The Heretic's Apprentice (8 page)

‘I know you now,' he said, fumbling for words. ‘But you're changed!'

‘You are not,' she said. ‘Browner, perhaps, and your hair's even fairer than it used to be, but I'd have known you anywhere. And you turn up like this without a word of warning, and they were letting you go without waiting for me?'

‘I'm coming again tomorrow,' he said, and hesitated to attempt the explanation, here in the yard, with Conan still lingering on the borders of their meeting. ‘Mistress Margaret will tell you about it. I had messages to bring…'

‘If you knew' said Fortunata, ‘how often and how long we've talked of you both, and wondered how you were faring in those far places. It's not every day we have kinsfolk setting out on such an adventure, do you think we never gave you a thought?'

Hardly once in all those years had it entered his mind to wonder about any of those left behind. Closest to him in this house, and alone significant, had been William, and with William he had gone, blithely, without a thought for anyone left to continue life here, least of all a leggy little girl of eleven with a spotty skin and a disconcerting stare.

‘I doubt,' he said, abashed, ‘that I ever deserved you should.'

‘What has desert to do with it?' she said. ‘And you were leaving now until tomorrow? No, that you can't! Come back with me into the house, if only for an hour. Why must I wait until tomorrow to get used to seeing you again?'

She had him by the hand, turning him back towards the open door, and though he knew it was no more than the open and gallant friendliness of one who had known him from her childhood, and wished him well in absence as she wished well to all men of goodwill – nothing more than that, not yet! – he went with her like a bidden child, silenced and charmed. He would have gone wherever she led him. He had that to tell her that would cloud her brightness for a while, and afterwards no rights in her or in this house, no reason to believe she would ever be more to him than she was now, or he to her. But he went with her, and the warm dimness of the hall received them.

Conan looked after them for a long moment, before he went on towards the stable, his thick brows drawn together, and his wits very busy in his head.

It was fully dark when Conan came home again, and he came alone.

‘I went as far as Forton, but he'd gone on to Nesse early in the day, likely he'd have finished there and moved on before night. I thought it best to come back. He'll not be home tomorrow, not until too late to see old William to his grave, not knowing the need.'

‘He'll be sorry to let the old man go without him,' said Margaret, shaking her head, ‘but there's nothing to be done about it now. Well, we'll have to manage everything properly on his behalf. I suppose it would have been a pity to fetch him back so far and lose two days or more in the middle of the shearing time. Perhaps it's just as well he was out of reach.'

‘Uncle William will sleep just as well,' said Jevan, unperturbed. ‘He had an eye to business in his day, he wouldn't favour waste of time, or risk of another dealer picking up one of his customers while his back was turned. Never fret, we'll make a good family showing tomorrow. And if you want to be up early to prepare your table, Meg, you'd best be off to bed and get your rest.'

‘Yes,' she said, sighing, and braced her hands on the table to rise. ‘Never mind, Conan, you did what you could. There's meat and bread and ale in the kitchen for you, as soon as you've stabled the pony. Goodnight to you both! Jevan, you'll put out the lamp and see the door bolted?'

‘I will. When did you know me to forget? Goodnight, Meg!'

The master bedchamber was the only one on this main floor. Fortunata had a small room above, closed off from the larger part of the loft where the menservants had their beds, and Jevan slept in a small chamber over the entry from the street into the yard, where he kept his choicest wares and his chest of books.

Margaret's door closed behind her. Conan had turned to go out to the kitchen, but in the doorway he looked back, and asked: ‘Did he stay long? The young fellow? He was for going, the same time I left, but we met with Fortunata in the yard, and he turned back with her.'

Jevan looked up in tolerant surprise. ‘He stayed and ate with us. He's bidden back with us tomorrow, too. Our girl seemed pleased to see him.' His grave, long face, very solemn in repose, was nevertheless lit by a pair of glittering black eyes that missed very little, and seemed to be seeing too far into Conan at this moment for Conan's comfort, and finding what they saw mildly amusing. ‘Nothing to fret you,' said Jevan. ‘He's no shepherd, to put a spoke in your wheel. Go and get your supper, and let Aldwin do the fretting, if there's any to be done.'

It was a thought which had not been in Conan's mind until that moment, but it had its validity, just as surely as the other possibility which had really been preoccupying him. He went off to the kitchen with the two considerations churning in his brain, to find the meal left for him, and Aldwin sitting morosely at the trestle table with a half empty mug of ale.

‘I never thought,' said Conan, spreading his elbows on the other side of the table, ‘we should ever see that young spark again. All those perils by land and sea that we hear about, cutthroats and robbers by land, storm and shipwreck and pirates on the sea, and he has to wriggle his way between the lot of them and come safe home. More than his master did!'

‘Did you find Girard?' asked Aldwin.

‘No, he's too far west. There was no time to go farther after him, they'll have to bury the old man without him. Small grief to me,' said Conan candidly, ‘if it was Elave we were burying.'

‘He'll be off again,' Aldwin said, strenuously hoping so. ‘He'll be too big for us now, he won't stay.'

Conan gave vent to a laugh that held no amusement. ‘Go, will he? He was for going this afternoon until he set eyes on Fortunata. He came back fast enough when she took him by the hand and bade him in again. And by what I saw of the looks between them, she'll have no eyes for another man while he's around.'

Aldwin gave him a wary and disbelieving look. ‘Are you taking a fancy to get the girl for yourself? I never saw sign of it before.'

‘I like her well enough, always have. But for all they treat her like a daughter, she's none of their kind, just a foundling taken in for pity. And when it's money, it sticks close in the blood, and mostly to the men, and Dame Margaret has nephews if Girard has none on his side. Like or not like, a man has to think of his prospects.'

‘And now you think better of the girl because she has a dowry from old William,' Aldwin guessed shrewdly, ‘and want the other fellow out of sight and mind. For all he brought her the dowry! And how do you know but what's in it may be worth nothing to boast of?'

‘In a fine carved casket like that? You saw how it was ornamented, all tendrils and ivory.'

‘A box is a box. It's what it holds that counts.'

‘No man would put rubbish in a box like that. But little value or great, it's worth the wager. For I do like the girl, and I think it only good sense and no shame,' vowed Conan roundly, ‘to like her the better for having possessions. And you'd do well,' he added seriously, ‘to think on your own case if that youngster comes to Fortunata's lure and stays here, where he was taught his clerking.'

He was giving words to what had been eating away at Aldwίn's always tenuous peace of mind ever since Elave had showed his face. But he made one feeble effort to stand it off. ‘I've seen no sign he'd be wanted back here.'

‘For one not wanted he was made strangely welcome, then,' retorted Conan. ‘And didn't I just say something to Jevan, that made him answer how I had nothing to fret about, seeing Elave was no shepherd, to threaten me. Let Aldwin do the fretting, says he, if there's any to be done.'

Aldwin had been doing the fretting all the evening, and it was made manifest by the tight clenching of his hands, white at the knuckle, and the sour set of his mouth, as though it were full of gall. He sat mute, seething in his fears and suspicions, and this light pronouncement of Jevan's, all the confirmation they needed.

‘Why did he have to come safe out of a mad journey that's killed its thousands before now?' wondered Conan, brooding. ‘I wish the man no great harm, God knows, but I wish him elsewhere. I'd wish him well, if only he'd make off somewhere else to enjoy it. But he'd be a fool not to see that he can do very well for himself here. I can't see him taking to his heels.'

‘Not,' agreed Aldwin malevolently, ‘unless the hounds were snapping at them.'

*

Aldwin sat for some while after Conan had gone off to his bed. By the time he rose from the table the hall would certainly be in darkness, the outer door barred, and Jevan already in his own chamber. Aldwin lit an end of candle from the last flicker of the saucer lamp, to light him through the hall to the wooden stairway to the loft, before he blew out the dwindling flame.

In the hall it was silent and still, no movement but the very slight creak of a shutter in the night breeze. Aldwin's candle made a minute point of light in the darkness, enough to show him his way the width of a familiar room. He was halfway to the foot of the stair when he halted, stood hesitating for a moment, listening to the reassuring silence, and then turned and made straight for the corner press.

The key was always in the lock, but seldom turned. Such valuables as the house contained were kept in the coffer in Girard's bedchamber. Aldwin carefully opened the long door, set his candle to stand steady on a shelf at breast-level, and reached up to the higher shelf where Margaret had placed Fortunata's box. Even when he had it set down beside his light he wavered. How if the key turned creakingly instead of silently, or would not yield at all? He could not have said what impelled him to meddle, but curiosity was strong and constant in him, as if he had to know the ins and outs of everything in the household, in case some overlooked detail might be held in store to be used against him. He turned the little key, and it revolved sweetly and silently, well made like the lock it operated and the box it adorned and guarded. With his left hand he raised the lid, and with his right lifted the candle to cast its light directly within.

‘What are you doing there?' demanded Jevan's voice, sharp and irritable from the top of the stairway.

Aldwin started violently, shaking drops of hot wax on to his hand. He had the lid closed and the key turned in an instant, and thrust the box back on to its upper shelf in panic haste. The open door of the press screened what he was about. From where Jevan came surging down the first few treads of the stairs, a moving shadow among shadows, he would see the light, though not its source, a segment of the open cupboard, and Aldwin's body in sharp silhouette, but could not have seen what his hands were up to, apart, perhaps, from that movement of reaching up to replace the violated treasure. Aldwin clawed along the shelf and turned with the candle in one hand, and the small knife he had just palmed from his own belt in the other.

‘I left my penknife here yesterday, when I cut a new peg to fasten the handle of the small bucket. I shall need it in the morning.'

Jevan had come the rest of the way down the staircase, and advanced upon him in resigned irritation, brushing him aside to close the door of the press.

‘Take it, then, and get to bed, and give over disturbing the household at this hour.'

Aldwin departed with what was for him unusual alacrity and docility, only too pleased to have come so well out of what might have been an awkward encounter. He did not so much as look round, but carried his guttering candle-end up the stairs and into the loft with a shaking hand. But behind him he heard the small, grating sound of a large key turning, and knew that Jevan had locked the press. His clerk's furtive foragings might be tolerated and passed over as annoying but harmless, but they were not to be encouraged. Aldwin had best walk warily with Jevan for a while, until the incident was forgotten.

The vexing thing was that it had all been for nothing. He had never had time to examine what was in the box, but had had to close the lid hastily in the same moment as opening it, with no time to get a glimpse within. He was not going to try that again. The contents of Fortunata's box would have to remain a secret until Girard came home.

*

On the twenty-first day of June, after mid-morning Mass, William of Lythwood was buried in a modest corner of the graveyard east of the abbey church, where good patrons of the house found a final resting-place. So he had what he wanted, and slept content.

Among those attending, Brother Cadfael could discern certain currents of discontent. He knew the clerk Aldwin much as he had known Elave in his day, as an occasional messenger on behalf of his master, and to tell truth, had never yet seen him looking content, but his bearing on this day seemed more abstracted and morose than usual, and he and the shepherd had their heads together in a conspiratorial manner, and their eyes narrowed and sharp upon the returned pilgrim in a manner which suggested that he was by no means welcome to them, however amiably the rest of the household behaved to him. And the young man himself seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts, and for all his concentration upon the office, his eyes strayed several times towards the young woman who stood modestly a pace behind Dame Margaret, earnestly attentive and very solemn beside the grave of the man who had given her a home and a name. And a dowry!

She was well worth looking at. Possibly Elave was debating reconsidering his determination to look about him for something more and better than could be found in his old employment. The skinny little thing all teeth and elbows had grown into a very attractive woman. One, however, who showed no sign at this moment of finding the young man as disturbing as he obviously found her. She had devoted herself wholly to her benefactor's funeral rites, and had no attention to spare for anything else.