The Devils Novice by Ellis Peters Page A

in the content, it’s worth taking a
close look at the manner.”
    Hugh
had an excellent memory, and reproduced Meriet’s replies even to the intonation.
“But there’s nothing there, barring a very good description of the horse. Every
question he answered and still told us nothing, since he knows nothing.”
    “Ah,
but he did not answer every question,” said Cadfael. “And I think he may have
told us a few notable things, though whether they have any bearing on Master
Clemence’s vanishing seems dubious. Canon Eluard asked him: “And you saw no
more of him?” And the lad said: “I did not go with them.” But he did not
say he had seen no more of the departed guest. And again, when he spoke of the
servants and this Foriet girl, all gathered to speed the departure with him, he
did not say “and my brother.” Nor did he say that his brother had ridden with
the escort.”
    “All
true,” agreed Hugh, not greatly impressed. “But none of these need mean
anything at all. Very few of us watch every word, to leave no possible detail
in doubt.”
    “That
I grant. Yet it does no harm to note such small things, and wonder. A man not
accustomed to lying, but brought up against the need, will evade if he can.
Well, if you find your horse in some stable thirty miles or more from here,
there’ll be no need for you or me to probe behind every word young Meriet
speaks, for the hunt will have outrun him and all his family. And they can
forget Peter Clemence—barring the occasional Mass, perhaps, for a kinsman’s
soul.”
    Canon
Eluard departed for London, secretary, groom, baggage and all, bent on urging
King Stephen to pay a diplomatic visit to the north before Christmas, and
secure his interest with the two powerful brothers who ruled there almost from
coast to coast. Ranulf of Chester and William of Roumare had elected to spend
the feast at Lincoln with their ladies, and a little judicious flattery and the
dispensing of a modest gift or two might bring in a handsome harvest. The canon
had paved the way already, and meant to make the return journey in the king’s
party.
    “And
on the way back,” he said, taking leave of Hugh in the great court of the
abbey, “I shall turn aside from his Grace’s company and return here, in the
hope that by then you will have some news for me. The bishop will be in great
anxiety.”
    He
departed, and Hugh was left to pursue the search for Peter Clemence, which had
now become, for all practical purposes, the search for his bay horse. And
pursue it he did, with vigour, deploying as many men as he could muster along
the most frequented ways north, visiting lords of manors, invading stables,
questioning travellers. When the more obvious halting places yielded nothing,
they spread out into wilder country. In the north of the shire the land was
flatter, with less forest but wide expanses of heath, moorland and scrub, and
several large tracts of peat-moss, desolate and impossible to cultivate, though
the locals who knew the safe dykes cut and stacked fuel there for their winter
use.
    The
manor of Alkington lay on the edge of this wilderness of dark-brown pools and
quaking mosses and tangled bush, under a pale, featureless sky. It was sadly
run down from its former value, its ploughlands shrunken, no place to expect to
find, grazing in the tenant’s paddock, a tall bay thoroughbred fit for a prince
to ride. But it was there that Hugh found him, white-blazed face, white
forefeet and all, grown somewhat shaggy and ill-groomed, but otherwise in very
good condition.
    There
was as little concealment about the tenant’s behaviour as about his open
display of his prize. He was a free man, and held as subtenant under the lord
of Wem, and he was willing and ready to account for the unexpected guest in his
stable.
    “And
you see him, my lord, in better fettle than he was when he came here, for he’d
run wild some time, by all accounts, and