“A man of those parts who had no property to tie him mightvery well get the same notion now,” said Cadfael ruefully,“without being in want of his wits. Indeed, it might be hiswits that advised him to move on.”

“So it might. But this fellow said—if he did notdream it—that the day he set out he looked back from ahilltop, and saw smoke in clouds over Winchester, and in the nightfollowing there was a red glow all above the city, that flickeredas if with still quick flames.”

“It could be true,” said Cadfael, and gnawed aconsidering lip. “It would come as no great surprise. Thelast firm news we had was that empress and bishop were holding offcautiously from each other, and shifting for position. A littlepatience… But she was never, it seems, a patient woman. Iwonder, now, I wonder if she has laid him under siege. How longwould your man have been on the road?”

“I fancy he made what haste he could,” said Simon,“but four days at least, surely. That sets his story a weekback, and no word yet to confirm it.”

“There will be, if it’s true,” said Cadfaelgrimly, “there will be! Of all the reports that fly about theworld, ill news is the surest of all to arrive!”

He was still pondering this ominous shadow as heset off back along the Foregate, and his preoccupation was suchthat his greetings to acquaintances along the way were apt to bebelated and absent-minded. It was mid-morning, and the dusty roadbrisk with traffic, and there were few inhabitants of this parishof Holy Cross outside the town walls that he did not know. He hadtreated many of them, or their children, at some time in these hiscloistered years; even, sometimes, their beasts, for he who learns