Wynstan was satisfied with the progress. His plan had gone not perfectly but well enough. It had been a nasty shock to find Bern outside Wilf’s door, alert and sober, but Wynstan had reacted quickly and Wigelm had known what to do; and after that everything had happened as intended.
The story that Carwen had killed both Bern and Wilf was a good deal less plausible than Wynstan’s original, which was that she had cut Wilf’s throat while he slept; but people were fools and they seemed to believe it. They were all frightened of their slaves, Wynstan thought: the slaves had every reason to hate their owners, and if they had the chance, why would they not kill the people who had stolen their lives? A slave owner never slept easy. And all that stored-up fear burst like a boil when a slave was accused of murdering a nobleman.
Wynstan was hoping that the hue and cry would fail to find Carwen. He did not want her to tell her story in court. He would deny everything she said, and swear an oath, but a few might believe her rather than him. Much better if she vanished. Runaway slaves were usually caught, betrayed by their ragged clothes and their foreign accents and their pennilessness. However, Carwen had good clothes and some money, so she had a better-than-average chance.
Failing that, he had a contingency plan.
He was at the house of his mother, Gytha, with his brother,Wigelm, and their nephew Garulf late in the afternoon, waiting for the search party to return, when Sheriff Den appeared. With mock courtesy Wynstan said: “It’s an honor to receive a visit from you, sheriff, and all the more prized for its rarity.”
Den was impatient with facetious banter. A gray-haired man of about fifty, he had probably seen too much violence to be baited by mere jeering. He said: “You understand, don’t you, that not everyone is fooled?”
“I have no idea what you can be talking about,” said Wynstan with a smile.
“You think you’re clever, and you are, but there’s a limit to what you can get away with. And I’m here to tell you that you’re now perilously close to that limit.”
“It’s kind of you.” Wynstan continued to make fun of Den, but in fact he was paying close attention. This kind of threat from a sheriff to a bishop was unusual. Den was serious and he was not without power. He had authority, he had men-at-arms, and he had the ear of the king. Wynstan was only pretending not to care.
But what had prompted this display of menace? Not just the murder of Wilf, Wynstan thought.
In the next second he found out.
Den said: “Keep your hands off the lady Ragna.”
So that was it.
Den went on: “I want you to understand that if she should die, I will come after you, Bishop Wynstan.”
“How dreadful.”
“Not your brother or your nephew or any of your men—you. And I will never give up. I will bring you all the way down. You will live as a leper and die, as lepers do, in misery and filth.”
Despite himself Wynstan was chilled. He was thinking up a sarcastic riposte when Den simply turned around and left the house.
Wigelm said: “I should have ripped his guts open, the arrogant fool.”
Wynstan said: “He’s not a fool, unfortunately. If he was, we could ignore him.”
Gytha commented: “The foreign cat has got her claws into him.”
It was partly that, Wynstan had no doubt—Ragna had the ability to enchant most men—but there was something else. Den had long wanted to restrain the power of Wynstan’s family, and the murder of Ragna might provide him with a strong enough pretext, especially if it followed quickly after a power grab by Wynstan.
His ruminations were interrupted by Garulf’s bone headed friend Stiggy, who burst in, breathing hard, excited. He had gone with the hue and cry, under instructions from Wynstan, who had told him to race home ahead of the group if Carwen should be recaptured, a task so simple that even Stiggy could hardly fail to understand it.
“They got her,” he said now.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Shame.” It was time for the contingency plan. Wynstan got to his feet, and Wigelm and Garulf did the same. “Where was she?”
“In the woods this side of Trench. The dogs sniffed her out.”
“Did she say anything?”
“A lot of Welsh cursing.”
“How far behind you are they now?”
