by Ellis Peters
“He saw us pass,” said Judith, “before we were into the forest. He was on his way home then, but he knew me, and he followed. Well for me! But Niall Bronzesmith has always been well for me, the few times ever we’ve met or touched.”
Hugh rose to depart. “Well, I’ll have Alan take a patrol down into the forest, and make a thorough drive there. If we have a nest of wild men in those parts, we’ll smoke them out. Madam, there shall be nothing made public of what has been said here. That matter is finished as you would have it. And thank God it ended no worse. Now I trust you may be left in peace.”
“Only I am not easy about Bertred,” Judith said abruptly. “Neither about his guilt nor his death. So strong a swimmer, born and raised by the river. Why should his skill fail him that night, of all nights?”
Hugh was gone, back to the castle to call off his hunters as fast as they came in to report, and either to deal faithfully with the wretched Vivian Hynde, or, more probably, leave him sweating and worrying overnight or longer in a chilly cell. Cadfael took the carefully rolled altar frontal Sister Magdalen had extracted from her saddle-roll, and set off back to the abbey. But first he looked in at the small bare room where Bertred’s coffined body lay on trestles, and the master-carpenter and his son were just fitting the lid, and said a prayer for a young man lost. Sister Magdalen came out with him as far as the street, and there halted, still silent and frowning in intense thought.
“Well?” said Cadfael, finding her so taciturn.
“No, not well. Very ill!” She shook her head dubiously. “I can make nothing of this pattern. Plain enough what happened to Judith, but the rest I cannot fathom. You heard what she said of Bertred’s death? The same doubts I feel about what so nearly might have been her own, but for the smith. Is there anything in all this coil that has happened by pure chance? I doubt it!”
He was still pondering that as he started uphill towards the High Street, and as he neared the corner, for some reason he slowed and turned to look back, and she was still standing in the mouth of the passage, gazing after him, her strong hands folded at her girdle. Nothing by pure chance, no, surely not, even those happenings that seemed wanton carried a false echo. Rather a sequence of events had set off each the following one, and called in motives and interests until then untouched, so that the affair had come about in a circle, and brought up the hapless souls involved in it facing where they had never intended to go. A deal more rapidly and purposefully than he had left her, Cadfael started back towards Sister Magdalen.
“I did wonder,” she said without apparent surprise, “what was going on in your mind. I’ve seldom known you sit through such a conference saying so little and scowling so much. What have you thought of now?”
“There’s something I should like you to do for me, since you’ll be staying in this house,” said Cadfael. “What with the youngster’s burial and Judith’s return, it shouldn’t be too difficult to filch a couple of things for me, and send them down to me at the abbey. By Martin’s boy Edwy, if they’re still here, but not a word to anyone else. Borrowing, not stealing. God knows I shan’t need them for long, one way or the other.”
“You interest me,” said Magdalen. “What are these two things?”
“Two left shoes,” said Cadfael.
Chapter Thirteen
Now that his mind was stringing together a thread of abhorrent sense out of details which hitherto had seemed to make none, he could not turn his thoughts to anything else. Throughout Vespers he struggled to concentrate on the office, but the lamentable sequence of disasters connected with the rose rent marched inexorably through his mind, gradually assembling into a logical order. First there was Judith, still deprived and unhappy after three lonely years, thinking and sometimes speaking of retreating into a nunnery, and vexed by a number of suitors both old and young, who had had an eye on her person and her wealth all this time, and wooed and pleaded without reward, and were now beginning to get desperate in case she carried out her design to become a religious. Then the attempt on the rose-bush, to retrieve at least the possibility of regaining the gift-house, and the resultant death of Brother Eluric, probably, indeed almost certainly, unplanned and committed in panic. After that, however bitterly regretted, one man at least had murder already against him, and would be far more likely afterwards to stick at nothing. But then, to confound and complicate, came the abduction of Judith, another panic measure to prevent her from making her gift unconditional, and try to persuade or threaten her into marriage. Even if he had not been named, the perpetrator of that enormity was known. And the nocturnal death of Bertred might have been logical enough, had the abductor brought it about, but plainly he had not. Judith vouched for that, and so, probably, could Vivian Hynde’s mother, since it seemed clear that once the bargain was made between captive and captor, Judith had been removed to the greater comfort of a house which had already been visted in search of her, and the buried room in the warehouse hurriedly and ingeniously cleared of all traces of her presence. So far, well! But there had been listeners outside in the night, Bertred first and possibly another afterwards, unless Vivian had reached a state in which every stirring of a spider or a mouse in the roof could alarm him. The plan might well have been overheard, and the horse with the double load might have had another follower, besides Niall Bronzesmith. And that would round off the whole disastrous circle, all the more surely if he who began it was also the one who sought to end it.
For consider, thought Cadfael, while his mind should have been on more tranquil and timeless things, what an excellent scapegoat Vivian Hynde makes for whoever attacked Judith in the forest. The man who had snatched her away and tried in vain to force marriage upon her, now riding away with her into the forest by night, and perhaps not trusting to her promise not to betray him, but preferring, once he had set her down, to dismount and hurry back to put an end to her. True, as things were, Judith vindicated him, she was quite certain he had not turned back, but made all haste away home, or up to Forton, to his father’s flocks. But how if the attempt had succeeded, and Judith had been left dead in the forest, and there had been no witness to do him justice?
A scapegoat provided for one murder beforehand, Cadfael pursued. How if there had been another provided for the first murder, not beforehand, since that killing was not premeditated, but afterwards? A scapegoat suddenly presented helpless and vulnerable and already trussed for execution, bringing with him in an instant the inspiration of his usefulness, and the certainty of his death? Still not chance, but the bitterly ironic consequence of what had gone before.
And all this complication of logic and guilt depended upon two left shoes, which as yet he had not seen. The older the better, he had said, when Magdalen, intelligent and immune from surprise, questioned him on detail, I want them well worn. Few but the rich own many pairs of shoes, but one of the wearers of those he had in mind had no further use for whatever he did possess, and the other must surely have more than one pair. Not the new, Cadfael had said firmly, for he surely has some that are new. His oldest he’ll hardly miss.
Vespers was over, and Cadfael spared time to pay a visit to his workshop in the herb-garden before supper, in case the boy was waiting for him there. The master-carpenter’s son knew his way about very well, from old acquaintance of some years past, and would certainly look for him there. But all was cool and quiet and solitary within, a single wine-jar bubbling contentedly on its bench, in a slow, drowsy rhythm, the dried bunches of herbs rustling softly overhead along the eaves without and the beams within, the brazier quenched and cold. These were the longest days of the year, the light outside was barely subdued from its afternoon brightness, but in another hour it would be mellowing into the level beams of sunset and the greenish glow of twilight.
Nothing yet. He closed the door on his small inner kingdom, and went back to supper in the refectory, and bore with Brother Jerome’s unctuous reproof for being a moment late without comment or complaint. Indeed, without even noticing it, thou
gh he made appropriately placating answer by instinct. The household at Maerdol-head must be too busily awake and in motion for Sister Magdalen to manage her depredations as easily and quickly as he had hoped. No matter! Whatever she took in hand she would complete successfully.
He evaded Collations, but went dutifully to Compline, and still there was no sign. He retired again to his workshop, always a convenient excuse for not being where according to the horarium he should have been, even thus late in the evening. But it was full dark, and the brothers already in their cells in the dortoir, before Edwy Bellecote came, in haste and full of apologies.
“My father sent me on an errand out to Frankwell, and I had no leave to tell him what I was about for you, Brother Cadfael, so I thought best to hold my tongue and go. It took me longer than I thought for, and I had to pretend I’d left my tools behind as an excuse for going back to the house so late. But the sister was on the watch for me. She’s quick, that one! And she had what you asked for.” He produced a bundle rolled in sacking from under his coat, and sat down comfortably, uninvited but sure of his welcome, on the bench by the wall. “What would you be needing two odd shoes for?”
Cadfael had known him well since the boy, turned eighteen now, was a lively imp of fourteen, tall for his years and lean and venturesome, with a bush of chestnut hair, and light hazel eyes that missed very little of what went on about him. He was using them now to good effect, as Cadfael unwrapped the sacking, and tipped out the shoes on the earth floor.
“For the proper study of two odd feet,” he said, and viewed them for a moment without touching. “Which of the two is Bertred’s?”
“This. This one I purloined for her from where his few things were laid by, but she had to wait for a chance to get at the other, or I should have been here before ever I got sent out to Frankwell.”
“No matter,” said Cadfael absently, and turned the shoe sole-upward in his hands. Very well worn, the whole-cut upper rubbed thin at the toe and patched, the single-thickness sole reinforced with a triangular lift of thick leather at the heel. It was of the common sort that have no fastening, but are simply slipped on the foot. The leather thonging that seamed the instep at the outer side was almost worn through. But after all its probable years of wear, the sole was trodden straight and true from back of heel to tip of toe. No pressure to either side, no down at heel nor oblique wear at the toe.
“I should have known,” said Cadfael. “I can’t recall seeing the man walking more than half a dozen times, but I should have known. Straight as a lance! I doubt if he ever trod a sole sidelong or ground down a heel askew in his life.”
The other shoe was rather a low-cut ankle boot, made on the same one-piece pattern as to the upper, and similarly seamed at the instep, with a slightly pointed toe, a thicker lift of leather at the heel, and a thong that encircled the ankle and was fastened with a bronze buckle. The outer side of the back of the heel was trodden down in a deep segment, and the same wear showed at the inner side of the toe. The light of Cadfael’s small lamp, falling close but sidelong over it, accentuated the lights and shadows. Here there was only the faint beginning of a crack under the big toe, but it showed in the same spot as on the boot that had been taken from Bertred’s dead foot, and it was enough.
“What does it prove?” wondered Edwy, his bright shock-head bent curiously over the shoe.
“It proves that I am a fool,” said Cadfael ruefully, “though I have sometimes suspected as much myself. It proves that the man who wears a certain shoe this week may not be the man who wore it last week. Hush, now, let me think!” He was in two minds whether there was any need to take further action immediately, but recalling all that had been said that afternoon, he reasoned that action could wait until morning. What could have been more reassuring than Judith’s simple assumption that the attack on her had been a mere matter of the hazards of forest travel, an opportunist blow at a woman benighted, any woman, simply for the clothes she wore if she proved to have nothing else of value about her? No, no need to start an alarm and rouse Hugh again before morning, the murderer had every cause to believe himself safe.
“Son,” said Cadfael, sighing, “I am getting old, I miss my bed. And you had better be off to yours, or your mother will be blaming me for getting you into bad ways.”
When the boy had gone, with his curiosity still unsatisfied, Cadfael sat still and silent, at last admitting into his thoughts the realisation of which even his mind had been fighting shy. For the murderer, so well persuaded now of his own skill, feeling himself invulnerable, would not give up now. Having come so far, he would not turn back. Well, his time was short. He had only this one night left, though he did not know it, and he neither would nor could attempt anything against Judith now, in her own home, with Sister Magdalen keeping her formidable company. He would prefer to bide his time, unaware that tomorrow was to see an ending.
Cadfael started erect, causing the lamp to flicker. No, not against Judith! But if he was so sure of himself, then he had still this one night to try again to conserve the house in the Foregate, for tomorrow the rose rent would be paid, and for another year the abbey’s title would be unassailable. If Judith was not vulnerable, the rose-bush still was.
He told himself that he was being a superstitious fool, that no one, not even a criminal at once lulled and exhilarated by success, would dare venture anything again so soon, but by the time he had completed even the thought he found himself halfway across the garden, heading at a hasty walk out into the great court, and making for the gatehouse. Here on familiar ground darkness was no impediment, and tonight the sky was clear, and there were stars, though fine as pinpricks in the midnight blackness. Along the Foregate it was very quiet, nothing moving but the occasional prowling cat among the alleys. But somewhere ahead, near the corner of the abbey wall at the horse-fair ground, there was a small, vibrating glow in the sky, low down behind the house-roofs, and its quivering alternately lit them into black silhouette and quenched them again in the common darkness. Cadfael began to run. Then he heard, distant and muted, the flurry of many voices in half-unbelieving alarm, and suddenly the glow was swallowed up in a great burst of flame, that fountained into the sky with a crackling of wood and thorn. The babble of voices became an uproar of men shouting and women shrilling, and all the Foregate dogs baying echoes from wall to wall along the highway.
Doors were opening, men running out into the roadway, pulling on hose and coats as they came and breaking into shuffling, entangled motion towards the fire. Questions flew at random, and were not answered because no one as yet knew the answers. Cadfael arrived among the rest at the gate of Niall’s yard, which already stood wide. Through the wicket into the garden the poppy-red glow glared, quivering, and above the crest of the wall the column of fire soared, breathing upward a whirlwind of burning air and spinning flakes of ash, double a tall man’s height, to dissolve into the darkness. Thank God, thought Cadfael at sight of its vertical ascent, there’s no wind, it won’t reach either the house or the farrier’s loft on the other side. And by the fury and noise of it, it may burn out quickly. But he knew already what he would see as he stepped through the wicket.
In the middle of the rear wall the rose-bush was a great globe of flames, roaring like a furnace and crackling like the breaking of bones as the thorns spat and writhed in the heat. The fire had reached the old, crabbed vine, but beyond that there was nothing but the stone wall to feed it. The fruit trees were far enough removed to survive, though their nearer branches might be scorched. But nothing, nothing but blackened, outspread arms and white wood-ash, would be left of the rose-bush. Against the blinding brightness of the flames a few helpless figures circled and flinched away, unable to approach. Water thrown from a safe distance exploded into steam and vanished in a frantic hissing, but did no good. They had given up the attempt to fight it, and stood back, dangling buckets, to watch the old, gnarled bole, so many years fruitful, twist and split and groan in its death-agony.
Niall h
ad drawn back to the wall opposite, and stood watching with a soiled, discouraged face and drawn brows. Cadfael came to his side, and the brown head turned to acknowledge his coming, and nodded brief recognition before turning back again to resume his interrupted watch.
“How did he get this furnace going?” asked Cadfael. “Not with simple flint and steel and tinder, that’s certain, and you in the house. It would have taken him a good quarter-hour to get beyond the first smoulder.”
“He came the same way,” said Niall, without removing his bleak gaze from the tower of smoke and spinning ash surging up into the sky, “Through the paddock at the back, where the ground’s higher. He never even entered the garden this time. He must have poured oil over the wall on to the bush and the vine drenched them in oil. And then he dropped a torch over. Well alight
And he away in the dark. And there’s nothing we can do, nothing!”
Nothing any man could do, except stand back from the heat and watch, as very gradually the first fury began to slacken, and the blackened branches to sag from the wall and collapse into the blazing heart of the fire, sending up drifts of fine grey ash that soared upwards like a flight of moths. Nothing except be thankful that the wall behind was of solid stone, and would not carry the fire towards either human habitation.
“It was dear to her,” said Niall bitterly.
“It was. But at least she has her life still,” said Cadfael, “and has rediscovered its value. And she knows who to thank for the gift, next after God.”
Niall said nothing to that, but continued grimly to watch as the fire, appeased, began to settle into a bed of crimson, and the flying moths of ash to drift about the garden, no longer torn headlong upward by the draught. The neighbours stood back, satisfied that the worst was over, and began gradually to drift away, back to their beds. Niall heaved a great breath, and shook himself out of his daze.