by Ellis Peters
“Tell me, this was a well-fitted lid, and closed when you threw it over?”
“Yes.” He was very fairly visible now, and all startled eyes. He did not understand the question, but he was sure of his work. “Is that important, too, I wish now I hadn’t done it, I see I’ve made everything worse. But how was Ito know? There wasn’t any hue and cry for me then, there wasn’t any murder, I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“A small wooden box, tightly closed, will float gallantly where the river carries it, and there are men who live by the river traffic and fishing, yes, and poaching, too, and they’ll know every bend and beach from here to Atcham where things fetch up on the current. Keep your heart up, lad, you may yet see your work again if I can get the sheriff to listen to me, and put out the word to the watermen to keep a watch. If I give them a description of what was thrown away— oh, be easy, I’ll not reveal how I got it!—and somewhere downstream that very thing is discovered, that’s a strong point in your favour, and I may even be able to get them to look elsewhere for the bottle, somewhere where Edwin Gurney was not, and therefore could not have left it. You bide yet a day or two here in quiet, if you can bear it, and if need be, I’ll get you away to some more distant place, where you can wait the time out in better comfort.”
“I can bear it,” said Edwin sturdily. And added ruefully: “But I wish it may not be long!”
The brothers were filing out at the end of Compline when it dawned upon Cadfael that there was one important question which he and everyone else had neglected to ask, and the only person he could think of who might conceivably be able to answer it was Richildis. There was still time to ask it before night, if he gave up his final half-hour in the warming-room. Not, perhaps, a tactful time to visit, but everything connected with this business was urgent, and Richildis could at least sleep a little more easily for the knowledge that Edwin was, thus far at least, safe and provided for. Cadfael drew up his cowl, and made purposefully for the gates.
It was bad luck that Brother Jerome should be coming across the court towards the porter’s lodge at the same time, probably with some officious orders for the morrow, or some sanctimonious complaint of irregularities today. Brother Jerome already felt himself to be in the exalted position of clerk to the abbot-elect, and was exerting himself to represent adequately his master Robert, now that that worthy man had availed himself of the abbot’s privilege and privacy. Authority delegated to Brother Richard, and sedulously avoided by him wherever possible, would be greedily taken up by Brother Jerome. Some of the novices and boy pupils had already had cause to lament his zeal.
“You have an errand of mercy at so late an hour, brother?” Jerome smiled odiously. “Can it not wait until morning?”
“At the risk of further harm,” snapped Cadfael, “it might.” And he made no further halt, but proceeded on his way, well aware of the narrowed eyes following his departure. He had, within reason, authority to come and go as he thought fit, even to absent himself from services if his aid was required elsewhere, and he was certainly not going to explain himself, either truthfully or mendaciously, to Brother Jerome, however others less bold might conform for the sake of staying out of Robert’s displeasure. It was unfortunate, but he had nothing ill to conceal, and to turn back would have suggested the contrary.
There was still a small light burning in the kitchen of the house beyond the millpond, he could see it through a tiny chink in the shutter as he approached. Yes, now, there was something he had failed to take into account: the kitchen window overlooked the pond, and close, at that, closer than from the road, and yesterday it had been open because of the brazier standing under it, an outlet for the smoke. An outlet, too, for a small vial hurled out there as soon as emptied, to be lost for ever in the mud at the bottom of the pond? What could be more convenient? No odour on clothing, no stains, no dread of being discovered with the proof.
Tomorrow, thought Cadfael, elated, I’ll search from that window down to the water. Who knows but this time the thing thrown may really have fallen short, and be lying somewhere in the grass by the water’s edge for me to find? That would be something gained! Even if it cannot prove who threw it there, it may still tell me something.
He knocked softly at the door, expecting Aldith to answer, or Aelfric, but it was the voice of Richildis herself that called out quietly from within: “Who’s there?”
“Cadfael! Open to me for a few minutes.”
His name had been enough, she opened eagerly, and reached a hand to draw him into the kitchen. “Hush, softly! Aldith is asleep in my bed, and Aelfric within, in the room. I could not sleep yet, I was sitting late, thinking about my boy. Oh, Cadfael, can you give me no comfort? You will stand his friend if you can?”
“He is well, and still free,” said Cadfael, sitting down beside her on the bench against the wall. “But mark me, you know nothing, should any ask. You may truly say he has not been here, and you don’t know where he is. Better so!”
“But you do know!” The tiny, steady light of the rush-candle showed him her face smoothed of its ageing lines and softly bright, very comely. He did not answer; she might read that for herself, and could still say truly that she knew nothing.
“And that’s all you can give me?” she breathed.
“No, I can give you my solemn word that he never harmed his stepfather. That I know. And truth must come out. That you must believe.”
“Oh, I will, I do, if you’ll help to uncover it. Oh, Cadfael, if you were not here I should despair. And such constant vexations, pin-pricks, when I can think of nothing but Edwin. And Gervase not in his grave until tomorrow! Now that he’s gone, I no longer have a claim to livery for his horse, and with so many travellers coming now before the feast, they want his stable-room, and I must move him elsewhere, or else sell him … But Edwin will want him, if …” She shook her head distractedly, and would not complete that doubt. “They told me they’ll find him a stall and feed somewhere until I can arrange for him to be stabled elsewhere. Perhaps Martin could house him…”
They might, Cadfael thought indignantly, have spared her such small annoyances, at least for a few days. She had moved a little closer to him, her shoulder against his. Their whispering voices in the dimly lit room, and the lingering warmth from a brazier now mostly ash, took him back many years, to a stolen meeting in her father’s outhouse. Better not linger, to be drawn deeper still!
“Richildis, there’s something I came to ask you. Did your husband ever actually draw up and seal the deed that made Edwin his heir?”
“Yes, he did.” She was surprised by the question, “It was quite legal and binding, but naturally this agreement with the abbey has a later date, and makes the will void now. Or it did …” She was brought back sharply to the realisation that the second agreement, too, had been superseded, more roughly even than the first. “Of course, that’s of no validity now. So the grant to Edwin stands. It must, our man of law drew it properly, and I have it in writing.”
“So all that stands between Edwin and his manor, now, is the threat of arrest for murder, which we know he did not do. But tell me this, Richildis, if you know it: supposing the worst happened—which it must not and will not—and he was convicted of killing your husband—then what becomes of Mallilie? The abbey cannot claim it, Edwin could not then inherit it. Who becomes the heir?”
She managed to gaze resolutely beyond the possibility of the worst, and considered what sense law would make of what was left.
“I suppose I should get my dower, as the widow. But the manor could only revert to the overlord, and that’s the earl of Chester, for there’s no other legitimate heir. He could bestow it where he pleased, to his best advantage. It might go to any man he favoured in these parts. Sheriff Prestcote, as like as not, or one of his officers.”
It was true, and it robbed all others here, except Edwin, of any prospect of gaining by Bonel’s death; or at least, of any material gain. An enemy sufficiently consumed by hate might fi
nd the death in itself gain enough, yet that seemed an excessive reaction to a man no way extreme, however difficult Edwin had found him.
“You’re sure? There’s no nephew, or cousin of his somewhere about the shire?”
“No, no one, or he would never have promised me Mallilie for Edwin. He set great store by his own blood.”
What had been going through Cadfael’s mind was the possibility that someone with his own fortune in view might have planned to remove at one stroke both Bonel and Edwin, by ensuring the boy’s arrest for the man’s murder. But evidently that was far from the mark. No one could have calculated with any certainty on securing for himself what the house of Bonel forfeited.
By way of comfort and encouragement, Cadfael laid his broad, gnarled hand on her slender one, and marked in the slanting tight, with roused tenderness, its enlarged knuckles and tracery of violet veins, more touching than any girlish smoothness could ever have been. Her face was beautiful, too, even in its ageing, lined, now that he saw it almost at peace, with good-humour and the long experience of happiness, which this brief ordeal of exasperation, disruption and pain could do little now to deflower. It was his youth he was lamenting, not any waste of Richildis. She had married the right man and been blessed, and a late mistake with the wrong man was over without irreparable damage, provided her darling could be extricated from his present danger. That, and only that, Cadfael thought gratefully, is my task.
The warm hand under his turned and closed, holding him fast. The still beguiling face turned to gaze at him closely and earnestly, with limpid, sympathetic eyes and a mouth with delicate, self-congratulatory guilt. “Oh, Cadfael, did you take it so hard? Did it have to be the cloister? I wondered about you so often, and so long, but I never knew I had done you such an injury. And you have forgiven me that broken promise?”
“The whole fault was mine,” said Cadfael, with somewhat over-hearty fervour. “I’ve wished you well always, as I do now.” And he made to rise from the bench, but she kept her hold on his hand and rose with him. A sweet woman, but dangerous, like all her innocent kind.
“Do you remember,” she was saying, in the hushed whisper the hour demanded, but with something even more secret in its intimacy, “the night we pledged our troth? That was December, too. I’ve been thinking of it ever since I knew you were here—a Benedictine monk! Who would ever have dreamed it would end so! But you stayed away so long!”
It was certainly time to go. Cadfael retrieved his hand gently, made her a soothing good night, and discreetly withdrew, before worse could befall him. Let her by all means attribute his vocation to the loss of her own delightful person, for the conviction would stand by her well until her world was restored in safety. But as for him, he had no regrets whatever. The cowl both fitted and became him.
He let himself out and returned enlarged through the chill and sparkle of the frosty night, to the place he had chosen, and still and for ever now preferred.
Behind him, as he neared the gatehouse, a meagre shadow detached itself from the shelter of the eaves of Richildiss house, and slid contentedly along the road after him, keeping well to the side in case he looked back. But Brother Cadfael did not look back. He had just had a lesson in the perils of that equivocal exercise; and in any case, it was not his way.
CHAPTER 6
Chapter next morning promised to be as dull as usual, once Brother Andrew’s readings were done, and the business of the house reached; but Cadfael, dozing gently behind his pillar, remained alert enough to prick his ears, when Brother Matthew the cellarer announced that the guest-hall was full to capacity, and more stabling space was needed for still more expected gentlefolk, so that it would be necessary to transfer some of the horses and mules belonging to the abbey to some other housing, to accommodate the travellers’ beasts within the walls. Late merchants, taking advantage of the clement autumn after the summer of siege and disorder, were now on the roads making for home for the feast, and nobles with manors in the county were seeking their own retired firesides, to celebrate Christmas away from the burden of arms and the stress of faction in the south. It was manifestly true that the stables were overcrowded, and the great court daily brighter and busier with arrivals and departures.
“There is also the matter of the horse that belonged to Master Gervase Bonel,” said Brother Matthew, “who is to be buried today. Our responsibility to provide stabling and feed is now at an end, though I know the case is in suspense until the matter of the man’s death and the disposal of his property is cleared up. But the widow as survivor is certainly not entitled to livery for a horse. She has a daughter married in the town, and doubtless will be able to make provision for the beast, and of course we must house it until she so disposes, but it need not occupy a stall in our main stables. Have I your approval to move it out with our own working beasts to the stabling under our barn in the horse-fair ground?”
Most certainly he had not Cadfael’s approval! He sat stiff with alarm and exasperation, fuming at his own unfortunate choice of hiding-place rather than Matthew’s practical dispositions. Yet how could he have foreseen this? Very seldom had it been necessary to make use of the stalls at the barn, apart from its actual purpose as temporary accommodation at the horse-fairs and St. Peter’s fair. And now how was he to get to Edwin in time to remove him from the peril of discovery? In broad daylight, and with the inescapable spiritual duties of the day confining his movements?
“That should certainly provide adequate stabling,” agreed Prior Robert. “It would be well to make the transfer at once.”
“I will give instructions to the grooms. And you agree also, Father, to the Widow Bonel’s horse being removed with them?”
“By all means!” Robert no longer had quite the same interest in the Bonel family, now that it seemed doubtful he would ever lay his hands on the manor of Mallilie, though he did not intend to give up without a struggle. The unnatural death and its consequences irked him like a thorn in his flesh, and he would gladly have removed not merely the horse but the whole household, could he have done so with propriety. He did not want murder associated with his convent, he did not want the sheriff’s officers probing among his guests, or the whiff of notoriety hanging round the monastery buildings like a bad odour. “It will be necessary to go into the legal complications on the vexed question of the charter, which inevitably lapses now unless a new lord chooses to endorse and complete it. But until after Master Bonel’s burial, of course, nothing should be done. The horse, however, can well be moved. I doubt if the widow will now have any use for a mount, but that is not yet our problem.”
He is already regretting, thought Cadfael, that in the first flush of sympathy and concern he authorised a grave for Bonel in the transept. But his dignity will not let him withdraw the concession now. God be thanked, Richildis will have whatever comfort there is in a solemn and dignified funeral, since all that Robert does must be done with grandeur. Gervase has lain in state in the mortuary chapel of the abbey, and will lie in abbey ground by nightfall. She would be soothed and calmed by that. She felt, he was sure, a kind of guilt towards the dead man. Whenever she was solitary she would be playing the ageless, debilitating game of: If only … If only I’d never accepted him … if only I had managed affairs between him and Edwin better … if only—then he might have been alive and hale today!
Cadfael closed his ears to the desultory discussion of a possible purchase of land to enlarge the graveyard, and gave his mind to the consideration of his own more pressing problem. It would not be impossible to find himself an errand along the Foregate when the grooms were stabling the horses in their new quarters, and the lay brothers would not question any movements of his. He could as well bring Edwin out of his retreat in a Benedictine habit as lead him into it, provided he took care to time the exit property. And once out, then where? Certainly not towards the gatehouse. There were people in one or two houses along the highroad towards St. Giles who had had dealings with him when sick, some whose children
he had attended in fever. They might give shelter to a young man at his recommendation, though he did not much like the idea of involving them. Or there was, at the end of this stretch of road, the leper hospital of St. Giles, where young brothers often served a part of their novitiate in attendance on those less fortunate. Something, surely, might be arranged to hide one haunted boy.
Incredulously, Cadfael heard his own name spoken, and was jerked sharply out of his planning. Across the chapter-house, in his stall as close as possible to Prior Robert, Brother Jerome had risen, and was in full spate, his meagre figure deceptively humble in stance, his sharp eyes half-hooded in holy meekness. And he had just uttered Brother Cadfael’s name, with odious concern and affection!
“… I do not say, Father, that there has been any impropriety in our dearly valued brother’s conduct. I do but appeal for aid and guidance for his soul’s sake, for he stands in peril. Father, it has come to my knowledge that many years since, before his call to this blessed vocation, Brother Cadfael was in a relationship of worldly affection with the lady who is now Mistress Bonel, and a guest of this house. By reason of the death of her husband he was drawn back into contact with her, by no fault of his, oh, no, I do not speak of blame, for he was called to help a dying man. But consider, Father, how severe a test may be imposed upon a brother’s sincere devotion, when he is again brought unexpectedly into so close touch with a long-forgotten attachment according to this world!”
To judge by Prior Robert’s loftily erected head and stretched neck, which enabled him to look from an even greater height down his nose at the imperilled brother, he was indeed considering it. So was Cadfael, with astonished indignation that congealed rapidly into cool, inimical comprehension. He had underestimated Brother Jerome’s audacity, no less than his venom. That large, sinewy ear must have been pressed lovingly to the large keyhole of Richildis’s door, to have gathered so much.