by Ellis Peters
A small thing, to make so huge a hole in the defence a man put up for his life. Someone had stood pressed against that doorpost, looking in, someone about Cadfael’s own height—a small man with flaxen hair, and a bloodied graze on the left side of his head.
Chapter 3
Saturday, from Noon to Night
CADFAEL was still standing with the tiny, ominous speck in his palm when he heard his name called from the hall door, and in the same moment a freshening puff of wind took the floating hairs and carried them away. He let them go. Why not? They had already spoken all too eloquently, they had nothing to add. He turned to see Susanna withdrawing into the hall, and the little maidservant scurrying towards him, with a knotted bundle of cloth held out before her.
“Mistress Susanna says, Dame Juliana wants these out of the house.” She opened the twist of cloth, and showed a glimpse of painted wood, scarred from much use. “They belong to Liliwin. She said you would take them to him.” The great dark eyes that dwelt unwaveringly on Cadfael’s face dilated even more. “Is it true?” she asked, low and urgently. “He’s safe, there in the church? And you’ll protect him? You won’t let them fetch him away?”
“He’s with us, and safe enough,” said Cadfael. “No one dare touch him now.”
“And they haven’t hurt him?” she questioned earnestly.
“No worse than will mend now, in peace. No need to fret for a while. He has forty days grace. I think,” he said, studying the thin face, the delicate, staring cheekbones under the wide-set eyes, “you like this young man.”
“He made such lovely music,” said the child wistfully. “And he spoke me gently, and was glad of being with me in the kitchen. It was the best hour I ever spent. And now I’m frightened for him. What will happen to him when the forty days are up?”
“Why, if it goes so far—for forty days is time enough to change many things—but even if it goes so far, and he must come forth, it will be into the hands of the law, not into the hands of his accusers. Law is grim enough, but tries to be fair. And by then those who accuse him will have forgotten their zeal, but even if they have not, they cannot touch him. If you want to help him, keep eyes and ears open, and if you learn of anything to the purpose, then speak out.” Clearly the very thought terrified her. Who ever listened to anything she might say? “To me you may speak freely,” he said. “Do you know anything of what went on here last night?”
She shook her head, casting wary glances over her shoulder. “Mistress Susanna sent me away to my bed. I sleep in the kitchen, I never even heard… I was very tired.” The kitchen was set well apart from the house for fear of fire, as was customary with these close-set and timber-framed town houses, she might well sleep through all the alarm after her long hours of labour. “But I do know this,” she said, and lifted her chin gallantly, and he saw that for all her youth and frailty it was a good chin, with a set to it that he approved. “I know Liliwin never harmed anyone, not my master nor any other man. What they say of him is not true.”
“Nor ever stole?” asked Cadfael gently.
She was no way put down, she held him steadily in her great lamps of eyes. “To eat, yes, perhaps, when he was hungry, an egg from under a hen somewhere, a partridge in the woods, even a loaf… that may be. He has been hungry all his life.” She knew, for much of her life so had she. “But steal more than that? For money, for gold? What good would that do him? And he is not like that… never!”
Cadfael was aware of the head emerging from the hall door before Rannilt was, and warned her softly: “There, run! Say I kept you with questions, and you knew no answers.”
She was very quick, she had whirled and was speeding back when Susanna’s voice pealed impatiently: “Rannilt!”
Cadfael did not wait to see her vanish within on the heels of her mistress, but turned at once to resume his way along the passage to the street.
*
Baldwin Peche was sitting with a pot of ale on the steps of his shop. The fact that the street was narrow, and the frontages here faced north-west and were in deep shadow, suggested that he had a reason beyond idleness and ease for being where he was at this hour. No doubt all those townsmen who had been guests at the Aurifaber wedding were up and alert this morning, as soon as they could shake off the effects of their entertainment, roused and restored by the sensational gossip they had to spread, and the possibility of further revelations.
The locksmith was a man in his fifties; short, sturdy, but beginning to grow a round paunch, a noted fisherman along the Severn, but a weak swimmer, unusually for this river-circled town. He had, truly enough, a long nose that quivered to every breath of scandal, though he was cautious in the use he made of it, as though he enjoyed mischief for its own sake rather than for any personal profit. A cold, inquisitive merriment twinkled in his pale-blue eyes, set in, a round, ruddy and smiling face. Cadfael knew him well enough to pass the time of day, and gave him good morrow as though making the approach himself, whereas he was well apprised Peche had been waiting to make it.
“Well, Brother Cadfael,” said the locksmith heartily, “you’ll have been tending these unlucky neighbours of mine. I trust you find them bearing up under their griefs? The lad tells me they’ll make good recoveries, the both of them.”
Cadfael said what was required of him, which was rather enquiry than response, and kept his mouth shut and his ears open to listen to the tale all over again, with more and richer detail, since this was Peche’s chosen craft. The journeyman locksmith, a fine-looking young man who lived with his widowed mother a street or two away in the town, looked out once from the shop doorway, cast a knowledgeable eye on his master, and withdrew, assured of having work to himself, as he preferred it. By this time John Boneth knew everything his skilled but idle tutor could teach him, and was quite capable of running the business single-handed. There was no son to inherit it, he was trusted and depended on, and he could wait.
“A lucky match, mark,” said Peche, prodding a knowing finger into Brother Cadfael’s shoulder, “especially if this treasury of Walter’s is really lost, and can’t be recovered. Edred Bele’s girl has money enough coming to her to make up the half, at least. Walter’s worked hard to get her for his lad, and the old dame’s done her share, too. Trust them!” He rubbed finger and thumb together suggestively, and nudged and winked. “And the girl no beauty and without graces-neither sings nor dances well, and dumb in company. No monster, though, she’ll pass well enough, or that youngster would never have been brought to… not with what he has in hand!”
“He’s a fine-looking lad,” said Cadfael mildly, “and they say not unskilled. And a good inheritance waiting for him.”
“Ah, but short now!” whispered Baldwin, leaning closer still and stabbing with a stiff forefinger, his knowing face gleeful. “It’s the waiting is hard to bear. Young folk live now, not tomorrow, and this side marriage—you take my meaning?—not t’other. Oh, the old dame may dote on him, the sun shines out of his tail for her, but she keeps her hold on the purse and doles out sweets very sparingly. Not enough for the sort he fancies!”
It occurred to Cadfael, rather belatedly, that it was hardly becoming behaviour in one of his habit to listen avidly to local scandal, but if he did nothing to encourage confidences, he certainly did not stop listening. Encouragement, in any case, was unnecessary. Peche had every intention of making the most of his probings.
“I wouldn’t say,” he breathed into Cadfael’s ear, “but he’s had his fingers in her purse a time or two, for all her sharpness. His present fancy comes expensive, not to speak of the game there’ll be if ever her husband gets to know of their cantrips. It’s a fair guess the bride’s dowry, as much of it as he can get his hands on, will go to deck out another wench’s neck. Not that he had any objections to this match—not he, he likes the girl well enough, and he likes her money a good deal better. But he likes somebody else best of all. No names, no revenges! But you should have seen her as a guest last night! Bold as a royal wh
ore, and the old man puffed up beside her, proud of owning the handsomest thing in the hall, and she and the bridegroom eyeing each other fit to laugh out loud at the old fool. As well I was the only one there had sharp enough eyes to see the sparks pass!”
“As well, indeed!” said Cadfael almost absently, for he was busy reflecting how understandable it was that Daniel should view his father’s tenant with such ill-will. No need to doubt Peche’s information, really devoted pryers make sure of their facts. Doubtless, though never a word need have been said, certain quiverings of that inquisitive nose and knowing glances from those coldly merry eyes had warned Daniel, evidently not quite a fool, that his gallivantings were no secret.
And the other, the old fool, welcome guest at the wedding—of consequence, therefore, among the merchants of Shrewsbury and with a young, bold, handsome wife… A second marriage, then, on the man’s part? The town was not so great that Cadfael had to look very far. Ailwin Corde, widowed a few years ago and married again, against his grown son’s wishes, to a fine, flaunting beauty a third his age, called Cecily…
“I’d keep your tongue within your teeth,” he advised amiably. “Wool merchants are a power in this town, and not every husband will thank you for opening his eyes.”
“What, I? Speak out of turn?” The merry eyes sparkled with all the cordiality of ice, and the long nose twitched. “Not I! I have a decent landlord and a snug corner, and no call to overturn what suits me well. I take my fun where I find it, Brother, but quietly and privately. No harm in what does none.”
“None in the world,” agreed Cadfael, and took his leave peaceably, and went on towards the winding descent of the Wyle, very thoughtful, but none too sure of what he should be thinking. For what had he learned? That Daniel Aurifaber was paddling palms, and probably more, with mistress Cecily Corde, whose wool-merchant husband collected fleeces from the bordering district of Wales, and traded them into England, and therefore was often absent for some days at a time, and that the lady, however fond, was accustomed to gifts, and did not come cheaply, whereas the young man was baulked by equally parsimonious father and grandmother, and was reputed already to be filching such small sums as he could get his fingers on. And no easy matter, either! And had his father not gone to lock up at least half of the bride’s dowry out of reach? Out of reach now in good earnest—or had last night’s events snugged it away well within reach? Such things can happen in families.
What else? That Daniel held no good opinion, reasonably enough, of the tenant who spent his leisure so inconveniently, and claimed he would have held him to be a prime suspect, if he had not been in full view throughout the time when the deed was done.
Well, time would show. They had forty days in hand.
*
High Mass was over when Cadfael had crossed the bridge and made his way back to the gatehouse and the great court. Prior Robert’s shadow, Brother Jerome, was hovering in the cloister to intercept him when he came.
“The lord abbot asks that you will wait upon him before dinner.” Jerome’s pinched, narrow nose quivered with a suggestion of deprecation and distaste which Cadfael found more offensive than Baldwin Peche’s full-blooded enjoyment of his own mischief. “I trust, Brother, that you mean to let time and law take their course, and not involve our house beyond the legal obligations of sanctuary, in so sordid a matter. It is not for you to take upon yourself the burdens that belong to justice.”
Jerome, if he had not explicit orders, had received his charge from Prior Robert’s knotted brow and quivering nostril. So low and ragged and miserable a manifestation of humanity as Liliwin, lodged here within the pale, irked Robert like a burr working through his habit and fretting his aristocratic skin. He would have no peace while the alien body remained, he wanted it removed, and the symmetry of his life restored. To be fair, not merely his own life, but the life of this house, which fretted and itched with the infection thus hurled in from the world without. The presence of terror and pain is disruptive indeed.
“All the abbot wants from me is an account of how my patients fare,” said Cadfael, with unwonted magnanimity towards the narrow preoccupations of creatures so uncongenial to him as Robert and his clerk. For their distress, however strange to him, was still comprehensible. The walls did, indeed, tremble, the sheltered souls did quake. “And I have burdens enough with them, and am hardly looking for any others. Is that lad fed and doctored? That’s all my business with him.”
“Brother Oswin has taken care of him,” said Jerome.
“That’s well! Then I’ll go pay my respects to the lord abbot, and get to my dinner, for I missed breakfast, and those up there in the town are too distraught to think of offering a morsel.”
He wondered, however, as he crossed the court to the abbot’s lodging, how much of what he had gleaned he was about to impart. Salacious gossip can be of no interest to abbatial ears, nor was there much to be said about a tiny plaque of dried blood tethering a couple of flaxen hairs; not, at least, until the vagabond, with every hand against him and his life at stake, had exercised the right to answer for himself.
Abbot Radulfus received without surprise the news that the entire wedding party was united in insisting on the jongleur’s guilt. He was not, however, quite convinced that Daniel, or any other of those attending could be certain who had, or had not, been in full view throughout.
“With a hall full of so many people, so much being drunk, and over so many hours of celebration, who can say how any man came and went? Yet so many voices all in one tale cannot be disregarded. Well, we must do our part, and leave the law to deal with the rest. The sergeant tells me his master the sheriff is gone to arbitrate in a dispute between neighbour knights in the east of the shire, but his deputy is due in the town before night.”
That was good news in Cadfael’s ear. Hugh Beringar would see to it that the search for truth and justice should not go sliding down the easiest way, and erase such minor details as failed to fit the pattern. Meantime, Cadfael had just such a detail to take up with Liliwin, besides restoring him the tools of his juggling trade. After dinner he went to look for him, and found him sitting in the cloister, with borrowed needle and thread, trying to cobble together the rents in his coat. Beneath the bandaged brow he had washed his face scrupulously, it showed pale and thin but clear-skinned, with good, even delicate features. And if he could not yet wash the dust and mire from his fair hair, at least he had combed it into decent order.
The sop first, perhaps, and then the switch! Cadfael sat down beside him, and dumped the cloth bundle in his lap. “Here’s a part of your property restored you, for an earnest. There, open it!”
But Liliwin already knew the faded wrapping. He sat gazing down for a moment in wonder and disbelief, and then untied the knotted cloth and sank his hand among his modest treasures with affection and pleasure, faintly flushing and brightening, as though for the first time recovering faith that some small comforts and kindnesses existed for him in the world.
“But how did you get them? I never thought I should see them again. And you thought to ask for them… for me… That was kind!”
“I did not even have to ask. That old dame who struck you, terror though she may be, is honest. She won’t keep what is not hers, if she won’t forgo a groat of what is. She sends them back to you.” Not graciously, but no need to go into that. “There, take it for a good sign. And how do you find yourself today? Have they fed you?”
“Very well! I’m to fetch my food from the kitchen at breakfast, dinner and supper.” He sounded almost incredulous, naming three meals a day. “And they’ve given me a pallet in the porch here. I’m afraid to be away from the church at night.” He said it simply and humbly. “They don’t all like it that I’m here. I stick in their craw like a husk.”
“They’re accustomed to calm,” said Cadfael sympathetically. “It is not calm you bring. You must make allowances, as they must. At least from tonight you may sleep secure. The deputy sheriff should be in town by thi
s evening. In his authority, I promise you, you can trust.”
Trust would still come very hard to Liliwin, after all he had experienced in a short life, but the toys he had tucked away so tenderly under his pallet were a promise. He bent his head over his patient stitching, and said no word.
“And therefore,” said Cadfael briskly, “You’d best consider on the half-tale you told me, and own to the part you left out. For you did not creep away so docilely as you let us all think, did you? What were you doing, hugging the door-post of Master Walter’s workshop, long after you claim you had made off into the night? With the door open, and your head against the post, and the goldsmith’s coffer in full view… and also open? And he bending over it!”
Liliwin’s needle had started in his fingers and pricked his left hand. He dropped needle, thread and coat, and sat sucking his pierced thumb, and staring at Brother Cadfael with immense, frightened eyes. He began to protest shrilly: “I never went there… I know nothing about it…” Voice and eyes sank together. He blinked down at his open hands, lashes long and thick as a well-bred cow’s brushing his staring cheekbones.
“Child,” said Cadfael, sighing, “you were there in the doorway, peering in. You left your mark there. A lad your size, with a bloodied head, leaned long enough against that door-post to leave a little clot of his blood, and two flax-white hairs gummed into it. No, no other has seen it, it’s gone, blown away on the wind, but I saw it, and I know. Now tell me truth. What passed between you and him?”