A Morbid Taste For Bones

by Ellis Peters

  The effort was wasted. Another hand, large and gentle, was laid on Annest’s shoulder while she hesitated, and moved her aside. “The company sounds somewhat loud and angry,” said a man’s voice, high and clear, “so, with your leave, Sioned, we’ll all go together.”

  Engelard put the girl aside between his hands, as familiarly and serenely as a brother might have done, and stepped past her into the clearing.

  He had eyes for no one but Sioned, he walked towards her with the straight gait of a proprietor, and as he came he took in her stiff erectness, and fixed face of fire and ice and despair, and his own face mirrored everything he saw in her. His brows drew together, his smile, taut and formidable to begin with, vanished utterly, his eyes burned bluer than cornflowers. He passed by Prior Robert as though he had not even been there, or not alive, a stock, a dead tree by the path. He put out his hands, and Sioned laid her hands in them, and for an instant closed her eyes. There was no frowning him away now, he was here in the midst, quite without defences. The circle, not all inimical but all hampering, was closing round him.

  He had her by the hands when he saw Rhisiart’s body.

  The shock went into him as abruptly as the arrow must have gone into Rhisiart, stopping him instantly. Cadfael had him well in view, and saw his lips part and whisper soundlessly: “Christ aid!” What followed was most eloquent. The Saxon youth moved with loving slowness, shutting both Sioned’s hands into one of his, and with his freed right hand stroked softly over her hair, down temple and cheek and chin and throat, all with such mastered passion that she was soothed, as he meant, while he had barely stopped shaking from the shock.

  He folded an arm about her, holding her close against his side, and slowly looked all round the circle of watching faces, and slowly down at the body of his lord. His face was bleakly angry.

  “Who did this?”

  He looked round, seeking the one who by rights should be spokesman, hesitating between Prior Robert, who arrogated to himself authority wherever he came, and Father Huw, who was known and trusted here. He repeated his demand in English, but neither of them answered him, and for a long moment neither did anyone else. Then Sioned said, with clear, deliberate warning: “There are some here are saying that you did.”

  “I?” he cried, astonished and scornful rather than alarmed, and turned sharply to search her face, which was intent and urgent.

  Her lips shaped silently: “Run! They’re blaming you!”

  It was all she could do, and he understood, for they had such a link between them that meanings could be exchanged in silence, in a look. He measured with a quick glance the number of his possible enemies, and the spaces between them, but he did not move. “Who accuses me?” he said. “And on what ground? It seems to me I might rather question all of you, whom I find standing here about my lord’s dead body, while I have been all day out with the cows, beyond Bryn. When I got home Annest was anxious because Sioned had not returned, and the sheep boy told her there was no service at Vespers at the church. We came out to look for you, and found you by the noise you were making among you. And I ask again, and I will know before ever I give up: Who did this?”

  “We are all asking that,” said Father Huw. “Son, there’s no man here has accused you. But there are things that give us the right to question you, and a man with nothing on his conscience won’t be ashamed or afraid to answer. Have you yet looked carefully at the arrow that struck Rhisiart down? Then look at it now!”

  Frowning, Engelard drew a step nearer, and looked indeed, earnestly and bitterly at the dead man, only afterwards at the arrow. He saw the flutter of deep blue, and gasped.

  “This is one of mine!” He looked up with wild suspicion at them all. “Either that, or someone has copied my mark. But no, this is mine, I know the trim, I fletched it new only a week or so ago.”

  “He owns it his?” demanded Robert, following as best he could. “He admits it?”

  “Admit?” flashed Engelard in English. “What is there to admit? I say it! How it was brought here, who loosed it, I know no more than you do, but I know the shaft for mine. God’s teeth!” he cried furiously, “do you think if I had any hand in this villainy I should leave my mark flaunting in the wound? Am I fool as well as outlander? And do you think I would do anything to harm Rhisiart? The man who stood my friend and gave me the means of living here when I’d poached myself out of Cheshire?”

  “He refused to consider you as a suitor for his daughter,” Bened said almost reluctantly, “whatever good he did for you otherwise.”

  “So he did, and according to his lights, rightly so. And I know it, knowing as much as I’ve learned of Wales, and even if I did smart under it, I knew he had reason and custom on his side. Never has he done anything I could complain of as unfair to me. He stood much arrogance and impatience from me, come to that. There isn’t a man in Gwynedd I like and respect more. I’d as soon have cut my own throat as injured Rhisiart.”

  “He knew and knows it,” said Sioned, “and so do I.”

  “Yet the arrow is yours,” said Huw unhappily. “And as for reclaiming or disguising it, it may well have been that speedy flight after such an act would be more important.”

  “If I had planned such an act,” said Engelard, “though God forbid I should ever have to imagine a thing so vile, I could as easily have done what some devil has done now to me, and used another man’s shaft.”

  “But, son, it would be more in keeping with your nature,” the priest pursued sadly, “to commit such a deed without planning, having with you only your own bow and arrows. Another approach, another quarrel, a sudden wild rage! No one supposes this was plotted beforehand.”

  “I had no bow with me all this day. I was busy with the cattle, what should I want with a bow?”

  “It will be for the royal bailiff to enquire into all possible matters concerning this case,” said Prior Robert, resolutely reclaiming the dominance among them. “What should be asked at once of this young man is where he has been all this day, what doing, and in whose company.”

  “In no man’s company. The byres behind Bryn are in a lonely place, good pasture but apart from the used roads. Two cows dropped their calves today, one around noon, the second not before late afternoon, and that was a hard birth, and gave me trouble. But the young things are there alive and on their legs now, to testify to what I’ve been doing.”

  “You left Rhisiart at his fields along the way?”

  “I did, and went straight on to my own work. And have not seen him again until now.”

  “And did you speak with any man, there at the byres? Can anyone testify as to where you were, at any time during the day?” No one was likely to try and wrest the initiative from Robert now. Engelard looked round him quickly, measuring chances. Annest came forward silently, and took her stand beside Sioned. Brother John’s roused, anxious eyes followed her progress, and approved the loyalty which had no other way of expressing itself.

  “Engelard did not come home until half an hour ago,” she said stoutly.

  “Child,” said Father Huw wretchedly, “where he was not does not in any way confirm where he says he was. Two calves may be delivered far more quickly than he claims, how can we know, who were not there? He had time to slip back here and do this thing, and be back with his cattle and never noticed. Unless we can find someone who testifies to having seen him elsewhere, at whatever time this deed may have been done, then I fear we should hold Engelard in safe-keeping until the prince’s bailiff can take over the charge for us.”

  The men of Gwytherin hovered, murmuring, some convinced, many angry, for Rhisiart had been very well liked, some hesitant, but granting that the outlander ought to be held until his innocence was established or his guilt proved. They shifted and closed, and their murmur became one of consent.

  “It is fair,” said Bened, and the growl of assent answered him.

  “One lone Englishman with his back to the wall,” whispered Brother John indignantly in Cadfael’s
ear, “and what chance will he have, with nobody to bear out what he says? And plain truth, for certain! Does he act or speak like a murderer?”

  Peredur had stood like a stock all this while, hardly taking his eyes from Engelard’s face but to gaze earnestly and unhappily at Sioned. As Prior Robert levelled an imperious arm at Engelard, and the whole assembly closed in slowly in obedience, braced to lay hands on him, Peredur drew a little further back at the edge of the trees, and Cadfael saw him catch Sioned’s eye, flash her a wild, wide-eyed look, and jerk his head as though beckoning. Out of her exhaustion and misery she roused a brief, answering blaze, and leaned to whisper rapidly in Engelard’s ear.

  “Do your duty, all of you,” commanded Robert, “to your laws and your prince and your church, and lay hold of this man!”

  There was one instant of stillness, and then they closed in all together, the only gap in their ranks where Peredur still hung back. Engelard made a long leap from Sioned’s side, as though he would break for the thickest screen of bushes, and then, instead, caught up a dead, fallen bough that lay in the grass, and whirled it about him in a flailing circle, laying two unwary elders flat, and sending others reeling back out of range. Before they could reassemble, he had changed direction, leaped over one of the fallen, and was clean through the midst of them, arming off the only one who almost got a grip on him, and made straight for the gap Peredur had left in their ranks. Father Huw’s voice, uplifted in vexed agitation, called on Peredur to halt him, and Peredur sprang to intercept his flight. How it happened was never quite clear, though Brother Cadfael had a rough idea, but at the very moment when his outstretched hand almost brushed Engelard’s sleeve, Peredur stepped upon a rotten branch in the turf, that snapped under his foot and rolled, tossing him flat on his face, half-blinded among the bushes. And winded, possibly, for certainly he made no move to pick himself up until Engelard was past him and away.

  Even then it was not quite over, for the nearest pursuers on either side, seeing how the hunt had turned, had also begun to run like hares, on courses converging with the fugitive’s at the very edge of the clearing. From the left came a long-legged villein of Cadwallon’s, with a stride like a greyhound, and from the right Brother John, his habit flying, his sandalled feet pounding the earth mightily. It was perhaps the first time Brother John had ever enjoyed Prior Robert’s whole-hearted approval. It was certainly the last.

  There was no one left in the race but these three, and fleet though Engelard was, it seemed that the long-legged fellow would collide with him before he could finally vanish. All three were hurtling together for a shattering collision, or so it seemed. The villein stretched out arms as formidably long as his legs. So, on the other side, did Brother John. A great hand closed on a thin fold of Engelard’s tunic from one side. Brother John bounded exuberantly in from the other. The prior sighed relief, expecting the prisoner to be enfolded in a double embrace. And Brother John, diving, caught Cadwallon’s villein round the knees and brought him crashing to the ground, and Engelard, plucking his tunic out of the enemy’s grasp, leaped into the bushes and vanished in a receding susurration of branches, until silence and stillness closed over the path of his withdrawal.

  Half the hunt, out of excitement rather than any real enmity, streamed away into the forest after the quarry, but half-heartedly now. They had little chance of capturing him. Probably they had no great desire to do anything of the kind, though once put to it, hounds must follow a scent. The real drama remained behind in the clearing. There, at least, justice had one clear culprit to enjoy.

  Brother John unwound his arms from his victim’s knees, sat up in the grass, fended off placidly a feeble blow the villein aimed at him, and said in robust but incomprehensible English: “Ah, let well alone, lad! What did he ever do to you? But faith, I’m sorry I had to fetch you down so heavily. If you think you’re hard-done-to, take comfort! I’m likely to pay dearer than you.”

  He looked round him complacently enough as he clambered to his feet and dusted off the debris of leaves and twigs that clung to his habit. There stood Prior Robert, not yet unfrozen from the shock of incredulous disillusionment, tall and stiff and grey, a Norman lordling debating terrible penalties for treason. But there, also, stood Sioned, tired, distraught, worn out with passion, but with a small, reviving glow in her eyes, and there was Annest at her elbow, an arm protectively round her waist, but her flower-face turned towards John. Not much use Robert thundering and lightning, while she so smiled and blossomed, beaming her gratitude and admiration.

  Brother Richard and Brother Jerome loomed like messengers of doom, one at either elbow. “Brother John, you are summoned. You are in gross offence.”

  He went with them resignedly. For all the threatening thunder-bolts he had never felt freer in his life. And having now nothing to lose but his own self-respect, he was sturdily determined not to sacrifice that.

  “Unfaithful and unworthy brother,” hissed Prior Robert, towering in terrible indignation, “what have you done? Do not deny what we have all witnessed. You have not merely connived at the escape of a felon, you have frustrated the attempt of a loyal servant to arrest him. You felled that good man deliberately, to let Engelard go free. Traitor against church and law, you have put yourself beyond the pale. If there is anything you can say in your defence, say it now.”

  “I thought the lad was being harried beyond reason, on very suspect suspicion,” said Brother John boldly. “I’ve talked with Engelard, I’ve got my own view of him, a decent, open soul who’d never do violence to any man by stealth, let alone Rhisiart, whom he liked and valued high. I don’t believe he has any part in this death, and what’s more, I think he’ll not go far until he knows who had, and God help the murderer then! So I gave him his chance, and good luck to him!”

  The two girls, their heads close together in women’s solidarity, interpreted the tone for themselves, if they lacked the words, and glowed in silent applause. Prior Robert was helpless, though he did not know it. Brother Cadfael knew it very well.

  “Shameless!” thundered Robert, bristling until even his suave purity showed knife-edged with affront. “You are condemned out of your own mouth, and a disgrace to our order. I have no jurisdiction here as regards Welsh law. The prince’s bailiff must resolve this crime that cries for vengeance here. But where my own subordinates are concerned, and where they have infringed the law of this land where we are guests, there two disciplines threaten you, Brother John. As to the sovereignty of Gwynedd, I cannot speak. As to my own discipline, I can and do. You are set far beyond mere ecclesiastical penance. I consign you to close imprisonment until I can confer with the secular authority here, and I refuse to you, meanwhile, all the comforts and consolations of the church.” He looked about him and took thought, brooding. Father Huw hovered miserably, lost in this ocean of complaints and accusations. “Brother Cadfael, ask Father Huw where there is a safe prison, where he can be held.”

  This was more than Brother John had bargained for, and though he repented of nothing, like a practical man he did begin to look round to weigh up the chances of evading the consequences. He eyed the gaps in the ring as Engelard had done, braced his sturdy feet well apart, and flexed his shoulders experimentally, as though he had thoughts of elbowing Brother Richard smartly in the belly, kicking the legs from under Jerome, and making a dash for freedom. He stopped himself just in time when he heard Cadfael report sedately: “Father Huw suggests there is only one place secure enough. If Sioned is willing to allow her holding to be used, a prisoner could be safe enough there.”

  At this point Brother John unaccountably lost interest in immediate escape.

  “My house is at Prior Robert’s disposal,” said Sioned in Welsh, with appropriate coldness, but very promptly. She had herself well in hand, she made no more lapses into English. “There are storehouses and stables, if you wish to use them. I promise I shall not go near the prisoner, or hold the key to his prison myself. Father Prior may choose his guard from among m
y people as he sees fit. My household shall provide him his living, but even that charge I shall give to someone else. If I undertook it myself I fear my impartiality might be doubted, after what has happened.”

  A good girl, Cadfael thought, translating this for Robert’s benefit rather less than for John’s. Clever enough to step resolutely round any actual lies even when she was thus wrung by one disaster after another, and generous enough to think for the wants and wishes of others. The someone else who would be charged with seeing Brother John decently housed and fed was standing cheek to cheek with her mistress as she spoke, fair head against dark head. A formidable pair! But they might not have found this unexpected and promising path open to them but for the innocence of celibate parish priests.

  “That may be the best plan,” said Prior Robert, chilly but courteous, “and I thank you for your dutiful offer, daughter. Keep him straitly, see he has what he needs for life, but no more. He is in great peril of his soul, his body may somewhat atone. If you permit, we will go before and bestow him securely, and let your uncle know what has happened, so that he may send down to you and bring you home. I will not intrude longer on a house of mourning.”

  “I will show you the way,” said Annest, stepping demurely from Sioned’s side.

  “Hold him fast!” warned the prior, as they massed to follow her uphill through the woods. Though he might have seen for himself, had he looked closely, that the culprit’s resignation had mellowed into something very like complacency, and he stepped out as briskly as his guards, a good deal more intent on keeping Annest’s slender waist and lime shoulders in sight than on any opportunity for escape.

  Well, thought Cadfael, letting them go without him, and turning to meet Sioned’s steady gaze, God sort all! As doubtless he is doing, now as ever!