by Ellis Peters
The tarnished buckle on the perished leather strap was of silver. The shoe had been elaborate and expensive. Slivers of burned cloth fluttered from the almost fleshless bone.
Hugh looked from the foot to the knee, and on above among the exposed wood for the joint from which it had broken free. ‘There he should be lying, aligned thus. Whoever put him there did not open a deserted stack, but built this new, and built him into the centre. Someone who knew the method, though perhaps not well enough. We had better take this apart carefully. You may rake off the earth covering and the leaves,’ he said to his men, ‘but when you reach the logs we’ll hoist them off one by one where they’re whole. I doubt he’ll be little but bones, but I want all there is of him.’ They went to work, raking away the covering on the unburned side, and Cadfael circled the mound to view the quarter from which the destroying wind must have been blowing. Low to the ground a small, arched hole showed in the roots of the pile. He stooped to look more closely, and ran a hand under the hanging leaves that half-obscured it. The hollow continued inward, swallowing his arm to the elbow. It had been built in as the stack was made. He went back to where Hugh stood watching.
‘They knew the method, sure enough. There’s a vent built in on the windward side to let in a draught. The stack was meant to burn out. But they overdid it. They must have had the vent covered until the stack was well alight, and then opened and left it. It blew too fiercely, and left the windward half hardly more than scorched while the rest blazed. These things have to be watched day and night.’ Meriet stood apart, close to where they had tethered the horses, and watched this purposeful activity with an impassive face. He saw Hugh cross to the edge of the arena, where three paler, flattened oblongs in the herbage showed where the wood had been stacked to season. Two of them showed greener than the third, as Mark had said, where new herbage had pierced the layer of dead grass and risen to the light. The third, the one which had supplied such a harvest for the inmates of Saint Giles, lay bleached and flat.
‘How long,’ asked Hugh, ‘to make this much new growth, and at this season?’ Cadfael pondered, digging a toe into the soft mat of old growth below. ‘A matter of eight to ten weeks, perhaps. Difficult to tell. And the blown ash might show as long as that. Mark was right, the heat reached the trees. If this floor had been less bare and hard, the fire might have reached them, too, but there was no thick layer of roots and leaf-mould to carry it along the ground.’ They returned to where the covering of earth and leaves now lay drawn aside, and the ridged surfaces of logs showed, blackened but keeping their shape. The sergeant and his men laid down their tools and went to work with their hands, hoisting the logs off one by one and stacking them aside out of the way. Slow work; and throughout Meriet stood watching, motionless and mute. The dead man emerged from his coffin of timber piecemeal after more than two hours of work. He had lain close to the central chimney on the leeward side, and the fire had been fierce enough to burn away all but a few tindery flakes of his clothing, but had passed by too rapidly to take all the flesh from his bones, or even the hair from his head. Laboriously they brushed away debris of charcoal and ash and half-consumed wood from him, but could not keep him intact. The collapse of part of the stack had started his joints and broken him apart. They had to gather up his bones as best they could, and lay them out on the grass until they had, if not the whole man, all but such small bones of finger and wrist as would have to be sifted from the ashes. The skull still retained, above the blackened ruin of a face, the dome of a naked crown fringed with a few wisps and locks of brown hair, cropped short.
But there were other things to lay beside him. Metal is very durable. The silver buckles on his shoes, blackened as they were, kept the form a good workman had given them. There was the twisted half of a tooled leather belt, with another silver buckle, large and elaborate, and traces of silver ornamenting in the leather. There was a broken length of tarnished silver chain attached to a silver cross studded with what must surely be semi-precious stones, though now they were blackened and encrusted with dirt. And one of the men, running fine ash from close to the body through the sieve, came to lay down for examination a finger-bone and the ring it had loosely retained while the flesh was burned from between. The ring bore a large black stone engraved with a design fouled by clotted ash, but which seemed to be a decorative cross. There was also something which had lain within the shattered rib-cage, burned almost clean by the fire, the head of the arrow that had killed him.
Hugh stood over the remnants of a man and his death for a long while, staring down with a grim face. Then he turned to where Meriet stood, rigid and still at the rim of the decline.
‘Come down here, come and see if you cannot help us further. We need a name for this murdered man. Come and see if by chance you know him.’ Meriet came, ivory-faced, drew close as he was ordered, and looked at what lay displayed. Cadfael held off, but at no great distance, and watched and listened. Hugh had not only his work to do, but his own wrung senses to avenge, and if there was some resultant savagery in his handling of Meriet, at least it was not purposeless. For now there was very little doubt of the identity of this dead man they had before them, and the chain that drew Meriet to him was contracting.
‘You observe,’ said Hugh, quite gently and coldly,’that he wore the tonsure, that his own hair was brown, and his height, by the look of his bones, a tall man’s. What age would you say, Cadfael?’ ‘He’s straight, and without any of the deformities of ageing. A young man. Thirty he might be, I doubt more.’ ‘And a priest,’ pursued Hugh mercilessly.
‘By the ring, the cross and the tonsure, yes, a priest.’ ‘You perceive our reasoning, Brother Meriet. Have you knowledge of such a man lost hereabouts?’ Meriet continued to stare down at the silent relics that had been a man. His eyes were huge in a face blanched to the palest ivory. He said in a level voice: ‘I see your reasoning. I do not know the man. How can anyone know him?’ ‘Not by his visage, certainly. But by his accoutrements, perhaps? The cross, the ring, even the buckles-these could be remembered, if a priest of such years, and so adorned, came into your acquaintance? As a guest, say, in your house?’ Meriet lifted his eyes with a brief and restrained flash of green, and said: ‘I understand you. There was a priest who came and stayed the night over in my father’s house, some weeks ago, before I came into the cloister. But that one travelled on the next morning, northwards, not this way. How could he be here? And how am I, or how are you, to tell the difference between one priest and another, when they are brought down to this?’ ‘Not by the cross? The ring? If you can say positively that this is not the man,’ said Hugh insinuatingly, ‘you would be helping me greatly.’ ‘I was of no such account in my father’s house,’ said Meriet with chill bitterness, ‘to be so close to the honoured guest. I stabled his horse-to that I have testified. To his jewellery I cannot swear.’ ‘There will be others who can,’ said Hugh grimly. ‘And as to the horse, yes, I have seen in what confortable esteem you held each other. You said truly that you are good with horses. If it became advisable to convey the mount some twenty miles or more away from where the rider met his death, who could manage the business better? Ridden or led, he would not give any trouble to you.’ ‘I never had him in my hands but one evening and the morning after,’ said Meriet, ‘nor saw him again until you brought him to the abbey, my lord.’ And though sudden angry colour had flamed upward to his brow, his voice was ready and firm, and his temper well in hand.
‘Well, let us first find a name for our dead man,’ said Hugh, and turned to circle the dismembered mound once more, scanning the littered and fouled ground for any further detail that might have some bearing. He pondered what was left of the leather belt, all but the buckle end burned away, the charred remnant extending just far enough to reach a lean man’s left hip. ‘Whoever he was, he carried sword or dagger, here is the loop of the strap by which it hung-a dagger, too light and elegant for a sword. But no sign of the dagger itself. That should be somewhere here among the
rubble.’ They raked through the debris for a further hour, but found no more of metal or clothing. When he was certain there was nothing more to be discovered, Hugh withdrew his party. They wrapped the recovered bones and the ring and cross reverently in a linen cloth and a blanket, and rode back with them to Saint Giles. There Meriet dismounted, but halted in silence to know what was the deputy-sheriff’s will with him.
‘You will be remaining here at the hospice?’ asked Hugh, eyeing him impartially. ‘Your abbot has committed you to this service?’ ‘Yes, my lord. Until or unless I am recalled to the abbey, I shall be here.’ It was said with emphasis, not merely stating a fact, but stressing that he felt himself to have taken vows already, and not only his duty of obedience but his own will would keep him here.
‘Good! So we know where to find you at need. Very well, continue your work here without hindrance, but subject to your abbot’s authority, hold yourself also at my disposal.’ ‘So I will, my lord. So I do,’ said Meriet, and turned on his heel with a certain drear dignity, and stalked away up the incline to the gate in the wattle fence.
‘And now, I suppose,’ sighed Hugh, riding on towards the Foregate with Cadfael beside him, ‘you will be at odds with me for being rough with your fledgling. Though I give you due credit, you held your tongue very generously.’ ‘No,’ said Cadfael honestly, ‘he’s none the worse for goading. And there’s no blinking it, suspicion drapes itself round him like cobwebs on an autumn bush.’ ‘It is the man, and he knows that it is. He knew it as soon as he raked out the shoe and the foot within it. That, and not the mere matter of some unknown man’s ugly death, was what shook him almost out of his wits. He knew-quite certainly he knew-that Peter Clemence was dead, but just as certainly he did not know what had been done with the body. Will you go with me so far?’ ‘So far,’ said Cadfael ruefully, ‘I have already gone. An irony, indeed, that he led them straight to the place, when for once he was thinking of nothing but finding his poor folk fuel for the winter. Which is on the doorstep this very evening, unless my nose for weather fails me.’ The air had certainly grown still and chill, and the sky was closing down upon the world in leaden cloud. Winter had delayed, but was not far away.
‘First,’ pursued Hugh, harking back to the matter in hand, ‘we have to affix a name to these bones. That whole household at Aspley saw the man, spent an evening in his company, they must all know these gems of his, soiled as they may be now. It might put a rampaging cat among pigeons if I sent to summon Leoric here to speak as to his guest’s cross and ring. When the birds fly wild, we may pick up a feather or two.’ ‘But for all that,’ said Cadfael earnestly, ‘I should not do it. Say never a probing word to any, leave them lulled. Let it be known we’ve found a murdered man, but no more. If you let out too much, then the one with guilt to hide will be off and out of reach. Let him think all’s well, and he’ll be off his guard. You’ll not have forgotten, the older boy’s marriage is set for the twenty-first of this month, and two days before that the whole clan of them, neighbours, friends and all, will be gathering in our guesthalls. Bring them in, and you have everyone in your hand. By then we may have the means to divine truth from untruth. And as for proving that this is indeed Peter Clemence-not that I’m in doubt!-did you not tell me that Canon Eluard intends to come back to us on the way south from Lincoln, and let the king go without him to Westminster?’ ‘True, so he said he would. He’s anxious for news to take back to the bishop at Winchester, but it’s no good news we have for him.’ ‘If Stephen means to spend his Christmas in London, then Canon Eluard may very well be here before the wedding party arrives. He knew Clemence well, they’ve both been close about Bishop Henry. He should be your best witness.’ ‘Well, a couple of weeks can hardly hurt Peter Clemence now,’ agreed Hugh wryly. ‘But have you noticed, Cadfael, the strangest thing in all this coil? Nothing was stolen from him, everything burned with him. Yet more than one man, more than two, worked at building that pyre. Would you not say there was a voice in authority there, that would not permit theft though it had been forced to conceal murder? And those who took his orders feared him-or at the least minded him-more than they coveted rings and crosses.’ It was true. Whoever had decreed that disposal of Peter Clemence had put it clean out of consideration that his death could be the work of common footpads and thieves. A mistake, if he hoped to set all suspicion at a distance from himself and his own people. That rigid honesty had mattered more to him, whoever he was, than safety. Murder was within the scope of his understanding, if not of his tolerance; but not theft from the dead.
CHAPTER NINE.
Frost set in that night, heralding a week of hard weather. No snow fell, but a blistering east wind scoured the hills, wild birds ventured close to human habitations to pick up scraps of food, and even the woodland foxes came skulking a mile closer to the town. And so did some unknown human predator who had been snatching the occasional hen from certain outlying runs, and now and then a loaf of bread from a kitchen. Complaints began to be brought in to the town provost of thefts from the garden stores outside the walls, and to the castle of poultry taken from homesteads at the edge of the Foregate, and not by foxes or other vermin. One of the foresters from the Long Forest brought in a tale of a gutted deer lost a month ago, with evidence enough that the marauder was in possession of a good knife. Now the cold was driving someone living wild nearer to the town, where nights could be spent warmer in byre or barn than in the bleak woods.
King Stephen had detained his sheriff of Shropshire in attendance about his person that autumn, after the usual Michaelmas accounting, and taken him with him in the company now paying calculated courtesies to the earl of Chester and William of Roumare in Lincoln, so that this matter of the henhouse marauder, along with all other offences against the king’s peace and good order, fell into Hugh’s hands. ‘As well!’ said Hugh, ‘for I’d just as lief keep the Clemence affair mine without interference, now it’s gone so far.’ He was well aware that he had not too much time left in which to bring it to a just end single-handed, for if the king meant to be back in Westminster for Christmas, then the sheriff might return to his shire in a very few days. And certainly this wild man’s activities seemed to be centred on the eastern fringe of the forest, which was engaging Hugh’s interest already for a very different reason.
In a country racked by civil war, and therefore hampered in keeping ordinary law and order, everything unaccountable was being put down to outlaws living wild; but for all that, now and then the simplest explanation turns out to be the true one. Hugh had no such expectations in this case, and was greatly surprised when one of his sergeants brought in to the castle wards in triumph the thief who had been living off the more unwary inhabitants of the Foregate. Not because of the man himself, who was very much what might have been expected, but because of the dagger and sheath which had been found on him, and were handed over as proof of his villainies. There were even traces of dried blood, no doubt from someone’s pullet or goose, engrained in the grooved blade.
It was a very elegant dagger, with rough gems in the hilt, so shaped as to be comfortable to the hand, and its sheath of metal covered with tooled leather had been blackened and discoloured by fire, the leather frayed away for half its length from the tip. An end of thin leather strap still adhered to it. Hugh had seen the loop from which it, or its fellow, should have depended.
In the bleak space of the inner ward he jerked his head towards the anteroom of the hall, and said: ‘Bring him within.’ There was a good fire in there, and a bench to sit on. ‘Take off his chains,’ said Hugh, after one look at the wreck of a big man, ‘and let him sit by the fire. You may keep by him, but I doubt if he’ll give you any trouble.’ The prisoner could have been an imposing figure, if he had still had flesh and sinew on his long, large bones, but he was shrunken by starvation, and with nothing but rags on him in this onset of winter. He could not be old, his eyes and his shock of pale hair were those of a young man, his bones, however starting from his flesh, move
d with the live vigour of youth. Close to the fire, warmed after intense cold, he flushed and dilated into something nearer approaching his proper growth. But his face, blue-eyed, hollow-cheeked, stared in mute terror upon Hugh. He was like a wild thing in a trap, braced taut, waiting for a bolthole. Ceaselessly he rubbed at his wrists, just loosed from the heavy chains.
‘What is your name?’ asked Hugh, so mildly that the creature stared and froze, afraid to understand such a tone.
‘What do men call you?’ repeated Hugh patiently.
‘Harald, my lord. I’m named Harald.’ The large frame produced a skeletal sound, deep but dry and remote. He had a cough that perforated his speech uneasily, and a name that had once belonged to a king, and that within the memory of old men still living, men of his own fair colouring.
‘Tell me how you came by this thing, Harald. For it’s a rich man’s weapon, as you must know. See the craftsmanship of it, and the jeweller’s work. Where did you find such a thing?’ ‘I didn’t steal it,’ said the wretch, trembling. ‘I swear I didn’t! It was thrown away, no one wanted it…’ ‘Where did you find it?’ demanded Hugh more sharply.
‘In the forest, my lord. There’s a place where they burn charcoal.’ He described it, stammering and blinking, voluble to hold off blame. ‘There was a dead fire there, I took fuel from it sometimes, but I was afraid to stay so near the road. The knife was lying in the ashes, lost or thrown away. Nobody wanted it. And I needed a knife…’ He shook, watching Hugh’s impassive face with frightened blue eyes. ‘It was not stealing… I never stole but to keep alive, my lord, I swear it.’ He had not been a very successful thief, even so, for he had barely kept body and soul together. Hugh regarded him with detached interest, and no particular severity.
‘How long have you been living wild?’ ‘Four months it must be, my lord. But I never did violence, nor stole anything but food. I needed a knife for my hunting…’ Ah, well, thought Hugh, the king can afford a deer here and there. This poor devil needs it more than Stephen does, and Stephen in his truest mood would give it to him freely. Aloud he said: ‘A hard life for a man, come wintertime. You’ll do better indoors with us for a while, Harald, and feed regularly, if not on venison.’ He turned to the sergeant, who was standing warily by. ‘Lock him away. Let him have blankets to wrap him. And see to it he eats-but none too much to start with or he’ll gorge and die on us.’ He had known it happen among the wretched creatures in flight the previous winter from the storming of Worcester, starving on the road and eating themselves to death when they came to shelter. ‘And use him well!’ said Hugh sharply as the sergeant hauled up his prisoner. ‘He’ll not stand rough handling, and I want him. Understood?’ The sergeant understood it as meaning this was the wanted murderer, and must live to stand his trial and take his ceremonial death. He grinned, and abated his hold on the bony shoulder he gripped. ‘I take your meaning, my lord.’ They were gone, captor and captive, off to a securely locked cell where the outlaw Harald, almost certainly a runaway villein, and probably with good reason, could at least be warmer than out in the woods, and get his meals, rough as they might be, brought to him without hunting.