The Raven in the Foregate

by Ellis Peters

  *

  In the heart of the tumult Abbot Radulfus raised a voice that seldom found it necessary to thunder, and thundered to instant effect.

  “Silence! You bring shame on yourselves and desecrate this holy place. Silence, I say!”

  And there was silence, sudden and profound, though it might as easily break out in fresh chaos if the rein was not tightened.

  “So, and keep silence, all you who have nothing here to plead or deny. Let those speak and be heard who have. Now, my lord sheriff, you accuse this man Jordan Achard of murder. On what evidence?”

  “On the evidence,” said Hugh, “of a witness who has said and will say again that he lies in saying he spent that night at home. Why, if he has nothing to hide, should he find it necessary to lie? On the evidence also of a witness who saw him creeping out from the mill path and making for his home at earliest light on Christmas morning. It is enough to hold him upon suspicion,” said Hugh crisply, and motioned to the two sergeants, who grasped the terrified Jordan almost tenderly by the arms. “That he had a grievance against Father Ailnoth is known to everyone.”

  “My lord abbot,” babbled Jordan, quaking, “on my soul I swear I never touched the priest. I never saw him, I was not there… it’s false… they lie about me…”

  “It seems there are those,” said Radulfus, “who will equally swear that you were there.”

  “It was I who told that I’d seen him,” spoke up the reeve’s shepherd cousin, worried and shaken by the result he had achieved. “I could say no other, for I did see him, and it was barely light, and all I’ve told is truth. But I never intended mischief, and I never thought any harm but that he was at his games, for I knew what’s said of him…”

  “And what is said of you, Jordan?” asked Hugh mildly.

  Jordan swallowed and writhed, agonised between shame at owning where he had spent his night, and terror of holding out and risking worse. Sweating and wriggling, he blurted: “No evil, I’m a man well respected… If I was there, it was for no wrong purpose. I… I had business there early, charitable business there early—with the old Widow Warren who lives along there…”

  “Or late, with her slut of a maidservant,” called a voice from the safe anonymity of the crowd, and a great ripple of laughter went round, hastily suppressed under the abbot’s flashing glare.

  “Was that the truth of it? And by chance under Father Ailnoth’s eye?” demanded Hugh. “He would look very gravely upon such depravity, from all accounts. Did he catch you sneaking into the house, Jordan? I hear he was apt to reprove sin on the spot, and harshly. Is that how you came to kill him and leave him in the pool?”

  “I never did!” howled Jordan. “I swear I never had ado with him. If I did fall into sin with the girl, that was all I did. I never went past the house. Ask her, she’ll tell you! I was there all night long…”

  And all this time Cynric had gone on patiently and steadily filling in the grave, without haste, without apparently paying any great attention to all the tumult at his back. During this last exchange he had straightened up creakily, and stretched until his joints cracked. Now he turned to thrust his way into the centre of the circle, the iron-shod spade still dangling in his hand.

  So strange an intrusion from so solitary and withdrawn a man silenced all voices and drew all eyes.

  “Let him be, my lord,” said Cynric. “Jordan had nought to do with the man’s death.” He turned his greying head and long, sombre, deep-eyed face from Hugh to the abbot, and back again. “There’s none but I,” he said simply, “knows how Ailnoth came by his end.”

  Then there was utter silence, beyond what the abbot’s authority had been able to invoke, a silence deep enough to drown in, as Ailnoth had drowned. The verger stood tall and dignified in his rusty black, waiting to be questioned further, without fear or regret, seeing nothing strange in what he had said, and no reason why he should have said more or said it earlier, but willing to bear with those who demanded explanations.

  “You know?” said the abbot, after long and astonished contemplation of the man before him. “And you have not spoken before?”

  “I saw no need. There was no other soul put in peril, not till now. The thing was done, best leave well alone.”

  “Are you saying,” demanded Radulfus doubtfully,”that you were there, that you witnessed it?… Was it you…?”

  “No,” said Cynric with a slow shake of his long, grizzled head. “I did not touch him.” His voice was patient and gentle, as it would have been to questioning children. “I was there, I witnessed it. But I did not touch him.”

  “Then tell us now,” said Hugh quietly. “Who killed him?”

  “No one killed him,” said Cynric. “Those who do violence die by the same. It’s only just.”

  “Tell us,” said Hugh again as softly. “Tell us how this befell. Let us all know, and be at peace again. You are saying his death was an accident?”

  “No accident,” said Cynric, and his eyes burned in their deep sockets. “A judgement.”

  He moistened his lips, and lifted his head to stare into the wall of the Lady Chapel, above their heads, as if he, who was illiterate, could read there the words he had to say, he who was a man of few words by nature.

  “I went out that night to the pool. I have often walked there by night, when there has been no moon, and none awake to see. Between the willow trees there, beyond the mill, where she went into the water… Eluned, Nest’s girl… because Ailnoth refused her confession and the uses of the church, denounced her before all the parish and shut the door in her face. He could as well have stabbed her to the heart, it would have been kinder. All that brightness and beauty taken from us… I knew her well, she came so often for comfort while Father Adam lived, and he never failed her. And when she was not fretting over her sins she was like a bird, like a flower, a joy to see. There are not so many things of beauty in the world that a man should destroy one of them, and make no amends. And when she fell into remorse she was like a child… she was a child, it was a child he cast out…”

  He fell silent for a moment, as though the words had become hard to read by reason of the blindness of grief, and furrowed his high forehead to decipher them the better, but no one ventured to speak.

  “There I was standing, where Eluned went into the pool, when he came along the path. I did not know who it was, he did not come as far as where I stood—but someone, a man stamping and muttering, there by the mill. A man in a rage, or so it sounded. Then a woman came stumbling after him, I heard her cry out to him, she went on her knees to him, weeping, and he was trying to shake her off, and she would not let go of him. He struck her—I heard the blow. She made no more than a moan, but then I did go towards them, thinking there could be murder done, and therefore I saw dimly, but I had my night eyes, and I did see—how he swung his stick at her again, and she clung with both hands to the head of it to save herself, and how he tugged at it with all his strength and tore it out of her hands… The woman ran from him, I heard her stumbling away along the path, but I doubt she ever heard what I heard, or knows what I know. I heard him reel backwards and crash into the stump of the willow. I heard the withies lash and break. I heard the splash—it was not a great sound—as he went into the water.”

  There was another silence, long and deep, while he thought, and laboured to remember with precision, since that was required of him. Brother Cadfael, coming up quietly behind the ranks of the awestruck brothers, had heard only the latter part of Cynric’s story, but he had the poor, draggled proof of it in his hand as he listened. Hugh’s trap had caught nothing, rather it had set everyone free. He looked across the mute circle to where Diota stood, with Sanan’s arm about her. Both women had drawn their hoods close round their faces. One of the hands torn by the sharp edges of the silver band held the folds of Diota’s cloak together.

  “I went towards the place,” said Cynric, “and looked into the water. It was only then I knew him certainly for Ailnoth. He drifted at my f
eet, stunned or dazed… I knew his face. His eyes were open… And I turned my back and walked away from him, as he turned his back on her and walked away from her, shutting the door on her tears as he struck at this other woman’s tears… If God had willed him to live, he would have lived. Why else should it happen there, in that very place? And who am I, to usurp the privilege of God?”

  All this he delivered in the same reasonable voice with which he would have rendered account of the number of candles bought for the parish altar, though the words came slowly and with effort and thought, studying to make all plain now that plainness was needed. But to Abbot Radulfus it had some distant echo of the voice of prophecy. Even if the man had wished to save, could he have saved? Might not the priest have been already past saving? And there in the dark, alone, with no time to summon help, since everyone was preparing for the night office, and with that undercut bank to contend with, and the dead weight of a big man to handle could any man, singly, have saved? Better to suppose that the thing had been impossible, and accept what to Cynric was the will of God!

  “And now, with your leave, my lord abbot,” said Cynric, having waited courteously but vainly for some comment or question, “if you’ve no more need of me I’ll be getting on with filling in the grave, for I’ll need the most of the daylight to make a good job of it.”

  “Do so,” said the abbot, and looked at him for a moment, eye to eye, with no shadow of blame, and saw no shadow of doubt. “Do so, and come to me for your fee when it is done.”

  Cynric went as he had come, back to his work, and those who watched him in awe-stricken silence saw no change in his long-legged walk, or in the quiet, steady rhythm with which he plied his spade.

  Radulfus looked at Hugh, and then to Jordan Achard, mute and wilting with relief from terror between his guards. For a brief instant the abbot’s austere face was shaken by the merest fleeting shadow of a smile. “My lord sheriff, I think your charge against this man is already answered. What other offences he may have on his conscience,” said the abbot, fixing the demoralised Jordan with a severe eye, “I recommend him to bring to confession. And to avoid henceforward! He may well reflect on the dangers into which such a manner of life has led him, and take this day as a warning.”

  “For my part, I’m glad to know the truth and find that none of us here has the guilt of murder on his soul,” said Hugh. “Master Achard, take yourself home and be glad you have a loyal and dutiful wife. Lucky for you there was one here to speak for you, for there was a strong case against you had there been no such witness. Loose him!” he said to his sergeants. “Let him be about his business. By rights he owes a gift to the parish altar, by way of thanks for a good deliverance.”

  Jordan all but sagged to the ground when the two officers took their hands from him, and Will Warden was moved in good humour to lend him a supporting hand again under one arm until he got his legs to stand solid under him. And now at last it was truly over, but that every soul there was so petrified with wonder that it took another benediction by way of dismissal to start them moving.

  “Go now, good people,” said the abbot, somewhat brusquely accepting the need. “Make your prayers for the soul of Father Ailnoth, and bear in mind that our neighbour’s failings should but make us mindful rather of our own. Go, and trust to us who have the grant of this parish to bestow, to consider your needs above all in whatever we determine.” And he blessed them departing, with a vigour and brevity that actually set them in motion. Silent as yet, even as they melted like snow and began to move away, but soon they would be voluble enough. Town and Foregate would ring with the many and contradictory accounts of this morning’s events, to be transmuted at last into myth, a folk memory of momentous things witnessed, once, long ago.

  *

  “And you, brothers,” said Radulfus shortly, turning to his own flock, doves with fluttered feathers now and disrupted cooing, “go now to your daily duties, and make ready for dinner.”

  They broke ranks almost fearfully, and drifted apart as the rest were doing, apparently aimlessly at first, then making slowly for the places where now they should be. Like sparks from a fire, or dust scattered on a wind, they disseminated, still half-dazed with revelation. The only one who went about his business with purpose and method was Cynric, busy with his spade under the wall.

  Brother Jerome, deeply disturbed by proceedings which in no way fitted in with his conception of the rule and routine of the Benedictine order, went about rounding up some of his strayed chicks towards the lavatorium and the frater, and shooing some of the lingering parishioners out of the abbey’s confines. In so doing he drew near to the wide-open doors upon the Foregate, and became aware of a young man standing in the street outside, holding the bridle of a horse, and casting an occasional brief glance over those emerging, but from within a close-drawn capuchon, so that his face was not clearly visible. But there was something about him that held Jerome’s sharp eyes. Something not quite recognised, since the coat and capuchon were strange, and the face obstinately averted, and yet something reminiscent of a certain young fellow known for a while to the brethren, and later vanished in strange circumstances. If only the fellow would once turn his face fully!

  Cadfael, lingering to watch Sanan and Diota depart, saw them instead draw back into the shadow of the chapel wall, and wait there until the greater part of the throng had moved towards the Foregate. The impulse came from Sanan, he saw her restraining hand laid upon the older woman’s arm, and wondered why she should delay. Had she seen someone among the crowd whom she was anxious not to encounter? In search of such a person, he scanned the retreating backs, and saw one at least whose presence there would certainly not be too welcome to her. And had she not, like Diota, drawn the hood of her cloak closely round her face, during the time that Cadfael himself had been absent, as if to avoid being noticed and recognised by someone?

  Now the two women began to move after the rest, but with cautious slowness, and Sanan’s eyes were intent upon the back of the tall man who had almost reached the open doorway. Thus both Sanan and Cadfael at the same moment also saw Brother Jerome, hovering hesitant for a moment, and then making purposefully for the street. And following the converging courses of these two very dissimilar backs, the one erect and confident, the other meagre and stooped, inevitably lighted upon the horse waiting in the Foregate, and the young man holding his bridle.

  Brother Jerome was still not quite sure, though he was bent on making sure, even if it meant leaving the precinct without due reason or permission. It would be counted due reason enough if he succeeded in raising a righteous alarm, and handing over a fugitive enemy of the King to the King’s justice. A guard outside the gates, the sheriff had said. He had but to halloo the soldiers on to their quarry, who stood within arm’s reach, believing himself safe. If, of course, if this really was the youngster once known as Benet?

  But if Jerome was not yet certain, Sanan was, and Cadfael was. Who, in these parts, had known that figure and stance and carriage as well as they? And there was Jerome bearing down upon him with plainly malevolent intent, before their eyes, and they had no way of preventing the disaster.

  Sanan dropped Diota’s arm and started forward. Cadfael, approaching from another angle, bellowed: “Brother!” peremptorily after Jerome, in a self-righteous and scandalised voice of which Jerome himself need not have been ashamed, in the hope of diverting his attention, but vainly. Jerome nose-down on the trail of a malefactor was almost as undeflectable as Father Ailnoth himself. It was left to someone else to turn the trick.

  Ninian’s horseman, long-legged and striding briskly away from a field which left him unthreatened and well satisfied, arrived at the doorway only a pace or two ahead of Jerome, indeed he brushed past him into the Foregate. Not the ending he had expected, but on the whole he was glad of it. As long as he was neither suspect of disloyalty nor threatened with loss of lands of status, he bore no grudge now against the rash young man who had caused him so much anxiety. Let him g
et away unscathed, provided he never came back here to make trouble for others.

  Ninian had glanced round to see his patron approaching, and saw at the same time, very belatedly, the ferret countenance of Brother Jerome, all too clearly making for him with no kindly intent. There was no time to evade, he had no choice but to stand his ground. Blessedly the horseman reached him barely ahead of the hunter, and blessedly he was well content with whatever he had witnessed within, for he clapped his horse-boy on the shoulder as the bridle was surrendered into his hand. Ninian made haste to stoop to the stirrup, and hold it for the rider to mount.

  It was enough! Jerome stopped so abruptly in the gateway that Erwald, coming behind, collided with him, and put him aside good-naturedly with one large hand as he passed. And by that time the horseman had dropped a careless word of thanks into Ninian’s ear and a silver penny into his hand, and set off back along the Foregate at a leisurely trot, to vanish round the corner by the horse-fair ground, with his supposed groom loping behind him on foot.

  A lucky escape, thought Ninian, dropping into a walk as soon as he was round the corner of the high wall and out of sight. And he span delightedly in his hand the silver penny a satisfied and lavish patron had tossed to him as he rode away. God bless the man, whoever he may be, he’s saved my life, or at least my hide! A man of consequence, and evidently well known here. Just as well for me his grooms are not equally well known, and all over fifty and bearded, or I should have been a lost man.

  A lucky escape, thought Cadfael, heaving a great sigh of relief, and turning back to where Hugh still stood in earnest talk with Abbot Radulfus, under the great east window of the Lady Chapel. Salvation comes from strange places and unexpected friends. And a very apt ending, too!

  A lucky escape, thought Sanan, shaking with dismay and fear suddenly transmuted into triumphant laughter. And he has no idea what has just happened! Neither of them has! Oh, to see Ninian’s face when I tell him!