by Ellis Peters
Cadfael hoisted him by the middle, marked the derisory flow from his mouth, barely moistening the grass, and let him down carefully in the same form. He was a little puzzled to find so meagre a flow, since even the dead may give back the water they have swallowed, for at least a brief while after their death. This one had left a shallow shape scooped in the gravel of the cove, which was hardly disturbed by currents. His outlines in the grass now duplicated the outline he had abandoned there.
Now how had Baldwin Peche come to be beached here like a landed fish? Drunk and careless along the riverside at night? Spilled out of a boat while fishing? Or fallen foul of a footpad in one of the dark alleys and tipped into the water for the contents of his purse? Such things did occasionally happen even in a well-regulated town on dark enough nights, and there did seem to be a thicker and darker moisture in the grizzled hair behind Peche’s right ear, as though the skin beneath was broken. Scalp wounds tend to bleed copiously, and even after some hours in the water or cast up here traces might linger. He was native-born, he knew the river well enough to respect it, all the more as he acknowledged he was a weak swimmer.
Cadfael threaded the belt of bushes to have a clear view over the Severn, upstream and down, and was rewarded by the sight of a coracle making its way against the current, turning and twisting to make use of every eddy, bobbing and dancing like a shed leaf, but always making progress. There was only one man who could handle the paddle and read the river with such ease and skill, and even at some distance the squat, dark figure was easily recognisable. Madog of the Dead-Boat was as Welsh as Cadfael himself, and the best-known waterman in twenty miles of the Severn’s course, and had got his name as a result of the cargo he most often had to carry, by reason of his knowledge of all the places where missing persons, thought to have been taken by the river whether in flood or by felony, were likely to fetch up. This time he had no mute passenger aboard; his natural quarry was here waiting for him.
Cadfael knew him well and for no ascertainable reason, except the customary association of Madog with drowned men, took for granted that even in this case the connection must hold good. He raised a hail and waved an arm as the coracle drew nearer, picking its feathery way across the mid-stream current where it was diffused and moderate. Madog looked up, knew the man who beckoned him in, and with a sweep of his paddle brought his boat inshore, clear of the deceitfully silent and rapid thrust that sped down-river, leaving this cove so placid and clear. Cadfael waded into the shallows to meet him, laying a hand to the rim of hide as Madog hopped out nimbly to join him, his brown feet bare.
‘I thought I knew that shaven sconce of yours,’ he said heartily, and hoisted his cockle-shell of withies and hide on to his shoulder to heft it ashore. ‘What is it with you? When you call me, I take it there’s a sound reason.’
‘Sound enough,’ said Cadfael. ‘I think I may have found what you were looking for.’ He jerked his head towards the plane of grass above, and led the way up without more words. They stood together over the prone body in thoughtful silence for some moments. Madog had taken note in one glance of the position of the head, and looked back to the gravelled shore under its liquid skin of water. He saw the shadowy shape left in the fine shale, and the mute, contained violence of the current that swept past only a man’s length away from that strange calm.
‘Yes. I see. He went into the water above. Perhaps not far above. There’s a strong tow under that bank, upstream from here a piece, under the castle. Then it could have brought him across and thrown him up here just as he lies. A good, solid weight, head-first into the bank. And left him stranded.’
‘So I thought,’ said Cadfael. ‘You were looking for him?’ People along the waterside who had kin go missing usually sought out Madog before they notified the provost or the sheriff’s sergeant.
‘That journeyman of his sent after me this morning. It seems his master went off yesterday before noon, but nobody wondered, he did the like whenever he chose, they were used to it. But this morning he’d never been back. There’s a boy sleeps in his shop, he was fretting over it, so when Boneth came to work and no locksmith he sent the lad to me. This one here liked his bed, even if he sometimes came to it about dawn. Not the man to go hungry or dry, either, and the ale-house he favoured hadn’t seen him.’
‘He has a boat,’ said Cadfael. ‘A known fisherman.’
‘So I hear. His boat was not where he keeps it.’
‘But you’ve found it,’ said Cadfael with conviction.
‘A half-mile down-river, caught in the branches where the willows overhang. And his rod snagged by the hook and trailing. The boat had overturned. He ran a coracle, like me. I’ve left it beached where I found it. A tricky boat,’ said Madog dispassionately, ‘if he hooked a lusty young salmon. The spring ones are coming. But he knew his craft and his sport.’
‘So do many and take the one chance that undoes them.’
‘We’d best get him back,’ said Madog, minding his business like any good master-craftsman. ‘To the abbey? It’s the nearest. And Hugh Beringar will have to know. No need to mark this place, you and I both know it well, and his marks will last long enough.’
Cadfael considered and decided. ‘You’ll get him home best afloat, and it’s your right. I’ll follow ashore and meet you below the bridge, we shall make much the same time of it. Keep him as he lies, Madog, facedown, and note what signs he leaves aboard.’
Madog had at least as extensive a knowledge of the ways of drowned men as Cadfael. He gave his friend a long, thoughtful look, but kept his thoughts to himself, and stooped to lift the shoulders of the dead man, leaving Cadfael the knees. They got him decently disposed into the light craft. There was a fee for every Christian body Madog brought out of the river, he had indeed a right to it. The duty had edged its way in on him long ago, almost unaware, but other men’s dying was the better part of his living now. And an honest, useful, decent man, for which many a family had been thankful.
Madog’s paddle dipped and swung him across the contrary flow, to use the counter-eddies in moving up-river. Cadfael took a last look at the cove and the level of grass above it, memorised as much of the scene as he could, and set off briskly up the path to meet the boat at the bridge.
The river was fast and self-willed, and by hurrying, Cadfael won the race, and had time to recruit three or four novices and lay brothers by the time Madog brought his coracle into the ordered fringes of the Gaye. They had an improvised litter ready, they lifted Baldwin Peche onto it, and bore him away up the path to the Foregate and across to the gatehouse of the abbey. A nimble and very young novice had been sent in haste to carry word to the deputy-sheriff to come to the abbey at Brother Cadfael’s entreaty.
But for all that, no one knew how, somehow the word had gone round. By the time Madog arrived, so had a dozen idle observers, draped over the downstream parapet of the bridge. By the time the bearers had got their burden to the level of the Foregate and turned towards the abbey, the dozen had become a score, and drifted in ominous quietness towards the end of the bridge, and there were a dozen more gradually gathering behind them, emerging from the town gate. When they reached the abbey gatehouse, which could not well be closed against any who came in decorous silence and apparent peace, they had between forty and fifty souls hovering at their heels and following them within. The weight of their foreboding, accusation and self-righteousness lay heavy on the nape of Cadfael’s neck as the litter was set down in the great court. When he turned to view the enemy, for no question but they were the enemy, the first face he saw, the first levelled brow and vengeful eye, was that of Daniel Aurifaber.
Chapter Seven
Tuesday: from afternoon to night
They came crowding close, peering round Madog and Cadfael to confirm what they already knew. They passed the word back to those behind, in ominous murmurs that swelled into excited speculation in a matter of moments. Cadfael caught at the sleeve of the first novice who came curiously to see what was happ
ening.
‘Get Prior Robert and sharp about it. We’re likely to need some other authority before Hugh Beringar gets here.’ And to the litter-bearers, before they could be completely surrounded: ‘Into the cloister with him, while you can, and stand ready to fend off any who try to follow.’
The sorry cortege obediently made off into cover in some haste, and though one or two of the younger fellows from the town were drawn after by gaping curiosity to the threshold of the cloister, they did not venture further, but turned back to rejoin their friends. An inquisitive ring drew in about Cadfael and Madog.
‘That was Baldwin Peche the locksmith you had there,’ said Daniel, not asking, stating. ‘Our tenant. He never came home last night. John Boneth has been hunting high and low for him.’
‘So have I,’ said Madog, ‘at that same John’s urging. And between the two of us here we’ve found both the man and his boat.”
‘Dead.’ That was not a question either.
‘Dead, sure enough.’
By that time Prior Robert had been found, and came in haste with his dutiful shadow at his heels. Of the interruptions to his ordered, well-tuned life within here, it seemed, there was to be no end. He had caught an unpleasant murmur of ‘Murder!’ as he approached, and demanded in dismay and displeasure what had happened to bring this inflamed mob into the great court. A dozen voices volunteered to tell him, disregarding how little they themselves knew about it.
‘Father Prior, we saw our fellow-townsman carried in here, dead
‘
‘No one had seen him since yesterday
‘
‘My neighbour and tenant, the locksmith,’ cried Daniel. ‘Father robbed and assaulted, and now Master Peche fetched in dead!’
The prior held up a silencing hand, frowning them down. ‘Let one speak. Brother Cadfael, do you know what this is all about?’
Cadfael saw fit to tell the bare facts, without mention of any speculations that might be going on in his own mind. He took care to be audible to them all, though he doubted if they would be setting any limits to their own speculations, however careful he might be. ‘Madog here has found the man’s boat overturned, down-river past the castle,’ he concluded. ‘And we have sent to notify the deputy-sheriff, the matter will be in his hands now. He should be here very soon.’
That was for the more excitable ears. There were some wild youngsters among them, the kind who are always at leisure to follow up every sensation, who might well lose their heads if they sighted their scapegoat. For the implication was already there, present in the very air. Walter robbed and battered, now his tenant dead, and all evil must light upon the same head.
‘If the unfortunate man drowned in the river, having fallen from his boat,’ said Robert firmly, ‘there can be no possibility of murder. That is a foolish and wicked saying.’
They began to bay from several directions. ‘Father Prior, Master Peche was not a foolhardy man
‘
‘He knew the Severn from his childhood
‘
‘So do many,’ said Robert crisply, ‘who fall victim to it in the end, men no more foolhardy than he. You must not attribute evil to what is natural misfortune.’
‘And why should natural misfortune crowd so on one house?’ demanded an excited voice from the rear. ‘Baldwin was a guest the night Walter was struck down and his coffer emptied.’
‘And next-door neighbour, and liked to nose out whatever was hidden. And who’s to say he didn’t stumble on some proof that would be very bad news to the villain that did the deed, and lurks here swearing to his innocence?’
It was out, they took it up on all sides. ‘That’s how it was! Baldwin found out something the wretch wouldn’t have been able to deny!’
‘And he’s killed the poor man to stop his mouth
‘
‘A knock on the head and souse into the river
‘
‘No trick to turn his boat loose for the river to take down after him
‘
Cadfael was relieved to see Hugh Beringar riding briskly in at the gatehouse then with a couple of officers behind him. This was getting all too predictable. When men have elected a villain, and one from comfortably outside their own ranks, without roots or kin, they need feel nothing for him, he is hardly a man, has no blood to be shed or heart to be broken, and whatever else needs a scapegoat will be laid on him heartily and in the conviction of righteousness. Nor will reason have much say in the matter. But he raised his voice powerfully to shout them down: ‘The man you accuse is absolutely clear of this, even if it were murder. He is in sanctuary here, dare not leave the precinct, and has not left it. The king’s officers wait for him outside, as you all know. Be ashamed to make such senseless charges!’
He said afterwards, rather resignedly than bitterly, that it was a precise measure of Liliwin’s luck that he should appear innocently from the cloister at that moment, bewildered and shocked by the incursion of a dead body into the pale, and coming anxiously to enquire about it, but utterly ignorant of any connection it might be thought to have with him. He came hastening out of the west walk, solitary, apart, marked at once by two or three of the crowd. A howl went up, hideously triumphant. Liliwin took it like a great blast of cold wind in his face, shrank and faltered, and his countenance, healing into smooth comeliness these last two days, collapsed suddenly into the disintegration of terror.
The wildest of the young bloods moved fast, hallooing, but Hugh Beringar moved faster. The raw-boned grey horse, his favourite familiar, clattered nimbly between quarry and hounds, and Hugh was out of the saddle with a hand on Liliwin’s shoulder, in a grip that could have been ambiguously arrest or protection, and his neat, dark, saturnine visage turned blandly towards the threatening assault. The foremost hunters froze discreetly, and thawed again only to draw back by delicate inches from challenging his command.
The nimble young novice had acquitted himself well, and shown an excellent grasp of his charge, for Hugh had the half of it clear in his mind already and understood its perilous application here. He kept his holdlet them read it however they wouldon Liliwin throughout the questioning that followed, and listened as narrowly to Daniel Aurifaber’s heated witness as to Cadfael’s account.
‘Very well! Father Prior, it would be as well if you yourself would convey this in due course to the lord abbot. The drowned man I must examine, as also the place where he was cast ashore and that where his boat came to rest. I must call upon the help of those who found out these matters. For the rest of you, if you have anything to say, say it now.’
Say it they did, intimidated but still smouldering, and determined to pour out their heat. For this was no chance death in the river, of that they were certain. This was the killing of a witness, close, curious, likely of all men to uncover some irrefutable evidence. He had found proof of the jongleur’s strenuously-denied guilt, and he had been slipped into the Severn to drown before he could open his mouth. They began by muttering it, they ended by howling it. Hugh let them rave. He knew they were no such monsters as they made themselves out to be, but knew, too, that given a following wind and a rash impulse, they could be, to their own damage and that of every other man.
They ran themselves out of words at length, and dwindled like sails bereft of wind.
‘My men have been camped outside the gates here,’ said Hugh then, calmly, ‘all this while and have seen no sign of this man you accuse. To my knowledge he has not set foot outside these walls. How, then, can he have had any hand in any man’s death?’
They had no answer ready to that, though they sidled and exchanged glances and shook their heads as though they knew beyond doubt that there must be an answer if they could only light on it. But out of the prior’s shadow the insinuating voice of Brother Jerome spoke up mildly:
‘Pardon, Father Prior, but is it certain that the young man has been every moment within here? Only recall, last night Brother Anselm was enquiring after him and had not
seen him since just after noon, and remarked, moreover, that he did not come to the kitchen for his supper as is customary. And being concerned for any guest of our house, I felt it my duty to look for him and did so everywhere. That was just when twilight was falling. I found no trace of him anywhere within the walls.’
They took it up gleefully on the instant and Liliwin, as Cadfael observed with a sigh, shook and swallowed hard, and could not get out a word, and drops of sweat gathered on his upper lip and ran down, to be licked off feverishly.
‘You see, the good brother says it! He was not here! He was out about his foul business!’
‘Say rather,’ Prior Robert reproached gently, ‘that he could not be found.’ But he was not altogether displeased.
‘And go without his supper? A half-starved rat scorn his food unless he had urgent business elsewhere?’ cried Daniel fiercely.
‘Very urgent! He took his life in his hands to make sure Baldwin should not live to speak against him.’
‘Speak up!’ said Hugh drily, shaking Liliwin by the shoulder. ‘You have a tongue, too. Did you leave the abbey enclave at any time?’
Liliwin gulped down gall, hung in anguished silence a moment, and got out in a great groan: ‘No!’
‘You were within here yesterday, when you were sought and could not be found?’
‘I didn’t want to be found. I hid myself.’ His voice was firmer when he had at least a morsel of truth to utter. But Hugh pressed him still.
‘You have not once set foot outside this pale since you took refuge here?’
‘No, never!’ he gasped, and dragged in breath as though he had run a great way.
‘You hear?’ said Hugh crisply, putting Liliwin aside and behind him. ‘You have your answer. A man penned securely here cannot have committed murder outside, even if this proves to be murder, as at this moment there is no proof whatsoever. Now go, get back to your own crafts, and leave to the law what is the law’s business. If you doubt my thoroughness, try crossing me.’ And to his officers he said simply: ‘Clear the court of those who have no business here. I will speak with the provost later.’