by Mike Ashley
Ailill started, his eyes narrowing as he stared at her. Sister Fidelma continued oblivious of the tension in the chamber.
“Abbot Colmán summoned me hither. He had much to gain from this affair, as we have discussed. He also had the opportunity to carry out the crime.”
“That’s not true!” cried the Abbot.
Sister Fidelma turned and smiled at the ruddy-faced cleric.
“You are right, Colmán. And I have already conceded that fact. You did not do it.”
“But the sword was found in Cernach’s chamber,” Sechnasach pointed out. “He must surely be guilty.”
“Several times I was pointed towards Cernach as a vehement advocate of Roman reforms. A youthful hothead, was one description. Several times I was encouraged to think that the motive lay in replacing Sechnasach, a traditionalist, with someone who would encourage those reforms. And, obligingly, the sword was placed in Cernach’s chamber by the real culprit, for us to find. To Cernach my footsteps were carefully pointed . . . But why Cernach? He was not even of the ‘age of choice’, so what could he gain?”
There was a silence as they waited tensely for her to continue.
“Abbot Colmán told me that Cernach was a supporter of Rome. So did Ailill and so did Ornait. But Ornait was the only one who told me that Cernach desired the throne, even though unable to do so by his age. Ornait also told me that he would be of age within a month.”
Sister Fidelma suddenly wheeled round on the girl.
“Ornait was also the only person who knew of my reputation as a solver of mysteries. Ornait told the Abbot and encouraged him to send for me. Is this not so?”
She glanced back to Abbot Colmán who nodded in confusion.
Ornait had gone white, staring at Sister Fidelma.
“Are you saying that I stole the sword?” she whispered with ice in her voice.
“That’s ridiculous!” cried Sechnasach. “Ornait is my sister.”
“Nevertheless, the guilty ones are Ailill and Ornait,” replied Sister Fidelma.
“But you have just demonstrated that Ailill was innocent of the crime,” Sechnasach said in total bewilderment.
“No. I demonstrated that evidence was left for me in order that I would believe Ailill was innocent; that he could not have carried out the deed as it was claimed he had. When things are obvious, beware of them.”
“But why would Ornait take part in this theft?” demanded the High King.
“Ornait conceived the plan. Its cunning was her own. It was carried out by Ailill and herself and no others.”
“Explain.”
“Ailill and Ornait entered the chapel that night in the normal way through the passage. They proceeded to carry out the plan. Ornait took the sword while Ailill broke the bolt, making sure of the obvious mistake. They relied on discovery by the two guards and Ailill waited for them. But, as always in such carefully laid plans, there comes the unexpected. As Ornait was proceeding back through the passage she saw the Abbot coming along it. He had left his Psalter in the sacristy and needed it. She pressed into an alcove and hid until he had gone by. When she left the alcove she tore her gown on some obstruction.”
Sister Fidelma held out the small piece of frayed colourful cloth.
“But the rest of the plan worked perfectly. Ailill was imprisoned. The second part of the plan was now put into place. Ornait had been informed by a sister from my house at Kildare that I was a solver of mysteries. In fact, without undue modesty, I may say that Ornait’s entire plan had been built around me. When the sword could not be found, she was able to persuade Abbot Colmán to send for me to investigate its mysterious disappearance. Colmán himself had never heard of me before Ornait dropped my name in his ear. He has just admitted this.”
The Abbot was nodding in agreement as he strove to follow her argument.
“When I arrived, the contrived evidence led me immediately to believe Ailill Flann Esa was innocent, as it was supposed to do. It also led me to the chosen scapegoat, Cernach Mac Diarmuid. And in his chamber, scarcely concealed, was the sacred sword. It was all too easy for me. That ease made me suspicious. Both Ailill and Ornait were too free with Cernach’s name. Then I saw the frayed cloth in the passage and I began to think.”
“But if it was a simple plot to discredit me by the non-production of the sword,” observed Sechnasach, “why such an elaborate plot? Why not simply steal the sword and hide it where it could not be so easily recovered?”
“That was the matter which caused the greatest puzzle. However, it became clear to me as I considered it. Ornait and Ailill had to be sure of your downfall. The loss of the sword would create alarm and dissension among the people. But it was not simply chaos that they wanted. They wanted your immediate downfall. They had to ensure that the Great Assembly would come to regret their decision and immediately proclaim for Ailill at the inauguration.”
“How could they ensure that?” demanded Abbot Colmán. “The Great Assembly had already made their decision.”
“A decision which could be overturned any time before the inauguration. After aspersions had been cast on Sechnasach’s judgement, his ability to treat people fairly, the Great Assembly could change its support. By showing the Great Assembly that Sechnasach was capable of unjustly accusing one who had been his rival, this could be done. I am also sure that Sechnasach would be accused of personal enmity because of Ornait’s love of Ailill. I was part of Ornait’s plan to depose her brother and replace him with Ailill. I was to be invited to Tara for no other purpose but to demonstrate Ailill’s innocence and Cernach’s guilt. Doubt on Sechnasach’s judgement would be a blemish on his ability for the High Kingship. Remember the Law of Kings, the law of the seven proofs of a righteous King? That his judgement be firm and just and beyond reproach. Once Sechnasach’s decision to imprison Ailill was shown to have been unjust, Ailill, as tánaiste, would be acclaimed in his place with Ornait as his queen.”
Sechnasach sat staring at his sister, reading the truth in her scowling features. If the veracity of Sister Fidelma’s argument needed support, it could be found in the anger and hate written on the girl’s features and that humiliation on Ailill’s face.
“And this was done for no other reason than to seize the throne, for no other motive than power?” asked the High King incredulously. “It was not done because they wanted to reform the Church in line with Rome?”
“Not for Rome. Merely for power,” Fidelma agreed. “For power most people would do anything.”
PART II
The Middle Ages
THE PRICE OF LIGHT
Ellis Peters
This anthology would not be complete without Brother Cadfael, the twelfth-century monk whose crime-solving abilities brought the medieval mystery to life.
Ellis Peters is the crime-writing persona of Edith Pargeter (b. 1913), in her own right a talented writer of historical novels. Her first book had been a short historical novel set in Roman times, Hortensius, Friend of Nero (1936), but the initial poor sales of her historical books caused her to turn to crime fiction. She first introduced her character of Inspector Felse in Fallen Into the Pit (1951); a later Felse novel, Death and the Joyful Woman (1961) won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award as the Year’s Best Mystery Novel.
Brother Cadfael first appeared in A Morbid Taste for Bones and has now featured in nineteen novels and three short stories. The short story reprinted here is his earliest case as a monk. Although “A Light on the Road to Woodstock” is set earlier, Cadfael was still then a man of the world. “The Price of Light” takes place two years before A Morbid Taste for Bones, and reintroduces us to many of the familiar characters.
Hamo FitzHamon of Lidyate held two fat manors in the north-eastern corner of the county, towards the border of Cheshire. Though a gross feeder, a heavy drinker, a self-indulgent lecher, a harsh landlord and a brutal master, he had reached the age of sixty in the best of health, and it came as a salutary shock to him when he was at last taken with a
mild seizure, and for the first time in his life saw the next world yawning before him, and woke to the uneasy consciousness that it might see fit to treat him somewhat more austerely than this world had done. Though he repented none of them, he was aware of a whole register of acts in his past which heaven might construe as heavy sins. It began to seem to him a prudent precaution to acquire merit for his soul as quickly as possible. Also as cheaply, for he was a grasping and possessive man. A judicious gift to some holy house should secure the welfare of his soul. There was no need to go so far as endowing an abbey, or a new church of his own. The Benedictine abbey of Shrewsbury could put up a powerful assault of prayers on his behalf in return for a much more modest gift.
The thought of alms to the poor, however ostentatiously bestowed in the first place, did not recommend itself. Whatever was given would be soon consumed and forgotten, and a rag-tag of beggarly blessings from the indigent could carry very little weight, besides failing to confer a lasting lustre upon himself. No, he wanted something that would continue in daily use and daily respectful notice, a permanent reminder of his munificence and piety. He took his time about making his decision, and when he was satisfied of the best value he could get for the least expenditure, he sent his law-man to Shrewsbury to confer with abbot and prior, and conclude with due ceremony and many witnesses the charter that conveyed to the custodian of the altar of St. Mary, within the abbey church, one of his free tenant farmers, the rent to provide light for Our Lady’s altar throughout the year. He promised also, for the proper displaying of his charity, the gift of a pair of fine silver candlesticks, which he himself would bring and see installed on the altar at the coming Christmas feast.
Abbot Heribert, who after a long life of repeated disillusionments still contrived to think the best of everybody, was moved to tears by this penitential generosity. Prior Robert, himself an aristocrat, refrained, out of Norman solidarity, from casting doubt upon Hamo’s motive, but he elevated his eyebrows, all the same. Brother Cadfael, who knew only the public reputation of the donor, and was sceptical enough to suspend judgement until he encountered the source, said nothing, and waited to observe and decide for himself. Not that he expected much; he had been in the world fifty-five years, and learned to temper all his expectations, bad or good.
It was with mild and detached interest that he observed the arrival of the party from Lidyate, on the morning of Christmas Eve. A hard, cold Christmas it was proving to be, that year of 1135, all bitter black frost and grudging snow, thin and sharp as whips before a withering east wind. The weather had been vicious all the year, and the harvest a disaster. In the villages people shivered and starved, and Brother Oswald the almoner fretted and grieved the more that the alms he had to distribute were not enough to keep all those bodies and souls together. The sight of a cavalcade of three good riding horses, ridden by travellers richly wrapped up from the cold, and followed by two pack-ponies, brought all the wretched petitioners crowding and crying, holding out hands blue with frost. All they got out of it was a single perfunctory handful of small coin, and when they hampered his movements FitzHamon used his whip as a matter of course to clear the way. Rumour, thought Brother Cadfael, pausing on his way to the infirmary with his daily medicines for the sick, had probably not done Hamo FitzHamon any injustice.
Dismounting in the great court, the knight of Lidyate was seen to be a big, over-fleshed, top-heavy man with bushy hair and beard and eyebrows, all grey-streaked from their former black, and stiff and bristling as wire. He might well have been a very handsome man before indulgence purpled his face and pocked his skin and sank his sharp black eyes deep into flabby sacks of flesh. He looked more than his age, but still a man to be reckoned with.
The second horse carried his lady, pillion behind a groom. A small figure she made, even swathed almost to invisibility in her woollens and furs, and she rode snuggled comfortably against the groom’s broad back, her arms hugging him round the waist. And a very well-looking young fellow he was, this groom, a strapping lad barely twenty years old, with round, ruddy cheeks and merry, guileless eyes, long in the legs, wide in the shoulders, everything a country youth should be, and attentive to his duties into the bargain, for he was down from the saddle in one lithe leap, and reaching up to take the lady by the waist, every bit as heartily as she had been clasping him a moment before, and lift her lightly down. Small, gloved hands rested on his shoulders a brief moment longer than was necessary. His respectful support of her continued until she was safe on the ground and sure of her footing; perhaps a few seconds more. Hamo FitzHamon was occupied with Prior Robert’s ceremonious welcome, and the attentions of the hospitaller, who had made the best rooms of the guest-hall ready for him.
The third horse also carried two people, but the woman on the pillion did not wait for anyone to help her down, but slid quickly to the ground and hurried to help her mistress off with the great outer cloak in which she had travelled. A quiet, submissive young woman, perhaps in her middle twenties, perhaps older, in drab homespun, her hair hidden away under a coarse linen wimple. Her face was thin and pale, her skin dazzlingly fair, and her eyes, reserved and weary, were of a pale, clear blue, a fierce colour that ill suited their humility and resignation.
Lifting the heavy folds from her lady’s shoulders, the maid showed a head the taller of the two, but drab indeed beside the bright little bird that emerged from the cloak. Lady FitzHamon came forth graciously smiling on the world in scarlet and brown, like a robin, and just as confidently. She had dark hair braided about a small, shapely head, soft, full cheeks flushed rosy by the chill air, and large dark eyes assured of their charm and power. She could not possibly have been more than thirty, probably not so much. FitzHamon had a grown son somewhere, with children of his own, and waiting some said with little patience, for his inheritance. This girl must be a second or a third wife, a good deal younger than her stepson, and a beauty, at that. Hamo was secure enough and important enough to keep himself supplied with wives as he wore them out. This one must have cost him dear, for she had not the air of a poor but pretty relative sold for a profitable alliance, rather she looked as if she knew her own status very well indeed, and meant to have it acknowledged. She would look well presiding over the high table at Lidyate, certainly, which was probably the main consideration.
The groom behind whom the maid had ridden was an older man, lean and wiry, with a face like the bole of a knotty oak. By the sardonic patience of his eyes he had been in close and relatively favoured attendance on FitzHamon for many years, knew the best and the worst his moods could do, and was sure of his own ability to ride the storms. Without a word he set about unloading the pack-horses, and followed his lord to the guest-hall, while the young man took FitzHamon’s bridle, and led the horses away to the stables.
Cadfael watched the two women cross to the doorway, the lady springy as a young hind, with bright eyes taking in everything around her, the tall maid keeping always a pace behind, with long steps curbed to keep her distance. Even thus, frustrated like a mewed hawk, she had a graceful gait. Almost certainly of villein stock, like the two grooms. Cadfael had long practice in distinguishing the free from the unfree. Not that the free had any easy life, often they were worse off than the villeins of their neighbourhood; there were plenty of free men, this Christmas, gaunt and hungry, forced to hold out begging hands among the throng round the gatehouse. Freedom, the first ambition of every man, still could not fill the bellies of wives and children in a bad season.
FitzHamon and his party appeared at Vespers in full glory to see the candlesticks reverently installed upon the altar in the Lady Chapel. Abbot, prior and brothers had no difficulty in sufficiently admiring the gift, for they were indeed things of beauty, two fluted stems ending in the twin cups of flowering lilies. Even the veins of the leaves showed delicate and perfect as in the living plant. Brother Oswald the almoner, himself a skilled silversmith when he had time to exercise his craft, stood gazing at the new embellishments of the altar
with a face and mind curiously torn between rapture and regret, and ventured to delay the donor for a moment, as he was being ushered away to sup with Abbot Heribert in his lodging.
“My lord, these are of truly noble workmanship. I have some knowledge of precious metals, and of the most notable craftsmen in these parts, but I never saw any work so true to the plant as this. A countryman’s eye is here, but the hand of a court craftsman. May we know who made them?”
FitzHamon’s marred face curdled into deeper purple, as if an unpardonable shadow had been cast upon his hour of self-congratulation. He said brusquely: “I commissioned them from a fellow in my own service. You would not know his name – a villein born, but he had some skill.” And with that he swept on, avoiding further question, and wife and men-servants and maid trailed after him. Only the older groom, who seemed less in awe of his lord than anyone, perhaps by reason of having so often presided over the ceremony of carrying him dead drunk to his bed, turned back for a moment to pluck at brother Oswald’s sleeve, and advise him in a confidential whisper: “You’ll find him short to question on that head. The silversmith – Alard, his name was – cut and ran from his service last Christmas, and for all they hunted him as far as London, where the signs pointed, he’s never been found. I’d let that matter lie, if I were you.”
And with that he trotted away after his master, and left several thoughtful faces staring after him.
“Not a man to part willingly with any property of his,” mused Brother Cadfael, “metal or man, but for a price, and a steep price at that.”
“Brother, be ashamed!” reproved Brother Jerome at his elbow. “Has he not parted with these very treasures from pure charity?”