Dead Man's Ransom

by Ellis Peters

  “And I,” said Hugh ruefully, “must go break the news to his widow and daughter, and make report to the lord abbot, and a sorry errand that will be. Murder in his own enclave!”

  Abbot Radulfus came, grimly composed, looked long and grievously at the dead face, heard what Cadfael had to tell, and covered the stark visage with a linen cloth. Prior Robert came, jolted out of his aristocratic calm, shaking his silver head over the iniquity of the world and the defilement of holy premises. There would have to be ceremonies of reconsecration to make all pure again, and that could not be done until truth was out and justice vindicated. Brother Edmund came, distressed beyond all measure at such a happening in his province and under his devoted and careful rule, as though the guilt of it fouled his own hands and set a great black stain against his soul. It was hard to comfort him. Over and over he lamented that he had not placed a constant watch by the sheriff’s bed, but how could any man have known that there would be need? Twice he had looked in, and found all quiet and still, and left it so. Quietness and stillness, time and rest, these were what the sick man most required. The door had been left ajar, any brother passing by could have heard if the sleeper had awakened and wanted for any small service.

  “Hush you, now!” said Cadfael sighing. “Take to yourself no more than your due, and that’s small enough. There’s no man takes better care of his fellows, as well you know. Keep your balance, for you and I will have to question all those within here, if they heard or saw anything amiss.”

  Einon ab Ithel was gone by then, with only his two captains to bear him company, his hill ponies on a leading rein, back to Montford for the night, and then as fast as might be to wherever Owain Gwynedd now kept his border watch in the north. There was not one of his men could fill up every moment of his time within here, and bring witnesses to prove it. Here or in the closer ward of the castle they must stay, until Prestcote’s murderer was found and named.

  Hugh, wisely enough, had gone first to the abbot, and only after speeding the departing Welsh did he go to perform the worst errand of all.

  Edmund and Cadfael withdrew from the bedside when the two women came in haste and tears from the guest hall, Sybilla stumbling blindly on Hugh’s arm. The little boy they had managed to leave in happy ignorance with Sybilla’s maid. There would be a better time than this to tell him he was fatherless.

  Behind him, as he drew the door quietly to, Cadfael heard the widow break into hard and painful weeping, as quickly muffled in the coverings of her husband’s bed. From the girl not a sound. She had walked into the room stiffly, with blanched, icy face and eyes fallen empty with shock.

  In the great court the little knot of Welshmen hung uneasily together, with Hugh’s guards unobtrusive but watchful on all sides, and in particular between them and the closed wicket in the gate. Elis and Eliud, struck silent and helpless in this disaster, stood a little apart, not touching, not looking at each other. Now for the first time Cadfael could see a family resemblance in them, so tenuous that in normal times it would never be noticed, while the one went solemn and thoughtful, and the other as blithe and untroubled as a bird. Now they both wore the same shocked visage, the one as lost as the other, and they could almost have been twin brothers.

  They were still standing there waiting to be disposed of, and shifting miserably from foot to foot in silence, when Hugh came back across the court with the two women. Sybilla had regained a bleak but practical control over her tears, and showed more stiffening in her backbone than Cadfael, for one, had expected. Most likely she had already turned a part of her mind and energy to the consideration of her new situation, and what it meant for her son, who was now the lord of six valuable manors, but all of them in this vulnerable border region. He would need either a very able steward or a strong and well, disposed step-father. Her lord was dead, his overlord the king a prisoner; there was no one to force her into an unwelcome match. She was many years younger than her lost husband, and had a dower of her own, and good enough looks to make her a fair bargain. She would live, and do well enough.

  The girl was another matter. Within her frosty calm a faint fire had begun to burn again, deep sparks lurked in the quenched eyes. She turned one unreadable glance upon Elis, and then looked straight before her.

  Hugh checked for a moment to commit the Welshmen of the escort to his sergeants, and have them led away to the security of the castle, with due civility, since all of them might be entirely innocent of wrong, but into close and vigilant guard. He would have passed on, to see the women into their apartments before attempting any further probing, but Melicent suddenly laid a hand upon his arm.

  “My lord, since Brother Edmund is here, may I ask him a question, before we leave this in your hands?” She was very still, but the fire in her was beginning to burn through, and her pallor to show sharp edges of steel. “Brother Edmund, you best know your own domain, and I know you watch over it well. There is no blame falls upon you. But tell us, who, if anyone, entered my father’s chamber after he was left there asleep?”

  “I was not constantly by,” said Edmund unhappily. “God forgive me, I never dreamed there could be any need. Anyone could have gone in to him.”

  “But you know of one who certainly did go in?” Sybilla had plucked her step, daughter by the sleeve, distressed and reproving, but Melicent shook her off without a glance. “And only one?” she said sharply.

  “To my knowledge, yes,” agreed Edmund uncomprehendingly, “but surely no harm. It was shortly before you all returned from the abbot’s lodging. I had time then to make a round, and I saw the sheriff’s door opened, and found a young man beside the bed, as though he meant to disturb his sleep. I could not have that, so I took him by the shoulder and turned him about, and pointed him out of the room. And he went obediently and made no protest. There was no word spoken,” said Edmund simply, “and no harm done. The patient had not awakened.”

  “No,” said Melicent, her voice shaken at last out of its wintry calm, “nor never did again, nor never will. Name him, this one!

  And Edmund did not even know the boy’s name, so little had he had to do with him. He indicated Elis with a hesitant hand. “It was our Welsh prisoner.”

  Melicent let out a strange, grievous sound of anger, guilt and pain, and whirled upon Elis. Her marble whiteness had become incandescent, and the blue of her eyes was like the blinding fire sunlight strikes from ice. “Yes, you! None but you! None but you went in there. Oh, God, what have you and I done between us! And I, fool, fool, I never believed you could mean it, when you told me, many times over, you’d kill for me, kill whoever stood between us. Oh, God, and I loved you! I may even have invited you, urged you to the deed. I never understood. Anything, you said, to keep us together a while longer, anything to prevent your being sent away, back to Wales. Anything! You said you would kill, and now you have killed, and God forgive me, I am guilty along with you.”

  Elis stood facing her, the poor lucky lad suddenly most unlucky and defenceless as a babe. He stared with dropped jaw and startled, puzzled, terrified face, struck clean out of words and wits, open to any stab. He shook his head violently from side to side, as if he could shake away a nightmare, after the fashion of those clever dreamers who use their fingers to prise open eyelids beset by unbearable dreams. He could not get out a word or a sound.

  “I take back every evidence of love,” raged Melicent, her voice like a cry of pain. “I hate you, I loathe you… I hate myself for ever loving you. You have so mistaken me, you have killed my father.”

  He wrenched himself out of his stupor then, and made a wild move towards her. “Melicent! For God’s sake, what are you saying?” She drew back violently out of his reach. “No, don’t touch me, don’t come near me. Murderer!”

  “This shall end,” said Hugh, and took her by the shoulders and put her into Sybilla’s arms. “Madam, I had thought to spare you any further distress today, but you see this will not wait. Bring her! And sergeant, have these two into the gatehouse,
where we may be private. Edmund and Cadfael, go with us, we may well need you.”

  “Now,” said Hugh, when he had herded them all, accused, accuser and witnesses, into the anteroom of the gatehouse out of the cold and out of the public eye, “now let us get to the heart of this. Brother Edmund, you say you found this man in the sheriff’s chamber, standing beside his bed. How did you read it? Did you think, by appearances, he had been long in there? Or that he had but newly come?”

  “I thought he had but just crept in,” said Edmund. “He was close to the foot of the bed, a little stooped, looking down as though he wondered whether he dared wake the sleeper.”

  “Yet he could have been there longer? He could have been standing over a man he had smothered, to assure himself it was thoroughly done?”

  “It might be interpretable so,” agreed Edmund very dubiously, “but the thought did not enter my mind. If there had been anything so sinister in him; would it not have shown? It’s true he started when I touched him, and looked guilty, but I mean as a boy caught in mischief, nothing that caused me an ill thought. And he went, when I ordered him, as biddable as a child.”

  “Did you look again at the bed, after he was gone? Can you say if the sheriff was still breathing then? And the coverings of the bed, were they disarranged?”

  “All was smooth and quiet as when we left him sleeping. But I did not look more closely,” said Edmund sadly. “I wish to God I had.”

  “You knew of no cause, and his best cure was to be let alone to sleep. One more thing—had Elis anything in his hands?”

  “No, nothing. Nor had he on the cloak he has on his arm now.” It was of a dark red cloth, smooth, surfaced and close-woven.

  “Very well. And you have no knowledge of any other who may have made his way into the room?”

  “No knowledge, no. But at any time entry was possible. There may well have been others.”

  Melicent said with deadly bitterness: “One was enough! And that one we do know.” She shook Sybilla’s hand from her arm, refusing any restraint but her own. “My lord Beringar, hear me speak. I say again, he has killed my father. I will not go back from that.”

  “Have your say,” said Hugh shortly.

  “My lord, you must know that this Elis and I learned to know each other in your castle where he was prisoner, but with the run of the wards on his parole, and I was with my mother and brother in my father’s apartments waiting for news of him. We came to see and touch—my bitter regret that I am forced to say it, we loved. It was not our fault, it happened to us, we had no choice. We came to extreme dread that when my father came home we must be parted, for then Elis must leave in his place. And you, my lord, who best knew my father, know that he would never countenance a match with a Welshman. Many a time we talked of it, many a time we despaired. And he said—I swear he said so, he dare not deny it!—he said he would kill for me if need be, kill any man who stood between us. Anything, he said, to hold us together, even murder. In love men say wild things. I never thought of harm, and yet I am to blame, for I was as desperate for love as he. And now he has done what he threatened, for he has surely killed my father.”

  Elis got his breath, coming out of his stunned wretchedness with a heave that almost lifted him out of his boots. “I did not! I swear to you I never laid hand on him, never spoke word to him. I would not for any gain have hurt your father, even though he barred you from me. I would have reached you somehow, there would have been a way… You do me terrible wrong!”

  “But you did go to the room where he lay?” Hugh reminded him equably. “Why?”

  “To make myself known to him, to plead my cause with him, what else? It was the only present hope I had, I could not let it slip through my fingers. I wanted to tell him that I love Melicent, that I am a man of lands and honour, and desire nothing better than to serve her with all my goods and gear. He might have listened! I knew, she had told me, that he was sworn enemy to the Welsh, I knew it was a poor hope, but it was all the hope I had. But I never got the chance to speak. He was deep asleep, and before I ventured to disturb him the good brother came and banished me. This is the truth, and I will swear to it on the altar.”

  “It is truth!” Eliud spoke up vehemently for his friend. He stood close, since Elis had refused a seat, his shoulder against Elis’s shoulder for comfort and assurance. He was as pale as if the accusation had been made against him, and his voice was husky and low. “He was with me in the cloister, he told me of his love, and said he would go to the lord Gilbert and speak to him man to man. I thought it unwise, but he would go. It was not many minutes before I saw him come forth, and Brother Infirmarer making sure he departed. And there was no manner of stealth in his dealings,” insisted Ehud stoutly, “for he crossed the court straight and fast, not caring who might see him go in.”

  “That may well be true,” agreed Hugh thoughtfully, “but for all that, even if he went in with no ill intent, and no great hope, once he stood there by the bedside it might come into his mind how easy, and how final, to remove the obstacle—a man sleeping and already very low.”

  “He never would!” cried Eliud. “His is no such mind.”

  “I did not,” said Elis, and looked helplessly at Melicent, who stared back at him stonily and gave him no aid. “For God’s sake, believe me! I think I could not have touched or roused him, even if there had been no one to send me away. To see a fine, strong man so—quite defenceless…”

  “Yet no one entered there but you,” she said mercilessly.

  “That cannot be proved!” flashed Eliud. “Brother Infirmarer has said that the way was open, anyone might have gone in.”

  “Nor can it be proved that anyone did,” she said with aching bitterness.

  “But I think it can,” said Brother Cadfael.

  He had all eyes on him in an instant. All this time some morsel of his memory had been worrying at the flaw he could not quite identify. He had picked up the folded sheepskin cloak from the chest, where he had watched Edmund lay it, and there had been something different about it, though he could not think what it could be. And then the encounter with death had driven the matter to the back of his mind, but it had lodged there ever since, like chaff in the throat after eating porridge. And suddenly he had it. The cloak was gone now, gone with Einon ab Ithel back to Wales, but Edmund was there to confirm what he had to say. And so was Eliud, who would know his lord’s belongings.

  “When we disrobed and bedded Gilbert Prestcote,” he said, “the cloak that wrapped him, which belonged to Einon ab Ithel, was folded and laid by, Brother Edmund will remember it, in such case as to leave plain to be seen in the collar a great gold pin that fastened it. When Eliud, here, came to ask me to show him the room and hand out his lord’s cloak to him and I did so, the cloak was folded as before, but the pin was gone. Small wonder if we forgot the matter, seeing what else we found. But I knew there was something I should have noted, and now I have recalled what it was.”

  “It is truth!” cried Eliud, his face brightening eagerly. “I never thought! And I have let my lord go without it, never a word said. I fastened the collar of the cloak with it myself, when we laid him in the litter, for the wind blew cold. But with this upset, I never thought to look for it again. Here is Elis and has never been out of men’s sight since he came from the infirmary—ask all here! If he took it, he has it on him still. And if he has it not, then someone else has been in there before him and taken it. My foster-brother is no thief and no murderer—but if you doubt, you have your remedy.”

  “What Cadfael says is truth,” said Edmund. “The pin was there plain to be seen. If it is gone, then someone went in and took it.” Elis had caught the fierce glow of hope, in spite of the unchanging bitterness and grief of Melicent’s face. “Strip me!” he demanded, glittering. “Search my body! I won’t endure to be thought thief and murderer both.”

  In justice to him, rather than having any real doubts in the matter, Hugh took him at his word, but allowed only Cadfael
and Edmund to be witnesses with him in the borrowed cell where Elis, with sweeping, arrogant, hurt gestures, tore off his clothes and let them fall about him, until he stood naked with braced feet astride and arms outspread, and dragged disdainful fingers painfully through his thick thatch of curls and shook his head violently to show there was nothing made away there. Now that he was safe from the broken, embittered stare of Melicent’s eyes the tears he had defied came treacherously into his own, and he blinked and shook them proudly away.

  Hugh let him cool gradually and in considerate silence.

  “Are you content?” the boy demanded stiffly, when he had his voice well in rein.

  “Are you?” said Hugh, and smiled.

  There was a brief, almost consoling silence. Then Hugh said mildly: “Cover yourself, then. Take your time.” And while Elis was dressing, with hands that shook now in reaction: “You do understand that I must hold you in close guard, you and your foster-brother and the others alike. As at this moment, you are no more in suspicion than many who belong here within the pale, and will not be let out of it until I know to the last moment where they spent this morn and noon. This is no more than a beginning, and you but one of many.”

  “I do understand,” said Elis and wavered, hesitant to ask a favour. “Need I be separated from Eliud?”

  “You shall have Eliud,” said Hugh.

  When they went out again to those who still waited in the anteroom the two women were on their feet, and plainly longing to withdraw. Sybilla had but half her mind here in support of her step-daughter, the better half was with her son; and if she had been a faithful and dutiful wife to her older husband and mourned him truly now after her fashion, love was much too large a word for what she had felt for him and barely large enough for what she felt for the boy he had given her. Sybilla’s thoughts were with the future, not the past.