by Ellis Peters
“You’re sure of him?”
“Sure that he’s the same man, yes. Sure enough of his practices to challenge him openly, no, hardly, since he has never yet been taken up but once, and then he proved so slippery he slithered through the bailiffs fingers. But keep a weather eye on him, and this may be where he’ll make the slip every rogue makes in the end, and get his comeuppance.”
“If you’re right,” said Cadfael, “has he not strayed rather far from his own haunts? In my experience, from years back I own, his kind seldom left the region where they knew their way about better than the bailiffs. Has he made the south country so hot for him that he must run for a fresh territory? That argues something worse than cheating at dice.”
Brother Adam hoisted dubious shoulders. “It could be. Some of our scum have found the disorders of faction very profitable, in their own way, just as their lords and masters have in theirs. Battles are not for them—far too dangerous to their own skins. But the brawls that blow up in towns where uneasy factions come together are meat and drink to them. Pockets to be picked, riots to be started—discreetly from the rear—unoffending elders who look prosperous to be knocked on the head or knifed from behind or have their purse-strings cut in the confusion… Safer and easier than taking to the woods and living wild for prey, as their kind do in the country.”
Just such gatherings, thought Cadfael, as that at Winchester, where at least one man was knifed in the back and left dying. Might not the law in the south be searching for this man, to drive him so far from his usual hunting-grounds? For some worse offence than cheating silly young men of their money at dice? Something as black as murder itself?
“There are two or three others in the common guest-hall,” he said, “about whom I have my doubts, but this man has had no truck with them so far as I’ve seen. But I’ll bear it in mind, and keep a watchful eye open, and have Brother Denis do the same. And I’ll mention what you say to Hugh Beringar, too, before this evening’s out. Both he and the town provost will be glad to have fair warning.”
Since Ciaran was sitting quietly in the cloister garth, it seemed a pity he should be made to walk through the gardens to the herbarium, when Cadfael’s broad brown feet were in excellent condition, and sensibly equipped with stout sandals. So Cadfael fetched the salve he had used on Ciaran’s wounds and bruises, and the spirit that would brace and toughen his tender soles, and brought them to the cloister. It was pleasant there in the afternoon sun, and the turf was thick and springy and cool to bare feet. The roses were coming into full bloom, and their scent hung in the warm air like a benediction. But two such closed and sunless faces! Was the one truly condemned to an early death, and the other to lose and mourn so close a friend?
Ciaran was speaking as Cadfael approached, and did not at first notice him, but even when he was aware of the visitor bearing down on them he continued steadily to the end, “…you do but waste your time, for it will not happen. Nothing will be changed, don’t look for it. Never! You might far better leave me and go home.”
Did the one of them believe in Saint Winifred’s power, and pray and hope for a miracle? And was the other, the sick man, all too passionately of Rhun’s mind, and set on offering his early death as an acceptable and willing sacrifice, rather than ask for healing?
Matthew had not yet noticed Cadfael’s approach. His deep voice, measured and resolute, said just audibly, “Save your breath! For I will go with you, step for step, to the very end.”
Then Cadfael was close, and they were both aware of him, and stirred defensively out of their private anguish, heaving in breath and schooling their faces to confront the outer world decently. They drew a little apart on the stone bench, welcoming Cadfael with somewhat strained smiles.
“I saw no need to make you come to me,” said Cadfael, dropping to his knees and opening his scrip in the bright green turf, “when I am better able to come to you. So sit and be easy, and let me see how much work is yet to be done before you can go forth in good heart.”
“This is kind, brother,” said Ciaran, rousing himself with a sigh. “Be assured that I do go in good heart, for my pilgrimage is short and my arrival assured.”
At the other end of the bench Matthew’s voice said softly, “Amen!”
After that it was all silence as Cadfael anointed the swollen soles, kneading spirit vigorously into the misused skin, surely heretofore accustomed always to going well shod, and soothed the ointment of cleavers into the healing grazes.
“There! Keep off your feet through tomorrow, but for such offices as you feel you must attend. Here there’s no need to go far. And I’ll come to you tomorrow and have you fit to stand somewhat longer the next day, when the saint is brought home.” When he spoke of her now, he hardly knew whether he was truly speaking of the mortal substance of Saint Winifred, which was generally believed to be in that silver-chaced reliquary, or of some hopeful distillation of her spirit which could fill with sanctity even an empty coffin, even a casket containing pitiful, faulty human bones, unworthy of her charity, but subject, like all mortality, to the capricious, smiling mercies of those above and beyond question. If you could reason by pure logic for the occurrence of miracles, they would not be miracles, would they?
He scrubbed his hands on a handful of wool, and rose from his knees. In some twenty minutes or so it would be time for Vespers.
He had taken his leave, and almost reached the archway into the great court, when he heard rapid steps at his heels, a hand reached deprecatingly for his sleeve, and Matthew’s voice said in his ear, “Brother Cadfael, you left this lying.”
It was his jar of ointment, of rough, greenish pottery, almost invisible in the grass. The young man held it out in the palm of a broad, strong, workmanlike hand, long-fingered and elegant. Dark eyes, reserved but earnestly curious, searched Cadfael’s face.
Cadfael took the jar with thanks, and put it away in his scrip. Ciaran sat where Matthew had left him, his face and burning gaze turned towards them; they stood at a distance, between him and the outer day, and he had, for one moment, the look of a soul abandoned to absolute solitude in a populous world.
Cadfael and Matthew stood gazing in speculation and uncertainty into each other’s eyes. This was that able, ready young man who had leaped into action at need, upon whom Melangell had fixed her young, unpractised heart, and to whom Rhun had surely looked for a hopeful way out for his sister, whatever might become of himself. Good, cultivated stock, surely, bred of some small gentry and taught a little Latin as well as his schooling in arms. How, except by the compulsion of inordinate love, did this one come to be ranging the country like a penniless vagabond, without root or attachment but to a dying man?
“Tell me truth,” said Cadfael. “Is it indeed true—is it certain—that Ciaran goes this way towards his death?”
There was a brief moment of silence, as Matthew’s wide-set eyes grew larger and darker. Then he said very softly and deliberately, “It is truth. He is already marked for death. Unless your saint has a miracle for us, there is nothing can save him. Or me!” he ended abruptly, and wrenched himself away to return to his devoted watch.
*
Cadfael turned his back on supper in the refectory, and set off instead along the Foregate towards the town. Over the bridge that spanned the Severn, in through the gate, and up the curving slope of the Wyle to Hugh Beringar’s town house. There he sat and nursed his godson Giles, a large, comely, self-willed child, fair like his mother, and long of limb, some day to dwarf his small, dark, sardonic father. Aline brought food and wine for her husband and his friend, and then sat down to her needlework, favouring her menfolk from time to time with a smiling glance of serene contentment. When her son fell asleep in Cadfael’s lap she rose and lifted the boy away gently. He was heavy for her, but she had learned how to carry him lightly balanced on arm and shoulder. Cadfael watched her fondly as she bore the child away into the next room to his bed, and closed the door between.
“How is it possib
le that that girl can grow every day more radiant and lovely? I’ve known marriage rub the fine bloom off many a handsome maid. Yet it suits her as a halo does a saint.”
“Oh, there’s something to be said for marriage,” said Hugh idly. “Do I look so poorly on it? Though it’s an odd study for a man of your habit, after all these years of celibacy… And all the stravagings about the world before that! You can’t have thought too highly of the wedded state, or you’d have ventured on it yourself. You took no vows until past forty, and you a well-set-up young fellow crusading all about the east with the best of them. How do I know you have not an Aline of your own locked away somewhere, somewhere in your remembrance, as dear as mine is to me? Perhaps even a Giles of your own,” he added, whimsically smiling, “a Giles God knows where, grown a man now…”
Cadfael’s silence and stillness, though perfectly easy and complacent, nevertheless sounded a mute warning in Hugh’s perceptive senses. On the edge of drowsiness among his cushions after a long day out of doors, he opened a black, considering eye to train upon his friend’s musing face, and withdrew delicately into practical business.
“Well, so this Simeon Poer is known in the south. I’m grateful to you and to Brother Adam for the nudge, though so far the man has set no foot wrong here. But these others you’ve pictured for me… At Wat’s tavern in the Foregate they’ve had practice in marking down strangers who come with a fair or a feast, and spread themselves large about the town. Wat tells my people he has a group moving in, very merry, some of them strangers. They could well be these you name. Some of them, of course, the usual young fellows of the town and the Foregate with more pence than sense. They’ve been drinking a great deal, and throwing dice. Wat does not like the way the dice fall.”
“It’s as I supposed,” said Cadfael, nodding. “For every Mass of ours they’ll be celebrating the Gamblers’ Mass elsewhere. And by all means let the fools throw their money after their sense, so the odds be fair. But Wat knows a loaded throw when he sees one.”
“He knows how to rid his house of the plague, too. He has hissed in the ears of one of the strangers that his tavern is watched, and they’d be wise to take their school out of there. And for tonight he has a lad on the watch, to find out where they’ll meet. Tomorrow night we’ll have at them, and rid you of them in good time for the feast day, if all goes well.”
Which would be a very welcome cleansing, thought Cadfael, making his way back across the bridge in the first limpid dusk, with the river swirling its coiled currents beneath him in gleams of reflected light, low summer water leaving the islands outlined in swathes of drowned, browning weed. But as yet there was nothing to shed light, even by reflected, phantom gleams, upon that death so far away in the south country, whence the merchant Simeon Poer had set out. On pilgrimage for his respectable soul? Or in flight from a law aroused too fiercely for his safety, by something graver than the cozening of fools? Though Cadfael felt too close to folly himself to be loftily complacent even about that, however much it might be argued that gamblers deserved all they got.
The great gate of the abbey was closed, but the wicket in it stood open, shedding sunset light through from the west. In the mild dazzle Cadfael brushed shoulders and sleeves with another entering, and was a little surprised to be hoisted deferentially through the wicket by a firm hand at his elbow.
“Give you goodnight, brother!” sang a mellow voice in his ear, as the returning guest stepped within on his heels. And the solid, powerful, woollen-gowned form of Simeon Poer, self-styled merchant of Guildford, rolled vigorously past him, and crossed the great court to the stone steps of the guest-hall.
Chapter 6
THEY WERE EMERGING FROM High Mass on the morning of the twenty-first day of June, the eve of Saint Winifred’s translation, stepping out into a radiant morning, when the abbot’s sedate progress towards his lodging was rudely disrupted by a sudden howl of dismay among the dispersing multitude of worshippers, a wild ripple of movement cleaving a path through their ranks, and the emergence of a frantic figure lurching forth on clumsy, naked feet to clutch at the abbot’s robe, and appeal in a loud, indignant cry, “Father Abbot, stand my friend and give me justice, for I am robbed! A thief, there is a thief among us!”
The abbot looked down in astonishment and concern into the face of Ciaran, convulsed and ablaze with resentment and distress.
“Father, I beg you, see justice done! I am helpless unless you help me!”
He awoke, somewhat late, to the unwarranted violence of his behaviour, and fell on his knees at the abbot’s feet. “Pardon, pardon! I am too loud and troublous, I hardly know what I say!”
The press of gossiping, festive worshippers just loosed from Mass had fallen quiet all in a moment, and instead of dispersing drew in about them to listen and stare, avidly curious. The monks of the house, hindered in their orderly departure, hovered in quiet deprecation. Cadfael looked beyond the kneeling, imploring figure of Ciaran for its inseparable twin, and found Matthew just shouldering his way forward out of the crowd, open-mouthed and wide-eyed in patent bewilderment, to stand at gaze a few paces apart, and frown helplessly from the abbot to Ciaran and back again, in search of the cause of this abrupt turmoil. Was it possible that something had happened to the one that the other of the matched pair did not know?
“Get up!” said Radulfus, erect and calm. “No need to kneel. Speak out whatever you have to say, and you shall have right.”
The pervasive silence spread, grew, filled even the most distant reaches of the great court. Those who had already scattered to the far corners turned and crept unobtrusively back again, large-eyed and prick-eared, to hang upon the fringes of the crowd already assembled.
Ciaran clambered to his feet, voluble before he was erect. “Father, I had a ring, the copy of one the lord bishop of Winchester keeps for his occasions, bearing his device and inscription. Such copies he uses to afford safe-conduct to those he sends forth on his business or with his blessing, to open doors to them and provide protection on the road. Father, the ring is gone!”
“This ring was given to you by Henry of Blois himself?” asked Radulfus.
“No, Father, not in person. I was in the service of the prior of Hyde Abbey, a lay clerk, when this mortal sickness came on me, and I took this vow of mine to spend my remaining days in the canonry of Aberdaron. My prior—you know that Hyde is without an abbot, and has been for some years—my prior asked the lord bishop, of his goodness, to give me what protection he could for my journey…”
So that had been the starting point of this barefoot journey, thought Cadfael, enlightened. Winchester itself, or as near as made no matter, for the New Minster of that city, always a jealous rival of the Old, where Bishop Henry presided, had been forced to abandon its old home in the city thirty years ago, and banished to Hyde Mead, on the north-western outskirts. There was no love lost between Henry and the community at Hyde, for it was the bishop who had been instrumental in keeping them deprived of an abbot for so long, in pursuit of his own ambition of turning them into an episcopal monastery. The struggle had been going on for some time, the bishop deploying various schemes to get the house into his own hands, and the prior using every means to resist these manipulations. It seemed Henry had still the grace to show compassion even on a servant of the hostile house, when he fell under the threat of disease and death. The traveller over whom the bishop-legate spread his protecting hand would pass unmolested wherever law retained its validity. Only those irreclaimably outlaw already would dare interfere with him.
“Father, the ring is gone, stolen from me this very morning. See here, the slashed threads that held it!” Ciaran heaved forward the drab linen scrip that rode at his belt, and showed two dangling ends of cord, very cleanly severed. “A sharp knife—someone here has such a dagger. And my ring is gone!”
Prior Robert was at the abbot’s elbow by then, agitated out of his silvery composure. “Father, what this man says is true. He showed me the ring. Given to ensure
him aid and hospitality on his journey, which is of most sad and solemn import. If now it is lost, should not the gate be closed while we enquire?”
“Let it be so,” said Radulfus, and stood silent to see Brother Jerome, ever ready and assiduous on the prior’s heels, run to see the order carried out. “Now, take breath and thought, for your loss cannot be lost far. You did not wear the ring, then, but carried it knotted securely by this cord, within your scrip?”
“Yes, Father. It was beyond words precious to me.”
“And when did you last ascertain that it was still there, and safe?”
“Father, this very morning I know I had it. Such few things as I possess, here they lie before you. Could I fail to see if this cord had been cut in the night while I slept? It is not so. This morning all was as I left it last night. I have been bidden to rest, by reason of my barefoot vow. Today I ventured out only for Mass. Here in the very church, in this great press of worshippers, some malevolent has broken every ban, and slashed loose my ring from me.”
And indeed, thought Cadfael, running a considering eye round all the curious, watching faces, it would not be difficult, in such a press, to find the strings that anchored the hidden ring, flick it out from its hiding-place, cut the strings and make away with it, discreetly between crowding bodies, and never be seen by a soul or felt by the victim. A neat thing, done so privately and expertly that even Matthew, who missed nothing that touched his friend, had missed this impudent assault. For Matthew stood there staring, obviously taken by surprise, and unsure as yet how to take this turn of events. His face was unreadable, closed and still, his eyes narrowed and bright, darting from face to face as Ciaran or abbot or prior spoke. Cadfael noted that Melangell had stolen forward close to him, and taken him hesitantly by the sleeve. He did not shake her off. By the slight lift of his head and widening of his eyes he knew who had touched him, and he let his hand feel for hers and clasp it, while his whole attention seemed to be fixed on Ciaran. Somewhere not far behind them Rhun leaned on his crutches, his fair face frowning in anxious dismay, Aunt Alice attendant at his shoulder, bright with curiosity. Here are we all, thought Cadfael, and not one of us knows what is in any other mind, or who has done what has been done, or what will come of it for any of those who look on and marvel.