The Rose Rent

Chapter Four

Brother Jerome, who counted heads and censored behaviour in all the brothers, young and old, and whether within his province or no, had marked the silence within one dormitory cell when all the rest were rising dutifully for Prime, and made it his business to look within, somewhat surprised in this case, for Brother Eluric rated normally as a model of virtue. But even the virtuous may backslide now and then, and the opportunity to reprove so exemplary a brother came rarely, and was certainly not to be missed. This time Jerome’s zeal was wasted, and the pious words of reproach died unspoken, for the cell was empty, the cot immaculately neat, the breviary open on the narrow desk. Brother Eluric had surely risen ahead of his kin, and was already on his knees somewhere in the church, engaged in supererogatory prayer. Jerome felt cheated, and snapped with more than his usual acidity at any who looked blear-eyed with sleep, or came yawning to the night-stairs. He was equally at odds with those who exceeded him in devotion and those who fell short. One way or another, Eluric would pay for this check.

Once they were all in their stalls in the choir, and Brother Anselm was launched into the liturgy - how could a man past fifty, who spoke in a round, human voice deeper than most, sing at will in that upper register, like the most perfect of boy cantors? And how dared he! - Jerome again began to count heads, and grew even happier in his self-vindication, for there was one missing, and that one was Brother Eluric. The fallen paragon, who had actually won his way into Prior Robert’s dignified and influential favour, to Jerome’s jealous concern! Let him look to his laurels now! The prior would never demean himself to count or search for defections, but he would listen when they were brought to his notice.

Prime came to its end, and the brothers began to file back to the night-stairs, to complete their toilets and make ready for breakfast. Jerome lingered to sidle confidentially to Prior Robert’s elbow, and whisper into his ear, with righteous disapproval: “Father, we have a truant this morning. Brother Eluric was not present in church. Nor is he in his cell. All is left in order there, I thought surely he was before us into the church. Now I cannot think where he may be, nor what he is about, to neglect his duties so.”

Prior Robert in his turn paused and frowned. “Strange! He of all people! Have you looked in the Lady Chapel? If he rose very early to tend the altar and has lingered long in prayer he may have fallen asleep. The best of us may do so.”

But Brother Eluric was not in the Lady Chapel. Prior Robert hurried to detain the abbot on his way across the great court towards his lodging.

“Father Abbot, we are in some concern over Brother Eluric.”

The name produced instant and sharp attention. Abbot Radulfus turned a fixed and guarded countenance. “Brother Eluric? Why, what of him?”

“He was not in attendance at Prime, and he is nowhere to be found. Nowhere, at least, that he should be at this hour. It is not like him to absent himself from the office,” said the prior fairly.

“It is not. He is a devoted soul.” The abbot spoke almost absently, for his mind was back in the privacy of his parlour, facing that all too brittle devotee as he poured out his illicit and bravely resisted love. This reminder came all too aptly. How if confession and absolution and the release from temptation had not been enough? Radulfus, not a hesitant man, was still hesitating how to act now, when they were interrupted by the sight of the porter coming down from the gatehouse at a scurrying run, skirts and sleeves flying.

“Father Abbot, there’s one here at the gate, the bronzesmith who rents the Widow Perle’s old house, says he has dire news that won’t wait. He asks for you - would not give me the message...”

“I’ll come,” said Radulfus instantly. And to the prior, who would have made to follow him: “Robert, do you have someone search further, the gardens, the grange court... If you do not find him, come back to me.” And he was off at a long, raking stride towards the gate, and the authority of his voice and the vehemence of his going forbade pursuit. There were too many interwoven threads here - the lady of the rose, the house of the rose, the tenant who had willingly undertaken the errand Eluric dreaded, and now Eluric lost from within, and dire news entering from without. A woven pattern began to appear, and its colours were sombre.

Niall was waiting at the door of the porter’s lodge, his broad, strongly boned face very still and blanched with shock under its summer brown.

“You asked for me,” said Radulfus quietly, viewing him with a steady, measuring stare. “I am here. What is this news you bring?”

“My lord,” said Niall, “I thought best you should know it first alone, and then dispose as you see fit. Last night I lay at my sister’s house overnight because of the rain. When I came back this morning I went into the garden. My lord, Mistress Perle’s rose-bush has been hacked and broken, and one of your brothers lies dead there under it.”

After a brief, profound silence Radulfus said: “If you know him, name him.”

“I do know him. For three years he came to the garden to cut the rose for Mistress Perle. He is Brother Eluric, the custodian of Saint Mary’s altar.”

This time the silence was longer and deeper. Then the abbot asked simply: “How long since you discovered him there?”

“About the length of Prime, my lord, for it was nearly the hour when I passed the church on my way home. I came at once, but the porter would not disturb you during the office.”

“And you left all as you found it? Touched nothing?”

“I lifted his head to see his face. Nothing else. He lies just as I found him.”

“Good!” said Radulfus, and winced at using the word even for one right act, where everything else went grimly awry. “Then wait but a moment, while I send for certain others, and we will go back with you to that garden.”

Those he took with him, saying nothing as yet to any other, even the prior, were Brother Anselm and Brother Cadfael, witnesses for the abbey to the charter drawn up with Judith Perle. They alone had been told of Brother Eluric’s trouble, and shared the sorry knowledge that might be relevant here. The young man’s confessor was silenced by his office, and in any case Sub-Prior Richard was not the man Radulfus would have chosen as a wise counsellor in such dark matters.

The four of them stood in silence round the body of Brother Eluric, taking in the pitiful heap of black folds, the outflung hand, the mangled tree and the bloody knife. Niall had withdrawn a few paces to leave them alone, but stood watchful in attendance, to answer whatever they might ask.

“Poor, tormented child,” said Radulfus heavily. “I doubt I failed him fatally, his disease was worse than I knew. He begged to be relieved of his task, but surely he grudged it to any other, and has tried here to destroy the bush. And himself with it.”

Cadfael was silent, his eyes roving thoughtfully over the trampled ground. They had all refrained from treading too close, nothing had been disturbed since Niall went on his knees to turn the pallid face up to the light.

“Is that how you read it?” asked Anselm. “Are we to condemn him as a suicide? However we may pity?”

“What else can it be? Surely this involuntary love had so eaten into him that he could not bear another should take his place with the woman. Why else should he steal out by night and come here to this garden, why else should he hack at the roots of the tree? And from that it would be but a step, in his despair, to the unholy temptation to destroy himself with the roses. What could fix his image more terribly and for ever in her memory than such a death? For you know - you two do know - the measure of his desperation. And there lies the knife beside his hand.”

It was not a dagger, but a good, long-hafted knife, sharp and thin, such as any practical man might carry on him for a dozen lawful purposes, from carving his meat at the table to scaring off footpads on a journey, or the occasional wild boar in the forest.

“Beside it,” said Cadfael shortly, “not in it.”

They turned their eyes on him cautiously, even hopefully.

“You see how his hand is clenched into the soil,” he went on slowly, “and there is no blood upon it, though the knife is bloodied to the hilt. Touch his hand - I think you’ll find it is already stiffening as it lies, clutching the earth. He never held this knife. And if he had, would not the sheath be on his girdle? No man in his senses would carry such a knife about him unsheathed.”

“A man not in his right senses might, however,” said Radulfus ruefully. “He needed it, did he not, for what he has done to the rose-bush.”

“What was done to the rose-bush,” said Cadfael firmly, “was not done with that knife. Could not be! A man would have to saw away for half an hour or more, even with a sharp knife, at such a thick bole. That was done with a heavier weapon, meant for such work, a broom-hook or a hatchet. Moreover, you see the gash begins higher, where a single blow, or two at the most, should have severed the stem, but it swerves downwards into the thick of the bole, where dead wood has been cut away for years, and left this woody encrustation.”

“I fear,” said Brother Anselm wryly,”that Brother Eluric would hardly be expert with such a tool.”

“And there was no second blow,” said Cadfael, undeterred. “If there had been, the bush would be severed utterly. And the first blow, I think, the only blow - even that was deflected. Someone interrupted the act. Someone clutched at the arm that was swinging the hatchet, and sent the blade down into the thick of the bole. I think - I think - it stuck fast there, and the man who held it had not time to get both hands to the haft and pull it out. Why else should he draw his knife?”

“You are saying,” said Radulfus intently, “that there were two men here in the night, not one? One who tried to destroy, and one who tried to prevent?”

“Yes, that is what I see here.”

“And that the one who tried to protect the tree, who caught at the attacker’s arm and caused his weapon to lodge fast - and who was struck down instead with the knife...“

“Is Brother Eluric. Yes. How else can it have been?

Certainly he came here secretly in the night of his own will, but not to destroy, rather to take a last farewell of this wild dream of his, to look for one last time on the roses, and then never no more. But he came just in time to see another man here, one who had other thoughts, and for other motives, one who had come to destroy the rose-bush. Would Eluric endure to see that done? Surely he leaped to protect the tree, clutched at the arm wielding the hatchet, drove the blade down to stick fast in the bole. If there was a struggle, as the ground shows, I do not think it lasted long. Eluric was unarmed. The other, if he could not then make use of his hatchet, carried a knife. And used it.”

There was a long silence, while they all stared at him and thought out slowly the implications of what he was saying. And gradually something of conviction came easefully into their faces, even something of relief and gratitude. For if Eluric was not a suicide, but had gone to his end faithfully bearing his burden and seeking to prevent an evil act, then his resting-place in the cemetery was assured, and his passage through death, however his account might stand for little sins needing purging, as safe as a prodigal son re-entering his father’s house.

“If it were not as I’ve said, “Cadfael pointed out, “then the hatchet would still be here in the garden. It is not. And certainly it was not our brother here who carried it away. And neither did he bring it here, I pledge my word on that.”

“Yet if this is true,” said Anselm consideringly, “the other did not stay to complete his work.”

“No, he lugged out his hatchet and made off as fast as he could, away from the place where he had made himself a murderer. A thing I daresay he never intended, done in a moment of alarm and terror, when this poor lad in his outrage lunged at him. He would run from Eluric dead in far greater horror than he ever need have done from Eluric living.”

“Nevertheless,” said Abbot Radulfus strongly, “this is murder.”

“It is.”

“Then I must send word to the castle. It is for the secular authorities to pursue murderers. A pity,” he said, “that Hugh Beringar is gone north, we shall have to wait for his return, though no doubt Alan Herbard will send to him at once, and let him know what has happened. Is there more that we here must do, before we have Brother Eluric carried home?”

“We can at least observe whatever is here to be seen, Father. One thing I can tell you, indeed you yourself will see it, what happened here happened after the rain stopped. The ground was soft when they came together here, see how they’ve marked it. And back and shoulder of the boy’s habit are dry. May we now move him? There are witnesses enough here as to how he was found.”

They stooped in all reverence and lifted the stiffening but not yet rigid body, and laid him out on the grass, stretched on his back. From throat to toes the front of his habit was dark with the moisture from the earth, and the great dark stain of his blood clotted the cloth over his left breast. His face, if it had borne the stamp of sudden anger, dread and pain, had now lost that tension, and eased into the smoothness of youth and innocence. Only his eyes, half-open, retained the frowning anxiety of a troubled soul. Radulfus stooped and closed them gently, and wiped the mud from the pale cheeks.

“You take a load from my heart, Cadfael. Surely you are right, he did not take his own life, it was rapt from him cruelly and unjustly, and there must be a price to pay for it. But as for this child here, he is safe enough. I would I had known better how to deal with him, he might still have been living.” He drew the two smooth hands together, and folded them on the bloodied breast.

“I sleep too well,” said Cadfael wryly, “I never heard when the rain ceased. Did anyone mark the end of it?”

Niall had drawn a little nearer, waiting patiently in case anything further should be required of him.

“It was over by about midnight,” he said, “for before we went to our beds, there at Pulley, my sister opened the door and looked out, and said that the sky had cleared and it was bidding to be a fine night. But it was too late to start out then.” He added, putting his own interpretation on the way they turned to look at him, after so long of forgetting his presence: “My sister and her man and the children will tell you I stayed the night over, and left in the dawn. It might be said a family will hold together, however. But I can tell you the names of two or three I said good day to, coming back along the Foregate this morning. They’ll bear me out.”

The abbot gave him a startled and preoccupied look, and understood. “Such checks and counter-checks are for the sheriff’s men,” he said. “But I make no doubt you’ve told us simple truth. And the rain was over by midnight, you say?”

“It was, my lord. There’s but three miles between, it would surely be much the same here.”

“It fits well,” said Cadfael, kneeling over the body. “He must surely have died about six or seven hours ago. And since he came after the rain stopped, when the ground was soft and moist to tread, there should be traces they’ve left after them. Here they’ve stamped the ground raw between them, there’s nothing clear, but by one way or another they walked in here in the night, and one walked out again.”

He rose from his knees and rubbed his moist palms together. “Hold your places where you stand, and look about you. We may have trampled out something of value ourselves, but at least all of us here but one wear sandals, and so did Eluric. Master Bronzesmith, how did you enter here this morning, when you found him?”

“Through the house-door,” said Niall, nodding in that direction.

“And when Brother Eluric came each year to fetch the rose, how did he enter?”

“Through the wicket from the front yard, as we did now. And was very quiet and modest about it.”

“Then this night past, coming with no ill intent, though so secretly, surely he would come as he always came. Let us see,” said Cadfael, treading carefully along the grass to the wicket gate in the wall, “if any but sandalled feet came that way.”

The earth path, watered into mud by the rain, and again dried into a smooth, soft surface, had taken all their entering footprints and held them clear to view, three pairs of flat soles, here and there overlaid one on another. Or were there four pairs? With these common sandals size meant nothing very helpful, but Cadfael thought he could detect, among all those prints entering and none leaving, one which had trodden deeper than the rest, having entered here while the ground was wetter than now, and by lucky chance escaped being trodden out of shape with their morning invasion. There was also a broad, sturdy shoe-sole, recent like the sandals, which Niall claimed for his, and showed as much by fitting his foot to it.

“Whoever the second was,” said Cadfael, “I fancy he did not come by the front way, as innocent men do. Nor leave by it, either, having left a dead man behind here. Let us look elsewhere.”

On the eastward side the garden was hemmed in by the wall of the house belonging to Thomas the farrier, on the west by Niall’s workshop and dwelling; there was no way out there. But to the rear, on the other side of the north wall, lay a paddock, very easily entered from the fields, and no way overlooked by any building. A few paces along the wall from the mutilated rose-bush there was a vine growing, crabbed and old and seldom fruitful. A part of its twisted trunk had been pulled away from the wall, and when Niall approached it closely he saw that where the trunk turned sidelong and afforded a foothold, a foot had indeed scored it, mounting in panic haste.

“Here! Here he climbed. The ground is higher outside in the paddock, but leaving he needed a holt on the way.”

They drew close, peering. The climber’s boot had scratched the bark and left soil in the scratches. And below, in the exposed earth of the bed, the other foot, the left, had stamped a deep and perfect print as he lunged upward, for he had had to reach high. A booted foot, with a raised heel that had dug deep, but less deep on the outer edge at the back, where the wearer habitually trod his boot down. By the shape his footgear had been well made, but well worn also. There was a fine ridge of earth that crossed from below the great toe diagonally half across the sole, narrowing to vanishing point as it went, left by a crack in the leather. Opposite the downtrodden heel, the toe also had left an imprint shallowing slightly. Whoever the man was, he trod from the left of the heel clean to the right of the toe with this left foot. His spring from the ground had forced the print in deep, but his foot had left the soil cleanly, and the wet earth, gradually drying, had preserved the perfect mould.

“A little warm wax,” said Cadfael, half to himself, intently staring, “a little warm wax and a steady hand, and we have him by the heel!”

They were so intent upon that single spot, the last remaining trace of Brother Eluric’s murderer, that none of them heard the light footsteps approaching the open house-door from within, or caught in the corner of an eye the slight gleam of the sun upon movement and colour, as Judith came into the doorway. She had found the workshop empty, and waited some minutes for Niall to appear. But since the door into his living quarters was wide open as he had left it, and the shifting green and gold of sunlit branches stirring showed in reflection across the room within, and since she knew the house so well, she had ventured to pass through to find him in the garden, where she judged he must be.

“I ask pardon,” she was saying as she stepped into the doorway, “but the doors were open. I did call...”

She broke off there, startled and bewildered to see the whole group of them swing about and stare in consternation at her. Three black Benedictine habits gathered beside the old, barren vine, and one of them the lord abbot himself. What errand could they possibly have here?

“Oh, forgive me,” she began haltingly. “I didn’t know...“

Niall sprang out of his shocked stillness and came running, putting himself between her and what else she might see if once she took her eyes off the abbot. He spread an arm protectively to urge her back into the house.

“Come within, mistress, here’s nothing to trouble you. I have the girdle ready. You’re early, I hadn’t expected you... “

He was not good at providing a flood of reassuring words. She held her ground, and over his shoulder she swept the enclosed space of the garden with dilated eyes blanched into the chill grey of glass, and found the still body lying aloof and indifferent in the grass. She saw the pale oval of the face, the pale cross of the hands on the breast of the habit, the hacked bole of the rose-bush, and its sagging branches torn from the wall. As yet she neither recognised the dead youth, nor understood at all what could have been happening here.

But all too well she understood that whatever befell in this place, between these walls which had once been hers, somehow lay heavy upon her, as if she had set in motion some terrible procession of events which she was powerless to stop, as if a gathering guilt had begun to fold round her, and mock her with her purity of intent and the corruption of its consequences.

She made no sound at all, she did not shrink, or yield to Niall’s awkward, concerned pleading: “Come, come within and sit you down quietly, and leave all here to the lord abbot. Come!” He had an arm about her, rather persuading than supporting, for she stood quite still and erect, not a quiver in her body. She laid her hands on his shoulders, resisting his urging with resigned determination.

“No, let me be. This has to do with me. I know it.”

They were all drawing anxiously about her by then. The abbot accepted necessity. “Madam, there is here matter that must distress you, that we cannot deny. I will not hide anything from you. This house is your gift, and truth is your due. But you must not take to yourself more than is customary from any godly gentlewoman in compassion for a young life taken untimely. No part of this stems from you, and no part of what must be done about it falls to your duty. Go within, and all that we know - all that is of consequence - you shall be told. I promise it.”

She hesitated, her eyes still on the dead youth. “Father, I will not further embitter what is surely hard enough for you,” she said slowly. “But let me see him. I owe him that.”

Radulfus looked her in the eyes, and stood aside. Niall took away his arm from about her almost stealthily, for fear she should suddenly become aware of his touch in the instant when it was removed. She crossed the grass with a firm and steady step, and stood looking down at Brother Eluric. In death he looked even younger and more vulnerable than in life, for all his immovable calm. Judith reached over him to the dangling, wounded bush, plucked one of the half-open buds, and slipped it carefully into his folded hands.

“For all those you brought to me,” she said. And to the rest of those present, raising her head: “Yes, it is he. I knew it must be he.”

“Brother Eluric,” said the abbot.

“I never knew his name. Is not that strange?” She looked round them all, from face to face, with drawn brows. “I never asked, and he never told. So few words we ever had to say to each other, and too late now for more.” She fastened last and longest, and with the first returning warmth of pain in her eyes as the numbness passed, on Cadfael, whom she knew best here. “How could this happen?” she said.

“Come within now,” said Cadfael, “and you shall know.”