The Rose Rent

Chapter Five

The abbot and Brother Anselm departed, back to the abbey to send men with a litter to bring Brother Eluric home, and a messenger to Hugh’s young deputy at the castle, to warn him he had a murder on his hands. Very soon word would go forth through the Foregate that a brother was mysteriously dead, and many and strange rumours would be blown on the summer winds all through the town. Some carefully truncated version of Eluric’s tragedy the abbot would surely make public, to silence the wildest tales. He would not lie, but he would judiciously omit what was eternally private between himself, the two brother witnesses, and the dead man. Cadfael could guess how it would read. It had been decided, on maturer reflection, that it would be more suitable for the rose rent to be paid direct by the tenant, rather than by the custodian of the altar of Saint Mary, and therefore Brother Eluric had been excused from the duty he had formerly fulfilled. That he had gone in secret to the garden was perhaps foolish, but not blameworthy. No doubt he had simply wished to verify that the bush was well cared for and in blossom, and finding a malefactor in the very act of destroying it, he had naturally tried to prevent the act, and had been struck down by the attacker. A creditable death, an honourable grave. What need to mention the conflict and suffering that lay behind it?

But in the meantime here was he, Cadfael, confronted with a woman who surely had the right to know everything. It would not, in any case, be easy to lie to this woman, or even to prevaricate. She would not be satisfied with anything less than truth.

Since the sun was now reaching the flower-bed under the north wall of the garden, and the edge of the deep print might become dry and friable before noon, and perhaps powder away, Cadfael had borrowed some ends of candle from Niall on the spot, melted them in one of the smith’s small crucibles, and gone to fill in carefully the shape of the ‘ bootprint. With patient coaxing the congealed form came away intact. It would have to go into a cold place to preserve its sharpness, but for good measure he had also purloined a discarded offcut of thin leather, and made a careful outline of the print, marking where heel and toe were worn down, and the diagonal crack across the ball of the foot. Sooner or later boots come into the hands of the cobbler, they are far too precious to be discarded until they are completely worn out and can no longer be mended. Often they are handed down through three generations before finally being thrown away. So, reflected Cadfael, would this boot some day need attention from Provost Corviser or one of his trade. How soon there was no telling, but justice has to learn to wait, and not to forget.

Judith sat waiting for him now in Niall’s neat, bare and austere living room, the room of a man living alone, orderly and clean, but with none of the small adornments a woman would have added. The doors still stood wide open, there were two unshuttered windows, green of foliage and gold of sun came quivering in, and filled the chamber with light. She was not afraid of light, she sat where it played over her, gilding and trembling as the breeze quickened. She was alone when Cadfael came back from the garden.

“The smith has a customer,” she said with the palest of smiles. “I bade him go. A man must tend to his trade.”

“So must a woman,” said Cadfael, and laid his moulded waxen form carefully down on the stone floor, where the draught would play over it as the sunlight did over her.

“Yes, so I shall. You need not fear me, I have a respect for life. All the more,” she said gravely, “now that I have seen death close to, yet again. Tell me! You said you would.”

He sat down with her on the uncushioned bench, and told her fully all that had happened that morning - the defection of Eluric, the coming of Niall with his story of finding the crumpled body and the broken bush, even the first grim suspicion of deliberate damage and self-murder, before sign after sign pointed another way. She heard him out with unwavering attention, those arresting grey eyes dauntingly wide and intelligent.

“But still,” she said, “I do not understand. You speak as if there was nothing of note or consequence in his leaving the enclave by night as he did. But you know it is something utterly unknown, for a young brother so to dare. And he, I thought, so meek and dutiful, no breaker of rules. Why did he do so? What can have made it so important to him to visit the rose-bush? Secretly, illicitly, by night? What did it mean to him, to drive him so far out of his proper way?”

No question but she was asking honestly. She had never thought of herself as a disturber of any man’s peace. And she meant to have an answer, and there was none to give her but the truth. The abbot might have hesitated at this point. Cadfael did not hesitate.

“It meant to him,” he said simply, “the memory of you. It was no change of policy that removed him from being bearer of the rose. He had begged to be relieved of a task which had become torment to him, and his request was granted. He could no longer bear the pain of being in your presence and as far from you as the moon, of seeing you, and being within touch of you, and forbidden to love. But when he was released, it seems he could not bear absence, either. In a manner, he was saying his goodbye to you. He would have got over it,” said Cadfael with resigned regret, “if he had lived. But it would have been a long, bleak sickness.”

Still her eyes had not wavered nor her face changed, except that the blood had drained from her cheeks and left her pale and translucent as ice. “Oh, God!” she said in a whisper. “And I never knew! There was never word said, never a look

And I so much his elder, and no beauty! It was like sending one of the singing boys from the school to me. Never a wrong thought, how could there be?”

“He was cloistered almost from his cradle,” said Cadfael gently, “he had never had to do with a woman since he left his mother. He had no defence against a gentle face, a soft voice and a motion of grace. You cannot see yourself with his eyes, or you might find yourself dazzled.”

After a moment of silence she said: “I did feel, somehow, that he was not happy. No more than that. And how many in this world can boast of being happy?” And she asked, looking up again into Cadfael’s face: “How many know of this? Need it be spoken of?”

“No one but Father Abbot, Brother Richard his confessor, Brother Anselm and myself. And now you. No, it will never be spoken of to any other. And none of these can or will ever think one thought of blame for you. How could we?”

“But I can,” said Judith.

“Not if you are just. You must not take to yourself more than your due. That was Eluric’s error.”

A man’s voice was raised suddenly in the shop, young and agitated, and Niall’s voice replying in hasty reassurance. Miles burst in through the open doorway, the sunlight behind him casting him into sharp silhouette, and shining through his ruffled fair hair, turning light brown into flaxen. He was flushed and out of breath, but he heaved a great, relieved sigh at the sight of Judith sitting composed and tearless and in calm company.

“Dear God, what has been happening here? The tales they’re buzzing along the Foregate of murder and malice! Brother, is it true? My cousin

I knew she was coming here this morning. Thank God, girl dear, I find you safe and well befriended. No harm has come to you? I came on the run as soon as I heard what they were saying, to take you home.”

His boisterous coming had blown away, like a March wind, the heavy solemnity that had pervaded the room, and his vigour had brought back some rising colour to Judith’s frozen face. She rose to meet him, and let him embrace her in an impulsive hug, and kiss her cold cheek.

“I’ve taken no harm, no need to fret for me. Brother Cadfael has been kind enough to keep me company. He was here before I came, and Father Abbot also, there was never any threat or danger to me.”

“But there has been a death?” With his arms still protectively about her he looked from her face to Cadfael’s, anxiously frowning. “Or is it all a false tale? They were saying - a brother of the abbey was carried home from this place, and his face covered

“It’s all too true,” said Cadfael, rising somewhat wearily. “Brother Eluric, the custodian of Saint Mary’s altar, was found here this morning stabbed to death.”

“Here? What, within the house?” He sounded incredulous, as well he might. What would a brother of the abbey be doing invading a craftsman’s house?

“In the garden. Under the rose-tree,” said Cadfael briefly, “and that rose-tree hacked and damaged. Your cousin will tell you all. Better you should hear truth than the common rumours none of us will quite escape. But the lady should be taken home at once and allowed to rest. She has need of it.” He took up from the stone threshold the form of wax, on which the young man’s eyes rested with wondering curiosity, and laid it carefully away in his linen scrip to avoid handling.

“Indeed!” agreed Miles, recalled to his duty and flushing boyishly. “And thank you, Brother, for your kindness.”

Cadfael followed them out into the workshop. Niall was at his bench, but he rose to meet them as they took their leave, a modest man, who had had the delicacy to remove himself from any attendance on what should be private between comforter and comforted. Judith looked at him gravely, and suddenly recovered from some deep reserve of untouched innocence within her a pale but lovely smile. “Master Niall, I grieve that I have caused you so much trouble and distress, and I do thank you for your goodness. And I have a thing to collect, and a debt to pay - have you forgotten?”

“No,” said Niall. “But I would have brought it to you when the time was better suited.” He turned to the shelf behind him, and brought out to her the coiled girdle. She paid him what he asked, as simply as he asked it, and then she unrolled the buckle end in her hands, and looked long at her dead husband’s mended gift, and for the first time her eyes moistened with a pearly sheen, though no tears fell.

“It is a time very well suited now,” she said, looking up into Niall’s face, “for a small, precious thing to provide me with a pure pleasure.”

It was the only pleasure she had that day, and even that carried with it a piercing undercurrent of pain. Agatha’s flustered and voluble fussing and Miles’s restrained but all too attentive concern were equally burdensome to her. The dead face of Brother Eluric remained with her every moment. How could she have failed to feel his anguish? Once, twice, three times she had received him and parted from him, with no deeper misgiving than a mild sense of his discomfort, which could well be merely shyness, and a conviction that here was a young man none too happy, which she had attributed to want of a true vocation in one cloistered from childhood. She had been so deeply sunk in her own griefs as to be insensitive to his. Even in death he did not reproach her. He had no need. She reproached herself.

She would have sought distraction at least in occupying her hands, but she could not face the awed whispers and heavy silences of the girls in the spinning room. She chose rather to sit in the shop, where, if the curious came to stare and exclaim, at least they were likely to come one at a time, and some at least might come honestly to buy cloth, not even having heard yet the news that was being blown round the alleys of Shrewsbury like thistledown, and taking root as blithely.

But even that was hard to bear. She would have been glad when evening came, and the shutters were put up, but that one late customer, coming to collect a length of cloth for his mother, elected to stay a while and commiserate with the lady in private, or at least as much privacy as he could contrive between the clucking forays of Agatha, who could not leave her niece unattended for many minutes together. Those brief intervals, however, Vivian Hynde knew how to use to the best advantage.

He was the only son of old William Hynde, who ran the biggest flocks of sheep in the central western uplands of the shire, and who for years had regularly sold the less select fleeces of his clip to the Vestiers, while the finest were reserved to be collected by the middlemen for shipping to the north of France and the wool towns of Flanders, from his warehouse and jetty downstream, beyond Godfrey Fuller’s workshops. The partnership between the two families for business purposes had existed for two generations, and made close contact plausible even for this young sprig who was said to be at odds with his father, and highly unlikely to prove a third successful woolman, his talent being more highly developed in spending the money his father made. So much so that it was rumoured the old man had put his foot down heavily, and refused to pay any more debts for his son and heir, or allow him any more funds to squander on dice, and girls, and riotous living. William had bailed him out of trouble often enough already, but now, without his backing, Vivian’s usual resources were far less likely to lend to him or give him extended credit. And easy friends fall off from an idol and patron who no longer has money to spend.

There was no sign of drooping as yet, however, in Vivian’s bright crest when he came, with his considerable charm and grace, to console a dismayed widow. He was a very personable young man indeed, tall and athletic, with corn-yellow hair that curled becomingly, and dancing pebble-brown eyes in which a full light found surprising golden glints. He was invariably elegant in his gear and wear, and knew very well how pleasant a picture he made in most women’s eyes. And if he had made no headway yet with the Widow Perle, neither had anyone else, and there was still hope.

He had the wit to approach delicately on this occasion, with a declaration of sympathy and concern that stopped short of probing too deeply. Excellent at keeping his feet on thin ice, indeed sensible enough to know himself a man for surfaces, not for depths, he also had the gall to rally and tease a little in the hope of raising a smile.

“And now if you shut yourself up here and grieve in private for someone you hardly knew, that aunt of yours will drive you ever more melancholy. She has you talked halfway to a nunnery already. And that,” said Vivian with emphatic pleading, “you must not do.”

“Many another has,” she said, “with no better cause. Why not I?”

“Because,” he said, glittering, and leaning closer to lower his voice for fear Agatha should choose that moment to enter yet again on some pretext or other, “because you are young and beautiful, and have no real wish to bury yourself in a convent. You know it! And because I am your devoted worshipper, as well you know, and if you vanish from my life it will be the death of me.”

She took that as a well-intended if ill-judged flourish, and was even a little touched by his suddenly caught breath and stricken gaze as he realised what he had said, and how it must bite home on this of all days. He caught at her hand, voluble and honeyed in dismay. “Oh, forgive me, forgive me! Fool that I am, I never meant

There is no blame, none, can touch you. Let me in to your life closer, and I’ll convince you. Marry me, and I’ll shut out all vexations and doubts from you.”

She did begin to wonder, afterwards, if it was all calculated, for he was a subtle and persuasive young man; but then she was disarmed and self-doubting, and could not bring herself to attribute deceit or self-interest to any other. Vivian had often enough pressed his attentions upon her and made no impression. Now what she saw in him was a boy no more than a year older than Brother Eluric, one who might, for all his flattery and exaggeration, be suffering something of what Brother Eluric had suffered. She had so lamentably failed to offer the slightest help to the one, the more reason she should deal considerately with the other. So she tolerated him, and made firm but gentle answers, longer than she would have done at any other time.

“It’s foolish to talk so,” she said. “You and I have known each other from childhood. I’m your elder, and a widow, by no means a match for you, and I do not intend to marry again with any man. You must accept that for an answer. Waste no more time here on me.”

“You are fretting now,” he said vehemently, “over this monk who is dead, though God knows that’s none of your fault. But it will not always be so, you’ll see all very differently in a month or so. And for this charter that troubles you, it can be changed. You can, you should rid yourself of the bargain, and with it the reproach. You see now it was folly.”

“Yes,” she agreed resignedly, “it was indeed folly to put a price, even a nominal price, upon a gift. I should never have done it. It has brought nothing but grief. But yes, it can be undone.”

It seemed to her that he was drawing encouragement from this lengthening colloquy, and that she certainly did not desire. So she rose, and pleaded her very real weariness to rid herself of his continuing assiduities as gently as possible. Vivian departed reluctantly but still gracefully, looking back from the doorway for a long, ingratiating moment before he swung about and went, lithe and long-legged and elegant, down the street called Maerdol towards the bridge.

But even when he was gone, the evening was full of echoes of the morning, reminders of disaster, reproaches of folly, as Agatha worried away at the past.

“You see now how foolish it was to make such a ballad-romance agreement, like any green girl. A rose, indeed! You should never have given away half your patrimony so rashly, how could you know when you and yours might have great need of it? And now see what it’s come to! A death, and all at the door of that foolish charter.”

“You need not trouble any longer,” said Judith wearily. “I do repent it. It is not too late to amend it. Let me alone now. There is nothing you could say to me that I have not already said to myself.”

She went early to her bed, and the girl Branwen, relieved of the carding that brought her out in a rash, and put to work for a time in the household, came to fetch and carry for her, fold away into the chest the gown her mistress discarded, and curtain the unshuttered window. Branwen was fond of Judith, but not sorry, on this occasion, to be dismissed early, for Vivian’s serving-man, left behind to carry home the bolt of cloth for Mistress Hynde, was settled cosily in the kitchen, throwing dice with Bertred, the foreman of the weavers, and both of them were personable fellows with an eye for a pretty girl. Branwen was not at all averse to being the desirable bone between two handsome dogs. Sometimes she had felt that Bertred had ideas above his station, and was casting a greedy eye in the direction of his mistress, being vain of his sturdy, straight body and fresh, comely face, and a silver tongue to match. But nothing would ever come of that! And when he had Master Hynde’s Gunnar across the table from him, plainly captivated, he might better appreciate more accessible meat.

“Go now,” said Judith, loosing the great sheaf of her hair about her shoulders. “I shan’t need you tonight. But call me very early in the morning,” she added with sudden resolution, “for I’m going to the abbey. I’ll not leave this matter lying one hour more than need be. Tomorrow I’ll go to the abbot and have a new charter drawn up. No more roses! The gift I made for so foolish a fee I’ll now make unconditional.”

Branwen was proud of her advancement into Judith’s personal service, and fondly imagined herself closer in her mistress’s confidence than in fact she was. And with two young men in the kitchen already interested in her and prepared to be impressed, what wonder if she boasted of being the first to be entrusted with Judith’s plans for the morrow? It seemed a pity that Gunnar should so soon afterwards recall that he had to carry home Mistress Hynde’s cloth, and might end with a flea in his ear if he delayed too long. And though that left her the attentions of Bertred, whom on the whole she preferred, his pricked sense of proprietorship in a woman of this household seemed to flag disappointingly once his rival was out of the house. It was not, after all, a satisfactory evening. Branwen went to her bed out of temper between disillusionment and dudgeon, and out of sorts with men.

Young Alan Herbard, Hugh’s deputy, dutiful and determined though he was, drew the line at coping unaided with murder, and had had a courier on the road as soon as the news came to his ears. By noon of the next day, which was the eighteenth day of June, Hugh would surely be back in Shrewsbury, not in his own house, where only one elderly servant remained during the family’s absence, but at the castle, where garrison, sergeant and all were at his disposal.

Meantime, Cadfael betook himself and his waxen footprint, with the abbot’s blessing, into the town, and showed mould and drawing to Geoffrey Corviser, the provost, and his son Philip, the foremost shoemakers and leather workers in the town. “For sooner or later every boot comes into the cobbler’s hands,” he said simply, “though it may be a year ahead or more. No harm, at least, in keeping a copy of such witness as you see there, and looking out for the like among any you repair.”

Philip handled the wax delicately, and nodded over the evidence it provided of its wearer’s tread. “I don’t know it, but it will be easily seen if ever it does find its way in here. And I’ll show it to the cobbler over the bridge, in Frankwell. Between us, who knows, we may run the fellow down in the end. But there’s many a man patches his own,” said the good craftsman with professional disdain.

A thin chance enough, Cadfael admitted to himself on his way back over the bridge, but one that could not be neglected. What else had they to offer a lead? Little enough, except the inevitable and unanswerable question: Who could possibly have wanted to destroy the rose-bush? And for what conceivable reason? A question they had all voiced already, without profit, and one that would be posed all over again when Hugh arrived.

Instead of turning in at the gatehouse Cadfael passed by and walked the length of the Foregate, along the dusty highway, past the bakery, past the forge, exchanging greetings in at doorways and over hedges as he went, to turn in at the gate of Niall’s yard, and cross to the wicket which led through into the garden. It was bolted fast on the inner side. Cadfael turned instead to the shop, where Niall was at work with a small ceramic crucible and a tiny clay mould for a brooch.

“I came to see if you’d had any further night visitors,” said Cadfael, “but I see you’ve secured one way in, at least. A pity there’s no wall ever built high enough to keep out a man determined to get in. But even stopping one hole is something. What of the bush? Will it live?”

“Come and see. One side may die off, but it’s no more than two or three branches. It may leave the tree lopsided, but a year or so, and pruning and growth will balance all.”

In the green and sunlight and tangled colour of the garden the rose-bush spread its arms firmly against the north wall, the dangling trailers pegged back to the stone with strips of cloth. Niall had wound a length of stout canvas round and round the damaged bole, binding the severed wood together, and coated the covering with a thick layer of wax and grease.

“There’s love been put into this,” said Cadfael approvingly, but wisely did not say whether for the bush or the woman. The leaves on the half-severed part had wilted, and a few had fallen, but the bulk of the tree stood green and glossy, and full of half-open buds. “You’ve done well by it. I could use you inside the enclave, if ever you tire of bronze and the world.”

The quiet, decent man never opened his mouth to answer that. Whatever he felt for woman or rose was his business, no other man’s. Cadfael respected that, and viewing the wide, wide-set, honest and yet reticent eyes, he took his leave and set off back to his proper duties feeling somewhat reproved, and curiously elated. One man at least in this sorry business kept his eyes on his own course, and would not easily be turned aside. And he, surely, looking for no gain. Somewhere in all this there was greed of gain more than enough, and little enough of love.

It was almost noon by this time, and the sun high and hot, a true June day. Saint Winifred must have been at work coaxing the heavens to do her honour for the festival of her translation. As so often happened in a late season, the summer had all but caught up with the laggard spring, flowers which had lingered shivering and reluctant to bloom suddenly sprang into fevered haste, bursting their buds overnight into a blazing prime. The crops, slower to take risks, might still be as much as a month late, but they would be lavish and clean, half their hereditary enemies chilled to death in April and May.

In the doorway of his lodge in the gatehouse Brother Porter was standing in earnest talk with an agitated young man. Cadfael, always vulnerable to curiosity, his prevalent sin, halted, wavered and turned aside, recognising Miles Coliar, that tidy, practical, trim young fellow a great deal less trim than usual, his hair blown and teased erect in disorder, his bright blue eyes dilated beneath drawn and anxious copper brows. Miles turned his head, hearing a new step approaching, and recognised, through a haze of worry, a brother he had seen only the previous day sitting amicably with his cousin. He swung about eagerly.

“Brother, I remember you - you were of some comfort and help yesterday to Judith. You have not seen her today? She has not spoken again with you?”

“She has not,” said Cadfael, surprised. “Why? What is new now? She went home with you yesterday. I trust she has met with no further grief?”

“No, none that I know of. I do know she went to her bed in good time, and I hoped she would sleep well. But now... ” He cast a vague, distracted glance about him: “They tell me at home she set out to come here. But... “

“She has not been here,” said the porter positively. “I have not left my post, I should know if she had entered the gate. I know the lady from the time she came here making her gift to the house. I have not set eyes on her today. But Master Coliar here says she left home very early...“

“Very early,” Miles confirmed vehemently. “Before I was waking.”

“And with intent to come here on some errand to the lord abbot,” concluded the porter.

“So her maid told me,” said Miles, sweating. “Judith told her so last night, when the girl attended her to bed. I knew nothing of it until this morning. But it seems she has not been here. She never reached here. And she has not come home again. Midday, and she has not come home! I dread something ill has befallen her.”