The Rose Rent

Chapter Nine

They came in haste at his call, fluttered and dismayed, though a drowned man cast up by the Severn was no such rare matter, and these young brothers knew no more of the affair than that. No doubt whispers of the outer world’s crises made their way in among the elders, but by and large the novices lived in innocence. Cadfael chose the strongest and the least likely to be distressed by the contemplation of death, and sent the others back to their work. With their hoes and rope girdles and scapulars they rigged a makeshift litter, and carried it down the riverside path to where the dead man lay.

In awed silence they took up their sodden burden, and bore him back in dripping procession through the belt of woodland and all along the lush level of the Gaye, to the path that climbed to the Foregate.

“We’d best take him to the abbey,” said Cadfael, halting a moment to consider. “That’s the quickest means of getting him decently out of the public view, and we can send for his master or his kin from there.” There were other reasons for the decision, too, but he did not think fit to mention them at this point. The dead man came from Judith Perle’s household, and what had befallen him surely could not be entirely disconnected from all the other disasters which seemed to be haunting the house and the heiress of the Vestier business. In which case Abbot Radulfus had a direct interest and a right to be informed, and even more surely, so had Hugh Beringar. Not only a right, but a need. Two deaths and a disappearance, all circling round the same lady and her dealings with the abbey, demanded very close attention. Even young, strong men in the most exuberant of health can drown. But Cadfael had already seen the broken bruise on the dead man’s right temple, washed white and bleached of blood by the water of the river. “Run on ahead, lad,” he said to Brother Rhun, the youngest of the novices, “and let Father Prior know what manner of guest we’re bringing.”

The boy bowed his flaxen head in the small gesture of respect with which he received any order from an elder, and was off in an instant, willing and eager. To bid Rhun run was a kindness rather than an imposition, for there was nothing in which he took greater delight than making use of the fleetness and grace he had possessed for barely a year, after coming to Saint Winifred’s festival a cripple and in pain. His year’s novitiate was almost over, and soon he would be admitted as a full brother. No power or persuasion could have induced him to depart from the service of the saint who had healed him. What to Cadfael was still the serious burden and stumbling-block of obedience, Rhun embraced as a privilege, as happily as he accepted the sunlight on his face.

Cadfael turned from watching the bright head and flashing feet ascend the path, and covered the dead man’s face with the corner of a scapular. Water dripped through the saturated cloth as they carried Bertred up to the road, and along the Foregate to the abbey gatehouse. Inevitably there were people abroad to halt at sight of the mournful procession, and nudge and whisper and stare as they passed. It was always a mystery where the urchins of the Foregate sprang from, as soon as there was something unusual to stare at, and how they multiplied at every step, and how the dogs, their inseparable playmates, also halted and dawdled alongside them with much the same expression of alerted curiosity on their faces. Soon guess and counter-guess would be running through the streets, but none of them would yet be able to name the drowned man. The little time before it was common knowledge who he was could be useful to Hugh Beringar, and merciful to the dead man’s mother. One more widow, Cadfael recalled, as they turned in at the gatehouse and left a ring of watchers gathered at a respectable distance outside.

Prior Robert came hastening to meet the procession, with Brother Jerome scurrying at his heels, and Brother Edmund from the infirmary and Brother Denis from the guest-hall converged at the same time upon the bearers and the bier. Half a dozen brothers who had been crossing the great court variously about their own proper business lingered to watch, and to draw closer by degrees to hear and see the better.

“I have sent Brother Rhun to notify the lord abbot,” said Robert, stooping his lofty silver head over the still body on the improvised litter. “This is a very bad business. Where did you find the man? Was it on our ground you took him ashore?”

“No, some way beyond,” said Cadfael, “cast up on the sand. Dead some hours, I judge. There was nothing to be done for him.”

“Was it necessary, then, to bring him here? If he is known, and has family in the town or the Foregate, they will take charge of his burial rites.”

“If not necessary,” said Cadfael, “I thought it advisable he should be brought here. I believe the lord abbot will also think so. There are reasons. The sheriff may have an interest in this matter.”

“Indeed? Why should that be so, if the man died by drowning? Surely an accident not unknown here.” He reached a fastidious hand to turn back the scapular from the bleached and bluish face which in life had glowed with such self-conscious health. But these features meant nothing to him. If he had ever seen the man, it could have been only casually, passing the gates. The house at Maerdol-head lay in the town parish of Saint Chad; neither worship nor commerce would bring Bertred into frequent contact with the Foregate. “Do you know this man?”

“By sight, yes, though little more than that. But he is one of Mistress Perle’s weavers, and lives in her household.”

Even Prior Robert, who held himself aloof from those uncomfortable worldly concerns which sometimes infiltrated into the abbey’s well-ordered enclave and bred disruption there, opened his eyes wide at that. He could not choose but know what untoward things had happened connected with that household, nor quite resist the conviction that any new disaster similarly connected must be a part of the whole deplorable pattern. Coincidences do occur, but they seldom cluster by the dozen round one dwelling and one name.

“Well!” he said on a long breath, cautiously noncommittal. “Yes, the lord abbot should certainly know of this.” And with due relief he added: “He is coming now.”

Abbot Radulfus had emerged from his garden and was approaching briskly, with Rhun attendant at his elbow. He said nothing until he had drawn back the covering from Bertred’s head and shoulders and surveyed him in sombre and thoughtful silence for a long moment. Then he again covered the dead face, and turned to Cadfael.

“Brother Rhun has told me where he was found, and how, but he does not know who the man is. Do you?”

“Yes, Father. His name is Bertred, he is Mistress Perle’s foreman weaver. I saw him yesterday out with the sheriff’s men, helping in the hunt for the lady.”

“Who has not been found,” said Radulfus.

“No. This is the third day of searching for her, but she has not been found.”

“And her man is found dead.” There was no need to point out to him implications which were already plain. “Are you satisfied that he drowned?”

“Father, I need to consider that. I think he did, but also he has suffered a blow to the head. I would like to examine his body further.”

“So, I suppose, would the lord sheriff,” said the abbot briskly. “I’ll send to him at once, and keep the body here for the present. Do you know if he could swim?”

“No, Father, but there are few born here who can’t. His kin or his master will tell us.”

“Yes, we must also send to them. But perhaps later, after Hugh has seen him, and made what you and he between you can of the matter.” And to the bearers of the litter, who had laid it down meanwhile and stood waiting silently, a little apart, he said: “Take him to the mortuary chapel. You had best strip him and lay him decently. Light candles for him. However and for whatever cause he died, he is our mortal brother. I’ll send a groom to look for Hugh Beringar. Wait with me, Cadfael, until he comes. I want to know everything you have gathered concerning this poor girl who is lost.”

In the mortuary chapel they had laid Bertred’s naked body on the stone bier, and covered him with a linen cloth. His sodden clothes lay loosely folded aside, with the boots they had drawn from his feet. The light being dim in there, they had also provided candles on tall holders, so that they could be placed wherever they gave the best light. They stood close about the slab, Abbot Radulfus, Brother Cadfael and Hugh Beringar. It was the abbot who drew down the linen and uncovered the dead, who lay with his hands duly crossed on his breast, drawn out very straight and dignified. Someone had reverently closed the eyes Cadfael remembered as half-open, like someone just waking, too late ever to complete the awakening.

A youthful body and a handsome, perhaps slightly over-muscled for perfection. Not much past twenty, surely, and blessed with features regular and shapely, again perhaps a shade over-abundant in flesh or under-provided with bone. The Welsh are accustomed to seeing in the faces of neighbours the strong solidity and permanence of bone, are sensitive to loss where they see it pared down over-cushioned in others. Nevertheless, a very comely young man. Face and neck and shoulders, and from elbow to fingertips, he was tanned by outdoor sun and wind, though the brown was dulled and sad now.

“Not a mark on him,” said Hugh, looking him over from head to feet, “barring that knock on his forehead. And that surely caused him nothing worse than a headache.”

High near the hairline the skin was certainly broken, but it seemed no more than a glancing blow. Cadfael took up the head, with its thick thatch of brown hair plastered to the broad forehead, between his hands, and felt about the skull with probing fingers. “He has another dunt, here, on the side, here in his hair, above the ear. Something with a long, sharp edge - through all this thickness of hair it made a scalp wound. That could have knocked the wits out of him for some time, perhaps, but not killed. No, he certainly drowned.”

“What could the man have been doing?” asked the abbot, pondering. “At that spot on that shore, in the night? There’s nothing there, no path that leads anywhere, no house to he visited. Hard to see what business a man could possibly have there in the dark.”

“The business he’d been on all yesterday,” said Hugh, “is the hunt for his mistress. He was in Mistress Perle’s service, of her household, he offered his help, and so far as I saw he gave it, unsparingly, and in good earnest. How if he was still bent on continuing the search?”

“By night? And there? There is nothing there but open meadow and a few groves of trees,” said Radulfus, “not one cottage for some distance, once past our border, nowhere that a stolen woman could be hidden. Even if he had been found on the opposite bank it would have been more believable, at least that gives access to the town and the houses of the Castle Foregate. But even so - by night, and a dark night until late...“

“And even so, how did he come by two blows on the head and end in the river? A man might go too near on a shelving bank, and miss his footing in the dark,” said Hugh, shaking his head, “but of a native Shrewsbury lad I doubt it. They know their river. We must find out if he was a swimmer, but the most of them learn early. Cadfael, we know where he was cast up. Is it possible he went into the water on the other side? If he tried to swim across, half-stunned after he got these injuries, might he fetch up about where you found him?”

“That we should ask of Madog,” said Cadfael. “He’ll know. The currents are certainly very strong and contrary in places, it would be possible.” He straightened the wet hair almost absently on the dead man’s forehead, and drew up the linen over his face. “There’s nothing more he can tell us. It remains to tell his kin. At least they may be able to say when last they saw him, and whether he owned to having any plans for the night.”

“I’ve sent for Miles Coliar, but said nothing to him yet of the reason. Better he should break it to the mother, it will come easier for her there, in her own home - for I’m told she belongs there, in the kitchen. And Coliar will need to have the body taken back there to make ready for burial, if you see no need to keep it longer.”

“None,” said Cadfael, turning away from the bier with a sigh. “At your discretion, both! I have done.” But at the door, last to leave the chapel, he cast one long glance back at the still white shape on the slab of stone. One more young man dead untimely, sad waste of the stuff of life. “Poor lad!” said Cadfael, and closed the door gently after him.

Miles Coliar came from the town in haste and alone, uninformed of the occasion for the summons, but certainly aware that there must be a grave reason, and by the look of his face speculating anxiously and fearfully as to what that might be. They awaited him in the ante-room of the gatehouse. Miles made his reverence to abbot and sheriff, and raised a worried countenance to look rapidly from face to face, questioning their solemnity.

“My lord, is there news? My cousin? Have you got word of her, that you sent for me here?” His pallor blanched still more, and his face stiffened into a mask of dread, misreading, it seemed, their mute and sombre looks. “Oh, God, no! Not, no, she cannot be! You have not found her?” His voice foundered on the word ‘dead’, but his lips shaped it.

“No, no!” said Hugh in haste. “Not that! No, there’s nothing new, no word of her yet, no need to think the worst. This is quite another matter, though grim enough. The hunt for your cousin goes on, and will go on until we find her.”

Miles said: “Thank God!” just audibly, and drew deep breath, the tense lines of his face relaxing. “Pardon if I am slow to think and speak and understand, and too hasty to fear extremes. These few days I have hardly slept or rested at all.”

“I am sorry to add more to your troubles,” said Hugh, “but needs must. It’s not Mistress Perle we’re concerned with here. Have you missed any man from your looms today?”

Miles stared, and scratched his bushy brown head, at once relieved and puzzled. “None of the weavers are working today, the looms have been neglected since yesterday morning, we’ve all or most been out on the hunt. I’ve kept the women spinning, it’s no work for them to go stravaging about with the sergeants and the men of the garrison. Why do you ask, my lord?”

“Then have you seen your man Bertred at all since last night? He lives in your household, I’m told.”

“He does,” agreed Miles, frowning. “No, I’ve not seen him today, with the looms quiet there’s no reason I should. He eats in the kitchen. I suppose he’s out again on the hunt, though God knows we’ve knocked on every door and probed round every yard in the town, and not a housewife or goodman who hasn’t been alerted to watch for any sign and listen for any word that could lead us to her. Yet what can we do but search and ask all over again? They’re out on all the roads and asking at the hamlets for a mile round, now, as you best know, my lord. Bertred will be out raking the countryside with them, no question. He’s been tireless for her, that I grant him.”

“And his mother - she’s in no anxiety about him? Nothing has been said of things he may have had on his mind? She has not spoken of him to you?”

“No!” Miles was again looking bewilderedly from face to face. “You’ll hardly find a soul in our house who is not anxious, and they show it, but I’ve noticed nothing amiss with her more than with all the rest of us. Why? What is this, my lord? Do you know something of Bertred that I do not know? Not guilt! Impossible! He’s run himself raw scouring the town for my cousin a decent man! You cannot have taken him in any wickedness?”

It was a reasonable supposition, when the lord sheriff began asking such close questions about any man. Hugh put him out of his defensive agitation, but without over-haste.

“I know no wrong of your man, no. He is the victim of harm, not the cause. This is bad news we have for you, Master Coliar.” Its purport was already implicit in his tone, but he put it into words bleak and blunt enough. “An hour ago the brothers working on the Gaye plucked Bertred out of the river and brought him here, dead. Drowned.”

In the profound silence that followed Miles stood motionless, until finally he stirred and moistened his lips.

“Where is he?”

“Laid decently in the mortuary chapel here,” said the abbot. “The lord sheriff will take you to him.”

In the dim chapel Miles stared down at the known face now so strangely unfamiliar, and shook his head repeatedly and vigorously, as though he could shake away, if not the fact of death, his own shock at its suddenness. He had recovered his down-to-earth calmness and acceptance. One of his weavers was dead, the task of getting him out of here and into his grave with proper rites fell to Miles as his master. What was due from him he would do.

“How could this be?” he said. “Yesterday he came late in the evening for his meal, but there was nothing in that, all day he’d been out abroad with your men, my lord. He went to his bed soon after. He said good night to me, it must have been about the hour of Compline. The house was already quiet, but some of us were still up. I never saw him again.”

“So you don’t know whether he went out again by night?”

Miles looked up sharply, the blue of his eyes at their widest startlingly bright. “It seems that he must have done. But in God’s name, why should he? He was tired out after a long day. I know no reason why he should have stirred again till morning. You said it was but an hour since you took him out of the Severn.“

“I took him out,” said Cadfael, unobtrusive in a dark corner of the chapel. “But he had been there more hours than one. In my judgement, since the small hours of the morning. It is not easy to say how long.”

“And, look, his brow is broken!” The wide, low forehead was dry now, but for the damp fringe of hair. The skin had shrunk apart, leaving the moist wound bared. “Are you sure, Brother, that he drowned?”

“Quite sure. How he came by that knock there’s no knowing, but he surely had it before he went into the water. You can’t tell us anything that may help us, then?”

“I wish I could,” said Miles earnestly. “I’ve seen no change in him, he’s said nothing to me that could shed any light. This comes out of the dark to me. I cannot account for it.” He looked doubtfully at Hugh across the body. “May I take him home? I’ll need to speak with his mother first, but she’ll want him home.”

“Naturally,” agreed Hugh resignedly. “Yes, you may fetch him away when you will. Do you need help with the means?”

“No, my lord, we’ll do all ourselves. I’ll bring down a handcart and decent covering. And I do thank you and this house for the care you’ve had of him.”

He came again about an hour later, looking strained from the ordeal of breaking bad news to a widow now childless. Two of his men from the looms followed him with a simple, high-sided handcart used for wheeling goods, and waited mute and sombre in the great court until Brother Cadfael came to lead them to the mortuary chapel. Between them they carried Bertred’s body out into the early evening light, and laid him on a spread brychan in the cart, and covered him tidily from view. They were still about it when Miles turned to Cadfael, and asked simply: “And his clothes? She should have back with him all that was his. Small comfort for a woman, but she’ll want them. And she’ll need what they’ll fetch, too, poor soul, though I’ll see she’s taken care of still, and so will Judith when she’s found. If...” His mind seemed to be drifting back into expectations of the worst, and fiercely rejecting them.

“I had forgot,” Cadfael owned, never having handled the clothes stripped from Bertred’s body. “Wait, I’ll bring them.”

The forlorn little bundle of clothes laid aside in the chapel had been folded together as tidily as haste and their sodden condition permitted, and had drained gradually where they lay. The folds of coat and shirt and homespun hose were beginning to dry. Cadfael took the pile in one arm, and picked up in the other hand the boots that stood beside it. He carried them out into the court as Miles was smoothing the blanket neatly over Bertred’s feet. The young man turned to meet him and take the bundle from him, and in the exchange, as Miles leaned to stow the clothes under the blanket, the cart tilted, and the boots, just balanced at the tail, fell to the cobbled paving.

Cadfael stooped to pick them up and restore them to their place. It was the first time he had really looked at them, and the light here in the court was clear and bright. He stood arrested in mid-movement, a boot in either hand, and slowly he turned up the left one to look attentively at the sole. For so long a time that when he did look up he found Miles standing just as still in wonder, gazing at him with open mouth, his head on one side like a puzzled hound on a lost scent.

“I think,” said Cadfael with deliberation, “I had better get leave from the lord abbot, and come up into the town with you. I need to speak once again with the lord sheriff.”

It was but a short walk from the castle to the house at Maerdol-head, and the boy sent in haste to find Hugh brought him within the quarter-hour, cursing mildly at being sidetracked on the point of further action he had intended, but reconciled by sharp curiosity, for Cadfael would not have sent for him again so soon without good reason.

In the hall Dame Agatha, attended by a tearful Branwen, volubly lamented the rockfall of disasters which had befallen the Vestier household. In the kitchen the bereaved Alison mourned with more bitter reason the loss of her son, while all the spinning-girls formed a chorus to her threnody. But in the loom-shed, where Bertred’s body had been laid out decorously on a trestle table to await the visit of Martin Bellecote, the master-carpenter from the Wyle, it was quiet to the point of oppression, even though there were three of them there conversing in low voices and few words.

“There is no shadow of doubt,” said Cadfael, holding the boot sole up to the light of a small lamp one of the girls had set at the head of the table. The light outside was still hardly less bright than in the afternoon, but half the shed was shuttered because the looms were at rest. “This is the boot that made the print I took from the soil under Niall’s vine, and the man who wore it is the man who tried to hack down the rose-bush, the same who also killed Brother Eluric. I made the mould, I know I am not mistaken. But here is the mould itself, for I brought it with me. You will find it matches exactly.”

“I take your word for it,” said Hugh. But as one who must verify for himself every morsel of evidence, he took the boot and the waxen mould, and carried them out to the doorway to match the two together. “There is no doubt.” The two fitted like seal and matrix. There was the oblique tread that had worn down outer heel and inner toe, and the crack reaching half across the sole at the ball of the foot. “It seems,” said Hugh, “the Severn has saved us the cost of a trial, and him a worse fate than drowning.”

Miles had remained standing somewhat apart, looking from face to face with the same baffled wonder with which he had brooded over Bertred’s body in the mortuary chapel.

“I don’t understand,” he said dubiously at last. “Are you saying that it was Bertred who got into the smith’s garden to spoil Judith’s rose-bush? And killed

” The same vigorous, even violent, shaking of his head, trying to toss the unwelcome belief from him, like a bull trying to throw off a dog that had him by the soft nose. And with as little success, for slowly the conviction began to penetrate his mind, to judge by the slackening of the lines of his face, and his final resigned calm and glint of rising interest. A very eloquent face, had Miles; Cadfael could follow every change. “Why should he do such a thing?” he said slowly, but rather as if his own wit was already beginning to supply answers.

“The killing he never meant, as like as not,” said Hugh reasonably. “But as for hacking down the bush - it was you yourself gave us a good reason why a man might do so.”

“But what did it benefit Bertred? All it would have done was to prevent my cousin getting her rent paid. What was that to him? He had no rights in it.” But there Miles halted to reflect again. “I don’t know - it seems reaching far. I know I said he fancied he had some small chance with her. He did presume, sometimes, he had a good conceit of himself. He may even have believed he might win her favour, such things have been known. Well, there’s no denying, if he had such vaulting ideas, the Foregate house was a good half of her property, worth a man’s while trying to regain.”

“As all her suitors may have reasoned,” said Hugh, “not merely Bertred. He slept in here?”

“He did.”

“And therefore could go in and out at will, by night or day, without disturbing any other creature.”

“Well, so he could. It seems so he did, last night, for none of us within heard a sound.”

“But granted we have the proof now that links him to the death of Brother Eluric,” said Hugh, frowning, “we are still floundering when it comes to the vanishing of Mistress Perle. There’s nothing whatever to connect him with that, and we have still a second malefactor to find. Bertred has been among the most assiduous of our helpers in the search for her. I don’t think he would have spent quite so much energy if he had had any knowledge of where she was, however desirable it might be to make a show of zeal.”

“My lord,” said Miles slowly, “I never would have believed such devious work of Bertred, but now you have shown me so far into his guilt I cannot help following further. It’s a strange thing, his own mother has been pouring out to us all, since we brought him home, what he said to her last night. You may ask her yourself, my lord, she will surely repeat it to you as she has to us. I would rather not be the bearer, nor risk being suspect of mangling the purport. If it means anything, let her deliver it, not I.”

The widow, bloated with tears and surrounded by her would-be comforters, was indeed still spouting words between her bouts of weeping, and had no objection to continuing her threnody for the benefit of the sheriff, when he drove her companions away for a short while, to have the bereaved woman to himself.

“A good son he was always to me, a good worker to his mistress, and deserved well of her, and well she thought of him. But great notions he had, like his father before him, and where have they got him now? How would I like, says he to me last night, how would I like to be better than a servant in this house - a gentlewoman, fit for the hall instead of the kitchen? ‘Only wait a day or so’, says he, ‘and you’ll see, I mean to make your fortune and my own’. ‘There’s not one’, he says, ‘knows what I know’. If there’s ought you know to the purpose, I said, why haven’t you told? But would he? ‘And spend the credit along with my breath?’ he says. ‘No, you leave all to me’.”

“And did he say anything about what he intended in the night?” asked Hugh, slipping his question quietly and unobtrusively into the first chink in her outpourings, while she drew breath.

“He said he must go out again when it was full dark, but he wouldn’t tell me where, or why, nor what he was about at all. ‘Wait till tomorrow’, he says, ‘and not a word to any tonight’. But what does it matter now? Speak or keep silent, it does him no good now. Don’t you go running your head into trouble, I told him. There may be more than you out about risky business in the night.”

Her flow of words was by no means exhausted, but its matter became repetitive, for she had told everything she knew. They left her to the ministrations of the women and the diminishing bitterness of her grief as it drained away into exhaustion. The house of Vestier, Miles assured them earnestly as they left the premises, would not let any of its old servants go short of the means of a decent life. Alison was safe enough.