Brother Cadfael's Penance

Chapter Five

YVES HAD RECOILED a stumbling pace backward from the whiplash voice and ferocious glare, gaping in blank shock and disbelief In the confident armour of his status and privilege it had not even dawned on him that he had put himself in obvious peril of such suspicions. He stared open-mouthed, fool innocent that he was, he was even tempted into a grin of incredulity, almost into laughter, before the truth hit home, and he blanched whiter than his shirt, and flashed a wild glance round to recognize the same wary conviction in a dozen pairs of eyes, circling him every way. He heaved in breath gustily, and found a voice.

“I? You think that I…? I came from the church this moment. I stumbled over him. He lay here as you see him…”

“There’s blood on your hand,” said Philip through set teeth. “And on your hands by right! Who else? Here you stand over his body, and no man else abroad in the night but you. You, who bore a blood grudge against him, as every soul here knows.”

“I found him so,” protested Yves wildly. “I kneeled to handle him, yes, it was dark, I did not know if he was dead or alive. I cried out when I stumbled over him. You heard me! I called you to come, to bring lights, to help him if help was possible…”

“What better way,” Philip demanded bitterly, “to show as innocent, and bring witnesses running? We were on your heels, you had no time to vanish utterly and leave your dead man lying. This was my man, my officer, I valued him! And I will have his price out of you if there is any justice.”

“I tell you I had but just left the church, and fell over him lying here. I came late, I was just within the door.” He had grasped his dire situation by now, his voice had settled into a strenuous level, reasoning and resolute. “There must be some here who were beside me in the church, latecomers like me. They can bear out that I have but just come forth into the cloister. De Soulis wears a sword. Am I in arms? Use your eyes! No sword, no dagger, no steel on me! Arms are forbidden to all who attend the offices of the Church. I came to Compline, and I left my sword in my lodging. How can I have killed him?”

“You are lying,” said Philip, on his feet now over the body of his friend. “I do not believe you ever were in the church. Who speaks up for you? I hear none. While we were within you had time enough, more than enough, to clean your blade and bestow it in your quarters, while you waited for the office to end, to cry out to us and bring us running to discover him in his blood, and you unarmed and crying murder on some unknown enemy. You, the known enemy! Nothing hinders but this can be, must be, is your work.”

Cadfael, hemmed in among many bodies pressing close, could not thrust a way through towards king and empress, or make himself heard above the clamour of a dozen voices already disputing across the width of the cloister. He could see between the craning heads Philip’s implacable face, sharply lit by the torchlight. Somewhere among the hubbub of partisan excitement and consternation, no doubt, the voices of the bishops were raised imploring reason and silence, but without effect, without even being heard. It took Stephen’s imperious bellow to shear through the noise and cut off all other sound.

“Silence! Hush your noise!”

And the silence fell like a stone, crushingly; for one instant all movement froze, and every breath was held. A moment only, then almost stealthily feet shuffled, sleeves brushed, breath was drawn in gustily, and even comment resumed in hushed undertones and hissing whispers, but Stephen had his field, and bestrode it commandingly.

“Now let us have some room for thought before we accuse or exonerate any man. And before all, let someone who knows his business make good sure that the man is out of reach of help, or we are all guilty of his death. One lad falling over him in the dark, whether he himself struck the blow or not, can hardly give a physician’s verdict. William, do you make sure.”

William Martel, long in experience of death by steel through many campaigns, kneeled beside the body, and turned it by the shoulder to lie flat, exposing to the torchlight the bloody breast, the slit coat, and the narrow, welling wound. He drew wide an eyelid and marked the unmoving stare.

“Dead. Through the heart, surely. Nothing to be done for him.”

“How long?” asked the king shortly.

“No telling. But very recently.”

“During Compline?” The office was not a long one, though on this fateful evening it had been drawn out somewhat beyond its usual time.

“I saw him living,” said Martel, “only minutes before we went in. I thought he had followed us in. I never marked that he wore steel.”

“So if this young man is shown to have been within throughout the office,” said the king practically, “he cannot be guilty of this murder. Not fair fight, for de Soulis never had time to draw. Murder.”

A hand reached softly for Cadfael’s sleeve. Hugh had been worming his way inconspicuously through the press to reach him. In Cadfael’s ear his voice whispered urgently: “Can you speak for him? Was he within? Did you see him?”

“I wish to God I had! He says he came later. I was well forward in the choir. The place was full, the last would be pinned just within the doors.” In corners unlit, and possibly with none or few of their own acquaintance nearby to recognize or speak to them. All too easy not to be noticed, and a convincing reason why Yves should be one of the first to move out into the cloister and clear the way, to stumble over a dead man. The fact that his first cry had been a wordless one of simple alarm when he fell should speak for him. Only a minute later had he cried out the cause.

“No matter, let be!” said Hugh softly. “Stephen has his finger on the right question. Someone surely will know. And if all else fails, the empress will never let Philip FitzRobert lay a finger on any man of hers. Not for the death of a man she loathes? Look at her!”

Cadfael had to crane and shift to do so, for tall though she was, for a woman, she was surrounded by men far taller. But once found, she shone fiercely clear under the torchlight, her handsome face composed and severe, but her large eyes glittering with a suggestion of controlled elation, and the corners of her lips drawn into the austere shadow of an exultant smile. No, she had no reason at all to grieve at the death of the man who had betrayed Faringdon, or to sympathize with the grief and anger of his lord and patron, who had handed over her castle of Cricklade to the enemy. And as Cadfael watched, she turned her head a little, and looked with sharp attention at Yves Hugonin, and the subtle shadows that touched the corners of her lips deepened, and for one instant the smile became apparent. She did not move again, not yet. Let other witnesses do all for her, if that was possible. No need to spend her own efforts until or unless they were needed. She had her half-brother beside her, Roger of Hereford at one shoulder, Hugh Bigod at the other, force enough to prevent any action that might be ventured against any protégé of hers.

“Speak up!” said Stephen, looking round the array of watchful faces, guarded and still now, side-glancing at near neighbours, eyeing the king’s roused countenance. “If any here can say he saw this man within the church throughout Compline, then speak up and declare it, and do him right. He says he came unarmed, in all duty, to the worship of God, and was with us to the end of the office. Who bears him out?”

No one moved, beyond turning to look for reaction from others. No one spoke. There was a silence.

“Your Grace sees,” said Philip at length, breaking the prolonged hush, “there is no one willing to confirm what he says. And there is no one who believes him.”

“That is no proof that he lies,” said Roger de Clinton. “Too often truth can bring no witness with it, and find no belief. I do not say he is proven true, but neither is he proven a liar. We have not here the testimony of every man who came to Compline this night. Even if we had, it would not be proof positive that he is lying. But if one man only can come forward and say: I stood by him close to the door until the last prayer was said, and we went out to leave the doorway clear: then truth would be made manifest. Your Grace, we should pursue this further.”

“There is no time,” said the king, frowning. Tomorrow we leave Coventry. Why linger? Everything has been said.”

Back to the battlefield, thought Cadfael, despairing for a moment of his own kind, and with their fires refuelled by this pause.

“Within these walls,” said Roger de Clinton, roused, “I forbid violence even in return for violence, and even outside these walls I charge you forswear all revenges. If there cannot be proper enquiry after justice, then even the guilty among us must go free.”

“They need not,” said Philip grimly. “I require a blood price for my man. If his Grace wills justice, then let this man be left in fetters here, and let the constables of the city examine him, and hold him for trial. There is the means of justice in the laws of this land, is there not? Then use them! Give him to the law, as surely as death he has broken the law, and owes a death for a death. How can you doubt it? Who else was abroad? Who else had picked so fierce a quarrel with Brien de Soulis, or held so bitter a grudge against him? And we find him standing over the dead man, and barely another soul loose in the night, and you still doubt?”

And indeed it seemed to Cadfael that Philip’s bitter conviction was carrying even the king with him. Stephen had no great cause to believe in an unknown youth’s protestations of innocence against the odds, a youth devoted to the opposing cause, and suspect of robbing him of a useful fighting man who had recently done such signal service. He hesitated, visibly only too willing to shift the burden to other shoulders, and be off about his martial business again. The very suggestion that he was failing to maintain strict law in his own domain prompted him to commit Yves to the secular authorities, and wash his hands of him.

“I have a thing to say to that,” said the empress deliberately, her voice raised to carry clearly. “This conference was convened upon the issue of safe conducts on both sides, that we might come together without fear. Whatever may have happened here, it cannot break that compact. I came here with a certain number of people in my following, and I shall go hence tomorrow with that same number, for all were covered by safe conduct, and against none of them has any wrong been proved, neither this young squire nor any other. Touch him, and you touch him unlawfully. Detain him, and you are forsworn and disgraced. We leave tomorrow as many as we came.”

She moved decisively then, brushing aside those who stood between, and held out her hand imperiously to Yves. Her sleeve brushed disdainfully past Philip’s braced arm as the white-faced boy obeyed her gesture and turned to go with her wherever she directed. The ranks gave back and opened before her. Cadfael saw her turn to smile upon her escort, and marvelled that the boy’s face should gaze back at her so blanched and empty of gratitude, worship or joy.

He came back to their lodging half an hour later. She did not even allow him to walk the short distance between without a guard, for fear Philip or some other aggrieved enemy would attempt revenge while he was here within reach. Though her interest in him, Yves reflected wretchedly, probably would not last long. She would keep him jealously from harm until her whole entourage was safely away on the road back to Gloucester, and then forget him. It was to herself she owed it to demonstrate her power to hold him immune. The debt she owed, or believed she owed to him was thereby amply repaid. He was not of any permanent importance.

And yet the vital touch of her hand on his, leading him contemptuously out of the circle of his enemies, could not but fire his blood. Even though he felt it freeze again as he reminded himself what she believed of him, what she was valuing in him. Of all those who truly believed he had murdered Brien de Soulis, the Empress Maud was the most convinced. The soft voice he recalled, giving subtle orders by roundabout means, haunted him still. A loyal young man, clay in her hands, blindly devoted like all the rest, and nothing she could not ask of him, however circuitously, and he understood and obeyed. And of course he would deny it, even to her. He knew his duty. The death of de Soulis must not be spoken of, must never be acknowledged in any way.

He was short to question, that night, even by his friends; by his friends most of all. They were none too sure of his safety, either, and stayed close beside him, not letting him out of their sight until he should be embarked in the protective company of all the empress’s escort next morning, and bound away for Gloucester.

He put together his few belongings before sleeping. “I must go,” he said, and added nothing to explain the note of reluctance in his voice. “And we are no nearer to finding out what they have done with Olivier.”

“With that matter,” said Cadfael, “I have not finished yet. But for you, best get away from here, and let it lie.”

“And that cloud still over my name?” said Yves bitterly.

“I have not finished with that, either. The truth will be known in the end. Hard to bury truth for ever. Since you certainly did not kill Brien de Soulis, there’s somewhere among us a man who did, and whoever uncovers his name removes the shadow from yours. If, indeed, there is anyone who truly believes you guilty.”

“Oh, yes,” said Yves, with a wry and painful smile. “Yes, there is. One at least!”

But it was the nearest he got to giving that person a name; and Cadfael pressed him no more.

In the morning, group by group, they all departed. Philip FitzRobert was gone, alone as he had come, before ever the bell rang for Prime, making no farewells. King Stephen waited to attend High Mass before gathering all his baronage about him and setting forth briskly for Oxford. Some northern lords left for their own lands to make all secure, before returning their attention to either king or empress. The empress herself mustered for Gloucester in mid-morning, having lingered to be sure her rival was out of the city before her, and not delaying to use even this opportunity for recruiting support behind her back.

Yves had gone alone into the church when the party began to gather, and Cadfael, following at a discreet distance, found him on his knees by a transept altar, shunning notice in his private devotions before departure. It was the stiff unhappiness of the boy’s face that caused Cadfael to discard discretion and draw closer. Yves heard him come, and turned on him a brief, pale smile, and hurriedly raised himself. “I’m ready.”

The hand he leaned upon the prie-dieu wore a ring Cadfael had never seen before. A narrow, twisted gold band, no way spectacular, and so small that it had to be worn on the boy’s little finger. The sort of thing a woman might give to a page as reward for some special service. Yves saw how Cadfael’s eyes rested upon it, and began an instinctive movement to withdraw it from sight, but then thought better of it, and let it lie. He veiled his eyes, himself staring down at the thin band with a motionless face.

“She gave you this?” Cadfael asked, perceiving that he was permitted, even expected, to question.

Half resigned, half grateful, Yves said simply: “Yes.” And then added: “I tried to refuse it.”

“You were not wearing it last night,” said Cadfael.

“No. But now she will expect… I am not brave enough,” said Yves ruefully, “to face her and discard it. Halfway to Gloucester she’ll forget all about me, and then I can give it to some shrine, or a beggar along the way.”

“Why so?” said Cadfael, deliberately probing this manifest wound. “If it was for services rendered?”

Yves turned his head with a sharp motion of pain, and started towards the door. Aside he said, choking on the utterance: “It was unearned.” And again, more gently: “I had not earned it.”

They were gone, the last of the glittering courtiers and the steel captains, the kings and the kingmakers, and the two visiting bishops, Nigel of Ely to his own diocese, Henry of Blois with his royal brother to Oxford, before going beyond, to his see of Winchester. Gone with nothing settled, nothing solved, peace as far away as ever. And one dead man lying in a mortuary chapel here until he could be coffined and disposed of wherever his family, if he had family, desired to bury him. In the great court it was even quieter than normally, since the common traffic between town and priory had not yet resumed after the departure of the double court of a still divided land.

“Stay yet a day or two,” Cadfael begged of Hugh. “Give me so much grace, for if I then return with you I am keeping to terms. God knows I would observe the limits laid on me if I can. Even a day might tell me what I want to know.”

“After king and empress and all their following have denied any knowledge of where Olivier may be?” Hugh pointed out gently.

“Even then. There were some here who did know,” said Cadfael with certainty. “But, Hugh, there is also this matter of Yves. True, the empress has spread her cloak over him and taken him hence in safety, but is that enough? He’ll have no peace until it’s known who did the thing he surely did not do. Give me a few more days, and let me at least give some thought to this death. I have asked the brothers here to let me know of anything they may have heard concerning the surrender of Faringdon, give me time at least to be sure the word has gone round, and to get an answer if any man here has an answer to give me.”

“I can stretch my leave by a day or two,” Hugh allowed doubtfully. “And indeed I’d be loth to go back without you. Let us by all means put the boy’s mind at rest if we can, and lay the blame where it belongs. If,” he added with a grimace, “there should be any great measure of blame for removing de Soulis from the world. No, say nothing! I know! Murder is murder, as much a curse to the slayer as to the slain, and cannot be a matter of indifference, whoever the dead may be. Do you want to look at him again? An accurate stab wound, frontal, no ambush from behind. But it was dark there. A knowledgeable swordsman, if he had been waiting and had his night eyes, would have no difficulty.”

Cadfael considered. “Yes, let’s take another look at the man. And his belongings? Are they still here in the prior’s charge? Could we ask, do you think?”

“The bishop might allow it. He’s no better pleased at having a murderer active within the pale than you are.”

Brien de Soulis lay on the stone slab in the chapel, covered with a linen sheet, but not yet shrouded, and his coffin still in the hands of the carpenters. It seemed money had been left to provide a noble funeral. Was that Philip’s doing?

Cadfael drew down the sheet to uncover the body as far as the wound, a mere thin blue-black slit now, with slightly ribbed edges, a stroke no more than a thumbnail long. The body, otherwise unmarked, was well muscled and comely, the face retained its disdainful good looks, but cold and hard as alabaster.

“It was no sword did that,” said Cadfael positively. “The flow of blood hid all when he was found. But that was made by a dagger, not even a long one, but long enough. It’s not so far into the heart. And fine, very fine. The hilt has not bruised him. It was plunged in and withdrawn quickly, quickly enough for the slayer to draw off clean before ever the bleeding came. No use looking for stained clothing, so fine a slit does not open and gush like a fountain. By the time it was flowing fast the assailant was gone.”

“And never stayed to be sure of his work?” wondered Hugh.

“He was sure of it. Very cool, very resolute, very competent.” Cadfael drew up the sheet again over the stone-still face. “Nothing more here. Shall we consider once again the place where this happened?”

They passed through the south door, and emerged into the north walk of the cloister. Outside the third carrel the body had lain, its toes just trailing across the threshold. There was a faint pink stain, a hand’s length, still visible, where his blood had seeped down under his right side and fouled the flags. Someone had been diligent in cleaning it away, but the shape still showed. “Yes, here,” said Hugh. “The stones will show no marks, even if there was a struggle, but I fancy there was none. He was taken utterly by surprise.”

They sat down together there in the carrel to consider the alignment of this scene.

“He was struck from before,” said Cadfael, “and as the dagger was dragged out he fell forward with it, out of the carrel into the walk. Surely he was the one waiting here within. For someone. He wore sword and dagger himself, so he was not bound for Compline. If he designed to meet someone here in private, it was surely someone he trusted, someone never questioned, or how did he approach so close? Had it been Yves, as we know it was not, de Soulis would have had the sword out of the scabbard before ever the boy got within reach. The open hostility between those two was not the whole story. There must have been fifty souls within these walls who hated the man for what he did at Faringdon. Some who were there, and escaped in time, many others of the empress’s following who were not there, but hold the treason bitterly against him no less. He would be wary of any man fronting him whom he did not know well, and trust, men of his own faction and his own mind.”

“And this one he mistook fatally,” said Hugh.

“How should treason be prepared for counter-treason? He turned in the empress’s hand, now one of his own has turned in his. And he as wholly deceived as she was in him. So it goes.”

“I take it,” said Hugh, eyeing his friend very gravely, “that we can and do accept all that Yves says as truth? I do so willingly only from knowledge of him. But should we not consider how the thing must have looked to others who do not know him?”

“So we may,” said Cadfael sturdily, “and still be certain. True, no one has owned to seeing him among the last who came into the church, but that is well possible. He says he came late and spoke to no one, because the office had already begun. He was in a dark corner just within the door, and hence among the first out, to clear the way at the end. We heard him cry out, the first simply a gasp of surprise as he stumbled, then the alarm. Now if he had indeed avoided Compline, and had time to act at leisure while almost all were within, why cry out at all? Out of cunning, as Philip charged, to win the appearance of innocence? Yves is clever, but certainly has no cunning at all. And if he had the whole cloister at his back, he had time enough to slip away and leave others to find his dead man. He bore no arms, his sword was found, as he said, clean and sheathed in his quarters, and showed no sign of having been blooded. He had had, said Philip, the whole time of Compline to blood it, clean it and restore it to his lodging. But I saw the blade, and I could find no sign of blood. No, if he had had all the time of Compline at his disposal, he would never have sounded the alarm himself, but taken good care to be elsewhere when the dead man was found, and among witnesses, well away from the first outcry.”

“And if he had come forth from the church as he says, then he had no time to encounter and kill, and no sword or dagger on him.”

“Manifestly. And I think you know, as I know, that the death came earlier, though how much earlier it’s hard to tell. He had had time to bleed, you still see there the extent of the pool that gathered under him. No, you need not have any doubts. What you know of our lad you know rightly.”

“And of the rest of this great household,” said Hugh reflectively, “most were in the church. It need not be all, however. And as you say, he had enemies here, one at least more discreet than Yves, and more deadly.”

“And one,” Cadfael elaborated sombrely, “of whom he was no way wary. One who could approach him closely and rouse no suspicion, one he was waiting for, for surely he was standing here, in this carrel, and stepped forth willingly when the other came, and was spitted on the very threshold.”

Hugh retraced in silence the angle of that fall, the way the body had lain, the ominous rim of the bloodstain, and could find no flaw in this account of that encounter. In their well-meant efforts to bring together in reconciliation all the power and force and passion of both sides in the contention, the bishops had succeeded also in bringing within these walls a great cauldron of hatred and malice, and infinite possibilities of further treachery.

“More intrigue, more plotting for advantage,” said Hugh resignedly. “If two were meeting here in secret while the baronage was at worship, then it was surely for mischief. What more can we do here? Did you say you wanted to see what belongings de Soulis left behind him? Come, we’ll have a word with the bishop.”

“The man’s possessions,” said the bishop, “such as he had here with him, are here in my charge, and I await word from his brother in Worcester as to future arrangements for his burial. I have no doubt the brother will be responsible for that. But if you think that examination of his effects can give us any indication as to how he died, yes, certainly we should at least put it to the test. We may not neglect any means of finding out the truth. You are fully convinced,” he added anxiously, “that the young man who called us to the body bears no guilt for the death?”

“My lord,” said Hugh, “from all I know of him, he is as poor a hand at deceit or stealth as ever breathed. You saw him yourself on the day we entered here, how he sprang out of the saddle and made straight for his foe, brow to brow. That is more his way of going about it. Nor had he any weapon about him. You cannot know him as we do, but for my part and Brother Cadfael’s, we are sure of him.”

“In any case,” agreed the bishop heavily, “it can do no harm to see if there is anything, letter or sign of any kind, in the dead man’s baggage that may shed light, on his movements intended on leaving here, or any undertaking he had in hand. Very well! The saddlebags are here in the vestment room.”

There was a horse in the stables, too, a good horse waiting to be delivered, like all the rest, to the younger de Soulis in Worcester. The bishop unbuckled the straps of the first bag with his own hands, and hoisted it to a bench. “One of the brothers packed them and brought them here from the guesthall where he lodged. You may view them.” He stayed to observe, in duty bound, being now responsible for all that was done with these relics.

Spread out upon the bench before their eyes, handled scrupulously as another man’s property, Brien de Soulis’s equipment showed Spartan and orderly. Changes of shirt and hose, the compact means of a gentleman’s toilet, a well-furnished purse. Plainly he travelled light, and was a man of neat habit. A leather pouch in the second saddlebag yielded a compartmented box with flint and tinder, wax and a seal. A man of property, travelling far, would certainly not be without his personal seal. Hugh held it on his palm for the bishop’s inspection. The device, sharply cut, was a swan with arched neck, facing left, and framed between two wands of willow.

“That is his,” Hugh confirmed. “We saw it on the buckle of his sword-belt when we carried in the body. But embossed and facing the other way, of course. And that is all.”

“No,” said Cadfael, his hand groping along the seams of the empty bag. “Some other small thing is here at the bottom.” He drew it out and held it up to the light. “Also a seal! Now what would a man want with carrying two on a journey?”

What indeed? For to risk carrying both, if two had actually been made, was to risk theft or loss of one, with all the dire possibilities of having it fall into the hands of an enemy or a sharper, and being misused in many and profitable ways, to its owner’s loss.

“It is not the same,” said Hugh sharply, and carried it to the window to examine it more carefully. “A lizard like a little dragon, no, a salamander, for he’s in a nest of little pointed flames. No border but a single line at the rim. Engraved deep, little used. I have never seen this. Do you know it, my lord?”

The bishop studied it, and shook his head. “No, strange to me. For what purpose could one man be carrying another man’s personal seal? Unless it had been confided to him as the owner’s proxy, for attachment to some document in absence?”

“Certainly not here,” said Hugh wryly, “for here there have been no documents to seal, no agreement on any matter, the worse for us all. Cadfael, do you see any significance in this?”

“Of all his possessions,” said Cadfael, “a man would be least likely to be parted from his seal. The thing carries his sanction, his honour, his reputation with it. If he did trust it to a known friend, it would be kept very securely, not dropped into the corner of a saddlebag, thus disregarded. Yes, Hugh, I should very much like to know whose device this is, and how it came into de Soulis’s possession. His recent history has not shown him as a man to be greatly trusted by his acquaintances, or lightly made proxy for another man’s honour.”

He hesitated, turning the small artifact in his fingers. A circlet measuring as far across as the length of his first thumb joint, its handle of a dark wood polished high, fitting smoothly in the palm. The engraving was skilled and precise, the little conventional flames sharply incised. The head with its open mouth and darting tongue faced left. The positive would face right. Mirror images, the secret faces of real beings, hold terrifying significances. It seemed to Cadfael that the sharp ascending flames of the salamander’s cradling fire were searing the fingers that touched them, and crying out for recognition and understanding.

“My lord bishop,” he said slowly, “may I, on my oath to return it to you unless I find its true owner, borrow this seal? In my deepest conscience I feel the need of it. Or, if that is not permitted, may I make a drawing of it, in every detail, for credentials in its place?”

The bishop gave him a long, penetrating look, and then said with deliberation: “At least in taking the copy there can be no harm. But you will have small opportunity of enquiring further into either this death, or the whereabouts of the prisoners you are seeking, if, as I suppose, you are going home to Shrewsbury now the conference is over.”

“I am not sure, my lord,” said Cadfael, “that I shall be going home.”