Dead Man's Ransom

Chapter Nine

OWAIN GWYNEDD SENT BACK HIS RESPONSE to the events at Shrewsbury on the day after Anion’s flight, by the mouth of young John Marchmain, who had remained in Wales to stand surety for Gilbert Prestcote in the exchange of prisoners. The half-dozen Welsh who had escorted him home came only as far as the gates of the town, and there saluted and withdrew again to their own country.

John, son to Hugh’s mother’s younger sister, a gangling youth of nineteen, rode into the castle stiff with the dignity of the embassage with which he was entrusted, and reported himself ceremoniously to Hugh.

“Owain Gwynedd bids me say that in the matter of a death so brought about, his own honour is at stake, and he orders his men here to bear themselves in patience and give all possible aid until the truth is known, the murderer uncovered, and they vindicated and free to return. He sends me back as freed by fate. He says he has no other prisoner to exchange for Elis ap Cynan, nor will he lift a finger to deliver him until both guilty and innocent are known.” Hugh, who had known him from infancy, hoisted impressed eyebrows into his dark hair, whistled and laughed. “You may stoop now, you’re flying too high for me.”

“I speak for a high, flying hawk,” said John, blowing out a great breath and relaxing into a grin as he leaned back against the guard-room wall. “Well, you’ve understood him. That’s the elevated tenor of it. He says hold them and find your man. But there’s more. How recent is the news you have from the south? I fancy Owain has his eyes and ears alert up and down the borders, where your writ can hardly go. He says that the empress is likely to win her way and be crowned queen, for Bishop Henry has let her into Winchester cathedral, where the crown and the treasure are guarded, and the archbishop of Canterbury is dilly, dallying, putting her off with—he can’t well acknowledge her until he’s spoken with the king. And by God, so he has, for he’s been to Bristol and taken a covey of bishops with him, and been let in to speak with Stephen in his prison.” And what says King Stephen?” wondered Hugh.

“He told them, in that large way of his, that they kept their own consciences, that they must do, of course, what seemed to them best. And so they will, says Owain, what seems to them best for their own skins! They’ll bend their necks and go with the victor. But here’s what counts and what Owain has in mind. Ranulf of Chester is well aware of all this, and knows by now that Gilbert Prestcote is dead and this shire, he thinks, is in confusion, and the upshot is he’s probing south, towards Shropshire and over into Wales, pouring men into his forward garrisons and feeling his way ahead by easy stages.” And what does Owain ask of us?” questioned Hugh, with kindling brightness.

“He says, if you will come north with a fair force, show your hand all along the Cheshire border, and reinforce Oswestry and Whitchurch and every other fortress up there, you will be helping both yourself and him, and he will do as much for you against the common enemy. And he says he’ll come to the border at Rhyd-y-Croesau by Oswestry two days from now, about sunset, if you’re minded to come and speak with him there.”

“Very firmly so minded!” said Hugh heartily, and rose to embrace his glowing cousin round the shoulders, and haul him out about the business of meeting Owain’s challenge and invitation, with the strongest force possible from a beleaguered shire.

That Owain had given them only two and a half days in which to muster, provide cover for the town and castle with a depleted garrison, and get their host into the north of the shire in time for the meeting on the border, was rather an earnest of the ease and speed with which Owain could move about his own mountainous land than a measure of the urgency of their mutual watch. Hugh spent the rest of that day making his dispositions in Shrewsbury and sending out his call for men to those who owed service. At dawn the next day his advance party would leave, and he himself with the main body by noon. There was much to be done in a matter of hours.

Lady Prestcote was also marshalling her servants and possessions in her high, bleak apartments, ready to leave next morning for the most easterly and peaceful of her manors. She had already sent off one string of pack-ponies with three of her men-servants. But while she was in town it was sensible to purchase such items as she knew to be in short supply where she was bound, and among other commodities she had requested a number of dried herbs from Cadfael’s store. Her lord might be dead and in his tomb, but she had still an honour to administer, and for her son’s sake had every intention of proving herself good at it. Men might die, but the meats necessary to the living would still require preservatives, salts and spices to keep them good and palatable. The boy was given, also, to a childish cough in spring, and she wanted a jar of Cadfael’s herbal rub for his chest. Between them, Gilbert Prestcote the younger and domestic cares would soon fill up the gap, already closing, where Gilbert Prestcote the elder had been.

There was no real need for Cadfael to deliver the herbs and medicines in person, but he took advantage of the opportunity as much to satisfy his curiosity as to enjoy the walk and the fresh air on a fine, if blustery, March day. Along the Foregate, over the bridge spanning a Severn muddied land turgid from the thaw in the mountains, in through the town gate, up the long, steep curve of the Wyle, and gently downhill from the High Cross to the castle gatehouse, he went with eyes and ears alert, stopping many times to exchange greetings and pass the time of day. And everywhere men were talking of Anion’s flight, and debating whether he would get clean away or be hauled back before night in a halter…

Hugh’s muster was not yet common gossip in the town, though by nightfall it surely would be. But as soon as Cadfael entered the castle wards it was plain, by the purposeful bustle everywhere, that something of importance was in hand. The smith and the fletchers were hard at work, so were the grooms, and store-wagons were being loaded to follow stolidly after the faster horse, and foot-men. Cadfael delivered his herbs to the maid who came down to receive them, and went looking for Hugh. He found him directing the stalling of commandeered horses in the stables.

“You’re moving, then? Northward?” said Cadfael, watching without surprise. “And making quite a show, I see.”

“With luck, it need be only a show,” said Hugh, breaking his concentration to give his friend a warm sidelong smile.

“Is it Chester feeling his oats?” Hugh laughed and told him. “With Owain one side of the border and me the other, he should think twice. He’s no more than trying his arm. He knows Gilbert is gone, but me he does not know. Not yet!”

“High time he should know Owain,” observed Cadfael. “Men of sense have measured and valued him some while since, I fancy. And Ranulf is no fool, though I wouldn’t say he’s not capable of folly, blown up by success as he is. The wisest man in his cups may step too large and fall on his face.” And he asked, alert to all the sounds about him, and all the shadows that patterned the cobbles: “Do your Welsh pair know where you’re bound, and why, and who sent you word?” He had lowered his voice to ask it, and Hugh, without need of a reason, did the same. “Not from me. I’ve had no time to spare for civilities. But they’re at large. Why?” He did not turn his head; he had noted where Cadfael was looking.

“Because they’re bearing down on us, the pair in harness. And in anxiety.” Hugh made their approach easier, waving into the groom’s hands the thickset grey he had been watching about the cobbles, and turning naturally to withdraw from the stables as from a job finished for the present. And there they were, Elis and Eliud, shoulders together as though they had been born in one linked birth, moving in on him with drawn brows and troubled eyes.

“My lord Beringar…” It was Eliud who spoke for them, the quiet, the solemn, the earnest one. “You’re moving to the border? There’s threat of war? Is it with Wales?” To the border, yes,” said Hugh easily, “there to meet with the prince of Gwynedd. The same that bade you and all your company here bear your souls in patience and work with me for justice concerning the matter you know of. No, never fret! Owain Gwynedd lets me know that both he and I have a common interest in the north of this shire, and a common enemy trying his luck there. Wales is in no danger from me and my shire, I believe, in no danger from Wales. At least,” he added, reconsidering briskly, “not from Gwynedd.” The cousins looked along wide, straight shoulders at each other, measuring thoughts. Elis said abruptly: “My lord, but keep an eye to Powys. They… we,” he corrected in a gasp of disgust, “we went to Lincoln under the banner of Chester. If it’s Chester now, they’ll know in Caus as soon as you move north. They may think it time… think it safe… The ladies there at Godric’s Ford…”

“A parcel of silly women,” said Cadfael musingly into his cowl, but audibly, “and old and ugly into the bargain.” The round, ingenuous face under the tangle of black curls flamed from neck to brow, but did not lower its eyes or lose its fixed intensity. “I’m confessed and shriven of all manner of follies,” said Elis sturdily, “that among them. Only do keep a watch on them! I mean it! That failure will rankle, they may still venture.”

“I had thought of it,” said Hugh patiently. “I have no mind to strip this border utterly of men.”

The boy’s blush faded and flamed anew. “Pardon!” he said. “It is your field. Only I do know… It will have gone deep, that rebuff.”

Eliud plucked at his cousin’s arm, drawing him back. They withdrew some paces without withdrawing their twin, troubled gaze. At the gate of the stables they turned, still with one last glance over their shoulders, and went away still linked, as one disconsolate creature.

“Christ!” said Hugh on a blown breath, looking after them. And I with less men than I should like, if truth be told, and that green child to warn me! As if I do not know I take chances now with every breath I draw and every archer I move. Should I ask him how a man spreads half a company across three times a company’s span?”

“Ah, but he would have your whole force drawn up between Godric’s Ford and his own countrymen,” said Cadfael tolerantly. “The girl he fancies is there. I doubt if he cares so much what happens to Oswestry or Whitchurch, provided the Long Forest is left undisturbed. They’ve neither of them given you any trouble?”

“Good as gold! Not a step even into the shadow of the gate.” It was said with casual certainty. Cadfael drew his own conclusions. Hugh had someone commissioned to watch every move the two prisoners made, and knew all that they did, if not all that they said, from dawn to dark, and if ever one of them did advance a foot over the threshold, his toes would be promptly and efficiently trampled on. Unless, of course, it was more important to follow, and find out with what intent he broke his parole. But when Hugh was in the north, who was to say his deputy would maintain the same unobtrusive watch?

“Who is it you’re leaving in charge here?”

“Young Alan Herbard. But Will Warden will have a hand on his shoulder. Why, do you expect a bolt for it as soon as my back’s turned?” By the tone of his voice Hugh was in no great anxiety on that score. “There’s no absolute certainty in any man, when it comes to it, but those two have been schooled under Owain, and measure themselves by him, and by and large I’d take their word.”

So thought Cadfael, too. Yet it’s truth that to any man may come the one extreme moment when he turns his back on his own nature and goes the contrary way. Cadfael caught one more glimpse of the cousins as he turned for home and passed through the outer ward. They were up on the guard, walk of the curtain wall, leaning together in one of the wide embrasures between the merlons, and gazing clean across the busy wards of the castle into the hazy distance beyond the town, on the road to Wales. Eliud’s arm was about Elis’s shoulders, to settle them comfortably into the space, and the two faces were close together and equally intent and reticent. Cadfael went back through the town with that dual likeness before his mind’s eye, curiously memorable and deeply disturbing. More than ever they looked to him like mirror images, where left and right were interchangeable, the bright side and the dark side of the same being.

Sybilla Prestcote departed, her son on his stout brown pony at her elbow, her train of servants and pack, horses stirring the March mire which the recent east winds were drying into fine dust. Hugh’s advance party had left at dawn, he and his main body of archers and men-at-arms followed at noon, and the commissariat wagons creaked along the northern road between the two groups, soon overhauled and left behind on the way to Oswestry. In the castle a somewhat nervous Alan Herbard, son of a knight and eager for office, mounted scrupulous guard and made every round of his responsibilities twice, for fear he had missed something the first time. He was athletic, fairly skilled in arms, but of small experience as yet, and well aware that any one of the sergeants Hugh had left behind was better equipped for the task in hand than he. They knew it, too, but spared him the too obvious demonstration of it.

A curious quiet descended on town and abbey with the departure of half the garrison, as though nothing could now happen here. The Welsh prisoners were condemned to boredom in captivity, the quest for Gilbert’s murderer was at a standstill, there was nothing to be done but go on with the daily routine of work and leisure and worship, and wait.

And think, since action was suspended. Cadfael found himself thinking all the more steadily and deeply about the two missing pieces that held the whole puzzle together, Einon ab Ithel’s gold pin, which he remembered very clearly, and that mysterious cloth which he had never seen, but which had stifled a man and urged him out of the world.

But was it so certain that he had never seen it? Never consciously, yet it had been here, here within the enclave, within the infirmary, within that room. It had been here, and now was not. And the search for it had been begun the same day, and the gates had been closed to all men attempting departure from the moment the death was discovered. How long an interval did that leave? Between the withdrawal of the brothers into the refectory and the finding of Gilbert dead, any man might have walked out by the gatehouse unquestioned. A matter of nearly two hours. That was one possibility.

The second possibility, thought Cadfael honestly, is that both cloth and pin are still here, somewhere within the enclave, but so well hidden that all our searching has not uncovered them.

And the third—he had been mulling it over in his mind all day, and repeatedly discarding it as a pointless aberration, but still it came back insistently, the one loophole. Yes, Hugh had put a guard on the gate from the moment the crime was known, but three people had been let out, all the same, the three who could not possibly have killed, since they had been in the abbot’s company and Hugh’s throughout. Einon ab Ithel and his two captains had ridden back to Owain Gwynedd. They had not taken any particle of guilt with them, yet they might unwittingly have taken evidence.

Three possibilities, and surely it might be worth examining even the third and most tenuous. He had lived with the other two for some days, and pursued them constantly, and all to no purpose. And for those countrymen of his penned in the castle, and for abbot and prior and brothers here, and for the dead man’s family, there would be no true peace of mind until the truth was known.

Before Compline Cadfael took his trouble, as he had done many times before, to Abbot Radulfus.

“Either the cloth is still here among us, Father, but so well hidden that all our searching has failed to find it, or else it has been taken out of our walls by someone who left in the short time between the hour of dinner and the discovery of the sheriff’s death, or by someone who left, openly and with sanction, after that discovery. From that time Hugh Beringar has had a watch kept on all who left the enclave. For those who may have passed through the gates before the death was known, I think they must be few indeed, for the time was short, and the porter did name three, all good folk of the Foregate on parish business, and all have been visited and are clearly blameless. That there may be others I do concede, but he has called no more to mind.”

“We know,” said the abbot thoughtfully, “of three who left that same afternoon, to return to Wales, being by absolute proof clear of all blame. Also of one, the man Anion, who fled after being questioned. It is known to you, as it is to me, that for most men Anion’s guilt is proven by his flight. It is not so to you?”

“No, Father, or at least not that mortal guilt. Something he surely knows, and fears, and perhaps has cause to fear. But not that. He has been in our infirmary for some weeks, his every possession is known to all those within—he has little enough, the list is soon ended, and if ever he had had in his hands such a cloth as I seek, it would have been noticed and questioned.” Radulfus nodded agreement. “You have not mentioned, though that also is missing, the gold pin from the lord Einon’s cloak.” That,” said Cadfael, understanding the allusion, “is possible. It would account for his flight. And he has been sought, and still is. But if he took the one thing, he did not bring the other. Unless he had in his hands such a cloth as I have shadowed for you, Father, then he is no murderer. And that little he had, many men here have seen and known. Nor, so far as ever we can discover, had this house ever such a weave within its store, to be pilfered and so misused.”

“Yet if this cloth came and went in that one day,” said Radulfus, “are you saying it went hence with the Welsh lords? We know they did no wrong. If they had cause to think anything in their baggage, on returning, had to do with this matter, would they not have sent word?”

“They would have no such cause, Father, they would not know it had any importance to us. Only after they were gone did we recover those few frail threads I have shown you. How should they know we were seeking such a thing? Nor have we had any word from them, nothing but the message from Owain Gwynedd to Hugh Beringar. If Einon ab Ithel valued and has missed his jewel, he has not stopped to think he may have lost it here.”

“And you think, asked the abbot, considering, “that it might be well to speak with Einon and his officers, and examine these things?”

“At your will only,” said Cadfael. “There is no knowing if it will lead to more knowledge than we have. Only, it may! And there are so many souls who need for their comfort to have this matter resolved. Even the guilty.”

“He most of all,” said Radulfus, and sat a while in silence. There in the parlour the light was only now beginning to fade. A cloudy day would have brought the dusk earlier. About this time, perhaps a little before, Hugh would have been waiting on the great dyke at Rhyd-y-Croesau by Oswestry for Owain Gwynedd. Unless, of course, Owain was like him in coming early to any meeting. Those two would understand each other without too many words. “Let us go to Compline,” said the abbot, stirring, “and pray for enlightenment. Tomorrow after Prime we will speak again.”

The Welsh of Powys had done very well out of their Lincoln venture, undertaken rather for plunder than out of any desire to support the earl of Chester, who was more often enemy than ally. Madog ap Meredith was quite willing to act in conjunction with Chester again, provided there was profit in it for Madog, and the news of Ranulf’s probes into the borders of Gwynedd and Shropshire alerted him to pleasurable possibilities. It was some years since the men of Powys had captured and partially burned the castle of Caus, after the death of William Corbett and in the absence of his brother and heir, and they had held on to this advanced outpost ever since, a convenient base for further incursions. With Hugh Beringar gone north, and half the Shrewsbury garrison with him, the time seemed ripe for action.

The first thing that happened was a lightning raid from Caus along the valley towards Minsterley, the burning of an isolated farmstead and the driving off of a few cattle. The raiders drew off as rapidly as they had advanced, when the men of Minsterley mustered against them, and vanished into Caus and through the hills into Wales with their booty. But it was indication enough that they might be expected back and in greater strength, since this first assay had passed off so easily and without loss. Alan Herbard sweated, spared a few men to reinforce Minsterley, and waited for worse.

News of this tentative probe reached the abbey and the town next morning. The deceptive calm that followed was too good to be true, but the men of the borders, accustomed to insecurity as the commonplace of life, stolidly picked up the pieces and kept their billhooks and pitchforks ready to hand.

“It would seem, however,” said Abbot Radulfus, pondering the situation without surprise or alarm, but with concern for a shire threatened upon two fronts, “that this conference in the north would be the better informed, on both parts, if they knew of this raid. There is a mutual interest. However short, lived it may prove,” he added drily, and smiled. A stranger to the Welsh, he had learned a great deal since his appointment in Shrewsbury. “Gwynedd is close neighbour to Chester, as Powys is not, and their interests are very different. Moreover, it seems the one is to be trusted to be both honourable and sensible. The other—no, I would not say either wise or stable by our measure. I do not want these western people of ours harried and plundered, Cadfael. I have been thinking of what we said yesterday. If you return once again to Wales, to find these lords who visited us, you will also be close to where Hugh Beringar confers with the prince.”

“Certainly,” said Cadfael, “for Einon ab Ithel is next in line to Owain Gwynedd’s penteulu, the captain of his own guard. They will be together.”

“Then if I send you, as my envoy, to Einon, it would be well if you should also go to the castle, and make known to this young deputy there that you intend this journey, and can carry such messages as he may wish to Hugh Beringar. You know, I think,” said Radulfus with his dark smile, “how to make such a contact discreetly. The young man is new to office.”

“I must, in any case, pass through the town,” said Cadfael mildly, “and clearly I ought to report my errand to the authorities at the castle, and have their leave to pass. It is a good opportunity, where men are few and needed.”

“True,” said Radulfus, thinking how acutely men might shortly be needed down the border. “Very well! Choose a horse to your liking. You have leave to deal as you think best. I want this death reconciled and purged, I want God’s peace on my infirmary and within my walls, and the debt paid. Go, do what you can.”

There was no difficulty at the castle. Herbard needed only to be told that an envoy from the abbot was bound into Oswestry and beyond, and he added an embassage of his own to his sheriff. Raw and uneasy though he might be, he was braced and steeled to cope with whatever might come, but it was an additional shell of armour to have informed his chief. He was frightened but resolute; Cadfael thought he shaped well, and might be a useful man to Hugh, once blooded. And that might be no long way off.

“Let the lord Beringar know,” said Herbard, “that I intend a close watch on the border by Caus. But I desire he should know the men of Powys are on the move. And if there are further raids, I will send word.”

“He shall know,” said Cadfael, and forthwith rode back a short spell through the town, down from the High Cross to the Welsh bridge, and so north, west for Oswestry.

It was two days later that the next thrust came. Madog ap Meredith had been pleased with his first probe, and brought more men into the field before he launched his attack in force. Down the Rea valley to Minsterley they swarmed, burned and looted, wheeled both ways round Minsterley, and flowed on towards Pontesbury.

In Shrewsbury castle Welsh ears, as well as English, stretched and quivered to the bustle and fever of rumours.

“They are out!” said Elis, tense and sleepless beside his cousin in the night. “Oh God, and Madog with this grudge to pay off! And she is there! Melicent is there at Godric’s Ford. Oh, Eliud, if he should take it into his head to take revenge!”

“You’re fretting for nothing,” Eliud insisted passionately. “They know what they’re doing here, they’re on the watch, they’ll not let any harm come to the nuns. Besides, Madog is not aiming there, but along the valley, where the pickings are best. And you saw yourself what the forest men can do. Why should he try that a second time? It wasn’t his own nose was put out of joint there, either, you told me who led that raid. What plunder is there at Godric’s Ford for such as Madog, compared with the fat farms in the Minsterley valley? No, surely she’s safe there.”

“Safe! How can you say it? Where is there any safety? They should never have let her go.” Elis ground angry fists in the rustling straw of their palliasse, and heaved himself round in the bed. “Oh, Eliud, if only I were out of here and free…”

“But you’re not,” said Eliud, with the exasperated sharpness of one racked by the same pain, “and neither am I. We’re bound, and nothing we can do about it. For God’s sake, do some justice to these English, they’re neither fools nor cravens, they’ll hold their city and their ground, and they’ll take care of their women, without having to call on you or me. What right have you to doubt them? And you to talk so, who went raiding there yourself!” Elis subsided with a defeated sigh and a drear smile. “And got my come, uppance for it! Why did I ever go with Cadwaladr? God knows how often and how bitterly I’ve repented it since.”

“You would not be told,” said Eliud sadly, ashamed at having salted the wound. “But she will be safe, you’ll see, no harm will come to her, no harm will come to the nuns. Trust these English to look after their own. You must! There’s nothing else we can do.”

“If I were free,” Elis agonised helplessly, “I’d fetch her away from there, take her somewhere out of all danger…”

“She would not go with you,” Eliud reminded him bleakly. “You, of all people! Oh, God, how did we ever get into this quagmire, and how are we ever to get out of it?”

“If I could reach her, I could persuade her. In the end she would listen. She’ll have remembered me better by now, she’ll know she wrongs me. She’d go with me. If only I could reach her…”

“But you’re pledged, as I am,” said Eliud flatly. “We’ve given our word, and it was freely accepted. Neither you nor I can stir a foot out of the gates without being dishonoured.”

“No,” agreed Elis miserably, and fell silent and still, staring into the darkness of the shallow vault over them.