Monk's Hood

CHAPTER 5

It was now imperative to find the murderer, otherwise the boy could not emerge from hiding and take up his disrupted life. And that meant tracing in detail the passage of the ill-fated dish of partridge from the abbot’s kitchen to Gervase Bonel’s belly. Who had handled it? Who could have tampered with it? Since Prior Robert, in his lofty eminence within the abbot’s lodging, had eaten, appreciated and digested the rest of it without harm, clearly it had been delivered to him in goodwill and in good condition. And he, certainly without meddling, had delivered it in the same condition to his cook.

Before High Mass, Cadfael went to the abbot’s kitchen. He was one of a dozen or so people within these walls who were not afraid of Brother Petrus. Fanatics are always frightening, and Brother Petrus was a fanatic, not for his religion or his vocation, those he took for granted, but for his art. His dedicated fire tinted black hair and black eyes, scorching both with a fiery red. His northern blood boiled like his own cauldron. His temper, barbarian from the borders, was as hot as his own oven. And as hotly as he loved Abbot Heribert, for the same reasons he detested Prior Robert.

When Cadfael walked in upon him, he was merely surveying the day’s battlefield, and mustering his army of pans, pots, spits and dishes, with less satisfaction than the exercise should have provided, because it was Robert, and not Heribert, who would consume the result of his labours. But for all that, he could not relax his hold on perfection.

“That partridge!” said Petrus darkly, questioned on the day’s events. “As fine a bird as ever I saw, not the biggest, but the best-fed and plumpest, and could I have dressed it for my abbot, I would have made him a masterwork. Yes, this prior comes in and bids me set aside a portion—for one only, mark!—to be sent to the guest at the house by the millpond, with his compliments. And I did it. I made it the best portion, in one of Abbot Heribert’s own dishes. My dishes, says Robert! Did anyone else here touch it? I tell you, Cadfael, the two I have here know me, they do what I say, and let all else ride. Robert? He came in to give his orders and sniff at my pan, but it was all in one pan then, it was only after he left my kitchen I set aside the dish for Master Bonel. No, take it as certain, none but myself touched that dish until it left here, and that was close on the dinner hour, when the manservant—Aelfric, is it?—brought his tray.”

“How do you find this man Aelfric?” asked Cadfael. “You’re seeing him daily.”

“A surly fellow, or at least a mute one,” said Petrus without animosity, “but keeps exact time, and is orderly and careful.”

So Richildis had said, perhaps even to excess, and with intent to aggrieve his master.

“I saw him crossing the court with his load that day. The dishes were covered, he has but two hands, and certainly he did not halt this side the gatehouse, for I saw him go out.”

But once through the gate there was a bench set in an alcove in the wall, where a tray could easily be put down for a moment, on pretense of adjusting to a better balance. And Aelfric knew his way to the workshop in the garden, and had seen the oil dispensed. And Aelfric was a soured man on two counts. A man of infinite potential, since he let so little of himself be known to any.

“Ah, well, it’s certain nothing was added to the food here.”

“Nothing but wholesome wine and spices. Now if it had been the rest of the bird that was poisoned,” said Petrus darkly, “I’d give you leave to look sideways at me, for you’d have reason. But if ever I did go so far as to prepare a monk’s-hood stew for that one, be sure I’d make no mistake about which bowl went to which belly.”

No need, thought Cadfael, crossing the court to Mass, to take Brother Petrus’s fulminations too seriously. For all his ferocity he was a man of words rather than actions. Or ought it, after all, to be considered as worth pondering? The idea that a mistake had been made, and the dish intended for Robert sent instead to Bonel, had never entered Cadfael’s head until now, but clearly Petrus had credited him with just such a notion, and made haste to hammer it into absurdity before it was uttered. A shade too much haste? Murderous hatreds had been known to arise between those who were sworn to brotherhood, before this, and surely would so arise again. Brother Petrus might have started the very suspicion he had set out to scotch. Not, perhaps, a very likely murderer. But bear it in mind!

The few weeks before the main festivals of the year always saw an increase in the parochial attendance at Mass, the season pricking the easy consciences of those who took their spiritual duties lightly all the rest of the year. There were a creditable number of local people in the church that morning, and it was no great surprise to Cadfael to discover among them the white coif and abundant yellow hair of the girl Aldith. When the service ended he noticed that she did not go out by the west door, like the rest, but passed through the south door into the cloister, and so out into the great court. There she drew her cloak around her, and sat down on a stone bench against the refectory wall.

Cadfael followed, and saluted her gravely, asking after her mistress. The girl raised to him a fair, composed face whose soft lines seemed to him to be belied by the level dark force of her eyes. She was, he reflected, as mysterious in her way as Aelfric, and what she did not choose to reveal of herself it would be hard to discover unaided.

“She’s well enough in body,” she said thoughtfully, “but distressed in mind for Edwin, naturally. But there’s been no word of his being taken, and I’m sure we should have heard if he had been. That’s some comfort. Poor lady, she’s in need of comfort.”

He could have sent her some reassurance by this messenger, but he did not. Richildis had taken care to speak with him alone, he should respect that preference. In so tight and closed a situation, where only the handful of people involved in one household seemed to be at risk, how could Richildis be absolutely sure even of her young kinswoman, even of her stepson or her manservant? And could he, in the end, even be sure of Richildis? Mothers may be driven to do terrible things in defence of the rights of their children. Gervase Bonel had made a bargain with her, and broken it.

“If you’ll permit, I’ll sit with you a little while. You’re not in haste to return?”

“Aelfric will be coming for the dinner soon,” she said. “I thought I would wait for him, and help him carry everything. He’ll have the ale and the bread as well.” And she added, as Cadfael sat down beside her: “It’s ill for him, having to do that same office daily, after what fell on us yesterday. To think that people may be eyeing him and wondering. Even you, brother. Isn’t it true?”

“No help for that,” said Cadfael simply, “until we know the truth. The sheriff’s sergeant believes he knows it already. Do you agree with him?”

“No!” She was mildly scornful, it even raised the ghost of a smile. “It isn’t the wild, noisy, boisterous boys, the ones who let the world all round know their grievances and their tantrums and their pleasures, who use poison. But what avails my telling you this, saying I believe or I don’t believe, when I’m deep in the same coil myself? As you know I am! When Aelfric came into my kitchen with the tray, and told me about the prior’s gift, it was I who set the dish to keep hot on the hob, while Aelfric carried the large dish into the room, and I followed with the platters and the jug of ale. The three of them were in there at table, they knew nothing about the partridge until I told them … thinking to please the master, for in there the air was so chill you could hardly breathe. I think I was back in the kitchen first of the two of us, and I sat by the hob to eat my meal, and I stirred the bowl when it simmered. More than once, and moved it aside from the heat, too. What use my saying I added nothing? Of course that is what I, or any other in my shoes would say, it carries no weight until there’s proof, one way or the other.”

“You are very sensible and very just,” said Cadfael. “And Meurig, you say, was just coming in at the door when you returned to the kitchen. So he was not alone with the dish … even supposing he had known what it was, and for whom it was intended.”

Her dark brows rose, wonderfully arched and vivid and striking under the pale brow and light-gold hair. “The door was wide open, that I recall, and Meurig was just scraping the dirt from his shoes before coming in. But what reason could Meurig have, in any case, to wish his father dead? He was not lavish with him, but he was of more value to him alive than dead. He had no hope of inheriting anything, and knew it, but he had a modest competence to lose.”

That was simple truth. Not even the church would argue a bastard’s right to inherit, while the state would deny it even where marriage of the parents, every way legal, followed the birth. And this had been a commonplace affair with one of his own maidservants. No, Meurig had no possible stake in this death. Whereas Edwin had a manor to regain, and Richildis, her adored son’s future. And Aelfric?

She had reared her head, gazing towards the gatehouse, where Aelfric had just appeared, the high-rimmed wooden tray under his arm, a bag for the loaves slung on his shoulder. She gathered her cloak and rose.

“Tell me,” said Cadfael, mild-voiced beside her, “now that Master Bonel is dead, to whom does Aelfric belong? Does he go with the manor, to the abbey or some other lord? Or was he excluded from the agreement, conceded to Master Bonel as manservant in villeinage for life?”

She looked back sharply in the act of going to meet Aelfric. “He was excluded. Granted to be my lord’s villein personally.”

“Then whatever happens to the manor now, he will go to whoever inherits the personal effects … to widow or son, granted the son escapes a criminal charge. And Aldith, you know Mistress Bonel’s mind, would you not say that she would at once give Aelfric his freedom, with a glad heart? And would the boy do any other?”

All she gave him by way of answer was a brief, blinding flash of the black, intelligent eyes, and the sudden, veiling swoop of large lids and long dark lashes. Then she went to cross Aelfric’s path, and fall in beside him on his way to the abbot’s lodging. Her step was light and easy, her greeting indifferent, her manner dutiful. Aelfric trudged by her side stiff and mute, and would not let her take the bag from his shoulder. Cadfael sat looking after them for a long moment, observing and wondering, though after a while the wonder subsided into mild surprise, and by the time he set off to wash his hands before dinner in the refectory, even surprise had settled into conviction and reassessment.

It was mid-afternoon, and Cadfael was picking over the stored trays of apples and pears in the loft of the abbot’s barn, discarding the few decayed specimens before they could infect their neighbours, when Brother Mark came hallooing for him from below.

“The sheriff’s man is back,” he reported, when Cadfael peered down the ladder at him and demanded what the noise was about, “and asking for you. And they’ve not captured their man—if it’s any news I’m telling you.”

“It’s no good news that I should be wanted,” admitted Cadfael, descending the ladder backwards, as nimbly as a boy. “What’s his will? Or his humour, at least?”

“No menace to you, I think,” said Mark, considering. “Vexed at not laying his hands on the boy, naturally, but I think his mind’s on small things like the level of that rubbing oil in your store. He asked me if I could tell if any had been removed from there, but I’m a slipshod hand who notices nothing, as you’ll bear witness. He thinks you’ll know to the last drop.”

“Then he’s the fool. It takes a mere mouthful or two of that to kill, and in a container too wide to get the fingers of both hands around, and tall as a stool, who’s to know if ten times that amount has been purloined? But let’s at least pick his brains of what he’s about now, and how far he thinks he has his case proven.”

In the workshop the sheriff’s sergeant was poking his bushy beard and hawk’s beak into all Cadfael’s sacks and jars and pots in somewhat wary curiosity. If he had brought an escort with him this time, he must have left them in the great court or at the gatehouse.

“You may yet be able to help us, brother,” he said as Cadfael entered. “It would be a gain to know from which supply of this oil of yours the poison was taken, but the young brother here can’t say if any is missing from this store. Can you be more forthcoming?”

“On that point,” said Cadfael bluntly, “no. The amount needed would be very small, and my stock, as you see, is large. No one could pretend to say with certainty whether any had been taken out unlawfully. This I can tell you, I examined the neck and stopper of this bottle yesterday, and there is no trace of oil at the lip. I doubt if a thief in haste would stop to wipe the lip clean before stoppering it, as I do.”

The sergeant nodded, partially satisfied that this accorded with what he believed. “It’s more likely it was taken from the infirmary, then. And that’s a smaller flask by much than this, but I’ve been there, and they can none of them hazard an opinion. Among the old the oil is in favoured use now, who can guess if it was used one more time without lawful reason?”

“You’ve made little progress, I fear,” said Brother Cadfael.

“We have not caught our man, yet. No knowing where Edwin Gurney is hiding, but there’s been no trace of him round Bellecote’s shop, and the carpenter’s horse is in its stable. I’d wager the boy is still somewhere within the town. We’re watching the shop and the gates, and keeping an eye on his mother’s house. It is but a matter of time before we take him.”

Cadfael sat back on his bench and spread his hands on his knees. “You’re very sure of him. Yet there are at least four others who were there in the house, and any number more who, for one reason or another, know the use and abuse of this preparation. Oh, I know the weight of the case you can make against this boy. I could make as good a case against one or two more, but that I won’t do. I’d rather by far consider those factors that might provide, not suspicion, but proof, and not against one chosen quarry, but against the person, whoever he may be, towards whom the facts point. The time concerned is tight, half an hour at most. I myself saw the manservant fetch the dishes from the abbot’s kitchen, and carry them out at the gate. Unless we are to look seriously at those who serve the abbot’s kitchen, the dish was still harmless when it left our enclave. I don’t say,” he added blandly, “that you should, because we wear the cowl, write off any man of us as exempt from suspicion, myself included.”

The sergeant was intelligent, though not impressed. “Then what limiting factors, what firm facts, do you refer to, brother?”

“I mentioned to you yesterday, and if you care to sniff at that bottle, and try a drop of it on your sleeve, you’ll note for yourself, that it makes itself apparent both to the nose and eye. You would not easily wash out the greasy mark from cloth, nor get rid of the smell. It is not the wolfsbane that smells so sharp and acrid, there’s also mustard and other herbs. Whoever you seize upon, you must examine his clothing for these signs. I don’t say it’s proof of innocence if no such signs are found, but it does weaken the evidence of guilt.”

“You are interesting, brother,” said the sergeant, “but not convincing.”

“Then consider this. Whoever had used that poison would be in haste to get rid of the bottle as soon as possible, and as cleanly. If he lingered, he would have to hide it about him, and risk marking himself, or even having it discovered on him. You will conduct your business as you see fit. But I, were I in your shoes, would be looking very carefully for a small vial, anywhere within a modest distance of that house, for when you find it, the place where it was discarded will tell a great deal about the person who could have cast it there.” And with certainty he added: “You’ll be in no doubt of it being the right vial.”

He did not at all like the expression of indulgent complacency that was creeping over the sergeant’s weathered countenance, as though he enjoyed a joke that presently, when he chose to divulge it, would quite take the wind out of Cadfael’s sails. He himself admitted he had not captured his man, but there was certainly some other secret satisfaction he was hugging to his leather bosom.

“You have not found it already?” said Cadfael cautiously.

“Not found it, no. Nor looked for it very hard. But for all that, I know where it is. Small use looking now, and in any case, no need.” And now he was openly grinning.

“I take exception to that,” said Cadfael firmly. “if you have not found it, you cannot know where it is, you can only surmise, which is not the same thing.”

“It’s as near the same thing as we’re likely to get,” said the sergeant, pleased with his advantage. “For your little vial has gone floating down the Severn, and may never be seen again, but we know it was tossed in there, and we know who tossed it. We’ve not been idle since we left here yesterday, I can tell you, and we’ve done more than simply pursue a young fox and lose his trail a while. We’ve taken witness from any we could find who were moving about the bridge and the Foregate around the dinner hour, and saw Bonel’s manservant running after the boy. We found a carter who was crossing the bridge just at that time. Such a chase, he pulled up his cart, thinking there was a hue and cry after a thief, but when the boy had run past him he saw the pursuer give up the chase, short of the bridge, for he had no chance of overtaking his quarry. The one shrugged and turned back, and when the carter turned to look after the other he saw him slow in his running for a moment, and hurl some small thing over the downstream parapet into the water. It was young Gurney, and no other, who had something to dispose of, as soon as possible after he’d tipped its contents into the dish for his stepfather, given the spoon a whirl or two, and rushed away with the bottle in his hand. And what do you say to that, my friend?”

What, indeed? The shock was severe, for not one word had Edwin said about this incident, and for a moment Cadfael did seriously consider that he might have been hoodwinked for once by a cunning little dissembler. Yet cunning was the last thing he would ever have found in that bold, pugnacious face. He rallied rapidly, and without betraying his disquiet.

“I say that ‘some small thing’ is not necessarily a vial. Did you put it to your carter that it might have been that?”

“I did, and he would not say yes or no, only that whatever it was was small enough to hold in the closed hand, and flashed in the light as it flew. He would not give it a shape or a character more than that.”

“You had an honest witness. Now can you tell me two things more from his testimony. At exactly what point on the bridge was the boy when he threw it? And did the manservant also see it thrown?”

“My man says the fellow running after had halted and turned back, and only then did he look round and catch the other one in the act. The servant could not have seen. And as for where the lad was at that moment, he said barely halfway across the drawbridge.”

That meant that Edwin had hurled away whatever it was as soon as he felt sure he was above the water, clear of the bank and the shore, for it was the outer section of the bridge that could be raised. And at that, he might have miscalculated and been in too big a hurry. The bushes and shelving slope under the abutments ran well out below the first arch. There was still a chance that whatever had been discarded could be recovered, if it had fallen short of the current. It seemed, also, that Aelfric had not concealed this detail, for he had not witnessed it.

“Well,” said Cadfael, “by your own tale the boy had just gone running past a halted cart, with a driver already staring at him, and no doubt, at that hour, several other people within view, and made no secret of getting rid of whatever it was he threw. Nothing furtive about that. Hardly the way a murderer would go about disposing of the means, to my way of thinking. What do you say?”

The sergeant hitched at his belt and laughed aloud. “I say you make as good a devil’s advocate as ever I’ve heard. But lads in a panic after a desperate deed don’t stop to think. And if it was not the vial he heaved into the Severn, you tell me, brother, what was it?” And he strode out into the chill of the early evening air, and left Cadfael to brood on the same question.

Brother Mark, who had made himself inconspicuous in a corner all this time, but with eyes and ears wide and sharp for every word and look, kept a respectful silence until Cadfael stirred at length, and moodily thumped his knees with clenched fists. Then he said, carefully avoiding questions: “There’s still an hour or so of daylight left before Vespers. If you think it’s worth having a look below the bridge there?”

Brother Cadfael had almost forgotten the young man was present, and turned a surprised and appreciative eye on him.

“So there is! And your eyes are younger than mine. The two of us might at least cover the available ground. Yes, come, for better or worse we’ll venture.”

Brother Mark followed eagerly across the court, out at the gatehouse, and along the highroad towards the bridge and the town. A flat, leaden gleam lay over the millpond on their left, and the house beyond it showed only a closed and shuttered face. Brother Mark stared at it curiously as they passed. He had never seen Mistress Bonel, and knew nothing of the old ties that linked her with Cadfael, but he knew when his mentor and friend was particularly exercised on someone else’s behalf, and his own loyalty and partisan fervour, after his church, belonged all to Cadfael. He was busy thinking out everything he had heard in the workshop, and making practical sense of it. As they turned aside to the right, down the sheltered path that led to the riverside and the main gardens of the abbey, ranged along the rich Severn meadows, he said thoughtfully:

“I take it, brother, that what we are looking for must be small, and able to take the light, but had better not be a bottle?”

“You may take it,” said Cadfael, sighing, “that whether it is or not, we must try our best to find it. But I would very much rather find something else, something as innocent as the day.”

Just beneath the abutments of the bridge, where it was not worth while clearing the ground for cultivation, bushes grew thickly, and coarse grass sloped down gradually to the lip of the water. They combed the tufted turf along the edge, where a filming of ice prolonged the ground by a few inches, until the light failed them and it was time to hurry back for Vespers; but they found nothing small, relatively heavy, and capable of reflecting a flash of light as it was thrown, nothing that could have been the mysterious something tossed away by Edwin in his flight.

Cadfael slipped away after supper, absenting himself from the readings in the chapter-house, helped himself to the end of a loaf and a hunk of cheese, and a flask of small ale for his fugitive, and made his way discreetly to the loft over the abbey barn in the horse-fair. The night was clear overhead but dark, for there was no moon as yet. By morning the ground would be silvered over, and the shore of Severn extended by a new fringe of ice.

His signal knock at the door at the head of the stairs produced only a profound silence, which he approved. He opened the door and went in, closing it silently behind him. In the darkness within nothing existed visibly, but the warm, fresh scent of the clean hay stirred in a faint wave, and an equally quiet rustling showed him where the boy had emerged from his nest to meet him. He moved a step towards the sound. “Be easy, it’s Cadfael.”

“I knew,” said Edwin’s voice very softly. “I knew you’d come.”

“Was it a long day?”

“I slept most of it.”

“That’s my stout heart! Where are you… ? Ah!” They moved together, uniting two faint warmths that made a better warmth between them; Cadfael touched a sleeve, found a welcoming hand. “Now let’s sit down and be blunt and brief, for time’s short. But we may as well be comfortable with what we have. And here’s food and drink for you.” Young hands, invisible, clasped his offerings gladly. They felt their way to a snug place in the hay, side by side.

“Is there any better news for me?” asked Edwin anxiously.

“Not yet. What I have for you, young man, is a question. Why did you leave out half the tale?”

Edwin sat up sharply beside him, in the act of biting heartily into a crust of bread. “But I didn’t! I told you the truth. Why should I keep anything from you, when I came asking for your help?”

“Why, indeed! Yet the sheriff’s men have had speech with a certain carter who was crossing the bridge from Shrewsbury when you went haring away from your mother’s house, and he testifies that he saw you heave something over the parapet into the river. Is that true?”

Without hesitation the boy said: “Yes!” his voice a curious blend of bewilderment, embarrassment and anxiety. Cadfael had the impression that he was even blushing in the darkness, and yet obviously with no sense of guilt at having left the incident unmentioned, rather as though a purely private folly of his own had been accidentally uncovered.

“Why did you not tell me that yesterday? I might have had a better chance of helping you if I’d known.”

“I don’t see why.” He was a little sullen and on his dignity now, but wavering and wondering. “It didn’t seem to have anything to do with what happened … and I wanted to forget it. But I’ll tell you now, if it does matter. It isn’t anything bad.”

“It matters very much, though you couldn’t have known that when you threw it away.” Better tell him the reason now, and show that by this examiner, at least, he was not doubted. “For what you sent over the parapet, my lad, is being interpreted by the sheriff’s man as the bottle that held the poison, newly emptied by you before you ran out of the house, and disposed of in the river. So now, I think, you had better tell me what it really was, and I’ll try to convince the law they are on the wrong scent, over that and everything else.”

The boy sat very still, not stunned by this blow, which was only one more in a beating which had already done its worst and left him still resilient. He was very quick in mind, he saw the implications, for himself and for Brother Cadfael. Slowly he said: “And you don’t need first to be convinced?”

“No. For a moment I may have been shaken, but not longer. Now tell me!”

“I didn’t know! How could I know what was going to happen?” He drew breath deeply, and some of the tension left the arm and shoulder that leaned confidingly into Cadfael’s side, “No one else knew about it, I hadn’t said a word to Meurig, and I never got so far as to show it even to my mother—I never had the chance. You know I’m learning to work in wood, and in fine metals, too, a little, and I had to show that I meant to be good at what I did. I made a present for my stepfather. Not because I liked him,” he made haste to add, with haughty honesty, “I didn’t! But my mother was unhappy about our quarrel, and it had made him hard and ill-tempered even to her—he never used to be, he was fond of her, I know. So I made a present as a peace offering… and to show I should make a craftsman, too, and be able to earn my living without him. He had a relic he valued greatly, he bought it in Walsingham when he was on pilgrimage, a long time ago. It’s supposed to be a piece of Our Lady’s mantle, from the hem, but I don’t believe it’s true. But he believed it. It’s a slip of blue cloth as long as my little finger, with a gold thread in the edge, and it’s wrapped in a bit of gold. He paid a lot of money for it, I know. So I thought I would make him a little reliquary just the right size for it, a little box with a hinge. I made it from pearwood, and jointed and polished it well, and inlaid the lid with a little picture of Our Lady in nacre and silver, and blue stone for the mantle. I think it was not bad.” The light ache in his voice touched Brother Cadfael’s relieved heart; he had loved his work and destroyed it, he was entitled to grieve.

“And you took it with you to give to him yesterday?” he asked gently.

“Yes.” He bit that off short. Cadfael remembered how he had been received, according to Richildis, when he made his difficult, courageous appearance at their table, his gift secreted somewhere upon him.

“And you had it in your hand when he drove you out of the house with his malice. I see how it could happen.”

The boy burst out bitterly, shivering with resentment still: “He said I’d come to crawl to him for my manor … he taunted me, and if I kneeled to him … How could I offer him a gift, after that? He would have taken it as proof positive … I couldn’t bear that! It was meant to be a gift, without any asking.”

“I should have done what you did, boy, kept it clutched in my hand, and run from there without a word more.”

“But not thrown it in the river, perhaps,” sighed Edwin ruefully. “Why? I don’t know … Only it had been meant for him, and I had it in my hand, and Aelfric was running after me and calling, and I couldn’t go back … It wasn’t his, and it wasn’t any more mine, and I threw it over to be rid of it …”

So that was why neither Richildis nor anyone else had mentioned Edwin’s peace offering. Peace or war, for that matter? It had been meant to assert both his forgiveness and his independence, neither very pleasing to an elderly autocrat. But well-meant, for all that, an achievement, considering the lad was not yet fifteen years old. But no one had known of it. No one but the maker had ever had the chance to admire—as Richildis would have done most dotingly!—the nice dove-tailing of the joints of his little box, or the fine setting of the slips of silver and pearl and lapis which had flashed just once in the light as they hurtled into the river.

“Tell me, this was a well-fitted lid, and closed when you threw it over?”

“Yes.” He was very fairly visible now, and all startled eyes. He did not understand the question, but he was sure of his work. “Is that important, too, I wish now I hadn’t done it, I see I’ve made everything worse. But how was I to know? There wasn’t any hue and cry for me then, there wasn’t any murder, I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“A small wooden box, tightly closed, will float gallantly where the river carries it, and there are men who live by the river traffic and fishing, yes, and poaching, too, and they’ll know every bend and beach from here to Atcham where things fetch up on the current. Keep your heart up, lad, you may yet see your work again if I can get the sheriff to listen to me, and put out the word to the watermen to keep a watch. If I give them a description of what was thrown away— oh, be easy, I’ll not reveal how I got it!—and somewhere downstream that very thing is discovered, that’s a strong point in your favour, and I may even be able to get them to look elsewhere for the bottle, somewhere where Edwin Gurney was not, and therefore could not have left it. You bide yet a day or two here in quiet, if you can bear it, and if need be, I’ll get you away to some more distant place, where you can wait the time out in better comfort.”

“I can bear it,” said Edwin sturdily. And added ruefully: “But I wish it may not be long!”

The brothers were filing out at the end of Compline when it dawned upon Cadfael that there was one important question which he and everyone else had neglected to ask, and the only person he could think of who might conceivably be able to answer it was Richildis. There was still time to ask it before night, if he gave up his final half-hour in the warming-room. Not, perhaps, a tactful time to visit, but everything connected with this business was urgent, and Richildis could at least sleep a little more easily for the knowledge that Edwin was, thus far at least, safe and provided for. Cadfael drew up his cowl, and made purposefully for the gates.

It was bad luck that Brother Jerome should be coming across the court towards the porter’s lodge at the same time, probably with some officious orders for the morrow, or some sanctimonious complaint of irregularities today. Brother Jerome already felt himself to be in the exalted position of clerk to the abbot-elect, and was exerting himself to represent adequately his master Robert, now that that worthy man had availed himself of the abbot’s privilege and privacy. Authority delegated to Brother Richard, and sedulously avoided by him wherever possible, would be greedily taken up by Brother Jerome. Some of the novices and boy pupils had already had cause to lament his zeal.

“You have an errand of mercy at so late an hour, brother?” Jerome smiled odiously. “Can it not wait until morning?”

“At the risk of further harm,” snapped Cadfael, “it might.” And he made no further halt, but proceeded on his way, well aware of the narrowed eyes following his departure. He had, within reason, authority to come and go as he thought fit, even to absent himself from services if his aid was required elsewhere, and he was certainly not going to explain himself, either truthfully or mendaciously, to Brother Jerome, however others less bold might conform for the sake of staying out of Robert’s displeasure. It was unfortunate, but he had nothing ill to conceal, and to turn back would have suggested the contrary.

There was still a small light burning in the kitchen of the house beyond the millpond, he could see it through a tiny chink in the shutter as he approached. Yes, now, there was something he had failed to take into account: the kitchen window overlooked the pond, and close, at that, closer than from the road, and yesterday it had been open because of the brazier standing under it, an outlet for the smoke. An outlet, too, for a small vial hurled out there as soon as emptied, to be lost for ever in the mud at the bottom of the pond? What could be more convenient? No odour on clothing, no stains, no dread of being discovered with the proof.

Tomorrow, thought Cadfael, elated, I’ll search from that window down to the water. Who knows but this time the thing thrown may really have fallen short, and be lying somewhere in the grass by the water’s edge for me to find? That would be something gained! Even if it cannot prove who threw it there, it may still tell me something.

He knocked softly at the door, expecting Aldith to answer, or Aelfric, but it was the voice of Richildis herself that called out quietly from within: “Who’s there?”

“Cadfael! Open to me for a few minutes.”

His name had been enough, she opened eagerly, and reached a hand to draw him into the kitchen. “Hush, softly! Aldith is asleep in my bed, and Aelfric within, in the room. I could not sleep yet, I was sitting late, thinking about my boy. Oh, Cadfael, can you give me no comfort? You will stand his friend if you can?”

“He is well, and still free,” said Cadfael, sitting down beside her on the bench against the wall. “But mark me, you know nothing, should any ask. You may truly say he has not been here, and you don’t know where he is. Better so!”

“But you do know!” The tiny, steady light of the rush-candle showed him her face smoothed of its ageing lines and softly bright, very comely. He did not answer; she might read that for herself, and could still say truly that she knew nothing.

“And that’s all you can give me?” she breathed.

“No, I can give you my solemn word that he never harmed his stepfather. That I know. And truth must come out. That you must believe.”

“Oh, I will, I do, if you’ll help to uncover it. Oh, Cadfael, if you were not here I should despair. And such constant vexations, pin-pricks, when I can think of nothing but Edwin. And Gervase not in his grave until tomorrow! Now that he’s gone, I no longer have a claim to livery for his horse, and with so many travellers coming now before the feast, they want his stable-room, and I must move him elsewhere, or else sell him … But Edwin will want him, if …” She shook her head distractedly, and would not complete that doubt. “They told me they’ll find him a stall and feed somewhere until I can arrange for him to be stabled elsewhere. Perhaps Martin could house him…”

They might, Cadfael thought indignantly, have spared her such small annoyances, at least for a few days. She had moved a little closer to him, her shoulder against his. Their whispering voices in the dimly lit room, and the lingering warmth from a brazier now mostly ash, took him back many years, to a stolen meeting in her father’s outhouse. Better not linger, to be drawn deeper still!

“Richildis, there’s something I came to ask you. Did your husband ever actually draw up and seal the deed that made Edwin his heir?”

“Yes, he did.” She was surprised by the question, “It was quite legal and binding, but naturally this agreement with the abbey has a later date, and makes the will void now. Or it did …” She was brought back sharply to the realisation that the second agreement, too, had been superseded, more roughly even than the first. “Of course, that’s of no validity now. So the grant to Edwin stands. It must, our man of law drew it properly, and I have it in writing.”

“So all that stands between Edwin and his manor, now, is the threat of arrest for murder, which we know he did not do. But tell me this, Richildis, if you know it: supposing the worst happened—which it must not and will not—and he was convicted of killing your husband—then what becomes of Mallilie? The abbey cannot claim it, Edwin could not then inherit it. Who becomes the heir?”

She managed to gaze resolutely beyond the possibility of the worst, and considered what sense law would make of what was left.

“I suppose I should get my dower, as the widow. But the manor could only revert to the overlord, and that’s the earl of Chester, for there’s no other legitimate heir. He could bestow it where he pleased, to his best advantage. It might go to any man he favoured in these parts. Sheriff Prestcote, as like as not, or one of his officers.”

It was true, and it robbed all others here, except Edwin, of any prospect of gaining by Bonel’s death; or at least, of any material gain. An enemy sufficiently consumed by hate might find the death in itself gain enough, yet that seemed an excessive reaction to a man no way extreme, however difficult Edwin had found him.

“You’re sure? There’s no nephew, or cousin of his somewhere about the shire?”

“No, no one, or he would never have promised me Mallilie for Edwin. He set great store by his own blood.”

What had been going through Cadfael’s mind was the possibility that someone with his own fortune in view might have planned to remove at one stroke both Bonel and Edwin, by ensuring the boy’s arrest for the man’s murder. But evidently that was far from the mark. No one could have calculated with any certainty on securing for himself what the house of Bonel forfeited.

By way of comfort and encouragement, Cadfael laid his broad, gnarled hand on her slender one, and marked in the slanting tight, with roused tenderness, its enlarged knuckles and tracery of violet veins, more touching than any girlish smoothness could ever have been. Her face was beautiful, too, even in its ageing, lined, now that he saw it almost at peace, with good-humour and the long experience of happiness, which this brief ordeal of exasperation, disruption and pain could do little now to deflower. It was his youth he was lamenting, not any waste of Richildis. She had married the right man and been blessed, and a late mistake with the wrong man was over without irreparable damage, provided her darling could be extricated from his present danger. That, and only that, Cadfael thought gratefully, is my task.

The warm hand under his turned and closed, holding him fast. The still beguiling face turned to gaze at him closely and earnestly, with limpid, sympathetic eyes and a mouth with delicate, self-congratulatory guilt. “Oh, Cadfael, did you take it so hard? Did it have to be the cloister? I wondered about you so often, and so long, but I never knew I had done you such an injury. And you have forgiven me that broken promise?”

“The whole fault was mine,” said Cadfael, with somewhat over-hearty fervour. “I’ve wished you well always, as I do now.” And he made to rise from the bench, but she kept her hold on his hand and rose with him. A sweet woman, but dangerous, like all her innocent kind.

“Do you remember,” she was saying, in the hushed whisper the hour demanded, but with something even more secret in its intimacy, “the night we pledged our troth? That was December, too. I’ve been thinking of it ever since I knew you were here—a Benedictine monk! Who would ever have dreamed it would end so! But you stayed away so long!”

It was certainly time to go. Cadfael retrieved his hand gently, made her a soothing good night, and discreetly withdrew, before worse could befall him. Let her by all means attribute his vocation to the loss of her own delightful person, for the conviction would stand by her well until her world was restored in safety. But as for him, he had no regrets whatever. The cowl both fitted and became him.

He let himself out and returned enlarged through the chill and sparkle of the frosty night, to the place he had chosen, and still and for ever now preferred.

Behind him, as he neared the gatehouse, a meagre shadow detached itself from the shelter of the eaves of Richildiss house, and slid contentedly along the road after him, keeping well to the side in case he looked back. But Brother Cadfael did not look back. He had just had a lesson in the perils of that equivocal exercise; and in any case, it was not his way.