One Corpse Too Many

Chapter Eleven

A server for every plate was required at the king’s supper. It was no problem to suggest to Abbot Heribert that the brother who had coped with the matter of the mass burial, and even talked with the king concerning the unlicensed death, should be on hand with him to be questioned at need. Prior Robert took with him his invariable toady and shadow, Brother Jerome, who would certainly be indefatigable with finger-bowl, napkin and pitcher throughout, a great deal more assiduous than Cadfael, whose mind might well be occupied elsewhere. They were old enemies, in so far as Brother Cadfael entertained enmities. He abhorred a sickly-pale tonsure.

The town was willing to put on a festival face, not so much in the king’s honour as in celebration of the fact that the king was about to depart, but the effect was much the same. Edric Flesher had come down to the high street from his shop to watch the guests pass by, and Cadfael flashed him a ghost of a wink, by way of indication that they would have things to discuss later, things so satisfactory that they could well be deferred. He got a huge grin and a wave of a meaty hand in response, and knew his message had been received. Petronilla would weep for her lamb’s departure, but rejoice for her safe delivery and apt escort. I must go there soon, he thought, as soon as this last duty is done.

Within the town gate Cadfael had seen the blind old man sitting almost proudly in Giles Siward’s good cloth hose, holding out his palm for alms with a dignified gesture. At the high cross he saw the little old woman clasping by the hand her feeble-wit grandson with his dangling lip, and the fine brown cotte sat well on him, and gave him an air of rapt content by its very texture. Oh, Aline, you ought to give your own charity, and see what it confers, beyond food and clothing!

Where the causeway swept up from the street to the gate of the castle, the beggars who followed the king’s camp had taken up new stations, hopeful and expectant, for the king’s justiciar, Bishop Robert of Salisbury, had arrived to join his master, and brought a train of wealthy and important clerics with him. In the lee of the gate-house wall Lame Osbern’s little trolley was drawn up, where he could beg comfortably without having to move. The worn wooden pattens he used for his callused knuckles lay tidily beside him on the trolley, on top of the folded black cloak he would not need until night fell. It was so folded that the bronze clasp at the neck showed up proudly against the black, the dragon of eternity with his tail in his mouth.

Cadfael let the others go on through the gates, and halted to say a word to the crippled man. “Well, how have you been since last I saw you by the king’s guard-post? You have a better place here.”

“I remember you,” said Osbern, looking up at him with eyes remarkably clear and innocent, in a face otherwise as misshapen as his body. “You are the brother who brought me the cloak.”

“And has it done you good service?”

“It has, and I have prayed for the lady, as you asked. But, brother, it troubles me, too. Surely the man who wore it before me is dead. Is it so?”

“He is,” said Cadfael, “but that should not trouble you. The lady who sent it to you is his sister, and trust me, her giving blesses the gift. Wear it, and take comfort.”

He would have walked on then, but a hasty hand caught at the skirt of his habit, and Osbern besought him pleadingly: “But, brother, I go in dread that I bear some guilt. For I saw the man, living, with this cloak about him, hale as I…”

“You saw him?” echoed Cadfael on a soundless breath, but the anxious voice had ridden over him and rushed on.

“It was in the night, and I was cold, and I thought to myself, I wish the good God would send me such a cloak to keep me warm! Brother, thought is also prayer! And no more than three days later God did indeed send me this very cloak. You dropped it into my arms! How can I be at peace? The young man gave me a groat that night, and asked me to say a prayer for him on the morrow, and so I did. But how if my first prayer made the second of none effect? How if I have prayed a man into his grave to get myself a cloak to wear?”

Cadfael stood gazing at him amazed and mute, feeling the chill of ice flow down his spine. The man was sane, clear of mind and eye, he knew very well what he was saying, and his trouble of heart was real and deep, and must be the first consideration, whatever else followed.

“Put all such thoughts out of your mind, friend,” said Cadfael firmly, “for only the devil can have sent them. If God gave you the thing for which you wished, it was to save one morsel of good out of a great evil for which you are no way to blame. Surely your prayers for the former wearer are of aid even now to his soul. This young man was one of FitzAlan’s garrison here, done to death after the castle fell, at the king’s orders. You need have no fears, his death is not at your door, and no sacrifice of yours could have saved him.”

Osbern’s uplifted face eased and brightened, but still he shook his head, bewildered. “FitzAlan’s man? But how could that be, when I saw him enter and leave the king’s camp?”

“You saw him? You are sure? How do you know this is the same cloak?”

“Why, by this clasp at the throat. I saw it clearly in the firelight when he gave me the groat.”

He could not be mistaken, then, there surely were not two such designs exactly alike, and Cadfael himself had seen its match on the buckle of Giles Siward’s swordbelt.

“When was it that you saw him?” he asked gently. “Tell me how it befell.”

“It was the night before the assault, around midnight. I had my place then close to the guard-post for the sake of the fire, and I saw him come, not openly, but like a shadow, among the bushes. He stood when they challenged him, and asked to be taken to their officer, for he had something to tell, to the king’s advantage. He kept his face hidden, but he was young. And afraid! But who was not afraid, then? They took him away within, and afterwards I saw him return, and they let him out. He said he had orders to go back, for there must be no suspicion. That was all I heard. He was in better heart then, not so frightened, so I asked him for alms, and he gave, and asked my prayers in return. Say some prayer for me tomorrow, he said — and on ‘the morrow, you tell me, he died! This I’m sure of, when he left me he was not expecting to die.”

“No,” said Cadfael, sick with pity and grief for all poor, frightened, breakable men, “surely he was not. None of us knows the day. But pray for him you may, and your prayers will benefit his soul. Put off all thought that ever you did him harm, it is not so. You never wished him ill, God hears the heart. Never wished him any, never did him any.”

He left Osbern reassured and comforted, but went on into the castle carrying with him the load of discomfort and depression the lame man had shed. So it always is, he thought, to relieve another you must burden yourself. And such a burden! He remembered in time that there was one more question he should have asked, the most urgent of all, and turned back to ask it.

“Do you know, friend, who was the officer of the guard, that night?”

Osbern shook his head. “I never saw him, he never came out himself. No, brother, that I can’t tell you.”

“Trouble no more,” said Cadfael. “Now you have told it freely, and you know the cloak came to you with a blessing, not a bane. Enjoy it freely, as you deserve.”

“Father Abbot,” said Cadfael, seeking out Heribert in the courtyard, “if you have no need of me until you come to table, there is work here I have still to do, concerning Nicholas Faintree.”

With King Stephen holding audience in the inner ward, and the great court teeming with clerics, bishops, the small nobility of the county, even an earl or so, there was no room, in any case, for the mere servitors, whose duties would begin when the feast began. The abbot had found a friend in the bishop of Salisbury, and readily dismissed Cadfael to whatever pursuit he chose. He went in search of Hugh Beringar with Osbern’s story very heavy on his mind, and the last question still unanswered, though so many sad mysteries were now made plain. It was not a terrified prisoner with the rope already round his neck who had broken down and betrayed the secret of FitzAlan’s plans for his treasury. No, that betrayal had taken place a day previously, when the issue of battle was still to be decided, and the thing had been done with forethought, to save a life it yet had failed to save. He came by stealth, and asked to be taken to the officer of the guard, for he had something to tell to the king’s advantage! And when he left he told the guard he had orders to go back, so that there could be no suspicion, but then he was in better heart. Poor wretch, not for long!

By what means or on what pretext he had managed to get out of the castle — perhaps on pretence of reconnoitering the enemy’s position? — certainly he had obeyed his instructions to return and keep all suspicion lulled. He had returned only to confront the death he had thought he was escaping.

Hugh Beringar came out and stood on the steps of the great hall, craning round him for one person among all that shifting throng. The black Benedictine habits showed here and there in strong contrast to the finery of lordlings in their best, but Cadfael was shorter than many of those about him, and saw the man he was seeking before he was himself seen. He began to weave his way towards him, and the keen black eyes sweeping the court beneath drawn brows lit upon him, and glittered. Beringar came down to take him by the arm and draw him away to a quieter place.

“Come away, come up on to the guard-walk, there’ll be no one there but the sentry. How can we talk here?” And when they had mounted to the wall, he found a corner where no one could approach them without being seen, he said, eyeing Cadfael very earnestly: “You have news in your face. Tell it quickly, and I’ll tell you mine.”

Cadfael told the story as briefly as it had been told to him, and it was understood as readily. Beringar stood leaning against the merlon of the wall as though bracing his back for a dour defence. His face was bitter with dismay.

“Her brother! No escaping it, this can have been no other. He came by night out of the castle, by stealth, hiding his face, he spoke with the king’s officer, and returned as he had come. So that there might be no suspicion! Oh, I am sick!” said Beringar savagely. “And all for nothing! His treason fell victim to one even worse. You don’t know yet, Cadfael, you don’t know all! But that of all people it should be her brother!”

“No help for it,” said Cadfael, “it was he. In terror for his life, regretting an ill-judged alliance, he went hurrying to the besiegers to buy his life, in exchange-for what? Something of advantage to the king! That very evening they had held conference and planned the removal of FitzAlan’s gold. That was how someone learned in good time of what Faintree and Torold carried, and the way they were to go. Someone who never passed that word on, as I think, to king or any, but acted upon it himself, and for his own gain. Why else should it end as it did? The young man, so says Osbern, went back under orders, relieved and less afraid.”

“He had been promised his life,” said Beringar bitterly, “and probably the king’s favour, too, and a place about him, no wonder he went back the happier in that belief. But what was really intended was to send him back to be taken and slaughtered with the rest, to make sure he should not live to tell the tale. For listen, Cadfael, to what I got out of one of the Flemings who was in that day’s murderous labour from first to last. He said that after Arnulf of Hesdin was hanged, Ten Heyt pointed out to the executioners a young man who was to be the next to go, and said the order came from above. And it was done. They found it a huge jest that he was dragged to his death incredulous, thinking at first, no doubt, they were putting up a pretence to remove him from the ranks, and then he saw it was black reality, and he screamed that they were mistaken, that he was not to die with the rest, that he had been promised his life, that they should send and ask — “

“Send and ask,” said Brother Cadfael, “of Adam Courcelle.”

“No — I learned no name … my man heard none. What makes you hit on that name in particular? He was not by but once, according to this man’s account, he came but once to look at the bodies they had already cut down, and it was early, they would be but few. Then he went away to his work in the town, and was seen no more. Weak-stomached, they thought.”

“And the dagger? Was Giles wearing it when they strung him up?”

“He was, for my man had an eye to the thing himself, but when he was relieved for a while, and came back to get it, it was already gone.”

“Even to one with a great prize in view,” said Cadfael sadly, “a small extra gain by the way may not come amiss.”

They looked at each other mutely for a long moment. “But why do you say so certainly, Courcelle?”

“I am thinking,” said Cadfael, “of the horror that fell upon him when Aline came to collect her dead, and he knew what he had done. If I had known, he said, if I had known, I would have saved him for you! No matter at what cost! God forgive me! he said, but he meant: Aline, forgive me! With all his heart he meant it then, though I would not call that repentance. And he gave back, you’ll remember, the cloak. I think, truly I do think, he would then have given back also the dagger, if he had dared. But he could not, it was already broken and incomplete. I wonder,” said Cadfael, pondering, “I wonder what he has done with it now? A man who would take it from the dead in the first place would not part with it too easily, even for a girl’s sake, and yet he never dare let her set eyes on it, and he is in earnest in courting her. Would he keep it, in hiding? Or get rid of it?”

“If you are right,” said Beringar, still doubtful, “we need it, it is our proof. And yet, Cadfael, for God’s sake, how are we to deal now? God knows I can find no good to say for one who tried to purchase his own safety so, when his fellows were at their last gasp. But neither you nor I can strip this matter bare, and do so wicked an injury to so innocent and honourable a lady. It’s enough that she mourns for him. Let her at least go on thinking that he held by his mistaken choice faithfully to the end, and gave his life for it — not that he died craven, bleating that he was promised grace in return for so base a betrayal. She must not know, now or ever.”

Brother Cadfael could not but agree. “But if we accuse him, and this comes to trial, surely everything will come out. That we cannot allow, and there lies our weakness.”

“And our strength,” said Beringar fiercely, “for neither can he allow it. He wants his advancement with the king, he wants offices, but he wants Aline — do you think I did not know it? Where would he stand with her if ever a breath of this reached her? No, he will be at least as anxious as we to keep the story for ever buried. Give him but a fair chance to settle the quarrel out of hand, and he’ll jump at it.”

“Your preoccupation,” said Cadfael gently, “I understand, and sympathise with it. But you must also acknowledge mine. I have here another responsibility. Nicholas Faintree must not lie uneasy for want of justice.”

“Trust me, and stand ready to back me in whatever I shall do this night at the king’s table,” said Hugh Beringar. “Justice he shall have, and vengeance, too, but let it be as I shall devise.”

Cadfael went to his duty behind the abbot’s chair in doubt and bewilderment, with no clear idea in his mind of what Beringar intended, and no conviction that without the broken dagger any secure case could be made against Courcelle. The Fleming had not seen him take it, what he had cried out to Aline over her brother’s body, in manifest pain, was not evidence. And yet there had been vengeance and death in Hugh Beringar’s face, as much for Aline Siward’s sake as for Nicholas Faintree’s. What mattered most in the world to him, at this moment, was that Aline should never know how her brother had disgraced his blood and his name, and in that cause Beringar would not scruple to spend not only Adam Courcelle’s life, but also his own. And somehow, reflected Cadfael ruefully, I have become very much attached to that young man, and I should not like to see any ill befall him. I would rather this case went to law, even if we have to step carefully in drawing up our evidence, and leave out every word concerning Torold Blund and Godith Adeney. But for that we need, we must have, proof positive that Giles Siward’s dagger passed into the possession of Adam Courcelle, and preferably the dagger itself, into the bargain, to match with the piece of it I found on the scene of the murder. Otherwise he will simply lie and lie, deny everything, say he never saw the topaz or the dagger it came from, and has nothing to answer; and from the eminence of the position he has won with the king, he will be unassailable.

There were no ladies present that night, this was strictly a political and military occasion, but the great hall had been decked out with borrowed hangings, and was bright with torches. The king was in good humour, the garrison’s provisions were assured, and those who had robbed for the royal supplies had done their work well. From his place behind Heribert at the king’s high table Cadfael surveyed the full hall, and estimated that some five hundred guests were present. He looked for Beringar, and found him at a lower table, in his finery, very debonair and lively in conversation, as though he had no darker preoccupation. He was master of his face; even when he glanced briefly at Courcelle there was nothing in the look to attract attention, certainly nothing to give warning of any grave purpose.

Courcelle was at the high table, though crowded to its end by the visiting dignitaries. Big, vividly coloured and handsome, accomplished in arms, in good odour with the king, how strange that such a man should feel it necessary to grasp secretly at plunder, and by such degrading means! And yet, in this chaos of civil war, was it so strange after all? Where a king’s favour could be toppled with the king, where barons were changing sides according as the fortunes changed, where even earls were turning to secure their own advantage rather than that of a cause that might collapse under their feet and leave them prisoner and ruined! Courcelle was merely a sign of the times; in a few years there would be duplicates of him in every corner of the realm.

I do not like the way I see England going, thought Cadfael with anxious foreboding, and above all I do not like what is about to happen, for as surely as God sees us, Hugh Beringar is set to sally forth on to a dubious field, half-armed.

He fretted through the long meal, hardly troubled by the demands of Abbot Heribert, who was always abstemious with wine, and ate very frugally. Cadfael served and poured, proffered the finger-bowl and napkin, and waited with brooding resignation.

When the dishes were cleared away, musicians playing, and only the wine on the tables, the servitors in their turn might take their pick of what was left in the kitchens, and the cooks and scullions were already helping themselves and finding quiet corners to sit and eat. Cadfael collected a bread trencher and loaded it with broken meats, and took it out through the great court to Lame Osbern at the gate. There was a measure of wine to go with it. Why should not the poor rejoice for once at the king’s cost, even if that cost was handed on down the hierarchies until it fell at last upon the poor themselves? Too often they paid, but never got their share of the rejoicing.

Cadfael was walking back to the hall when his eye fell upon a lad of about twelve, who was sitting in the torchlight on the inner side of the gate house, his back comfortably against the wall, carving his meat into smaller pieces with a narrow-bladed knife. Cadfael had seen him earlier, in the kitchen, gutting fish with the same knife, but he had not seen the halt of it, and would not have seen it now if the boy had not laid it down beside him on the ground while he ate.

Cadfael halted and gazed, motionless. It was no kitchen knife, but a well-made dagger, and its hilt was a slender shaft of silver, rounded to the hand, showing delicate lines of filigree-work, and glowing round the collar of the blade with small stones. The hilt ended in a twist of silver broken off short. It was hard to believe, but impossible not to believe. Perhaps thought really is prayer.

He spoke to the boy very softly and evenly; the unwitting means of justice must not be alarmed. “Child, where did you get so fine a knife as that?”

The boy looked up, untroubled, and smiled. When he had gulped down the mouthful with which his cheeks were bulging, he said cheerfully: “I found it. I didn’t steal it.”

“God forbid, lad, I never thought it. Where did you find it? And have you the sheath, too?”

It was lying beside him in the shadow, he patted it proudly. “I fished them out of the river. I had to dive, but I found them. They really are mine, father, the owner didn’t want them, he threw them away. I suppose because this was broken. But it’s the best knife for slitting fish I ever had.”

So he threw them away! Not, however, simply because the jewelled hilt was broken.

“You saw him throw it into the river? Where was this, and when?”

“I was fishing under the castle, and a man came down alone from the water-gate to the bank of the river, and threw it in, and went back to the castle. When he’d gone I dived in where I saw it fall, and I found it. It was early in the evening, the same night all the bodies were carried down to the abbey — a week ago, come tomorrow. It was the first day it was safe to go fishing there again.”

Yes, it fitted well. That same afternoon Aline had taken Giles away to St Alkmund’s, and left Courcelle stricken and wild with unavailing regrets, and in possession of a thing that might turn Aline against him for ever, if once she set eyes on it. And he had done the only, the obvious thing, consigned it to the river, never thinking that the avenging angel, in the shape of a fisherboy, would redeem it to confront him when most he believed himself safe.

“You did not know who this man was? What like was he? What age?” For there remained the lingering doubt; all he had to support his conviction was the memory of Courcelle’s horrified face and broken voice, pleading his devotion over Giles Siward’s body.

The child hoisted indifferent shoulders, unable to picture for another what he himself had seen clearly and memorably. “Just a man. I didn’t know him. Not old like you, father, but quite old.” But to him anyone of his father’s generation would be old, though his father might be only a year or two past thirty.

“Would you know him if you saw him again? Could you point him out among many?”

“Of course!” said the boy almost scornfully. His eyes were young, bright, and very observant, if his tongue was none too fluent, of course he would know his man again.

“Sheathe your knife, child, and bring it, and come with me,” said Cadfael with decision. “Oh, don’t fret, no one will take your treasure from you, or if later you must give it up, you shall be handsomely paid for it. All I need is for you to tell again what you have told to me, and you shan’t be the loser.”

He knew, when he entered the hall with the boy beside him, a little apprehensive now but even more excited, that they came late. The music was stilled, and Hugh Beringar was on his feet and striding towards the dais on which the high table stood. They heard his voice raised, high and clear, as he mounted and stood before the king. “Your Grace, before you depart for Worcester, there is a matter on which I beg you’ll hear me and do right. I demand justice on one here in this company, who has abused his position in your confidence. He has stolen from the dead, to the shame of his nobility, and he has committed murder, to the shame of his manhood. I stand on my charges, to prove them with my body. And here is my gage!”

Against his own doubts, he had accepted Cadfael’s intuition, to the length of staking his life upon it. He leaned forward, and rolled something small and bright across the table, to clang softly against the king’s cup. The silence that had fallen was abrupt and profound. All round the high table heads craned to follow the flash of yellow brilliance that swayed irregularly over the board, limping on its broken setting, and then were raised to stare again at the young man who had launched it. The king picked up the topaz and turned it in his large hands, his face blank with incomprehension at first, and then wary and brooding. He, too, looked long at Hugh Beringar. Cadfael, picking his way between the lower tables, drew the puzzled boy after him and kept his eyes upon Adam Courcelle, who sat at his end of the table stiff and aware. He had command of his face, he looked no more astonished or curious than any of those about him; only the taut hand gripping his drinking-horn betrayed his consternation. Or was even that imagined, to fit in with an opinion already formed? Cadfael was no longer sure of his own judgment, a state he found distressing and infuriating.

“You have bided your time to throw your thunderbolt,” said the king at length, and looked up darkly at Beringar from the stone he was turning in his hands.

“I was loth to spoil your Grace’s supper, but neither would I put off what should not be put off. Your Grace’s justice is every honest man’s right.”

“You will need to explain much. What is this thing?”

“It is the tip of a dagger-hilt. The dagger to which it belongs is now by right the property of the lady Aline Siward, who has loyally brought all the resources of her house to your Grace’s support. It was formerly in the possession of her brother Giles, who was among those who garrisoned this castle against your Grace, and have paid the price for it. I say that it was taken from his dead body, an act not unknown among the common soldiery, but unworthy of knight or gentleman. That is the first offence. The second is murder — that murder of which your Grace was told by Brother Cadfael, of the Benedictine house here in Shrewsbury, after the count of the dead was made. Your Grace and those who carried out your orders were used as a shield for one who strangled a man from behind, as your Grace will well remember.”

“I do remember,” said the king grimly. He was torn between displeasure at having to exert himself to listen and judge, when his natural indolence had wanted only a leisurely and thoughtless feast, and a mounting curiosity as to what lay behind all this. “What has this stone to do with that death?”

“Your Grace, Brother Cadfael is also present here, and will testify that he found the place where this murder was committed, and found there, broken off in the struggle and trodden into the ground, this stone. He will take oath, as I do, that the man who stole the dagger is the same who killed Nicholas Faintree, and that he left behind him, unnoticed, this proof of his guilt.”

Cadfael was drawing nearer by then, but they were so intent on the closed scene above that no one noticed his approach. Courcelle was sitting back, relaxed and brightly interested, in his place, but what did that mean? Doubtless he saw very well the flaw in this; no need to argue against the claim that whoever stole the dagger slew the man, since no once could trace possession to him. The thing was at the bottom of the Severn, lost for ever. The theory could be allowed to stand, the crime condemned and deplored, provided no one could furnish a name, and proof to back it. Or, on the other hand, this could far more simply be the detachment of an innocent man!

“Therefore,” said Hugh Beringar relentlessly, “I repeat those charges I have made here before your Grace. I appeal one among us here in this hall of theft and murder, and I offer proof with my body, to uphold my claim in combat upon the body of Adam Courcelle.”

He had turned at the end to face the man he accused, who was on his feet with a leap, startled and shaken, as well he might be. Shock burned rapidly into incredulous anger and scorn. Just so would any innocent man look, suddenly confronted with an accusation so mad as to be laughable.

“Your Grace, this is either folly or villainy! How comes my name into such a diatribe? It may well be true that a dagger was stolen from a dead man, it may even be true that the same thief slew a man, and left this behind as witness. But as for how my name comes into such a tale, I leave it to Hugh Beringar to tell — if these are not simply the lies of an envious man. When did I ever see this supposed dagger? When was it ever in my possession? Where is it now? Has any ever seen me wear such a thing? Send, my lord, and search those soldier’s belongings I have here, and if such a thing is found in any ward or lodging of mine, let me know of it!”

“Wait!” said the king imperiously, and looked from one face to the other with frowning brows. “This is indeed a matter that needs to be examined, and if these charges are made in malice there will be an account to pay. What Adam says is the nub of it. Is the monk indeed present? And does he confirm the finding of this broken ornament at the place where this killing befell? And that it came from that very dagger?”

“I brought Brother Cadfael here with me tonight,” said the abbot, and looked about for him helplessly.

“I am here, Father Abbot,” said Cadfael from below the dais, and advanced to be seen, his arms about the shoulders of the boy, now totally fascinated, all eyes and ears.

“Do you bear out what Beringar says?” demanded King Stephen. “You found this stone where the man was slain?”

“Yes, your Grace. Trampled into the earth, where plainly there had been a struggle, and two bodies rolling upon the ground.”

“And whose word have we that it comes from a dagger once belonging to Mistress Siward’s brother? Though I grant you it should be easy enough to recognise, once known.”

“The word of Lady Aline herself. It has been shown to her, and she has recognised it.”

“That is fair witness enough,” said the king, “that whoever is the thief may well be the murderer, also. But why it should follow that either you or Beringar here suppose him to be Adam, that for my life I cannot see. There’s never a thread to join him to the dagger or the deed. You might as well cast round here among us, and pick on Bishop Robert of Salisbury, or any one of the squires down below there. Or prick your knife-point into a list of us with eyes closed. Where is the logic?”

“I am glad,” said Courcelle, darkly red and forcing a strained laughter, “that your Grace puts so firm a finger on the crux of the matter. With goodwill I can go along with this good brother to condemn a mean theft and a furtive killing, but, Beringar, beware how you connect me with either, or any other honest man. Follow your thread from this stone, by all means, if thread there is, but until you can trace this dagger into my hands, be careful how you toss challenges to mortal combat about you, young man, for they may be taken up, to your great consternation.”

“My gage is now lying upon the table,” said Hugh Beringar with implacable calm. “You have only to take it up. I have not withdrawn it.”

“My lord king,” said Cadfael, raising his voice to ride over the partisan whisperings and murmurings that were running like conflicting winds about the high table, “it is not the case that there is no witness to connect the dagger with any person. And for proof positive that stone and dagger belong together, here is the very weapon itself. I ask your Grace to match the two with your own hands.”

He held up the dagger, and Beringar at the edge of the dais took it from him, staring like a man in a dream, and handed it in awed silence to the king. The boy’s eyes followed it with possessive anxiety, Courcelle’s with stricken and unbelieving horror, as if a drowned victim had risen to haunt him. Stephen looked at the thing with an eye appreciative of its workmanship, slid out the blade with rising curiosity, and fitted the topaz in its silver claw to the jagged edge of the hilt.

“No doubt but this belongs. You have all seen?” And he looked down at Cadfael. “Where, then, did you come by this?”

“Speak up, child,” said Cadfael encouragingly, “and tell the king what you told to me.”

The boy was rosy and shining with an excitement that had quite overridden his fear. He stood up and told his tale in a voice shrill with self-importance, but still in the simple words he had used to Cadfael, and there was no man there who could doubt he was telling the truth.

” … and I was by the bushes at the edge of the water, and he did not see me. But I saw him clearly. And as soon as he went away I dived in where it had fallen, and found it. I live by the river, I was born by it. My mother says I swam before I walked. I kept the knife, thinking no wrong, since he did not want it. And that is the very knife, my lord, and may I have it back when you are done?”

The king was diverted for a moment from the gravity of the cause that now lay in his hands, to smile at the flushed and eager child with all the good-humour and charm his nature was meant to dispense, if he had not made an ambitious and hotly contested bid for a throne, and learned the rough ways that go with such contests.

“So our fish tonight was gutted with a jewelled knife, was it, boy? Princely indeed! And it was good fish, too. Did you catch it, as well as dress it?”

Bashfully the boy said that he had helped.

“Well, you have done your part very fitly. And now, did you know this man who threw away the knife?”

“No, my lord, I don’t know his name. But I know him well enough when I see him.”

“And do you see him? Here in this hall with us now?”

“Yes, my lord,” said the child readily, and pointed a finger straight at Adam Courcelle. “That was the man.”

All eyes turned upon Courcelle, the king’s most dourly and thoughtfully of all, and there was a silence that lasted no more than a long-drawn breath, but seemed to shake the foundations of the hall, and stop every heart within its walls. Then Courcelle said, with arduous and angry calm:

“Your Grace, this is utterly false. I never had the dagger, I could not well toss it into the river. I deny that ever I had the thing in my possession, or ever saw it until now.”

“Are you saying,” asked the king drily, “that the child lies? At whose instigation? Not Beringar’s — it seems to me that he was as taken aback by this witness as I myself, or you. Am I to think the Benedictine order has procured the boy to put up such a story? And for what end?”

“I am saying, your Grace, that this is a foolish error. The boy may have seen what he says he saw, and got the dagger as he claims he got it, but he is mistaken in saying he saw me. I am not the man. I deny all that has been said against me.”

“And I maintain it,” said Hugh Beringar. “And I ask that it be put to the proof.”

The king crashed a fist upon the table so that the boards danced, and cups rocked and spilled wine. “There is something here to be probed, and I cannot let it pass now without probing it.” He turned again to the boy, and reined in his exasperation to ask more gently: “Think and look carefully, now, and say again: are you certain this is the man you saw? If you have any doubt, say so. It is no sin to be mistaken. You may have seen some other man of like build or colour. But if you are sure, say that also, without fear.”

“I am sure,” said the boy, trembling but adamant. “I know what I saw.”

The king leaned back in his great chair, and thumped his closed fists on the arms, and pondered. He looked at Hugh Beringar with grim displeasure: “It seems you have hung a millstone round my neck, when most I need to be free and to move fast. I cannot now wipe out what has been said, I must delve deeper. Either this case goes to the long processes of court law — no, not for you nor any will I now delay my going one day beyond the morrow’s morrow! I have made my plans, I cannot afford to change them.”

“There need be no delay,” said Beringar, “if your Grace countenances trial by combat. I have appealed Adam Courcelle of murder, I repeat that charge. If he accepts, I am ready to meet him without any ceremony or preparations. Your Grace may see the outcome tomorrow, and march on the following day, freed of this burden.”

Cadfael, during these exchanges, had not taken his eyes from Courcelle’s face, and marked with foreboding the signs of gradually recovered assurance. The faint sweat that had broken on his lip and brow dried, the stare of desperation cooled into calculation; he even began to smile. Since he was now cornered, and there were two ways out, one by long examination and questioning, one by simple battle, he was beginning to see in this alternative his own salvation. Cadfael could follow the measuring, narrowed glance that studied Hugh Beringar from head to foot, and understood the thoughts behind the eyes. Here was a younger man, lighter in weight, half a head shorter, much less in reach, inexperienced, over-confident, an easy victim. It should not be any problem to put him out of the world; and that done, Courcelle had nothing to fear. The judgment of heaven would have spoken, no one thereafter would point a finger at him, and Aline would be still within his reach, innocent of his dealings with her brother, and effectively separated from a too-engaging rival, without any blame to Courcelle, the wrongly accused. Oh, no, it was not so grim a situation, after all. It should work out very well.

He reached out along the table, picked up the topaz, and rolled it contemptuously back towards Beringar, to be retrieved and retained.

“Let it be so, your Grace. I accept battle, tomorrow, without formality, without need for practice. Your Grace shall march the following day,” And I with you, his confident countenance completed.

“So be it!” said the king grimly. “Since you’re bent on robbing me of one good man, between you, I suppose I may as well find and keep the better of the two. Tomorrow, then, at nine of the clock, after Mass. Not here within the wards, but in the open — the meadow outside the town gate, between road and river, will do well. Prestcote, you and Willem marshal the lists. See to it! And we’ll have no horses put at risk,” he said practically. “On foot, and with swords!”

Hugh Beringar bowed acquiescence. Courcelle said:

“Agreed!” and smiled, thinking how much longer a reach and stronger a wrist he had for sword-play.

“A l’outrance!” said the king with a vicious snap, and rose from the table to put an end to a sullied evening’s entertainment.