The Raven in the Foregate

Chapter Nine

CADFAEL WAS UNEASY IN HIS MIND ALL THAT DAY, plagued on the one hand by misgivings about Sanan’s revelation, and on the other by the elusive gnat that sang in the back of his consciousness, telling him persistently that he had failed to notice the loss of one item that should have been sought with Ailnoth, and might very well have missed another. There was certainly something he should have thought of, something that might shed light, if only he could discover what it was, and go, belatedly, to look for it.

In the meantime, he pursued the round of his duties through Vespers and supper in the refectory, and tried in vain to concentrate upon the psalms for this thirtieth day of December, the sixth day in the octave of Christmas.

Cynric had been right about the thaw. It came furtively and grudgingly, but it was certainly on its way by mid afternoon. The trees were shedding their tinkling filigree of frozen rime and standing starkly black against a low sky. Drips perforated the whiteness under the eaves with small dark pockmarks, and the black of the road and the green of grass were beginning to show through the covering of snow. By morning it might even be possible to break the ground, in that chosen spot sheltered under the precinct wall, and dig Father Ailnoth’s grave.

Cadfael had examined the skull-cap closely, and could make no great sense of it. Yet it fretted him simply because he had failed to think of it when the body was found.

As for the damage to it, that suggested a connection with the blow to the head, and yet at the same time contradicted that connection, since in that event the cap would surely have fallen on land, when the blow was struck. True, the assailant might very well have thrown it into the water after the priest, but in the dark would he have noticed or thought of it, and if he had, would he necessarily have been able to find it? A small black thing in tufted grass not yet white with rime not easy to see, and unlikely to be remembered as too dangerous to leave, when murder had been committed. Who was going to grope around in the dark in rough grass, when he had just killed a man? His one thought would be to get well away from the scene as quickly as possible.

Well, if Cadfael had missed this one thing, he might have missed—his demon was nagging at him that he had missed!—another as important. And if he had, it was still there by the mill, either along the bank or in the water, or even within the mill itself. No use looking for it elsewhere.

There was half an hour left before Compline, and most of the brothers, very sensibly, were in the warming room, getting the chill out of their bones. It was folly to think of going near the mill at this hour, in the dark, but for all that Cadfael could not keep away, his mind so dwelt upon the place, as though the very ambience of the pool, the mill and the solitary night might reproduce the events of Christmas Eve, and prod his memory into recapturing the lost factor. He crossed the great court to the retired corner by the infirmary, where the wicket in the precinct wall led through directly to the mill.

Outside, with no moon and only ragged glimpses of stars, he stood until his eyes grew accustomed to the night, and the shapes of things grew out of obscurity. The rough grass of the field, the dark bulk of the mill to his right, with the little wooden bridge at the corner of the building immediately before him, crossing the head-race to the overhanging bank of the pool. He crossed, his feet making a small, clear, hollow sound on the planks, and walked across the narrow strip of grass to the bank. The expanse of the water opened beneath him, pale, leaden—still, dappled with patches of open water, rimmed round with half-thawed ice.

Nothing moved here but himself, there was nothing to be heard, not even a breath of wind stirring in the lissome naked shoots of the pollarded willows at his left hand along the bank. A few yards along there, just past the nearest stump, cut down to hip-height and bristling with wands like hair on the giant head of a terrified man, they had drawn Ailnoth’s body laboriously along under the eroded bank, and brought him to shore where the meadow sloped down more gently to the outflow of the tail-race.

In his recollection of the morning every detail stood sharply defined, but shed no light at all on what had happened in the night. He turned from the high bank and walked back across the bridge, and for no good reason that he could see continued round the mill, and down the sloping bank to the big doors where the grain was carried in. Only an outer bar fastened the door, and that, he saw dimly by the faint reflection from bleached timber, was drawn back from its socket. There was a small door on the higher level, giving quick access to the wicket in the precinct wall. That could be fastened within. But why should this heavy bar be drawn back unless someone had made entry from without?

Cadfael set his hand to the closed but unbarred door, eased it open by a hand’s breadth, and stiffened to listen with an ear to the chink. Nothing but silence from within. He opened it a little wider, slid quietly through, and eased the door back again behind him. The warm scents of flour and grain tickled his nostrils. He had a nose sharp as fox or hound, and trusted to it in the dark, and there was another scent here, very faint, utterly familiar. In his own workshop he was unaware of it from long and constant acquaintance, but in any other place it pricked his consciousness with a particular insistence, as of a stolen possession of his own, and a valued one, that had no business to stray. A man cannot be in and out of a workshop saturated with years of harvesting herbs, and not carry the scent of them about in his garments. Cadfael froze with his back against the closed door, and waited.

The faintest stir reached his ears, as of a foot carefully placed in dust and husk that could not choose but rustle, however cautiously trodden. Somewhere above him, on the upper floor. So the hatch was open, and someone was leaning there, carefully shifting his stance to drop through. Cadfael moved obligingly in that direction, to give him encouragement. Next moment a body dropped neatly behind him, and an arm clamped about his neck, bracing him back against his assailant, while its fellow embraced him about chest and arms, pinning him close. He stood slack within the double grip, and continued to breathe easily, and with wind to spare.

“Not badly done,” he said with mild approval. “But you have no nose, son. What are four senses, without the fifth?”

“Have I not?” breathed Ninian’s voice in his ear, shaken by a quaver of suppressed laughter. “You came in at the door so like a waft of wind through your eaves, I was back there with that oil I had to abandon. I hope it took no harm.” Hard and vehement young arms hugged Cadfael close, let him loose gently, and turned him about at arm’s length, as though to view him, where there was no light to see more than a shape, a shadow. “I owed you a fright. You had the wits scared out of me when you eased the door ajar,” said Ninian reproachfully.

“I was none too easy in my own mind,” said Cadfael, “when I found the bar out of its socket. Lad, you take far too many chances. For God’s sake and Sanan’s, what are you doing here?”

“I could as well ask you that,” said Ninian. “And might get the same answer, too. I ventured here to see if there was anything more to be found, though after so many days, heaven knows why there should be. But how can any of us be easy until we know? “I know I never laid hands on the man, but what comfort is that when everyone else lays it at my door? I should be loth to leave here until it’s shown I’m no murderer, even if there were nothing more in it than that, but there is. There’s Diota! Wanting the chance to get at me, how long before they begin to turn on her, if not for murder, then for treason in helping me to escape the hunt in the south, and cover my guilt here?”

“If you think Hugh Beringar has any ill intent against Mistress Hammet, or will suffer anyone else to make her a victim,” said Cadfael firmly, “you may put that out of your mind at once. Well, now, since we’re both here, and the time and place as good as any, we may as well sit down somewhere in the warmest corner we can find, and put together whatever we have to share. Two heads may make more of it than my one has been able to do. There should be plenty of sacks here somewhere—better than nothing…”

Evidently Ninian had been here long enough to know his way about, for he took Cadfael by the arm, and drew him confidently into a corner where a pile of clean, coarse bags was folded and stacked against the timber wall. They settled themselves close there, flank by flank for warmth, and Ninian drew round them both a thick cloak which had certainly never been in Benet’s possession.

“Now,” said Cadfael briskly, “I should first tell you that this very morning I’ve spoken with Sanan, and I know what you and she are planning. Probably she’s told you as much. I’m half in and half out of your confidence and hers, and if I’m to be of any help to you in putting an end to this vexatious business that holds you here, you had better let me in fully. I do not believe you guilty of the priest’s death, and I have no reason in the world to stand in your way. But I do believe that you know more of what happened here that night than you have told. Tell the rest, and let me know where we really stand. You did come here to the mill, did you not?”

Ninian blew out a gusty, rueful breath that warmed Cadfael’s leaning cheek for a moment. “I did. I had to. I got no more answer from Giffard than that he’d received and understood the message I sent. I’d no means of knowing whether he meant to come or not. But I came very early, to view the place and find a corner to hide in until I saw what came of it. I stayed there in the doorway in the abbey wall, with the wicket ajar, so that I could watch for whoever came. I had to make haste round the corner of the infirmary, I can tell you, when the miller came bustling through on his way to church, but I had the place to myself after that, to keep watch on the path.”

“And it was Ailnoth who came?” said Cadfael.

“Storming along the path like a bolt from God. Dark as it was, there was no mistaking him, he had a gait all his own. There was no possible reason he should be there at such an hour, unless he’d got wind of what I was up to, and meant all manner of mischief. He was striding up and down and round the mill and along the bank, thumping the ground like a cat lashing its tail. And I’d perhaps got another man into the mud with me, and must make some shift to get him, at least, out of it, even if I was still stuck in the mire.”

“So what did you do?”

“It was still early. I couldn’t leave Giffard to come to the meeting all unsuspecting, could I? I didn’t know if he meant to come at all, but still he might, I couldn’t take the risk. I hared away back through the court and out at the gatehouse, and went to earth among the bushes close by the end of the bridge. If he came at all, he had to come that way from the town. And I didn’t even know what the man looked like, though I knew his name and his allegiance from others. But I thought there’d be very few men coming out from the town at that hour, and I could risk accosting any who looked of his age and quality.”

“Ralph Giffard had already come over the bridge,” said Cadfael, “a good hour earlier, to visit the priest and send him hot-foot to confront you at the mill, but you could hardly know that. I fancy he was already back in his own house while you were watching for him in the bushes. Did you see any others pass by you there?”

“Only one, and he was too young, and too poor and simple in his person and gear to be Giffard. He went straight along the Foregate and turned in at the church.”

Centwin, perhaps, thought Cadfael, coming from paying his debt, to have his mind free and at peace, owing no man, as he went to celebrate the birth of Christ. Well for him if it proved that Ninian could speak for him, and show clearly that his own bitter debt had gone unreclaimed.

“And you?”

“I waited until I was sure he was not coming—it was past the time. So I made haste back to be in time for Matins.”

“Where you met with Sanan.” Cadfael’s smile was invisible in the dark, but perceptible in his voice. “She was not so foolish as to go to the mill, for like you, she could not be quite sure her step-father would not keep the tryst. But she knew where to find you, and she was determined to respond to the appeal Giffard had preferred to reject. Indeed, as I recall, she had already taken steps to get a good look at you, as you yourself told me. Maybe you’ll do for a lady’s page, after all. With a little polishing!”

Within the muffling folds of the cloak he heard Ninian laughing softly. “I never believed, that first day, that anything would really come of it. And now see—everything I owe to her. She would not be put off… You’ve seen her, you’ve talked to her, you know how splendid she is… Cadfael, I must tell you—she’s coming with me to Gloucester, she’s promised herself to me in marriage.” His voice was low and solemn now, as though he had already come to the altar. It was the first time Cadfael had known him in awe of anything or anyone.

“She is a very valiant lady,” said Cadfael slowly, “and knows her own mind very well, and I, for my part, wouldn’t say a word against her choice. But, lad, is it right to let her do this for you? Is she not abandoning property, family, everything? Have you considered that?”

“I have, and urged her to consider it, too. How much do you know, Cadfael, of her situation? She has no land to abandon. Her father’s manor was taken from him after the siege here, because he supported FitzAlan and the Empress. Her mother is dead. Her step-father—she has no complaint of him, he has always cared for her in duty bound, but not gladly. He has a son by his first marriage to inherit from him, he will be only too pleased to have an estate undivided, and to escape providing her a dowry. But from her mother she has a good provision in jewels, undeniably her own. She says she loses nothing by coming with me, and gains what she most wants in the world. I do love her!” said Ninian with abrupt and moving gravity. “I will make a fit place for her. I can! I will!”

Yes, thought Cadfael on reflection, on balance she may be getting none so bad a bargain. Giffard himself lost certain lands for his adherence to the Empress, no wonder he wants all he has left to go to his son. It may even be more for his son’s sake than his own that he has so ruthlessly severed himself now from any lingering devotion to his former overlord, and even sought to buy his own security with this boy’s freedom. Men do things far out of their nature when deformed by circumstances. And the girl knew a good lad when she saw one, she’ll be his fair match.

“Well, I wish you a fortunate journey through Wales, with all my heart,” he said. “You’ll need horses for the journey, is that already arranged?”

“We have them, she procured them. They’re stabled where I’m in hiding,” said Ninian, candid and thoughtless, “out by—”

Cadfael clapped a hand hastily over the boy’s mouth, fumbling in the dark but effectively silencing him out of sheer surprise. “No, hush, tell me nothing! Better I know nothing of where you are, or where you got your horses. What I don’t know I can’t even be expected to tell.”

“But I can’t go,” said Ninian firmly, “while there’s a shadow hanging over me. I won’t be remembered, here or anywhere, as a fugitive murderer. Still less can I go while there’s such a shadow hanging over Diota. I owe her more already than I know how to repay, I must see her secure and protected before I go.”

“The more credit to you, and we must try by any means we have for a resolution. As it seems we’ve both been doing tonight, though with very sorry success. But now, had you not best be getting back to your hiding place? How if Sanan should send to you, and you not there?”

“And you?” retorted Ninian. “How if Prior Robert should make a round of the dortoir, and you not there?”

They rose together, and unwound the cloak from about them, drawing in breath sharply at the invading cold.

“You haven’t told me,” said Ninian, opening the heavy door on the comparative light outside, “just what thought brought you here tonight—though I’m glad it did. I was not happy at leaving you without a word. But you can hardly have been hunting for me! What were you hoping to find?”

“I wish I knew. This morning I found a gaggle of goslings playing in the snow with a black skull-cap that surely belonged to Ailnoth, for the boys had found it here in the shallows of the pool, among the reeds. And I had seen him wearing it that evening, and clean forgotten so small a thing. And it’s been nagging at me all day long since then that there was something else I had noted about him, and likewise never missed and never looked for afterwards. I don’t know that I came here with any great expectation of finding anything. Perhaps I simply hoped that being here might bring the thing back to mind. Did ever you get up to do something, and then clean forget what it was?” wondered Cadfael. “And have to go back to where you first thought of it, to bring it back to mind? No, surely not, you’re too young, for you to think of doing a thing is to do it. But ask the elders like me, they’ll all admit to it.”

“And it still hasn’t come back to you?” asked Ninian, delicately sympathetic towards the old and forgetful.

“It has not. Not even here. Have you fared any better?”

“It was a thin hope to find what I came for,” said Ninian ruefully,”though I did risk coming before the light was quite gone. But at least I know what I came looking for. I was there with Diota when you brought him back on Christmas Day, and I never thought what was missing until later. After all, it’s a thing that could well go astray, not like the clothes he was wearing. But I knew he had it with him when he came stamping along the path and stabbing at the ground. Coming all this way through England in his company, I got to know it very well. That great staff he was always so lungeous with—ebony, tall as his elbow, with a stag’s-horn handle—that’s what I came to look for. And somewhere here it must still be.”

They had emerged on to the low shore, dappled now with moist dark patches of grass breaking through the tattered snow. The dull, pale level of the water stretched away to the dark slope of the further bank. Cadfael had stopped abruptly, staring over the shield of pallor in startled enlightenment.

“So it must!” he said devoutly. “So it must! Child, that’s the will-o’-the-wisp I’ve been chasing all this day. You get back to your refuge and keep snug within, and leave this search to me now. You’ve read my riddle for me.”

By morning half the snow had melted and vanished, and the Foregate was like a coil of tattered and threadbare lace. The cobbles of the great court shone moist and dark, and in the graveyard east of the church Cynric had broken the turf for Father Ailnoth’s grave.

Cadfael came from the last chapter of the year with a strong feeling that more things than the year were ending. No word had yet been said of who was to succeed to the living of Holy Cross, no word would be said until Ailnoth was safely under the ground, with every proper rite and as much mourning as brotherhood and parish could muster between them. The next day, the birth of another year, would see the burial of a brief tyranny that would soon be gratefully forgotten. God send us, thought Cadfael, a humble soul who thinks himself as fallible as his flock, and labours modestly to keep both from falling. If two hold fast together they stand steadily, but if one holds aloof the other may find his feet betraying him in slippery places. Better a limping prop than a solid rock for ever out of reach of the stretched hand.

Cadfael made for the wicket in the wall, and went through to the shores of the mill-pond. He stood on the edge of the overhanging bank between the pollarded willows, at the spot where he had found Ailnoth’s body, the pool widening and shallowing on his right hand into the reed beds below the highway, and on his left gradually narrowing to the deeper stream that carried the water back to the brook, and shortly thereafter to the Severn. The body had entered the water probably a few yards to the right, and been nudged aside here under the bank by the tail-race. The skull-cap had been found in the reeds, somewhere accessible from the path on the opposite side. A small, light thing, it would go with the current until reeds or branch or debris in the water arrested it. But where would a heavy ebony staff be carried, whether it flew from his hand as he was struck down, or whether it was thrown in after him, from this spot? It would either be drifted aside in the same direction as the body, in which case it might be sunk deep somewhere in the narrowing channel, or else, if it fell on the other side of the main force of the tail-race, edged away like the skull-cap into the far shore. At least there was no harm in circling the shallow bowl and looking for it.

He re-crossed the little bridge over the head-race, circled the mill and went down to the edge of the water. There was no real path here, the gardens of the three small houses came almost to the lip of the bank, where a narrow strip of open grass just allowed of passage. For some way the path was still raised above water level, and somewhat hollowed out beneath, then it dropped gradually into the first growth of reeds, and he walked in tufted grass, with moisture welling round every step he took. Under the miller’s house and garden, under the house where the deaf old woman lived with her pretty slattern of a maidservant, and then he was bearing somewhat away from the final house, round the rim of the broad shallows. Silver of water gleamed through the blanched, pallid green of winter reeds, but though an accumulation of leaves, dead twigs and branches had drifted and lodged here, he saw no sign of an ebony walking-staff. Other cast-offs, however, showed themselves, broken crockery, discarded shards and a holed pot, too far gone to be worth mending.

He went on, round the broad end of the pool, to the trickle of water that came down from the conduit under the highway, stepped over that, and on beneath the gardens of the second trio of abbey houses. Somewhere here the boys had found the cap, but he could not believe he would find the staff here. Either he had missed it, or, if it had been flung well out over the drift of the tail-race, he must look for it on the far side of the channel opposite where the body had been found. The water was still fairly wide there, but what fell beyond its centre might well fetch up on this far side.

He halted to consider, glad he had put on boots to wade about this thawing quagmire. His friend and fellow Welshman, Madog of the Dead Boat, who knew everything there was to be known about water and its properties, given an idea of the thing sought, could have told him exactly where to seek it. But Madog was not here, and time was precious, and he must manage on his own. Ebony was heavy and solid, but still it was wood, and would float. Nor would it float evenly, having a stag’s-horn handle, a tip should break the surface, wherever it lodged, and he did not believe it would be carried so far as the brook and the river. Doggedly he went on, and on this side of the water there was a trodden path, which gradually lifted out of the boggy ground, and carried him dry-shod a little above the surface of the pool.

He drew level with the mill opposite, and was past the sloping strips of garden on this side the water. The stunted willow stump, defiantly sprouting its head of startled hair, matched his progress and held his eye. Just beyond that the body had lain, nuzzling the undercut bank.

Three paces more, and he found what he was seeking. Barely visible through the fringe of rotting ice and the protruding ends of grass, only its tip emerging, Ailnoth’s staff lay at his feet. He took it gingerly by its tapered end, and plucked it out of the water. No mistaking it, once found, there could hardly be two exactly alike. Black and long, with a metal-shod tip and a grooved horn handle, banded to the shaft by a worn silver band embossed in some pattern worn very smooth with age. Whether flying out of the victim’s hand or thrown in afterwards, it must have fallen into the water on this side of the current’s main flow, and so been cast up here into the encroaching border of grass.

Melting snow dripped from the handle and ran down the shaft. Carrying it by the middle of the shaft, Cadfael turned back on his tracks, and circled the reedy shallows back to the mill. He was not yet ready to share his prize with anyone, not even Hugh, until he had had a close look at it, and extracted from it whatever it had to tell him. His hopes were not high, but he could not afford to let any hint slip through his fingers. He hurried through the wicket in the precinct wall, and across the great court, and went to earth in his own workshop. He left the door open for the sake of light, but also lit a wooden spill at the brazier and kindled his little lamp to make a close examination of the trophy.

The hand-long piece of horn, pale brown furrowed with wavy ruts of darker brown, was heavy and polished from years of use, and its slight curve fitted well into the hand. The band of silver was a thumb joint wide, and the half-eroded vine leaves with which it was engraved reflected the yellow light of the lamp from worn highlights as Cadfael carefully dabbed off the moisture and held it close to the flame. The silver had worn thin as gauze, and grown so pliant to every touch that both rims had frayed up into rough edges here and there, sharp as knife blades. Cadfael had scratched a finger in drying the metal before he realised the danger.

This was the formidable weapon with which Father Ailnoth had lashed out at the vexatious urchins who played games against the wall of his house, and no doubt prodded the ribs or thumped the shoulders of the unlucky pupils who were less than perfect in their lessons. Cadfael turned it slowly in his hands in the close light of the lamp, and shook his head over the sins of the virtuous. It was while he was so turning it that his eye was caught by the brief, passing gleam of a drop of moisture, spinning past an inch or more from the rim of silver. Hastily he checked, and turned the staff counterwise, and the bead of brightness reappeared. A single minute drop, clinging not to the metal, but to a fine thread held by the metal, something that appeared and vanished in a silvery curve. He uncoiled on his finger-end a long, greying hair, drawing it forth until it resisted, caught in a sharp edge of silver. Not one hair only, for now a second was partly drawn forth with it, and a third made a small, tight ring, stuck fast in the same tiny nick.

It took him some little time to detach them all from the notch in the lower rim of the band, five of them in all, as well as a few tangled ends. The five were all of fine hair, some brown, some greying to silver, and long, too long for any tonsure, too long for a man, unless he wore his hair neglected and untrimmed. If there had ever been any further mark, of blood, or grazed skin, or thread from a cloth, the water had soaked it away, but these hairs, caught fast in the worn metal, had held their place, to give up their testimony at last.

Cadfael ran a careful hand up the shaft of the staff, and felt the needle-stabs of three or four rough points in the silver. In the deepest of these five precious hairs had been dragged by violence from a head. A woman’s head!

Diota opened the door to him, and on recognising her visitor seemed to hesitate whether to open it wider and step aside to let him in, or hold her ground and discourage any lengthy conversation by keeping him on the doorstep. Her face was guarded and still, and her greeting resigned rather than welcoming. But the hesitation was only momentary. Submissively she stepped back into the room, and Cadfael followed her within and closed the door upon the world. It was early afternoon, the light as good as it would be this day, and the fire in the clay hearth bright and clear, almost without smoke.

“Mistress Hammet,” said Cadfael, with no more than a yard of dim warm air between their faces, “I must talk with you, and what I have to say concerns also the welfare of Ninian Bachiler, whom I know you value. I am in his confidence, if that helps me to yours. Now sit, and listen to me, and believe in my goodwill, as you have nothing on your conscience but the heart’s affection. Which God saw clearly, before ever I held a key to it.”

She turned from him abruptly, but with a suggestion rather of balance and resolution than shock and dread, and sat down on the bench where Sanan had been sitting on his former visit. She sat erect, drawn up with elbows tight at her sides and feet firmly planted.

“Do you know where he is?” she asked in a low voice.

“I do not, though he made to tell me. Rest easy, I talked with him only last night, I know he is well. What I have to say has to do with you, and with what happened on the eve of the Nativity, when Father Ailnoth died, and you… had a fall on the ice.”

She was already certain that he had knowledge she had hoped to keep from the light, but she did not know what it was. She kept silence, her eyes lifted steadily to his face, and left it to him to continue.

“A fall—yes! You won’t have forgotten. You fell on the icy road and struck your head on the doorstone. I dressed the wound then, I saw it again yesterday, and it has healed over, but it still shows the bruise, and the scar where the skin was broken. Now hear what I have found this morning, in the mill-pond. Father Ailnoth’s staff, drifted across to the far shore, and caught in the worn silver band, where the thin edges have turned, and are rough and sharp, five long hairs, the like of yours. Yours I saw closely, when I bathed your wound, I know there were broken ends there. I have the means to match them now.”

She had sunk her head into her hands, the long, work-worn fingers clutched cheek and temple hard.

“Why should you hide your face?” he said temperately. “That was not your sin.”

In a little while she raised a tearless face, blanched and wary, and peered at him steadily between her supporting hands. “I was here,” she said slowly, “when the nobleman came. I knew him again, I knew why he was here. Why else should he come?”

“Why, indeed! And when he was gone, the priest turned upon you. Reviled you, perhaps cursed you, for an accomplice in treason, for a liar and deceiver… We have learned to know him well enough to know that he would not be merciful, nor listen to excuse or pleading. Did he threaten you? Tell you how he would crush your nurseling first, and discard you with ignominy afterwards?”

Her back stiffened. She said with dignity: “I nursed my lamb at this breast after my own child was born dead. He had a sickly mother, poor sweet lady. When he came to me, it was as if a son of my own had come home in need. Do you think I cared what he—my master—might do against me?”

“No, I believe you,” said Cadfael. “Your thought was all of Ninian when you went out after Father Ailnoth that night, to try to turn him from his purpose of challenge and betrayal. For you did follow him, did you not? You must have followed him. How else have I teased your hairs out of the worn band of his staff? You followed and pleaded with him, and he struck you. Clubbed his staff and struck out at your head.”

“I clung to him,” she said, with stony calm now, “fell on my knees in the frosty grass there by the mill, and clung to the skirts of his gown to hold him, and would not let go. I prayed him, I pleaded, I begged him for mercy, but he had none. Yes, he struck me. He could not endure to be so held and crossed, it enraged him, he might well have killed me. Or so I dreaded then. I tried to fend off his blows, but I knew he would strike again if he could not rid himself of me. So I loosed hold and got to my feet, God knows how, and ran from him. And that was the last I ever saw of him living.”

“And you neither saw nor heard any other creature there? You left him whole, and alone?”

“I tell you truth,” she said, shaking her head, “I neither heard nor saw any other soul, not even when I reached the Foregate. But neither my eyes nor my ears were clear, my head so rang, and I was in such sick despair. The first I was truly aware of was blood running down my forehead, and then I was in this house, crouched on the floor by the hearth, and shivering with the cold of fear, with no notion how I got here. I ran like an animal to its den, and that was all I knew. Only I am sure I met no one on the way, because if I had I should have had to master myself, walk like a woman in her senses, even give a greeting. And when you have to, you can. No, I know nothing more after I fled from him. All night I waited in fear of his return, knowing he would not spare me, and dreading he had already done his worst against Ninian. I was sure then that we were both lost—that everything was lost.”

“But he did not come,” said Cadfael.

“No, he did not come. I bathed my head, and stanched the blood, and waited without hope, but he never came. It was no help to me. Fear of him turned about into fear for him, for what could he be doing, out in the frost all night long? Even if he had gone up to the castle and called out the guard there, still it could not have kept him so long. But he didn’t come. Think for yourself what manner of night I spent, sleepless in his house, waiting.”

“There was also, perhaps worst of all,” said Cadfael gently, “your fear that he had indeed met with Ninian at the mill after you fled, and come to grief at Ninian’s hands.”

She said, “Yes,” in a dry whisper, and shivered. “It could have been so. A boy of such spirit, challenged, accused, perhaps attacked… It could have been so. Thanks be to God, it was not so!”

“And in the morning? You could not leave it longer or leave it to others to raise an alarm. So you came to the church.”

“And told half a story,” she said with a brief, twisted smile, like a contortion of pain. “What else could I do?”

“And while we went searching for the priest, Ninian stayed with you, and told you, doubtless, how he had spent the night, knowing nothing at all of what had happened after he left the mill. As doubtless you told him the rest of your story. But neither of you could shed light on the man’s death.”

“That is true,” said Diota, “I swear it. Neither then nor now. And now what do you intend for me?”

“Why, simply that you should do what Abbot Radulfus charged you, continue here and keep this house in readiness for another priest, and trust his word that you shall not be abandoned, since the church brought you here. I must be free to make use of what I know, but it shall be done with as little harm to you as possible, and only when I have understood more than now I understand. I wish you could have helped me one more step on the road, but never mind, truth is there to be found, and there must be a way to it. There were three people, besides Ailnoth, went to the mill that night,” said Cadfael, pausing at the door. “Ninian was the first, you were the second. I wonder—I wonder!—who was the third?”