The Sanctuary Sparrow

Chapter Eleven

Susanna came to the table as the subdued household assembled next morning, with the keys at her girdle, and with deliberation unfastened the fine chain that held them, and laid them before Margery.

‘These are now yours, sister, as you wished. From today the management of this house belongs to you, and I will not meddle.’

She was pale and heavy-eyed from a sleepless night, though none of them were in much better case. They would all be glad to make an early night of it as soon as the day’s light failed, to make up for lost rest.

‘I’ll come round kitchen and store with you this morning, and show you what you have in hand, and the linen, and everything I’m handing over to you. And I wish you well,’ she said.

Margery was almost out of countenance at such magnanimity, and took pains to be conciliatory as she was conducted remorselessly round her new domain.

‘And now,’ said Susanna, shaking off that duty briskly from her shoulders, ‘I must go and bring Martin Bellecote to see about her coffin, and father will be off to visit the priest at Saint Mary’s. But then - you’ll hold me excused - I should like to get a little sleep, and so must the girl there, for neither of us has closed an eye.’

“I’ll manage well enough alone,’ said Margery, ‘and take care not to disturb you in that chamber for today. If I may take out what’s needed for the dinner now, then you can get your rest.’ She was torn between humility and exultation. Having death in the house was no pleasure, but the gloom would lie heavy for only a few days, and then she was rid of all barriers to her own plans, free of the old, censorious eyes watching and disparaging her best efforts, free of this ageing virgin, who would surely absent herself from all participation in the running of the house hereafter, and mistress of a tamed husband who would dance henceforth to her piping.

Brother Cadfael spent the early part of that afternoon in the herb-garden, and having seen everything left in order there, went out to view the work along the Gaye. The weather continued sunny and warm, and the urchins of the town and the Foregate, born and bred by the water and swimmers almost before they could walk, were in and out of the shallows, and the bolder and stronger among them even venturing across where the Severn ran smoothly. The spring spate from the mountains was over now, the river showed a bland face, but these water-children knew its tricks, and seldom trusted it too far.

Cadfael walked through the flowering orchard, very uneasy in his mind after the night’s alarms, and continued downstream until he stood somewhere opposite the gardens of the burgages along the approach to the castle. Halfway up the slope the tall stone barrier of the town wall crossed, its crest crumbled into disrepair in places, not yet restored after the rigours of the siege two years ago. Within his vision it was pierced by two narrow, arched doorways, easily barred in dangerous times. One of the two must be in the Aurifaber grounds, but he could not be sure which. Below the wall the greensward shone fresh and vivid, and the trees were in pale young leaf and snowy flower. The alders leaned over the shallows lissome and rosy with catkins. Willow withies shone gold and silver with the fur-soft flowers. So sweet and hopeful a time to be threatening a poor young man with hanging or bludgeoning a single household with loss and death.

The boys of the Foregate and the boys of the town were rivals by tradition, earring into casual warfare the strong local feeling of their sires. Their water-games sometimes became rough, though seldom dangerous, and if one rash spirit overstepped the mark, there was usually an older and wiser ally close by, to clout him off and haul his victim to safety. There was some horse-play going on in the shallows opposite as Cadfael watched. An imp of the Foregate had ventured the crossing, plunged into a frolic of town children before they were aware, and ducked one of them spluttering below the surface. The whole incensed rout closed on him and pursued him some way downstream, until he splashed ashore up a slope of grass to escape them, falling flat in the shallows in his haste, and clawing and scrambling clear in a flurry of spray. From a smooth greensward where he certainly had no right to be, he capered and crowed at them as they drew off and abandoned the chase.

It seemed that he had fished something up with him out of the shallow water and gravel under the bushes. He sat down and scrubbed at it in his palm, intent and curious. He was still busy with it when another boy hardly older than himself came naked out of the orchard above, dropping his shirt into the grass, and trotting down towards the water. He saw the intruder, and checked at gaze, staring.

The distance was not so great but Cadfael knew him, and knew, in consequence, at whose extended burgage he was looking. Thirteen years old, well-grown and personable; Baldwin Peche’s simpleton boy, Griffin, let loose from his labours for an hour to run down through the wicket in the wall, and swim in the river like other boys.

Griffin had seen, far better than Cadfael across the river could hope to see, whatever manner of trophy the impudent invader from the Foregate had discovered in the shallows. He let out an indignant cry, and came running down the grass to snatch at the cupped hand. Something dropped, briefly glinting, into the turf, and Griffin fell upon it like a hawk swooping and caught it up jealously. The other boy, startled, leaped to his feet and made to grab at it in his turn, but gave back before a taller challenger. He was not greatly disturbed at losing his toy. There was some exchange, light-hearted on his side, slow and sober on Griffin’s. The two youthful voices floated light, excited sounds across the water. The Foregate urchin shrilled some parting insult, dancing backwards towards the river, jumped in with a deliberate splash, and struck out for his home waters, sudden and silvery as a trout.

Cadfael moved alertly to where the child must come ashore, but kept one eye on the slope opposite also, and saw how Griffin, instead of plunging in after his repulsed rival, went back to lay his trophy carefully in the folds of the shirt he had discarded by the bushes. Then he slid down the bank and waded out into the water, and lay facedown upon the current in so expert and easy a fashion that it was plain he had been a swimmer from infancy. He was rolling and playing in the eddies when the other boy hauled himself ashore into the grass of Cadfael’s bank, shedding water and glowing from his play, and began to caper and clap his arms about his slender body in the sunny air. Grown men would hardly be trying that water for a month or so yet, but the young have energy enough to keep them warm, and as old men tend to say tolerantly, where there’s no sense there’s no feeling.

‘Well, troutling,” said Cadfael, knowing this imp as soon as he drew close, ‘what was that you fished out of the mud over yonder? I saw you take to the land. Not many yards ahead of the vengeance, either! You picked the wrong haven.’

The boy had aimed expertly for the place where he had left his clothes. He darted for his cotte, and slung it round his nakedness, grinning. ‘I’m not afeared of all the town hobbledehoys. Nor of that big booby of the locksmith’s, neither, but he’s welcome to his bit of trumpery. Knew it for his master’s, he said! Just a little round piece, with a man’s head on it with a beard and a pointed hat. Nothing to fall out over.’

‘Besides that Griffin is bigger than you,’ said Cadfael innocently.

The imp made a scornful face, and having scrubbed his feet and ankles through the soft grass, and slapped his thighs dry, set to work to wriggle into his hose. ‘But slow, and hasn’t all his wits. What was the thing doing drifted under the gravel in the water there, if there was any good in it? He can have it for me!’

And he was off at an energetic run to rejoin his friends, leaving Cadfael very thoughtful. A coin silted into the gravel under the bank there, where the river made a shallow cove, and clawed up in the fist of a scrambling urchin who happened to sprawl on his face there in evading pursuit. Nothing so very strange in that. All manner of things might turn up in the waters of Severn, queerer things than a lost coin. All that made it notable was that this one should turn up in that particular place. Too many cobweb threads were tangling around the Aurifaber burgage, nothing that occurred there could any longer be taken as ordinary or happening by chance. And what to make of all these unrelated strands was more than Cadfael could yet see.

He went back to his seedlings, which at least were innocent of any mystery, and worked out the rest of the afternoon until it drew near the time to return for Vespers; but there was still a good half-hour in hand when he was hailed from the river, and looked round to see Madog rowing upstream, and crossing the main current to come to shore where Cadfael was standing. He had abandoned his coracle for a light skiff, quite capable, as Cadfael reflected with a sudden inspiration, of ferrying an inquisitive brother across to take a look for himself at that placid inlet where the boy had dredged up the coin of which he thought so poorly.

Madog brought his boat alongside, and held it by an oar dug into the soft turf of the bank. ‘Well, Brother Cadfael, I hear the old dame’s gone, then. Trouble broods round that house. They tell me you were there to see her set out.’

Cadfael owned it. ‘After fourscore years I wonder if death should be accounted troublous. But yes, she’s gone. Before midnight she left them.’ Whether with a blessing or a curse, or only a grim assertion of her dominance over them and defence of them, loved or unloved, was something he had been debating in his own mind. For she could have spoken, but had said only what she thought fit to say, nothing to the point. The disputes of the day, surely relevant, she had put clean away. They were her people. Whatever needed judgement and penance among them was her business, no concern of the world outside. And yet those few enigmatic words she had deliberately let him hear. Him, her opponent, physician and - was friend too strong a word? To her priest she had responded only with the suggested movements of her eyelids saying yea and nay, confessing to frailties, agreeing to penitence, desiring absolution. But no words.

‘Left them at odds,’ said Madog shrewdly, his seamed oak face breaking into a wry smile. ‘When have they been anything else? Avarice is a destroying thing, Cadfael, and she bred them all in her own shape, all get and precious little give.’

‘I bred them all,’ she had said, as though she admitted a guilt to which her eyelids had said neither yea nor nay for the priest.

‘Madog,’ said Cadfael, ‘row me over to the bank under their garden, and as we go I’ll tell you why. They hold the strip outside the wall down to the waterside. I’d be glad to have a look there.’

‘Willingly!’ Madog drew the skiff close. ‘For I’ve been up and down this river from the water-gate, where Peche kept his boat, trying to find any man who can give me word of seeing it or him after the morning of last Monday, and never a glimpse anywhere. And I doubt Hugh Beringar has done better enquiring in the town after every fellow who knew the locksmith, and every tavern he ever entered. Come inboard, then, and sit yourself down steady, she rides a bit deeper and clumsier with two aboard.’

Cadfael slid down the overhanging slope of grass, stepped nimbly upon the thwart, and sat. Madog thrust off and turned into the current. ‘Tell, then! What is there over there to draw you?’

Cadfael told him what he had witnessed, and in the telling it did not seem much. But Madog listened attentively enough, one eye on the surface eddies of the river, running bland and playful now, the other, as it seemed, on some inward vision of the Aurifaber household from old matriarch to new bride.

‘So that’s what’s caught your fancy! Well, whatever it may mean, here’s the place. That Foregate lad left his marks, look where he hauled his toes up after him, and the turf so moist and tender.’

A quiet and almost private place it was, once the skiff was drawn in until its shallow draught gravelled. A little inlet where the water lay placid, clean speckled gravel under it, and even in that clear bottom the boy’s clutching hands had left small indentations. Out of one of those hollows - the right hand, Cadfael recalled - the small coin had come, and he had brought it ashore with him to examine at leisure. Withies of both willow and alder grew out from the very edge of the water on either side of the plane of grass which opened out above into a broad green slope, steep enough to drain readily, smooth enough to provide an airy cushion for bleaching linen. Only from across the river could this ground be viewed, on this town shore it was screened both ways by the bushes. Clean, washed, white pebbles, some of considerable size, had been piled inshore of the bushes for weighting down the linens spread here to dry on washing days when the weather was favourable. Cadfael eyed them and noted the one larger stone, certainly fallen from the town wall, which had not their water-smoothed polish, but showed sharp corners and clots of mortar still adhering. Left here as it had rolled from the crest, perhaps used sometimes for tying up boats in the shallows.

‘D’you see ought of use to you?’ asked Madog, holding his skiff motionless with an oar braced into the gravel. The boy Griffin had long since enjoyed his bathe, dried and clothed himself, and carried away his reclaimed coin to the locksmith’s shop where John Boneth now presided. He had known John for a long time as second only to his master; for him John was now his master in succession.

‘All too much!’ said Cadfael.

There were the boy’s traces, clutching hands under the clear water, scrabbling toes above in the grass. Down here he had found his trophy, above he had sat to burnish and examine it, and had it snatched from him by Griffin. Who knew it as his master’s, and was honest as only the simple can be. Here all round the boat the withies crowded, there above in the sward lay the pile of heavy pebbles and the fallen stone. Here swaying alongside danced the little rafts of water-crowfoot, under the leaning alders. And most ominous of all, here in the sloping grass verge, within reach of his hand, not one, but three small heads of reddish purple blossoms stood up bravely in the grass, the fox-stones for which they had hunted in vain downstream.

The piled pebbles and the one rough stone meant nothing as yet to Madog, but the little spires of purple blossoms certainly held his eyes. He looked from them to Cadfael’s face, and back to the sparkling shallow where a man could not well drown, if he was in his senses.

‘Is this the place?’

The fragile, shivering white rafts of crowfoot danced under the alders, delicately anchored. The little grooves left by the boy’s fingers very gradually shifted and filled, the motes of sand and gravel sliding down in the quiver of water to fill them. ‘Here at the foot of their own land?’ said Madog, shaking his head. ‘Is it certain? I’ve found no other place where this third witness joins the other two.’

‘Under the certainty of Heaven,’ said Cadfael soberly, ‘nothing is ever quite certain, but this is as near as a man can aim. Had he stolen and been found out? Or had he found out too much about the one who had stolen, and was fool enough to let it be known what he knew? God sort all! Ferry me back now, Madog, I must hurry back to Vespers.’

Madog took him, unquestioning, except that he kept his deep-browed and sharp-sighted old eyes fixed on Cadfael’s face all the way across to the Gaye.

‘You’re going now to render account to Hugh Beringar at the castle?’ asked Cadfael.

‘At his own house, rather. Though I doubt if he’ll be there yet to expect me.’

‘Tell him all that we have seen there,’ said Cadfael very earnestly. ‘Let him look for himself, and make what he can of it. Tell him of the coin - for so I am sure it was - that was dredged up out of the cove there, and how Griffin claimed it for his master’s property. Let Hugh question him on that.’

‘I’ll tell him all,’ said Madog, ‘and more than I understand.’

‘Or I, either, as yet. But ask him, if his time serves for it, to come down and speak with me, when he has made what he may of all this coil. For I shall be worrying from this moment at the same tangle and may, who knows? - God aiding! - may arrive at some understanding before night.’

Hugh came late home from his dogged enquiries round the town which had brought him no new knowledge, unless their cumulative effect turned probability into certainty, and it could now be called knowledge that no one, in his familiar haunts or out of them, had set eyes on Baldwin Peche since Monday noon. News of Dame Juliana’s death added nothing, she being so old, and yet there was always the uncomfortable feeling that misfortune could not of itself have concentrated such a volley of malice against one household. What Madog had to tell him powerfully augmented this pervading unease.

‘There within call of his own shop? Is it possible? And all present, the alders, the crowfoot, the purple flower... Everything comes back, everything comes home, to that burgage. Begin wherever we may, we end there.’

‘That is truth,’ said Madog. ‘And Brother Cadfael is cudgelling his wits over the same tangle, and would be glad to consider it along with you, my lord, if you can spare him the needed hour tonight, however late.’

‘I’ll do that thankfully,’ said Hugh, ‘for God knows it wants more cunning that I have alone, and sharper vision, to see through this murk. Do you go home and get your rest, Madog, for you’ve done well by us. And I’ll go knock up Peche’s lad, and have out of him whatever he can tell us about this coin he claims for his master’s.’

By this same hour Brother Cadfael had eased his own mind by imparting, after supper, all that he had discovered to Abbot Radulfus, who received it with thoughtful gravity.

‘And you have sent word already to Hugh Beringar? You think he may wish to take counsel with you further in the matter?’ He was well aware that there was a particular understanding between them, originating in events before he himself took office at Shrewsbury. ‘You may take whatever time you need if he comes tonight. Certainly this affair must be concluded as soon as possible, and it does increasingly appear that our guest in sanctuary may have very little to do with any of these offences. He is within here, but the evil continues without. If he is innocent of all, in justice that must be shown to the world.’

Cadfael left the abbot’s lodging with time still for hard thought, and the twilight just falling. He went faithfully to Compline and then, turning his back on the dortoir, went out to the porch where Liliwin spread his blankets and made his bed. The young man was still wide awake, sitting with his knees drawn up and his back braced comfortably into the corner of the stone bench, a small, hunched shadow in the darkness, singing over to himself the air of a song he was making and had not yet completed to his satisfaction. He broke off when Cadfael appeared, and made room beside him on his blankets.

‘A good tune, that,’ said Cadfael, settling himself with a sigh. ‘Yours? You’d best keep it to yourself, or Anselm will be stealing it for the ground of a Mass.’

‘It is not ready yet,’ said Liliwin. ‘There lacks a proper soft fall for the ending. It is a love song for Rannilt.’ He turned his head to look his companion earnestly in the eyes. ‘I do love her. I’ll brave it out here and hang rather than go elsewhere without her.’

‘She would hardly be grateful to you for that,’ said Cadfael. ‘But God willing you shall not have to make any such choice.’ The boy himself, though he still went in suspense and some fear, was well aware that every day now cast further doubt upon the case against him. ‘Things move there without, if in impenetrable ways. To tell truth, the law is coming round very sensibly to my opinion of you.’

‘Well, maybe... But what if they found that I did leave here that night? They wouldn’t believe my story as you did... ” He cast a doubtful glance at Brother Cadfael, and saw something in the bland stare that met him that caused him to demand in alarm: ‘You haven’t told the sheriff’s deputy? You promised... for Rannilt’s sake...‘

‘Never fret, Rannilt’s good name is as safe with Hugh Beringar as with me. He has not even called on her as a witness for you, nor will not unless the affair goes to the length of trial. Tell him? Well, so I did, but only after he had made it plain he guessed the half. His nose for a reluctant liar is at least as keen as mine, he never believed that “No” he wrung out of you. So the rest of it he wrung out of me. He found you more convincing telling truth than lying. And then there is always Rannilt, if ever you need her witness, and the watchmen who saw you pass in and out. No need to trouble too much about your doings that night. I wish I knew as much about everyone else’s.’ He pondered, conscious of Liliwin’s intent and trusting regard. ‘There’s nothing more you’ve recalled? The smallest detail concerning that house may be of help.’

Hesitantly Liliwin cast his mind back, and told over again the brief story of his connection with the goldsmith’s house. The host at a tavern where he had played and sung for his supper had told him of the marriage to be celebrated next day, he had gone there hopefully, and been engaged for the occasion, he had done his best to earn his money and been cast out, and hunted as a thief and murderer here into the church. All of it known already.

‘How much of that burgage did you ever see? For you went first in daylight.’

‘I went to the shop and they sent me in through the passage to the hall door, to the women. It was they who hired me, the old woman and the young one.’

‘And in the evening?’

‘Why, as soon as I came there they sent me to eat with Rannilt in the kitchen, and I was there with her until they sent out for me to come and play and sing while they feasted, and afterwards I played for dancing, and did my acrobatics, and juggled - and you know how it ended.’

‘So you never saw more than the passage and the yard. You never were down the length of the garden, or through the town wall there to the waterside?’

Liliwin shook his head firmly. ‘I didn’t even know it went beyond the wall until the day Rannilt came here. I could see as far as the wall when I went through to the hall in the morning, but I thought it ended there. It was Rannilt told me the drying-ground was beyond there. It was their washing day, you see, she’d done all the scrubbing and rinsing, and had it all ready to go out by mid-morning. But usually she has the dinner to prepare as well, and watches the weather, and fetches the clothes in before evening. But that day Mistress Susanna had said she would see to everything, and let Rannilt come here to visit me. That was truly kind!’

Strange how sitting here listening to the boy’s recollections brought up clearly the picture of that drying-ground he had never seen but through Rannilt’s eyes, the slope of grass, the pebbles for anchors, the alders screening the riverside, the town wall shielding the sward from the north and leaving it open to the south

‘And I remember she said Mistress Susanna had her shoes and the hems of her skirts wet when she came in from putting out the washing and found Rannilt crying. But still she took note first for my girl being so sad... Never mind my wet feet, she said, what of your wet eyes? Rannilt told me so!’

All ready to go out by mid-morning... As Baldwin Peche had gone out in mid-morning for the last time. The fish rising... Cadfael, away pursuing his own thoughts, suddenly baulked, realising, belatedly, what he had heard.

‘What was that you said? She had her feet and skirts wet?’

‘The river was a little high then,’ explained Liliwin, undisturbed. ‘She’d slipped on the smooth grass into the shallows. Hanging out a shirt on the alders

And she came in calmly, and sent the maidservant away so that none other but herself should go to bring in the linen. What other reason would any have for passing through the wicket in the wall? And only yesterday Rannilt had been sitting in the doorway to have the light on her work, mending a rent in the skirt of a gown. And the brown at the hem had been mottled and faded, leaving a tide-mark of dark colour round the pallor

‘Brother Cadfael,’ called the porter softly from the archway into the cloister, ‘Hugh Beringar is here for you. He said you would be expecting him.’

‘I am expecting him,’ said Cadfael, recalling himself with an effort from the Aurifaber hall. ‘Bid him come through here. I think we have word for each other.’

It was not quite dark, the sky being so clear, and Hugh knew his way everywhere within these walls. He came briskly, made no objection to Liliwin’s presence, and sat down at once in the porch to show the silver coin in his palm.

‘I’ve already viewed it in a better light. It’s a silver penny of the sainted Edward, king before the Normans came, a beautiful piece minted in this town. The moneyer was one Godesbrond, there are a few of his pieces to be found, but few indeed in the town where they were struck. Aurifaber’s inventory listed three such. And this was stuck between the boards of the bucket in their well the morning after the theft. A scrap of coarse blue cloth, the lad says, was caught in with it, but he thought nothing of that. But it seems to me that whoever emptied Aurifaber’s coffer tipped all into a blue cloth bag and dropped it into that bucket - the work of a mere few moments - to be retrieved later at leisure in the dark hours, before the earliest riser went to draw water.’

‘And whoever hoisted it out again,’ said Cadfael, ‘snagged a corner of the bag on a splinter... a small tear, just enough to let through one of the smaller coins. It could be so. And Peche’s boy had found this?’

‘He was the earliest riser. He went to draw water and lit on this. He took it to his master, and was rewarded, and told not to let it out to any other ears that the locksmith possessed any such. A great value, Peche said, he set on this.’

So he well might, if it meant to him that someone there in that very household must be the thief, and could be milked of the half of his gains in return for silence. The fish were rising! Now Cadfael began gradually to comprehend all that had happened. He forgot the young man hugging his knees and stretching his amazed ears in the corner of the bench close to them. Hugh had hardly given the boy a thought, so silent and so still he was.

‘I think,’ said Cadfael, picking his way without too much haste, for there might yet be pitfalls, ‘that when he saw this he knew, or could divine with very fair certainty, which of that household must be the robber. He foresaw good pickings. What would he ask? A half-share in the booty? But it would not have made any difference had he been far more modest than that, for the one he approached had the force and the passion and the ruthlessness to act at once and waste no time on parley. Listen to me, Hugh, and remember that night. They sought Master Walter, found him stunned in his shop, and carried him up to his bed. And then someone - no one seems certain who - cried that it must be the jongleur who had done this, and sent the whole mob haring out after him, as we here witnessed. Who, then, was left there to tend the stricken man, and the old woman threatened by her fit?’

‘The women,’ said Hugh.

‘The women. Of whom the bride was left to care for the victims upstairs in their own chambers. It was Susanna who ran for the physician. Very well, so she did. But did she run for him at once, or take but a few moments to run first to the well and place what she found there in safer hiding?’

In a brief and awed silence they sat staring at each other.

‘Is it possible?’ said Hugh marvelling. ‘His daughter?’

‘Among humankind all things are possible. Consider! This locksmith had the key to the mystery put into his hands. If he had been honest he would have gone straight to Walter or to Daniel and showed it, and told what he knew. He did not, for he was not honest. He meant to gain by what he had found out. If he did not approach the one he believed guilty until the Monday, it was because he had no chance until then of doing so in private. He was as able as we to remember how all the menfolk had gone baying after Liliwin here, and to reason that it was a woman who reclaimed the treasury from the well and put it safely away until all the hue and cry should be over, and a stray lad, with luck, hanged for the deed. And who kept the keys of the house and had the best command over all its hiding-places? He chose Susanna. And on Monday his time came, when she took her basket of linen and went down through the wall to spread it out in the drying-ground. About mid-morning Baldwin Peche was last seen in his shop, and went off with some remark about the fish rising. No one saw him, living, ever again.’

Liliwin, hitherto mute in his corner, leaned forward with a soft, protesting cry: ‘You can’t mean it! She... But she was the only one, the only one who showed Rannilt some kindness. She let her come to me for her comfort... She did not truly believe that I

‘ He saw in time where he was headed, and halted with a great groan.

‘She had good reason to know that you never harmed her father’s person or stole his goods. The best! And a sound reason, also, for sending Rannilt away out of the house so that she herself, and none but she, should fetch in the washing, or have any other occasion to go down to the riverside, where she had left the extortioner dead.’

‘I cannot believe,’ whispered Liliwin, shaking, ‘that she could, even if she would, do such a thing. A woman... kill?’

‘You underrate Susanna,’ said Cadfael grimly. ‘So did all her kin. And women have killed, many a time.’

‘Granted, then, that he followed her down to the river,’ said Hugh. ‘You had better go on. Tell us what you believe happened there, and how this thing came about.’

‘I think he came down after her to the brink, showed her the coin, and demanded a share in her gains to pay for his silence. I think he, of all people, had worst underestimated her. A mere woman! He expected prevarication, lies, delay, perhaps pleading, some labour to convince her he knew what he knew and meant what he said. He had greatly mistaken her. He had not bargained for a woman who could accept danger instantly, with no outcry, make up her mind, and act, stamping out the threat as soon as it arose. I think she spoke him fair while she went on laying out the washing, and as he stood by the water’s edge with the coin in his hand she so arranged that she passed behind him with a stone in her hand, reaching to a corner of linen, and struck him down.’

‘Go on,’ said Hugh, ‘you cannot leave it there. There was more done than that.’

‘I think you already know. Whether the blow quite stunned him or not, it flung him facedown into the shallow water. I think she did not wait to give him time to recover his wits and try to rise, but went on acting instantly. Her skirt and shoes were wet! I have only just learned it. And remember the bruises on his back. I think she stepped upon him in the water, almost as he fell, and held him down until he was dead.’

Hugh sat silent. It was Liliwin who uttered a small whimper of horror at hearing it, and shook as if the night had turned cold.

‘And then considered calmly the possibility that the river might find force enough to float him away, and took steps to pin him down where he was, under the alders, under the water, until he could be conveyed away by night, to be discovered elsewhere, a drowned man. Do you recall the pitted bruise on his shoulders? There is a jagged stone fallen from the town wall, beside the pebbles there. As for the coin, it was under his body, she did not try to recover it.’

Hugh drew deep breath. ‘It could be so! But it was not she who followed her father to his shop and struck him down, for she is one person who is vouched for fully, all that time that he was gone, until she went to look for him. And then she cried out at once for help. There was no time at all when she could have struck the blow or made off with the booty. She may have removed it from the well later, she certainly did not put it there. You are arguing, I take it, that there were two who planned this between them?’

‘Two are implied. One to strike and steal and hide, the other to retrieve the goods by night and secrete them in a safer place. One to destroy the extortioner as soon as he declared himself, and the other to take away the body and dispose of it by night. Yes, surely two.’

‘Then who is the second? Certainly brother and sister who suffered from such parsimonious elders might compound together to get their hands on what was withheld from them, and certainly Daniel was abroad that night and furtive about it. And for all his tale of a married woman’s bed rings likely enough, I have still had an eye on him. Even shallow men can learn to lie.’

‘I have not forgotten Daniel. But you may, for of all men living, her brother is the least likely to have had any part in Susanna’s plans.’ Cadfael was recalling, as in a storm-flash of illumination, small, unremarkable, unremarked things, Rannilt repeating the words she had overheard, Juliana’s improbable praise of her granddaughter’s excellent housewifery, in preserving her oatmeal crock half-full past Easter, and Susanna’s bitter taunt: ‘Had you still a place prepared for me? A nunnery, perhaps?’ And then the old woman shrieked and fell down

No, wait! There was more to it, he saw it now. The old woman at the head of the stairs, the only light that of the little lamp she carried, a falling light, pricking Susanna’s form and features into sharpest light and shade, every curve or hollow magnified... Yes! She saw what she saw, she shrieked and clutched her breast, and then fell, letting fall the revealing lamp from her hand. Somehow she had known the half of it, and come forth by night to confront her only, her best antagonist. She, too, must have seen the torn skirt, the stained hem, and made her own connections. And she had still, she had said, a use for those concealed keys of hers before she surrendered them at last. Yes, and the last words she ever spoke: ‘For all that, I should have liked to hold my great-grandchild... ‘ Words better understood now than when first he had heard them.

‘No, now I see! Nothing now could have held her back.

The man who compounded with her to steal was no kinsman, nor one they would ever have admitted as kin. They made their plans perforce, those two, to vanish from here together at the first favourable time, and make a life somewhere far away from this town. Her father grudged her a dowry, she has taken it for her herself. Whatever his name may be, this man, we know now what he is. He is her lover. More, he is the man who has got her with child.’