by Ellis Peters
‘So you’ve lost your best suspect,’ said Cadfael thoughtfully.
‘The only one I had. And not sorry, so far as the fool himself is concerned, that he should turn out to be blameless. Well, short of murder, at least,’ Hugh corrected himself. ‘But contenders were thin on the ground from the start. And what follows now?’
‘What follows,’ said Cadfael, ‘is that I tell you what I’ve come to tell you, for with even Conan removed from the field it becomes more substantial even than I thought. And then, if you agree, we might drain Conan dry of everything he knows, to the last drop, before you turn him loose. I can’t be sure, even, that anyone has so much as mentioned to you the box that Elave brought home for the girl, by way of a dowry? From the old man, before he died in France?’
‘Yes,’ said Hugh wonderingly, ‘it was mentioned. Jevan told me, by way of accounting for Conan’s wanting to get rid of Elave. He liked the daughter, did Conan, in a cool sort of way, but he began to like her much better when she had a dowry to bring with her. So says Jevan. But that’s all I know of it. Why? How does the box have any bearing on the murder?’
‘I have been baffled from the start,’ said Cadfael, ‘by the absence of motive. Revenge, said everyone, pointing the finger at Elave, but when that was blown clear away by young Father Eadmer, what was left? Conan may have been eager to prevent Aldwin from withdrawing his denunciation, but even that was thin enough, and now you tell me that’s gone, too. Who had anything against Aldwin so grievous as to be worth even a clout in a quarrel, let alone murder? It was hard enough to see the poor devil at all, let alone resent him. He had nothing worth coveting, had done no great harm to anyone until now. No wonder suspects were thin on the ground. Yet he stood in someone’s way, or menaced someone, surely, whether he knew it or not, so since his betrayal of Elave was not the cause of his death, I began to look more closely at all the affairs of the household to which both men were attached, however loosely, every detail, especially anything that was new, this outbreak being so sudden and so dire. All was quiet enough until Elave came home. The only thing but himself he brought into that house was Fortunata’s box. And even at first sight it was no ordinary box. So when Fortunata brought it to the abbey, thinking to use the money in it to procure Elave’s release, I asked if we could examine it more closely. And this, Hugh, this is what we found.’
He told it scrupulously, in every detail of the gold and purple, the change in its weight, the possible and disturbing change in its contents. Hugh listened without comment to the end. Then he said slowly: ‘Such a thing, if indeed it did enter that house, might well be enough to tempt any man.’
‘Any who understood its value,’ said Cadfael. ‘Either in money, or for its own rare sake.’
‘And before all, it would have to be a man who had opened the box, and seen what was there. Before it was made known to them all. Do we know whether it was opened at once, when the boy delivered it? Or how soon after?’
‘That,’ said Cadfael, ‘I do not know. But you have one in hold who may know. One who may even know where it was laid by, who went near it, what was said about it, through those few days, as Elave could not know at all, not being there. Why do we not question Conan once more, before you set him free?’
‘Bearing in mind,’ Hugh warned, ‘that this, too, may blow away in the wind. It may all along have been coins within there, but better packed.’
‘English coin, and in such quantity?’ said Cadfael, catching at a thread he had not considered, but finding it frail. ‘At the end of such a journey, and committed to her from France? But if he sent her money at all, it must needs be English money. He could have been holding it in reserve for such a purpose, once he began to be a sick man. No, there’s nothing certain, everything slips through the fingers.’
Hugh rose decisively. ‘Come, let’s go and see what can be wrung out of Master Conan, before I let him slip through mine.’
*
Conan sat in his stone cell, and eyed them doubtfully and slyly from the moment they entered. He had a slit window on the air, a hard but tolerable bed, ample food and no work, and was just getting used to the fact, at first surprising, that no one was interested in using him roughly, but for all that he was uneasy and anxious whenever Hugh appeared. He had told so many lies in his efforts to distance himself from suspicion of the murder that he had difficulty in remembering now exactly what he had said, and was wary of trapping himself in still more tangled coils.
‘Conan, my lad,’ said Hugh, walking in upon him breezily, ‘there’s still a little matter in which you can be of help to me. You know most of what goes on in Girard of Lythwood’s house. You know the box that was brought for Fortunata from France. Answer me some questions about it, and let’s have no more lies this time. Tell me about the box. Who was there when it first came into the house?’
Uneasy at this or any diversion he could not understand, Conan answered warily: ‘There was Jevan, Dame Margaret, Aldwin and me. And Elave! Fortunata wasn’t there, she came in later.’
‘Was the box opened then?’
‘No, the mistress said it should wait until Master Girard came home.’ Chary of words until he understood the drift, Conan added nothing more.
‘So she put it away, did she? And you saw where, did you not? Tell us!’
He was growing ever more uneasy. ‘She put it away in the press, on a high shelf. We all saw it!’
‘And the key, Conan? The key was with it? And were you not curious about it? Did you not want to see what was in it? Didn’t your fingers begin to itch before nightfall?’
‘I never meddled with it!’ cried Conan, alarmed and defensive. ‘It wasn’t me who pried into it. I never went near it.’
So easy it was! Hugh and Cadfael exchanged a brief glance of astonished gratification. Ask the right question, and the road ahead opens before you. They closed in almost fondly on the sweating Conan.
‘Then who was it?’ Hugh demanded.
‘Aldwin! He pried into everything. He never took things,’ said Conan feverishly, desperate to point the bolts of suspicion away from himself at all costs, ‘but he couldn’t bear not knowing. He was always afraid there was something brewing against him. I never touched it, but he did.’
‘And how do you know this, Conan?’ asked Cadfael.
‘He told me, afterwards. But I heard them, down in the hall.’
‘And when was it you heard them – down in the hall?’
‘That same night.’ Conan drew breath, beginning to be somewhat reassured again, since nothing of all this seemed to be pointing in his direction, after all. ‘I went to bed, and left Aldwin down in the kitchen, but I wasn’t asleep. I never heard him come into the hall, but I did hear Jevan suddenly shout down at him from the top of the stairs, “What are you doing there?” and then Aldwin, down below, all in a hurry, said he’d left his penknife in the press, and he’d be needing it in the morning. And Jevan says take it, then, and get to bed, and give over disturbing other people. And Aldwin came up in haste, with his tail between his legs. And I heard Jevan go on down into the hall and cross to the press, and I think he locked it and took the key away, for it was locked next morning. I asked Aldwin later what he’d been up to, and he said he only wanted to have a look inside, and he had the box open, and then had to shut and lock it again in a hurry, and try to hide what he was about, when Jevan shouted at him.’
‘And did he see what was in it?’ asked Cadfael, already foreseeing the answer, and tasting its bitter irony.
‘Not he! He pretended at first he had, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was, and in the end he had to admit he never got a glimpse. He’d barely raised the lid when he had to close it again in a hurry. It got him nothing!’ said Conan, almost with satisfaction, as if he had scored over his fellow in some way by that wasted curiosity.
It got him his death, thought Cadfael, with awful certainty. And all for nothing! He never had time to see what the box held. Perhaps no one had then seen it. Perhaps
it was that prying inquisitiveness that set off another man’s quickening curiosity, fatal to them both.
‘Well, Conan,’ said Hugh, ‘you may take heart and think yourself lucky. There’s a man from the Welsh side of the town can swear to it you were on your way to Girard’s fold well before Vespers, the night Aldwin was killed. You’re clear of blame. You can be off home when you choose, the door’s open.’
*
‘And he did not even see it,’ said Hugh, as they recrossed the outer ward side by side.
‘But there was one who believed he had. And looked for himself,’ said Cadfael, ‘and was lost. Fathoms deep! And in one more day, or two, three at the most, Girard would be home, the box would be opened, what was in it would be known to all, and would be Fortunata’s. Girard is a shrewd merchant, he would get for her the highest sum possible – not that it would approach its worth. But if he did not himself know where best to sell it, he would know where to ask. If it was what I begin to believe, the sum left her in its place would not have bought one leaf.’
‘And only one life stood in the way, to threaten betrayal,’ said Hugh. ‘Or so it seemed! And all for nothing, the poor wretch never did have time to see what should have been there to be seen when the box was opened. Cadfael, my mind misgives me – yesterday, when Anselm examined that box, gold leaf, purple dye and all, Girard and the girl were present? How if one of them proved sharp enough to think as we are thinking? Having gone so far, could a man stop short now, if the same danger threatened his gains all over again?’
It was a new and disturbing thought. Cadfael checked for an instant in midstride, shaken into considering it.
‘I think Girard never gave it much thought. The girl – I would not say! She is deeper than she seems, and she it is who has so much at stake. And she’s young and kind, and sudden undeserved death has never before come so near her. I wonder! Truly I wonder! She did pay close attention, missing nothing, saying little. Hugh, what will you do?’
‘Come!’ said Hugh, making up his mind. ‘You and I will go and visit the Lythwood household. We have pretext enough. They have buried their murdered man this morning, I have released one suspect from their retinue this afternoon, and I am still bent on finding a murderer. No need for one member rather than another to be wary of my probing, as yet, not until I have filled up the score of that day’s movements for him as I took so long to do for Conan. At least we’ll take note here and now of where the girl is, until you or I can talk with her again, and make sure she does nothing to draw danger upon herself.’
*
At about the same time that Hugh and Cadfael set out from the castle, Jevan of Lythwood had occasion to go up to his chamber, to discard and fold away the best cotte he had worn for Aldwin’s funeral, and put on the lighter and easier coat in which he worked. He seldom entered the room without casting a pleased, possessive glance at the chest which held his books, and so he did now. The sunlight, declining from the zenith into the golden, sated hours of late afternoon, came slanting in by the south-facing window, gilded a corner of the lid and just reached the metal plate of the lock. Something gossamer-fine fluttered from the ornate edge, appearing and disappearing as it stirred in an air not quite motionless. Four or five long hairs, dark but bright, showing now and then a brief scintillation of red. But for the light, which just touched them against shadow, they would have been invisible.
Jevan saw them and stood at gaze, his face unchanging. Then he went to take the key from its place, and unlocked the chest and raised the lid. Nothing within was disturbed. Nothing was changed but those few sunlit filaments that stirred like living things, and curled about his fingers when he carefully detached them from the fretted edge in which they were caught.
In thoughtful silence he closed and locked the chest again, and went down into the shuttered shop. The key of his workshop upriver, on the right bank of the Severn well clear of the town, was gone from its hook.
He crossed the yard and looked in at the hall, where Girard was busy over the accounts Aldwin had left in arrears, and Margaret was mending a shirt at the other end of the table.
‘I’m going down to the skins again,’ said Jevan. ‘There’s something I left unfinished.’
Chapter 13
THE WELCOME AT GIRARD’S HOUSE was all the warmer because Conan had arrived home only a quarter of an hour earlier, ebullient with relief and none the worse for his few days’ incarceration, and Girard, a practical man, was disposed to let the dead bury their dead, once the living had seen to it that they got their dues and were seen off decently into a better world. What was left of his establishment seemed now to be clear of all aspersions, and could proceed about its business without interference.
Two members, however, were missing.
‘Fortunata?’ said Margaret in answer to Cadfael’s enquiry. ‘She went out after dinner. She said she was going to the abbey, to try to see Elave again, or at least to find out if anything had happened yet in his case. I daresay you’ll be meeting her on the way down, but if not, you’ll find her there.’
That was a load lifted from Cadfael’s mind, at least. Where better could she be, or safer? ‘Then I’d best be on my way home,’ he said, pleased, ‘or I shall be outstaying my leave.’
‘And I came hoping to pick your brother’s brains,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ve been hearing a great deal about this box of your daughter’s, and I’m curious to see it. I’m told it may have been made to hold a book, at one time. I wondered what Jevan thought of that. He knows everything about the making of books, from the raw skin to the binding. I should like to consult him when he has time to spare. But perhaps I might see the box?’
They were quite happy to tell him what they could. There was no foreboding, no tremor in the house. ‘He’s away to his workshop just now,’ said Girard. ‘He was down there this morning, but he said he’d left something unfinished. He’ll surely be back soon. Come in and wait a while, and he’ll be here. The box? I doubt it’s locked away until he comes. Fortunata gave it to him last night. If it’s meant to hold a book, she says, Uncle Jevan is the man who has books, let me give him the box. And he’s using it for the one he most values, as she wanted. He’ll be pleased to show it to you. It is a very fine thing.’
‘I won’t trouble you now, if he’s not here,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ll look in later, I’m close enough.’
They took their leave together, and Hugh went with Cadfael as far as the head of the Wyle. ‘She gave him the box,’ said Hugh, frowning over a puzzle. ‘What should that mean?’
‘Bait,’ said Cadfael soberly. ‘Now I do believe she has been following the same road my mind goes. But not to prove – rather to disprove if she can. But at all costs needing to know. He is her close and valued kin, but she is not one who can shut her eyes and pretend no wrong has ever been done. Yet still we may both be wrong, she as well as I. Well, at the worst, she is safe enough if she’s at the abbey. I’ll go and find her there. And as for the other one…’
‘The other one,’ said Hugh, ‘leave to me.’
*
Cadfael walked in through the arch of the gatehouse into a scene of purposeful activity. It seemed he had arrived on the heels of an important personage, to whose reception the hierarchies of the house were assembling busily. Brother Porter had come in a flurry of skirts to take one bridle, Brother Jerome was contending with a groom for another one, Prior Robert was approaching from the cloister at his longest stride, Brother Denis hovered, not yet certain whether the newcomer would be housed in the guest hall or with the abbot. A flutter of brothers and novices hung at a respectful distance, ready to run any errands that might arise, and three or four of the schoolboys, sensibly withdrawn out of range of notice and censure, stood frankly staring, all eyes and ears.
And in the middle of this flurry of arrival stood Deacon Serlo, just dismounted from his mule and shaking out the skirts of his gown. A little dusty from the ride, but as rounded and pink-cheeked and wholesome as ever, and decidedly happ
ier now that he had brought his bishop with him, and could leave all decisions to him with a quiet mind.
Bishop Roger de Clinton was just alighting from a tall roan horse, with the vigour and spring of a man half his age. For he must, Cadfael thought, be approaching sixty. He had been bishop for fourteen years, and wore his authority as easily and forthrightly as he did his plain riding clothes, and with the same patrician confidence. He was tall, and his erect bearing made him appear taller still. A man austere, competent, and of no pretensions because he needed none, there was something about him, Cadfael thought, of the warrior bishops who were becoming a rare breed these days. His face would have done just as well for a soldier as for a priest, hawk-featured, direct and resolute, with penetrating grey eyes that summed up as rapidly and decisively as they saw. He took in the whole scene about him in one sweeping glance, and surrendered his bridle to the porter as Prior Robert bore down on him, all reverence and welcome.
They moved off together towards the abbot’s lodging, and the group broke apart gradually, having lost its centre. The horses were eased of their saddle-bags and led away to the stables, the hovering brothers dispersed about their various businesses, the children drifted off in search of other amusement until they should be rounded up for their early supper. And Cadfael thought of Elave, who must have heard, distantly across the court, the sounds that heralded the coming of his judge. Cadfael had seen Roger de Clinton only twice before, and had no means of knowing in what mood and what mind he came to this vexed cause. But at least he had come in person, and looked fully capable of wresting back the responsibility for his diocese and its spiritual health from anyone who presumed to trespass on his writ.
Meantime, Cadfael’s immediate business was to find Fortunata. He approached the porter with his enquiry. ‘Where am I likely to find Girard of Lythwood’s daughter? They told me at the house she would be here.’
