by Ellis Peters
Cadfael rose to his feet, and turned a sombre face upon his companions, who were standing by the plank bridge, gazing across the open water to where the other party was just appearing below the gardens of the townward cottages.
“He is here,” said Cadfael. “We have found him.”
It was no small labour to get him out, even when Brother Ambrose and his fellows, hailed from their own fruitless hunt by the miller’s bull’s bellow and excited waving, came hurrying round from the road to lend a hand in the work. The high, undercut bank, with deep water beneath it, made it impossible to reach down and get a hold on his clothing even when the lankiest of them lay flat on his face and stretched long arms down, to grope still short of the surface. The miller brought a boat hook from among his store of tools, and with care they guided the obdurate body along to the edge of the tail-race, where they could descend to water level and grasp the folds of his garments.
The black, ominous bird had become an improbable fish. He lay in the grass, when they had carried him up to level ground, streaming pond-water from wiry black hair and sodden black garments, his uncovered face turned up to the chill winter light marbled blue and grey, with lips parted and eyes half-open, the muscles of cheeks and jaw and neck drawn tight with a painful suggestion of struggle and terror. A cold, cold, lonely death in the dark, and mysteriously his corpse bore the marks of it even when the combat was over. They looked down at him in awe, and no one had anything to say. What they did they did practically, without fuss, in blank silence.
They took a door from its hinges in the mill, and laid him on it, and carried him away through the wicket in the wall into the great court, and thence to the mortuary chapel. They dispersed then about their various businesses, as soon as Abbot Radulfus and Prior Robert had been apprised of their return, and what they brought with them. They were glad to go, to be off to the living, and to the festival the living were still keeping, glad to have the sanction of the season to feel happiness and have a great thing to celebrate.
The word went round the Foregate almost furtively, whispered from ear to ear, without exclaim, without many words, taking its time to reach the outer fringes of the parish, but by nightfall it was known to all. The thanksgiving made no noise, no one acknowledged it or mentioned it, no one visibly exulted. Nevertheless, the parishioners of the Foregate kept Christmas with the heartfelt fervour of a people from whom an oppressive shadow had been lifted overnight. In the mortuary chapel, where even at this end of the year no warmth could be employed, those gathered about the bier shivered and blew into their bunched fingers wringing the rough, fingerless mittens to set the chill blood flowing and work off the numbness. Father Ailnoth, colder than them all, nevertheless lay indifferent to the gathering frost even in his nakedness, and on his bed of stone.
“We must, then, conclude,” said Abbot Radulfus heavily,”that he fell into the pool and drowned. But why was he there at such an hour, and on the eve of the Nativity?”
There was no one prepared to answer that. To reach the place where he had been found he must have passed by every near habitation without word or sign, to end in a barren, unpeopled solitude.
“He drowned, certainly,” said Cadfael.
“Is it known,” wondered Prior Robert, “whether he could swim?”
Cadfael shook his head. “I’ve no knowledge of that, I doubt if anyone here knows. But it might not be of much importance whether he could or no. Certainly he drowned. It is less certain, I fear, that he simply fell into the water. See herethe back of his head
“
He raised the dead man’s head with one hand, and propped head and shoulders with the right arm, and Brother Edmund, who had already viewed this corpse with him before even Abbot Radulfus and Prior Robert were summoned, held a candle to show the nape and the thick circlet of wiry black hair. A broken wound, with edges of skin grazed loose round it and a bleached, moist middle now only faintly discoloured with blood after its soaking in the pool, began just at the rim of the tonsure, and scraped down raggedly through the circle of hair, to end where the inward curve of the nape began.
“He suffered a blow on the head here, before ever he entered the water,” said Cadfael.
“Struck from behind him,” said the abbot, with fastidious disdain, and peered closer. “You are sure he drowned? This blow could not have killed him? For what you are saying is that this was no accident, but a deliberate assault. Or could he have come by this innocently? Is it possible? The track there is rutted, and it was icy. Could he have fallen and injured himself thus?”
“I doubt it. If a man’s feet go from under him he may sit down heavily, even sprawl back on his shoulders, but he seldom goes full-length so violently as to hit his head forcibly on the ground and break his crown. That could not happen on such rough ground, only on smooth sheet ice. And mark, this is not on the round of his head, which would have taken such a shock, but lower, even moving into the curve of his neck, and lacerated, as if he was struck with something rough and jagged. And you saw the shoes he was wearing, felted beneath the sole. I think he went safer from a fall, last night, than most men.”
“Certainly, then, a blow,” said Radulfus. “Could it have killed?”
“No, impossible! His skull is not broken. Not enough to kill, nor even to do him much lasting harm. But he might well have been stunned for a while, or so dazed that he was helpless when he fell into the water. Fell,” said Cadfael with deliberation, but ruefully, “or was pushed in.”
“And of those two,” said the abbot with cold composure, “which is the more likely?”
“In darkness,” said Cadfael, “any man may step too near a sloping edge and misjudge his footing where a bank overhangs water. But whatever his reason for going along that path, why should he persist beyond the last dwelling? But this broken head I do not believe he got by any natural fall, and he got it before he went into the water. Some other hand, some other person, was there with him, and party to this death.”
“There is nothing in the wound, no fragment to show what manner of weapon it was that struck him?” ventured Brother Edmund, who had worked with Brother Cadfael in similar cases, and found good reason to require his judgement even in the minutest details. But he did not sound hopeful.
“How could there be?” said Cadfael simply. “He was lain in the water all through the night, everything about him is bleached and sodden. If there had ever been soil or grass in his grazes, it would have soaked away long ago. But I do not think there was. He cannot alone have staggered far after that blow was struck, and he was just past the tail-race, or it would have drifted him the opposing way. Nor would anyone have carried or dragged him far if he was stunned, he being a big, heavy man, and the blow being only briefly disabling, not killing. Not ten paces from where we found him, I judge, he went into the pool. And close by that same stretch he got this blow. On top of all, there he was on grass unrutted by wheels, being past the millonly rough and tufted, as winter turf is. If he had slipped and fallen, the ground there might have half-stunned him, but it would not have broken his head and fetched blood. I have told you all I can tell from this poor body,” he said wearily. “Make what you can of it.”
“Murder!” said Prior Robert, rigid with indignation and horror. “Murder is what I make of it. Father Abbot, what is now to be done?”
Radulfus brooded for some minutes over the indifferent corpse which had been Father Ailnoth, and never before so still and quiet, so tolerant of the views of others. Then he said, with measured regret: “I am afraid, Robert, we have no choice but to inform the lord sheriffs deputy, since Hugh Beringar himself is elsewhere about his own duties.” And with his eyes still upon the livid face on the stone slab he said, with bleak wonder: “I knew he had not made himself loved. I had not realised that in so short a time he could make himself so hated.”
Chapter Six
Young alan herbard, who was hugh’s deputy in his absence, came down hot-foot from the castle with the most experien
ced of his sergeants, William Warden, and two other officers in his train. Even if Herbard had not been well acquainted with the Foregate and its people, Will Warden certainly was, and went in no misapprehension concerning the degree of love the congregation of Holy Cross had for its new priest.
“There’ll be very little mourning for him hereabouts,” he said bluntly, viewing the dead man without emotion. “He made a thorough job of turning every soul in the parish against him. A poor end, though, for any man. A poor, cold end!”
They examined the head wound, noted the account rendered by every man who had taken part in the search, and listened to the careful opinions put forward by Brother Edmund and Brother Cadfael, and to everything Dame Diota had to say of her master’s evening departure, and the anxious night she had spent worrying about his failure to return.
She had refused to depart, and waited all this time to repeat her story, which she did with a drained but steady composure, now that the matter and the mystery were out of her hands. Benet was beside her, attentive and solicitous, a very sombre Benet, with creased brows and hazel eyes clouded by something between anxiety on her account and sheer puzzlement on his own.
“If you’ll give me leave,” said the boy, as soon as the officers had withdrawn from the precinct to go in search of the provost of the Foregate, who knew his people as well as any man could, “I’ll take my aunt back to the house now, and see her settled with a good fire. She needs to rest.” And he added, appealing to Cadfael: “I won’t stay long. I may be wanted here.”
“Stay as long as is needful,” said Cadfael readily. “I’ll answer for you if there should be any questions. But what could you have to tell? I know you were in the church well before Matins began.” And knew, moreover, where the boy had been later on, and probably not alone, but he said nothing about that. “Has anything been said about making provision for Mistress Hammet’s future? This leaves her very solitary, but for you, and still almost a stranger here. But I’m sure Abbot Radulfus will see to it she’s not left friendless.”
“He came himself to speak to her,” said Benet, a faint flush and gleam of his usual brightness appearing for a moment, in appreciation of such considerate usage. “He says she need not be troubled at all, for she came here in good faith to serve the church in her proper station, and the church will see to it that she is provided for. Dwell in the house and care for it, he said, until a new priest is preferred to the benefice, and then we’ll see. But in no case shall she be cast away.”
“Good! Then you and she can rest with easy minds. Terrible this may be, but it’s no fault of yours or hers, and you should not brood on it.” They were both looking at him then with still, shocked faces that expressed nothing of grief or reassurance, but only stunned acceptance. “Stay and sleep there, if you see fit,” he said to Benet. “She may be glad of having you close by, tonight.”
Benet said neither yes nor no to that, nor did the woman. They went out silently from the ante-room of the gatehouse, where they had sat out the long uncertainty of the morning together, and crossing the wide highway of the Foregate, vanished into the narrow mouth of the alley opposite, still silvered with hoar-frost between its enclosing walls.
Cadfael felt no great surprise when Benet was back within the hour, instead of taking advantage of the permission to absent himself overnight. He came looking for Cadfael in the garden, and found him, for once, virtually idle in his workshop, sitting by the glowing brazier. The boy sat down silently beside him, and heaved a glum sigh.
“Agreed!” said Cadfael, stirring out of his thoughts at the sound. “We’re none of us quite ourselves today, small wonder. But no need for you to rack your conscience, surely. Have you left your aunt all alone?”
“No,” said Benet. “There’s a neighbour with her, though I doubt if she’s all that glad of the kind attention. There’ll be more of them, I daresay, before long, bursting with curiosity and worming the whole story out of her. Not for grief, either, to judge by the one I left with her. They’ll be chattering like starlings all over the parish, and never stop until night falls.”
“They’ll stop fast enough, you’ll find,” said Cadfael drily, “as soon as Alan Herbard or one of his sergeants puts a word in. Let one officer show his face, and silence will fall. There’s not a soul in the Foregate will own to knowing anything about anything once the questions begin.”
Benet shifted uneasily on the wooden bench, as though his bones rather than his conscience felt uncomfortable. “I never understood that he was quite so blackly disliked. Do you truly think they’ll hang together so close, and never betray even if they know who brought him to his death?”
“Yes, I do think it. For there’s hardly a soul but will feel it might as easily have been his own act, but for God’s grace. But it need not fret you, one way or the other. Unless it was you who broke his head?” said Cadfael mildly. “Was it?”
“No,” said Benet as simply, staring down into his linked hands; and the next moment looked up with sharp curiosity: “But what makes you so sure of it?”
“Well, firstly, I saw you in church well before it was time for Matins, and though there’s no certainty just when Ailnoth went into the pool, I should judge it was probably after that time. Secondly, I know of no reason why you should bear him any grudge, and you said yourself it comes as a surprise to you he was so hated. But thirdly and best, from what I know of you, lad, if you took such dire offence as to up and hit a man, it would not be from behind, but face to face.”
“Well, thank you for that!” said Benet, briefly recovering his blazing smile. “But, Cadfael, what do you think happened? It was you saw him last, alive, at least as far as is known. Was there any other soul about there? Did you see anyone else? Anyone, as it might be, following him?”
“Never a creature beyond the gatehouse here. There were folk from the Foregate just coming in for the service, but none going on towards the town. Any others who may have seen Ailnoth can only have seen him before ever I did, and with nothing to show where he was bound. Unless someone had speech with him. But by the way he went scurrying past me, I doubt if he halted for any other.”
Benet considered that in silence for a long moment, and then said, rather to himself than to Cadfael: “And from his house it’s so short a way. He’d come into the Foregate just opposite the gatehouse. Small chance of being seen or stopped in that distance.”
“Leave it to the King’s officers to scratch their heads over the how and why,” Cadfael advised. “They’ll find no lack of folk who’ll pretend no sorrow at seeing the last of Ailnoth, but I doubt if they’ll get much information out of anyone, man, woman or child. No blinking it, the man generated grudges wherever he stepped. He may well have made the most perfect of clerks, where he had to deal only with documents, charters and accounts, but he had no notion how to coax and counsel and comfort common human sinners. And what else is a parish priest for?”
The frost continued that night, harder than ever, freezing over the reedy shallows in the mill-pond, and fringing the townward shore with a white shelf of ice, but not yet sealing over the deeper water or the tremulous path of the tail-race, so that the little boys who went hopefully to examine the ice in the early morning returned disappointed. No point as yet in trying to break the iron ground for Father Ailnoth’s grave, even if Herbard would have permitted an early burial, but at least the clear cold made delay acceptable.
In the Foregate a kind of breathless hush brooded. People talked much but in low voices and only among trusted friends, and yet everywhere there was a feeling of suppressed and superstitious gladness, as if a great cloud had been lifted from the parish. Even those who did not confide in one another in words did so in silent glances. The relief was everywhere, and palpable.
But so was the fear. For someone, it seemed, had rid the Foregate of its blight, and all those who had wished it away felt a morsel of the guilt sticking to their fingers. They could not but speculate on the identity of their deliverer, even w
hile they shut their mouths and their eyes, and put away all knowledge of their own suspicions, for fear of betraying them to the law.
All through the routine of the day Cadfael pursued his own thoughts, and they centred, inevitably, on Ailnoth’s death. No one would tell Alan Herbard about Eadwin’s headland or Aelgar’s grievance, or the unconsecrated grave of Centwin’s son, or any of the dozen or more other wounds that had made Ailnoth a hated man, but there would be no need. Will Warden would know them all already, and maybe other, lesser offences of which even the abbot had not been told. Every one of those thus aggrieved would be examined as to his movements on the eve of the Nativity, and Will would know where to look for confirmation. And much as the Foregate might sympathise with whoever had killed Ailnoth, and loyally as they would close round him and cover him, it was nevertheless vital that the truth should be known, for there would be no real peace of mind for anyone until it was discovered. That was the first reason why Cadfael, almost against his will, wished for a solution. The second was for the sake of Abbot Radulfus, who carried, in his own mind, a double guilt, for bringing to the fold so ill-fitted a shepherd, and for suffering him to be done to death by some enraged ram among the flock. Bitter though it may be to many, Cadfael concluded, there is no substitute for truth, in this or any case.
Meantime, in occasional reversions to the day’s labours, he was thankful that Benet had completed the winter digging just in time, before the hard frost came, and attacked the final thin crop of weeds in all the flower beds so vigorously that now the earth could sleep snugly under the rime, and the whole enclosed garden looked neat and clean, and content as a hedge-pig curled up an arm’s length down under leaves and grass and dry herbage until the spring.
A good worker, the boy Benet, cheerful and ungrudging, and good company. Somewhat clouded by the death of this man who had brought him here, and at least never done him any harm, but his natural buoyancy would keep breaking through. Not much was left, now, of the candidate for the cloister. Had that been the one sign of human frailty in Father Ailnoth, that he had deliberately represented his groom on the journey north as desirous of the monastic life, though still a little hesitant to take the final step? A lie to get the boy off his hands? Benet was firm that he had never given voice to any such wish, and Benet, in Cadfael’s considered opinion, would make a very poor liar. Come to think of it, not very much left, either, of the wide-eyed, innocent, unlettered bumpkin Benet had first affected, at least not here in the solitude of the garden. He could still slip it on like a glove if for any reason the prior accosted him. Either he thinks me blind, said Cadfael to himself, or he does not care at all to pretend with me. And I am very sure he does not think me blind!
