The Raven in the Foregate bc-12

by Ellis Peters

  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?”

  Chapter Ten

  Cadfael had been back in his workshop no more than half an hour, and the light was only just beginning to dim towards the Vesper office, when Hugh came seeking him, as he usually did if shire affairs brought him to confer with the abbot. He brought in with him a gust of moist, chill air and the quiver of a rising breeze that might bring more snow, now that the hard frost had eased, or might blow away the heavy cloud and clear the sky for the morrow.

  “I’ve been with Father Abbot,” said Hugh, and sat down on the familiar bench by the wall and spread his feet appreciatively towards the brazier. “Tomorrow, I hear, you’re burying the priest. Cynric has the grave dug for him so deep you’d think he feared the man might break out of it without six feet of earth on top of him to hold him down. Well, he’s going to his funeral unavenged, for we’re no nearer knowing who killed him. You said from the first that the entire Foregate would turn blind, deaf and dumb. A man would think the whole parish had been depeopled on Christmas Eve, no one will admit to having been out of his own house but to hurry to church, and not a man of them set eyes on any other living being in the streets that night. It took a stranger to let fall even one little word of furtive comings and goings at an ungodly hour, and I place no great credence in that. And how have you been faring?”

  Cadfael had been wondering the same thing in his own mind ever since leaving Diota, and could see no possibility of keeping back from Hugh what he had learned. He had not promised secrecy, only discretion, and he owed help to Hugh as surely as to the woman caught in the trap of her own devotion.

  “Better, perhaps, than I deserve,” he said sombrely, and put aside the tray of tablets he had just set out to dry, and went to sit beside his friend. “If you had not come to me, Hugh, I should have had to come to you. Last night it was brought back to me what I had seen in Ailnoth’s possession that night, and had not found nor thought to look for again the next day, when we brought him back here dead. Two things, indeed, though the first I did not find myself, but got it from the little boys who went down hopefully to the pool on Christmas morning, thinking it might be frozen over. Wait a moment, I’ll bring both, and you shall hear.”

  He brought them, and carried the lamp closer, to show the detail that might mean so much or so little.

  “This cap the children found among the reeds of the shallows. You see how the stitches are started in the one seam, and the binding ripped loose. And this staff—this I found only this morning, almost opposite the place where we found Ailnoth.” He told that story simply and truthfully, but for omitting any mention of Ninian, though that, too, might have to come. “You see how the silver band is worn into a mere wafer from age, and crumpled at the edges, being so thin. This notch here

  ” He set a fingertip to the razor-sharp points. “From this I wormed out these!”

  He had dabbed a tiny spot of grease into one of his clay saucers for selecting seed, and anchored the rescued hairs to the congealed fat, so that no chance draught should blow them away. In the close yellow light of the lamp they showed clearly. Cadfael drew out one of them to its full length.

  “A metal edge fissured like this might pick up a stray hair almost anywhere,” said Hugh, but not with any great conviction.

  “So it might, but here are five, captured at the same mis-stroke. Which makes this a different matter. Well?”

  Hugh likewise laid a finger to the glistening threads and said deliberately: “A woman’s. Not young.”

  “Whether you yet know it or no,” said Cadfael,”there are but two women in all this coil, and one of them is young, and will not be grey, please God, for many years yet.”

  “I think,” sa
id Hugh, eyeing him with a faint, wise smile, “you had better tell me. You were here from the beginning, I came late, and brought with me another matter warranted to confuse the first. I am not interested in preventing young Bachiler from making clean away to Gloucester to fight for his Empress, if he has nothing on his conscience that chances to be more particularly my business. But I am interested in burying the ugly fact of murder along with Ailnoth tomorrow, if by any means I can. I want the town and the Foregate going about their day’s work with a quiet mind, and the way cleared for another priest, and let’s hope one easier to live with. Now, what I make of these hairs is that they came from the head of Dame Diota Hammet. I have not even seen the woman in a good light, to know if this colouring is hers, but even there indoors the bruise on her brow was plain to be seen. She had a fall on the icy step—so I had been told, and so she told me. I think you are saying she came by that injury in a very different manner.”

  “She came by it,” said Cadfael, “by the mill that night, when she followed the priest in desperation, to plead with him to let well alone and turn a blind eye to the boy’s deception, instead of confronting him like an avenging demon and fetching your sergeants down on him to throw him into prison. She was Ninian’s nurse, she would dare almost anything for his sake. She clung about Ailnoth’s skirts and begged him to let be, and because he could not shake her off, he clubbed this staff of his and struck her on the head, and would have struck again if she had not loosed him and scrambled away half-stunned, and run for her life back to the house.”

  He told the whole of it as he had had it from Diota herself, and Hugh listened with a grave face but the hint of the smile lingering thoughtfully in his eyes. “You believe this,” he said at the end of it; not a question, but a fact, and relevant to his own thinking.

  “I do believe it. Entirely.”

  “And she can add nothing more, to point us to any other person. Or would she, even if she could?” wondered Hugh. “She may very well feel with the Foregate, and prefer to keep her own counsel.”

  “So she might, I won’t deny, but for all that, I think she knows no more. She ran from him dazed and in terror. I think there’s no more to be got from her.”

  “Nor from your boy Benet?” said Hugh slyly, and laughed at seeing Cadfael turn a sharp glance on him and bridle for a moment. “Oh, come now, I do accept that it was not you who warned the boy to make himself scarce when Giffard brought the law down on him. But only because someone else had already spared you the trouble. You were very well aware that he was gone, when you so helpfully led us all round the garden here hunting for him. I’ll even believe that you had seen him here not half an hour before. You have a way of telling simple truths which is anything but simple. And when did you ever have a young fellow in trouble under your eye, and not wind your way into his confidence? Of course he’ll have opened his mind to you. I daresay you know where he is this very moment. Though I’m not asking!” he added hastily.

  “No,” said Cadfael, well satisfied with the way that was phrased, “no, that I don’t know, so you may ask, for I can’t tell you.”

  “Having gone to some trouble not to find out or be told,” agreed Hugh, grinning. “Well, I did tell you to keep him out of sight if you should happen on him. I might even turn a blind eye myself, once this other matter is cleared up.”

  “As to that,” said Cadfael candidly, “he’s of the same mind as you, for until he knows that all’s made plain, and Dame Hammet safe and respected, he won’t budge. Much as he wants to get to honest service in Gloucester, here he stays while she’s in trouble. Which is only fair, seeing the risks she has taken for him. But once this is over, he’ll be away, out of your territory. And not alone!” said Cadfael, meeting Hugh’s quizzical glance with a complacent countenance. “Is it possible I still know something you do not know?”

  Hugh furrowed his brow and considered this riddle at leisure. “Not Giffard, that’s certain! He could not get himself out of the trap fast enough. Two women in the affair, you said, one of them young

  Do you tell me this young venturer has found himself a wife in these parts? Already? These imps of Anjou work briskly, I grant them that! Let’s see, then

  ” He pondered, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the rim of the clay saucer. “He had got himself into a monastery, where women do not abound, and I think you will have got your due of work out of him, he had small opportunity to go wooing among the townswomen. And as far as I know, he made no approach to any other of the local lordlings. I’m left with Giffard’s household, where the boy’s embassage may have been a none too well-kept secret, and where there’s a very pleasing young woman, of the Empress’s faction by blood, and bold and determined enough to choose differently from her step-father. Why, pure curiosity would have brought her to have a close look at such a paladin of romance, come in peril of his liberty and life from over the sea. Sanan Berničres? Is he truly wanting to take her with him?”

  “Sanan it is. But I think it was she who made the decision. They have horses hidden away ready for departure, and she has her own small estate in jewels from her mother, easily carried. No doubt she’s provided him sword and dagger, too. She’ll not let him come before the Empress or Robert of Gloucester shabby, or without arms and horse.”

  “They mean this earnestly?” wondered Hugh, frowning over a private doubt as to what his own course ought to be in such a case.

  “They mean it. Both of them. I doubt if Giffard will mind much, though he’s done his duty by her fairly enough. It saves him a dowry. And the man’s had his losses, and is ambitious for his son.”

  “And what,” demanded Hugh, “does she get out of it?”

  “She gets her own way. She gets what she wants, and the man she’s chosen for herself. She gets Ninian. I think it may not be a bad bargain.”

  Hugh sat silent for a brooding while, weighing the rights and wrongs of allowing such a flight, and recalling, perhaps, his own determined pursuit of Aline, not so long past. After a while his brow smoothed, and the private gleam of mischief quickened in his black eyes and twitched at the corner of his mouth. An eloquent eyebrow tilted above a covert glance at Cadfael.

  “Well, I can as easily put a stop to that as cross the court here, yes, and bring the lad flying out of hiding into my arms, if I choose. You’ve taught me the way to flush him out of cover. All I need do is arrest Mistress Hammet, or even put it abroad that I’m about to, and he’ll come running to defend her. If I accused her of murder, as like as not he’d go so far as to confess to an act he never committed, to see her free and vindicated.”

  “You could do it,” Cadfael admitted, without any great concern, “but you won’t. You are as convinced as I am that neither he nor Dame Diota ever laid hand on Ailnoth, and you certainly won’t pretend otherwise.”

  “I might, however,” said Hugh, grinning, “try the same trick with another victim, and see if the man who did drown Ailnoth will be as honest and chivalrous as your lad would be. For I came here today with a small item of news you will not yet have heard, concerning one of Ailnoth’s flock who’ll be none the worse for a salutary shock. Who knows, there are plenty of rough and ready fellows who would kill lightly enough, but not stand by and let another man be hanged for it. It would be worth the trial, to hook a murderer, and even if it failed, the bait would come to no lasting harm.”

  “I would not do it to a dog!” said Cadfael.

  “Neither would I, dogs are honest, worthy creatures that fight fair and bear no grudges. When they set out to kill, they do it openly in broad daylight, and never care how many witnesses there may be. I have less scruples about some men. This one—ah, he’s none so bad, but a fright won’t hurt him, and may do a very sound turn for his poor drab of a wife.”

  “You have lost me,” said Cadfael.

  “Let me find you again! This morning Alan Herbard brought me a man he’d happened on by chance, a country kinsman of Erwald’s who came to spend Christmas with the provost and his
family here in the Foregate. The man’s a shepherd by calling, and Erwald had a couple of ewes too early in lamb, penned in his shed out beyond the Gaye, and one of them threatened to cast her lamb too soon. So his cousin the shepherd went to the shed after Matins and Lauds on Christmas morning, to take a look at them, and brought off the threatened lamb safely, too, and was on his way back, just coming up from the Gaye and along to the Foregate at first light. And who do you suppose he saw sneaking very furtively up from the path to the mill and heading for home, but Jordan Achard, rumpled and bleared from sleep and hardly expecting to be seen at that hour. By chance one of the few people our man would have known by sight and name here, being the baker from whose oven he’d fetched his cousin’s bread the day before. It came out in purest gossip, in all innocence. The countryman knew Jordan’s reputation, and thought it a harmless joke to have seen him making for home from some strange bed.”

  “Along that path?” said Cadfael, staring.

  “Along that path. It was well trodden that night, it seems.”

  “Ninian was the first,” said Cadfael slowly. “I never told you that, but he went there early, not being sure of Giffard. He took himself off smartly when he saw Ailnoth come raging to the meeting, and nothing more did he know of it until morning, when Diota came crying the priest was lost. She was there, as I’ve told you. I said there must be a third. But Jordan? And blundering homeward at first light? It’s hard to believe he had so much durable malice in him as to carry his grudge so long. A big, spoiled babe, I should have said, but for being an excellent baker.”

  “So should I. But he was there, no question. Who’s abroad at first light on Christmas morning after a long night’s worship? Barring, of course, a shepherd anxious about an ailing ewe! That was very ill luck for Jordan. But it goes further, Cadfael. I went myself to talk to Jordan’s wife, while he was busy at his ovens. I told her what news we had of his moves, and made her understand it was proven beyond doubt where he’d been. I think she was ready to break like a branch over-fruited. Do you know how many children she’s borne, poor soul? Eleven, and only two of them living. And how he managed to engender so many, considering how seldom he lies at home, only the recording angel can tell. Not a bad-looking woman, if she were not so worn and harried. And still fond of him!”