by Ellis Peters
He could not possibly burst a way through that serried line, and the black gown would not deceive them for a moment, on a rider proceeding at this desperate speed. Edwin did the only thing possible. With pleading voice and urgent knees he checked and wheeled his displeased mount, and set off back the way he had come, at the same headlong gallop. And well behind him he heard a gleeful shout that told him he was now pursued by a posse of determined men-at-arms, fully persuaded they were on the heels of a miscreant, even if they were not yet certain of his identity.
Brother Mark, hurrying along the horse-fair after High Mass, primed with his part to enter the loft unobserved, so that no one should be able afterwards to swear that only one went in where two came out, arrived close to the barn just in time to hear the commotion of a hue and cry, and see Edwin on his elated war-horse come hurtling back along the Foregate, cowl and skirts streaming, head stooped low to the flying mane. He had never before set eyes on Edwin Gurney, but there was no doubt as to who this careering desperado must be; nor, alas, any doubt that Mark’s own errand came much too late. The quarry was flushed from cover, though not yet taken. But there was nothing, nothing at all, Brother Mark could do to help him.
The head groom Will, a stout-hearted man, had hastily hauled out the best of the remaining horses in his care, and prepared to pursue the fugitive, but he had no more than heaved himself into the saddle when he beheld the chestnut thundering back again in the opposite direction. He spurred forward to try and intercept it, though the prospect was daunting; but his mount’s courage failed of matching his, and it baulked and swerved aside before Rufus’s stretched neck, laidback ears and rolling eye. One of the undergrooms hurled a pikel towards the pounding hooves, but if truth be told rather half-heartedly, and Rufus merely made a startled sidewise bound, without checking speed, and was past and away towards the town.
Will might well have followed, though with small hope of keeping that yellow, billowing tail in sight; but by then the clamour of the pursuers was approaching along the Foregate, and he was only too glad to surrender the task to them. It was, after all, their business to apprehend malefactors, and whatever else this pseudo-monk had done, he had certainly stolen a horse belonging to the Widow Bonel, and in the abbey’s care. Obviously the theft should be reported at once. He rode into the path of the galloping guards, waving a delaying hand, and all three of his colleagues closed in to give their versions of what had happened.
There was a substantial audience by then. Passersby had happily declined to pass by such a promising męlée, and people had darted out from nearby houses to discover what all the hard riding meant. During the pause to exchange information, several of the children had drawn close to listen and stare, and that in itself somewhat slowed the resumption of the chase. Mothers retrieved children, and managed to keep the way blocked a full minute more. But there seemed no reasonable explanation for the fact that at the last moment, when they were virtually launched, the horse under the captain of the guard suddenly shrieked indignantly, reared, and almost spilled his rider, who was not expecting any such disturbance, and had to spend some minutes mastering the affronted horse, before he could muster his men and gallop away after the fugitive.
Brother Mark, craning and peering with the rest of the curious, watched the guards stream away towards the town, secure that the chestnut horse had had time to get clean out of sight. The rest was up to Edwin Gurney. Mark folded his hands in his wide sleeves, drew his cowl well forward to shadow a modest face, and turned back towards the gatehouse of the abbey, with very mixed news. On the way he discarded the second pebble he had picked up by the barn. On his uncle’s manor he had been set to work for his meagre keep at four years old, following the plough with a small sack full of stones, to scare off the birds that took the seed. It had taken him two years to discover that he sympathised with the hungry birds, and did not really want to harm them; but by then he was already a dead shot, and he had not lost his skills.
“And you followed as far as the bridge?” Cadfael questioned anxiously. “And the bridge-keepers had not so much as seen him? And the sheriff’s men had lost him?”
“Clean vanished,” Brother Mark reported with pleasure. “He never crossed into the town, at least, not that way. If you ask me, he can’t have turned from the road by any of the alleys short of the bridge, he wouldn’t be sure he was out of sight. I think he must have dived down along the Gaye, the shoreward side where the orchard trees give some cover. But what he would do after that I can’t guess. But they haven’t taken him, that’s certain. They’ll be hounding his kin within the town, but they’ll find nothing there.” He beamed earnestly into Cadfael’s troubled face, and urged: “You know you’ll prove he has nothing to answer for. Why do you worry?”
It was more than enough worry to have someone depending so absolutely on the victory of truth, and the credit with heaven of Brother Cadfael, but it seemed that this morning’s events had cast no shadow upon young Mark, and that was matter for gratitude.
“Come to dinner,” said Cadfael thankfully, “and then take your ease, for with such a faith as yours you can. I do believe when you come to cast a pebble with intent, it must hit the mark. Whoever named you foresaw your future. And since it arises, what is your own mark? A bishopric?”
“Pope or cardinal,” said Brother Mark happily. “Nothing less.”
“Oh, no,” said Brother Cadfael seriously. “Beyond bishop, and a pastoral cure, I think you would be wasted.”
All that day the sheriff’s men hunted Edwin Gurney through the town, where they reckoned he must have sought help, somehow evading notice in crossing the bridge. Finding no trace there, they sent out patrols to cover all the major roads out of the peninsula. In a close loop of the Severn, Shrewsbury had only two bridges, one towards the abbey and London, by which he was thought to have entered, one towards Wales, with a fan of roads branching out westwards.
They were convinced that the fugitive would make for Wales, that being his quickest way out of their jurisdiction, though his future there might well be hazardous. So it came as a surprise when a party patrolling the abbey side of the river, where they had little expectation of picking up the trail, was accosted by. an excited young person of about eleven, who ran to them through the fields to demand breathlessly if it was true the man they were looking for was in monk’s gown, and riding a bright-brown horse with a primrose mane and tail. Yes, she had seen him, and only a short time since, breaking cautiously out of that copse and trotting away eastwards, as if he wanted to cross the next loop of the river and move round to join the highroad to London, some way past St. Giles. Since he had first set out in that direction, and found the way blocked at the rim of the town, her report made sense. Evidently he had managed to find cover and lie up for a while, in the hope that the hunt would take the opposite direction, and now he felt secure in moving again. The girl said he might be making for the ford at Uffington.
They thanked her heartily, sent back one man to report the trail hot again and bring reinforcements after, and set off briskly for the ford. And Alys, having watched them out of sight, made her way back as briskly to the highroad and the bridge. No one was on the watch for eleven-year-old girls going in and out.
Beyond the ford at Uffington the hunters got their first glimpse of the quarry, jogging along almost sedately on the narrow road towards Upton. From the moment he turned and saw them, he flashed away at speed; the colour and the gait of the horse were unmistakable, and the pursuers could not but wonder why the rider had retained his purloined habit, which was now more liability than asset, for everyone in the countryside must be looking out for it.
It was then mid-afternoon, and the light beginning to dim. The chase went on for hours. The boy seemed to know every byway and every covert, and managed to lose them several times, and lead them into some unexpected and perilous places, often leaving the roads for marshy meadows where one stout man-at-arms was thrown into odorous bog, or broken places where it was so
on impossible to see the easiest passage, and one horse picked up a stone and went lame. Through Atcham, Cound and Cressage he held them off, and from time to time lost them, until Rufus tired and stumbled in the woods beyond Acton, and they were on him and round him, grasping at gown and cowl and pinioning him fast. They pulled him down and tied his hands, and for the chase he had led them they gave him some rough handling, which he bore philosophically and in silence. All he asked was that the miles they had to go back to Shrewsbury should be taken at an easy pace, for the horse’s sake.
At some stage he had rigged a serviceable bridle from the rope girdle of his habit. They borrowed that back to secure him behind the lightest weight among them, for fear he should leap clear even with bound hands, and make off into the darkening woods on foot. Thus they brought their prisoner back the lengthy journey to Shrewsbury, and turned in at the abbey gatehouse late in the evening. The stolen horse might as well be returned at once where he belonged; and since that was, at present, the only crime that stood manifestly proven against the culprit, his proper place, until further examination had been made of his deeds, was in the abbey prison. There he could safely be left to kick his heels until the law was ready to proceed against him on graver charges of acts committed outside the pale, and therefore within the sheriff’s jurisdiction.
Prior Robert, courteously informed that the wanted youth was brought in captive, and must remain in abbey keeping at least overnight, was torn between satisfaction at the prospect of getting rid of the criminal implications of Master Bonel’s death, in order to be able to deal more skilfully with the legal ones, and the vexation of having temporarily to accommodate the criminal within his own domain. Still, an arrest for the murder must follow in the morning, the inconvenience was not so great.
“You have this youth in the gatehouse now?” he asked the man-at-arms who had brought the news to his lodging.
“We have, Father. Two of your abbey sergeants are with him there, and if you please to give orders that they hold him in charge until tomorrow, the sheriff will certainly take him off your hands on the graver count. Would it please you come and examine him for yourself on the matter of the horse? If you see fit, there could be charges of assault against your grooms, a serious matter even without the theft.”
Prior Robert was not immune to human curiosity, and was not adverse to taking a look at this youthful demon who had poisoned his own stepfather and led the sheriff’s men a dance over half the shire. “I will come,” he said. “The church must not turn its back upon the sinner, but only deplore the sin.”
In the porter’s room at the gatehouse the boy sat stolidly on a bench opposite the welcome fire, hunched defensively against the world, but looking far from cowed, for all his bruises and wariness. The abbey sergeants and the sheriff’s patrol circled him with brooding eyes and hectoring questions, which he answered only when he chose to do so, and then briefly. Several of them were soiled and mud-stained from the hunt, one or two had scratches and bruises of their own to show. The boy’s bright eyes flickered from one to another, and it even seemed that his lips twitched with the effort to suppress a smile when he contemplated the one who had gone head over heels in the meadows near Cound. They had stripped his borrowed habit from him and restored it to the porter’s care; the boy showed now slender and light-haired, smooth and fair of skin, with ingenuous-seeming hazel eyes. Prior Robert was somewhat taken aback by his youth and comeliness; truly the devil can assume fair shapes!
“So young and marred!” he said aloud. The boy was not meant to hear that, it was uttered in the doorway as Robert entered, but at fourteen the hearing is keen. “So, boy,” said the prior, drawing near, “you are the troubler of our peace. You have much upon your conscience, and I fear it is even late to pray that you may have time to amend. I shall so pray. You know, for you are old enough to know, that murder is mortal sin.”
The boy looked him in the eye, and said with emphatic composure: “I am not a murderer.”
“Oh, child, is it now of any avail to deny what is known? You might as well say that you did not steal a horse from our barn this morning, when four of our servants and many other people saw the act committed.”
“I did not steal Rufus,” the boy retorted promptly and firmly. “He is mine. He was my stepfather’s property, and I am my stepfather’s heir, for his agreement with the abbey has never been ratified, and the will that made me his heir is sound as gold. What belongs to me how could I steal? From whom?”
“Wretched child,” protested the prior, bristling at such bold defiance, and even more at a dawning suspicion that this imp, in spite of his dire situation, was daring to enjoy himself, “think what you say! You should rather be repenting while you have time. Have you not yet realised that the murderer cannot live to inherit from his victim?”
“I have said, and say again, I am not a murderer. I deny, on my soul, on the altar, on whatever you wish, that ever I did my stepfather harm. Therefore Rufus is mine. Or when the will is proven, and my overlord gives his consent as he promised, Rufus and Mallilie and all will be mine. I have committed no crime, and nothing you can do or say can make me admit to any. And nothing you can do,” he added, his eyes suddenly flashing, “can ever make me guilty of any.”
“You waste your goodwill, Father Prior,” growled the sheriff’s sergeant, “he’s an obdurate young wretch meant for the gallows, and his come-uppance will be short.” But under Robert’s august eye he refrained from clouting the impudent brat round the ears, as otherwise he might well have done. “Think no more of him, but let your servants clap him into safe hold in your cell here, and put him out of your mind as worth no more pains. The law will take care of him.”
“See that he has food,” said Robert, not altogether without compassion, and remembering that this child had been in the saddle and in hiding all the day, “and let his bed be hard, but dry and warm enough. And should he relent and ask … Boy, listen to me, and give a thought to your soul’s welfare. Will you have one of the brothers come and reason and pray with you before you sleep?”
The boy looked up with a sudden sparkle in his eye that might have been penitent hope, but looked more like mischief, and said with deceptive meekness: “Yes, and gratefully, if you could be so kind as to send for Brother Cadfael.” It was time, after all, to take thought for his own situation, he had surely done enough now.
He expected the name to raise a frown, and so it did, but Robert had offered a grace, and could not now withdraw it or set conditions upon it. With dignity he turned to the porter, who hovered at the door. “Ask Brother Cadfael to come here to us at once. You may tell him it is to give counsel and guidance to a prisoner.”
The porter departed. It was almost the hour for retirement, and most of the brothers would certainly be in the warming-room, but Cadfael was not there, nor was Brother Mark. The porter found them in the workshop in the garden, not even compounding mysteries, either, but sitting somewhat glumly, talking in low and anxious tones. The news of the capture had not yet gone round; by day it would have been known everywhere within minutes. It was common knowledge, of course, how the sheriff’s men had spent their day, but it was not yet common knowledge with what an achievement they had crowned it.
“Brother Cadfael, you’re wanted at the gatehouse,” announced the porter, leaning in at the doorway. And as Cadfael looked up at him in surprise: “There’s a young fellow there asks for you as his spiritual adviser, though if you want my view, he’s very much in command of his own spirit, and has let Prior Robert know it, too. A company of the sheriff’s men rode in towards the end of Compline with a prisoner. Yes, they’ve taken young Gurney at last.”
So that was how it had ended, after all Mark’s efforts and prayers, after all his own ineffective reasonings and seekings and faith. Cadfael got up in grieving haste. “I’ll come to him. With all my heart I’ll come. Now we have the whole battle on our hands, and little time left. The poor lad! But why have they not taken him straight into t
he town?” Though of that one small mercy he was glad, seeing he himself was confined within the abbey walls, and only this odd chance provided him with a brief meeting.
“Why, the only thing they can charge him with, and nobody can question, is stealing the horse he rode off on this morning, and that was from our premises and our care, the abbey court has rights in it. In the morn they’ll fetch him away on the count of murder.”
Brother Mark fell in at their heels and followed to the gatehouse, altogether cast down and out of comfort, unable to find a hopeful word to say. He felt in his heart that that was sin, the sin of despair; not despair for himself, but despair of truth and justice and right, and the future of wretched mankind. Nobody had bidden him attend, but he went, all the same, a soul committed to a cause about which, in fact, he knew very little, except the youth of the protagonist, and the absolute nature of Cadfael’s faith in him, and that was enough.
Cadfael entered the porter’s room with a heavy heart but not in despair; it was a luxury he could not afford. All eyes turned upon him, understandably, since he entered upon a heavy silence. Robert had abandoned his kindly meant but patronising exhortations, and the men of law had given up the attempt to get any admissions out of their captive, and were content to see him safely under lock and key, and get to their beds in the castle. A ring of large, well-equipped men on guard round a willowy lad in country homespun, bareheaded and cloakless on a frosty night, who sat braced and neat and alert on a bench by the wall, pleasantly flushed now from the fire, and looking, incredibly, almost complacent. His eyes met Brother Cadfael’s eyes, and danced; clear, dark-fringed, greenish eyes. His hair was light brown, like seasoned oak. He was lightly built but tall for his years. He was tired, sleepy, bruised and dirty, and behind the wary eyes and solemn face he was undoubtedly laughing.
