Monk's Hood bc-3

by Ellis Peters

  “True, but I’ve involved you enough already. And if I had had good sense I could have got the law to do it, which would have been far better. Though this is not at all dangerous or blameworthy,” he reminded himself, taking heart, “it is only to search once again for a bottle …”

  “Last time,” said Mark thoughtfully, “we were looking for something we hoped would not be a bottle. Pity we did not find it.”

  “True, but this time it should be a bottle, if the omen of Beringar’s coming instead of Prestcote means anything. And I’ll tell you where.” And so he did, pointing the significance of a window open to the south, even in light frost, on a bright day.

  “I’m gone,” said Brother Mark. “And you may sleep the noon away with a good conscience. My eyes are younger than yours.”

  “Mind, take a napkin, and if you find it, wrap it loosely, and touch only as you must. I need to see how the oil has run and dried.”

  It was when the afternoon light was dimming that Brother Mark came back. There was half an hour yet before Vespers, but from this time on any search for a small thing in a narrow slope of grass would have been a blind and hopeless quest. Winter days begin so late and end so early, like the dwindling span of life past three score.

  Cadfael had taken Brother Mark at his word, and dozed the afternoon away. There was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do here, no work needing his efforts. But suddenly he started out of a doze, and there was Brother Mark, a meagre but erect and austere figure, standing over him with a benign smile on the ageless, priestly face Cadfael had seen in him ever since his scared, resentful, childish entry within these walls. The voice, soft, significant, delighted, rolled the years back; he was still eighteen, and a young eighteen at that.

  “Wake up! I have something for you!”

  Like a child coming on a father’s birthday: “Look! I made it for you myself!”

  The carefully folded white napkin was lowered gently into Cadfael’s lap. Brother Mark delicately turned back the folds, and exposed the contents with a gesture of such shy triumph that the analogy was complete. There it lay to be seen, a small, slightly misshapen vial of greenish glass, coloured somewhat differently all down one side, where yellowish brown coated the green, from a residue of liquid that still moved very sluggishly within.

  “Light me that lamp!” said Cadfael, gathering the napkin in both hands to raise the prize nearer his eyes. Brother Mark laboured industriously with flint and tinder, and struck a spark into the wick of the little oil-lamp in its clay saucer, but the conflict of light, within and without, hardly bettered the view. There was a stopper made of a small plug of wood wrapped in a twist of wool cloth. Cadfael sniffed eagerly at the cloth on the side that was coloured brown. The odour was there, faint but unmistakable, his nose knew it well. Frost had dulled but still retained it. There was a long trail of thin, crusted oil, long dried, down the outside of the vial.

  “Is it right? Have I brought you what you wanted?” Brother Mark hovered, pleased and anxious.

  “Lad, you have indeed! This little thing carried death in it, and, see, it can be hidden within a man’s hand. It lay thus, on its side, as you found it? Where the residue has gathered and dried the length of the vial within? And without, too … It was stoppered and thrust out of sight in haste, surely about someone’s person, and if he has not the mark of it somewhere about him still, this long ooze of oil from the leaking neck is a great deceiver. Now sit down here and tell me where and how you found it, for much depends on that. And can you find the exact spot again, without fail?”

  “I can, for I marked it.” Flushed with pleasure at having pleased, Brother Mark sat down, leaning eagerly against Cadfael’s sleeve. “You know the houses there have a strip of garden going down almost to the water, there is only a narrow footpath along the edge of the pond below. I did not quite like to invent a reason for entering the gardens, and besides, they are narrow and steep. It would not be difficult to throw something of any weight from the house right to the edge of the water, and beyond—even for a woman, or a man in a hurry. So I went first along the path, the whole stretch of it that falls within reach from the kitchen window, the one you said was open that day. But it was not there I found it.”

  “It was not?”

  “No, but beyond. There’s a fringe of ice round the edge of the pond now, but the current from the millrace keeps all the middle clear. I found the bottle on my way back, after I’d searched all the grass and bushes there, and thought to look on the other side of the path, along the rim of the water. And it was there, on its side half under the ice, held fast. I’ve driven a hazel twig into the ground opposite the place, and the hole I prised it from will say unless we have a thaw. I think the bottle was thrown clear of whatever ice there may have been then, but not far enough out to be taken away by the mill current, and because the stopper was in it, it floated, and drifted back to be caught in the next frost. But, Cadfael, it couldn’t have been thrown from the kitchen window, it was too far along the path.”

  “You’re sure of that? Then where? Is it the distance that seems too great?”

  “No, but the direction. It’s much too far to the right, and there’s a bank of bushes between. The ground lies wrong for it. If a man threw it from the kitchen window it would not go where I found it, it could not. But from the window of the other room it very well could. Do you remember, Cadfael, was that window unshuttered, too? The room where they were dining?”

  Cadfael thought back to the scene within the house, when Richildis met him and ushered him desperately through to the bedchamber, past the disordered table laid with three trenchers. “It was, it was!—the shutter was set open, for the midday sun came in there.” From that room Edwin had rushed in indignant offence, and out through the kitchen, where he was thought to have committed his crime and rid himself of the evidence later. But not for a moment had he been alone in that inner room; only in his precipitate flight had he been out of sight of all the household.

  “You see, Mark, what this means? From what you say, this vial was either thrown from the window of the inner room, or else someone walked along that path and threw it into the pond. And neither of those things could Edwin have done. He might, as they suppose, have halted for a moment in the kitchen, but he certainly did not go along the path by the pond before making for the bridge, or Aelfric would have overtaken him. No, he would have been ahead of him, or met him at the gate! Nor did he have the opportunity, at any time afterwards, to dispose of the vial there. He hid with his bitter mood until Edwy found him, and from then on they were both in hiding until they came to me. This small thing, Mark, is proof that Edwin is as clear of guilt as you or I.”

  “But it does not prove who the guilty man is,” said Mark.

  “It does not. But if the bottle was indeed thrown from the window of that inner room, then it was done long after the death, for I doubt if anyone was alone in there for a moment until after the sergeant had come and gone. And if the one responsible carried this somewhere on him all that time, as ill-stoppered as it is now, then the marks of it will be on him. He might try to scrub the stain away, but it will not be easily removed. And who can afford to discard cotte or gown? No, the signs will be there to be found.”

  “But what if it was someone else, not of the household, who did the deed, and flung the vial from the pathway? Once you did wonder, about the cook and the scullions …

  “I won’t say it’s impossible. But is it likely? From the path a man could make very sure the vial went into the mid-current and the deep of the pool, and even if it did not sink—though he would have had time in that case to ensure that it did!—it would be carried away back to the brook and the river. But you see it fell short, and lay for us to find.”

  “What must we do now?” asked Brother Mark, roused and ready.

  “We must go to Vespers, my son, or we shall be late. And tomorrow we must get you, and this witness with you, to Hugh Beringar in Shrewsbury.”

  The l
ay contingent at Vespers was always thin, but never quite absent. That evening Martin Bellecote had come down out of the town to give a word of hearty thanks first to God, and then to Cadfael, for his son’s safe return. After the service ended he waited in the cloister for the brothers to emerge, and came to meet Cadfael at the south door.

  “Brother, it’s to you we owe it that the lad’s home again, if it is with a flea in his ear, and not lying in some den in the castle for his pains.”

  “Not to me, for I could not free him. It was Hugh Beringar who saw fit to send him home. And take my word, in all that may happen you can rely on Beringar for a decent, fair-minded man who’ll not tolerate injustice. In any encounter with him, tell him the truth.”

  Bellecote smiled, but wryly. “Truth, but not all the truth, even to him—though he showed generous indeed to my boy, I grant you. But until the other one’s as safe as Edwy, I keep my own counsel on where he is. But to you, brother …”

  “No,” said Cadfael quickly, “not to me, either though soon, I hope, there may be no reason left for hiding him. But that time’s not yet. Is all well, then, with your own family? And Edwy none the worse?”

  “Never a whit the worse. Without a bruise or two he’d have valued his adventure less. It was all his own devising. But it’s caused him to draw in his horns for a while. I never knew him so biddable before, and that’s no bad thing. He’s working with more zeal than he commonly shows. Not that we’re overburdened with work, this close to the feast, but wanting Edwin, and now Meurig’s gone to keep Christmas with his kin, I’ve enough on hand to keep my scamp busy.”

  “So Meurig goes to his own people, does he?”

  “Regularly for Christmas and Easter. He has cousins and an uncle or so up in the borders. He’ll be back before the year ends. He sets store by his own folk, does Meurig.”

  Yes, so he had said on the day Cadfael first encountered him. “My kinship is my mother’s kinship, 1go with my own. My father was not a Welshman.” Naturally he would want to go home for the feast.

  “May we all be at peace for the Lord’s nativity!” said Cadfael, with heartier optimism since the discovery of the small witness now lying on a shelf in his workshop.

  “Amen to that, brother! And I and my household thank you for your stout aid, and if ever you need ours, you have but to say.”

  Martin Bellecote went back to his shop with duty done, and Brother Cadfael and Brother Mark went to supper with duty still to be done.

  “I’ll go early into the town,” said Brother Mark, earnestly whispering in Cadfael’s ear in a corner of the chapter-house, during some very lame readings in the Latin by Brother Francis, after the meal. “I’ll absent myself from Prime, what does it matter if I incur penance?”

  “You will not,” Brother Cadfael whispered back firmly. “You’ll wait until after dinner, when you are freed to your own work, as this will truly be legitimate work for you, the best you could be about. I will not have you flout any part of the rule.”

  “As you would not dream of doing, of course!” breathed Mark, and his plain, diffident face brightened beautifully into a grin he might have borrowed from Edwin or Edwy.

  “For no reason but matter of life and death. And owning my fault! And you are not me, and should not be copying my sins. It will be all the same, after dinner or before,” he said reassuringly. “You’ll ask for Hugh Beringar—no one else, mind, I would not be sure of any other as I am of him. Take him and show him where you found the vial, and I think Edwin’s family will soon be able to call him home again.”

  Their planning was largely vain. The next morning’s chapter undid such arrangements as they had made, and changed everything.

  Brother Richard the sub-prior rose, before the minor matters of business were dealt with, to say that he had an item of some urgency, for which he begged the prior’s attention.

  “Brother Cellarer has received a messenger from our sheepfold near Rhydycroesau, by Oswestry. Lay Brother Barnabas is fallen ill with a bad chest, and is in fever, and Brother Simon is left to take care of all the flock there alone. But more than this, he is doubtful of his skill to tend the sick brother successfully, and asks, if it’s possible, that someone of more knowledge should come to help him for a while.”

  “I have always thought,” said Prior Robert, frowning, “that we should have more than two men there. We run two hundred sheep on those hills, and it is a remote place. But how did Brother Simon manage to send word, since he is the only able man left there?”

  “Why, he took advantage of the fortunate circumstances that our steward is now in charge at the manor of Mallilie. It seems it is only a few miles from Rhydycroesau. Brother Simon rode there and asked that word be sent, and a groom was despatched at once. No time has been lost, if we can send a helper today.”

  The mention of Mallilie had caused the prior to prick up his ears. It had also made Cadfael start out of his own preoccupations, since this so clearly had a bearing on the very problems he was pondering. So Mallilie was but a few short miles from the abbey sheepfolds near Oswestry! He had never stopped to consider that the exact location of the manor might have any significance, and this abrupt enlightenment started a number of mental hares out of their forms in bewildering flight.

  “Clearly we must do so,” said Robert, and almost visibly reminded himself that the errand could with propriety be laid upon the abbey’s most skilled herbalist and apothecary, which would effectively remove him not only from all contact with the Widow Bonel, but also from his meddlesome insistence on probing the unfortunate events which had made her a widow. The prior turned his silver, stately head and looked directly at Brother Cadfael, something he normally preferred not to do. The same considerations had dawned upon Cadfael, with the same pleasing effect. If I had devised this myself, he was thinking, it could not have been more apposite. Now young Mark can leave the errand to me, and remain here blameless.

  “Brother Cadfael, it would seem this is a duty for you, who are accomplished in medicines. Can you at once put together all such preparations as may be needed for our sick brother?”

  “I can and will, Father,” said Cadfael, so heartily that for a moment Prior Robert recoiled into doubt of his own wisdom and penetration. Why should the man be so happy at the prospect of a long winter ride, and hard work being both doctor and shepherd at the end of it? When he had been so assiduously poking his nose into the affairs of the Bonel household here? But the distance remained a guarantee; from Rhydycroesau he would be in no position to meddle further.

  “I trust it may not be for very long. We shall say prayers for Brother Barnabas, that he may rally and thrive. You can again send word by the grooms at Mallilie, should there be need. And is your novice Mark well grounded, enough for minor ailments in your absence? In cases of serious illness we may call on the physician.”

  “Brother Mark is devoted and able,” said Cadfael, with almost paternal pride, “and can be trusted absolutely, for if he feels himself in need of better counsel he will say so with modesty. And he has a good supply of all those remedies that may most be needed at this season. We have taken pains to provide against an ill winter.”

  “That’s very well. Then in view of the need, you may leave chapter and make ready. Take a good mule from the stables, and have food with you for the way, and make sure you’re well provided for such an illness as Brother Barnabas seems to have contracted. If there is any case in the infirmary you feel you should visit before leaving, do so. Brother Mark shall be sent to you, you may have advice for him before you go.”

  Brother Cadfael went out from the chapter-house and left them to their routine affairs. God is still looking our way, he thought, bustling blithely into his workshop and raking the shelves for all that he needed. Medicines for throat, chest, head, an unguent for rubbing into the chest, goose-grease and strong herbs. The rest was warmth and care and proper food. They had hens at Rhydycroesau, and their own good milchcow, fed through the winter. And last, a thing he ne
ed take only into Shrewsbury, the little green glass vial, still wrapped in its napkin.

  Brother Mark came with a rush and out of breath, sent from his Latin studies under Brother Paul. “They say you’re going away, and I’m to be custodian here. Oh, Cadfael, how shall I manage without you? And what of Hugh Beringar, and this proof we have for him?”

  “Leave that to me now,” said Cadfael. “To go to Rhydycroesau one must go through the town, I’ll bear it to the castle myself. You pay attention only to what you’ve learned from me, for I know how well it’s been learned, and I shall be here with you in spirit every moment. Imagine that you ask me, and you’ll find the answer.” He had a jar of unguent in one hand, he reached the other with absent affection and patted the young, smooth tonsure ringed by rough, thick, spiky straw-coloured hair. “It’s only for a short while, we’ll have Brother Barnabas on his feet in no time. And listen, child dear, the manor of Mallilie, I find, is but a short way from where I shall be, and it seems to me that the answer to what we need to know may be there, and not here.”

  “Do you think so?” said Brother Mark hopefully, forgetting his own anxieties.

  “I do, and I have a thought—no more than the gleam of an idea, that they loosed in me at chapter … Now make yourself useful! Go and bespeak me a good mule at the stables, and see all these things into the saddlebags for me. I have an errand to the infirmary before I leave.”

  Brother Rhys was in his privileged place by the fire, hunched in his chair in a contented half-doze, but awake enough to open one eye pretty sharply at every movement and word around him. He was in the mood to welcome a visitor, and brightened into something approaching animation when Cadfael told him that he was bound for the north-west of the county, to the sheepfolds of Rhydycroesau.

  “Your own countryside, brother! Shall I carry your greetings to the borderland? You’ll still have kinsfolk there, surely, three generations of them.”