The Sanctuary Sparrow

by Ellis Peters

  A woman came out of the room as Cadfael approached it. Tall, like her young brother, of the same rich brown colouring, past thirty years old and mistress of this household for the last fifteen of those years, Walter’s daughter Susanna had a cool dignity about her that went very ill with violence and crime. She had stepped into the shoes of her mother, whom she was said to resemble, as soon as Dame Juliana began to ail. The keys were hers, the stores were hers, the pillars and the roof of the house were held up by her, calmly and competently. A good girl, people said. Except that her girlhood was gone.

  She smiled at Brother Cadfael, though even her smile was distant and cool. She had a pale, clear oval face with wide-set grey eyes, that went very strangely with her wealth of russet hair, braided and bound austerely on her head. Her housewifely gown was neat, dark and plain. The keys at her waist were her only jewellery.

  They were old acquaintances. Cadfael could not claim more or better than that.

  “No call to fret,” said the girl briskly. “She’s over it already, though frightened. In good case to take advice, I hope. Margery is in there with her.”

  Margery? Of course, the bride! Strange office for a bride, the day after the wedding, to be nursing her bridegroom’s grandam. Margery Bele, Cadfael recalled, daughter to the cloth-merchant Edred Bele, had a very nice little fortune in line for her some day, since she had no brother, and brought with her a very proper dowry even now. Well worth a miserly family’s purchase for their heir. But was she, then, so bereft of suitors that this one offer must buy her? Or had she already seen and wanted that curly-haired, spoiled, handsome brat now no doubt frowning and fretting over his losses in the shop here?

  “I must leave her to you and God,” said Susanna. “She takes no notice of anyone else. And I have the dinner to prepare.”

  “And what of your father?”

  “He’ll do well enough,” she said practically. “He was very mellow, it did him good service, he fell soft as a cushion. Go along and see him, when she’s done with you.” She gave him her wry smile, and slipped away silently down the stairs.

  *

  If Dame Juliana’s attack had affected her speech at all on this occasion, she had made a remarkable recovery. Flat on her pillows she might be, and indeed had better remain for a day or so, but her tongue wagged remorselessly all the time Cadfael was feeling her forehead and the beat of her heart, and drawing back an eyelid from a fierce grey eye to look closely at the pupil. He let her run on without response or encouragement, though he missed nothing of what she had to say.

  “And I expected better of the lord abbot,” she said, curling thin, bluish lips, “than to take the part of a vagabond footpad, murderer and thief as he is, against honest craftsmen who pay their dues and their devotions like Christians. It’s great shame to you all to shelter such a rogue.”

  “Your son, I’m told,” said Cadfael mildly, rummaging in his scrip for the little flask of powder dried from oak mistletoe, “is not dead, nor like to be yet, though the pack of your guests went baying off through the night yelling murder.”

  “He well might have been a corpse,” she snapped. “And dead or no, either way this is a hanging matter, as well you know. And how if I had died, eh? Whose fault would that have been? There could have been two of us to bury, and the family left ruined into the bargain. Mischief enough for one wretched little minstrel to wreak in one night. But he’ll pay for it! Forty days or no, we shall be waiting for him, he won’t escape us.”

  “If he ran from here loaded with your goods,” said Cadfael, shaking out a little powder into his palm, “he certainly brought none of them into the church with him. If he has your one miserly penny on him, that’s all.” He turned to the young woman who stood anxiously beside the head of the bed. “Have you wine there, or milk? Either does. Stir this into a cup of it.”

  She was a small, round, homely girl, this Margery, perhaps twenty years old, with fresh, rosy colouring and a great untidy mass of yellow hair. Her eyes were round and wary. No wonder if she felt lost in this unfamiliar and disrupted household, but she moved quietly and sensibly, and her hands were steady on pitcher and cup.

  “He had time to hide his plunder somewhere,” the old woman insisted grimly. “Walter was gone above half an hour before Susanna began to wonder, and went to look for him. The wretch could have been over the bridge and into the bushes by then.”

  She accepted the drink that was presented to her lips, and swallowed it down readily. Whatever her dissatisfaction with abbot and abbey, she trusted Cadfael’s remedies. The two of them were unlikely to agree on any subject under the sun, but for all that they respected each other. Even this avaricious, formidable old woman, tyrant of her family and terror of her servants, had certain virtues of courage, spirit and honesty that were not to be despised.

  “He swears he never touched your son or your gold,” said Cadfael. “As I grant he may be lying, so you had better grant that you and yours may be mistaken.”

  She was contemptuous. She pushed away from under her wrinkled neck the skimpy braid of brittle grey hair that irritated her skin. “Who else could it have been? The only stranger, and with a grudge because I docked him the value of what he broke…”

  “Of what he says some boisterous young fellow hustled him and caused him to break.”

  “He must take a company as he finds it, wherever he hires himself out. And now I recall,” she said, “we put him out without those painted toys of his, wooden rings and balls. I want nothing of his, and what he’s taken of mine I’ll have back before the end. Susanna will give you the playthings for him, and welcome. He shall not be able to say we’ve matched his thievery.”

  She would give him, scrupulously, what was his, but she would see his neck wrung without a qualm.

  “Be content, you’ve already broken his head for him. One more blow like that, and you might have had the law crying murder on you. And you’d best listen to me soberly now! One more rage like that, and you’ll be your own death. Learn to take life gently and keep your temper, or there’ll be a third and worse seizure, and it may well be the last.”

  She looked, for once, seriously thoughtful. Perhaps she had been saying as much to herself, even without his warning. “I am as I am,” she said, rather admitting than boasting.

  “Be so as long as you may, and leave it to the young to fly into frenzies over upsets that will all pass, given time. Now here I’m leaving you this flask—it’s the decoction of heart trefoil, the best thing I know to strengthen the heart. Take it as I taught you before, and keep your bed today, and I’ll take another look at you tomorrow. And now,” said Cadfael, “I’m going along to see how Master Walter fares.”

  *

  The goldsmith, his balding head swathed and his long, suspicious face fallen slack in sleep, was snoring heavily, and it seemed the best treatment to let him continue sleeping. Cadfael went down thoughtfully to find Susanna, who was out in the kitchen at the rear of the house. A skinny little girl laboured at feeding a sluggish fire and heaving a great pot to the hook over it. Cadfael had caught a glimpse of the child once before, all great dark eyes in a pale, grubby face, and a tangle of dark hair. Some poor maidservant’s by-blow by her master, or her master’s son, or a passing guest. For all the parsimony in this household, the girl could have fallen into worse hands. She was at least fed, and handed down cast-off clothing, and if the old matriarch was grim and frightening, Susanna was quiet and calm, no scold and no tyrant.

  Cadfael reported on his patient, and Susanna watched his face steadily, nodded comprehension, and asked no questions.

  “And your father is asleep. I left him so. What better could anyone do for him?”

  “I fetched his own physician to him last night,” she said, “when we found him. She’ll have none but you now, but father relies on Master Arnald, and he’s close. He says the blow is not dangerous, though it was enough to lay him senseless some hours. Though it may be the drink had something to do with that, too.�
�

  “He hasn’t yet been able to tell you what happened? Whether he saw who the man was who struck him?”

  “Not a word. When he comes to, his head aches so he can remember nothing. It may come back to him later.”

  For the saving or the damning of Liliwin! But whichever way that went, and whatever else he might be, Walter Aurifaber was not a liar. Meantime, there was nothing to be learned from him, but from the rest of the household there might be, and this girl was the gravest and most reasonable of the tribe.

  “I’ve heard the general cry against this young fellow, but not the way the thing happened. I know there was some horse-play with the lads, nothing surprising at a wedding feast, and the pitcher got broken. I know your grandmother lashed out at him with her stick, and had him cast out with only one penny of his fee. His story is that he made off then, knowing it was hopeless to protest further, and he knew nothing of what followed until he heard the hunters baying after him, and ran to us for shelter.”

  “He would say so,” she agreed reasonably.

  “Every man’s saying may as well be true as untrue,” said Cadfael sententiously. “How long after his going was it when Master Walter went to his workshop?”

  “Nearly an hour it must have been. Some of the guests were leaving then, but the more lively lads would stay to see Margery bedded, a good dozen of them were up the stair to the chamber. The wedding gifts were on the table to be admired, but seeing the night was ending, father took them and went to lock them away safely in his strong-box in the workshop. And it must have been about half an hour later, with all the merriment above, that I began to wonder that he hadn’t come back. There was a gold chain and rings that Margery’s father gave her, and a purse of silver links, and a breast ornament of silver and enamel—fine things. I went out by the hall door and round to the shop, and there he was, lying on his face by the coffer, and the lid open, and all but the heavy pieces of plate gone.”

  “So the singing lad had been gone a full hour before this happened. Did anyone see him lurking after he was put out?”

  She smiled, shaking a rueful head. “There was darkness enough to hide a hundred loiterers. And he did not go so tamely as you suppose. He knows how to curse, too, he cried us names I’d never heard before, I promise you, and howled that he’d have his own back for the wrong we did him. And I won’t say but he was hard done by, for that matter. But who else should it be? People we’ve known lifelong, neighbours here in the street? No, you may be sure he hung about the yard in the dark until he saw my father go alone to the shop, and he stole in there, and saw what wealth there was in the open coffer. Enough to tempt a poor man, I grant you. But even poor men must need resist temptation.”

  “You are very sure,” said Cadfael.

  “I am sure. He owes a life for it.”

  The little maidservant turned her head sharply, gazing with lips parted. Such eyes, huge and grieved. She made a very small sound like a kitten’s whimper.

  “Rannilt is daft about the boy,” said Susanna simply, scornfully tolerant of folly. “He ate with her in the kitchen, and played and sang for her. She’s sorry for him. But what’s done is done.”

  “And when you found your father lying so, of course you ran back here to call help for him?”

  “I couldn’t lift him alone. I cried out what had happened, and those guests who were still here came running, and Iestyn, our journeyman, came rushing up the stairs from the undercroft where he sleeps—he’d gone to bed an hour or more earlier, knowing he’d have to man the shop alone this morning…” Of course, in expectation of the goldsmith’s thick head and his son’s late tarrying with his bride. “We carried father up to his bed, and someone—I don’t know who was the first—cried out that this was the jongleur’s doing, and that he couldn’t be far, and out they all went streaming, every man, to hunt for him. And I left Margery to watch by father, while I ran off to fetch Master Arnald.”

  “You did what was possible,” Cadfael allowed. “Then when was it Dame Juliana took her fit?”

  “While I was gone. She’d gone to her chamber, she may even have been asleep, though with the larking and laughing in the gallery I should doubt it. But I was hardly out of the door when she hobbled along to father’s room, and saw him lying, with his bloody head, and senseless. She clutched at her heart, Margery says, and fell down. But it was not such a bad fit this time. She was already wake and talking,” said Susanna, “when I came back with the physician. We had help then for both of them.”

  “Well, they’ve both escaped the worst,” said Cadfael, brooding, “for this time. Your father is a strong, hale man, and should live his time out without harm. But for the dame, more shocks of the kind could be the death of her, and so I’ve told her.”

  “The loss of her treasury,” said Susanna drily, “was shock enough to kill her. If she lives through that, she’s proof against all else until her full time comes. We are a durable kind, Brother Cadfael, very durable.”

  *

  Cadfael turned aside from leaving by the passage to the street, and entered Walter Aurifaber’s workshop by the side door. Here Walter would have let himself in, when he came burdened with several choice items in gold and silver, enamel and fine stones, to lock them up with his other wealth in the strong-box; from which, in all likelihood, Mistress Margery would have had much ado to get them out again for her wearing. Unless, of course, that soft and self-effacing shape concealed a spirit of unsuspected toughness. Women can be very deceptive.

  As he entered the shop from the passage, the street door was on his left, there was a trestled show-table, cloth-covered, and the rear part of the room was all narrow shelving, the small furnace, cold, and the work-benches, at which Daniel was working on a setting for a clouded mossa gate, brows locked in a gloomy knot. But his fingers were deft enough with the fine tools, for all his preoccupation with the family misfortunes. The journeyman was bent over a scale on the bench beside the furnace, weighing small tablets of silver. A sturdy, compact person, this Iestyn, by the look of him about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, with cropped, straight dark hair in a thick cap. He turned his head, hearing someone entering, and his face was broad but bony, dark-skinned, thick-browed, deep-eyed, wholly Welsh. A better-humoured man than his master, though not so comely.

  At sight of Cadfael, Daniel put his tools aside. “You’ve seen them both? How is it with them?”

  “The pair of them will do well enough for this time,” said Cadfael. “Master Walter is under his own physician, and held to be out of any danger, if his memory is shaken. Dame Juliana is over this fit, but any further shock could be mortal, it’s only to be expected. Few reach such an age.”

  By the young man’s face, he was pondering whether any ever should. But for all that, he knew she favoured him, and had a use for her indulgence. He might even be fond of her, after his fashion, and as far as affection was possible between sour age and impatient youth. He did not seem altogether a callous person, only spoiled. Sole heirs of merchant houses can be as deformed by their privilege as those of baronies.

  In the far corner of the shop Walter’s pillaged strong-box stood, a big, iron-banded wooden coffer, securely bolted to floor and wall. Intent on impressing the magnitude of the crime upon any representative of the abbey that insisted on sheltering the felon, Daniel unlocked the double locks and heaved up the lid to display what was left within, a few heavy dishes of plate, too cumbersome to be concealed about the person. The tale he told, and would tell and retell indignantly as often as he found a listener, matched Susanna’s account. Iestyn, called to bear witness at every other aggrieved sentence, could only nod his black head solemnly, and confirm every word.

  “And you are all sure,” said Cadfael, “that the jongleur must be the guilty man? No thought of any other possible thief? Master Walter is known to be a wealthy man. Would a stranger know how wealthy? I daresay there are some here in the town may well envy a craftsman better-off than themselves.”

&n
bsp; “That’s a true word,” agreed Daniel darkly. “And there’s one no farther away than the width of the yard that I might have wondered about, if he had not been there in my eye every minute of the time. But he was, and there’s an end. I fancy he was the first to hit on it that it was the jongleur we wanted.”

  “What, your tenant the locksmith? A harmless soul enough, I should have thought. Pays his rent and minds his shop, like the rest.”

  “His man John Boneth minds the shop,” said Daniel, with a snort of laughter, “and the daft lad helps him. Peche is more often out poking his long nose into other people’s business, and carrying the gossip round the ale-houses than tending to his craft. A smiling, sneaking toady of a man to your face, and back-biting as soon as you turn away. There’s no sneak-thievery I’d put past him, if you want to know. But he was there in the hall the whole time, so it was not he. No, make no mistake, we were on the right trail when we set the pack after that rogue Liliwin, and so it will be proved in the end.”

  They were all in the same story, and the story might well be true. There was but one point to be put to them counter: where would a stranger to the town, and out in the dark, stow away so valuable a booty safely enough and secretly enough to hide it from all others, and yet be able to recover it himself? The aggrieved family might brush that aside. Cadfael found it a serious obstacle to belief.

  He was withdrawing by the same door at which he had entered, and drawing it closed after him by the iron latch, when the draught of the movement and the lengthening shaft of sunlight piercing the passage fluttered and illumined a single primrose-coloured thread, waving at the level of his eyes from the doorpost. The doorpost now on his right, on his left when he entered, but then out of range of the sun’s rays. Pale as flax, and long and shining. He took it between finger and thumb, and plucked it gently from the wood, and a little blotch of dark, brownish red which had gummed it to the post came away with it, a second, shorter hair coiled and stuck in the blot. Cadfael stared at it for an instant, and cast one glance back over his shoulder before he closed the door. From here the coffer in the far corner was plainly in view, and so would a man be, bending over it.