by Ellis Peters
“There within call of his own shop? Is it possible? And all present, the alders, the crowfoot, the purple flower… Everything comes back, everything comes home, to that burgage. Begin wherever we may, we end there.”
“That is truth,” said Madog. “And Brother Cadfael is cudgelling his wits over the same tangle, and would be glad to consider it along with you, my lord, if you can spare him the needed hour tonight, however late.”
“I’ll do that thankfully,” said Hugh, “for God knows it wants more cunning that I have alone, and sharper vision, to see through this murk. Do you go home and get your rest, Madog, for you’ve done well by us. And I’ll go knock up Peche’s lad, and have out of him whatever he can tell us about this coin he claims for his master’s.”
*
By this same hour Brother Cadfael had eased his own mind by imparting, after supper, all that he had discovered to Abbot Radulfus, who received it with thoughtful gravity.
“And you have sent word already to Hugh Beringar? You think he may wish to take counsel with you further in the matter?” He was well aware that there was a particular understanding between them, originating in events before he himself took office at Shrewsbury. “You may take whatever time you need if he comes tonight. Certainly this affair must be concluded as soon as possible, and it does increasingly appear that our guest in sanctuary may have very little to do with any of these offences. He is within here, but the evil continues without. If he is innocent of all, in justice that must be shown to the world.”
Cadfael left the abbot’s lodging with time still for hard thought, and the twilight just falling. He went faithfully to Compline and then, turning his back on the dortoir, went out to the porch where Liliwin spread his blankets and made his bed. The young man was still wide awake, sitting with his knees drawn up and his back braced comfortably into the corner of the stone bench, a small, hunched shadow in the darkness, singing over to himself the air of a song he was making and had not yet completed to his satisfaction. He broke off when Cadfael appeared, and made room beside him on his blankets.
“A good tune, that,” said Cadfael, settling himself with a sigh. “Yours? You’d best keep it to yourself, or Anselm will be stealing it for the ground of a Mass.”
“It is not ready yet,” said Liliwin. “There lacks a proper soft fall for the ending. It is a love song for Rannilt.” He turned his head to look his companion earnestly in the eyes. “I do love her. I’ll brave it out here and hang rather than go elsewhere without her.”
“She would hardly be grateful to you for that,” said Cadfael. “But God willing you shall not have to make any such choice.” The boy himself, though he still went in suspense and some fear, was well aware that every day now cast further doubt upon the case against him. “Things move there without, if in impenetrable ways. To tell truth, the law is coming round very sensibly to my opinion of you.”
“Well, maybe… But what if they found that I did leave here that night? They wouldn’t believe my story as you did…” He cast a doubtful glance at Brother Cadfael, and saw something in the bland stare that met him that caused him to demand in alarm: “You haven’t told the sheriff’s deputy? You promised… for Rannilt’s sake…”
“Never fret, Rannilt’s good name is as safe with Hugh Beringar as with me. He has not even called on her as a witness for you, nor will not unless the affair goes to the length of trial. Tell him? Well, so I did, but only after he had made it plain he guessed the half. His nose for a reluctant liar is at least as keen as mine, he never believed that “No” he wrung out of you. So the rest of it he wrung out of me. He found you more convincing telling truth than lying. And then there is always Rannilt, if ever you need her witness, and the watchmen who saw you pass in and out. No need to trouble too much about your doings that night. I wish I knew as much about everyone else’s.” He pondered, conscious of Liliwin’s intent and trusting regard. “There’s nothing more you’ve recalled? The smallest detail concerning that house may be of help.”
Hesitantly Liliwin cast his mind back, and told over again the brief story of his connection with the goldsmith’s house. The host at a tavern where he had played and sung for his supper had told him of the marriage to be celebrated next day, he had gone there hopefully, and been engaged for the occasion, he had done his best to earn his money and been cast out, and hunted as a thief and murderer here into the church. All of it known already.
“How much of that burgage did you ever see? For you went first in daylight.”
“I went to the shop and they sent me in through the passage to the hall door, to the women. It was they who hired me, the old woman and the young one.”
“And in the evening?”
“Why, as soon as I came there they sent me to eat with Rannilt in the kitchen, and I was there with her until they sent out for me to come and play and sing while they feasted, and afterwards I played for dancing, and did my acrobatics, and juggled—and you know how it ended.”
“So you never saw more than the passage and the yard. You never were down the length of the garden, or through the town wall there to the waterside?”
Liliwin shook his head firmly. “I didn’t even know it went beyond the wall until the day Rannilt came here. I could see as far as the wall when I went through to the hall in the morning, but I thought it ended there. It was Rannilt told me the drying-ground was beyond there. It was their washing day, you see, she’d done all the scrubbing and rinsing, and had it all ready to go out by mid-morning. But usually she has the dinner to prepare as well, and watches the weather, and fetches the clothes in before evening. But that day Mistress Susanna had said she would see to everything, and let Rannilt come here to visit me. That was truly kind!”
Strange how sitting here listening to the boy’s recollections brought up clearly the picture of that drying-ground he had never seen but through Rannilt’s eyes, the slope of grass, the pebbles for anchors, the alders screening the riverside, the town wall shielding the sward from the north and leaving it open to the south…
“And I remember she said Mistress Susanna had her shoes and the hems of her skirts wet when she came in from putting out the washing and found Rannilt crying. But still she took note first for my girl being so sad… Never mind my wet feet, she said, what of your wet eyes? Rannilt told me so!”
All ready to go out by mid-morning… As Baldwin Peche had gone out in mid-morning for the last time. The fish rising… Cadfael, away pursuing his own thoughts, suddenly baulked, realising, belatedly, what he had heard.
“What was that you said? She had her feet and skirts wet?”
“The river was a little high then,” explained Liliwin, undisturbed. “She’d slipped on the smooth grass into the shallows. Hanging out a shirt on the alders…
And she came in calmly, and sent the maidservant away so that none other but herself should go to bring in the linen. What other reason would any have for passing through the wicket in the wall? And only yesterday Rannilt had been sitting in the doorway to have the light on her work, mending a rent in the skirt of a gown. And the brown at the hem had been mottled and faded, leaving a tide-mark of dark colour round the pallor…
“Brother Cadfael,” called the porter softly from the archway into the cloister, “Hugh Beringar is here for you. He said you would be expecting him.”
“I am expecting him,” said Cadfael, recalling himself with an effort from the Aurifaber hall. “Bid him come through here. I think we have word for each other.”
*
It was not quite dark, the sky being so clear, and Hugh knew his way everywhere within these walls. He came briskly, made no objection to Liliwin’s presence, and sat down at once in the porch to show the silver coin in his palm.
“I’ve already viewed it in a better light. It’s a silver penny of the sainted Edward, king before the Normans came, a beautiful piece minted in this town. The moneyer was one Godesbrond, there are a few of his pieces to be found, but few indeed in the town where they we
re struck. Aurifaber’s inventory listed three such. And this was stuck between the boards of the bucket in their well the morning after the theft. A scrap of coarse blue cloth, the lad says, was caught in with it, but he thought nothing of that. But it seems to me that whoever emptied Aurifaber’s coffer tipped all into a blue cloth bag and dropped it into that bucket—the work of a mere few moments—to be retrieved later at leisure in the dark hours, before the earliest riser went to draw water.”
“And whoever hoisted it out again,” said Cadfael, “snagged a corner of the bag on a splinter… a small tear, just enough to let through one of the smaller coins. It could be so. And Peche’s boy had found this?”
“He was the earliest riser. He went to draw water and lit on this. He took it to his master, and was rewarded, and told not to let it out to any other ears that the locksmith possessed any such. A great value, Peche said, he set on this.”
So he well might, if it meant to him that someone there in that very household must be the thief, and could be milked of the half of his gains in return for silence. The fish were rising! Now Cadfael began gradually to comprehend all that had happened. He forgot the young man hugging his knees and stretching his amazed ears in the corner of the bench close to them. Hugh had hardly given the boy a thought, so silent and so still he was.
“I think,” said Cadfael, picking his way without too much haste, for there might yet be pitfalls, “that when he saw this he knew, or could divine with very fair certainty, which of that household must be the robber. He foresaw good pickings. What would he ask? A half-share in the booty? But it would not have made any difference had he been far more modest than that, for the one he approached had the force and the passion and the ruthlessness to act at once and waste no time on parley. Listen to me, Hugh, and remember that night. They sought Master Walter, found him stunned in his shop, and carried him up to his bed. And then someone—no one seems certain who—cried that it must be the jongleur who had done this, and sent the whole mob haring out after him, as we here witnessed. Who, then, was left there to tend the stricken man, and the old woman threatened by her fit?”
“The women,” said Hugh.
“The women. Of whom the bride was left to care for the victims upstairs in their own chambers. It was Susanna who ran for the physician. Very well, so she did. But did she run for him at once, or take but a few moments to run first to the well and place what she found there in safer hiding?”
In a brief and awed silence they sat staring at each other.
“Is it possible?” said Hugh marvelling. “His daughter?”
“Among humankind all things are possible. Consider! This locksmith had the key to the mystery put into his hands. If he had been honest he would have gone straight to Walter or to Daniel and showed it, and told what he knew. He did not, for he was not honest. He meant to gain by what he had found out. If he did not approach the one he believed guilty until the Monday, it was because he had no chance until then of doing so in private. He was as able as we to remember how all the menfolk had gone baying after Liliwin here, and to reason that it was a woman who reclaimed the treasury from the well and put it safely away until all the hue and cry should be over, and a stray lad, with luck, hanged for the deed. And who kept the keys of the house and had the best command over all its hiding-places? He chose Susanna. And on Monday his time came, when she took her basket of linen and went down through the wall to spread it out in the drying-ground. About mid-morning Baldwin Peche was last seen in his shop, and went off with some remark about the fish rising. No one saw him, living, ever again.”
Liliwin, hitherto mute in his corner, leaned forward with a soft, protesting cry: “You can’t mean it! She… But she was the only one, the only one who showed Rannilt some kindness. She let her come to me for her comfort… She did not truly believe that I…” He saw in time where he was headed, and halted with a great groan.
“She had good reason to know that you never harmed her father’s person or stole his goods. The best! And a sound reason, also, for sending Rannilt away out of the house so that she herself, and none but she, should fetch in the washing, or have any other occasion to go down to the riverside, where she had left the extortioner dead.”
“I cannot believe,” whispered Liliwin, shaking, “that she could, even if she would, do such a thing. A woman… kill?”
“You underrate Susanna,” said Cadfael grimly. “So did all her kin. And women have killed, many a time.”
“Granted, then, that he followed her down to the river,” said Hugh. “You had better go on. Tell us what you believe happened there, and how this thing came about.”
“I think he came down after her to the brink, showed her the coin, and demanded a share in her gains to pay for his silence. I think he, of all people, had worst underestimated her. A mere woman! He expected prevarication, lies, delay, perhaps pleading, some labour to convince her he knew what he knew and meant what he said. He had greatly mistaken her. He had not bargained for a woman who could accept danger instantly, with no outcry, make up her mind, and act, stamping out the threat as soon as it arose. I think she spoke him fair while she went on laying out the washing, and as he stood by the water’s edge with the coin in his hand she so arranged that she passed behind him with a stone in her hand, reaching to a corner of linen, and struck him down.”
“Go on,” said Hugh, “you cannot leave it there. There was more done than that.”
“I think you already know. Whether the blow quite stunned him or not, it flung him face-down into the shallow water. I think she did not wait to give him time to recover his wits and try to rise, but went on acting instantly. Her skirt and shoes were wet! I have only just learned it. And remember the bruises on his back. I think she stepped upon him in the water, almost as he fell, and held him down until he was dead.”
Hugh sat silent. It was Liliwin who uttered a small whimper of horror at hearing it, and shook as if the night had turned cold.
“And then considered calmly the possibility that the river might find force enough to float him away, and took steps to pin him down where he was, under the alders, under the water, until he could be conveyed away by night, to be discovered elsewhere, a drowned man. Do you recall the pitted bruise on his shoulders? There is a jagged stone fallen from the town wall, beside the pebbles there. As for the coin, it was under his body, she did not try to recover it.”
Hugh drew deep breath. “It could be so! But it was not she who followed her father to his shop and struck him down, for she is one person who is vouched for fully, all that time that he was gone, until she went to look for him. And then she cried out at once for help. There was no time at all when she could have struck the blow or made off with the booty. She may have removed it from the well later, she certainly did not put it there. You are arguing, I take it, that there were two who planned this between them?”
“Two are implied. One to strike and steal and hide, the other to retrieve the goods by night and secrete them in a safer place. One to destroy the extortioner as soon as he declared himself, and the other to take away the body and dispose of it by night. Yes, surely two.”
“Then who is the second? Certainly brother and sister who suffered from such parsimonious elders might compound together to get their hands on what was withheld from them, and certainly Daniel was abroad that night and furtive about it. And for all his tale of a married woman’s bed rings likely enough, I have still had an eye on him. Even shallow men can learn to lie.”
“I have not forgotten Daniel. But you may, for of all men living, her brother is the least likely to have had any part in Susanna’s plans.” Cadfael was recalling, as in a storm-flash of illumination, small, unremarkable, unremarked things, Rannilt repeating the words she had overheard, Juliana’s improbable praise of her granddaughter’s excellent housewifery, in preserving her oatmeal crock half-full past Easter, and Susanna’s bitter taunt: “Had you still a place prepared for me? A nunnery, perhaps?” And then the old woman shriek
ed and fell down…
No, wait! There was more to it, he saw it now. The old woman at the head of the stairs, the only light that of the little lamp she carried, a falling light, pricking Susanna’s form and features into sharpest light and shade, every curve or hollow magnified… Yes! She saw what she saw, she shrieked and clutched her breast, and then fell, letting fall the revealing lamp from her hand. Somehow she had known the half of it, and come forth by night to confront her only, her best antagonist. She, too, must have seen the torn skirt, the stained hem, and made her own connections. And she had still, she had said, a use for those concealed keys of hers before she surrendered them at last. Yes, and the last words she ever spoke: “For all that, I should have liked to hold my great-grandchild…” Words better understood now than when first he had heard them.
“No, now I see! Nothing now could have held her back.
The man who compounded with her to steal was no kinsman, nor one they would ever have admitted as kin. They made their plans perforce, those two, to vanish from here together at the first favourable time, and make a life somewhere far away from this town. Her father grudged her a dowry, she has taken it for her herself. Whatever his name may be, this man, we know now what he is. He is her lover. More, he is the man who has got her with child.”
Chapter 12
Friday: night
HUGH WAS ON HIS FEET before the last words were spoken. “If you’re right, after what has happened they won’t wait for a better time. They’ve left it late as it is and so, by God, have I.”
“You’re going there now? I am coming with you.” Cadfael was not quite easy about Rannilt. In all innocence she had spoken out things that meant nothing evil to her, but might uncover much evil to those who listened. Far better to have her away before she could further threaten Susanna’s purposes. And it seemed that the same fear had fallen upon Liliwin, for he scrambled hastily out of the shadows to catch at Hugh’s arm before they could leave the cloister.
