A Morbid Taste For Bones

by Ellis Peters

  “Is this the man?” demanded Engelard.

  Sioned said: “Yes. He has owned to it.”

  Engelard looked beyond his prisoner then for the first time, and saw her standing in the soft starlight that was becoming to their accustomed eyes almost as clear as day. He saw her dishevelled and bruised and gazing with great, shocked eyes, her left arm gashed and bleeding freely, though the cut was shallow. He saw smears of her blood dabbling the white sheet in which she was swathed. By starlight there is little or no colour to be seen but everything that Engelard saw at that moment was blood-red. This was the man who had murdered in coward’s fashion Engelard’s well-liked lord and good friend—whatever their differences!—and now he had tried to kill the daughter as he had killed the father.

  “You dared, you dared touch her!” blazed Engelard in towering rage. “You worthless cloister rat!” And he took Columbanus by the throat and hoisted him bodily from the ground, shook him like the rat he had called him, cracked him in the air like a poisonous snake, and when he had done with him, flung him down at his feet in the grass.

  “Get up!” he growled, standing over the wreckage. “Get up now, and I’ll give you time to rest and breathe, and then you can fight a man to the death, without a dagger in your hand, instead of writhing through the undergrowth and stabbing him in the back, or carving up a defenceless girl. Take your time, I can wait to kill you till you’ve got your breath.”

  Sioned flew to him, breast to breast, and held him fast in her arms, pressing him back. “No! Don’t touch him again! I don’t want the law to have any hold on you, even the slenderest.”

  “He tried to kill you—you’re hurt…”

  “No! It’s nothing… only a cut. It bleeds, but it’s nothing!”

  His rage subsided slowly, shaking him. He folded his arms round her and held her to him, and with a disdainful but restrained jab of a toe urged his prostrate enemy again: “Get up! I won’t touch you. The law can have you, and welcome!”

  Columbanus did not move, not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid or the twitching of a finger. All three of them stood peering down at him in sudden silence, aware how utterly still he was, and how rare such stillness is among living things.

  “He’s foxing,” said Engelard scornfully, “for fear of worse, and by way of getting himself pitied. I’ve heard he’s a master at that.”

  Those who feign sleep and hear themselves talked of, usually betray themselves by some exaggeration of innocence. Columbanus lay in a stillness that was perfectly detached and indifferent.

  Brother Cadfael knelt down beside him, shook him by the shoulder gently, and sat back with a sharp sigh at the broken movement of the head. He put a hand inside the breast of the habit, and stooped to the parted lips and wide nostrils. Then he took the head between his hands, and gently turned and tilted it. It rolled back, as he released it, into a position so improbable that they knew the worst even before Cadfael said, quite practically: “You’d have waited a long time for him to get his breath back, my friend. You don’t know your own strength! His neck is broken. He’s dead.”

  Sobered and shocked, they stood dumbly staring down at what they had hardly yet recognised for disaster. They saw a regrettable accident which neither of them had ever intended, but which was, after all, a kind of justice. But Cadfael saw a scandal that could yet wreck their young lives, and others, too, for without Columbanus alive, and forced by two respected witnesses to repeat his confession, how strong was all their proof against him? Cadfael sat back on his heels, and thought. It was startling to realise, now that the unmoved silence of the night came down on them again, how all this violence and passion had passed with very little noise, and no other witnesses. He listened, and no stirring of foot or wing troubled the quiet. They were far enough away from any dwelling, not a soul had been disturbed. That, at least, was time gained.

  “He can’t be dead,” said Engelard doubtfully. “I barely handled him at all. Nobody dies as easily as that!”

  “This one did. And now what’s to be done? I hadn’t bargained for this.” He said it not complainingly, but as one pointing out that further urgent planning would now be necessary, and they had better keep their minds flexible.

  “Why, what can be done?” To Engelard it was simple, though troublesome. “We shall have to call up Father Huw and your prior, and tell them exactly what’s happened. What else can we do? I’m sorry to have killed the fellow, I never meant to, but I can’t say I feel any guilt about it.”

  Nor did he expect any blame. The truth was always the best way. Cadfael felt a reluctant affection for such innocence. The world was going to damage it sooner or later, but one undeserved accusation had so far failed even to bruise it, he still trusted men to be reasonable. Cadfael doubted if Sioned was so sure. Her silence was anxious and foreboding. And her grazed arm was still oozing blood. First things first, and they might as well be sensibly occupied while he thought.

  “Here, make yourself useful! Help me get this carrion back into the chapel, out of sight. And, Sioned, find his dagger, we can’t leave that lying about to bear witness. Then let’s get that arm of yours washed and bound up. There’s a stream at the back of the hawthorn hedge, and of linen we’ve plenty.”

  They had absolute faith in him, and did his bidding without question, though Engelard, once he had assured himself that Sioned was not gravely hurt, and had himself carefully and deftly bandaged her scratch, returned to his dogged opinion that their best course was to tell the whole story, which could hardly cast infamy upon anyone but Columbanus. Cadfael busied himself with flint and tinder until he had candles lighted, and the lamp refilled, from which he himself had drained a judicious quantity of oil before Sioned took her place under the draperies of the saint’s catafalque.

  “You think,” he said at length, “that because you’ve done nothing wrong, and we’ve all of us banded together to expose a wrong, that the whole world will be of the same opinion, and honestly come out and say so. Child, I know better! The only proof we have of Columbanus’ guilt is his confession, which both of us here heard. Or rather, the only proof we had, for we no longer have even that. Alive, we two could have forced the truth out of him a second time. Dead, he’s never going to give us that satisfaction. And without that, our position is vulnerable enough. Make no mistake, if we accuse him, if this fearful scandal breaks, to smirch the abbey of Shrewsbury, and all the force of the Benedictine order, backed here by the bishop and the prince, take my word for it, all the forces of authority will band together to avert the disaster, and nobody, much less a friendless outlander, will be allowed to stand in the way. They simply can’t afford to have the acquisition of Saint Winifred called in question and brought to disrepute. Rather than that, they’ll call this an outlaw killing by a desperate man, a fugitive already, wanted for another crime, and trying to escape both together. A pity,” he said, “I ever suggested that Sioned should call you in to wait in reserve, in case we had trouble. But none of this is your fault, and I won’t have you branded with it. I made the plot, and I must unravel it. But give up all idea of going straight to Father Huw, or the bailiff, or anyone else, with the true story. Far better use the rest of this night to rearrange matters to better advantage. Justice can be arrived at by more routes than one.”

  “They wouldn’t dare doubt Sioned’s word,” said Engelard stoutly.

  “Fool boy, they’d say that Sioned, for love’s sake, might go as far aside from her proper nature as Peredur did. And as for me, my influence is small enough, and I am not interested in protecting only myself, but as many of those in this coil as I can reach. Even my prior, who is arrogant and rigid, and to tell the truth, sometimes rather stupid, but not a murderer and not a liar. And my order, which has not deserved Columbanus. Hush, now, and let me think! And while I do, you can be clearing away the remains of the syrup bottle. This chapel must be as neat and quiet tomorrow as before we ever brought our troubles into it.”

  Obediently they went about
removing the traces of the night’s alarms, and let him alone until he should have found them a way through the tangle.

  “And I wonder, now,” he said at length, “what made you improve on all the speeches I made for you, and put such fiery words into Saint Winifred’s mouth? What put it into your head to say that you’d never wanted to leave Gwytherin, and did not want it now? That Rhisiart was not merely a decent, honest man, but your chosen champion?”

  She turned and looked at him in astonishment and wonder. “Did I say that?”

  “You did, and very well you delivered it, too. And very proper and apt it sounded, but I think we never rehearsed it so. Where did you get the words?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sioned, puzzled. “I don’t remember what I did say. The words seemed to come freely of themselves, I only let them flow.”

  “It may be,” said Engelard, “that the saint was taking her chance when it offered. All these strangers having visions and ecstasies, and interpreting them to suit themselves, yet nobody ever really asked Saint Winifred what she wanted. They all claimed they knew better than she did.”

  “Out of the mouths of innocents!” said Cadfael to himself, and pondered the road that was gradually opening before his mind’s eye. Of all the people who ought to be left happy with the outcome, Saint Winifred should surely come first. Aim, he thought, at making everybody happy, and if that’s within reach, why stir up any kind of unpleasantness? Take Columbanus, for instance! Only a few hours ago at Compline he prayed aloud before us all that if the virgin deemed him worthy, he might be taken up out of this world this very night, translated instantly out of the body. Well, that was one who got his wish! Maybe he’d have withdrawn his request if he’d known it was going to be taken up so literally, for its purpose was rather to reflect incomparable holiness upon him while he was still alive to enjoy it. But saints have a right to suppose that their devotees mean what they say, and bestow gifts accordingly. And if the saint has really spoken through Sioned, he thought—and who am I to question it?—if she really wants to stay here in her own village, which is a reasonable enough wish, well, the plot where she used to sleep has been newly turned today, no one will notice anything if it’s turned again tonight.

  “I believe,” said Sioned, watching him with the first faint smile, wan but trusting, “you’re beginning to see your way.”

  “I believe,” said Cadfael, “I’m beginning to see our way, which is more to the point. Sioned, I have something for you to do, and you need not hurry, we have work to do here while you’re away. Take that sheet of yours, and go and spread it under the may trees in the hedge, where they’re beginning to shed, but not yet brown, Shake the bushes and. bring us a whole cloud of petals. The last time she visited him, it was with wondrous sweet odours and a shower of white flowers. Bring the one, and we shall have the other.”

  Confidently, understanding nothing as yet, she took the linen sheet from which she had unwound herself as from a shroud, and went to do his bidding.

  “Give me the dagger,” said Cadfael briskly when she was gone. He wiped the blade on the veil Columbanus had torn from Sioned’s head, and moved the candles so that they shone upon the great red seals that closed Winifred’s reliquary. “Thank God he didn’t bleed,” he said. “His habit and clothes are unmarked. Strip him!”

  And he fingered the first seal, nodded satisfaction at its fatness and the thinness and sharpness of the dagger, and thrust the tip of the blade into the flame of the lamp.

  Long before daylight they were ready. They walked down all three together from the chapel towards the village, and separated at the edge of the wood, where the shortest path turned off uphill towards Rhisiart’s holding.

  Sioned carried with her the blood-stained sheet and veil, and the fragments of glass they had buried in the forest. A good thing the servants who had filled in Rhisiart’s grave had left their spades on the scene, meaning to tidy the mound next day. That had saved a journey to borrow without leave, and a good hour of time.

  “There’ll be no scandal,” said Cadfael, when they halted at the place where the paths divided. “No scandal, and no accusations. I think you may take him home with you, but keep him out of sight until we’re gone. There’ll be peace when we’re gone. And you needn’t fear that the prince or his bailiff will ever proceed further against Engelard, any more than against John. I’ll speak a word in Peredur’s ear, Peredur will speak it into the bailiff’s ear, the bailiff will speak it into Owain Gwynedd’s ear—Father Huw we’ll leave out of it, no need to burden his conscience, the good, simple man. And if the monks of Shrewsbury are happy, and the people of Gwytherin are happy—for they’ll hear the whisper fast enough—why should anyone want to upset such a satisfactory state of affairs, by speaking the word aloud? A wise prince—and Owain Gwynedd seems to me very wise—will let well alone.”

  “All Gwytherin,” said Sioned, and shivered a little at the thought, “will be there in the morning to watch you take the reliquary away.”

  “So much the better, we want all the witnesses we can have, all the emotion, all the wonder. I am a great sinner,” said Cadfael philosophically, “but I feel no weight. Does the end justify the means, I wonder?”

  “One thing I know,” she said. “My father can rest now, and that he owes to you. And I owe you that and more. When I first came down to you out of the tree—you remember?—I thought you would be like other monks, and not want to look at me.”

  “Child, I should have to be out of my wits, not to want to look at you. I’ve looked so attentively, I shall remember you all my life. But your love, my children, and how you manage it—with that I can’t help you.”

  “No need,” said Engelard. “I am an outlander, with a proper agreement. That agreement can be dissolved by consent, and I can be a free man by dividing all my goods equally with my lord, and now Sioned is my lord.”

  “And then there can no man prevent,” said Sioned, “if I choose to endow him with half my goods, as is only fair. Uncle Meurice won’t stand in our way. And it won’t even be hard for him to justify. To marry an heiress to an outlander servant is one thing, to marry her to a free man and heir to a manor, even if it’s in England and can’t be claimed for a while, is quite another.”

  “Especially,” said Cadfael, “when you already know he’s the best hand with cattle in the four cantrefs.”

  It seemed that those two, at any rate, were satisfied. And Rhisiart in his honoured grave would not grudge them their happiness. He had not been a grudging man.

  Engelard, no talker, said his thanks plainly and briefly when they parted. Sioned turned back impulsively, flung her arms round Cadfael’s neck, and kissed him. It was their farewell, for he had thought it best to advise them not to show themselves at the chapel again. It was a wry touch that she smelled so heady and sweet with flowering may, and left so saintly a fragrance in his arms when she was gone.

  On his way down to the parsonage Cadfael made a detour to the mill-pond, and dropped Columbanus’s dagger into the deepest of the dark water. What a good thing, he thought, making for the bed he would occupy for no more than an hour or so before Prime, that the brothers who made the reliquary were such meticulous craftsmen, and insisted on lining it with lead!

  Chapter Eleven

  PRIOR ROBERT AROSE and went to the first service of the day in so great content with his success that he had almost forgotten about the escape of Brother John, and even when he remembered that one unsatisfactory particular, he merely put it away in the back of his mind, as something that must and would be dealt with faithfully in good time, but need not cloud the splendour of this occasion. And it was indeed a clear, radiant morning, very bright and still, when they came from the church and turned towards the old graveyard and the chapel, and all the congregation fell in at their heels and followed, and along the way others appeared silently from every path, and joined the procession, until it was like some memorable pilgrimage. They came to Cadwallon’s gatehouse, and Cadwallon ca
me out to join them, and Peredur, who had hung back in strict obedience to his orders to remain at home until his penance was appointed, was kindly bidden forth by Father Huw, and even smiled upon, though as saint to sinner, by Prior Robert. Dame Branwen, if not still asleep, was no doubt recuperating after her vapours. Her menfolk were not likely to be very pressing in their invitations to her to go with them, and perhaps she was still punishing them by withdrawing herself. Either way, they were relieved of her presence.

  The order of procession having only a loose form, brothers and villagers could mingle, and greet, and change partners as they willed. It was a communal celebration. And that was strange, considering the contention that had threatened it for some days. Gwytherin was playing it very cautiously now, intent on seeing everything and giving nothing away.

  Peredur made his way to Cadfael’s side, and remained there thankfully, though silently. Cadfael asked after his mother, and the young man coloured and frowned, and then smiled guiltily like a child, and said that she was very well, a little dreamy still, but placid and amiable.

  “You can do Gwytherin and me a good service, if you will,” said Brother Cadfael, and confided to his ear the work he had in mind to pass on to Griffith ap Rhys.

  “So that’s the way it is!” said Peredur, forgetting altogether about his own unforgivable sins. His eyes opened wide. He whistled softly. “And that’s the way you want it left?”

  “That’s the way it is, and that’s the way I want it left. Who loses? And everyone gains. We, you, Rhisiart, Saint Winifred—Saint Winifred most of all. And Sioned and Engelard, of course,” said Cadfael firmly, probing the penitent to the heart.

  “Yes… I’m glad for them!” said Peredur, a shade too vehemently. His head was bent, and his eyelids lowered. He was not yet as glad as all that, but he was trying. The will was there. “Given a year or two longer, nobody’s going to remember about the deer Engelard took. In the end he’ll be able to go back and forth to Cheshire if he pleases, and he’ll have lands when his father dies. And once he’s no longer reckoned outlaw and felon he’ll have no more troubles. I’ll get your word to Griffith ap Rhys this very day. He’s over the river at his cousin David’s but Father Huw will give me indulgence if it’s to go voluntarily to the law.” He smiled wryly. “Very apt that I should be your man! I can unload my own sins at the same time, while I’m confiding to him what everyone must know but no one must say aloud.”