by Ellis Peters
‘Lie still,’ he said, with a hand cupping Meriet’s cheek. ‘I am here-Mark. Be troubled by nothing, you are safe here with me.’ He was not aware that he had meant to say that. It was promising infinite blessing, and what right had he to claim any such power? And yet the words had come to him unbidden.
The heavy eyelids heaved, fought for a moment with the unknown weight holding them closed, and parted upon a reflected flame in desperate green eyes. A shudder passed through Meriet’s body. He worked a dry mouth and got out faintly: ‘I must go-I must tell them… Let me up!’ The effort he made to rise was easily suppressed by a hand on his breast; he lay helpless but shaking.
‘I must go! Help me!’ ‘There is nowhere you need go,’ said Mark, leaning over him. ‘If there is any message you wish sent to any man, lie still, and only tell me. You know I will do it faithfully. You had a fall, you must lie still and rest.’ ‘Mark… It is you?’ He felt outside his blankets blindly, and Mark took the wandering hand and held it. ‘It is you,’ said Meriet, sighing. ‘Mark-the man they’ve taken… for killing the bishop’s clerk… I must tell them… I must go to Hugh Beringar…’ ‘Tell me,’ said Mark, ‘and you have done all. I will see done whatever you want done, and you may rest. What is it I am to tell Hugh Beringar?’ But in his heart he already knew.
‘Tell him he must let this poor soul go… Say he never did that slaying. Tell him I know! Tell him,’ said Meriet, his dilated eyes hungry and emerald-green on Mark’s attentive face, ‘that I confess my mortal sin… that it was I who killed Peter Clemence. I shot him down in the woods, three miles and more from Aspley. Say I am sorry, so to shame my father’s house.’ He was weak and dazed, shaking with belated shock, the tears sprang from his eyes, startling him with their unexpected flood. He gripped and wrung the hand held. ‘Promise! Promise you will tell him so…’ ‘I will, and bear the errand myself, no other shall,’ said Mark, stooping low to straining, blinded eyes to be seen and believed. ‘Every word you give me I will deliver. If you will also do a good and needful thing for yourself and for me, before I go. Then you may sleep more peacefully.’ The green eyes cleared in wonder, staring up at him. ‘What thing is that?’ Mark told him, very gently and firmly. Before he had the words well out, Meriet had wrenched away his hand and heaved his bruised body over in the bed, turning his face away. ‘No!’ he said in a low wail of distress. ‘No, I will not! No…’ Mark talked on, quietly urging what he asked, but stopped when it was still denied, and with ever more agitated rejection. ‘Hush!’ he said then placatingly. ‘You need not fret so. Even without it, I’ll do your errand, every word. You be still and sleep.’ He was instantly believed; the body stiff with resistance softened and eased. The swathed head turned towards him again; even the dim light within the barn caused his eyes to narrow and frown. Brother Mark put out the lantern, and drew the brychans close. Then he kissed his patient and penitent, and went to do his errand.
Brother Mark walked the length of the Foregate and across the stone bridge into the town, exchanging the time of day with all he met, enquired for Hugh Beringar at his house by Saint Mary’s, and walked on undismayed and unwearied when he was told that the deputy-sheriff was already at the castle. It was by way of a bonus that Brother Cadfael happened to be there also, having just emerged from applying another dressing to the festered wound in the prisoner’s forearm. Hunger and exposure are not conducive to ready healing, but Harald’s hurts were showing signs of yielding to treatment. Already he had a little more flesh on his long, raw bones, and a little more of the texture of youth in his hollow cheeks. Solid stone walls, sleep without constant fear, warm blankets and three rough meals a day were a heaven to him.
Against the stony ramparts of the inner ward, shut off from even what light there was in this muted morning, Brother Mark’s diminutive figure looked even smaller, but his grave dignity was in no way diminished. Hugh welcomed him with astonishment, so unexpected was he in this place, and haled him into the anteroom of the guard, where there was a fire burning, and torchlight, since full daylight seldom penetrated there to much effect.
‘I’m sent with a message,’ said Brother Mark, going directly to his goal, ‘to Hugh Beringar, from Brother Meriet. I’ve promised to deliver it faithfully word for word, since he cannot do it himself, as he wanted to do. Brother Meriet learned only yesterday, as did we all at Saint Giles, that you have a man held here in prison for the murder of Peter Clemence. Last night, after he had retired, Meriet was desperately troubled in his sleep, and rose and walked. He fell from the loft, sleeping, and is now laid in his bed with a broken head and many bruises, but he has come to himself, and I think with care he’ll take no grave harm. But if Brother Cadfael would come and look at him I should be easier in my mind.’ ‘Son, with all my heart!’ said Cadfael, dismayed. ‘But what was he about, wandering in his sleep? He never left his bed before in his fits. And men who do commonly tread very skilfully, even where a waking man would not venture.’ ‘So he might have done,’ owned Mark, sadly wrung, ‘if I had not spoken to him from below. For I thought he was well awake, and coming to ask comfort and aid, but when I called his name he stepped at fault, and cried out and fell. And now he is come to himself, I know where he was bound, even in his sleep, and on what errand. For that errand he has committed to me, now he is helpless, and I am here to deliver it.’ ‘You’ve left him safe?’ asked Cadfael anxiously, but half-ashamed to doubt whatever Brother Mark thought fit to do.
‘There are two good souls keeping an eye on him, but I think he will sleep. He has unloaded his mind upon me, and here I discharge the burden,’ said Brother Mark, and he had the erect and simple solitude of a priest, standing small and plain between them and Meriet. ‘He bids me say to Hugh Beringar that he must let this prisoner go, for he never did that slaying with which he is charged. He bids me say that he speaks of his own knowledge, and confesses to his own mortal sin, for it was he who killed Peter Clemence. Shot him down in the woods, says Meriet, more than three miles north of Aspley. And he bids me say also that he is sorry, so to have disgraced his father’s house.’ He stood fronting them, wide-eyed and open-faced as was his nature, and they stared back at him with withdrawn and thoughtful faces. So simple an ending! The son, passionate of nature and quick to act, kills, the father, upright and austere yet jealous of his ancient honour, offers the sinner a choice between the public contumely that will destroy his ancestral house, or the lifelong penance of the cloister, and his father’s son prefers his personal purgatory to shameful death, and the degradation of his family. And it could be so! It could answer every question.
‘But of course,’ said Brother Mark, with the exalted confidence of angels and archangels, and the simplicity of children, ‘it is not true.’ ‘I need not quarrel with what you say,’ said Hugh mildly, after a long and profound pause for thought, ‘if I ask you whether you speak only on belief in Brother Meriet-for which you may feel you have good cause-or from knowledge by proof? How do you know he is lying?’ ‘I do know by what I know of him,’ said Mark firmly, ‘but I have tried to put that away. If I say he is no such person to shoot down a man from ambush, but rather to stand square in his way and challenge him hand to hand, I am saying what I strongly believe. But I was born humble, out of this world of honour, how should I speak to it with certainty? No, I have tested him. When he told me what he told me, I said to him that for his soul’s comfort he should let me call our chaplain, and as a sick man make his confession to him and seek absolution. And he would not do it,’ said Mark, and smiled upon them. ‘At the very thought he shook and turned away. When I pressed him, he was in great agitation. For he can lie to me and to you, to the king’s law itself, for a cause that seems to him good enough,’ said Mark, ‘but he will not lie to his confessor, and through his confessor to God.’
CHAPTER TEN.
After long and sombre consideration, Hugh said: ‘For the moment, it seems, this boy will keep, whatever the truth of it. He is in his bed with a broken head, and not li
kely to stir for a while, all the more if he believes we have accepted what, for whatever cause, he wishes us to believe. Take care of him, Mark, and let him think he has done what he set out to do. Tell him he can be easy about this prisoner of ours, he is not charged, and no harm will come to him. But don’t let it be put abroad that we’re holding an innocent man who is in no peril of his life. Meriet may know it. Not a soul outside. For the common ear, we have our murderer safe in hold.’ One deceit partnered another deceit, both meant to some good end; and if it seemed to Brother Mark that deceit ought not to have any place in the pilgrimage after truth, yet he acknowledged the mysterious uses of all manner of improbable devices in the workings of the purposes of God, and saw the truth reflected even in lies. He would let Meriet believe his ordeal was ended and his confession accepted, and Meriet would sleep without fears or hopes, without dreams, but with the drear satisfaction of his voluntary sacrifice, and grow well again to a better, an unrevealed world.
‘I will see to it,’ said Mark,’that only he knows. And I will be his pledge that he shall be at your disposal whenever you need him.’ ‘Good! Then go back now to your patient. Cadfael and I will follow you very shortly.’ Mark departed, satisfied, to trudge back through the town and out along the Foregate. When he was gone, Hugh stood gazing eye to eye with Brother Cadfael, long and thoughtfully. ‘Well?’ ‘It’s a tale that makes excellent sense,’ said Cadfael, ‘and a great part of it most likely true. I am of Mark’s way of thinking, I do not believe the boy has killed. But the rest of it? The man who caused that fire to be built and kindled had force enough to get his men to do his will and keep his secret. A man well-served, well-feared, perhaps even well-loved. A man who would neither steal anything from the dead himself, nor allow any of his people to do so. All committed to the fire. Those who worked for him respected and obeyed him. Leoric Aspley is such a man, and in such a manner he might behave, if he believed a son of his had murdered from ambush a man who had been a guest in his house. There would be no forgiveness. If he protected the murderer from the death due, it might well be for the sake of his name, and only to serve a lifetime’s penance.’ He was remembering their arrival in the rain, father and son, the one severe, cold and hostile, departing without the kiss due between kinsmen, the other submissive and dutiful, but surely against his nature, at once rebellious and resigned. Feverish in his desire to shorten his probation and be imprisoned past deliverance, but in his sleep fighting like a demon for his liberty. It made a true picture. But Mark was absolute that Meriet had lied.
‘It lacks nothing,’ said Hugh, shaking his head. ‘He has said throughout that it was his own wish to take the cowl-so it might well be; good reason, if he was offered no other alternative but the gallows. The death came there, soon after leaving Aspley. The horse was taken far north and abandoned, so that the body should be sought only well away from where the man was killed. But whatever else the boy knows, he did not know that he was leading his gleaners straight to the place where the bones would be found, and his father’s careful work undone. I take Mark’s word for that, and by God, I am inclined to take Mark’s word for the rest. But if Meriet did not kill the man, why should he so accept condemnation and sentence? Of his own will!’ ‘There is but one possible answer,’ said Cadfael. ‘To protect someone else.’ ‘Then you are saying that he knows who the murderer is.’ ‘Or thinks he knows,’ said Cadfael. ‘For there is veil on veil here hiding these people one from another, and it seems to me that Aspley, if he has done this to his son, believes he knows beyond doubt that the boy is guilty. And Meriet, since he has sacrificed himself to a life against which his whole spirit rebels, and now to shameful death, must be just as certain of the guilt of that other person whom he loves and desires to save. But if Leoric is so wildly mistaken, may not Meriet also be in error?’ ‘Are we not all?’ said Hugh, sighing. ‘Come, let’s go and see this sleep-walking penitent first, and-who knows?-if he’s bent on confession, and has to lie to accomplish it, he may let slip something much more to our purpose. I’ll say this for him, he was not prepared to let another poor devil suffer in his place, or even in the place of someone dearer to him than himself. Harald has fetched him out of his silence fast enough.’ Meriet was sleeping when they came to Saint Giles. Cadfael stood beside the pallet in the barn, and looked down upon a face strangely peaceful and childlike, exorcised of its devil. Meriet’s breathing was long and deep and sweet. It was believable that here was a tormented sinner who had made confession and cleansed his breast, and found all things thereafter made easy. But he would not repeat his confession to a priest. Mark had a very powerful argument there.
‘Let him rest,’ said Hugh, when Mark, though reluctantly, would have awakened the sleeper. ‘We can wait.’ And wait they did, the better part of an hour, until Meriet stirred and opened his eyes. Even then Hugh would have him tended and fed and given drink before he consented to sit by him and hear what he had to say. Cadfael had looked him over, and found nothing wrong that a few days of rest would not mend, though he had turned an ankle and foot under him in falling, and would find it difficult and painful to put any weight upon it for some time. The blow on the head had shaken his wits sadly, and his memory of recent days might be hazy, though he held fast to the one more distant memory which he so desired to declare. The gash crossing his temple would soon heal; the bleeding had already stopped.
His eyes, in the dim light within the barn, shone darkly green, staring up dilated and intent. His voice was faint but resolute, as he repeated with slow emphasis the confession he had made to Brother Mark. He was bent on convincing, very willing and patient in dredging up details. Listening, Cadfael had to admit to himself, with dismay, that Meriet was indeed utterly convincing. Hugh must also be thinking so.
He questioned, slowly and evenly: ‘You watched the man ride away, with your father in attendance, and made no demur. Then you went out with your bow-mounted or afoot?’ ‘Mounted,’ said Meriet with fiery readiness; for if he had gone on foot, how could he have circled at speed, and been ahead of the rider after his escort had left him to return home? Cadfael remembered Isouda saying that Meriet had come home late that afternoon with his father’s party, though he had not ridden out with them. She had not said whether he was mounted when he returned or walking; that was something worth probing.
‘With murderous intent?’ Hugh pursued mildly. ‘Or did this thing come on you unawares? For what can you have had against Master Clemence to warrant his death?’ ‘He had made far too free with my brother’s bride,’ said Meriet. ‘I did hold it against him-a priest, playing the courtier, and so sure of his height above us. A manorless man, with only his learning and his patron’s name for lands and lineage, and looking down upon us, as long rooted as we are. On grievance for my brother…’ ‘Yet your brother made no move to take reparation,’ said Hugh.
‘He was gone to the Lindes, to Roswitha… He had escorted her home the night before, and I am sure he had quarrelled with her. He went out early, he did not even see the guest leave, he went to make good whatever was ill between those two… He never came home,’ said Meriet, clearly and firmly, ‘until late in the evening, long after all was over.’ True, by Isouda’s account, thought Cadfael. After all was over, and Meriet brought home a convicted murderer, to reappear only after he had chosen of his own will to ask admittance to the cloister, and was prepared to go forth on his parole, and so declare himself, an oblate to the abbey, fully aware of what he was doing. So he had told his very acute and perceptive playmate, in calm control of himself. He was doing what he wished to do.
‘But you, Meriet, you rode ahead of Master Clemence. With murder in mind?’ ‘I had not thought,’ said Meriet, hesitating for the first time. ‘I went alone… But I was angry.’ ‘You went in haste,’ said Hugh, pressing him, ‘if you overtook the departing guest, and by a roundabout way, if you passed and intercepted him, as you say.’ Meriet stretched and stiffened in his bed, large eyes straining on his questioner. He set his jaw. ‘
I did hasten, though not for any deliberate purpose. I was in thick covert when I was aware of him riding towards me, in no hurry. I drew and loosed upon him. He fell…’ Sweat broke on the pallid brow beneath his bandages. He closed his eyes.
‘Let be!’ said Cadfael, quiet at Hugh’s shoulder. ‘He has enough.’ ‘No,’ said Meriet strongly. ‘Let me make an end. He was dead when I stooped over him. I had killed him. And my father took me so, red-handed. The hounds-he had hounds with him-they scented me and brought him down upon me. He has covered up for my sake, and for the sake of an honoured name, what I did, but for whatever he may have done that is unlawful, to keep me man alive, I take the blame upon me, for I am the cause of it. But he would not condone. He promised me cover for my forfeit life, if I would accept banishment from the world and take myself off into the cloister. What was done afterwards no one ever told me. I did by my own will and consent accept my penalty. I even hoped… and I have tried… But set down all that was done to my account, and let me pay all.’ He thought he had done, and heaved a great sigh out of him, Hugh also sighed and stirred as if about to rise, but then asked carelessly: ‘At what hour was this, Meriet, that your father happened upon you in the act of murder?’ ‘About three in the afternoon,’ said Meriet indifferently, falling headlong into the trap.
‘And Master Clemence set out soon after Prime? It took him a great while,’ said Hugh with deceptive mildness,’to ride somewhat over three miles.’ Meriet’s eyes, half-closed in weariness and release from tension, flared wide open in consternation. It cost him a convulsive struggle to master voice and face, but he did it, hoisting up out of the well of his resolution and dismay a credible answer. ‘I cut my story too short, wanting it done. When this thing befell it cannot have been even mid-morning. But I ran from him and let him lie, and wandered the woods in dread of what I’d done. But in the end I went back. It seemed better to hide him in the thick coverts off the pathways, where he could lie undiscovered, and I might come by night and bury him. I was in terror, but in the end I went back. I am not sorry,’ said Meriet at the end, so simply that somewhere in those last words there must be truth. But he had never shot down any man. He had come upon a dead man lying in his blood, just as he had balked and stood aghast at the sight of Brother Wolstan bleeding at the foot of the appletree. A three-mile ride from Aspley, yes, thought Cadfael with certainty, but well into the autumn afternoon, when his father was out with hawk and hound. ‘I am not sorry,’ said Meriet again, quite gently. ‘It’s good that I was taken so. Better still that I have now told you all.’ Hugh rose, and stood looking down at him with an unreadable face. ‘Very well! You should not yet be moved, and there is no reason you should not remain here in Brother Mark’s care. Brother Cadfael tells me you would need crutches if you tried to walk for some days yet. You’ll be secure enough where you are.’ ‘I would give you my parole,’ said Meriet sadly, ‘but I doubt if you would take it. But Mark will, and I will submit myself to him. Only-the other man-you will see he goes free?’ ‘You need not fret, he is cleared of all blame but a little thieving to fill his belly, and that will be forgotten. It is to your own case you should be giving thought,’ said Hugh gravely. ‘I would urge you receive a priest and make your confession.’ ‘You and the hangman can be my priests,’ said Meriet, and fetched up from somewhere a wry and painful smile.
