by Ellis Peters
‘Come in, Isouda,’ said Cadfael placidly, rustling the bunches of herbs that dangled from the beams above. ‘I’ve been hoping to find a means of talking with you. I should have known you would make your own occasion.’ ‘But I mustn’t stay long,’ she said, coming in and closing the door behind her. ‘I am supposed to be lighting a candle and putting up prayers in the church for my father’s soul.’ ‘Then should you not be doing that?’ said Cadfael, smiling. ‘Here, sit and be easy for the short time you have, and whatever you want of me, ask.’ ‘I have lit my candle,’ she said, seating herself on the bench by the wall, ‘it’s there to be seen, but my father was a fine man, and God will take good care of his soul without any interference from me. And I need to know what is really happening to Meriet.’ ‘They’ll have told you that he had a bad fall, and cannot walk as yet?’ ‘Brother Paul told us so. He said it would be no lasting harm. Is it so? Will he be well again surely?’ ‘Surely he will. He got a gash on the head in his fall, but that’s already healed, and his wrenched foot needs only a little longer rest, and it will bear him again as well as ever. He’s in good hands, Brother Mark is taking care of him, and Brother Mark is his staunch friend. Tell me, how did his father take the word of his fall?’ ‘He kept a severe face,’ she said,’though he said he grieved to hear it, so coldly, who would believe him? But for all that, he does grieve.’ ‘He did not ask to visit him?’ She made a disdainful face at the obstinacy of men. ‘Not he! He has given him to God, and God must fend for him. He will not go near him. But I came to ask you if you will take me there to see him.’ Cadfael stood earnestly considering her for a long moment, and then sat down beside her and told her all that had happened, all that he knew or guessed. She was shrewd, gallant and resolute, and she knew what she wanted and was ready to fight for it. She gnawed a calculating lip when she heard that Meriet had confessed to murder, and glowed in proud acknowledgement when Cadfael stressed that she was the sole privileged person, besides himself and Mark and the law, to be apprised of it, and to know, to her comfort, that it was not believed.
‘Sheer folly!’ she said roundly. ‘I thank God you see through him as through gauze. And his fool of a father believes it? But he never has known him, he never has valued or come close to him, from the day Meriet was born. And yet he’s a fair-minded man, I own it, he would not knowingly do any man wrong. He must have urgent cause to believe this. And Meriet cause just as grave to leave him in the mistake-even while he certainly must be holding it against him that he’s so ready to believe evil of his own flesh and blood. Brother Cadfael, I tell you, I never before saw so clearly how like those two are, proud and stubborn and solitary, taking to themselves every burden that falls their way, shutting out kith and kin and liegemen and all. I could knock their two fool crowns together. But what good would that do, without an answer that would shut both their mouths-except on penitence?’ ‘There will be such an answer,’ said Cadfael, ‘and if ever you do knock their heads together, I promise you both shall be unshaven. And yes, tomorrow I will take you to practise upon the one of them, but after dinner-for before it, I aim to bring your Uncle Leoric to visit his son, whether he will or no. Tell me, if you know, what are their plans for the morrow? They have yet one day to spare before the marriage.’ ‘They mean to attend High Mass,’ she said, sparkling hopefully, ‘and then we women will be fitting gowns and choosing ornaments, and putting a stitch in here and there to the wedding clothes. Nigel will be shut out of all that, until we go to dine with the lord abbot, and I think he and Janyn intend to go into the town for some last trifles. Uncle Leoric may be left to himself after Mass. You might snare him then, if you catch your time.’ ‘I shall be watching for it,’ Cadfael assured her. ‘And after the abbot’s dinner, if you can absent yourself, then I will take you to Meriet.’ She rose joyfully when she thought it high time to leave him, and she went forth valiantly, certain of herself and her stars, and her standing with the powers of heaven. And Cadfael went to deliver his selected herbs to Brother Petrus, who was already brooding over the masterpieces he would produce the next day at noon.
After High Mass on the morning of the twentieth of December the womenfolk repaired to their own apartments, to make careful choice of the right array for dining with the abbot. Leoric’s son and his son’s bosom friend went off on foot into the town, his guests dispersed to pay local visits for which this was rare opportunity, and make purchases of stores for their country manors while they were close to the town, or to burnish their own finery for the morrow. Leoric walked briskly in the frosty air the length of the gardens, round fish-ponds and fields, down to the Meole brook, fringed with delicate frost like fine lace, and after that as decisively vanished. Cadfael had waited to give him time to be alone, as plainly he willed to be, and then lost sight of him, to find him again in the mortuary chapel where Peter Clemence’s coffin, closed now and richly draped, waited for Bishop Henry’s word as to its disposal. Two new, fine candles burned on a branched candlestick at the head, and Leoric Aspley was on his knees on the flagstones at the foot. His lips moved upon silent, methodical prayers, his open eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon the bier. Cadfael knew then that he was on firm ground. The candles might have been simply any courtly man’s offering to a dead kinsman, however distant, but the grim and grievous face, silently acknowledging a guilt not yet confessed or atoned for, confirmed the part he had played in denying this dead man burial, and pointed plainly at the reason.
Cadfael withdrew silently, and waited for him to come forth. Blinking as he emerged into daylight again, Leoric found himself confronted by a short, sturdy, nut-brown brother who stepped into his path and addressed him ominously, like a warning angel blocking the way: ‘My lord, I have an urgent errand to you. I beg you to come with me. You are needed. Your son is mortally ill.’ It came so suddenly and shortly, it struck like a lance. The two young men had been gone half an hour, time for the assassin’s stroke, for the sneak-thief’s knife, for any number of disasters. Leoric heaved up his head and snuffed the air of terror, and gasped aloud: ‘My son…?’ Only then did he recognise the brother who had come to Aspley on the abbot’s errand. Cadfael saw hostile suspicion flare in the deep-set, arrogant eyes, and forestalled whatever his antagonist might have had to say.
‘It’s high time,’ said Cadfael, ‘that you remembered you have two sons. Will you let one of them die uncomforted?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
Leoric went with him; striding impatiently, suspiciously, intolerantly, yet continuing to go with him. He questioned, and was not answered. When Cadfael said simply: ‘Turn back, then, if that’s your will, and make your own peace with God and him!’ Leoric set his teeth and his jaw, and went on.
At the rising path up the grass-slope to Saint Giles he checked, but rather to take stock of the place where his son served and suffered than out of any fear of the many contagions that might be met within. Cadfael brought him to the barn, where Meriet’s pallet was still laid, and Meriet at this moment was seated upon it, the stout staff by which he hobbled about the hospice braced upright in his right hand, and his head leaned upon its handle. He would have been about the place as best he might since Prime, and Mark must have banished him to an interval of rest before the midday meal. He was not immediately aware of them, the light within the barn being dim and mellow, and subject to passing shadows. He looked several years older than the silent and submissive youth Leoric had brought to the abbey a postulant, almost three months earlier.
His sire, entering with the light sidelong, stood gazing. His face was closed and angry, but the eyes in it stared in bewilderment and grief, and indignation, too, at being led here in this fashion when the sufferer had no mark of death upon him, but leaned resigned and quiet, like a man at peace with his fate.
‘Go in,’ said Cadfael at Leoric’s shoulder, ‘and speak to him.’ It hung perilously in the balance whether Leoric would not turn, thrust his deceitful guide out of the way, and stalk back by the way he had come. He did cast
a black look over his shoulder and make to draw back from the doorway; but either Cadfael’s low voice or the stir of movement had reached and startled Meriet. He raised his head and saw his father. The strangest contortion of astonishment, pain, and reluctant and grudging affection twisted his face. He made to rise respectfully and fumbled it in his haste. The crutch slipped out of his hand and thudded to the floor, and he reached for it, wincing.
Leoric was before him. He crossed the space between in three long, impatient strides, pressed his son back to the pallet with a brusque hand on his shoulder, and restored the staff to his hand, rather as one exasperated by clumsiness than considerate of distress. ‘Sit!’ he said gruffly. ‘No need to stir. They tell me you have had a fall, and cannot yet walk well.’ ‘I have come to no great harm,’ said Meriet, gazing up at him steadily. ‘I shall be fit to walk very soon. I take it kindly that you have come to see me, I did not expect a visit. Will you sit, sir?’ No, Leoric was too disturbed and too restless, he gazed about him at the furnishings of the barn, and only by rapid glimpses at his son. This life-the way you consented to-they tell me you have found it hard to come to terms with it. You put your hand to the plough, you must finish the furrow. Do not expect me to take you back again.’ His voice was harsh but his face was wrung.
‘My furrow bids fair to be a short one, and I daresay I can hold straight to the end of it,’ said Meriet sharply. ‘Or have they not told you, also, that I have confessed the thing I did, and there is no further need for you to shelter me?’ ‘You have confessed…’ Leoric was at a loss. He passed a long hand over his eyes, and stared, and shook. The boy’s dead calm was more confounding than any passion could have been.
‘I am sorry to have caused you so much labour and pain to no useful end,’ said Meriet. ‘But it was necessary to speak. They were making a great error, they had charged another man, some poor wretch living wild, who had taken food here and there. You had not heard that? Him, at least, I could deliver. Hugh Beringar has assured me no harm will come to him. You would not have had me leave him in his peril? Give your blessing to this act, at least.’ Leoric stood speechless some minutes, his tall body palsied and shaken as though he struggled with his own demon, before he sat down abruptly beside his son on the creaking pallet, and clamped a hand over Meriet’s hand; and though his face was still marble-hard, and the very gesture of his hand like a blow, and his voice when he finally found words still severe and harsh, Cadfael nevertheless withdrew from them quietly, and drew the door to after him. He went aside and sat in the porch, not so far away that he could not hear the tones of the two voices within, though not their words, and so placed that he could watch the doorway. He did not think he would be needed any more, though at times the father’s voice rose in helpless rage, and once or twice Meriet’s rang with a clear and obstinate asperity. That did not matter, they would have been lost without the sparks they struck from each other.
After this, thought Cadfael, let him put on indifference as icily as he will, I shall know better.
He went back when he judged it was time, for he had much to say to Leoric for his own part before the hour of the abbot’s dinner. Their rapid and high-toned exchanges ceased as he entered, what few words they still had to say came quietly and lamely.
‘Be my messenger to Nigel and to Roswitha. Say that I pray their happiness always. I should have liked to be there to see them wed,’ said Meriet steadily, ‘but that I cannot expect now.’ Leoric looked down at him and asked awkwardly: ‘You are cared for here? Body and soul?’ Meriet’s exhausted face smiled, a pale smile but warm and sweet. ‘As well as ever in my life. I am very well-friended, here among my peers. Brother Cadfael knows!’ And this time, at parting, it fell out not quite as once before. Cadfael had wondered. Leoric turned to go, turned back, wrestled with his unbending pride a moment, and then stopped almost clumsily and very briefly, and bestowed on Meriet’s lifted cheek a kiss that still resembled a blow. Fierce blood mantled at the smitten cheekbone as Leoric straightened up, turned, and strode from the barn.
He crossed towards the gate mute and stiff, his eyes looking inwards rather than out, so that he struck shoulder and hip against the gatepost, and hardly noticed the shock.
‘Wait!’ said Cadfael. ‘Come here with me into the church, and say whatever you have to say, and so will I. We still have time.’ In the little single-aisled church of the hospice, under its squat tower, it was dim and chill, and very silent. Leoric knotted veined hands and wrung them, and turned in formidable quiet anger upon his guide. ‘Was this well done, brother? Falsely you brought me here! You told me my son was mortally ill.’ ‘So he is,’ said Cadfael. ‘Have you not his own word for it how close he feels his death? So are you, so are we all. The disease of mortality is in us from the womb, from the day of our birth we are on the way to our death. What matters is how we conduct the journey. You heard him. He has confessed to the murder of Peter Clemence. Why have you not been told that, without having to hear it from Meriet? Because there was no one to tell you else but Brother Mark, or Hugh Beringar, or myself, for no one else knows. Meriet believes himself to be watched as a committed felon, that barn his prison. Now, I tell you, Aspley, that it is not so. There is not one of us three who have heard his avowal, but is heart-sure he is lying. You are the fourth, his father, and the only one to believe in his guilt.’ Leoric was shaking his head violently and wretchedly. ‘I wish it were so, but I know better. Why do you say he is lying? What proof can you have for your trust, compared with that I have for my certainty?’ ‘I will give you one proof for my trust,’ said Cadfael, ‘in exchange for all your proofs of your certainty. As soon as he heard there was another man accused, Meriet made his confession of guilt to the law, which can destroy his body. But resolutely he refused then and refuses still to repeat that confession to a priest, and ask penance and absolution for a sin he has not committed. That is why I believe him guiltless. Now show me, if you can, as strong a reason why you should believe him guilty.’ The lofty, tormented grey head continued its anguished motions of rejection. ‘I wish to God you were right and I wrong, but I know what I saw and what I heard. I never can forget it. Now that I must tell it openly, since there’s an innocent man at stake, and Meriet to his honour has cleansed his breast, why should I not tell it first to you? My guest was gone on his way safely, it was a day like any other day. I went out for exercise with hawk and hounds, and three besides, my chaplain and huntsman, and a groom, honest men all, they will bear me out. There’s thick woodland three miles north from us, a wide belt of it. It was the hounds picked up Meriet’s voice, no more than a distant call to me until we got nearer and I knew him. He was calling Barbary and whistling for him-the horse that Clemence rode. It may have been the whistle the hounds caught first, and went eager but silent to find Meriet. By the time we came on him he had the horse tethered-you’ll have heard he has a gift. When we burst in on him, he had the dead man under the arms, and was dragging him deep into a covert off the path. An arrow in Peter’s breast, and bow and quiver on Meriet’s shoulder. Do you want more? When I cried out on him, what had he done? he never said word to deny. When I ordered him to return with us, and laid him under lock and key until I could consider such a shame and horror, and know my way, he never said nay to it, but submitted to all. When I told him I would keep him man alive and cover up his mortal sin, but on conditions, he accepted life and withdrawal. I do believe, as much for our name’s sake as for his own life, but he chose.’ ‘He did choose, he did far more than accept,’ said Cadfael, ‘for he told Isouda what he told us all, later, that he came to us of his own will, at his own desire. Never has he said that he was forced. But go on, tell me your own part.’ ‘I did what I had promised him, I had the horse led far to the north, by the way Clemence should have ridden, and there turned loose in the mosses, where it might be thought his rider had foundered. And the body we took secretly, with all that was his, and my chaplain read the rites over him with all reverence, before we laid him within a ne
w stack on the charcoal-burner’s old hearth, and fired it. It was ill-done and against my conscience, but I did it. Now I will answer for it. I shall not be sorry to pay whatever is due.’ ‘Your son has taken care,’ said Cadfael hardly, ‘to claim to himself, along with the death, all that you have done to conceal it. But he will not confess lies to his confessor, as mortal a sin as hiding truth.’ ‘But why?’ demanded Leoric wildly. ‘Why should he so yield and accept all, if he had an answer for me? Why?’ ‘Because the answer he had for you would have been too hard for you to bear, and unbearable also to him. For love, surely,’ said Brother Cadfael. ‘I doubt if he has had his proper fill of love all his life, but those who most hunger for it do most and best deliver it.’ ‘I have loved him,’ protested Leoric, raging and writhing, ‘though he has been always so troublous a soul, for ever going contrary.’ ‘Going contrary is one way of getting your notice,’ said Cadfael ruefully, ‘when obedience and virtue go unregarded. But let that be. You want instances. This spot where you came upon him, it was hardly more than three miles from your manor-what, forty minutes’ ride? And the hour when you came there was well on in the afternoon. How many hours had Clemence lain there dead? And suddenly there is Meriet toiling to hide the dead body, and whistling up the straying horse left riderless. Even if he had run in terror, and wandered the woods fevered over his deed, would he not have dealt with the horse before he fled? Either lashed him away to ride wild, or caught and ridden him far off. What was he doing there calling and tethering the horse, and hiding the body, all those hours after the man must have died? Did you never think of that?’ ‘I thought,’ said Leoric, speaking slowly now, wide-eyed, urgent upon Cadfael’s face, ‘as you have said, that he had run in terror from what he had done, and come back, late in the day, to hide it from all eyes.’ ‘So he has said now, but it cost him a great heave of the heart and mind to fetch that excuse up out of the well.’ ‘Then what,’ whispered Leoric, shaking now with mingled hope and bewilderment, and very afraid to trust, ‘what has moved him to accept so dreadful a wrong? How could he do such an injury to me and to himself?’ ‘For fear, perhaps, of doing you a greater. And for love of someone he had cause to doubt, as you found cause to doubt him. Meriet has a great store of love to give,’ said Brother Cadfael gravely, ‘and you would not allow him to give much of it to you. He has given it elsewhere, where it was not repelled, however it may have been undervalued. Have I to say to you again, that you have two sons?’ ‘No!’ cried Leoric in a muted howl of protest and outrage, towering taller in his anger, head and shoulders above Cadfael’s square, solid form. ‘That I will not hear! You presume! It is impossible!’ ‘Impossible for your heir and darling, yet instantly believable in his brother? In this world all men are fallible, and all things are possible.’ ‘But I tell you I saw him hiding his dead man, and sweating over it. If he had happened on him innocently by chance he would not have had cause to conceal the death, he would have come crying it aloud.’ ‘Not if he happened innocently on someone dear to him as brother or friend stooped over the same horrid task. You believe what you saw, why should not Meriet also believe what he saw? You put your own soul in peril to cover up what you believed he had done, why should not he do as much for another? You promised silence and concealment at a price-and that protection offered to him was just as surely protection for another-only the price was still to be exacted from Meriet. And Meriet did not grudge it. Of his own will he paid it-that was no mere consent to your terms, he wished it and tried to be glad of it, because it bought free someone he loved. Do you know of any other creature breathing that he loves as he loves his brother?’ ‘This is madness!’ said Leoric, breathing hard like a man who has run himself half to death. ‘Nigel was the whole day with the Lindes, Roswitha will tell you, Janyn will tell you. He had a falling-out to make up with the girl, he was off to her early in the morning, and came home only late in the evening. He knew nothing of that day’s business, he was aghast when he heard of it.’ ‘From Linde’s manor to that place in the forest is no long journey for a mounted man,’ said Cadfael relentlessly. ‘How if Meriet found him busy and bloodied over Clemence’s body, and said to him: Go, get clean away from here, leave him to me-go and be seen elsewhere all this day. I will do what must be done. What then?’ ‘Are you truly saying,’ demanded Leoric in a hoarse whisper, ‘that Nigel killed the man? Such a crime against hospitality, against kinship, against his nature?’ ‘No,’ said Cadfael. ‘But I am saying that it may be true that Meriet did so find him, just as you found Meriet. Why should what was such plain proof to you be any less convincing to Meriet? Had he not overwhelming reason to believe his brother guilty, to fear him guilty, or no less terrible, to dread that he might be convicted in innocence? For bear this ever in mind, if you could be mistaken in giving such instant credence to what you saw, so could Meriet. For those lost six hours still stick in my craw, and how to account for them I don’t yet know.’ ‘Is it possible?’ whispered Leoric, shaken and wondering. ‘Have I so wronged him? And my own part-must I not go straight to Hugh Beringar and let him judge? In God’s name, what are we to do, to set right what can be righted?’ ‘You must go, rather, to Abbot Radulfus’s dinner,’ said Cadfael, ‘and be such a convivial guest as he expects, and tomorrow you must marry your son as you have planned. We are still groping in the dark, and have no choice but to wait for enlightenment. Think of what I have said, but say no word of it to any other. Not yet. Let them have their wedding day in peace.’ But for all that he was certain then, in his own mind, that it would not be in peace.
