by Ellis Peters
‘What is this? You recognise this gem as belonging to Master Clemence? You are certain?’ ‘As certain as I was of those possessions of his which you have already shown me, cross and ring and dagger, which had gone through the fire with him. This he valued in particular as the bishop’s gift. Whether he was wearing it on his last journey I cannot say, but it was his habit, for he prized it.’ ‘If I may speak, my lord,’ said Isouda clearly from behind Roswitha’s shoulder, ‘I do know that he was wearing it when he came to Aspley. The brooch was in his cloak when I took it from him at the door and carried it to the chamber prepared for him, and it was in his cloak also when I brought it out to him the next morning when he left us. He did not need the cloak for riding, the morning was warm and fine. He had it slung over his saddle-bow when he rode away.’ ‘In full view, then,’ said Hugh sharply. For cross and ring had been left with the dead man and gone to the fire with him. Either time had been short and flight imperative, or else some superstitious awe had deterred the murderer from stripping a priest’s gems of office from his very body, though he had not scrupled to remove this one fine thing which lay open to his hand. ‘You observe, my lords,’ said Hugh,’that this jewel seems to show no marks of damage. If you will allow us to handle and examine it…?’ Good, thought Cadfael, reassured, I should have known Hugh would need no nudging from me. I can leave all to him now.
Roswitha made no move either to allow or prevent, as Hugh unpinned the great brooch from its place. She looked on with a blanched and apprehensive face, but said never a word. No, Roswitha was not entirely innocent in the matter; whether she had known what this gift was and how come by or not, she had certainly understood that it was perilous and not to be shown-not yet! Perhaps not here? And after their marriage they were bound for Nigel’s northern manor. Who was likely to know it there?
This has never seen the fire,’ said Hugh, and handed it to Canon Eluard for confirmation. ‘Everything else the man had was burned with him. Only this one thing was taken from him before ever those reached him who built him into his pyre. And only one person, last to see him alive, first to see him dead, can have taken this from his cloak as he lay, and that was his murderer.’ He turned to Roswitha, who stood pale to translucency, like a woman of ice, staring at him with wide and horrified eyes.
‘Who gave it to you?’ She cast one rapid glance around her, and then as suddenly took heart, and drawing breath deep, she answered loudly and clearly: ‘Meriet!’ Cadfael awoke abruptly to the realisation that he possessed knowledge which he had not yet confided to Hugh, and if he waited for the right challenge to this bold declaration from other lips he might wait in vain, and lose what had already been gained. For most of those here assembled, there was nothing incredible in this great lie she had just told, nothing even surprising, considering the circumstances of Meriet’s entry into the cloister, and the history of the devil’s novice within these walls. And she had clutched at the brief general hush as encouragement, and was enlarging boldly: ‘He was always following me with his dog’s eyes. I didn’t want his gifts, but I took it to be kind to him. How could I know where he got it?’ ‘When?’ demanded Cadfael loudly, as one having authority. “When did he give you this gift?’ ‘When?’ She looked round, hardly knowing where the question had come from, but hasty and positive in answering it, to hammer home conviction. ‘It was the day after Master Clemence left Aspley-the day after he was killed-in the afternoon. He came to me in our paddock at Linde. He pressed me so to take it… I did not want to hurt him…’ From the tail of his eye Cadfael saw that Meriet had come forth from his shadowy place and drawn a little nearer, and Mark had followed him anxiously though without attempting to restrain him. But the next moment all eyes were drawn to the tall figure of Leoric Aspley, as he came striding and shouldering forward to tower over his son and his son’s new wife.
‘Girl,’ cried Leoric, ‘think what you say! Is it well to lie? I know this cannot be true.’ He swung about vehemently, encountering in turn with his grieved, grim eyes abbot and canon and deputy-sheriff. ‘My lords all, what she says is false. My part in this I will confess, and accept gladly whatever penalty is due from me. For this I know, I brought home my son Meriet, that same day that I brought home the dead body of my guest and kinsman, and having cause, or so I thought, to believe my son the slayer, I laid him under lock and key from that hour, until I had considered, and he had accepted, the fate I decreed for him. From late afternoon of the day Peter Clemence died, all the next day, and until noon of the third, my son Meriet was close prisoner in my house. He never visited this girl. He never gave her this gift, for he never had it in his possession. Nor did he ever lift hand against my guest and his kinsman, now it is shown! God forgive me that ever I credited it!’ ‘I am not lying!’ shrilled Roswitha, struggling to recover the belief she had felt within her grasp. ‘A mistake only-I mistook the day! It was the third day he came came…’ Meriet had drawn very slowly nearer. From deep within his shadowing cowl great eyes stared, examining in wonder and anguish his father, his adored brother and his first love, so frantically busy twisting knives in him. Roswitha’s roving, pleading eyes met his, and she fell mute like a songbird shot down in flight, and shrank into Nigel’s circling arms with a wail of despair.
Meriet stood motionless for a long moment, then he turned on his heel and limped rapidly away. The motion of his lame foot was as if at every step he shook off dust.
‘Who gave it to you?’ asked Hugh, with pointed and relentless patience.
All the crowd had drawn in close, watching and listening, they had not failed to follow the logic of what had passed. A hundred pairs of eyes settled gradually and remorselessly upon Nigel. He knew it, and so did she.
‘No, no, no!’ she cried, turning to wind her arms fiercely about her husband. ‘It was not my lord-not Nigel! It was my brother gave me the brooch!’ On the instant everyone present was gazing round in haste, searching the court for the fair head, the blue eyes and light-hearted smile, and Hugh’s officers were burrowing through the press and bursting out at the gate to no purpose. For Janyn Linde had vanished silently and circumspectly, probably by cool and unhurried paces from the moment Canon Eluard first noticed the bright enamels on Roswitha’s shoulder. And so had Isouda’s riding-horse, the better of the two hitched outside the gatehouse for Meriet’s use. The porter had paid no attention to a young man sauntering innocently out and mounting without haste. It was a youngster of the Foregate, bright-eyed and knowing, who informed the sergeants that a young gentleman had left by the gate, as long as a quarter of an hour earlier, unhitched his horse, and ridden off along the Foregate, not towards the town. Modestly enough to start with said the shrewd urchin, but he was into a good gallop by the time he reached the corner at the horse-fair and vanished.
From the chaos within the great court, which must be left to sort itself out without his aid, Hugh flew to the stables, to mount himself and the officers he had with him, send for more men, and pursue the fugitive; if such a word might properly be applied to so gay and competent a malefactor as Janyn.
‘But why, in God’s name, why?’ groaned Hugh, tightening girths in the stableyard, and appealing to Brother Cadfael, busy at the same task beside him. ‘Why should he kill? What can he have had against the man? He had never so much as seen him, he was not at Aspley that night. How in the devil’s name did he even know the looks of the man he was waiting for?
‘Someone had pictured him for him-and he knew the time of his departure and the road he would take, that’s plain.’ But all the rest was still obscure, to Cadfael as to Hugh.
Janyn was gone, he had plucked himself gently out of the law’s reach in excellent time, foreseeing that all must come out. By fleeing he had owned to his act, but the act itself remained inexplicable.
‘Not the man,’ fretted Cadfael to himself, puffing after Hugh as he led his saddled horse at a trot up to the court and the gatehouse. ‘Not the man, then it must have been his errand, after all. What else is the
re? But why should anyone wish to prevent him from completing his well-intentioned ride to Chester, on the bishop’s business? What harm could there be to any man in that?’ The wedding party had scattered indecisively about the court, the involved families taking refuge in the guesthall, their closest friends loyally following them out of sight, where wounds could be dressed and quarrels reconciled without witnesses from the common herd. More distant guests took counsel, and some withdrew discreetly, preferring to be at home. The inhabitants of the Foregate, pleased and entertained and passing dubiously reliable information hither and yon and adding to it as it passed, continued attentive about the gatehouse.
Hugh had his men mustered and his foot in the stirrup when the furious pounding of galloping hooves, rarely heard in the Foregate, came echoing madly along the enclave wall, and clashed in over the cobbles of the gateway. An exhausted rider, sweating on a lathered horse, reined to a slithering, screaming stop on the frosty stones, and fell rather than dismounted into Hugh’s arms, his knees giving under him. All those left in the court, Abbot Radulfus and Prior Robert among them, came closing in haste about the newcomer, foreseeing desperate news.
‘Sheriff Prestcote,’ panted the reeling messenger, ‘or who stands here for him-from the lord bishop of Lincoln, in haste, and pleads for haste…”
‘I stand here for the sheriff,’ said Hugh. ‘Speak out! What’s the lord bishop’s urgent word for us?’ ‘That you should call up all the king’s knight-service in the shire,” said the messenger, bracing himself strongly, ‘for in the north-east there’s black treason, in despite of his Grace’s head. Two days after the lord king left Lincoln, Ranulf of Chester and William of Roumare made their way into the king’s castle by a subterfuge and have taken it by force. The citizens of Lincoln cry out to his Grace to rescue them from an abominable tyranny, and the lord bishop has contrived to send out a warning, through tight defences, to tell his Grace of what is done. There are many of us now, riding every way with the word. It will be in London by nightfall.’ ‘King Stephen was there but a week or more ago,’ cried Canon Eluard, ‘and they pledged their faith to him. How is this possible? They promised a strong chain of fortresses across the north.’ ‘And that they have,’ said the envoy, heaving at breath, ‘but not for King Stephen’s service, nor the empress’s neither, but for their own bastard kingdom in the north. Planned long ago, when they met and called all their castellans to Chester in September, with links as far south as here, and garrisons and constables ready for every castle. They’ve been gathering young men about them everywhere for their ends…’ So that was the way of it! Planned long ago, in September, at Chester, where Peter Clemence was bound with an errand from Henry of Blois, a most untimely visitor to intervene where such a company was gathered in arms and such a plot being hatched. No wonder Clemence could not be allowed to ride on unmolested and complete his embassy. And with links as far south as here!
Cadfael caught at Hugh’s arm. ‘They were two in it together, Hugh. Tomorrow this newly-wed pair were to be on their way north to the very borders of Lincolnshire-it’s Aspley has the manor there, not Linde. Secure Nigel, while you can! If it’s not already too late!’ Hugh turned to stare for an instant only, grasped the force of it, dropped his bridle and ran, beckoning his sergeants after him to the guesthall. Cadfael was close at his heels when they broke in upon a demoralised wedding party, bereft of gaiety, appetite or spirits, draped about the untouched board in burdened converse more fitting a wake than a wedding. The bride wept desolately in the arms of a stout matron, with three or four other women clucking and cooing around her. The bridegroom was nowhere to be seen.
‘He’s away!’ said Cadfael. ‘While we were in the stableyard, no other chance. And without her! The bishop of Lincoln got his message out of a tightly-sealed city at least a day too soon.’ There was no horse tethered outside the gatehouse, when they recalled the possibility and ran to see. Nigel had taken the first opportunity of following his fellow-conspirator towards the lands, offices and commands William of Roumare had promised them, where able young men of martial achievements and small scruples could carve out a fatter future than in two modest Shropshire manors on the edge of the Long Forest.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
” There was new and sensational matter for gossip now, and the watchers in the Foregate, having taken in all that stretched ears and sharp eyes could command, went to spread the word further, that there was planned rebellion in the north, a bid to set up a private kingdom for the earls of Chester and Lincoln, that the fine young men of the wedding company were in the plot from long since, and were fled because the matter had come to light before they could make an orderly withdrawal as planned. The lord bishop of Lincoln, no very close friend of King Stephen, had nevertheless found Chester and Roumare still more objectionable, and bestirred himself to smuggle out word to the king and implore rescue, for himself and his city.
The comings and goings about bridge and abbey were watched avidly. Hugh Beringar, torn two ways, had delegated the pursuit of the traitors to his sergeants, while he rode at once to the castle to send out the call to the knight-service of the shire to be ready to join the force which King Stephen would certainly be raising to besiege Lincoln, to begin commandeering mounts enough for his force, and see that all that was needed in the armoury was in good order. The bishop’s messenger was lodged at the abbey, and his message sped on its way by another rider to the castles in the south of the shire. In the guesthall the shattered company and the deserted bride remained invisible, shut in with the ruins of their celebration.
All this, and the twenty-first day of December barely past two in the afternoon! And what more was to happen before night, who could guess, when things were rushing along at such a speed?
Abbot Radulfus had reasserted his domestic rule, and the brothers went obediently to dinner in the refectory at his express order, somewhat later than usual. The horarium of the house could not be altogether abandoned even for such devastating matters as murder, treason and man-hunt. Besides, as Brother Cadfael thoughtfully concluded, those who had survived this upheaval to gain, instead of loss, might safely be left to draw breath and think in peace, before they must encounter and come to new terms. And those who had lost must have time to lick their wounds. As for the fugitives, the first of them had a handsome start, and the second had benefited by the arrival of even more shocking news to gain a limited breathing-space, but for all that, the hounds were on their trail, well aware now what route to take, for Aspley’s northern manor lay somewhere south of Newark, and anyone making for it must set forth by the road to Stafford. Somewhere in the heathland short of that town, dusk would be closing on the travellers. They might think it safe to lodge overnight in the town. They might yet be overtaken and brought back.
On leaving the refectory Cadfael made for his normal destination during the afternoon hours of work, the hut in the herb garden where he brewed his mysteries. And they were there, the two young men in Benedictine habits, seated quickly side by side on the bench against the end wall. The very small spark of the brazier glowed faintly on their faces. Meriet leaned back against the timbers in simple exhaustion, his cowl thrust back on his shoulders, his face shadowy. He had been down into the very profound of anger, grief and bitterness, and surfaced again to find Mark still constant and patient beside him; and now he was at rest, without thought or feeling, ready to be born afresh into a changed world, but not in haste. Mark looked as he always looked, mild, almost deprecatory, as though he pleaded a fragile right to be where he was, and yet would stand to it to the death.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ said Brother Cadfael, and took the little bellows and blew the brazier into rosy life, for it was none too warm within there. He closed and barred the door to keep out even the draught that found its way through the chinks. ‘I doubt if you’ll have eaten,’ he said, feeling along the shelf behind the door. ‘There are oat cakes here and some apples, and I think I have a morsel of cheese. You’l
l be the better for a bite. And I have a wine that will do you no harm either.’ And behold, the boy was hungry! So simple it was. He was not long turned nineteen, and physically hearty, and he had eaten nothing since dawn. He began listlessly, docile to persuasion, and at the first bite he was alive again and ravenous, his eyes brightening, the glow of the blown brazier gilding and softening hollow cheeks. The wine, as Cadfael had predicted, did him no harm at all. Blood flowed through him again, with new warmth and urgency.
He said not one word of brother, father or lost love. It was still too early. He had heard himself falsely accused by one of them, falsely suspected by another, and what by the third? Left to pursue his devoted and foolish self-sacrifice, without a word to absolve him. He had a great load of bitterness still to shake from his heart. But praise God, he came to life for food and ate like a starved schoolboy. Brother Cadfael was greatly encouraged.
In the mortuary chapel, where Peter Clemence lay in his sealed coffin on his draped bier, Leoric Aspley had chosen to make his confession, and entreated Abbot Radulfus to be the priest to hear it. On his knees on the flagstones, by his own choice, he set forth the story as he had known it, the fearful discovery of his younger son labouring to drag a dead man into cover and hide him from all eyes, Meriet’s tacit acceptance of the guilt, and his own reluctance to deliver up his son to death, or let him go free.
‘I promised him I would deal with his dead man, even at the peril of my soul, and he should live, but in perpetual penance out of the world. And to that he agreed and embraced his penalty, as I now know or fear that I now know, for love of his brother, whom he had better reason for believing a murderer than ever I had for crediting the same guilt to Meriet. I am afraid, father, that he accepted his fate as much for my sake as for his brother’s, having cause, to my shame, to believe-no, to know! that I built all on Nigel and all too little upon him, and could live on after writing him out of my life, though the loss of Nigel would be my death. As now he is lost indeed, but I can and I will live. Therefore my grievous sin against my son Meriet is not only this doubt of him, this easy credence of his crime and his banishment into the cloister, but stretches back to his birth in lifelong misprizing.
