The Raven in the Foregate

by Ellis Peters

  A lucky escape, thought Jerome, scurrying thankfully back to his proper duties. I should have made a sorry fool of myself if I had challenged him. A mere chance resemblance in figure and bearing, after all, nothing more. What a blessing for me that his master brushed by in time to acknowledge him as his, and warn me of my error.

  For of course, Ralph Giffard, of all people, could scarcely be harbouring in his own service the very man he himself had so properly denounced to the law!

  Chapter 13

  “THERE IS ONE QUESTION,” said the abbot, “which not only has not been answered, it has not yet been asked.”

  He had waited until the table was cleared, and his guest supplied with the final cup of wine. Radulfus never allowed business of any kind to be discussed during a meal. The pleasures of the table were something he used sparingly, but respected.

  “What is that?” asked Hugh.

  “Has he told all the truth?”

  Hugh looked up sharply across the table. “Cynric? Who can say of any man that he never lies? But general report of Cynric says that he never speaks at all unless he must, and then to the point. It is why he said nothing until Jordan was accused. Words come very hard to Cynric. I doubt if he ever in his life used as many in one day as we heard from him in a handful of moments this morning. I doubt if he would waste breath on lying, when even necessary truth costs him such labour.”

  “He was eloquent enough today,” said Radulfus with a wry smile. “But I should be glad if we had some sure sign to confirm what he told us. He may very well have done no more than turn and walk away, and leave the issue of life and death to God, or whatever force he regards as the arbiter of justice in such a strange case. Or he may have struck the blow himself. Or he may have seen the thing happen, much as he says, but helped the priest into the water while he was stunned. Granted I do not think Cynric would be very ingenious at making up plausible tales to cover the event, yet we cannot know. Nor do I think him at all a man of violence, even where he found much to provoke it, but again we cannot know. And even if we have the entire truth from him, what should be done about such a man? How proceed with him?”

  “For my part,” said Hugh firmly, “nothing can or will be done. There is no law he has broken. It may be a sin to allow a death to take place, it is not a crime. I hold fast to my own writ. Sinners are in your province, not mine.” He did not add that there was some accounting due from the man who had brought Ailnoth, a stranger scarcely known, to assume the pastoral care of a bereaved flock that had no voice in the choosing of their new shepherd. But he suspected that the thought was in the abbot’s mind, and had been ever since the first complaints were brought to his ears. He was not a man to shut his eyes to his own errors, or shirk his own responsibilities.

  “This I can tell you,” said Hugh. “What he said of the woman who followed Ailnoth and was struck down by him is certainly true. Mistress Hammet claimed then that she had fallen on the icy ground. That was a lie. The priest did that to her, she has owned it since to Brother Cadfael, who treated her injuries. And since I have now brought Cadfael into this, I think you would do well, my lord, to send for him. I have had no chance to speak with him since the events of this morning, and it’s in my mind that he may have something further to say in this matter. He was missing from the ranks of the brothers in the cemetery when I came, for I looked for him and couldn’t find him. He came later, not from the Foregate but from within the court. He would not have absented himself but for good reason. If he has things to tell me, I cannot afford to neglect them.”

  “Neither, it seems, can I,” said Radulfus, and reached for the little bell that lay on his desk. The small silver chime brought in his secretary from the ante-room. “Brother Vitalis, will you find Brother Cadfael, and ask him to come here to us?”

  When the door had closed again the abbot sat silent for a while, considering. “I know now, of course,” he said at last, “that Father Ailnoth was indeed grossly deceived, and that is some extenuation for him. But the woman—I gather she is no kin to the youth she sheltered, the one we knew as Benet?—she had been an exemplary servant to her master for three years, her only offence was in protecting the young man, an offence which sprang only from affection. There shall be no penalty visited upon her, never by my authority. She shall have quiet living here, since it was I who brought her here. If we get a new priest who has neither mother nor sister to mind his dwelling, then she may serve him as she did Ailnoth, and I hope there may never be reason for her to kneel to him but in the confessional, and none ever for him to strike her. And as for the boy…” He looked back with a resigned and tolerant eye, and shook his head a little, smiling. “I remember we gave him to Cadfael to do the rough work before the winter freeze. I saw him once in the garden, digging the long butt. At least he gave honest value. FitzAlan’s squire was not afraid to dig, nor ashamed.” He looked up, head tilted, into Hugh’s face. “You don’t, by any chance, know…?”

  “I have been rather careful not to know,” said Hugh.

  “Well… I am glad he never fouled his hands with murder. I saw them black enough with soil, from plucking out the weeds too gross to be dug in,” said Radulfus, and smiled distantly, looking out of the window at a pearl-grey, low hanging sky. “I expect he’ll do well enough. Pity of all pities there should be one such young man in arms against another in this land, but at least let the steel be bared only in the open field, not privily in the dark.”

  *

  Cadfael laid out on the abbot’s desk the remaining relics of Father Ailnoth, the ebony staff, the draggled black skullcap with its torn binding, and the unravelled woollen remnant of braid that completed the circle.

  “Cynric told simple truth, and here are the proofs of it. Only this morning, when I saw Mistress Hammet’s open hand once again, and remembered the grazes I had dressed, did I understand how she got those injuries. Not from a fall—there was no fall. The wound on her head was dealt by this staff, for I found several long hairs of her greying light-brown colour here, caught in the frayed edges of this silver band. You see it’s worn wafer-thin, and the edges turned and cracking.”

  Radulfus ran a long, lean finger round the crumpled, razor-sharp rim, and nodded grimly. “Yes, I see. And from this same band she got the grazes to her hands. He swung his staff at her a second time, so Cynric said, and she caught and clung to it, to save her head…”

  “…and he tugged at it with all his strength, and tore it by main force out of her hands,” said Hugh, “to his own undoing.”

  “They could not have been many paces past the mill,” said Cadfael, “for Cynric was some way beyond, among the willows. On the side of that first stump that overhangs the pool I found a few broken withies, and this black ravelling of wool braid snagged in the cracked, dead wood of the stump. The priest went stunned or dazed into the water, the cap flew from his head, leaving this scrap held fast in the tree, as the silver band held her torn hairs. The staff was flung from his hand. The winter turf is tufted and rough there, no wonder if he caught his heel, as he reeled backwards when she loosed her hold. He crashed into the stump. The axe that felled it, long ago, left it uneven, the jagged edge took him low at the back of the head. Father, you saw the wound. So did the sheriff.”

  “I saw it,” said Radulfus. “And the woman knew nothing from the time she ran from him?”

  “She barely knows how she got home. Certainly she waited out the night in dread, expecting him to finish what he intended against the boy, and return to his house to denounce and cast her out. But he never came.”

  “Could he have been saved?” wondered the abbot, grieving as much for the roused and resentful flock as for the dead shepherd.

  “In the dark,” said Cadfael, “I doubt if any one man could have got him from under that bank, however he laboured at it. Even had there been help within reach, I think he would have drowned before ever they got him out.”

  “At the risk of falling into sin,” said Radulfus, with a smile th
at began sourly and ended in resignation, “I find that comforting. We have not a murderer among us, at any rate.”

  *

  “Talk of falling into sin,” said Cadfael later, when he and Hugh were sitting easy together in the workshop in the herb garden, “forces me to examine my own conscience. I enjoy some privileges, by reason of being called on to attend sick people outside the enclave, and also by virtue of having a godson to visit. But I ought not to take advantage of that permission for my own ends. Which I have done shamelessly on three or four occasions since Christmas. Indeed, Father Abbot must be well aware that I went out from the precinct this very morning without leave, but he’s said no word about it.”

  “No doubt he takes it for granted you’ll be making proper confession voluntarily, at chapter tomorrow,” said Hugh, straight-faced.

  “That I doubt! He’d hardly welcome it. I should have to explain the reason, and I know his mind by now. There are old hawks like Radulfus and myself in here, who can stand the gales, but there are also innocents who will not benefit by too stormy a wind blowing through the dovecote. He’s fretted enough about Ailnoth’s influence, now he wants it put by and soon forgotten. And I prophesy, Hugh, that the Foregate will soon have a new priest, and one who is known and welcome not only to us who have the bestowing of the benefice, but to those who are likely to reap the results. No better way of burying Ailnoth.”

  “In all fairness,” said Hugh thoughtfully, “it would have been a very delicate matter to reject a priest recommended by the papal legate, even for a man of your abbot’s stature. And the fellow was impressive to the eye and the ear, and had scholarship… No wonder Radulfus thought he was bringing you a treasure. God send you a decent, humble, common man next time.”

  “Amen! Whether he has Latin or not! And here am I the well-wisher, if not the accomplice, of an enemy of the King, criminal as well as sinner! Did I say I was being obliged to search my conscience? But not too diligently—that always leads to trouble.”

  “I wonder,” said Hugh, smiling indulgently into the glow of the brazier, “if they’ll have set out yet?”

  “Not until dark, I fancy. Overnight they’ll be gone. I hope she has somehow left word for Ralph Giffard,” said Cadfael, considering. “He’s no bad man, only driven, as so many are now, and mainly for his son. She had no complaint of him, except that he had compounded with fortune, and given up his hopes for the Empress. Being more than thirty years short of his age, she finds that incomprehensible. But you and I, Hugh, can comprehend it all too well. Let the young ones go their own gait, and find their own way.”

  He sat smiling, thinking of the pair of them, but chiefly of Ninian, lively and bold and impudent, and a stout performer with the spade, even though he had never had one in his hand before, and had to learn the craft quickly. “I never had such a stout-hearted labourer under me here since Brother John—that must be nearly five years now! The one who stayed in Gwytherin, and married the smith’s niece. He’ll have made a doughty smith himself by now. Benet reminded me of him, some ways… all or nothing, and ready for every venture.”

  “Ninian,” said Hugh, correcting him almost absently.

  “True, Ninian we must call him now, but I tend to forget. But I haven’t told you,” said Cadfael, kindling joyfully to the recollection, “the very best of the ending. In the middle of so much aggravation and suspicion and death, a joke is no bad thing.”

  “I wouldn’t say no to that,” agreed Hugh, leaning forward to mend the fire with a few judiciously placed pieces of charcoal, with the calculated pleasure of one for whom such things are usually done by others. “But I saw very little sign of one today. Where did you find it?”

  “Why, you were kept busy talking with Father Abbot, close by the grave, while the rest were dispersing. You had no chance to observe it. But I was loose, and so was Brother Jerome, with his nose twitching for officious mischief, as usual. Sanan saw it,” said Cadfael, with fond recollection. “It scared the wits out of her for a moment or two, but then it was all resolved. You know, Hugh, how wide those double doors of ours are, in the wall…”

  “I came that way,” said Hugh patiently, a little sleepy with relief from care, the fumes of the brazier, and the early start to a day now subsiding into a dim and misty evening. “I know!”

  “There was a young fellow holding a horse, out there in the Foregate. Who was to notice him until everyone began streaming out by that way? Jerome was running like a sheep-dog about the fringes, hustling them out, he was bound to take a frequent look out there to the streets. He saw a man he thought he recognised, and went closer to view, all panting with fervour and zeal—you know him!”

  “Every uncoverer of evil acquires merit,” said Hugh, taking idle pleasure in the mild satire upon Brother Jerome. “What merit could there be for him there, in a lad holding a horse?”

  “Why, one Benet, or Ninian, hunted as recreant to our lord King Stephen, and denounced to our lord sheriff—saving your presence, Hugh, but you know you were just confirmed in office, you mean more now to Brother Jerome than ever before!—by Ralph Giffard, no less. That is what Jerome saw, barring that the malefactor did seem to be wearing clothes never seen on him before.”

  “Now you do surprise me,” said Hugh, turning a gleaming and amused face upon his friend. “And this really was the said Benet or Ninian?”

  “It was indeed. I knew him, and so did Sanan when she looked ahead, where Jerome was looking, and saw him there. The lad himself, Hugh, bold as ever to plunge his head into whatever snare. Come to make sure himself where the blame was flying, and see that none of it fell upon his nurse. God knows what he would have done, if you had not carolled aloud your preference for Jordan. After all, what did he know of all that happened after he came panting into the church, that night? It could have been Jordan, for all he knew. No doubt he believed it was, once you bayed the quarry.”

  “I have a fine, bell-mouthed bay,” acknowledged Hugh, grinning. “And just as well Father Abbot kept me talking and would have me stay and dine with him, or I might have run my nose full into this madcap lad of yours, and just as Jerome plucked him by the hood. So how did all this end? I heard no foray in the Foregate.”

  “There was none,” agreed Cadfael complacently. “Ralph Giffard was there among the crowd, did you never see him? He’s tall enough to top most of the Foregate folk. But there, you were held fast in the middle, no time to look about you. He was there. At the end he turned to go, not worst pleased, I fancy, that you had no hold on the lad he’d felt obliged to hand to you earlier. It was good to see, Hugh! He shouldered past Jerome, having legs so much longer, just as our most eager hound had his nose down on a hot scent. And he took the bridle from the lad’s hand, and even smiled at him, eye to eye, and the lad held his stirrup for him and steadied him astride, as good a groom as ever you saw. And Jerome baulked like a hound at a loss, and came scuttling back, aghast that he’d as good as howled accusation at Giffard’s own groom, waiting honestly for his master. That was when I saw Sanan shudder into such laughter as might almost have broken her apart, but that she’s very sturdily made, that lady! And Giffard rode away, back along the Foregate, and the groom that was no groom of his went trotting after him afoot, out of sight and away.”

  “And this verily happened?” demanded Hugh.

  “Son, I saw it. I shall cherish it. Off they went, and Ralph Giffard threw a silver penny to young Ninian, and Ninian caught it and went on his way round the corner and out of sight, before he stopped for breath. And still does not know, I suppose,” said Cadfael, peering through the doorway into a late afternoon light that still lacked an hour or so to Vespers, “still does not know to whom he owes his salvation. How I would love to be by, when Sanan tells him to whom he owes his fat pay for less than an hour of holding a horse! I wager that lad will never part with that penny, he’ll have it pierced for his neck or for hers. There are not many such keepsakes,” said Cadfael smugly, “in one lifetime.”

  “A
re you telling me,” said Hugh, delighted,”that those two met so and parted so, in mutual service, and had no notion with whom they dealt?”

  “No notion in the world! They had exchanged messages, they were allies, adversaries, friends, enemies, what you please, in the most intimate degree,” said Cadfael, with deep and grateful contentment, “but neither of them had the least idea what the other one looked like. They had never once set eyes on each other.”

  Glossary of Terms

  Alltud

  A foreigner living in Wales

  Arbalest

  A crossbow that enables the bow to be drawn with a winding handle

  Baldric

  A sword-belt crossing the chest from shoulder to hip.

  Bannerole

  A thin ribbon attached to a lance tip

  Bodice

  The supportive upper area of a woman’s dress, sometimes a separate item of clothing worn over a blouse

  Brychan

  A woollen blanket

  Caltrop

  A small iron weapon consisting four spikes. Set on the ground and used against horses and infantry

  Capuchon

  A cowl-like hood

  Cariad

  Welsh for ‘beloved’

  Cassock

  A long garment of the clergy

  Castellan

  The ruler of a castle

  Chatelaine

  The lady of a manor house

  Chausses

  Male hose

  Coif

  The cap worn under a nun’s veil

  Conversus

  A man who joins the monkhood after living in the outside world

  Cottar

  A Villein who is leased a cottage in exchange for their work