A Rare Benedictine bc-20

by Ellis Peters

“Your life’s better worth than the abbey rents,” said Cadfael heartily, “and even they may be regained.”

  “The man who felled you,” said the sergeant, leaning dose, “cut your satchel loose with a knife, and made off with it. But if you can help us we’ll lay him by the heels yet. Where was this that he struck you down?”

  “Not a hundred paces from my own house,” lamented William bitterly. “I went there when I had finished, to check my rolls and make all fast, and…” He shut his mouth grimly on the overriding reason. Hazily he had been aware all this time of the silent and sullen young man sitting beside him, now he fixed his eyes on him until his vision cleared. The mutual glare was spirited, and came of long practice. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Waiting to have better news of you to take to my mother,” said Eddi shortly. He looked up defiantly into the sergeant’s face. “He came home to read me all my sins over, and warn me that the fine that’s due from me in two days more is my burden now, not his, and if I can’t make shift for it on my own I may go to gaol, and pay in another coin. Or it may be,” he added with grudging fairness, “that he came rather to flay me and then pay my dues, as he’s done more than once. But I was in no mind to listen, and he was in no mind to be flouted, so I flung out and went down to the butts. And won the good half of what I owe, for what that’s worth,”

  “So this was a bitter quarrel you had between you,” said the sergeant, narrowing suspicious eyes. “And not long after it you, master, went out to bring your rents home, and were set upon, robbed, and left for dead. And now you, boy, have the half of what you need to stay out of prison.”

  Cadfael, watching father and son, felt that it had not even occurred to Eddi, until then, that he might fall under suspicion of this all too opportune attack; and further, that even now it had not dawned on Master William that such a thought could occur to any sane man. He was scowling at his son for no worse reason than old custom and an aching head.

  “Why are you not looking after your mother at home?” he demanded querulously.

  “So I will, now I’ve seen and heard you more like yourself. Mother’s well enough cared for; Cousin Alice is with her. But she’ll be the better for knowing that you’re still the same cantankerous worrit, and likely to be a plague to us twenty years yet. I’ll go,” said Eddi grimly, “when I’m let. But he wants your witness before he can leave you to your rest. Better get it said.”

  Master William submitted wearily, knitting his brows in the effort to remember. “I came from the house, along the passage towards Saint Mary’s, above the water-gate. The door of the tanner’s yard was standing open, I know I’d passed it… But I never heard a step behind me. As if the wall had fallen on me! I recall nothing after, except sudden cold, deadly cold… Who brought me back, then, that I’m snug here?”

  They told him, and he shook his head helplessly over the great blank between.

  “You think the fellow must have been hiding behind that yard-door, lying in wait?”

  “So it seems.”

  “And you caught never a glimpse? Never had time to turn your head? You can tell us nothing to trace him? Not even a guess at his build? His age?”

  Nothing. Simply, there had been early dusk before him, his own steps the only sound, no man in sight between the high walls of gardens, yards and warehouses going down to the river, and then the shock of the blow, and abrupt darkness. He was growing tired again, but his mind was clear enough. There would be no more to get from him.

  Brother Edmund came in, eyed his patient, and silently nodded the visitors out at the door, to leave him in peace. Eddi kissed his father’s dangling hand, but brusquely, rather as though he would as lief have bitten it, and marched out to blink at the sunlight in the great court. With a face grimly defiant he waited for the sergeant’s dismissal.

  “I left him as I told you, I went to the butts, and played into a wager there, and shot well. You’ll want names from me. I can give them. And I’m still short the half of my fine, for what that’s worth. I knew nothing of this until I went home, and that was late, after your messenger had been there. Can I go home? I’m at your disposal.”

  “You can,” granted the sergeant, so readily that it was clear the young man would not be unwatched on the way, or on arrival. “And there stay, for I shall want more from you than merely names. I’m away to take their tales from the lay brothers who were working late at the Gaye yesterday, but I’ll not be long after you in the town.”

  The workers were already assembling in the court and moving off to their day’s labour. The sergeant strode forth to find his men, and left Eddi glowering after him, and Cadfael mildly observing the wary play of thought in the dark young face. Not a bad-looking lad, if he would wear a sunnier visage; but perhaps at this moment he had little cause.

  “He will truly be a hale man again?” he asked suddenly, turning his black gaze on Cadfael.

  “As whole and hearty as ever he was.”

  “And you’ll take good care of him?”

  “So we will,” agreed Cadfael innocently, “even though he may be a cantankerous worrit and a plague.”

  “I ‘m sure none of you here have any call to say so,” flashed the young man with abrupt ferocity. “The abbey has had loyal and solid service from him all these years, and owes him more thanks than abuse.” And he turned his back and stalked away out of the great court, leaving Cadfael looking after him with a thoughtful face and the mere trace of a smile.

  He was careful to wipe off the smile before he went back to Master William, who was in no mood to take himself, his son and his troubles anything but seriously. He lay trying to blink and frown away his headache, and fulminating about his offspring in a glum undertone.

  “You see what I have to complain of, who should be able to look for comfort and support at home. A wild, unbiddable good-for-nothing, and insolent into the bargain…”

  “So he is,” agreed Cadfael sympathetically, wooden-faced. “No wonder you mean to let him pay for his follies in prison, and small blame to you.” He got an acid glare as reward. “I shall do no such thing!” snapped Master William sharply. “The boy’s no worse than you or I at his age, I daresay. Nothing wrong with him that time won’t cure.”

  Master William’s disaster, it seemed, had shaken the serenity of the abbey from choir to guest-hall. The enquiries were many and assiduous. Young Jacob had been hopping about outside the infirmary from dawn, unable to tear himself away even to the duties he owed his injured master, until Cadfael had taken pity on his obvious anxiety, and stopped to tell him that there was no need for such distress, for the worst was over, and all would be well with Master William.

  “You are sure, brother? He has regained his senses? He has spoken? His mind is clear?”

  Patiently Cadfael repeated his reassurances.

  “But such villainy! Has he been able to help the sheriff’s men? Did he see his attacker? Has he any notion who it could have been?”

  “Not that, no. Never a glimpse, he was struck from behind, and knew no more until he came to this morning in the infirmary. He’s no help to the law, I fear. It was not to be expected.”

  “But he himself will be well and strong again?”

  “As ever he was, and before long, too.”

  “Thank God, brother!” said Jacob fervently, and went away satisfied to his accounts. For even with the town rents lost, there was still bookwork to be done on what remained.

  More surprising it seemed to be stopped on the way to the dortoir by Warin Harefoot, the haberdasher, with a very civil enquiry after the steward’s health. Warin did not presume to display the agitation of a favoured colleague like Jacob, but rather the mannerly sympathy of a humble guest of the house, and the law-abiding citizen’s indignation at evildoing, and desire that justice should pursue the evildoer. Had his honour been able to put a name or a face to his attacker? A great pity! Yet justice, he hoped, might still be done. And would there should any man be so fortunate as t
o trace the missing satchel with its treasure would there be a small reward for such a service? To an honest man who restored it, Cadfael thought, there well might. Warin went off to his day’s peddling in Shrewsbury, humping his heavy pack. The back view of him, for some reason, looked both purposeful and jaunty.

  But the strangest and most disturbing enquirer made, in fact, no enquiry, but came silently in, as Cadfael was paying another brief visit to the infirmary in the early afternoon, after catching up with some of his lost sleep. Brother Eutropius stood motionless and intent at the foot of the steward’s bed, staring down with great hollow eyes in a face like a stone mask. He gave never a glance to Cadfael. All he regarded was the sleeping man, now so placid and eased for all his bandaged head, a man back from the river, back from the grave. He stood there for a long time, his lips moving on inaudible formulae of prayer Suddenly he shuddered, like someone waking from a trance, and crossed himself, and went away as silently as he had come.

  Cadfael was so concerned at his manner and his closed face that he went out after him, no less quietly, and followed him at a distance through the cloisters and into the church.

  Brother Eutropius was on his knees before the high altar, his marble face upraised over clasped hands. His eyelids were closed, but the dark lashes glittered. A handsome, agonised man of thirty, with a strong body and a fierce, tormented heart, his lips framing silently but readably in the altar-light. “Mea culpa… maxima mea culpa …”

  Cadfael would have liked to pierce the distance and the ice between, but it was not the time. He went away quietly, and left Brother Eutropius to the remnant of his disrupted solitude, for whatever had happened to him, the shell was cracked and disintegrating, and never again would he be able to reassemble it about him.

  Cadfael went into the town before Vespers, to call upon Mistress Rede, and take her the latest good word of her man. It was by chance that he met the sergeant at the High Cross, and stopped to exchange news. It had been a routine precaution to round up a few of the best-known rogues in Shrewsbury, and make them account for their movements the previous day, but that had yielded nothing. Eddi’s fellow-marksmen at the butts under the town wall had sworn to his story willingly, but seeing they were all his cronies from boyhood, that meant little enough. The one new thing, and it marked the exact spot of the attack past question, was the discovery in the passage above the water-gate of the one loop of leather from Master William’s pouch, the one which had been sliced clean through and left lying in the thief’s haste, and the dim light under the high walls.

  “Right under the clothier’s cart-yard. The walls are ten feet high, and the passage narrow. Never a place from which the lane can be overlooked. No chance in the world of an eye witness. He chose his place well.”

  “Ah, but there is one place, then, from which a man might have watched the deed,” said Cadfael, enlightened. “The loft above that cart-house and barn has a hatch higher than the wall, and close to it. And Roger Clothier lets Rhodri Fychan sleep up there the old Welshman who begs at Saint Mary’s church. By that time of the evening he may have been up in the hay already, and on a fine evening he’d be sitting by the open hatch. And even if he had not come home at that time, who’s to be sure of that? It’s enough that he could have been there.

  He had been right about the sergeant; the man was an incomer, not yet acquainted with the half of what went on in Shrewsbury. He had not known Madog of the Dead-Boat, he did not know Rhodri Fychan. Pure chance had cast this particular affair into the hands of such a man, and perhaps no ill chance, either.

  “You have given me a notion,” said Cadfael, “that may bring us nearer the truth yet. Not that I’d let the old man run any risk, but no need for that. Listen, there’s a baited trap we might try, if you’re agreeable. If it succeeds you may have your man. If it fails, we shall have lost nothing. But it’s a matter of doing it quietly no public proclamation, leave the baiting to me. Will you give it a trial? It’s your credit if we hook our fish, and it costs but a night-watch.”

  The sergeant stared, already sniffing at the hope of praise and promotion, but cautious still. “What is it you have in mind?”

  “Say you had done this thing, there between blind walls, and then suddenly heard that an old man slept above every night of the year, and may have been there when you struck. And say you were told that this old beggar has not yet been questioned but tomorrow he will be…”

  “Brother,” said the sergeant, “I am with you. I am listening.”

  There were two things to be done, after that, if the spring was to succeed, and imperil no one but the guilty. No need to worry, as yet, about getting permission to be absent in the night, or, failing that, making his own practised but deprecated way out without permission. Though he had confidence in Abbot Radulfus, who had, before now, shown confidence in him. Justice is a permitted passion, the just respect it. Meantime, Cadfael went up to Saint Mary’s churchyard, and sought out the venerable beggar who sat beside the west door, in his privileged and honoured place. Rhodri the Less for his father had been Rhodri, too, and a respected beggar like his son knew the footstep, and turned up a wrinkled and pock-marked face, brown as the soil, smiling.

  “Brother Cadfael, well met, and what’s the news with you?”

  Cadfael sat down beside him, and took his time. “You’ll have heard of this bad business that was done right under your bedchamber, yesterday evening. Were you there, last night?”

  “Not when this befell,” said the old man, scratching his white poll thoughtfully, “and can find no one who was down there at that time, either. Last night I begged late, it was a mild evening. Vespers was over and gone here before I went home.”

  “No matter,” said Cadfael. “Now listen, friend, for I’m borrowing your nest tonight, and you’ll be a guest elsewhere, if you’ll be my helper…”

  “For a Welshman,” said the old man comfortably, “whatever he asks. You need only tell me.” But when it was told, he shook his head firmly. “There’s an inner loft. In the worst of the winter I move in there for the warmth, away from the frosty air. Why should not I be present? There’s a door between, and room for you and more. And I should like, Brother Cadfael, I should like of all things to be witness when Will Rede’s murderer gets his come-uppance.”

  He leaned to rattle his begging-bowl at a pious lady who had been putting up prayers in the church. Business was business, and the pitch he held was the envy of the beggars of Shrewsbury. He blessed the giver, and reached a delaying hand to halt Cadfael, who was rising to depart.

  “Brother, a word for you that might come helpfully, who knows! They are saying that one of your monks was down under the bridge yesterday evening, about the time Madog took up Will out of the water. They say he stood there under the stone a long time, like a man in a dream, but no good dream. One they know but very little, a man in his prime, dark-avised, solitary…”

  “He came late to Vespers,” said Cadfael, remembering.

  “You know I have those who tell me things, for no evil purpose a man who sits still must have the world come to him. They tell me this brother walked into the water, above his sandals, and would have gone deeper, but it was then Madog of the Dead-Boat hallooed that he had a drowned man aboard. And the strange monk drew back out of the water and fled from his devil. So they say. Does it mean anything to you?”

  “Yes,” said Cadfael slowly. “Yes, it means much.”

  When Cadfael had finished reassuring the steward’s brisk, birdlike little wife that she should have her man back in a day or two as good as new, he drew Eddi out with him into the yard, and told him all that was in the wind.

  “And I am off back now to drop the quiet word into a few ears I can think of, where it may raise the fiercest itch. But not too early, or why should not the thought be passed on to the sheriff’s man at once for action? No, last thing, after dark, when all good brothers are making their peace with the day before bed, I shall have recalled that there’s one place from wh
ich yonder lane can be overlooked, and one man who sleeps the nights there, year round, and may have things to tell. First thing tomorrow, I shall let them know, I’ll send the sheriff the word, and let him deal. Whoever fears an eye witness shall have but this one night to act.”

  The young man eyed him with a doubtful face but a glint in his glance. “Since you can hardly expect to take me in that trap, brother, I reckon you have another use for me.”

  “This is your father. If you will, you may be with the witnesses in the rear loft. But mark, I do not know, no one can know yet, that the bait will fetch any man.”

  “And if it does not,” said Eddi with a wry grin, “if no one comes, I can still find the hunt hard on my heels.”

  “True! But if it succeeds…”

  He nodded grimly. “Either way, I have nothing to lose. But listen, one thing I want amended, or I’ll spring your trap before the time. It is not I who will be in the rear loft with Rhodri Fychan and your sergeant. It is you. I shall be the sleeper in the straw, waiting for a murderer. You said rightly, brother this is my father. Mine, not yours!”

  This had been no part of Brother Cadfael’s plans, but for all that, he found it did not greatly surprise him. Nor, by the set of the intent young face and the tone of the quiet voice, did he think demur would do much good. But he tried.

  “Son, since it is your father, think better of it. He’ll have need of you. A man who has tried once to kill will want to make certain this time. He’ll come with a knife, if he comes at all. And you, however sharp your ears and stout your heart, still at a disadvantage, lying in a feigned sleep…”

  “And are your senses any quicker than mine, and your sinews any suppler and stronger?” Eddi grinned suddenly, and clapped him on the shoulder with a large and able hand. “Never fret, brother, I am well prepared for when that man and I come to grips. You go and sow your good seed, and may it bear fruit! I’ll make ready.”

  When robbery and attempted murder are but a day and a half old, and still the sensation of a whole community, it is by no means difficult to introduce the subject and insert into the speculations whatever new crumb of interest you may wish to propagate. As Cadfael found, going about his private business in the half-hour after Compline. He did not have to introduce the subject, in fact, for no one was talking about anything else. The only slight difficulty was in confiding his sudden idea to each man in solitude, since any general announcement would at once have caused some native to blurt out the obvious objection, and give the entire game away. But even that gave little trouble, for certainly the right man, if he really was among those approached, would not say one word of it to anyone else, and would have far too much to think about to want company or conversation the rest of the night. Young Jacob, emerging cramped and yawning after hours of assiduous scribing, broken only by snatched meals and a dutiful visit to his master, now sitting up by the infirmary hearth, received Brother Cadfael’s sudden idea wide-eyed and eager, and offered, indeed, to hurry to the castle even at this late hour to tell the watch about it, but Cadfael considered that hardworking officers of the law might be none too grateful at having their night’s rest disrupted; and in any case nothing would be changed by morning.