Dead Man's Ransom

by Ellis Peters

  He was about to turn back and compose his mind for the night prayers when the luminous darkness quickened around him, and two people came up from the shadowy buildings of the stables towards the hall, softly and swiftly, but with abrupt pauses that shook the air more than their motion. They were talking as they came, just above the betraying sibilance of whispers, and their conference had an edge and an urgency that made him freeze where he stood, covered by the bulk and darkness of the trees. By the time he was aware of them they were between him and his rest, and when they drew close enough he could not choose but hear. But man being what he is, it cannot be avowed that he would so have chosen, even if he could.

  “—mean me no harm!” breathed the one, bitter and soft. “And do you not harm me, do you not rob me of what’s mine by right, with every breath you draw? And now you will be off to him, as soon as this English lord can be moved…”

  “Have I a choice,” protested the other, “when the prince sends me? And he is my foster-brother, can you change that? Why can you not let well alone?”

  “It is not well, it is very ill! Sent, indeed!” hissed the girl’s voice viciously. “Ha! And you would murder any who took the errand from you, and well you know it. And I to sit here! While you will be together again, his arm around your neck, and never a thought for me!”

  The two shadows glared in the muted gleam from the dying fire within, black in the doorway. Eliud’s voice rose perilously. The taller shadow, head and shoulders taller, wrenched itself away.

  “For God’s love, woman, will you not hush, and let me be!”

  He was gone, casting her off roughly, and vanishing into the populous murmur and hush of the hall. Cristina plucked her skirts about her with angry hands, and followed slowly, withdrawing to her own retiring place.

  And so did Cadfael, as soon as he was sure there was none to be discomposed by his going. There went two losers in this submerged battle. If there was a winner, he slept with a child’s abandon, as seemed to be his wont, in a stone cell that was no prison, in Shrewsbury castle. One that would always fall on his feet. Two that probably made a practice of falling over theirs, from too intense peering ahead, and too little watching where they trod.

  Nevertheless, he did not pray for them that night. He lay long in thought instead, pondering how so complex a knot might be disentangled.

  *

  In the early morning he and his remaining force mounted and rode. It did not surprise him that the devoted cousin and foster-brother should be there to see him go, and send by him all manner of messages to his captive friend, to sustain him until his release. Most fitting that the one who was older and wiser should stand proxy to rescue the younger and more foolish. If folly can be measured so?

  “I was not clever,” owned Eliud ruefully, holding Cadfael’s stirrup as he mounted, and leaning on his horse’s warm shoulder when he was up. “I made too much of it that he should not go with Cadwaladr. I doubt I drove him the more firmly into it. But I knew it was mad!”

  “You must grant him one grand folly,” said Cadfael comfortably. “Now he’s lived through it, and knows it was folly as surely as you do. He’ll not be so hot after action again. And then,” he said, eyeing the grave oval countenance close, “I understand he’ll have other causes for growing into wisdom when he comes home. He’s to be married, is he not?”

  Eliud faced him a moment with great hazel eyes shining like lanterns. Then: “Yes!” he said very shortly and forbiddingly, and turned his head away.

  Chapter 4

  THE NEWS WENT ROUND in Shrewsbury—abbey, castle and town—almost before Cadfael had rendered account of his stewardship to Abbot Radulfus, and reported his success to Hugh. The sheriff was alive, and his return imminent, in exchange for the Welshman taken at Godric’s Ford. In her high apartments in the castle, Lady Prestcote brightened and grew buoyant with relief. Hugh rejoiced not only in having found and recovered his chief, but also in the prospect of a closer alliance with Owain Gwynedd, whose help in the north of the shire, if ever Ranulf of Chester did decide to attack, might very well turn the tide. The provost and guildsmen of the town, in general, were well pleased. Prestcote was a man who did not encourage close friendships, but Shrewsbury had found him a just and well-intentioned officer of the crown, if heavy-handed at times, and was well aware that it might have fared very much worse. Not everyone, however, felt the same simple pleasure. Even just men make enemies.

  Cadfael returned to his proper duties well content, and having reviewed Brother Oswin’s stewardship in the herbarium and found everything in good order, his next charge was to visit the infirmary and replenish the medicine-cupboard there.

  “No new invalids since I left?”

  “None. And two have gone out, back to the dortoir, Brother Adam and Brother Everard. Strong constitutions they have, both, in spite of age, and it was no worse than a chest cold, and has cleared up well. Come and see how they all progress. If only we could send out Brother Maurice with the same satisfaction as those two,” said Edmund sadly. “He’s eight years younger, strong and able, and barely sixty. If only he was as sound in mind as in body! But I doubt we’ll never dare let him loose. It’s the bent his madness has taken. Shame that after a blameless life of devotion he now remembers only his grudges, and seems to have no love for any man. Great age is no blessing, Cadfael, when the body’s strength outlives the mind.”

  “How do his neighbours bear with him?” asked Cadfael with sympathy.

  “With Christian patience! And they need it. He fancies now that every man is plotting some harm against him. And says so, outright, besides any real and ancient wrongs he’s kept in mind all too clearly.”

  They came into the big, bare room where the beds were laid, handy to the private chapel where the infirm might repair for the offices. Those who could rise to enjoy the brighter part of the day sat by a large log fire, warming their ancient bones and talking by fits and starts, as they waited for the next meal, the next office or the next diversion. Only Brother Rhys was confined to his bed, though most of those within here were aged, and spent much time there. A generation of brothers admitted in the splendid enthusiasm of an abbey’s founding also comes to senility together, yielding place to the younger postulants admitted by ones and twos after the engendering wave. Never again, thought Cadfael, moving among them, would a whole chapter of the abbey’s history remove thus into retirement and decay. From this time on they would come one by one, and be afforded each a death-bed reverently attended, single and in solitary dignity. Here were four or five who would depart almost together, leaving even their attendant brothers very weary, and the world indifferent.

  Brother Maurice sat installed by the fire, a tall, gaunt, waxen-white old man of elongated patrician face and irascible manner. He came of a noble house, an oblate since his youth, and had been removed here some two years previously, when after a trivial dispute he had suddenly called out Prior Robert in a duel to the death, and utterly refused to be distracted or reconciled. In his more placid moments he was gracious, accommodating and courteous, but touch him in his pride of family and honour and he was an implacable enemy. Here in his old age he called up from the past, vivid as when they happened, every affront to his line, every lawsuit waged against them, back to his own birth and beyond, and brooded over every one that had gone unrevenged.

  It was a mistake, perhaps, to ask him how he did, but his enthroned hauteur seemed to demand it. He raised his narrow hawk, nose, and tightened his bluish lips. “None the better for what I hear, if it be true. They’re saying that Gilbert Prestcote is alive and will soon be returning here. Is that truth?”

  “It is,” said Cadfael. “Owain Gwynedd is sending him home in exchange for the Welshman captured in the Long Forest a while since. And why should you be none the better for good news of a decent Christian man?”

  “I had thought justice had been done,” said Maurice loftily, “after all too long a time. But however long, divine justice should not fail in the
end. Yet once again it has glanced aside and spared the malefactor.” The glitter of his eyes was grey as steel.

  “You’d best leave divine justice to its own business,” said Cadfael mildly, “for it needs no help from us. And I asked you how you did, my friend, so never put me off with others. How is it with that chest of yours, this wintry weather? Shall I bring you a cordial to warm you?”

  It was no great labour to distract him, for though he was no complainer as to his health, he was open to the flattery of concerned attention and enjoyed being cosseted. They left him soothed and complacent, and went out to the porch very thoughtful.

  “I knew he had these hooks in him,” said Cadfael when the door was closed between, “but not that he had such a barb from the Prestcote family. What is it he holds against the sheriff?”

  Edmund shrugged, and drew resigned breath. “It was in his father’s time, Maurice was scarcely born! There was a lawsuit over a piece of land and long arguments either side, and it went Prestcote’s way. For all I know, as sound a judgement as ever was made, and Maurice was in his cradle, and Gilbert’s father, good God, was barely a man, but here the poor ancient has dredged it up as a mortal wrong. And it is but one among a dozen he keeps burnished in his memory, and wants blood for them all. Will you believe it, he has never set eyes on the sheriff? Can you hate a man you’ve never seen or spoken to, because his grandsire beat your father at a suit at law? Why should old age lose everything but the all-present evil?”

  A hard question. And yet sometimes it went the opposite way, kept the good, and let all the malice and spite be washed away. And why one old man should be visited by such grace, and another by so heavy a curse, Cadfael could not fathom. Surely a balance must be restored elsewhere.

  “Not everyone, I know,” said Cadfael ruefully, “loves Gilbert Prestcote. Good men can make as devoted enemies as bad men. And his handling of law has not always been light or merciful, though it never was corrupt or cruel.”

  “There’s one here has somewhat better cause than Maurice to bear him a grudge,” said Edmund. “I am sure you know Anion’s history as well as I do. He’s on crutches, as you’ll have seen before you left us on this journey, and getting on well, and we like him to go forth when there’s no frost and the ground’s firm and dry, but he’s still bedded with us, within there. He says nothing, while Maurice says too much, but you’re Welsh, and you know how a Welshman keeps his counsel. And one like Anion, half-Welsh, half-English, how do you read such a one?”

  “As best you can,” agreed Cadfael, “bearing in mind both are humankind.”

  He knew the man Anion, though he had never been brought close to him, since Anion was a lay servant among the livestock, and had been brought into the infirmary in late autumn from one of the abbey granges, with a broken leg that was slow to knit. He was no novelty in the district about Shrewsbury, offspring of a brief union between a Welsh wool, trader and an English maid-servant. And like many another of his kind, he had kept touch with his kin across the border, where his father had a proper wife, and had given her a legitimate son no long time after Anion was conceived.

  “I do remember now,” said Cadfael, enlightened. “There were two young fellows came to sell their fleeces that time, and drank too deep and got into a brawl, and one of the gate-keepers on the bridge was killed. Prestcote hanged them for it. I did hear tell at the time the one had a half, brother this side the border.”

  “Griffri ap Griffri, that was the young man’s name. Anion had got to know him, the times he came into town, they were on good terms. He was away among the sheep in the north when it happened or he might well have got his brother to bed without mischief. A good worker and honest, Anion, but a surly fellow and silent, and never forgets a benefit nor an injury.”

  Cadfael sighed, having seen in his time a long line of decent men wiped out in alternate savageries as the result of just such a death. The blood-feud could be a sacred duty in Wales.

  “Ah, well, it’s to be hoped the English half of him can temper his memories. That must be two years ago now. No man can bear a grudge for ever.”

  *

  In the narrow, stone-cold chapel of the castle by the meagre light of the altar lamp, Elis waited in the gloom of the early evening, huddled into his cloak in the darkest corner, biting frost without and gnawing fire within. It was a safe place for two to meet who could otherwise never be alone together. The sheriff’s chaplain was devout, but within limits, and preferred the warmth of the hall and the comforts of the table, once Vespers was disposed of, to this cold and draughty place.

  Melicent’s step on the threshold was barely audible, but Elis caught it, and turned eagerly to draw her in by both hands, and swing the heavy door closed to shut out the rest of the world.

  “You’ve heard?” she said, hasty and low. “They’ve found him, they’re bringing him back. Owain Gwynedd has promised it…”

  “I know!” said Elis, and drew her close, folding the cloak about them both, as much to assert their unity as to shield her from the chill and the trespassing wind. For all that, he felt her slipping away like a wraith of mist out of his hold. “I’m glad you’ll have your father back safely.” But he could not sound glad, no matter how manfully he lied. “We knew it must be so if he lived…” His voice baulked there, trying not to sound as if he wished her father dead, one obstacle out of the way from between them, and himself still a prisoner, unransomed. Her prisoner, for as long as might be, long enough to work the needful miracle, break one tie and make another possible, which looked all too far out of reach now.

  “When he comes back,” she said, her cold brow against his cheek, “then you will have to go. How shall we bear it!”

  “Don’t I know it! I think of nothing else. It will all be vain, and I shall never see you again. I won’t, I can’t accept that. There must be a way…”

  “If you go,” she said, “I shall die.”

  “But I must go, we both know it. How else can I even do this one thing for you, to buy your father back?” But neither could he bear the pain of it. If he let her go now he was for ever lost, there would be no other to take her place. The little dark creature in Wales, so faded from his mind he could hardly recall her face, she was nothing, she had no claim on him. Rather a hermit’s life, if he could not have Melicent. “Do you not want him back?”

  “Yes!” she said vehemently, torn and shivering, and at once took it back again: “No! Not if I must lose you! Oh, God, do I know what I want? I want both you and him—but you most! I do love my father, but as a father. I must love him, love is due between us, but… Oh, Elis, I hardly know him, he never came near enough to be loved. Always duty and affairs taking him away, and my mother and I lonely, and then my mother dead… He was never unkind, always careful of me, but always a long way off. It is a kind of love, but not like this… not as I love you! It’s no fair exchange…”

  She did not say: “Now if he had died…” but it was there stark at the back of her mind, horrifying her. If they had failed to find him, or found him dead, she would have wept for him, yes, but her stepmother would not have cared too much where she chose to marry. What would have mattered most to Sybilla was that her son should inherit all, and her husband’s daughter be content with a modest dowry. And so she would have been content, yes, with none.

  “But it must not be an end!” vowed Elis fiercely. “Why should we submit to it? I won’t give you up, I can’t, I won’t part from you.”

  “Oh, foolish!” she said, her tears gushing against his cheek, “The escort that brings him home will take you away. There’s a bargain struck, and no choice but to keep it. You must go, and I must stay, and that will be the end. Oh, if he need never reach here…” Her own voice uttering such things terrified her, she buried her lips in the hollow of his shoulder to smother the unforgivable words.

  “No, but listen to me, my heart, my dear! Why should I not go to him and offer for you? Why should he not give me fair hearing? I’m born princely, I h
ave lands, I’m his equal, why should he refuse to let me have you? I can endow you well, and there’s no man could ever love you more.”

  He had never told her, as he had so light-heartedly told Brother Cadfael, of the girl in Wales, betrothed to him from childhood. But that agreement had been made over their heads, by consent of others, and with patience and goodwill it could be honourably dissolved by the consent of all. Such a reversal might be a rarity in Gwynedd, but it was not unheard of. He had done no wrong to Cristina, it was not too late to withdraw.

  “Sweet fool innocent!” she said, between laughter and rage. “You do not know him! Every manor he holds is a border manor, he has had to sweat and fight for them many a time. Can you not see that after the empress, his enemy is Wales? And he as good a hater as ever was born! He would as soon marry his daughter to a blind leper in St Giles as to a Welshman, if he were the prince of Gwynedd himself. Never go near him, you will but harden him, and he’ll rend you. Oh, trust me, there’s no hope there.”

  “Yet I will not let you go,” vowed Elis into the cloud of her pale hair, that stirred and stroked against his face with a life of its own, in nervous, feathery caresses. “Somehow, somehow, I swear I’ll keep you, no matter what I must do to hold you, no matter how many I must fight to clear the way to you. I’ll kill whoever comes between us, my love, my dear…”

  “Oh, hush!” she said. “Don’t talk so. That’s not for you. There must, there must be some way for us…”

  But she could see none. They were caught in an inexorable process that would bring Gilbert Prestcote home, and sweep Elis ap Cynan away.