Dead Man's Ransom

by Ellis Peters

  “You are quite sure of him,” said Cadfael, stating, not doubting.

  “I am sure. From the time I understood, I have tried to make him acknowledge what I know and he knows to be truth. The more I pursue and plead, the more he turns away and will not speak or listen. But ever the more he wants me. I tell you truth, when Elis went away, and was made prisoner, I began to believe I had almost won Eliud, almost brought him to admit to love and join with me to break this threatened marriage, and speak for me himself. Then he was sent to be surety for this unhappy exchange and all went for nothing. And now it’s Elis who cuts the knot and frees us all.”

  “Too early yet to speak of being free,” warned Cadfael seriously. “Neither of those two is yet out of the wood—none of us is, until the matter of the sheriffs death is brought to a just end.”

  “I can wait,” said Cristina.

  Pointless, thought Cadfael, to attempt to cast any doubt over this new radiance of hers. She had lived in shadow far too long to be intimidated. What was a murder unsolved to her? He doubted if guilt or innocence would make any difference. She had but one aim, nothing would deflect her from it. No question but from childhood she had read her playfellows rightly, known the one who owned the right to her but valued it lightly, and the one who contained the gnawing grief of loving her and knowing her to be pledged to the foster-brother he loved only a little less. Perhaps no less at all, until he grew into the pain of manhood. Girl children are always years older than their brothers at the same age in years, and see more accurately and jealously.

  “Since you are going back,” said Cristina, viewing the activity in the stables with a kindling eye, “you will see him again. Tell him I am my own woman now, or soon shall be, and can give myself where I will. And I will give myself to no one but him.”

  “I will tell him so,” said Cadfael.

  The yard was alive with men and horses, harness and gear slung on every staple and trestle down the line of stalls. The morning light rose clear and pale over the timber buildings, and the greens of the valley forest were stippled with the pallor of new leaf-buds like delicate green veils among the darkness of fir. There was a small wind, enough to refresh without troubling. A good day for riding.

  “Which of these horses is yours?” she asked.

  Cadfael led him forth to be seen, and surrendered him to the groom who came at once to serve.

  “And that great raw-boned grey beast? I never saw him before. He should go well, even under a man in armour.”

  “That is Hugh Beringar’s favourite,” said Cadfael, recognising the dapple with pleasure. “And a very ill-conditioned brute towards any other rider. Hugh must have left him resting in Oswestry, or he would not be riding him now.”

  “I see they’re saddling up for Einon ab Ithel, too,” she said. “I fancy he’ll be going back to Chirk, to keep an eye on your Beringar’s northern border while he’s busy elsewhere.”

  A groom had come out across their path with a draping of harness on one arm and a saddle-cloth over the other, and tossed them over a rail while he went back to lead out the horse that would wear them. A very handsome beast, a tall, bright bay that Cadfael remembered seeing in the great court at Shrewsbury. He watched its lively gait with pleasure as the groom hoisted the saddle-cloth and flung it over the broad, glossy back, so taken with the horse that he barely noticed the quality of its gear. Fringes to the soft leather bridle, and a tooled brow, band with tiny studs of gold. There was gold on Einon’s land, he recalled. And the saddle-cloth itself…

  He fixed and stared, motionless, for an instant holding his breath. A thick, soft fabric of dyed woollens, woven from heavy yarns in a pattern of twining, blossomy sprays, muted red roses, surely faded to that gentle shade, and deep blue irises. Through the centre of the flowers and round the border ran thick, crusted gold threads. It was not new, it had seen considerable wear, the wool had rubbed into tight balls here and there, some threads had frayed, leaving short, fine strands quivering.

  No need even to bring out for comparison the little box in which he kept his captured threads. Now that he saw these tints at last he knew them past any doubt. He was looking at the very thing he had sought, too well known here, too often seen and too little regarded, to stir any man’s memory.

  He knew, moreover, instantly and infallibly, the meaning of what he saw.

  *

  He said never a word to Cristina of what he knew, as they walked back together. What could he say? Better by far keep all to himself until he could see his way ahead, and knew what he must do. Not one word to any, except to Owain Gwynedd, when he took his leave.

  “My lord,” he said then, “I have heard it reported of you that you have said, concerning the death of Gilbert Prestcote, that the only ransom for a murdered man is the life of the murderer. Is that truly reported? Must there be another death? Welsh law allows for the paying of a blood-price, to prevent the prolonged bloodshed of a feud. I do not believe you have forsaken Welsh for Norman law.”

  “Gilbert Prestcote did not live by Welsh law,” said Owain, eyeing him very keenly. “I cannot ask him to die by it. Of what value is a payment in goods or cattle to his widow and children?”

  “Yet I think galanas can be paid in other mintage,” said Cadfael. “In penitence, grief and shame, as high as the highest price judge ever set. What then?”

  “I am not a priest,” said Owain, “nor any man’s confessor. Penance and absolution are not within my writ. Justice is.”

  “And mercy also,” said Cadfael.

  “God forbid I should order any death wantonly. Deaths atoned for, whether by goods or grief, pilgrimage or prison, are better far than deaths prolonged and multiplied. I would keep alive all such as have value to this world and to those who rub shoulders with them here in this world. Beyond that it is God’s business.” The prince leaned forward, and the morning light through the embrasure shone on his flaxen head. “Brother,” he said gently, “had you not something we should have looked at again this morning by a better light? Last night we spoke of it.”

  “That is of small importance now,” said Brother Cadfael, “if you will consent to leave it in my hands some brief while. There shall be account rendered.”

  “I will well!” said Owain Gwynedd, and suddenly smiled, and the small chamber was filled with the charm of his presence. “Only, for my sake—and others, doubtless?—carry it carefully.”

  Chapter 13

  ELIS HAD MORE SENSE than to go rushing straight to the enclosure of the Benedictine sisters, all blown and mired as he was from his run, and with the dawn only just breaking. So few miles from Shrewsbury here, and yet so lonely and exposed! Why, he had wondered furiously as he ran, why had those women chosen to plant their little chapel and garden in so perilous a place? It was provocation! The abbess at Polesworth should be brought to realise her error and withdraw her threatened sisters. This present danger could be endlessly repeated, so near so turbulent a border.

  He made rather for the mill on the brook, upstream, where he had been held prisoner, under guard by a muscular giant named John, during those few February days. He viewed the brook with dismay, it was so fallen and tamed, for all its gnarled and stony bed, no longer the flood he remembered. But if they came they would expect to wade across merrily where the bed opened out into a smooth passage, and would scarcely wet them above the knee. Those stretches, at least, could be pitted and sown with spikes or caltrops. And the wooded banks at least still offered good cover for archers.

  John Miller, sharpening stakes in the mill, yard, dropped his hatchet and reached for his pitch, fork when the hasty, stumbling feet thudded on the boards. He whirled with astonishing speed and readiness for a big man, and gaped to see his sometime prisoner advancing upon him empty-handed and purposeful, and to be greeted in loud, demanding English by one who had professed total ignorance of that language only a few weeks previously.

  “The Welsh of Powys—a war-party not two hours away! Do the women know of it?
We could still get them away towards the town—they’re surely mustering there, but late…”

  “Easy, easy!” said the miller, letting his weapon fall, and scooping up his pile of murderous, pointed poles. “You’ve found your tongue in a hurry, seemingly! And whose side may you be on this time, and who let you loose? Here, carry these, if you’re come to make yourself useful.”

  “The women must be got away,” persisted Elis feverishly. “It’s not too late, if they go at once… Get me leave to speak to them, surely they’ll listen. If they were safe, we could stand off even a war-band, I came to warn them…”

  “Ah, but they know. We’ve kept good watch since the last time. And the women won’t budge, so you may spare your breath to make one man more, and welcome,” said the miller, “if you’re so minded. Mother Mariana holds it would be want of faith to shift an ell, and Sister Magdalen reckons she can be more use where she is, and most of the folks hereabouts would say that’s no more than truth. Come on, let’s get these planted—the ford’s pitted already.”

  Elis found himself running beside the big man, his arms full. The smoothest stretch of the brook flanked the chapel wall of the grange, and he realised as he fed out stakes at the miller’s command that there was a certain amount of activity among the bushes and coppice-woods on both sides of the water. The men of the forest were well aware of the threat, and had made their own preparations, and by her previous showing, Sister Magdalen must also be making ready for battle. To have Mother Mariana’s faith in divine protection is good, but even better if backed by the practical assistance heaven has a right to expect from sensible mortals. But a war-party of a hundred or more—and with one ignominious rout to avenge! Did they understand what they were facing?

  “I need a weapon,” said Elis, standing aloft on the bank with feet solidly spread and black head reared towards the north, west, from which the menace must come. “I can use sword, lance, bow, whatever’s to spare… That hatchet of yours, on a long haft…” He had another chance weapon of his own, he had just realised it. If only he could get wind in time, and be the first to face them when they came, he had a loud Welsh tongue where they would be looking only for terrified English, he had the fluency of bardic stock, all the barbs of surprise, vituperation and scarifying mockery, to loose in a flood against the cowardly paladins who came preying on holy women. A tongue like a whip-lash! Better still drunk, perhaps, to reach the true heights of scalding invective, but even in this state of desperate sobriety, it might still serve to unnerve and delay.

  Elis waded into the water, and selected a place for one of his stakes, hidden among the water-weed with its point sharply inclined to impale anyone crossing in unwary haste. By the careful way John Miller was moving, the ford had been pitted well out in midstream. If the attackers were horsed, a step astray into one of those holes might at once lame the horse and toss the rider forward on to the pales. If they came afoot, at least some might fall foul of the pits, and bring down their fellows with them, in a tangle very vulnerable to archery.

  The miller, knee-deep in midstream, stood to look on critically as Elis drove in his murderous stake, and bedded it firmly through the tenacious mattress of weed into the soil under the bank. “Good lad!” he said with mild approval. “We’ll find you a pikel, or the foresters may have an axe to spare among them. You shan’t go weaponless if your will’s good.”

  *

  Sister Magdalen, like the rest of the household, had been up since dawn, marshalling all the linens, scissors, knives, lotions, ointments and stunning draughts that might be needed within a matter of hours, and speculating how many beds could be made available with decorum and where, if any of the men of her forest army should be too gravely hurt to be moved. Magdalen had given serious thought to sending away the two young postulants eastward to Beistan, but decided against it, convinced in the end that they were safer where they were. The attack might never come. If it did, at least here there was readiness, and enough stout-hearted forest folk to put up a good defence. But if the raiders moved instead towards Shrewsbury, and encountered a force they could not match, then they would double back and scatter to make their way home, and two girls hurrying through the woods eastward might fall foul of them at any moment on the way. No, better hold together here. In any case, one look at Melicent’s roused and indignant face had given her due warning that that one, at any rate, would not go even if she was ordered.

  “I am not afraid,” said Melicent disdainfully.

  “The more fool you,” said Sister Magdalen simply. “Unless you’re lying, of course. Which of us doesn’t, once challenged with being afraid! Yet it’s generations of being afraid, with good reason, that have caused us to think out these defences.”

  She had already made all her dispositions within. She climbed the wooden steps into the tiny bell-turret and looked out over the exposed length of the brook and the rising bank beyond, thickly lined with bushes, and climbing into a slope once coppiced but now run to neglected growth. Countrymen who have to labour all the hours of daylight to get their living cannot, in addition, keep up a day-and-night vigil for long. Let them come today, if they’re coming at all, thought Sister Magdalen, now that we’re at the peak of resolution and readiness, can do no more, and can only grow stale if we must wait too long.

  From the opposite bank she drew in her gaze to the brook itself, the deep-cut and rocky bed smoothing out under her walls to the broad stretch of the ford. And there John Miller was just wading warily ashore, the water turgid after his passage and someone else, a young fellow with a thatch of black curls, was bending over the last stake, vigorous arms and shoulders driving it home, low under the bank and screened by reeds. When he straightened up and showed a flushed face, she knew him.

  She descended to the chapel very thoughtfully. Melicent was busy putting away, in a coffer clamped to the wall and strongly banded, the few valuable ornaments of the altar and the house. At least it should be made as difficult as possible to pillage this modest church.

  “You have not looked out to see how the men progress?” said Sister Magdalen mildly. “It seems we have one ally more than we knew. There’s a young Welshman of your acquaintance and mine hard at work out there with John Miller. A change of allegiance for him, but by the look of him he relishes this cause more than when he came the last time.”

  Melicent turned to stare, her eyes very wide and solemn. “He?” she said, in a voice brittle and low. “He was prisoner in the castle. How can he be here?”

  “Plainly he has slipped his collar. And been through a bog or two on his way here,” said Sister Magdalen placidly, “by the state of his boots and hose, and I fancy fallen in at least one by his dirty face.”

  “But why make this way? If he broke loose… what is he doing here?” demanded Melicent feverishly.

  “By all the signs he’s making ready to do battle with his own countrymen. And since I doubt if he remembers me warmly enough to break out of prison in order to fight for me,” said Sister Magdalen with a small, reminiscent smile, “I take it he’s concerned with your safety. But you may ask him by leaning over the fence.”

  “No!” said Melicent in sharp recoil, and closed down the lid of the coffer with a clash. “I have nothing to say to him.” And she folded her arms and hugged herself tightly as if cold, as if some traitor part of her might break away and scuttle furtively into the garden.

  “Then if you’ll give me leave,” said Sister Magdalen serenely, “I think I have.” And out she went, between newly, dug beds and first salad sowings in the enclosed garden, to mount the stone block that made her tall enough to look over the fence. And suddenly there was Elis ap Cynan almost nose to nose with her, stretching up to peer anxiously within. Soiled and strung and desperately in earnest, he looked so young that she, who had never borne children, felt herself grandmotherly rather than merely maternal. The boy recoiled, startled, and blinked as he recognised her. He flushed beneath the greenish smear the marsh had left across his chee
k and brow, and reached a pleading hand to the crest of the fence between them.

  “Sister, is she—is Melicent within there?”

  “She is, safe and well,” said Sister Magdalen, “and with God’s help and yours, and the help of all the other stout souls busy on our account like you, safe she’ll remain. How you got here I won’t enquire, boy, but whether let out or broken out you’re very welcome.”

  “I wish to God,” said Elis fervently, “that she was back in Shrewsbury this minute.”

  “So do I, but better here than astray in between. And besides, she won’t go.”

  “Does she know,” he asked humbly, “that I am here?”

  “She does, and what you’re about, too.”

  “Would she not—could you not persuade her?—to speak to me?”

  “That she refuses to do. But she may think the more,” said Sister Magdalen encouragingly. “If I were you, I’d let her alone to think the while. She knows you’re here to fight for us, there’s matter for thought there. Now you’d best go to ground soon and keep in cover. Go and sharpen whatever blade they’ve found for you and keep yourself whole. These flurries never take long,” she said, resigned and tolerant, “but what comes after lasts a lifetime, yours and hers. You take care of Elis ap Cynan, and I’ll take care of Melicent.”

  *

  Hugh and his twenty men had skirted the Breidden hills before the hour of Prime, and left those great, hunched outcrops on the right as they drove on towards Westbury. A few remounts they got there, not enough to relieve all the tired beasts. Hugh had held back to a bearable pace for that very reason, and allowed a halt to give men and horses time to breathe. It was the first opportunity there had been even to speak a word, and now that it came no man had much to say. Not until the business on which they rode was tackled and done would tongues move freely again. Even Hugh, lying flat on his back for ease beside Cadfael under the budding trees, did not question him concerning his business in Wales.