Dead Man's Ransom

by Ellis Peters

  “The iron is clean through,” she said. “I can raise them more, if you can reach the shaft.”

  Sister Magdalen was at Cadfael’s shoulder by then, as sturdy and practical as ever, but having taken a shrewd look at Melicent’s intent and resolute face she left the girl the place she had chosen, and went off placidly to salve others. Folly to disturb either Melicent or the two young men she nursed on her arm and her braced knee, when shifting them would only be worse pain. She went, instead, to fetch a small saw and the keenest knife to be found, and linen enough to stem the first bursts of bleeding when the shaft should be withdrawn. It was Melicent who cradled Elis and Eliud as Cadfael felt his way about the head of the shaft, sawed deeply into the wood, and then braced both hands to snap off the head with the least movement. He brought it out, barely dinted from its passage through flesh and bone, and dropped it aside in the grass.

  “Lay them down now—so! Let them lie a moment.” The solid slope, cushioned by turf, received the weight gently as Melicent lowered her burden. “That was well done,” said Cadfael. She had bunched the bloodstained wimple and held it under the wound as she drew aside, freeing a cramped and aching arm. “Now do you rest, too. The one of these is shorn through the flesh of his arm, and has let blood enough, but his body is sound, and his life safe. The other—no blinking it, his case is grave.”

  “I know it,” she said, staring down at the tangled embrace that bound the pair of them fast. “He made his body a shield,” she said softly, marvelling. “So much he loved him!” And so much she loved him, Cadfael thought, that she had blazed forth out of shelter in much the same way, shrieking defiance and rage. To the defence of her father’s murderer? Or had she long since discarded that belief, no matter how heavily circumstances might tell against him? Or had she simply forgotten everything else, when she heard Elis yelling his solitary challenge? Everything but his invited peril and her anguish for him?

  No need for her to have to see and hear the worst moment of all. “Go fetch my scrip from the saddle yonder,” said Cadfael, “and bring more cloth, padding and wrapping both, we shall need plenty.”

  She was gone long enough for him to lay firm hold on the impaling shaft, rid now of its head, and draw it fast and forcefully out from the wound, with a steadying hand spread against Eliud’s back. Even so it fetched a sharp, whining moan of agony, that subsided mercifully as the shaft came free. The spurt of blood that followed soon slowed; the wound was neat, a mere slit, and healthy flesh closes freely over narrow lesions, but there was no certainty what damage had been done within. Cadfael lifted Eliud’s body carefully aside, to let both breathe more freely, though the entwined arms relinquished their hold very reluctantly. He enlarged the slit the arrow had made in the boy’s clothing, wadded a clean cloth against the wound, and turned him gently on his back. By that time Melicent was back with all that he had asked; a wild, soiled figure with a blanched and resolute face. There was blood drying on her hands and wrists, the skirts of her habit at the knee were stiffening into a hard, dark crust, and her wimple lay on the grass, a stained ball of red. It hardly mattered. She was never going to wear that or any other in earnest.

  “Now we’d best get these two indoors, where I can strip and cleanse their injuries properly,” said Cadfael, when he was assured the worst of the bleeding was checked. “Go and ask Sister Magdalen where we may lay them, while I find some stout men to help me carry them in.”

  *

  Sister Magdalen had made provision for more than one cell to be emptied within the grange, and Mother Mariana and the nuns of the house were ready to fetch and carry, heat water and bandage minor injuries with very good will, relieved now of the fear of outrage. They carried Elis and Eliud within and lodged them in neighbouring cells, for the space was too small to allow free movement to Cadfael and those helping him, if both cots were placed together. All the more since John Miller, who had escaped without a scratch from the mêlée, was one of the party. The gentle giant could not only heft sturdy young men as lightly as babies, he also had a deft and reassuring hand with injuries.

  Between the two of them they stripped Eliud, slitting the clothes from him to avoid racking him with worse pain, washed and dressed the wounds in back and breast, and laid him in the cot with his right arm padded and cradled to lie still. He had been trampled in the rush of the Welshmen crossing to shore, bruises were blackening on him, but he had no other wound, and it seemed the tramping feet had broken no bones. The arrowhead had emerged well to the right, through his shoulder, to pierce the flesh of Elis’s upper arm. Cadfael considered the line the shot had taken, and shook his head doubtfully but not quite hopelessly over the chances of life and death. With this one he would stay, sit with him the evening through—the night if need be—wait the return of sense and wit. There were things they had to say to each other, whether the boy was to live or die.

  Elis was another matter. He would live, his arm would heal, his honour would be vindicated, his name cleared, and for all Cadfael could see, there was no reason in the world why he should not get his Melicent. No father to deny him, no overlord at liberty to assert his rights in the girl’s marriage, and Lady Prestcote would be no bar at all. And if Melicent had flown to his side before ever the shadow was lifted from him, how much more joyfully would she accept him when he emerged sunlit from head to foot. Happy innocent, with nothing left to trouble him but a painful arm, some weakness from loss of blood, a wrenched knee that gave him pain at an incautious movement, and a broken rib from being trampled. Troubles that might keep him from riding for some time, but small grievances indeed, now he had opened dazed dark eyes on the unexpected vision of a pale, bright face stooped close to his, and heard a remembered voice, once hard and cold as ice, saying very softly and tenderly: “Elis… Hush, lie still! I’m here, I won’t leave you.”

  *

  It was another hour and more before Eliud opened his eyes, unfocussed and feverish, glittering greenly in the light of the lamp beside his bed, for the cell was very dim. Even then he roused to such distress that Cadfael eased him out of it again with a draught of poppy syrup, and watched the drawn lines of pain gradually smooth out from the thin, intense face, and the large eyelids close again over the distracted gleam. No point in adding further trouble to one so troubled in body and soul. When he revived so far as to draw the garment of his own dignity about him, then his time would come.

  Others came in to look down at him for a moment, and as quietly depart. Sister Magdalen came to bring Cadfael food and ale, and stood a while in silence watching the shallow, painful heave and fall of Eliud’s breast, and the pinched flutter of his nostrils on whistling breath. All her volunteer army of defenders had dispersed about its own family business, every hurt tended, the stakes uprooted from the ford, the pitted bed raked smooth again, a day’s work very well done. If she was tired, she gave no sign of it. Tomorrow there would be a number of the injured to visit again, but there had been few serious hurts, and no deaths. Not yet! Not unless this boy slipped through their fingers.

  Hugh came back towards evening, and sought out Cadfael in the silent cell. “I’m off back to the town now,” he said in Cadfael’s ear. “We’ve shepherded them more than halfway home, you’ll see no more of them here. You’ll be staying?”

  Cadfael nodded towards the bed.

  “Yes—a great pity! I’ll leave you a couple of men, send by them for whatever you need. And after this,” said Hugh grimly, “we’ll have them out of Caus. They shall know whether there’s still a sheriff in the shire.” He turned to the bedside and stood looking down sombrely at the sleeper. “I saw what he did. Yes, a pity…” Eliud’s soiled and dismembered clothing had been removed; he retained nothing but the body in which he had been born into the world, and the means by which he had demanded to be ushered out of it, if Elis proved false to his word. The rope was coiled and hung over the bracket that held the lamp. “What is this?” asked Hugh, as his eye lit upon it, and as quickly understood. “Ah! Al
an told me. This I’ll take away, let him read it for a sign. This will never be needed. When he wakes, tell him so.”

  “I pray God!” said Cadfael, so low that not even Hugh heard.

  *

  And Melicent came, from the cell where Elis lay sore with trampling, but filled and overfilled with unexpected bliss. She came at his wish, but most willingly, saw Cadfael to all appearances drowsing on his stool against the wall, signed Eliud’s oblivious body solemnly with the cross, and stooped suddenly to kiss his furrowed forehead and hollow cheek, before stealing silently away to her own chosen vigil.

  Brother Cadfael opened one considerate eye to watch her draw the door to softly after her, and could not take great comfort. But with all his heart he hoped and prayed that God was watching with him.

  *

  In the pallid first light before dawn Eliud stirred and quivered, and his eyelids began to flutter stressfully as though he laboured hard to open them and confront the day, but had not yet the strength. Cadfael drew his stool close, leaning to wipe the seamed brow and working lips, and having an eye to the ewer he had ready to hand for when the tormented body needed it. But that was not the unease that quickened Eliud now, rousing out of his night’s respite. His eyes opened wide, staring into the wooden roof of the cell and beyond, and shortened their range only when Cadfael leaned down to him braced to speak, seeing desperate intelligence in the hazel stare, and having something ripe within him that must inevitably be said.

  He never needed to say it. It was taken out of his mouth.

  “I have got my death,” said the thread of a voice that issued from Eliud’s dry lips, “get me a priest. I have sinned—I must deliver all those others who suffer doubt…” Not his own deliverance, not that first, only the deliverance of all who laboured under the same suspicion.

  Cadfael stooped closer. The gold-green eyes were straining too far, they had not recognised him. They did so now and lingered, wondering. “You are the brother who came to Tregeiriog. Welsh?” Something like a sorrowful smile mellowed the desperation of his face. “I do remember. It was you brought word of him… Brother, I have my death in my mouth, whether he take me now of this grief or leave me for worse… A debt… I pledged it…” He essayed, briefly, to raise his right hand, being strongly right, handed, and gave up the attempt with a whining intake of breath at the pain it cost him and shifted, pitiless, to the left, feeling at his neck where the coiled rope should have been. Cadfael laid a hand to the lifted wrist, and eased it back into the covers of the bed.

  “Hush, lie still! I am here to command, there’s no haste. Rest, take thought, ask of me what you will, bid me whatever you will. I’m here, I shan’t leave you.”

  He was believed. The slight body under the brychans seemed to sink and slacken in one great sigh. There was a small silence. The hazel eyes hung upon him with a great weight of trust and sorrow, but without fear. Cadfael offered a drop of wine laced with honey, but the braced head turned aside. “I want confession,” said Eliud faintly but clearly, “of my mortal sin. Hear me!”

  “I am no priest,” said Cadfael. “Wait, he shall be brought to you.”

  “I cannot wait. Do I know my time? If I live,” he said simply, “I will tell it again and again—as long as there’s need—I am done with all conceal.”

  They had neither of them observed the door of the cell slowly opening, it was done so softly and shyly, by one troubled with dawn voices, but as hesitant to disturb those who might wish to be private as unwilling to neglect those who might be in need. In her own as yet unreasoned and unquestioned happiness Melicent moved as one led by angelic inspiration, exalted and humbled, requiring to serve. Her bloodied habit was shed, she had a plain woollen gown on her. She hung in the half-open doorway, afraid to advance or withdraw, frozen into stillness and silence because the voice from the bed was so urgent and uncomforted.

  “I have killed,” said Eliud clearly. “God knows I am sorry! I had ridden with him, cared for him, watched him founder and urged his rest… And if ever he came home alive, then Elis was free… to go back to Cristina, to marry…” A great shudder went through him head to foot, and fetched a moan of pain out of him. “Cristina… I loved her always… from when we were children, but I did not, I did not speak of it, never, never… She was promised to him before ever I knew her, in her cradle. How could I touch, how could I covet what was his?”

  “She also loved,” said Cadfael, nursing him along the way. “She let you know of it…”

  “I would not hear, I dared not, I had no right… And all the while she was so dear, I could not bear it. And when they came back without Elis, and we thought him lost… Oh, God, can you conceive such trouble as was mine, half, praying for his safe return, half wishing him dead, for all I loved him, so that at last I might speak out without dishonour, and ask for my love… And then—you know it, it was you brought word… and I was sent here, my mouth stopped just when it was so full of words… And all that way I thought, I could not stop thinking, the old man is so sick, so frail, if he dies there’ll be none to exchange for Elis… If he dies I can return and Elis must stay… Even a little time and I could still speak… All I needed was a little time, now I was resolved. And that last day when he foundered… I did all I could, I kept him man alive, and all the time, all the time it was clamouring in me, let him die! I did not do it, we brought him still living…”

  He lay still for a minute to draw breath, and Cadfael wiped the corners of the lips that laboured against exhaustion to heave the worst burden from heart and conscience. “Rest a little. You try yourself too hard.”

  “No, let me end it. Elis… I loved him, but I loved Cristina more. And he would have wed her, and been content, but she… He did not know the burning we knew. He knows it now. I never willed it… it was not planned, what I did. All I did was to remember the lord Einon’s cloak and I went, just as I was, to fetch it. I had his saddle-cloth on my arm, “ He closed his eyes against what he remembered all too clearly, and tears welled out from under the braised lids and ran down on either cheek. “He was so still, hardly breathing at all—so like death. And in an hour Elis would have been on his way home and I left behind in his place. So short a step to go! I did the thing I wish to God I had cut off my hands rather than do, I held the saddle-cloth over his face. There has not been a waking moment since when I have not wished it undone,” whispered Eliud, “but to undo is not so easy as to do. As soon as I understood my own evil I snatched my hands away, but he was gone. And I was cowardly afraid and left the cloak lying, for if I’d taken it, it would have been known I’d been there. And that was the quiet hour and no one saw me, going or coming.”

  Again he waited, gathering strength with a terrible, earnest patience to continue to the end. “And all for nothing—for nothing! I made myself a murderer for nothing. For Elis came and told me how he loved the lord Gilbert’s daughter and willed to be released from his bond with Cristina, as bitterly as she willed it, and I also. And he would go to make himself known to her father… I tried to stop him… I needed someone to go there and find my dead man, and cry it aloud, but not Elis, oh, not Elis! But he would go. And even then they still thought the lord Gilbert alive, only sleeping. So I had to fetch the cloak, if no one else would cry him dead—but not alone… a witness, to make the discovery. I still thought Elis would be held and I should go home. He longed to stay and I to go… This knot some devil tied,” sighed Eliud, “and only I have deserved it. All they three suffer because of me. And you, brother, I did foully by you…”

  “In choosing me to be your witness?” said Cadfael gently. “And you had to knock over the stool to make me look closely enough, even then. Your devil still had you by the hand, for if you had chosen another there might never have been the cry of murder that kept you both prisoners.”

  “It was my angel, then, no devil. For I am glad to be rid of all lies and known for what I am. I would never have let it fall on Elis—nor on any other man. But I am human and fearful,�
�� he said inflexibly, “and I hoped to go free. Now that is solved. One way or another, I shall give a life for a life. I would not have let Elis bear it… Tell her so!”

  There was no need, she already knew. But the head of the cot was towards the door, and Eliud had seen nothing but the rough vault of the cell, and Cadfael’s stooping face. The lamp had not wavered, and did not waver now, as Melicent withdrew from the threshold very softly and carefully, drawing the door to by inches after her.

  “They have taken away my halter,” said Eliud, his eyes wandering languidly over the bare little room. “They’ll have to find me another one now.”

  *

  When it was all told he lay drained, very weak and utterly biddable, eased of hope and grateful for contrition. He let himself be handled for healing, though with a drear smile that said Cadfael wasted his pains on a dead man. He did his best to help the handling, and bore pain without a murmur when his wounds were probed and cleansed and dressed afresh. He tried to swallow the draughts that were held to his lips, and offered thanks for even the smallest service. When he drifted into an uneasy sleep, Cadfael went to find the two men Hugh had left to run his errands, and sent one of them riding to Shrewsbury with the news that would bring Hugh back again in haste. When he returned into the precinct, Melicent was waiting for him in the doorway. She read in his face the mixture of dismay and resignation he felt at having to tell over again what had been ordeal enough to listen to in the first place, and offered instant and firm reassurance.

  “I know. I heard. I heard you talking, and his voice… I thought you might need someone to fetch and carry for you, so I came to ask. I heard what Eliud said. What is to be done now?” For all her calm, she was bewildered and lost between father killed and lover saved, and the knowledge of the fierce affection those two foster-brothers had for each other, and every way was damage and every escape was barred. “I have told Elis,” she said. “Better we should all know what we are about. God knows I am so confused now, I doubt if I know right from wrong. Will you come to Elis? He’s fretting for Eliud.”