The Devil's Novice

by Ellis Peters

  “Or thinks he knows,” said Cadfael. “For there is veil on veil here hiding these people one from another, and it seems to me that Aspley, if he has done this to his son, believes he knows beyond doubt that the boy is guilty. And Meriet, since he has sacrificed himself to a life against which his whole spirit rebels, and now to shameful death, must be just as certain of the guilt of that other person whom he loves and desires to save. But if Leoric is so wildly mistaken, may not Meriet also be in error?”

  “Are we not all?” said Hugh, sighing. “Come, let’s go and see this sleep-walking penitent first, and—who knows?—if he’s bent on confession, and has to lie to accomplish it, he may let slip something much more to our purpose. I’ll say this for him, he was not prepared to let another poor devil suffer in his place, or even in the place of someone dearer to him than himself. Harald has fetched him out of his silence fast enough.”

  *

  Meriet was sleeping when they came to Saint Giles. Cadfael stood beside the pallet in the barn, and looked down upon a face strangely peaceful and childlike, exorcised of its devil. Meriet’s breathing was long and deep and sweet. It was believable that here was a tormented sinner who had made confession and cleansed his breast, and found all things thereafter made easy. But he would not repeat his confession to a priest. Mark had a very powerful argument there.

  “Let him rest,” said Hugh, when Mark, though reluctantly, would have awakened the sleeper. “We can wait.” And wait they did, the better part of an hour, until Meriet stirred and opened his eyes. Even then Hugh would have him tended and fed and given drink before he consented to sit by him and hear what he had to say. Cadfael had looked him over, and found nothing wrong that a few days of rest would not mend, though he had turned an ankle and foot under him in falling, and would find it difficult and painful to put any weight upon it for some time. The blow on the head had shaken his wits sadly, and his memory of recent days might be hazy, though he held fast to the one more distant memory which he so desired to declare. The gash crossing his temple would soon heal; the bleeding had already stopped.

  His eyes, in the dim light within the barn, shone darkly green, staring up dilated and intent. His voice was faint but resolute, as he repeated with slow emphasis the confession he had made to Brother Mark. He was bent on convincing, very willing and patient in dredging up details. Listening, Cadfael had to admit to himself, with dismay, that Meriet was indeed utterly convincing. Hugh must also be thinking so.

  He questioned, slowly and evenly: “You watched the man ride away, with your father in attendance, and made no demur. Then you went out with your bow—mounted or afoot?”

  “Mounted,” said Meriet with fiery readiness; for if he had gone on foot, how could he have circled at speed, and been ahead of the rider after his escort had left him to return home? Cadfael remembered Isouda saying that Meriet had come home late that afternoon with his father’s party, though he had not ridden out with them. She had not said whether he was mounted when he returned or walking; that was something worth probing.

  “With murderous intent?” Hugh pursued mildly. “Or did this thing come on you unawares? For what can you have had against Master Clemence to warrant his death?”

  “He had made far too free with my brother’s bride,” said Meriet. “I did hold it against him—a priest, playing the courtier, and so sure of his height above us. A manorless man, with only his learning and his patron’s name for lands and lineage, and looking down upon us, as long rooted as we are. On grievance for my brother…”

  “Yet your brother made no move to take reparation,” said Hugh.

  “He was gone to the Lindes, to Roswitha… He had escorted her home the night before, and I am sure he had quarrelled with her. He went out early, he did not even see the guest leave, he went to make good whatever was ill between those two… He never came home,” said Meriet, clearly and firmly, “until late in the evening, long after all was over.”

  True, by Isouda’s account, thought Cadfael. After all was over, and Meriet brought home a convicted murderer, to reappear only after he had chosen of his own will to ask admittance to the cloister, and was prepared to go forth on his parole, and so declare himself, an oblate to the abbey, fully aware of what he was doing. So he had told his very acute and perceptive playmate, in calm control of himself. He was doing what he wished to do.

  “But you, Meriet, you rode ahead of Master Clemence. With murder in mind?”

  “I had not thought,” said Meriet, hesitating for the first time. “I went alone… But I was angry.”

  “You went in haste,” said Hugh, pressing him, “if you overtook the departing guest, and by a roundabout way, if you passed and intercepted him, as you say.”

  Meriet stretched and stiffened in his bed, large eyes straining on his questioner. He set his jaw. “I did hasten, though not for any deliberate purpose. I was in thick covert when I was aware of him riding towards me, in no hurry. I drew and loosed upon him. He fell…” Sweat broke on the pallid brow beneath his bandages. He closed his eyes.

  “Let be!” said Cadfael, quiet at Hugh’s shoulder. “He has enough.”

  “No,” said Meriet strongly. “Let me make an end. He was dead when I stooped over him. I had killed him. And my father took me so, red-handed. The hounds—he had hounds with him—they scented me and brought him down upon me. He has covered up for my sake, and for the sake of an honoured name, what I did, but for whatever he may have done that is unlawful, to keep me man alive, I take the blame upon me, for I am the cause of it. But he would not condone. He promised me cover for my forfeit life, if I would accept banishment from the world and take myself off into the cloister. What was done afterwards no one ever told me. I did by my own will and consent accept my penalty. I even hoped… and I have tried… But set down all that was done to my account, and let me pay all.”

  He thought he had done, and heaved a great sigh out of him, Hugh also sighed and stirred as if about to rise, but then asked carelessly: “At what hour was this, Meriet, that your father happened upon you in the act of murder?”

  “About three in the afternoon,” said Meriet indifferently, falling headlong into the trap.

  “And Master Clemence set out soon after Prime? It took him a great while,” said Hugh with deceptive mildness, “to ride somewhat over three miles.”

  Meriet’s eyes, half-closed in weariness and release from tension, flared wide open in consternation. It cost him a convulsive struggle to master voice and face, but he did it, hoisting up out of the well of his resolution and dismay a credible answer. “I cut my story too short, wanting it done. When this thing befell it cannot have been even mid-morning. But I ran from him and let him lie, and wandered the woods in dread of what I’d done. But in the end I went back. It seemed better to hide him in the thick coverts off the pathways, where he could lie undiscovered, and I might come by night and bury him. I was in terror, but in the end I went back. I am not sorry,” said Meriet at the end, so simply that somewhere in those last words there must be truth. But he had never shot down any man. He had come upon a dead man lying in his blood, just as he had balked and stood aghast at the sight of Brother Wolstan bleeding at the foot of the appletree. A three-mile ride from Aspley, yes, thought Cadfael with certainty, but well into the autumn afternoon, when his father was out with hawk and hound. “I am not sorry,” said Meriet again, quite gently. “It’s good that I was taken so. Better still that I have now told you all.”

  Hugh rose, and stood looking down at him with an unreadable face. “Very well! You should not yet be moved, and there is no reason you should not remain here in Brother Mark’s care. Brother Cadfael tells me you would need crutches if you tried to walk for some days yet. You’ll be secure enough where you are.”

  “I would give you my parole,” said Meriet sadly, “but I doubt if you would take it. But Mark will, and I will submit myself to him. Only—the other man—you will see he goes free?”

  “You need not fret, he is cleare
d of all blame but a little thieving to fill his belly, and that will be forgotten. It is to your own case you should be giving thought,” said Hugh gravely. “I would urge you receive a priest and make your confession.”

  “You and the hangman can be my priests,” said Meriet, and fetched up from somewhere a wry and painful smile.

  *

  “He is lying and telling truth in the selfsame breath,” said Hugh with resigned exasperation on the way back along the Foregate. “Almost surely what he says of his father’s part is truth, so he was caught, and so he was both protected and condemned. That is how he came to you, willing-unwilling. It accounts for all the to-and-fro you have had with him, waking and sleeping. But it does not give us our answer to who killed Peter Clemence, for it’s as good as certain Meriet did not. He had not even thought of that glaring error in the time of day, until I prodded him with it. And considering the shock it gave him, he did pretty well at accounting for it. But far too late. To have made that mistake was enough. Now what is our best way? Supposing we should blazon it abroad that young Aspley has confessed to the murder, and put his neck in a noose? If he is indeed sacrificing himself for someone else, do you think that person would come forward and loose the knot and slip his own neck in it, as Meriet has for him?”

  With bleak conviction Cadfael said: “No. If he let him go unredeemed into one hell to save his own sweet skin, I doubt if he’d lift a hand to help him down from the gallows. God forgive me if I misjudge him, but on that conscience there’ll be no relying. And you would have committed yourself and the law to a lie for nothing, and brought the boy deeper into grief. No. We have still a little time, let things be. In two or three days more this wedding party will be with us in the abbey, and Leoric Aspley could be brought to answer for his own part, but since he’s truly convinced Meriet is guilty, he can hardly help us to the real murderer. Make no move to bring him to account, Hugh, until after the marriage. Let me have him to myself until then. I have certain thoughts concerning this father and son.”

  “You may have him and welcome,” said Hugh, “for as things are I’m damned if I know what to do with him. His offence is rather against the church than against any law I administer. Depriving a dead man of Christian burial and the proper rites due to him is hardly within my writ. Aspley is a patron of the abbey, let the lord abbot be his judge. The man I want is the murderer. You, I know, want to hammer it into that old tyrant’s head that he knows his younger son so poorly that mere acquaintances of a few weeks have more faith in the lad, and more understanding of him, than his sire has. And I wish you success. As for me, Cadfael, I’ll tell you what troubles me most. I cannot for my life see what cause anyone in these parts, Aspley or Linde or Foriet or who you will, had to wish Peter Clemence out of the world. Shoot him down for being too bold and too ingratiating with the girl? Foolery! The man was leaving, none of them had seen much of him before, none need ever see him again, and the bridegroom’s only concern, it seems, was to make his peace with his bride after too sharp reproaches. Kill for such a cause? Not unless a man ran utterly mad. You tell me the girl will flutter her lashes at every admirer, but none has ever died for it. No, there is, there must be, another cause, but for my life I cannot see what it can be.”

  It had troubled Cadfael, too. Minor brawls of one evening over a girl, and over too assiduous compliments to her, not affronts, a mere bubble in one family’s hitherto placid life—no, men do not kill for such trivial causes. And no one had ever yet suggested a deeper quarrel with Peter Clemence. His distant kinsmen knew him but slightly, their neighbours not at all. If you find a new acquaintance irritating, but know he remains for only one night, you bear with him tolerantly, and wave him away from your doorsill with a smile, and breathe the more easily thereafter. But you do not skulk in woods where he must pass, and shoot him down.

  But if it was not the man himself, what else could there be to bring him to his death? His errand? He had not said what it was, at least while Isouda was by to hear. And even if he had, what was there in that to make it necessary to halt him? A civil diplomatic mission to two northern lords, to secure their allegiance to Bishop Henry’s efforts for peace. A mission Canon Eluard had since pursued successfully, to such happy effect that he had now conducted his king thither to seal the accord, and by this time was accompanying him south again to keep his Christmas in high content. There could be nothing amiss there. Great men have their private plans, and may welcome at one time a visit they repel at another, but here was the proof of the approach, and a reasonably secure Christmas looming.

  Back to the man, and the man was harmless, a passing kinsman expanding and preening himself under a family roof, then passing on.

  No personal grudge, then. So what was left but the common hazard of travel, the sneak-thief and killer loose in the wild places, ready to pull a man from his horse and bludgeon his head to pulp for the clothes he wore, let alone a splendid horse and a handful of jewellery? And that was ruled out, because Peter Clemence had not been robbed, not of a silver buckle, not of a jewelled cross. No one had benefited in goods or gear from his death, even the horse had been turned loose in the mosses with his harness untouched.

  “I have wondered about the horse,” said Hugh, as though he had been following Cadfael’s thoughts.

  “I, too. The night after you brought the beast back to the abbey, Meriet called him in his sleep. Did they ever tell you that? Barbary, Barbary—and he whistled after him. His devil whistled back to him, the novices said. I wonder if he came, there in the woods, or if Leoric had to send out men after him later? I think he would come to Meriet. When he found the man dead, his next thought would be for the beast, he went calling him.”

  “The hounds may well have picked up his voice,” said Hugh ruefully, “before ever they got his scent. And brought his father down on him.”

  “Hugh, I have been thinking. The lad answered you very valiantly when you fetched him up hard against that error in time. But I do not believe it had dawned on him at all what it meant. See, if Meriet had simply blundered upon a lone body dead in the forest, with no sign to turn his suspicions towards any man, all he would then have known was that Clemence had ridden but a short way before he was shot. Then how could the boy know or even guess by whom? But if he chanced upon some other soul trapped as he was, stooped over the dead, or trying to drag him into hiding—someone close and dear to him—then he has not realised, even now, that this someone else came to this spot in the forest, even as he himself did, at least six hours too late to be the murderer!”

  *

  On the eighteenth day of December Canon Eluard rode into Shrewsbury in very good conceit of himself, having persuaded his king into a visit which had turned out conspicuously well, and escorted him thus far south again towards his customary London Christmas, before leaving him in order to diverge westward in search of news of Peter Clemence. Chester and Lincoln, both earls now in name as well as in fact, had made much of Stephen, and pledged him their unshakable loyalty, which he in turn had recognised with gifts of land as well as titles. Lincoln castle he retained in his own hand, well-garrisoned, but the city and the shire were open to his new earl. The atmosphere in Lincoln had been of holiday and ease, aided by clement weather for December. Christmas in the north-east bade fair to be a carefree festival.

  Hugh came down from the castle to attend on the canon and exchange the news with him, though it was a very uneven exchange. He had brought with him the relics of Peter Clemence’s jewels and harness, cleaned of their encrusted filth of ash and soil, but discoloured by the marks of fire. The dead man’s bones reposed now in a lead-lined coffin in the mortuary chapel of the abbey, but the coffin was not yet sealed. Canon Eluard had it opened for him, and gazed upon the remains within, grim-faced but unwincing.

  “Cover him,” he said, and turned away. There was nothing there that could ever again be known as any man. The cross and ring were a very different matter.

  “This I do know. This I have comm
only seen him wearing,” said Eluard, with the cross in the palm of his hand. Over the silver surface the coloured sheen of tarnish glimmered, but the gems shone clear. “This is certainly Clemence,” said Eluard heavily. “It will be grievous news for my bishop. And you have some fellow in hold for this crime?”

  “We have a man in prison, true,” said Hugh, “and have let it be noised abroad that he is the man, but in truth I must tell you that he is not charged, and almost certainly never will be. The worst known of him is a little thieving here and there, from hunger, and on that I continue to hold him. But a murderer I am sure he is not.” He told the story of his search, but said no word of Meriet’s confession. “If you intend to rest here two or three days before riding on, there may yet be more news to take with you.”

  It was in his mind as he said it that he was a fool to promise any such thing, but his thumbs had pricked, and the words were out. Cadfael had business with Leoric Aspley when he came, and the imminent gathering here of all those closest about Peter Clemence’s last hours seemed to Hugh like the thickening and lowering of a cloud before the storm breaks and the rain falls. If the rain refused to fall, then after the wedding Aspley should be made to tell all that he knew, and probe after what he did not know, taking into account such small matters as those six unrecorded hours, and the mere three miles Clemence had ridden before he met his death.

  “Nothing can restore the dead,” said Canon Eluard sombrely, “but it is only just and right that his murderer should be brought to account. I trust that may yet be done.”

  “And you’ll be here yet a few days? You’re not in haste to rejoin the king?”

  “I go to Winchester, not Westminster. And it will be worth waiting a few days to have somewhat more to tell the bishop concerning this grievous loss. I confess to being in need of a brief rest, too, I am not so young as once I was. Your sheriff still leaves you to carry the cares of the shire alone, by the way. King Stephen wishes to retain him in his company over the feast, they go directly to London.”