The hunt for Ninian Bachiler, as a proscribed agent of the Empress Maud at large in Stephen’s territory, was duly proclaimed in Shrewsbury, and the word went round in voluble gossip, all the more exuberantly as a relief from the former sensation of Ailnoth’s death, concerning which no one in the Foregate had been voluble, unless in privacy. It was good to have a topic of conversation which departed at so marked a tangent from what really preoccupied the parishioners of Holy Cross. Since none of the gossips cared a pin how many dissident agents were at large in the county, none of the talk was any threat to the fugitive, much less to Mistress Hammet’s dutiful nephew Benet, who came and went freely between abbey and parsonage.
In the afternoon of the twenty-ninth of December, Cadfael was called out to the first sufferers from coughs and colds in the Foregate, and extended his visits to one elderly merchant in the town itself, a regular chest patient of his in the winter. He had left Ninian sawing and splitting wood from the pruning of the trees, and keeping cautious watch on a pot of herbs in oil of almonds, which had to warm on the edge of the brazier without simmering, to make a lotion for the frost-nipped hands too tender to endure the hog’s fat base of the ointment. The boy could be trusted to abide by his instructions, and whatever he did he did with his might.
Cadfael’s errands had taken him rather less time than he had expected, and the weather was not such as to encourage him to linger. He re-entered at the gatehouse with more than an hour still in hand before Vespers, and made his way across the great court and out into the garden, rounding the box hedge into the alley that led to his herbarium. In the frost he had wrapped woollen cloths about his boots to give him a grip on the icy roads, and the same sensible precaution made his steps silent on the path. So it happened that he heard the voices before he himself was heard, rapid and soft and vehement from within his workshop. And one of the voices was Ninian’s, a tone above its usual pitch by reason of some fierce but subdued excitement. And the other was a girl’s, insistent and agitated. Curious that she, too, should convey this same foolhardy sense of enjoyment in the experience of danger and dread. A good match! And what other girl had had to do with this place and this youth, but Sanan Bernières?
“Oh, but he would!” she was saying emphatically. “He’s there by now, he’ll tell them everything, where to find you, how you sent to him—all! You must come now, quickly, before they come to take you.”
“Impossible by the gatehouse,” said Ninian, “we should run into their arms. But I can’t believe—why should he betray me? Surely he knows I’d never mention his name?”
“He’s been in dread,” said the girl impatiently, “ever since your message came, but now you’re cried publicly as a wanted man, he’ll do anything to shake off his own danger. He’s not evil—he does as other men do, protects his own life and lands, and his son’s, too—he lost enough before...”
“So he did,” said Ninian, penitent. “I never should have drawn him in. Wait, I must lift this aside, I can’t leave it to boil. Cadfael...”
The shameless listener, who at least had heard one motion of consideration towards him and his art, in that last utterance, suddenly came to his senses, and to the awareness that in a matter of seconds these two would be issuing forth from the hut and taking to flight, by what ever road this resourceful girl had devised. Just as soon as Ninian had lifted the soothing oil from the heat and laid it carefully in a secure spot. Bless the boy, he deserved to reach Gloucester in safety! Cadfael made haste to dart round behind the barrier of the box hedge, and freeze into stillness there. He had not time to withdraw completely, but it is not certain, in any case, that he would have done so.
They burst out of the workshop hand in hand, she leading, for she knew by what route she had entered here unobserved. Through the garden she drew him, over the rim of the slope, and down towards the Meole Brook. A dark little figure swathed in a cloak, she vanished first, dwindling rapidly out of sight down the field; Ninian followed. They were gone, along the edge of the newly ploughed and manured pease fields and out of sight. So the brook was frozen over, and so must the mill-pond be. That way she had come, straight to where she knew he would be. Yet she might, just as easily, have found Cadfael there as well. Which meant, surely, that she had had converse with Ninian since he had confided in Cadfael, and saw no reason to fear the encounter, when the need was great.
Well, they were gone. No sound came up from the hollow of the brook, and there were trees quite close on the further side for cover, and all they had to do after that was wait for the right moment, cross the brook again by the bridge that carried the westward road, and make their way discreetly to whatever hiding place she had devised for her hostage, whether in the town or out of it. If out of it, surely to the west, since that was the way he desired, at last, to go. But would Ninian consent to depart until he knew that Dame Diota was safe and suspect of nothing in connection with his own expedition? If his cover was stripped from him, then she was also exposed to question. He would not leave her so. Cadfael had begun to know this young man well enough to be certain of that.
It had grown profoundly quiet, as if the very air waited for the next and inevitable alarm. Cadfael spared a moment to peer into his workshop, saw his pot of oil placed carefully on the stone cooling slab close to the brazier, and withdrew again in some haste to the great court, and across it into the cloister, but hovering anxiously where he could watch for any invasion at the gatehouse, without himself being immediately observed.
They were longer in coming than he had expected, and for that he was grateful. Moreover, a sudden flurry of fine snow had begun to fall, and that would soon cover up the footsteps crossing the brook, and in the rising wind of evening even disguise any tracks left in the garden. Until this moment he had not had time to consider the implications of what he had overheard. Clearly Ninian’s appeal had gone to Ralph Giffard, who had turned a deaf ear, all too conscious of his own danger if he responded. But the girl, born into another family no less devoted to the Empress’s cause, had taken up the charge and made it her own. And now, affrighted by the public crying of an enemy spy, Giffard had thought it best to ensure his own position by carrying the whole story to Hugh Beringar. Who would not be grateful for the attention, but would be forced to act upon it, or at least to put up a fair show of doing so.
All of which left one curious point at issue: Where had Ralph Giffard been going in such purposeful haste on Christmas Eve, striding across the bridge towards the Foregate almost as impetuously as Father Ailnoth had been hastening in the opposite direction an hour or so later? The two intent figures began to look like mirror images of the same man. Giffard, perhaps, the more afraid, Ailnoth the more malevolent. There was a link somewhere there, though the join was missing.
And here they came, in at the gatehouse arch, all of them on foot, Hugh with Ralph Giffard hard and erect at his elbow, Will Warden and a couple of young officers in arms following. No need here for mounted men, they were in search of a youngster horseless and penniless, labouring in the abbey gardens, and the prison that waited for him was only walking distance away.
Cadfael took his time about appearing. Others were there first, and so much the better. Brother Jerome did not love the cold, but kept a watchful eye on the outer world whenever he hopped into the warming room on such frosty days, ready to appear at any moment, dutiful and devout. Moreover, he always knew where to find Prior Robert at need. By the time Cadfael emerged innocently from the cloister they were both there, confronting the visitors from the secular world, and a few other brethren had noted the gathering, and halted within earshot in pure human curiosity, forgetting their chilled hands and feet.
“The boy Benet?” Prior Robert was saying in tones of astonishment and disdain as Cadfael approached. “Father Ailnoth’s groom? The good father himself asked employment for this young man. What absurdity is this? The boy is scarcely better than a simpleton, a mere country lad! I have often spoken with him, I know him for an innocent. My lord sheriff, I fear this gentleman wastes your time in a mistake. This cannot be true.”
“Father Prior, by your leave,” Ralph Giffard spoke up firmly, “it is only too true, the fellow is not what he seems. I received a message, written in a fair hand, from this same simpleton, sealed with the seal of the traitor and outlaw FitzAlan, the Empress’s man who is now in France, and asking me for help in FitzAlan’s name—an appeal I rightly left unanswered. I have kept the leaf, the lord sheriff has seen it for himself. He was here, he said, come with the new priest, and he needed help, news and a horse, and laid claim to my aid to get what he wanted. He begged me to meet him at the mill an hour short of midnight on Christmas Eve, when all good folk would be making ready for church. I did not go, I would not touch such treason against our lord the King. But the proof I’ve given to the sheriff here, and there is not nor cannot be any mistake. Your labourer Benet is FitzAlan’s agent Ninian Bachiler, for so he signed himself with his own hand.”
“I fear it’s true enough, Father Prior,” said Hugh briskly. “There are questions to be asked later, but now I must ask your leave at once to seek out this Benet, and he must answer for himself. There need be no disturbance for the brothers, I am asking access only to the garden.”
It was at this point that Cadfael ambled forward out of the cloister, secure across the glazed cobbles, since his feet were still swathed in wool. He came with ears benignly pricked and countenance open as the air. The snow was still falling, in an idle, neglectful fashion, but every flake froze where it fell.
“Benet?” said Cadfael guilelessly. “You’re looking for my labouring boy? I left him not a quarter of an hour since in my workshop. What do you want with him?”
*
He went with them, all concern and astonishment, as they proceeded into the garden, and threw open the workshop door upon the soft glow of the brazier, the pot of herbal oil drawn close on its stone slab, and the aromatic emptiness, and from that went on to quarter the whole of the garden and the fields down to the brook, where the helpful snow had obliterated every footprint. He was as mystified as the best of them. And if Hugh avoided giving him a single sidelong look, that did not mean he had not observed every facet of this vain pursuit, rather that he had, and was in little doubt as to the purveyor of mystification. There was usually a reason for Brother Cadfael’s willing non-cooperation. Moreover, there were other points to be pursued before the search was taken further.
“You tell me,” said Hugh, turning to Giffard, “that you received this appeal for your help a day or so before Christmas Eve, when a meeting at the mill was requested, somewhat before midnight. Why did you not pass it on at once to my deputy? Something might have been done about it then. Plainly he had wind of us now, since he’s fled.”
If Giffard was uneasy at this dereliction of a loyal subject’s duty, he gave no sign of it, but stared Hugh fully and firmly in the face. “Because he was merely your deputy, my lord. Had you been here... You got your office first after the siege of Shrewsbury, you know how we who had taken the oath to the Empress fared then, you know of my losses. Since then I have submitted to King Stephen, and held by my submission faithfully. But a young man like Herbard, new here, left in charge and liable to stand on his dignity and status—one ignorant of the past, and what it cost me... I was afraid of being held still as one attainted, even if I told honestly all that I knew. And recollect, we had then heard nothing about this Bachiler being hunted in the south, the name meant nothing to me. I thought him probably of no importance, and with no prospect of any success in whipping up support for a lost cause. So I held my peace, in spite of FitzAlan’s seal. There were several of his knights held such seals in his name. Do me justice, as soon as you made public the hue and cry, and I understood what was afoot, I came to you and told you the truth.”
“I grant you did,” said Hugh, “and I understand your doubts, though it’s no part of my office to hound any man for what’s past and done.”
“But now, my lord...” Giffard had more to say, and had plainly taken great encouragement from his own eloquence and Hugh’s acquiescence, for he had burned into sudden hopeful fervour. “Now I see more in this than either you or I have thought. For I have not quite told you all, there has hardly been time to think of everything. For see, it was this young man who came here under the protection of Father Ailnoth, vilely deceiving the priest in the pretence that he was a harmless youth seeking work, and kin to the woman who kept the priest’s household. And is not Father Ailnoth, who brought him here in all innocence, now done to death and waiting for burial? Who is more likely to stand guilty of his murder than the man who took wicked advantage of his goodness, and made him an unwitting accomplice in treason?”
He knew very well what manner of bolt he was hurling into the circle of listeners, he had even drawn back a pace or two to observe the shock and to distance himself from it. There was no length to which he would not go, now, to prove his own loyal integrity, to keep what he still had, if he must eternally grudge and lament what he had lost by his former allegiance. Perhaps he was secretly relieved that the boy he traduced was well away, and need never answer, but what most troubled him was his own inviolability.
“You’re accusing him of the priest’s murder?” said Hugh, eyeing him narrowly. “That’s going far. On what grounds do you make such a charge?”
“The very fact that he is fled points to him.”
“That might be valid enough, but not—mark me!—not unless the priest had got wind of the deception practised on him. To the best we know there was no quarrel between them, nothing had arisen to set them at odds. Unless the priest had found out how he had been abused, there could be no ground for any hostility between them.”
“He did know,” said Giffard.
“Go on,” said Hugh after a brief, profound silence. “You cannot stop there. How do you know the priest had found him out?”
“For the best reason. I told him! I said there was still more that I had not yet told you. On the eve of the Nativity I came down here to his house, and told him how he was cheated and abused by one he had helped. I had given it anxious thought, and though I did not go to your deputy, I felt it only right to warn Father Ailnoth how he had harboured an enemy unawares. Those of the Empress’s party are threatened with excommunication now, as you, my lord sheriff, are witness. The priest had been shamefully imposed upon, and so I told him.”
So that was the way of it! That was where he had been bound in such determined haste before Compline. And that was why Father Ailnoth had rushed away vengefully to keep the nocturnal tryst and confront in person the youth who had imposed upon him. Give him his due, he was no coward, he would not run first to the sergeants and get a bodyguard, he would storm forth by the mill-pool to challenge his opponent face to face, denounce, possibly even attempt to overpower him with his own hands, certainly cry him outlaw to the abbot and to the castle if he could not himself hale him to judgement. But things had gone very differently, for Ninian had come unharmed to church, and Ailnoth had ended in the pool with a broken head. And who could avoid making the simple connection now? Who that had not spent so many days in Ninian’s blithe company as had Cadfael, and got to know him so well?
“And after you had left him,” said Hugh, eyeing Giffard steadily, “he knew the time and place appointed for you to meet with Bachiler, and the invitation you had rejected you think he went to accept? But without an acceptance from you, would Bachiler keep the appointment?”
“I made no answer. I had not rejected it outright. He was asking for help, for news, for a horse. He would come! He could not afford not to come.”
And he would meet with a very formidable and very angry enemy, bent on betraying him to the law, a man who verily held himself to be the instrument of the wrath of God. Yes, death could well come of such a meeting.
“Will,” said Hugh, turning abruptly to his sergeant, “get back to the castle and bring down more men. We’ll get the lord abbot’s permission to search the gardens here, and the stables and the barns, grange court, storehouses, all. Begin with the mill, and have a watch on the bridge and the highway. If this youngster was in the hut here not half an hour ago, as Cadfael says, he cannot be far. And whether he has killed or not is still open, but the first need is to lay hands on him and have him safe in hold.”
*
“You will not forget,” said Cadfael, alone with Hugh in the workshop later,”that there are others, many others, who had as good reason as Ninian, and better, to wish Ailnoth dead?”
“I don’t forget it. Far too many others,” agreed Hugh ruefully. “And all you tell me of this boy—not that I’m dull enough, mind, to suppose you’ve told me all you could!—shows him as one who might very well hit out boldly in his own defence, but scarcely from behind. Yet he might, in the heat of conflict. Who knows what any of us might do, in extremes? And by what I hear of the priest, he would lash out with all his might and whatever weapon came to hand. It’s the lad’s vanishing now that suggests the worst.”
“He had good reason to vanish,” pointed out Cadfael, “if he heard that Giffard was on his way to the castle to betray him. You’d have had to clap him into prison, guilty or innocent of the priest’s death. Your hand’s forced. Of course he’d run.”
“If someone warned him,” agreed Hugh with a wry smile. “You, for instance?”
“No, not I,” said Cadfael virtuously. “I knew nothing about Giffard’s errand, or I might have dropped a word in the boy’s ear. But no, certainly not I. I do know that Benet—Ninian we must call him now, I suppose!—was in the church some time before midnight on Christmas Eve. If he went to the mill at all, he went early for the meeting, and left early, also.”
“So you told me, and I believe it. But so, by your own account, did Ailnoth go early to the meeting place, perhaps to hide himself and spring out on Bachiler by surprise. There was still time for them to clash and one to die.”
“The boy had not the marks of any agitation or dismay upon him in the church. A little excitement, perhaps, but pleasurable, I would say. And how much have you managed to worm out of the parish folk about this business? There are a number who had justifiable grudges against Ailnoth, what have they to say for themselves?”
“In general, as you’d expect, as little as possible. One or two make no secret of their gratitude that the man’s gone, none at all. Eadwin, the one whose boundary stone he moved, he’s neither forgotten nor forgiven, even if the stone was replaced afterwards. His wife and children swear he never left the house that night—but so do they all, and so, of course, they would. Jordan Achard, the baker, now there’s a man who might kill in a rage. He has a real grievance. His bread is his pride, and there was never any amends made for that insult. It hurt far more than if the priest had denounced him for a notorious lecher, which would at least have had the merit of being true. There are some give him the credit for being the father of that poor girl’s baby, the lass who drowned herself, but from all I hear it could as well have been half the other men in the parish, for she couldn’t say no to any of them. Our Jordan says he was home and sober every moment of Christmas Eve, and his wife bears him out, but she’s a poor, subdued creature who wouldn’t dare cross him. But from all accounts it’s few nights he does spend in his own bed, and to judge by his wife’s sidelong looks and wary answers he may well have been sleeping abroad that night. But we shall never get her to say so. She’s both afraid of him and loyal to him.”
“The rest of his women may be less so,” said Cadfael. “But I hardly see Jordan as a man of violence.”
“Perhaps not. But I do see Father Ailnoth as a man of violence, whether bodily or spiritual. And consider, Cadfael, how he might behave if he happened on one of his flock sneaking into the wrong bed. If not a violent man, Jordan is a big and strong one, and by no means meek enough to suffer assault tamely. He might end the fight another man began, without ever meaning to. But Jordan is one among many, and not the most likely.”
“Your men have been diligent,” said Cadfael with a sigh.
“They have. Alan was on his mettle, and determined to deserve his place. There’s a decent poor soul called Centwin, who lives along the Foregate towards the horse-fair ground. You’ll have heard his story. It was new to me until I heard it from Alan. The babe that died un-christened because Ailnoth could not interrupt his prayers. That sticks in the craw of every man in the parish, worse than all.”
“You cannot have found out anything black against Centwin?” protested Cadfael. “As quiet a creature as breathes, never a trouble to any.”
“Never with occasion until now. But this goes deep. And Centwin, quiet as he may be, is also deep. He keeps his own counsel, and broods over his own grievances. I’ve spoken with him. We questioned the watch on the town gate, Christmas Eve,” said Hugh. “They saw you go out, and you best know the time that was, and where you met the priest. They also saw Centwin go out not many minutes after you, on his way home, he said, from visiting a friend in the town to whom he owed a small debt. True enough, for the tanner he paid has confirmed it. He wanted, he said, to have all his affairs clear and all dues paid before he went to Matins, as indeed he did go, and left before Lauds for home. But you see how the time fits. One coming a few minutes behind you may also have met with Ailnoth, may have seen him turn from the Foregate along the path to the mill. There in darkness and loneliness, think, might not even a mild, submissive man with that wound burning in his belly have seen suddenly an opportunity to pay off yet another and a more bitter debt? And there was the time between then and Matins for two men to clash in the darkness, and one to die.”
“No,” said Cadfael, “I do not believe it!”
“Because it would be one cruelty piled upon another? But such things happen. No, take heart, Cadfael, neither do I quite believe it, but it is possible. There are too many by far who are not vouched for, or whose guarantors cannot be trusted, too many who hated him. And there is still Ninian Bachiler. Whatever the truth of him, you do understand that I must do my best to find him?”
He looked down at his friend with a dark, private smile that was more eloquent than the words. It was not the first time they had agreed, with considerate courtesy and no need of many words, to pursue each what he held to be his own duty, and bear no malice if the two crossed like swords.
“Oh, yes!” said Cadfael. “Yes, that I fully understand.”