William Warden, who was the longest serving and most experienced of Hugh’s sergeants, came looking for the sheriff just as Hugh and Cadfael were crossing to the gatehouse; a big, bearded, burly man of middle age, grizzled and weatherbeaten, and with a solid conceit of himself that sometimes tended to undervalue others. He had taken Hugh for a lightweight when first the young man succeeded to the sheriff’s office, but time had considerably tempered that opinion, and brought them into a relationship of healthy mutual respect. The sergeant’s beard was bristling with satisfaction now. Clearly he had made progress, and was pleased with himself accordingly.
‘My lord, we’ve found it – the place where he was laid up till dark. Or at least, where he or some other bled long enough to leave his traces clear enough. While we were beating the bushes Madog thought to search through the grass under the arch of the bridge. Some fisherman had drawn up his light boat there, and turned it up to do some caulking on the boards. He wouldn’t be working on it yesterday, a feast day. When we hoisted it, there was the grass flattened the length of it, and a small patch of it blackened with blood. What with the dry weather, that ground has been uncovered a month or more, it’s bleached pale as straw. There’s no missing that stain, meagre though it is. A dead man could lie snug enough under there, with a boat upturned over him and nothing to show.’
‘So that was the place!’ said Hugh on a long, thoughtful breath. ‘And no great risk, slipping a body into the water there in the dark, from under the arch. No sound, no splash, nothing to see. With an oar, or a pole, you could thrust him well out into the current.’
‘We were right, it seems,’ said Cadfael. ‘You have to deal only with that length of the water, from the bridge to where he fetched up. You did not find the knife?’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘If he killed his man there, under the arch or in the bushes, he’d clean the knife in the edge of the water and take it away with him. Why waste a good knife? And why leave it lying about for some neighbour to find, and say: I know that, it belongs to John Weaver, or whoever it might be, and how comes it to have blood on it? No, we shan’t find the knife.’
‘True,’ said Hugh, ‘a man would have to be scared out of his wits to throw it away to be found, and I fancy this man was in sharp command of his. Never mind, you’ve done well, we know now where the thing was done, there or close by.’
‘There’s more yet to tell you, my lord,’ said Will, gratified, ‘and stranger, if he was in such a hurry as they told us, when he ran off to recant his charges. We asked the porter on the town gate if he’d seen him pass out and cross the bridge, and he said yes, he had, and spoke to him, but barely got an answer. But he hadn’t come straight from Lythwood’s house, that’s certain. It was more than an hour later, maybe as much as an hour and a half.’
‘He’s sure of that?’ demanded Hugh. ‘There’s no real check there, not in quiet times. He could be hazy about time passing.’
‘He’s sure. He saw them all come back after the hubbub they had here at chapter, Aldwin and the shepherd first and the girl after, and it seemed to him they were all of them in an upset. He’d heard nothing then of what had happened, but he did notice the fuss they were in, and long before Aldwin came down to the gate again the whole tale was out. The porter was all agog when he laid eyes on the very man coming down the Wyle, he was hoping to stop him and gossip, but Aldwin went past without a word. Oh, he’s sure enough! He knows how long had passed.’
‘So all that time he was still in the town,’ said Hugh, and gnawed a thoughtful lip. ‘Yet in the end he did cross the bridge, going where he’d said he was going. But why the delay? What can have kept him?’
‘Or who?’ suggested Cadfael.
‘Or who! Do you think someone ran after him to dissuade him? None of his own people, or they would have said so. Who else would try to turn him back? No one else knew what he was about. Well,’ said Hugh, ‘nothing else for it, we’ll walk every yard of the way from Lythwood’s house to the bridge, and hammer on every door, until we find out how far he got before turning aside. Someone must have seen him, somewhere along the way.’
‘I fancy,’ said Cadfael, pondering all he had seen and known of Aldwin, which was meagre enough and sad enough, ‘he was not a man who had many friends, nor one of any great resolution of mind. He must have had to pluck up all his courage to accuse Elave in the first place, it would cost him more to withdraw his accusation, and put himself in the way of being suspect of perjury or malice or both. He may well have taken fright on the way, and changed his mind yet again, and decided to let well or ill alone. Where would a solitary dim soul like that go to think things out? And try to get his courage back? They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.’
*
It was one of the young men-at-arms of the castle garrison, not at all displeased at being given the task of enquiring at the alehouses of the town, who came up with the next link in Aldwin’s uncertain traverse of Shrewsbury. There was a small tavern in a narrow, secluded close off the upper end of the steep, descending Wyle. It was sited about midway between the house near Saint Alkmund’s church and the town gate, and the lanes leading to it were shut between high walls, and on a feast day might well be largely deserted. A man overtaken by someone bent on changing his mind for him, or suddenly possessed by misgivings calculated to change it for him without other persuasion, might well swerve from the direct way and debate the issue over a pot of ale in this quiet and secluded place. In any case, the young enquirer had no intention of missing any of the places of refreshment that lay within his commission.
‘Aldwin?’ said the potman, willing enough to talk about so sensational a tragedy. ‘I only heard the word an hour past. Of course I knew him. A silent sort, mostly. If he did come in he’d sit in a corner and say hardly a word. He always expected the worst, you might say, but who’d have thought anyone would want to do him harm? He never did anyone else any that I knew of, not till this to-do yesterday. The talk is that the one he informed on has got his own back with a vengeance. And him with trouble enough,’ said the potman, lowering his voice confidentially, ‘if the Church has got its claws into him, small need to go crying out for worse.’
‘Did you see the man yesterday at all?’ asked the man-at-arms.
‘Aldwin? Yes, he was here for a while, up in the corner of the bench there, as glum as ever. I hadn’t heard anything then about this business at the abbey, or I’d have taken more notice. We’d none of us any notion the poor soul would be dead by this morning. It falls on a man without giving him time to put his affairs in order.’
‘He was here?’ echoed the enquirer, elated. ‘What time was that?’
‘Well past noon. Nearly three, I suppose, when they came in.’
‘They? He wasn’t alone?’
‘No, the other fellow brought him in, very confidential, with an arm round his shoulders and talking fast into his ear. They must have sat there for above half an hour, and then the other one went off and left him to himself another half-hour, brooding, it seemed. He was never a drinker, though, Aldwin. Sober as a stone when he got up and went out at the door, and without a word, mind you. Too late for words now, poor soul.’
‘Who was it with him?’ demanded the questioner eagerly. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know that I ever heard his name, but I know who he is. He works for the same master – that shepherd of theirs who keeps the flock they have out on the Welsh side of town.’
*
‘Conan?’ echoed Jevan, turning from the shelves of his shop with a creamy skin of vellum in his hands. ‘He’s off with the sheep, and he may very well sleep up there, these summer nights he often does. Why, is there anything new? He told you what he knew, what we all knew, this morning. Should we have kept him here? I knew of no reason you might need him again.’
‘Neither did I, then,’ agreed Hugh grimly. ‘But it seems Master Conan told no more than half a tale, the half you and all the household could bear witness to. Not a word about running after Aldwin and haling him away into the tavern in the Three-Tree Shut, and keeping him in there more than half an hour.’
Jevan’s level dark brows had soared to his hair, and his jaw dropped for a moment. ‘He did that? He said he’d be off to the flock and get on with his work for the rest of the day. I took it that’s what he’d done.’ He came slowly to the solid table where he folded his skins, and spread the one he was carrying carefully over it, smoothing it out abstractedly with a sweep of one long hand. He was a very meticulous man. Everything in his shop was in immaculate order, the uncut skins draped over racks, the trimmed leaves ranged on shelves in their varied sizes, and the knives with which he cut and trimmed them laid out in neat alignment in their tray, ready to his hand. The shop was small, and open on to the street in this fine weather, its shutters laid by until nightfall.
‘He went into the alehouse with Aldwin in his arm, so the potman says, about three o’clock. They were there a good half-hour, with Conan talking fast and confidentially into Aldwin’s ear. Then Conan left him there, and I daresay did go to his work, and Aldwin still sat there another half-hour alone. That’s the story my man unearthed, and that’s the story I want out of Conan’s hide, along with whatever more there may be to tell.’
Jevan stroked his long, well-shaven jaw and considered, with a speculative eye upon Hugh’s face. ‘Now that you tell me this, my lord, I must say I see more in what was said yesterday than I saw at the time. For when Aldwin said he must go and try to overtake that boy he’d done his best to ruin, and go with him to the monks to withdraw everything he’d said against him, Conan did tell him not to be a fool, that he’d only get himself into trouble, and do no good for the lad. He tried his best to dissuade him. But I thought nothing of it but that it was good sense enough, and all he meant was to haul Aldwin back out of danger. When I said let him go, if he’s bent on it, Conan shrugged it off, and went off about his own business. Or so I thought. Now I wonder. Does not this sound to you as though he spent another half-hour trying to persuade the poor fool to give up his penitent notion? You say it was he was doing the talking, and Aldwin the listening. And another half-hour still before Aldwin could make up his mind to jump one way or the other.’
‘It sounds like that indeed,’ said Hugh. ‘Moreover, if Conan went off content, and left him to himself, surely he thought he had convinced him. If it meant so much to him he would not have let go until he was satisfied he’d got his way. But what I do not understand is why it should matter so gravely to him. Is Conan the man to venture so much for a friend, or care so much into what mire another man blundered?’
‘I confess,’ said Jevan, ‘I’ve never thought so. He has a very sharp eye on his own advantage, though he’s a good worker in his own line, and gives value for what he’s paid.’
‘Then why? What other reason could he have for going to such pains to persuade the poor wretch to let things lie? What could he possibly have against Elave, that he should want him dead, or buried alive in a Church prison? The lad’s barely home. If they’ve exchanged a dozen words that must be the measure of it. If it’s not concern for Aldwin or a grudge against Elave this fellow of yours has in mind, what is it?’
‘You should ask him that,’ said Jevan with a slow and baffled shake of his head, but with a certain wondering note in his voice that made Hugh prick up his ears.
‘So I will. But now I am asking you.’
‘Well,’ said Jevan cautiously, ‘you must bear in mind I may be wrong. But there is a matter which Conan may be holding against Elave. Quite without provocation, and no doubt Elave would be astonished if he knew of it. You have not noticed our Fortunata? She is grown into a very fresh and winning young woman, since Elave went off with my uncle on this pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and before that, you must remember, they were here familiar in the house some years, and liked each other well enough, he condescending to a child, and she childishly fond of a pleasant young man, even if he did no better than humour her liking. A very different matter he found her when he came back. And here’s Conan...’
‘Who has known her as long, and seen her grow,’ said Hugh sceptically, ‘and could have offered for her long ago if he was so minded, with no Elave to stand in his way. And did he?’
‘He did not,’ Jevan granted, hollowly smiling. ‘But times have changed. In spite of the name my uncle gave to her, Fortunata until now has had nothing of her own, to make her a good match. Young Elave has brought back from the east not only himself, but the legacy my Uncle William, bless his kindly soul, thought to send to his fosterchild when he knew he might not see her again. Oh, no, Conan has no knowledge, as yet, of what may be in the box Elave brought for her. It will not be opened until my brother gets home from his wool-buying. But Conan knows it exists, it is here, it came from a generous man, virtually on his deathbed, when such a man would open his heart. From the looks I’ve seen Conan giving Fortunata these last few days, he’s beginning to look on her as earmarked for him, dowry and all, and on Elave as a threat to be removed.’
‘By death, if need be?’ hazarded Hugh doubtfully. It seemed too bold and bitter an extreme for so ordinary a man to contemplate. ‘It was not he who brought the charge.’
‘I have wondered if they did not hatch that rotten egg between them. It suited them both to get rid of the youngster if they could, since it turns out Aldwin feared he might be elbowed out of office. It was like him to think the worst of my brother and me, as of all others. Oh, I doubt if either of them thought of anything so final as a death sentence. It would do if the lad was whisked off into the bishop’s prison, or even so harried and ill-used here that he’d make off for healthier places when he was released. And doubtless Conan misread women,’ said the cynic who had never married, ‘and thought even the threat against Elave would put the girl off him. He should have known better. It has put her on! She’ll fight for him tooth and nail now. The priests have not heard the last of our Fortunata.’
‘So that’s the way of it,’ said Hugh, and whistled softly. ‘You make a case for more than you know. If that’s how it is with him, he might well be alarmed when Aldwin changed his tune, and wanted to get the boy out of the mire he’d thrust him into. It could well be enough to make him go after Aldwin, hang upon him, pour words into his ear, do everything possible to dissuade him. Would it be enough to make him go still further?’
Jevan stood gazing at him enquiringly, and laid down, slowly and almost absently, the edge of vellum he had taken up to fold across to its matching edge. ‘Further? How further? What have you in mind? It would seem he had won his argument, and went away satisfied. Nothing further was needed.’
‘Ah, but suppose he was not quite satisfied. Suppose he could not rely on it that he’d won? Knowing Aldwin for the whiffle-minded poor soul he was, with a bad conscience, his own fear removed and his grudge with it, and his resolution blown this way and that as the wind changed, suppose Conan stayed lurking somewhere to see what he would do. And saw him get up and walk out of the tavern without a word, and off down the Wyle to the town gate and the bridge. All his words gone to waste, and more than words needed, quickly, before the damage was done. Did it matter to him all that much? Aldwin would think no ill even when he was pursued a second time – by a man he’d known for years. He might even let himself be drawn aside into some quiet place to argue the cause all over again. And Aldwin,’ said Hugh, ‘died somewhere in cover by the bridge, and lay hidden under an upturned boat until dark, and was slipped into the water under cover of the arch.’
Jevan stood contemplating that in silence for some minutes. Then he shook his head vigorously, but without complete conviction. ‘I think it’s out of his scope. But agreed, it would certainly account for why he should conceal half the tale, and pretend the last he saw of Aldwin was in our yard, like the rest of us. But no, surely little men with little grievances don’t kill for them. Unless,’ he ended, ‘it was done in a silly rage, almost by accident, instantly regretted. That they might!’
‘Send and fetch him back here,’ said Hugh. ‘Tell him nothing. If you send, he’ll come unsuspecting. And if he’s wise, he’ll tell the truth.’
*
Girard of Lythwood came home in the middle of the evening, two days later than he had intended, but highly content with his week’s work, for the delay was due to his collecting two new clients on his travels, with good clips to sell, and thankful to make contact with an honest middleman and broker, after some less happy dealings in previous years. All the stores of wool he had weighed and bought were safely stowed in his warehouse outside the Castle Foregate before he came home to his own house. His hired pack-ponies, needed only once a year after the annual clip, were restored to the stable, and the two grooms hired with them were paid off and sent to their homes. Girard was a practical man, who dealt with first things first. He paid his bills on time, and expected others to pay what they owed him with as little reluctance or delay. By the end of June or the beginning of July the contract woolman who dealt with the Flemish export trade would come to collect the summer’s load. Girard knew his limitations. He was content to spread his net over a quarter of the shire and its Welsh neighbours, and leave the wholesale trade to more ambitious men.
Girard was half a head shorter than his younger brother, but a good deal broader in the shoulders and thicker in the bone, a portly man in the best of health and spirits, round-faced and cheerful, with a thick thorn-bush of reddish brown hair and a close trimmed beard. His good humour was seldom shaken even by the unexpected, but even he was taken aback at arriving home after a week’s absence to find his pilgrim Uncle William dead and buried, William’s young companion back safely from all the perils of his travels only to fall headlong into mortal trouble at home, his clerk dead and laid out for burial in one of the outhouses in his yard, the parish priest of Saint Alkmund’s probing anxiously into the dead man’s spiritual health before he would bury him, and his shepherd sweating and dumbstruck in Jevan’s shop with one of the sheriff’s men standing over him. It was no help to have three people all attempting to explain at the same time how these chaotic events had come about in his absence.
But Girard was a man who saw to first things first. If Uncle William was dead, and buried with all propriety, then there was nothing to be done about that, no haste even about coming to terms with the truth of it. If Aldwin, of all improbable people had come by a violent death, then that, too, though requiring a just resolution, was hardly within his competence to set right. Father Elias’s doubts about the poor fellow’s spiritual condition was another matter, and would need consideration. If Elave was in a locked cell at the abbey, then at least nothing worse could happen to him at this moment. As for Conan, he was solid enough, it would do him no harm to sweat a little. There would be time to salvage him, if it proved necessary. Meantime, Girard’s horse had done a good few miles that day, and needed stabling, and Girard himself was hungry.
‘Come within, lass,’ he said briskly, flinging a bracing arm about his wife’s waist and sweeping her towards the hall, ‘and, Jevan, see to my beast for me, will you, till I get this tale straight. It’s too late for lamentation and too soon for panic. Whatever’s gone wrong, there’ll be a time for putting it right. The more haste, the less speed! Fortunata, my chick, go and draw me some ale, I’m dry as a lime-pit. And set the supper forward, for if I’m to be any use I need my food.’
They did as he bade, every one of them. The pivot of the house, hearty and heartening, was home. Jevan, who had left most of the exclaiming to the women, allowed his brother his position as prop and stay of household, business and all, as from a relaxed and acknowledged distance, having his own separate kingdom among the membranes of vellum. He stabled, groomed and fed the tired horse at leisure, before he went into the house to join the rest at table. By that time Conan had been whisked away to the castle, to answer to Hugh Beringar. Jevan smiled, somewhat wryly, as he shuttered the frontage, and went into the hall.
‘Well, it’s a strange thing,’ said Girard, sitting back with a satisfied sigh, ‘that a man can’t be off about his business one week in the year but everything must happen in that week. Just as well Conan never caught up with me, or I should have missed two new customers, for I should have set off back with him if he had reached me. The wool of four hundred sheep I got from those two villages, and some of it the lowland breed, too. But I’m sorry, love, that you’ve had the worry of all this, and me not here to lift it from you. We’ll see now what’s to be done. The first thing, as I reckon, is this matter of Aldwin. Whatever he may have done and said against another man in his fret – was there ever such a one as Aldwin for fearing the worst and being afraid to ask in case it came true? Well, whatever he may have done, he was our man, and we’ll see him properly buried. But Father Elias here is troubled about the funeral.’
Father Elias, parish priest of Saint Alkmund’s, was there with them at the end of the table, swept in to supper in Girard’s hospitable arm from his conscientious brooding over the dead. Small, elderly, grey and fierce in his piety, Father Elias ate like a little bird, whenever he remembered to eat at all, and ran about among his flock busy and bothered, like a flustered hen trying to round up alien ducklings under her wings. Souls tended to elude him, every one seeming at the time the only one to matter, and he spent much of his time on his knees apologising to God for the soul that slipped through his fingers. But he would not let even that fugitive in upon false recommendation.
‘The man was my parishioner,’ said the little priest, in a wisp of a voice that yet had an irascible resolution in it, ‘and I grieve for him and will pray for him. But he died by violence, and as it were in the act of bringing mortal charges against another in malice, and what can the health of his soul be? He has not been to Mass in my church these many weeks, nor to confession. He was never regular in his worship, as all men should be. I would not ban him for his slackness. But when did he last confess, and gain absolution? How can I accept him unless I know he died penitent?’
‘One little act of contrition will do?’ ventured Girard mildly. ‘He may have gone to another priest. Who knows? The thought could have come upon him somewhere else, and seemed to him a mortal matter there and then.’
‘There are four parishes within the walls,’ said Elias with grudging tolerance. ‘I will ask. Though one who misses Mass so often... Well, I will ask, here within the town and beyond. It may even be that he feared to come to me. Men are feeble, and go aside to hide their feebleness.’
‘So they are, Father, so they do! Wouldn’t he be ashamed to come to you, if he’d never shown his face at Mass for so long? And mightn’t he go rather to another, one who didn’t know him so well, and might be easier on his sins? You ask, Father, and you’ll find excuse for him somewhere. Then there’s this matter of Conan. He’s our man, too, whatever he may have been up to. You say he gave evidence, about this lad of William’s talking some foolishness about the Church? What do you say, Jevan, did they put their heads together to do him harm?’
‘It’s likely enough,’ said Jevan, shrugging. ‘Though I wouldn’t say they understood rightly what they were doing. It turns out Aldwin, the silly soul, feared he’d be thrown out to let Elave back in.’
‘That would be like him, surely!’ agreed Girard, sighing. ‘Always one to look on the black side. Though he should have had more sense, all the years he’s known us. I daresay he thought the youngster would take to his heels, and be off to find his fortune elsewhere, as soon as he felt the threat. But why should Conan want to be rid of him?’
There was a brief, blank silence and some head-shaking, then Jevan said with his small, rueful smile: ‘I think our shepherd has also taken to thinking of Elave as a perilous rival, though not for employment. He has an eye on Fortunata...’
‘On me?’ Fortunata sat bolt upright with astonishment, and gaped at her uncle across the table. ‘I’ve never seen signs of it! And I’m sure I never gave him any cause.’
‘...and fancies and fears,’ continued Jevan, his smile deepening, ‘that Elave, if he stays, will make a more personable suitor. Not to say a more welcome one! And who’s to say he’s wrong?’ And he added, his black eye bent on the girl in teasing affection: ‘On both counts!’
‘Conan has never paid me any attention,’ said Fortunata, past sheer amazement now, and quick to examine what might very well be true, even if it had eluded her notice. ‘Never! I can’t believe he has ever given me a thought.’
‘He would certainly never make a winning lover,’ said Jevan, ‘but there’s been a change in these last few days. You’ve been too busy looking in another direction to notice it.’
‘You mean he’s been casting sheep’s eyes at my girl?’ demanded Girard, and laughed aloud at the notion.
‘Hardly that! I would call it a very calculating eye. Has not Margaret told you, Fortunata has an endowment now from William, to be her dowry.’
‘There was a box mentioned that has yet to be opened. Why, does any man think I would let my girl want for a dowry, when she has a mind to marry? Though it’s good that the old man remembered her, and thought to send her his blessing, too. If she did have a mind to Conan, well, I suppose he’s not a bad fellow, a girl could do worse. He should have known I’d never let her go empty-handed, whoever she chose.’ And he added, with an appreciative glance at Fortunata: ‘Though our girl might do a great deal better, too!’
‘Coin in the hand,’ said Jevan sardonically, ‘is more worth than all the promises.’
‘Ah, you surely do the man an injustice! What’s to prevent him waking up to the fact that our little lass has grown into a beauty, and as good as she is pretty, too. And even if he did bear witness against Elave to elbow him out of the running, and urge Aldwin not to recant for the same none too creditable reason, men have done worse, and not been made to pay too highly for it. But this business of Aldwin is murder. No, that’s out of Conan’s scope, surely!’ He looked down the length of the table to Father Elias, sitting small, attentive and sharp-eyed under his wispy grey tonsure. ‘Surely, Father?’
‘I have learned,’ said the little priest, ‘not to put any villainy out of any man’s reach. Nor any goodness, either. A life is a very fragile thing, created in desperate labour and snuffed out by a breath of wind – anger, or drunkenness, or mere horseplay, it takes no more than an instant.’
‘Conan has merely a few hours of time to account for,’ Jevan pointed out mildly. ‘He must surely have met with someone who knew him on his way out to the sheep, he has only to name them, they have only to say where and when they saw him. This time, if he tells all the truth instead of half, he cannot miscarry.’
And that would leave only Elave. The grossly offended, the most aggrieved, suddenly approached by his accuser, among trees, without witnesses, too enraged to wait to hear what his enemy wanted to say to him. It was what almost every soul in Shrewsbury must be saying, taking the ending for granted. One charge of heresy, one of murder. All that afternoon until Vespers he was at liberty, and who had seen Aldwin alive since he passed the porter on the town gate? Two and a half hours between then and Vespers, when Elave was again in custody, two and a half hours in which he could have done murder. Even the objection that Aldwin’s wound was in the back could easily be set aside. He came running to plead his penitence, Elave turned on him so furious a face and so menacing a front that he took fright and turned to flee, and got the knife in his back as he fled. Yes, they would all say so. And if it was argued that Elave had no knife on him, that it was left in his bundle in the guest-hall? He had another, doubtless at the bottom of the river by now. There was an answer to everything.
‘Father,’ said Fortunata abruptly, rising from her place, ‘will you open my box for me now? Let us see what I am worth. And then I must talk to you. About Elave!’
*
Margaret brought the box from the corner press, and cleared an end of the table to make room for it before her husband. Girard’s bushy brows rose appreciatively at the sight of it, and he handled it admiringly.
‘Why, this is a beautiful thing in itself. This could bring you in an extra penny or two if you ever need it.’ He took up the gilded key and fitted it into the lock. It turned smoothly and silently, and Girard opened the lid to reveal a neat, thick swathing of felt, folded in such a way that it could be opened to disclose what the box contained without removing it. Six little bags of similar felt were packed within. All of a size, snugly fitted together to fill the space.
‘Well, they’re yours,’ said Girard, smiling at Fortunata, who was leaning over to stare at them with her face in shadow. ‘Open one!’
She drew out one of the bags, and the soft chink of silver sounded under her fingers. There was no drawstring, the top of the bag was simply folded over. She tipped the contents streaming out upon the table, a flood of silver pennies, more than she had ever seen at one time, and yet somehow curiously disappointing. The casket was so beautiful and unusual, a work of art, the contents, however valuable, mere everyday money, the traffic of trade. But yes, they might have their uses, urgent uses if it came to the worst.
‘There you are, girl!’ said Girard, delighted. ‘Good coin of the realm, and all yours. Nigh on a hundred pence there, I should guess. And five more like it. Uncle William did well by you. Shall we count them for you?’
She hesitated for a moment, and then she said: ‘Yes!’ and herself curved a hand round the little pile of thin, small silver pieces, and began to tell them over one by one back into the bag. There were ninety-three of them. By the time she had folded the bag closed again and restored it to its corner in the box, Girard was half-way through the next.
Father Elias had drawn back a little from the table, averting his eyes from this sudden dazzling display of comparative wealth with a curious mixture of desire and detestation. A poor parish priest seldom saw even ten silver pennies together, let alone a hundred. He said hollowly: ‘I will go and enquire about Aldwin at Saint Julian’s,’ and walked quietly out of the room and out of the house, and only Margaret noticed his going, and ran after him to see him courteously out to the street.
There were five hundred and seventy pennies in the six bags. Fortunata fitted them all snugly back into their places in the box, and closed the lid upon them.
‘Lock it again, and put it away safely for me,’ she said. ‘It is mine, isn’t it? To use as I like?’ They were all looking at her with steady, benevolent interest, and the indulgent respect they had always shown towards her, even from her intense and serious childhood.
‘I wanted you to know. Since Elave came back, even more since this shadow fell, I have come close to him afresh, closer than ever I was. I think I love him. So I did long ago, but this is love in a different kind. He brought me this money to help me to a good marriage, but now I know that the marriage I want is with him, and even if I cannot have it, I want to use this gift to help him out of the shadow, even if it means he must go away from here, where they can’t lay hands on him again. Money can buy a lot of things, even ways out of prison, even men to open the doors. At least I can try.’
‘Girl dear,’ said Girard, gently but firmly, ‘it was you told me, just a while since, how you urged him to run for his life when he had the chance. And he was the one who refused. A man who won’t run can’t be made to run. And to my way of thinking he’s right. And not only because he gave his word, but because of why he gave his word. He said he’d done no wrong, and wouldn’t afford any man proof that he went in fear of justice.’
‘I know it,’ said Fortunata. ‘But he has absolute faith in the justice of Church and state. And I am not sure that I have. I would rather buy him his life against his will than see him throw it away.’
‘You would not get him to take it,’ warned Jevan. ‘He has refused you once.’
‘That was before Aldwin was murdered,’ she said starkly. ‘Then he was accused only of heresy. Now, if he is not yet charged, it’s a matter of murder. He never did it, I won’t believe it, murder is not in his nature. But there he is helpless under lock and key, already in their hands. It is his life now.’
‘He still has his life,’ said Girard robustly, and flung an arm about her to draw her to his solid side. ‘Hugh Beringar is not the man to take the easy answer and never look beyond. If the lad is blameless he’ll come out of it whole and free. Wait! Wait a little and see what the law can discover. I won’t meddle with murder. Do I know for sure that any man is innocent, whether it’s Elave or Conan? But if it comes down to the simple matter of heresy, then I’ll throw all the weight I have into the balance to bring him off safely. You shall have him, he shall have the place poor Aldwin grudged to him, and I’ll be guarantor for his good behaviour. But murder – no! Am I God, to see guilt or innocence in a man’s face?’