After long and sombre consideration, Hugh said: “For the moment, it seems, this boy will keep, whatever the truth of it. He is in his bed with a broken head, and not likely to stir for a while, all the more if he believes we have accepted what, for whatever cause, he wishes us to believe. Take care of him, Mark, and let him think he has done what he set out to do. Tell him he can be easy about this prisoner of ours, he is not charged, and no harm will come to him. But don’t let it be put abroad that we’re holding an innocent man who is in no peril of his life. Meriet may know it. Not a soul outside. For the common ear, we have our murderer safe in hold.”
One deceit partnered another deceit, both meant to some good end; and if it seemed to Brother Mark that deceit ought not to have any place in the pilgrimage after truth, yet he acknowledged the mysterious uses of all manner of improbable devices in the workings of the purposes of God, and saw the truth reflected even in lies. He would let Meriet believe his ordeal was ended and his confession accepted, and Meriet would sleep without fears or hopes, without dreams, but with the drear satisfaction of his voluntary sacrifice, and grow well again to a better, an unrevealed world.
“I will see to it,” said Mark, “that only he knows. And I will be his pledge that he shall be at your disposal whenever you need him.”
“Good! Then go back now to your patient. Cadfael and I will follow you very shortly.”
Mark departed, satisfied, to trudge back through the town and out along the Foregate. When he was gone, Hugh stood gazing eye to eye with Brother Cadfael, long and thoughtfully. “Well?”
“It’s a tale that makes excellent sense,” said Cadfael, “and a great part of it most likely true. I am of Mark’s way of thinking, I do not believe the boy has killed. But the rest of it? The man who caused that fire to be built and kindled had force enough to get his men to do his will and keep his secret. A man well-served, well-feared, perhaps even well-loved. A man who would neither steal anything from the dead himself, nor allow any of his people to do so. All committed to the fire. Those who worked for him respected and obeyed him. Leoric Aspley is such a man, and in such a manner he might behave, if he believed a son of his had murdered from ambush a man who had been a guest in his house. There would be no forgiveness. If he protected the murderer from the death due, it might well be for the sake of his name, and only to serve a lifetime’s penance.”
He was remembering their arrival in the rain, father and son, the one severe, cold and hostile, departing without the kiss due between kinsmen, the other submissive and dutiful, but surely against his nature, at once rebellious and resigned. Feverish in his desire to shorten his probation and be imprisoned past deliverance, but in his sleep fighting like a demon for his liberty. It made a true picture. But Mark was absolute that Meriet had lied.
“It lacks nothing,” said Hugh, shaking his head. “He has said throughout that it was his own wish to take the cowl—so it might well be; good reason, if he was offered no other alternative but the gallows. The death came there, soon after leaving Aspley. The horse was taken far north and abandoned, so that the body should be sought only well away from where the man was killed. But whatever else the boy knows, he did not know that he was leading his gleaners straight to the place where the bones would be found, and his father’s careful work undone. I take Mark’s word for that, and by God, I am inclined to take Mark’s word for the rest. But if Meriet did not kill the man, why should he so accept condemnation and sentence? Of his own will!”
“There is but one possible answer,” said Cadfael. “To protect someone else.”
“Then you are saying that he knows who the murderer is.”
“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 cleared 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 commonly 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.”
That was by no means unwelcome news to Hugh. The business he had begun he was strongly minded to finish, and two minds bent to the same task, the one more impatient than the other, do not make for good results. “And you are content with your visit,” he said. “Something, at least, has gone well.”
“It was worth all the travelling,” said Eluard with satisfaction. “The king can be easy in his mind about the north, Ranulf and William between them have every mile of it well in hand, it would be a bold man who would meddle with their order. His Grace’s castellan in Lincoln is on the best of terms with the earls and their ladies. And the messages I bear to the bishop are gracious indeed. Yes, it was well worth the miles I’ve ridden to secure it.”
*
On the following day the wedding party arrived in modest manorial state, to apartments prepared for them in the abbey guest-halls: the Aspleys, the Lindes, the heiress of Foriet, and a great rout of their invited guests from all the neighbouring manors down the fringes of the forest. All but the common hall and dortoir for the pedlars and pilgrims and birds of passage was given over to the party. Canon Eluard, the abbot’s guest, took a benevolent interest in the bright bustle from his privileged distance. The novices and the boys looked on in eager curiosity, delighted at any distraction in their ordered lives. Prior Robert allowed himself to be seen about the court and the cloisters at his most benign and dignified, always at his best where there were ceremonies to be patronised and a patrician audience to appreciate and admire him; and Brother Jerome made himself even more than usually busy and authoritative among the novices and lay servants. In the stable-yard there was great activity, and all the stalls were filled. Brothers who had kin among the guests were allowed to receive them in the parlour. A great wave of animation and interest swept through the courts and the gardens, all the more gaily because the weather, though crisp and very cold, was clear and fine, and the daylight lasted towards evening.
Cadfael stood with Brother Paul at the corner of the cloister and watched them ride in in their best travelling array, with pack-ponies bringing their wedding finery. The Lindes came first. Wulfric Linde was a fat, flabby, middle-aged man of amiable, lethargic face, and Cadfael could not choose but wonder what his dead lady must have been like, to make it possible for the pair of them to produce two such beautiful children. His daughter rode a pretty, cream-coloured palfrey, smilingly aware of all the eyes upon her, and keeping her own eyes tantalisingly lowered, in an appearance of modesty which gave exaggerated power to every flashing sidelong glance. Swathed warmly in a fine blue cloak that concealed all but the rosy oval of her face, she still knew how to radiate beauty, and oh, she knew, how well she knew, that she had at least forty pairs of innocent male eyes upon her, marvelling at what strange delights were withheld from them. Women of all ages, practical and purposeful, went in and out regularly at these gates, with complaint, appeal, request and gift, and made no stir and asked no tribute. Roswitha came armed in knowledge of her power, and delighted in the disquiet she brought with her. There would be some strange dreams among Brother Paul’s novices.
Close behind her, and for a moment hard to recognise, came Isouda Foriet on a tall spirited horse. Groomed and shod and well-mounted, her hair netted and uncovered to the light, a bright russet like autumn leaves, with her hood tossed back on her shoulders and her back straight and lissome as a birch-tree, Isouda rode without artifice, and needed none. As good as a boy! As good as the boy who rode beside her, with a hand stretched out to her bridle-hand, lightly touching. Neighbours, each with a manor to offer, would it be strange if Janyn’s father and Isouda’s guardian planned to match them? Excellently matched in age, in quality, having known each other from children, what could be more suitable? But the two most concerned still chattered and wrangled like brother and sister, very easy and familiar together. And besides, Isouda had other plans.
Janyn carried with him, here as elsewhere, his light, comely candour, smiling round him with pleasure on all he saw. Sweeping a bright glance round all the watching faces, he recognised Brother Cadfael, and his face lit up engagingly as he gave him a marked inclination of his fair head.
“He knows you,” said Brother Paul, catching the gesture.
“The bride’s brother—her twin. I encountered him when I went to talk with Meriet’s father. The two families are close neighbours.”
“A great pity,” said Paul sympathetically, “that Brother Meriet is not well enough to be here. I am sure he would wish to be present when his brother marries, and to wish them God’s blessing. He cannot walk yet?”
All that was known of Meriet among these who had done their best for him was that he had had a fall, and was laid up with a lingering weakness and a twisted foot.
“He hobbles with a stick,” said Cadfael. “I would not like him to venture far as he is. In a day or two we shall see how far we may let him try his powers.”
Janyn was down from his saddle with a bound, and attentive at Isouda’s stirrup as she made to descend. She laid a hand heartily on his shoulder and came down like a feather, and they laughed together, and turned to join the company already assembled. After them came the Aspleys, Leoric as Cadfael had imagined and seen him, bolt-upright body and soul, appearing tall as a church column in the saddle; an irate, intolerant, honourable man, exact to his responsibilities, absolute on his privileges. A demi-god to his servants, and one to be trusted provided they in turn were trustworthy; a god to his sons. What he had been to his dead wife could scarcely be guessed, or what she had felt towards her second boy. The admirable firstborn, close at his father’s elbow, vaulted out of his tall saddle like a bird lighting, large, vigorous and beautiful. At every move Nigel did honour to his progenitors and his name. Cloistered young men watching him murmured admiration, and well they might.
“Difficult,” said Brother Paul always sensitive to youth and its obscure torments, “to be second to such a one.”
“Difficult indeed,” said Cadfael ruefully.
Kinsmen and neighbours followed, small lords and their ladies, self-confident folk, commanding limited realms, perhaps, but absolute within them, and well able to guard their own. They alighted, their grooms led away the horses and ponies, the court gradually emptied of the sudden blaze of colour and animation, and the fixed and revered order continued unbroken, with Vespers drawing near.
*
Brother Cadfael went to his workshop in the herbarium after supper to fetch certain dried herbs needed by Brother Petrus, the abbot’s cook, for the next day’s dinner, when the Aspleys and the Lindes were to dine with Canon Euard at the abbot’s table. Frost was setting in again for the night, the air was crisp and still and the sky starry, and even the smallest sound rang like a bell in the pure darkness. The footsteps that followed him along the hard earth path between the pleached hedges were very soft, but he heard them; someone small and light of foot, keeping her distance, one sharp ear listening for Cadfael’s guiding steps ahead, the other pricked back to make sure no others followed behind. When he opened the door of his hut and passed within, his pursuer halted, giving him time to strike a spark from his flint and light his little lamp. Then she came into the open doorway, wrapped in a dark cloak, her hair loose on her neck as he had first seen her, the cold stinging her cheeks into rose-red, and the flame of the lamp making stars of her eyes.
“Come in, Isouda,” said Cadfael placidly, rustling the bunches of herbs that dangled from the beams above. “I’ve been hoping to find a means of talking with you. I should have known you would make your own occasion.”
“But I mustn’t stay long,” she said, coming in and closing the door behind her. “I am supposed to be lighting a candle and putting up prayers in the church for my father’s soul.”
“Then should you not be doing that?” said Cadfael, smiling. “Here, sit and be easy for the short time you have, and whatever you want of me, ask.”
“I have lit my candle,” she said, seating herself on the bench by the wall, “it’s there to be seen, but my father was a fine man, and God will take good care of his soul without any interference from me. And I need to know what is really happening to Meriet.”
“They’ll have told you that he had a bad fall, and cannot walk as yet?”
“Brother Paul told us so. He said it would be no lasting harm. Is it so? Will he be well again surely?”
“Surely he will. He got a gash on the head in his fall, but that’s already healed, and his wrenched foot needs only a little longer rest, and it will bear him again as well as ever. He’s in good hands, Brother Mark is taking care of him, and Brother Mark is his staunch friend. Tell me, how did his father take the word of his fall?”
“He kept a severe face,” she said, “though he said he grieved to hear it, so coldly, who would believe him? But for all that, he does grieve.”
“He did not ask to visit him?”
She made a disdainful face at the obstinacy of men. “Not he! He has given him to God, and God must fend for him. He will not go near him. But I came to ask you if you will take me there to see him.”
Cadfael stood earnestly considering her for a long moment, and then sat down beside her and told her all that had happened, all that he knew or guessed. She was shrewd, gallant and resolute, and she knew what she wanted and was ready to fight for it. She gnawed a calculating lip when she heard that Meriet had confessed to murder, and glowed in proud acknowledgement when Cadfael stressed that she was the sole privileged person, besides himself and Mark and the law, to be apprised of it, and to know, to her comfort, that it was not believed.
“Sheer folly!” she said roundly. “I thank God you see through him as through gauze. And his fool of a father believes it? But he never has known him, he never has valued or come close to him, from the day Meriet was born. And yet he’s a fair-minded man, I own it, he would not knowingly do any man wrong. He must have urgent cause to believe this. And Meriet cause just as grave to leave him in the mistake—even while he certainly must be holding it against him that he’s so ready to believe evil of his own flesh and blood. Brother Cadfael, I tell you, I never before saw so clearly how like those two are, proud and stubborn and solitary, taking to themselves every burden that falls their way, shutting out kith and kin and liegemen and all. I could knock their two fool crowns together. But what good would that do, without an answer that would shut both their mouths—except on penitence?”
“There will be such an answer,” said Cadfael, “and if ever you do knock their heads together, I promise you both shall be unshaven. And yes, tomorrow I will take you to practise upon the one of them, but after dinner—for before it, I aim to bring your Uncle Leoric to visit his son, whether he will or no. Tell me, if you know, what are their plans for the morrow? They have yet one day to spare before the marriage.”
“They mean to attend High Mass,” she said, sparkling hopefully, “and then we women will be fitting gowns and choosing ornaments, and putting a stitch in here and there to the wedding clothes. Nigel will be shut out of all that, until we go to dine with the lord abbot, and I think he and Janyn intend to go into the town for some last trifles. Uncle Leoric may be left to himself after Mass. You might snare him then, if you catch your time.”
“I shall be watching for it,” Cadfael assured her. “And after the abbot’s dinner, if you can absent yourself, then I will take you to Meriet.”
She rose joyfully when she thought it high time to leave him, and she went forth valiantly, certain of herself and her stars, and her standing with the powers of heaven. And Cadfael went to deliver his selected herbs to Brother Petrus, who was already brooding over the masterpieces he would produce the next day at noon.
*
After High Mass on the morning of the twentieth of December the womenfolk repaired to their own apartments, to make careful choice of the right array for dining with the abbot. Leoric’s son and his son’s bosom friend went off on foot into the town, his guests dispersed to pay local visits for which this was rare opportunity, and make purchases of stores for their country manors while they were close to the town, or to burnish their own finery for the morrow. Leoric walked briskly in the frosty air the length of the gardens, round fish-ponds and fields, down to the Meole brook, fringed with delicate frost like fine lace, and after that as decisively vanished. Cadfael had waited to give him time to be alone, as plainly he willed to be, and then lost sight of him, to find him again in the mortuary chapel where Peter Clemence’s coffin, closed now and richly draped, waited for Bishop Henry’s word as to its disposal. Two new, fine candles burned on a branched candlestick at the head, and Leoric Aspley was on his knees on the flagstones at the foot. His lips moved upon silent, methodical prayers, his open eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon the bier. Cadfael knew then that he was on firm ground. The candles might have been simply any courtly man’s offering to a dead kinsman, however distant, but the grim and grievous face, silently acknowledging a guilt not yet confessed or atoned for, confirmed the part he had played in denying this dead man burial, and pointed plainly at the reason.
Cadfael withdrew silently, and waited for him to come forth. Blinking as he emerged into daylight again, Leoric found himself confronted by a short, sturdy, nut-brown brother who stepped into his path and addressed him ominously, like a warning angel blocking the way:
“My lord, I have an urgent errand to you. I beg you to come with me. You are needed. Your son is mortally ill.”
It came so suddenly and shortly, it struck like a lance. The two young men had been gone half an hour, time for the assassin’s stroke, for the sneak-thief’s knife, for any number of disasters. Leoric heaved up his head and snuffed the air of terror, and gasped aloud: “My son...?”
Only then did he recognise the brother who had come to Aspley on the abbot’s errand. Cadfael saw hostile suspicion flare in the deep-set, arrogant eyes, and forestalled whatever his antagonist might have had to say.
“It’s high time,” said Cadfael, “that you remembered you have two sons. Will you let one of them die uncomforted?”