The Raven in the Foregate (11 page)

“We must, then, conclude,” said Abbot Radulfus
heavily,”that he fell into the pool and drowned. But why was he there at such
an hour, and on the eve of the Nativity?”

There was no one prepared to answer that. To reach the
place where he had been found he must have passed by every near habitation
without word or sign, to end in a barren, unpeopled solitude.

“He drowned, certainly,” said Cadfael.

“Is it known,” wondered Prior Robert, “whether he
could swim?”

Cadfael shook his head. “I’ve no knowledge of that, I
doubt if anyone here knows. But it might not be of much importance whether he
could or no. Certainly he drowned. It is less certain, I fear, that he simply
fell into the water. See here—the back of his head…”

He raised the dead man’s head with one hand, and
propped head and shoulders with the right arm, and Brother Edmund, who had
already viewed this corpse with him before even Abbot Radulfus and Prior Robert
were summoned, held a candle to show the nape and the thick circlet of wiry
black hair. A broken wound, with edges of skin grazed loose round it and a
bleached, moist middle now only faintly discoloured with blood after its
soaking in the pool, began just at the rim of the tonsure, and scraped down
raggedly through the circle of hair, to end where the inward curve of the nape
began.

“He suffered a blow on the head here, before ever he
entered the water,” said Cadfael.

“Struck from behind him,” said the abbot, with
fastidious disdain, and peered closer. “You are sure he drowned? This blow
could not have killed him? For what you are saying is that this was no
accident, but a deliberate assault. Or could he have come by this innocently?
Is it possible? The track there is rutted, and it was icy. Could he have fallen
and injured himself thus?”

“I doubt it. If a man’s feet go from under him he may
sit down heavily, even sprawl back on his shoulders, but he seldom goes
full-length so violently as to hit his head forcibly on the ground and break
his crown. That could not happen on such rough ground, only on smooth sheet
ice. And mark, this is not on the round of his head, which would have taken
such a shock, but lower, even moving into the curve of his neck, and lacerated,
as if he was struck with something rough and jagged. And you saw the shoes he
was wearing, felted beneath the sole. I think he went safer from a fall, last
night, than most men.”

“Certainly, then, a blow,” said Radulfus. “Could it
have killed?”

“No, impossible! His skull is not broken. Not enough
to kill, nor even to do him much lasting harm. But he might well have been
stunned for a while, or so dazed that he was helpless when he fell into the
water. Fell,” said Cadfael with deliberation, but ruefully, “or was pushed in.”

“And of those two,” said the abbot with cold
composure, “which is the more likely?”

“In darkness,” said Cadfael, “any man may step too
near a sloping edge and misjudge his footing where a bank overhangs water. But
whatever his reason for going along that path, why should he persist beyond the
last dwelling? But this broken head I do not believe he got by any natural
fall, and he got it before he went into the water. Some other hand, some other
person, was there with him, and party to this death.”

“There is nothing in the wound, no fragment to show
what manner of weapon it was that struck him?” ventured Brother Edmund, who had
worked with Brother Cadfael in similar cases, and found good reason to require
his judgement even in the minutest details. But he did not sound hopeful.

“How could there be?” said Cadfael simply. “He was
lain in the water all through the night, everything about him is bleached and
sodden. If there had ever been soil or grass in his grazes, it would have
soaked away long ago. But I do not think there was. He cannot alone have
staggered far after that blow was struck, and he was just past the tail-race,
or it would have drifted him the opposing way. Nor would anyone have carried or
dragged him far if he was stunned, he being a big, heavy man, and the blow
being only briefly disabling, not killing. Not ten paces from where we found him,
I judge, he went into the pool. And close by that same stretch he got this
blow. On top of all, there he was on grass unrutted by wheels, being past the
mill-only rough and tufted, as winter turf is. If he had slipped and fallen,
the ground there might have half-stunned him, but it would not have broken his
head and fetched blood. I have told you all I can tell from this poor body,” he
said wearily. “Make what you can of it.”

“Murder!” said Prior Robert, rigid with indignation
and horror. “Murder is what I make of it. Father Abbot, what is now to be
done?”

Radulfus brooded for some minutes over the indifferent
corpse which had been Father Ailnoth, and never before so still and quiet, so
tolerant of the views of others. Then he said, with measured regret: “I am
afraid, Robert, we have no choice but to inform the lord sheriffs deputy, since
Hugh Beringar himself is elsewhere about his own duties.” And with his eyes
still upon the livid face on the stone slab he said, with bleak wonder: “I knew
he had not made himself loved. I had not realised that in so short a time he
could make himself so hated.”

Chapter Six

YOUNG ALAN HERBARD, WHO WAS HUGH’S DEPUTY in his
absence, came down hot-foot from the castle with the most experienced of his
sergeants, William Warden, and two other officers in his train. Even if Herbard
had not been well acquainted with the Foregate and its people, Will Warden
certainly was, and went in no misapprehension concerning the degree of love the
congregation of Holy Cross had for its new priest.

“There’ll be very little mourning for him hereabouts,”
he said bluntly, viewing the dead man without emotion. “He made a thorough job
of turning every soul in the parish against him. A poor end, though, for any
man. A poor, cold end!”

They examined the head wound, noted the account rendered
by every man who had taken part in the search, and listened to the careful
opinions put forward by Brother Edmund and Brother Cadfael, and to everything
Dame Diota had to say of her master’s evening departure, and the anxious night
she had spent worrying about his failure to return.

She had refused to depart, and waited all this time to
repeat her story, which she did with a drained but steady composure, now that
the matter and the mystery were out of her hands. Benet was beside her,
attentive and solicitous, a very sombre Benet, with creased brows and hazel
eyes clouded by something between anxiety on her account and sheer puzzlement
on his own.

“If you’ll give me leave,” said the boy, as soon as
the officers had withdrawn from the precinct to go in search of the provost of
the Foregate, who knew his people as well as any man could, “I’ll take my aunt
back to the house now, and see her settled with a good fire. She needs to
rest.” And he added, appealing to Cadfael: “I won’t stay long. I may be wanted
here.”

“Stay as long as is needful,” said Cadfael readily.
“I’ll answer for you if there should be any questions. But what could you have
to tell? I know you were in the church well before Matins began.” And knew,
moreover, where the boy had been later on, and probably not alone, but he said
nothing about that. “Has anything been said about making provision for Mistress
Hammet’s future? This leaves her very solitary, but for you, and still almost a
stranger here. But I’m sure Abbot Radulfus will see to it she’s not left
friendless.”

“He came himself to speak to her,” said Benet, a faint
flush and gleam of his usual brightness appearing for a moment, in appreciation
of such considerate usage. “He says she need not be troubled at all, for she
came here in good faith to serve the church in her proper station, and the
church will see to it that she is provided for. Dwell in the house and care for
it, he said, until a new priest is preferred to the benefice, and then we’ll
see. But in no case shall she be cast away.”

“Good! Then you and she can rest with easy minds.
Terrible this may be, but it’s no fault of yours or hers, and you should not
brood on it.” They were both looking at him then with still, shocked faces that
expressed nothing of grief or reassurance, but only stunned acceptance. “Stay
and sleep there, if you see fit,” he said to Benet. “She may be glad of having
you close by, tonight.”

Benet said neither yes nor no to that, nor did the
woman. They went out silently from the ante-room of the gatehouse, where they
had sat out the long uncertainty of the morning together, and crossing the wide
highway of the Foregate, vanished into the narrow mouth of the alley opposite,
still silvered with hoar-frost between its enclosing walls.

Cadfael felt no great surprise when Benet was back
within the hour, instead of taking advantage of the permission to absent
himself overnight. He came looking for Cadfael in the garden, and found him,
for once, virtually idle in his workshop, sitting by the glowing brazier. The boy
sat down silently beside him, and heaved a glum sigh.

“Agreed!” said Cadfael, stirring out of his thoughts
at the sound. “We’re none of us quite ourselves today, small wonder. But no
need for you to rack your conscience, surely. Have you left your aunt all
alone?”

“No,” said Benet. “There’s a neighbour with her,
though I doubt if she’s all that glad of the kind attention. There’ll be more
of them, I daresay, before long, bursting with curiosity and worming the whole
story out of her. Not for grief, either, to judge by the one I left with her.
They’ll be chattering like starlings all over the parish, and never stop until
night falls.”

“They’ll stop fast enough, you’ll find,” said Cadfael
drily, “as soon as Alan Herbard or one of his sergeants puts a word in. Let one
officer show his face, and silence will fall. There’s not a soul in the
Foregate will own to knowing anything about anything once the questions begin.”

Benet shifted uneasily on the wooden bench, as though
his bones rather than his conscience felt uncomfortable. “I never understood
that he was quite so blackly disliked. Do you truly think they’ll hang together
so close, and never betray even if they know who brought him to his death?”

“Yes, I do think it. For there’s hardly a soul but
will feel it might as easily have been his own act, but for God’s grace. But it
need not fret you, one way or the other. Unless it was you who broke his head?”
said Cadfael mildly. “Was it?”

“No,” said Benet as simply, staring down into his
linked hands; and the next moment looked up with sharp curiosity: “But what
makes you so sure of it?”

“Well, firstly, I saw you in church well before it was
time for Matins, and though there’s no certainty just when Ailnoth went into
the pool, I should judge it was probably after that time. Secondly, I know of
no reason why you should bear him any grudge, and you said yourself it comes as
a surprise to you he was so hated. But thirdly and best, from what I know of
you, lad, if you took such dire offence as to up and hit a man, it would not be
from behind, but face to face.”

“Well, thank you for that!” said Benet, briefly
recovering his blazing smile. “But, Cadfael, what do you think happened? It was
you saw him last, alive, at least as far as is known. Was there any other soul
about there? Did you see anyone else? Anyone, as it might be, following him?”

“Never a creature beyond the gatehouse here. There
were folk from the Foregate just coming in for the service, but none going on
towards the town. Any others who may have seen Ailnoth can only have seen him
before ever I did, and with nothing to show where he was bound. Unless someone
had speech with him. But by the way he went scurrying past me, I doubt if he
halted for any other.”

Benet considered that in silence for a long moment,
and then said, rather to himself than to Cadfael: “And from his house it’s so
short a way. He’d come into the Foregate just opposite the gatehouse. Small
chance of being seen or stopped in that distance.”

“Leave it to the King’s officers to scratch their
heads over the how and why,” Cadfael advised. “They’ll find no lack of folk
who’ll pretend no sorrow at seeing the last of Ailnoth, but I doubt if they’ll
get much information out of anyone, man, woman or child. No blinking it, the
man generated grudges wherever he stepped. He may well have made the most
perfect of clerks, where he had to deal only with documents, charters and
accounts, but he had no notion how to coax and counsel and comfort common human
sinners. And what else is a parish priest for?”

The frost continued that night, harder than ever,
freezing over the reedy shallows in the mill-pond, and fringing the townward
shore with a white shelf of ice, but not yet sealing over the deeper water or
the tremulous path of the tail-race, so that the little boys who went hopefully
to examine the ice in the early morning returned disappointed. No point as yet
in trying to break the iron ground for Father Ailnoth’s grave, even if Herbard
would have permitted an early burial, but at least the clear cold made delay
acceptable.

In the Foregate a kind of breathless hush brooded.
People talked much but in low voices and only among trusted friends, and yet
everywhere there was a feeling of suppressed and superstitious gladness, as if
a great cloud had been lifted from the parish. Even those who did not confide
in one another in words did so in silent glances. The relief was everywhere,
and palpable.