The Raven in the Foregate (21 page)

He had dabbed a tiny spot of grease into one of his
clay saucers for selecting seed, and anchored the rescued hairs to the
congealed fat, so that no chance draught should blow them away. In the close
yellow light of the lamp they showed clearly. Cadfael drew out one of them to
its full length.

“A metal edge fissured like this might pick up a stray
hair almost anywhere,” said Hugh, but not with any great conviction.

“So it might, but here are five, captured at the same
mis-stroke. Which makes this a different matter. Well?”

Hugh likewise laid a finger to the glistening threads
and said deliberately: “A woman’s. Not young.”

“Whether you yet know it or no,” said Cadfael,”there
are but two women in all this coil, and one of them is young, and will not be
grey, please God, for many years yet.”

“I think,” said Hugh, eyeing him with a faint, wise
smile, “you had better tell me. You were here from the beginning, I came late,
and brought with me another matter warranted to confuse the first. I am not
interested in preventing young Bachiler from making clean away to Gloucester to
fight for his Empress, if he has nothing on his conscience that chances to be
more particularly my business. But I am interested in burying the ugly fact of
murder along with Ailnoth tomorrow, if by any means I can. I want the town and
the Foregate going about their day’s work with a quiet mind, and the way
cleared for another priest, and let’s hope one easier to live with. Now, what I
make of these hairs is that they came from the head of Dame Diota Hammet. I
have not even seen the woman in a good light, to know if this colouring is
hers, but even there indoors the bruise on her brow was plain to be seen. She
had a fall on the icy step—so I had been told, and so she told me. I think you
are saying she came by that injury in a very different manner.”

“She came by it,” said Cadfael, “by the mill that
night, when she followed the priest in desperation, to plead with him to let
well alone and turn a blind eye to the boy’s deception, instead of confronting
him like an avenging demon and fetching your sergeants down on him to throw him
into prison. She was Ninian’s nurse, she would dare almost anything for his
sake. She clung about Ailnoth’s skirts and begged him to let be, and because he
could not shake her off, he clubbed this staff of his and struck her on the
head, and would have struck again if she had not loosed him and scrambled away
half-stunned, and run for her life back to the house.”

He told the whole of it as he had had it from Diota
herself, and Hugh listened with a grave face but the hint of the smile
lingering thoughtfully in his eyes. “You believe this,” he said at the end of
it; not a question, but a fact, and relevant to his own thinking.

“I do believe it. Entirely.”

“And she can add nothing more, to point us to any other
person. Or would she, even if she could?” wondered Hugh. “She may very well
feel with the Foregate, and prefer to keep her own counsel.”

“So she might, I won’t deny, but for all that, I think
she knows no more. She ran from him dazed and in terror. I think there’s no
more to be got from her.”

“Nor from your boy Benet?” said Hugh slyly, and
laughed at seeing Cadfael turn a sharp glance on him and bridle for a moment.
“Oh, come now, I do accept that it was not you who warned the boy to make
himself scarce when Giffard brought the law down on him. But only because
someone else had already spared you the trouble. You were very well aware that
he was gone, when you so helpfully led us all round the garden here hunting for
him. I’ll even believe that you had seen him here not half an hour before. You
have a way of telling simple truths which is anything but simple. And when did
you ever have a young fellow in trouble under your eye, and not wind your way
into his confidence? Of course he’ll have opened his mind to you. I daresay you
know where he is this very moment. Though I’m not asking!” he added hastily.

“No,” said Cadfael, well satisfied with the way that
was phrased, “no, that I don’t know, so you may ask, for I can’t tell you.”

“Having gone to some trouble not to find out or be
told,” agreed Hugh, grinning. “Well, I did tell you to keep him out of sight if
you should happen on him. I might even turn a blind eye myself, once this other
matter is cleared up.”

“As to that,” said Cadfael candidly, “he’s of the same
mind as you, for until he knows that all’s made plain, and Dame Hammet safe and
respected, he won’t budge. Much as he wants to get to honest service in
Gloucester, here he stays while she’s in trouble. Which is only fair, seeing
the risks she has taken for him. But once this is over, he’ll be away, out of
your territory. And not alone!” said Cadfael, meeting Hugh’s quizzical glance
with a complacent countenance. “Is it possible I still know something you do
not know?”

Hugh furrowed his brow and considered this riddle at
leisure. “Not Giffard, that’s certain! He could not get himself out of the trap
fast enough. Two women in the affair, you said, one of them young… Do you tell
me this young venturer has found himself a wife in these parts? Already? These
imps of Anjou work briskly, I grant them that! Let’s see, then…” He pondered,
drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the rim of the clay saucer. “He had got
himself into a monastery, where women do not abound, and I think you will have
got your due of work out of him, he had small opportunity to go wooing among
the townswomen. And as far as I know, he made no approach to any other of the
local lordlings. I’m left with Giffard’s household, where the boy’s embassage
may have been a none too well-kept secret, and where there’s a very pleasing
young woman, of the Empress’s faction by blood, and bold and determined enough
to choose differently from her step-father. Why, pure curiosity would have
brought her to have a close look at such a paladin of romance, come in peril of
his liberty and life from over the sea. Sanan Bernières? Is he truly wanting to
take her with him?”

“Sanan it is. But I think it was she who made the
decision. They have horses hidden away ready for departure, and she has her own
small estate in jewels from her mother, easily carried. No doubt she’s provided
him sword and dagger, too. She’ll not let him come before the Empress or Robert
of Gloucester shabby, or without arms and horse.”

“They mean this earnestly?” wondered Hugh, frowning
over a private doubt as to what his own course ought to be in such a case.

“They mean it. Both of them. I doubt if Giffard will
mind much, though he’s done his duty by her fairly enough. It saves him a
dowry. And the man’s had his losses, and is ambitious for his son.”

“And what,” demanded Hugh, “does she get out of it?”

“She gets her own way. She gets what she wants, and
the man she’s chosen for herself. She gets Ninian. I think it may not be a bad
bargain.”

Hugh sat silent for a brooding while, weighing the
rights and wrongs of allowing such a flight, and recalling, perhaps, his own
determined pursuit of Aline, not so long past. After a while his brow smoothed,
and the private gleam of mischief quickened in his black eyes and twitched at
the corner of his mouth. An eloquent eyebrow tilted above a covert glance at
Cadfael.

“Well, I can as easily put a stop to that as cross the
court here, yes, and bring the lad flying out of hiding into my arms, if I
choose. You’ve taught me the way to flush him out of cover. All I need do is
arrest Mistress Hammet, or even put it abroad that I’m about to, and he’ll come
running to defend her. If I accused her of murder, as like as not he’d go so
far as to confess to an act he never committed, to see her free and
vindicated.”

“You could do it,” Cadfael admitted, without any great
concern, “but you won’t. You are as convinced as I am that neither he nor Dame
Diota ever laid hand on Ailnoth, and you certainly won’t pretend otherwise.”

“I might, however,” said Hugh, grinning, “try the same
trick with another victim, and see if the man who did drown Ailnoth will be as
honest and chivalrous as your lad would be. For I came here today with a small
item of news you will not yet have heard, concerning one of Ailnoth’s flock
who’ll be none the worse for a salutary shock. Who knows, there are plenty of
rough and ready fellows who would kill lightly enough, but not stand by and let
another man be hanged for it. It would be worth the trial, to hook a murderer,
and even if it failed, the bait would come to no lasting harm.”

“I would not do it to a dog!” said Cadfael.

“Neither would I, dogs are honest, worthy creatures
that fight fair and bear no grudges. When they set out to kill, they do it
openly in broad daylight, and never care how many witnesses there may be. I
have less scruples about some men. This one—ah, he’s none so bad, but a fright
won’t hurt him, and may do a very sound turn for his poor drab of a wife.”

“You have lost me,” said Cadfael.

“Let me find you again! This morning Alan Herbard
brought me a man he’d happened on by chance, a country kinsman of Erwald’s who
came to spend Christmas with the provost and his family here in the Foregate.
The man’s a shepherd by calling, and Erwald had a couple of ewes too early in
lamb, penned in his shed out beyond the Gaye, and one of them threatened to
cast her lamb too soon. So his cousin the shepherd went to the shed after
Matins and Lauds on Christmas morning, to take a look at them, and brought off
the threatened lamb safely, too, and was on his way back, just coming up from
the Gaye and along to the Foregate at first light. And who do you suppose he
saw sneaking very furtively up from the path to the mill and heading for home,
but Jordan Achard, rumpled and bleared from sleep and hardly expecting to be
seen at that hour. By chance one of the few people our man would have known by
sight and name here, being the baker from whose oven he’d fetched his cousin’s
bread the day before. It came out in purest gossip, in all innocence. The countryman
knew Jordan’s reputation, and thought it a harmless joke to have seen him
making for home from some strange bed.”

“Along that path?” said Cadfael, staring.

“Along that path. It was well trodden that night, it
seems.”

“Ninian was the first,” said Cadfael slowly. “I never
told you that, but he went there early, not being sure of Giffard. He took
himself off smartly when he saw Ailnoth come raging to the meeting, and nothing
more did he know of it until morning, when Diota came crying the priest was lost.
She was there, as I’ve told you. I said there must be a third. But Jordan? And
blundering homeward at first light? It’s hard to believe he had so much durable
malice in him as to carry his grudge so long. A big, spoiled babe, I should
have said, but for being an excellent baker.”

“So should I. But he was there, no question. Who’s
abroad at first light on Christmas morning after a long night’s worship?
Barring, of course, a shepherd anxious about an ailing ewe! That was very ill
luck for Jordan. But it goes further, Cadfael. I went myself to talk to
Jordan’s wife, while he was busy at his ovens. I told her what news we had of
his moves, and made her understand it was proven beyond doubt where he’d been.
I think she was ready to break like a branch over-fruited. Do you know how many
children she’s borne, poor soul? Eleven, and only two of them living. And how
he managed to engender so many, considering how seldom he lies at home, only
the recording angel can tell. Not a bad-looking woman, if she were not so worn
and harried. And still fond of him!”

“And this time,” said Cadfael, awed, “she really told
you truth?”

“Of course she did, she was rightly afraid for him.
Yes, she told truth. Yes, he was out all that night, it was nothing new. But
not murdering anyone! No, on that she was insistent, he would not hurt a fly.
He’s done his worst by a poor wretch of a wife, however! All he’d been about,
she said, was bedding his latest fancy girl, and that was the bold little bitch
who’s maidservant to the old woman who lives next to the miller, by the pool.”

“Ah, now that’s a far more likely thing,” said
Cadfael, enlightened. “That rings true! We talked to her,” he recalled,
fascinated, “next morning, when we were looking for Ailnoth.” A pretty slut of
about eighteen, with a mane of dark hair and bold, inquisitive eyes, saying:
“Not a soul that I know of came along here in the night, why should they?” No,
she had not been lying. She had never thought of her covert lover as counting
among the furtive visitors to the mill in the darkness. His errand was known,
and if not innocent, entirely natural and harmless. She spoke according to her
understanding.

“And she never said word of Jordan! No, why should
she? She knew what he’d been up to, it was not about him you were asking. Oh,
no, I’ve nothing against the girl. But I would stake much that she knows
nothing of time, and has no notion exactly when he came or when he left, except
by the beginning of light. He could have killed a man before ever he whispered
at the deaf woman’s door, for ears that were forewarned and sharp enough.”

“I doubt if he did,” said Cadfael.

“So do I. But see how beautiful a case I can make
against him! His wife has admitted that he went there. The shepherd saw him
leaving. We know that Father Ailnoth went along that same path. After Mistress
Hammet had fled from him, still he waited for his prey. And how if he saw a
parishioner of his, already in dispute with him, and whose reputation he may
well have heard before then, whispering his way furtively into a strange house,
and being let in by a young woman? How then? His nose was expert at detecting
sinners, he might well be distracted from his first purpose to flush out an
evil-doer on the spot. The old woman is stone deaf. The girl, if she witnessed
such a collision, and saw its end, would hold her tongue and tell a good story.
In such a case, Cadfael, old friend, the priest might well have started too hot
a hare, and got the worst of it, ending in the pool.”