The Raven in the Foregate (26 page)

“It seems there are those,” said Radulfus, “who will
equally swear that you were there.”

“It was I who told that I’d seen him,” spoke up the
reeve’s shepherd cousin, worried and shaken by the result he had achieved. “I
could say no other, for I did see him, and it was barely light, and all I’ve
told is truth. But I never intended mischief, and I never thought any harm but
that he was at his games, for I knew what’s said of him…”

“And what is said of you, Jordan?” asked Hugh mildly.

Jordan swallowed and writhed, agonised between shame
at owning where he had spent his night, and terror of holding out and risking
worse. Sweating and wriggling, he blurted: “No evil, I’m a man well respected…
If I was there, it was for no wrong purpose. I… I had business there early,
charitable business there early—with the old Widow Warren who lives along
there…”

“Or late, with her slut of a maidservant,” called a
voice from the safe anonymity of the crowd, and a great ripple of laughter went
round, hastily suppressed under the abbot’s flashing glare.

“Was that the truth of it? And by chance under Father
Ailnoth’s eye?” demanded Hugh. “He would look very gravely upon such depravity,
from all accounts. Did he catch you sneaking into the house, Jordan? I hear he
was apt to reprove sin on the spot, and harshly. Is that how you came to kill
him and leave him in the pool?”

“I never did!” howled Jordan. “I swear I never had ado
with him. If I did fall into sin with the girl, that was all I did. I never
went past the house. Ask her, she’ll tell you! I was there all night long…”

And all this time Cynric had gone on patiently and
steadily filling in the grave, without haste, without apparently paying any
great attention to all the tumult at his back. During this last exchange he had
straightened up creakily, and stretched until his joints cracked. Now he turned
to thrust his way into the centre of the circle, the iron-shod spade still
dangling in his hand.

So strange an intrusion from so solitary and withdrawn
a man silenced all voices and drew all eyes.

“Let him be, my lord,” said Cynric. “Jordan had nought
to do with the man’s death.” He turned his greying head and long, sombre,
deep-eyed face from Hugh to the abbot, and back again. “There’s none but I,” he
said simply, “knows how Ailnoth came by his end.”

Then there was utter silence, beyond what the abbot’s
authority had been able to invoke, a silence deep enough to drown in, as
Ailnoth had drowned. The verger stood tall and dignified in his rusty black,
waiting to be questioned further, without fear or regret, seeing nothing
strange in what he had said, and no reason why he should have said more or said
it earlier, but willing to bear with those who demanded explanations.

“You know?” said the abbot, after long and astonished
contemplation of the man before him. “And you have not spoken before?”

“I saw no need. There was no other soul put in peril,
not till now. The thing was done, best leave well alone.”

“Are you saying,” demanded Radulfus doubtfully,”that
you were there, that you witnessed it?… Was it you …?”

“No,” said Cynric with a slow shake of his long,
grizzled head. “I did not touch him.” His voice was patient and gentle, as it
would have been to questioning children. “I was there, I witnessed it. But I
did not touch him.”

“Then tell us now,” said Hugh quietly. “Who killed
him?”

“No one killed him,” said Cynric. “Those who do
violence die by the same. It’s only just.”

“Tell us,” said Hugh again as softly. “Tell us how
this befell. Let us all know, and be at peace again. You are saying his death
was an accident?”

“No accident,” said Cynric, and his eyes burned in
their deep sockets. “A judgement.”

He moistened his lips, and lifted his head to stare
into the wall of the Lady Chapel, above their heads, as if he, who was
illiterate, could read there the words he had to say, he who was a man of few
words by nature.

“I went out that night to the pool. I have often
walked there by night, when there has been no moon, and none awake to see.
Between the willow trees there, beyond the mill, where she went into the water…
Eluned, Nest’s girl… because Ailnoth refused her confession and the uses of the
church, denounced her before all the parish and shut the door in her face. He
could as well have stabbed her to the heart, it would have been kinder. All
that brightness and beauty taken from us… I knew her well, she came so often
for comfort while Father Adam lived, and he never failed her. And when she was
not fretting over her sins she was like a bird, like a flower, a joy to see.
There are not so many things of beauty in the world that a man should destroy
one of them, and make no amends. And when she fell into remorse she was like a
child… she was a child, it was a child he cast out…”

He fell silent for a moment, as though the words had
become hard to read by reason of the blindness of grief, and furrowed his high
forehead to decipher them the better, but no one ventured to speak.

“There I was standing, where Eluned went into the
pool, when he came along the path. I did not know who it was, he did not come
as far as where I stood—but someone, a man stamping and muttering, there by the
mill. A man in a rage, or so it sounded. Then a woman came stumbling after him,
I heard her cry out to him, she went on her knees to him, weeping, and he was
trying to shake her off, and she would not let go of him. He struck her—I heard
the blow. She made no more than a moan, but then I did go towards them,
thinking there could be murder done, and therefore I saw dimly, but I had my
night eyes, and I did see—how he swung his stick at her again, and she clung
with both hands to the head of it to save herself, and how he tugged at it with
all his strength and tore it out of her hands… The woman ran from him, I heard
her stumbling away along the path, but I doubt she ever heard what I heard, or
knows what I know. I heard him reel backwards and crash into the stump of the
willow. I heard the withies lash and break. I heard the splash—it was not a
great sound—as he went into the water.”

There was another silence, long and deep, while he
thought, and laboured to remember with precision, since that was required of
him. Brother Cadfael, coming up quietly behind the ranks of the awestruck
brothers, had heard only the latter part of Cynric’s story, but he had the
poor, draggled proof of it in his hand as he listened. Hugh’s trap had caught
nothing, rather it had set everyone free. He looked across the mute circle to
where Diota stood, with Sanan’s arm about her. Both women had drawn their hoods
close round their faces. One of the hands torn by the sharp edges of the silver
band held the folds of Diota’s cloak together.

“I went towards the place,” said Cynric, “and looked
into the water. It was only then I knew him certainly for Ailnoth. He drifted
at my feet, stunned or dazed… I knew his face. His eyes were open… And I turned
my back and walked away from him, as he turned his back on her and walked away
from her, shutting the door on her tears as he struck at this other woman’s
tears… If God had willed him to live, he would have lived. Why else should it
happen there, in that very place? And who am I, to usurp the privilege of God?”

All this he delivered in the same reasonable voice
with which he would have rendered account of the number of candles bought for
the parish altar, though the words came slowly and with effort and thought,
studying to make all plain now that plainness was needed. But to Abbot Radulfus
it had some distant echo of the voice of prophecy. Even if the man had wished
to save, could he have saved? Might not the priest have been already past saving?
And there in the dark, alone, with no time to summon help, since everyone was
preparing for the night office, and with that undercut bank to contend with,
and the dead weight of a big man to handle could any man, singly, have saved?
Better to suppose that the thing had been impossible, and accept what to Cynric
was the will of God!

“And now, with your leave, my lord abbot,” said
Cynric, having waited courteously but vainly for some comment or question, “if
you’ve no more need of me I’ll be getting on with filling in the grave, for
I’ll need the most of the daylight to make a good job of it.”

“Do so,” said the abbot, and looked at him for a
moment, eye to eye, with no shadow of blame, and saw no shadow of doubt. “Do
so, and come to me for your fee when it is done.”

Cynric went as he had come, back to his work, and
those who watched him in awe-stricken silence saw no change in his long-legged
walk, or in the quiet, steady rhythm with which he plied his spade.

Radulfus looked at Hugh, and then to Jordan Achard,
mute and wilting with relief from terror between his guards. For a brief
instant the abbot’s austere face was shaken by the merest fleeting shadow of a
smile. “My lord sheriff, I think your charge against this man is already
answered. What other offences he may have on his conscience,” said the abbot,
fixing the demoralised Jordan with a severe eye, “I recommend him to bring to
confession. And to avoid henceforward! He may well reflect on the dangers into
which such a manner of life has led him, and take this day as a warning.”

“For my part, I’m glad to know the truth and find that
none of us here has the guilt of murder on his soul,” said Hugh. “Master
Achard, take yourself home and be glad you have a loyal and dutiful wife. Lucky
for you there was one here to speak for you, for there was a strong case
against you had there been no such witness. Loose him!” he said to his
sergeants. “Let him be about his business. By rights he owes a gift to the
parish altar, by way of thanks for a good deliverance.”

Jordan all but sagged to the ground when the two
officers took their hands from him, and Will Warden was moved in good humour to
lend him a supporting hand again under one arm until he got his legs to stand
solid under him. And now at last it was truly over, but that every soul there
was so petrified with wonder that it took another benediction by way of
dismissal to start them moving.

“Go now, good people,” said the abbot, somewhat
brusquely accepting the need. “Make your prayers for the soul of Father
Ailnoth, and bear in mind that our neighbour’s failings should but make us
mindful rather of our own. Go, and trust to us who have the grant of this
parish to bestow, to consider your needs above all in whatever we determine.”
And he blessed them departing, with a vigour and brevity that actually set them
in motion. Silent as yet, even as they melted like snow and began to move away,
but soon they would be voluble enough. Town and Foregate would ring with the
many and contradictory accounts of this morning’s events, to be transmuted at
last into myth, a folk memory of momentous things witnessed, once, long ago.

“And you, brothers,” said Radulfus shortly, turning to
his own flock, doves with fluttered feathers now and disrupted cooing, “go now
to your daily duties, and make ready for dinner.”

They broke ranks almost fearfully, and drifted apart
as the rest were doing, apparently aimlessly at first, then making slowly for
the places where now they should be. Like sparks from a fire, or dust scattered
on a wind, they disseminated, still half-dazed with revelation. The only one
who went about his business with purpose and method was Cynric, busy with his
spade under the wall.

Brother Jerome, deeply disturbed by proceedings which
in no way fitted in with his conception of the rule and routine of the
Benedictine order, went about rounding up some of his strayed chicks towards
the lavatorium and the frater, and shooing some of the lingering parishioners
out of the abbey’s confines. In so doing he drew near to the wide-open doors
upon the Foregate, and became aware of a young man standing in the street
outside, holding the bridle of a horse, and casting an occasional brief glance
over those emerging, but from within a close-drawn capuchon, so that his face
was not clearly visible. But there was something about him that held Jerome’s
sharp eyes. Something not quite recognised, since the coat and capuchon were
strange, and the face obstinately averted, and yet something reminiscent of a
certain young fellow known for a while to the brethren, and later vanished in
strange circumstances. If only the fellow would once turn his face fully!

Cadfael, lingering to watch Sanan and Diota depart,
saw them instead draw back into the shadow of the chapel wall, and wait there
until the greater part of the throng had moved towards the Foregate. The
impulse came from Sanan, he saw her restraining hand laid upon the older
woman’s arm, and wondered why she should delay. Had she seen someone among the
crowd whom she was anxious not to encounter? In search of such a person, he
scanned the retreating backs, and saw one at least whose presence there would
certainly not be too welcome to her. And had she not, like Diota, drawn the
hood of her cloak closely round her face, during the time that Cadfael himself
had been absent, as if to avoid being noticed and recognised by someone?

Now the two women began to move after the rest, but
with cautious slowness, and Sanan’s eyes were intent upon the back of the tall
man who had almost reached the open doorway. Thus both Sanan and Cadfael at the
same moment also saw Brother Jerome, hovering hesitant for a moment, and then
making purposefully for the street. And following the converging courses of
these two very dissimilar backs, the one erect and confident, the other meagre
and stooped, inevitably lighted upon the horse waiting in the Foregate, and the
young man holding his bridle.