The Raven in the Foregate (27 page)

Brother Jerome was still not quite sure, though he was
bent on making sure, even if it meant leaving the precinct without due reason
or permission. It would be counted due reason enough if he succeeded in raising
a righteous alarm, and handing over a fugitive enemy of the King to the King’s
justice. A guard outside the gates, the sheriff had said. He had but to halloo
the soldiers on to their quarry, who stood within arm’s reach, believing
himself safe. If, of course, if this really was the youngster once known as
Benet?

But if Jerome was not yet certain, Sanan was, and
Cadfael was. Who, in these parts, had known that figure and stance and carriage
as well as they? And there was Jerome bearing down upon him with plainly
malevolent intent, before their eyes, and they had no way of preventing the
disaster.

Sanan dropped Diota’s arm and started forward.
Cadfael, approaching from another angle, bellowed: “Brother!” peremptorily
after Jerome, in a self-righteous and scandalised voice of which Jerome himself
need not have been ashamed, in the hope of diverting his attention, but vainly.
Jerome nose-down on the trail of a malefactor was almost as undeflectable as
Father Ailnoth himself. It was left to someone else to turn the trick.

Ninian’s horseman, long-legged and striding briskly
away from a field which left him unthreatened and well satisfied, arrived at
the doorway only a pace or two ahead of Jerome, indeed he brushed past him into
the Foregate. Not the ending he had expected, but on the whole he was glad of
it. As long as he was neither suspect of disloyalty nor threatened with loss of
lands of status, he bore no grudge now against the rash young man who had
caused him so much anxiety. Let him get away unscathed, provided he never came
back here to make trouble for others.

Ninian had glanced round to see his patron
approaching, and saw at the same time, very belatedly, the ferret countenance
of Brother Jerome, all too clearly making for him with no kindly intent. There
was no time to evade, he had no choice but to stand his ground. Blessedly the
horseman reached him barely ahead of the hunter, and blessedly he was well
content with whatever he had witnessed within, for he clapped his horse-boy on
the shoulder as the bridle was surrendered into his hand. Ninian made haste to
stoop to the stirrup, and hold it for the rider to mount.

It was enough! Jerome stopped so abruptly in the
gateway that Erwald, coming behind, collided with him, and put him aside
good-naturedly with one large hand as he passed. And by that time the horseman
had dropped a careless word of thanks into Ninian’s ear and a silver penny into
his hand, and set off back along the Foregate at a leisurely trot, to vanish
round the corner by the horse-fair ground, with his supposed groom loping
behind him on foot.

A lucky escape, thought Ninian, dropping into a walk
as soon as he was round the corner of the high wall and out of sight. And he
span delightedly in his hand the silver penny a satisfied and lavish patron had
tossed to him as he rode away. God bless the man, whoever he may be, he’s saved
my life, or at least my hide! A man of consequence, and evidently well known here.
Just as well for me his grooms are not equally well known, and all over fifty
and bearded, or I should have been a lost man.

A lucky escape, thought Cadfael, heaving a great sigh
of relief, and turning back to where Hugh still stood in earnest talk with Abbot
Radulfus, under the great east window of the Lady Chapel. Salvation comes from
strange places and unexpected friends. And a very apt ending, too!

A lucky escape, thought Sanan, shaking with dismay and
fear suddenly transmuted into triumphant laughter. And he has no idea what has
just happened! Neither of them has! Oh, to see Ninian’s face when I tell him!

A lucky escape, thought Jerome, scurrying thankfully
back to his proper duties. I should have made a sorry fool of myself if I had
challenged him. A mere chance resemblance in figure and bearing, after all,
nothing more. What a blessing for me that his master brushed by in time to
acknowledge him as his, and warn me of my error.

For of course, Ralph Giffard, of all people, could
scarcely be harbouring in his own service the very man he himself had so
properly denounced to the law!

Chapter Thirteen

“THERE IS ONE QUESTION,” said the abbot, “which not
only has not been answered, it has not yet been asked.”

He had waited until the table was cleared, and his
guest supplied with the final cup of wine. Radulfus never allowed business of
any kind to be discussed during a meal. The pleasures of the table were
something he used sparingly, but respected.

“What is that?” asked Hugh.

“Has he told all the truth?”

Hugh looked up sharply across the table. “Cynric? Who
can say of any man that he never lies? But general report of Cynric says that
he never speaks at all unless he must, and then to the point. It is why he said
nothing until Jordan was accused. Words come very hard to Cynric. I doubt if he
ever in his life used as many in one day as we heard from him in a handful of
moments this morning. I doubt if he would waste breath on lying, when even
necessary truth costs him such labour.”

“He was eloquent enough today,” said Radulfus with a
wry smile. “But I should be glad if we had some sure sign to confirm what he
told us. He may very well have done no more than turn and walk away, and leave
the issue of life and death to God, or whatever force he regards as the arbiter
of justice in such a strange case. Or he may have struck the blow himself. Or
he may have seen the thing happen, much as he says, but helped the priest into
the water while he was stunned. Granted I do not think Cynric would be very
ingenious at making up plausible tales to cover the event, yet we cannot know.
Nor do I think him at all a man of violence, even where he found much to
provoke it, but again we cannot know. And even if we have the entire truth from
him, what should be done about such a man? How proceed with him?”

“For my part,” said Hugh firmly, “nothing can or will
be done. There is no law he has broken. It may be a sin to allow a death to
take place, it is not a crime. I hold fast to my own writ. Sinners are in your
province, not mine.” He did not add that there was some accounting due from the
man who had brought Ailnoth, a stranger scarcely known, to assume the pastoral
care of a bereaved flock that had no voice in the choosing of their new
shepherd. But he suspected that the thought was in the abbot’s mind, and had
been ever since the first complaints were brought to his ears. He was not a man
to shut his eyes to his own errors, or shirk his own responsibilities.

“This I can tell you,” said Hugh. “What he said of the
woman who followed Ailnoth and was struck down by him is certainly true.
Mistress Hammet claimed then that she had fallen on the icy ground. That was a
lie. The priest did that to her, she has owned it since to Brother Cadfael, who
treated her injuries. And since I have now brought Cadfael into this, I think
you would do well, my lord, to send for him. I have had no chance to speak with
him since the events of this morning, and it’s in my mind that he may have
something further to say in this matter. He was missing from the ranks of the
brothers in the cemetery when I came, for I looked for him and couldn’t find
him. He came later, not from the Foregate but from within the court. He would
not have absented himself but for good reason. If he has things to tell me, I
cannot afford to neglect them.”

“Neither, it seems, can I,” said Radulfus, and reached
for the little bell that lay on his desk. The small silver chime brought in his
secretary from the ante-room. “Brother Vitalis, will you find Brother Cadfael,
and ask him to come here to us?”

When the door had closed again the abbot sat silent
for a while, considering. “I know now, of course,” he said at last, “that
Father Ailnoth was indeed grossly deceived, and that is some extenuation for
him. But the woman—I gather she is no kin to the youth she sheltered, the one
we knew as Benet?—she had been an exemplary servant to her master for three
years, her only offence was in protecting the young man, an offence which
sprang only from affection. There shall be no penalty visited upon her, never
by my authority. She shall have quiet living here, since it was I who brought
her here. If we get a new priest who has neither mother nor sister to mind his
dwelling, then she may serve him as she did Ailnoth, and I hope there may never
be reason for her to kneel to him but in the confessional, and none ever for
him to strike her. And as for the boy…” He looked back with a resigned and
tolerant eye, and shook his head a little, smiling. “I remember we gave him to
Cadfael to do the rough work before the winter freeze. I saw him once in the
garden, digging the long butt. At least he gave honest value. FitzAlan’s squire
was not afraid to dig, nor ashamed.” He looked up, head tilted, into Hugh’s
face. “You don’t, by any chance, know…?”

“I have been rather careful not to know,” said Hugh.

“Well… I am glad he never fouled his hands with
murder. I saw them black enough with soil, from plucking out the weeds too
gross to be dug in,” said Radulfus, and smiled distantly, looking out of the
window at a pearl-grey, low hanging sky. “I expect he’ll do well enough. Pity
of all pities there should be one such young man in arms against another in
this land, but at least let the steel be bared only in the open field, not
privily in the dark.”

Cadfael laid out on the abbot’s desk the remaining
relics of Father Ailnoth, the ebony staff, the draggled black skullcap with its
torn binding, and the unravelled woollen remnant of braid that completed the
circle.

“Cynric told simple truth, and here are the proofs of
it. Only this morning, when I saw Mistress Hammet’s open hand once again, and
remembered the grazes I had dressed, did I understand how she got those
injuries. Not from a fall—there was no fall. The wound on her head was dealt by
this staff, for I found several long hairs of her greying light-brown colour
here, caught in the frayed edges of this silver band. You see it’s worn
wafer-thin, and the edges turned and cracking.”

Radulfus ran a long, lean finger round the crumpled,
razor-sharp rim, and nodded grimly. “Yes, I see. And from this same band she
got the grazes to her hands. He swung his staff at her a second time, so Cynric
said, and she caught and clung to it, to save her head…”

“… and he tugged at it with all his strength, and tore
it by main force out of her hands,” said Hugh, “to his own undoing.”

“They could not have been many paces past the mill,”
said Cadfael, “for Cynric was some way beyond, among the willows. On the side
of that first stump that overhangs the pool I found a few broken withies, and
this black ravelling of wool braid snagged in the cracked, dead wood of the
stump. The priest went stunned or dazed into the water, the cap flew from his
head, leaving this scrap held fast in the tree, as the silver band held her
torn hairs. The staff was flung from his hand. The winter turf is tufted and
rough there, no wonder if he caught his heel, as he reeled backwards when she
loosed her hold. He crashed into the stump. The axe that felled it, long ago,
left it uneven, the jagged edge took him low at the back of the head. Father,
you saw the wound. So did the sheriff.”

“I saw it,” said Radulfus. “And the woman knew nothing
from the time she ran from him?”

“She barely knows how she got home. Certainly she
waited out the night in dread, expecting him to finish what he intended against
the boy, and return to his house to denounce and cast her out. But he never
came.”

“Could he have been saved?” wondered the abbot,
grieving as much for the roused and resentful flock as for the dead shepherd.

“In the dark,” said Cadfael, “I doubt if any one man
could have got him from under that bank, however he laboured at it. Even had
there been help within reach, I think he would have drowned before ever they
got him out.”

“At the risk of falling into sin,” said Radulfus, with
a smile that began sourly and ended in resignation, “I find that comforting. We
have not a murderer among us, at any rate.”

“Talk of falling into sin,” said Cadfael later, when
he and Hugh were sitting easy together in the workshop in the herb garden,
“forces me to examine my own conscience. I enjoy some privileges, by reason of
being called on to attend sick people outside the enclave, and also by virtue
of having a godson to visit. But I ought not to take advantage of that permission
for my own ends. Which I have done shamelessly on three or four occasions since
Christmas. Indeed, Father Abbot must be well aware that I went out from the
precinct this very morning without leave, but he’s said no word about it.”

“No doubt he takes it for granted you’ll be making
proper confession voluntarily, at chapter tomorrow,” said Hugh, straight-faced.

“That I doubt! He’d hardly welcome it. I should have
to explain the reason, and I know his mind by now. There are old hawks like
Radulfus and myself in here, who can stand the gales, but there are also
innocents who will not benefit by too stormy a wind blowing through the
dovecote. He’s fretted enough about Ailnoth’s influence, now he wants it put by
and soon forgotten. And I prophesy, Hugh, that the Foregate will soon have a
new priest, and one who is known and welcome not only to us who have the
bestowing of the benefice, but to those who are likely to reap the results. No
better way of burying Ailnoth.”