Chapter Eight

ANION THE CATTLE MAN, FOR WANT of calf or lamb to keep his hand in within the abbey enclave, had taken to spending much of his time in the stables, where at least there was horseflesh to be tended and enjoyed. Very soon now he would be fit to be sent back to the grange where he served, but he could not go until Brother Edmund discharged him. He had a gifted hand with animals, and the grooms were on familiar and friendly terms with him.

Brother Cadfael approached him somewhat sidelong, unwilling to startle or dismay him too soon. It was not difficult. Horses and mules had their sicknesses and injuries, as surely as men, and called frequently for remedies from Cadfael’s store. One of the ponies the lay servants used as pack, horses had fallen lame and was in need of Cadfael’s rubbing oils to treat the strain, and he brought the flask himself to the to-do, as good as certain he would find Anion there. It was easy enough to entice the practised stockman into taking over the massage, and to linger to watch and admire as he worked his thick but agile fingers into the painful muscles. The pony stood like a statue for him, utterly trusting. That in itself had something eloquent to say.

“You spend less and less time in the infirmary now,” said Cadfael, studying the dour, dark profile under the fall of straight black hair. “Very soon we shall be losing you at this rate. You’re as fast on a crutch as many of us are with two sturdy legs that never suffered a break. I fancy you could throw the prop away anytime you pleased.”

“I’m told to wait,” said Anion shortly. “Here I do what I’m told. It’s some men’s fate in life, brother, to take orders.”

“Then you’ll be glad to be back with your cattle again, where they do obedience to you for a change.”

“I tend and care for them and mean them well,” said Anion, “and they know it.”

“So does Edmund to you, and you know it.” Cadfael sat down on a saddle beside the stooping man, to come down to his level and view him on equal terms. Anion made no demur, it might even have been the faint shadow of a smile that touched his firmly-closed mouth. Not at all an ill, looking man, and surely no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. “You know the thing that happened there in the infirmary,” said Cadfael. “You may well have been the most active man in there that dinner time. Though I doubt if you stayed long after you’d eaten. You’re over-young to be shut in there with the ailing old. I’ve asked them all, did they hear or see any man go in there, by stealth or any other way, but they slept after they’d eaten. That’s for the aged, not for you. You’d be up and about while they drowsed.”

“I left them snoring,” said Anion, turning the full stare of his deep, set eyes on Cadfael. He reached for a rag to wipe his hands, and rose nimbly enough, the still troublesome leg drawn up after him.

“Before we were all out of the refectory? And the Welsh lads led in to their repast?”

“While it was all quiet. I reckon you brothers were in the middle of your meal. Why?” demanded Anion pointblank.

“Because you might be a good witness, what else? Do you know of anyone who made his way into the infirmary about that time that you left it? Did you see or hear aught to give you pause? Any man lurking who should not have been there? The sheriff had his enemies,” said Cadfael firmly, “like the rest of us mortals, and one of them deadly. Whatever he owed is paid now, or shortly to pay. God send none of us may take with him a worse account.”

“Amen!” said Anion. “When I came forth from the infirmary, brother, I met no man, I saw no man, friend or enemy, anywhere near that door.”

“Where were you bound? Down here to view the Welsh horses? If so,” explained Cadfael easily, warding off the sharp glance Anion gave him, “you’d be a witness if any of those lads went off and left his fellows about that time.” Anion shrugged that off disdainfully. “I never came near the stables, not then. I went through the garden and down to the brook. With a west wind it smells of the hills down there,” said Anion. “I grow sick of the shut-in smell of tired old men, and their talk that goes round and round.”

“Like mine!” said Cadfael tolerantly, and rose from the saddle. His eye lingered upon the crutch that was laid carelessly aside against the open door of a stall, a good fifty paces from where its owner was working. “Yes, I see you’re about ready to throw it away. You were still using it yesterday, though, unless Brother Rhys was mistaken. He heard you tap your way out for your walk in the garden, or thought he did.”

“He well might,” said Anion, and shook back his shaggy black mane from his round brown forehead. “It’s habit with me, after so long, even after the need’s gone. But when there’s a beast to see to, I forget, and leave it behind me in corners.” He turned deliberately, laid an arm over the pony’s neck, and led him slowly round on the cobbles, to mark his gait. And that was the end of the colloquy.

Brother Cadfael was fully occupied with his proper duties all that day, but that did not prevent him from giving a great deal of thought to the matter of Gilbert Prestcote’s death. The sheriff had long ago requested space for his tomb in the abbey church of which he had been a steady patron and benefactor, and the next day was to see him laid to rest there. But the manner of his death would not allow any rest to those who were left behind him. From his distracted family to the unlucky Welsh suspects and prisoners in the castle, there was no one who did not find his own life disrupted and changed by this death.

The news was surely making its way about the countryside by this time, from village to village and assart to manor round the shire, and no doubt men and women in the streets of Shrewsbury were busily allotting the blame to this one and that one, with Elis ap Cynan their favourite villain. But they had not seen the minute, bright fragments Cadfael nursed in his little box, or hunted in vain through the precinct for any cloth that could show the identical tints and the twisted gold thread. They knew nothing about the massive gold pin that had vanished from Gilbert’s death-chamber and could not be found within the pale.

Cadfael had caught glimpses of Lady Prestcote about the court, moving between the to-do and the church, where her husband lay in the mortuary chapel, swathed for his burial. But the girl had not once shown her face. Gilbert the younger, a little bewildered but oblivious of misfortune, played with the child oblates and the two young pupils, and was tenderly shepherded by Brother Paul, the master of the children. At seven years old he viewed with untroubled tolerance the eccentricities of grown-up people, and could make himself at home wherever his mother unaccountably conveyed him. As soon as his father was buried she would certainly take him away from here, to her favourite among her husband’s manors, where his life would resume its placid progress untroubled by bereavement.

A few close acquaintances of the sheriff had begun to arrive and take up residence ready for the morrow. Cadfael lingered to watch them, and fit noble names to the sombre faces. He was thus occupied, on his way to the herbarium, when he observed one unexpected but welcome face entering. Sister Magdalen, on foot and alone, stepped briskly through the wicket, and looked about her for the nearest known face. To judge by her brightening eye and prompt advance, she was pleased that it should be Cadfael’s.

“Well, well!” said Cadfael, going to meet her with equal pleasure. “We had no thought of seeing you again so soon. Is all well in your forest? No more raiders?”

“Not so far,” said Sister Magdalen cautiously, “but I would not say they might not try again, if ever they see Hugh Beringar looking the other way. It must have gone much against the grain with Madog ap Meredith to be bested by a handful of foresters and cottars, he may well want his revenge when he feels it safe to bid for it. But the forest men are keeping a good watch. It’s not we who are in turmoil now, it seems. What’s this I’ve been hearing in the town? Gilbert Prestcote dead, and that Welsh youngster I sent you blamed for the deed?”

“You’ve been in the town, then? And no stout escort with you this time?”

“Two,” she said, “but I’ve left them up in the Wyle, where we shall lie overnight. If it’s true the sheriff is to be buried tomorrow I must stay to do him honour among the rest. I’d no thought of such a thing when we set out this morning. I came on quite different business. There’s a reat-niece of Mother Mariana, daughter to a cloth-merchant here in Shrewsbury, who’s coming to take the veil among us. A plain child, none too bright, but willing, and knows she has small hopes of a pleasing marriage. Better with us than sold off like an unpromising heifer to the first that makes a grudging offer for her. I’ve left my men and horses in their yard, where I heard tell of what had happened here. Better to get the tale straight, there are any number of versions up there in the streets.”

“If you have an hour to spare,” said Cadfael heartily, “come and share a flask of wine of my own making in the herb-garden, and I’ll tell you the whole truth of it, so far as any man knows what’s truth. Who knows, you may find a pattern in it that I have failed to find.”

In the wood – scented dimness of the workshop in the herbarium he told her, at leisure and in detail, everything he knew or had gathered concerning the death of Gilbert Prestcote, everything he had observed or thought concerning Elis ap Cynan. She listened, seated with spread knees and erect back on the bench against the wall, with her cup nursed in both hands to warm it, for the wine was red and full. She no longer exerted herself to be graceful, if ever she had, but her composed heaviness had its own impressive grace.

“I would not say but that boy might kill,” she said at the end of it. “They act before they think and regret only too late. But I don’t think he would kill his girl’s father. Very easy, you say, and I believe it, to ease the man out of the world, so that even one not given to murder might do it before ever he realised. Yes, but those a man kills easily are commonly strangers to him. Hardly people at all. But this one would be armoured in identity – her father, no less, the man that begot her. And yet,” she owned, shaking her head, “I may be wrong about him. He may be the one of his kind who does what his kind does not do. There is always one.”

“The girl believes absolutely that he is guilty,” said Cadfael thoughtfully, “perhaps because she is all too well aware of what she feels to be her own guilt. The sire returns and the lovers are to be torn apart – no great step to dream of his failure to return, and only one more leap to see death as the final and total cause of that failure. But dreams they surely were, never truly even wished. The boy is on firmer ground when he swears he went to try and win her father to look kindly on his suit.

“For if ever I saw a lad sunlit and buoyed up with hope by nature, Elis is the one.”

“And this girl?” wondered Sister Magdalen, twirling her wine, cup between nursing palms. “If they’re of an age, then she must be the more mature by some years. So it goes! Is it anyway possible that she …?”

“No,” said Cadfael with certainty. “She was with the lady, and Hugh, and the Welsh princelings, throughout. I know she left her father living, and never came near him again until he was dead, and then in Hugh’s company. No, she torments herself vainly. If you had her in your hands,” said Cadfael with conviction, “you would soon find her out for the simple, green child she is.”

Sister Magdalen was in the act of saying philosophically: “I’m hardly likely to get the chance,” when the tap on the door came. So light and tentative a sound, and yet so staunchly repeated, they fell silent and still to make sure of it.

Cadfael rose to open it and peer out through the narrowest possible chink, convinced there was no one there; and there she stood, her hand raised to knock again, pallid, wretched and resolute, half a head taller than he, the simple, green child of his description, with a steely core of Norman nobility forcing her to transcend herself. Hastily he flung the door wide. “Come within from the cold. How can I serve you?”

“The porter told me,” said Melicent, “that the sister from Godric’s Ford came a while ago, and might be here wanting remedies from your store. I should like to speak with her.”

“Sister Magdalen is here,” said Cadfael. “Come, sit with her by the brazier, and I’ll leave you to talk with her in private.” She came in half afraid, as though this small, unfamiliar place held daunting secrets. She stepped with fastidious delicacy, almost inch by inch, and yet with that determination in her that would not let her turn back. She looked at Sister Magdalen eye to eye, fascinated, doubtless having heard her history both ancient and recent, and found some difficulty in reconciling the two.

“Sister,” said Melicent, going arrow, straight to the point, “when you go back to Godric’s Ford, will you take me with you?” Cadfael, as good as his word, withdrew softly and with alacrity, drawing the door to after him, but not so quickly that he did not hear Sister Magdalen reply simply and practically: “Why?” She never did or said quite what was expected of her, and it was a good question. It left Melicent in the delusion that this formidable woman knew little or nothing about her, and necessitated the entire retelling of the disastrous story, and in the retelling it might fall into truer proportion, and allow the girl to reconsider her situation with somewhat less desperate urgency. So, at any rate, Brother Cadfael hoped, as he trotted away through the garden to go and spend a pleasant half-hour with Brother Anselm, the precentor, in his carrel in the cloister, where he would certainly be compiling the sequence of music for the burial of Gilbert Prestcote.

“I intend,” said Melicent, rather grandly because of the jolt the blunt question had given her, “to take the veil, and I would like it to be among the Benedictine sisters of Polesworth.”

“Sit down here beside me,” said Sister Magdalen comfortably, “and tell me what has turned you to this withdrawal, and whether your family are in your confidence and approve your choice. You are very young, and have the world before you …”

“I am done with the world,” said Melicent.

“Child, as long as you live and breathe you will not have done with this world. We within the pale live in the same world as all poor souls without. Come, you have your reasons for wishing to enter the conventual life. Sit and tell me, let me hear them. You are young and fair and nobly born, and you wish to abandon marriage, children, position, honours, all … Why?” Melicent, yielding, sank beside her on the bench, hugged her slenderness in the warmth of the brazier, and let fall the barriers of her bitterness to loose the flood. What she had vouchsafed to the preoccupied ears of Sybilla was no more than the thread on which this confession was strung. All that heady dream of minstrels’ love-tales poured out of her.

“Even if you are right in rejecting one man,” said Magdalen mildly, “you may be most unjust in rejecting all. Let alone the possibility that you mistake even this Elis ap Cynan. For until it is proved he lies, you must bear in mind he may be telling truth.”

“He said he would kill for me,” said Melicent, relentless, “he went to where my father lay, and my father is dead. There was no other known to have gone near. As for me, I have no doubts. I wish I had never seen his face, and I pray I never may again.”

“And you will not wait to make your peace with one betrayal, and still show your countenance to others who do not betray?”

“At least I do know,” said Melicent bitterly, “that God does not betray. And I am done with men.”

“Child,” said Sister Magdalen, sighing, “not until the day of your death will you have done with men. Bishops, abbots, priests, confessors, all are men, blood-brothers to the commonest of sinful mankind. While you live, there is no way of escape from your part in humanity.”

“I have finished, then, with love,” said Melicent, all the more vehemently because a morsel of her heart cried out to her that she lied.

“Oh, my dear soul, love is the one thing with which you must never dispense. Without it, what use are you to us or to any? Granted there are ways and ways of loving,” said the nun come late to her celibacy, recalling what at the time she had hardly recognised as deserving the title, but knew now for one aspect of love, “yet for all there is a warmth needed, and if that fire goes out it cannot be rekindled. Well,” she said, considering, “if your stepmother approve your going with me, then you may come, and welcome. Come and be quiet with us for a while, and we shall see.”

“Will you come with me to my mother, then, and hear me ask her leave?”

“I will,” said Sister Magdalen, and rose and plucked her habit about her ready to set forth.

She told Brother Cadfael the gist of it when she stayed to attend Vespers before going back to the cloth-merchant’s house in the town.

“She’ll be better out of here, away from the lad, but left with the image of him she already carries about with her. Time and truth are what the pair of them most need, and I’ll see she takes no vows until this whole matter is resolved. The boy is better left to you, if you can keep an eye on him now and then.”

“You don’t believe,” said Cadfael with certainty, “that he ever did violence to her father.”

“Do I know? Is there man or woman who might not kill, given the driving need? A proper, upstanding, impudent, open, hearted lad, though,” said Sister Magdalen, who had never repented anything she did, “one that I might have fancied, when my fancying days were.”

Cadfael went to supper in the refectory, and then to Collations in the chapter-house, which he often missed if he had vulnerable preparations brewing in his workshop. In thinking over such slight gains as he had made in his quest for the truth, he had got nowhere, and it was good to put all that aside and listen with good heart to the lives of saints who had shrugged off the cares of the world to let in the promises of a world beyond, and viewed earthly justice as no more than a futile shadow, play obscuring the absolute justice of heaven, for which no man need wait longer than the life-span of mortality.

They were past St Gregory and approaching St Edward the Confessor and St Benedict himself – he middle days of March, and the blessed works of spring beginning, with everything hopeful and striving ahead. A good time. Cadfael had spent the hours before Sister Magdalen came digging and clearing the fresh half of his mint-bed, to give it space to proliferate new and young and green, rid of the old and debilitated. He emerged from the chapter-house feeling renewed, and it came at first as no more than a mild surprise when Brother Edmund came seeking him before Compline, looking almost episcopal as he brandished in one hand what at first sight might have been a crozier, but when lowered to the ground reached no higher than his armpit, and was manifestly a crutch.

“I found it lying in a corner of the to-do. Anion’s! Cadfael, he did not come for his supper tonight and he is nowhere in the infirmary, neither in the common room, nor in his bed, nor in the chapel. Have you seen him anywhere this day?”

“Not since morning,” said Cadfael, thinking back with something of an effort from the peace of the chapter-house. “He came to dinner at midday?’.

“So he did, but I find no man who has seen him since. I’ve looked for him everywhere, asked every man, and found nothing more of him than this, discarded. Anion is gone! Oh, Cadfael, I doubt he has fled his mortal guilt. Why else should he run from us?”

It was well past Compline when Hugh Beringar entered his own hall, empty-handed and discontented from his enquiries among the Welshmen, and found Brother Cadfael sitting by the fireside with Aline, waiting for him with a clouded brow.

“What brings you here so late?” wondered Hugh. “Out without leave again?” It had been known to happen, and the recollection of one such expedition, before the austere days of Abbot Radulfus, was an old and private joke between them.

“That I am not,” said Cadfael firmly. “There’s a piece of unexpected news even Prior Robert thought had better come to your ears as soon as possible. We had in our infirmary, with a broken leg mending and all but ready to leave us, a fellow named Anion. I doubt if the name means much to you, it was not you had to do with his brother. But do you remember a brawl in the town, two years ago now, when a gatekeeper on the bridge was knifed? Prestcote hanged the Welshman that did it – well, whether he did it or not, and naturally he’d say he didn’t, but he was blind drunk at the time and probably never knew the truth of it himself. However it was, he was hanged for it. A young fellow who used to trade in fleeces to the town market from somewhere in Mechain. Well, this Anion is his brother born the wrong side of the brychan, when the father was doing the trading, and there was no bad blood between the two. They got to know each other and there was a fondness.”

“If ever I knew of this,” said Hugh, drawing up to the fire with him, “I had forgot it.”

“So had not Anion. He’s said little, but it’s known he’s nursed his grudge, and there’s enough Welsh in him to make him look upon revenge as a duty, if ever the chance came his way.”

“And what of him now?” Hugh was studying his friend’s face intently, foreseeing what was to come. “Are you telling me this fellow was within the pale now, when the sheriff was brought there helpless?”

“He was, and only a door ajar between him and his enemy – if so he held him, as rumour says he did. Not the only one with a grudge, either, so that’s no proof of anything more than this, that the opportunity was there. But tonight there’s another mark against him. The man’s gone. He did not come for his supper, he’s not in his bed, and no man has seen him since dinner. Edmund missed him at the meal and has been looking for him ever since, but never a sign. And the crutch he was still using, though more from habit than need, was lying in the to-do. Anion has taken to his heels. And the blame, if blame there is,” said Cadfael honestly, “is mine. Edmund and I have been asking every man in the infirmary if he saw or heard anything of note about the sheriff’s chamber, any traffic in or out. It was but the same asking with Anion, indeed I was more cautious with him than with any when I spoke with him this morning in the stables. But for all that, no question, I’ve frightened him away.”

“Not necessarily a proof of guilt, to take fright and run,” said Hugh reasonably. “Men without privilege are apt to suppose they’ll be blamed for whatever’s done amiss. Is it certain he’s gone? A man just healed of a broken leg? Has he taken horse or mule? Nothing stolen?”

“Nothing. But there’s more to tell. Brother Rhys, whose bed is by the door, across the passage from where the sheriff lay, heard the door creak twice and the first time he says someone entered, or at least pushed the door open, who walked with a stick. The second time came later, and may have been the time the Welsh boy went in there. Rhys is hazy about time, and slept before and after, but both visitors came while the court was quiet – he says, while we of the house were in the refectory. With that, and now he’s run – even Edmund is taking it for granted Anion is your murderer. They’ll be crying his guilt in the town by morning.”

“But you are not so sure,” said Hugh, eyeing him steadily.

“Something he had on his mind, surely, something he saw as guilt, or knew others would call guilt, or he would not have run. But murderer …? Hugh, I have in that pill, box of mine certain proof of dyed wools and gold thread in whatever cloth was used to kill. Certain – whereas flight is uncertain proof of anything worse than fear. You know as I know that there was no such woven cloth anywhere in that room, or in the infirmary, or in the entire pale so far as we can discover. Whoever used it brought it with him. Where would Anion get hold of any such rich material? He can never have handled anything better than drab homespun and unbleached flax in his life. It casts great doubt on his guilt, though it does not utterly rule it out. It’s why I did not press him too far – or thought I had not!” he added ruefully.

Hugh nodded guarded agreement, and put the point away in his mind. “But for all that, tomorrow at dawn I must send out search parties between here and Wales, for surely that’s the way he’ll go. A border between him and his fear will be his first thought. If I can take him, I must and will. Then we may get out of him whatever it is he does know. A lame man cannot yet have got very far.”

“But remember the cloth. For those threads do not lie, though a mortal man may, guilty or innocent. The instrument of death is what we have to find.”

The hunt went forth at dawn, in small parties filtering through the woods by all the paths that led most directly to Wales; but they came back with the dark, empty-handed. Lame or no, Anion had contrived to vanish within half a day.

The tale had gone forth through the town and the Foregate by then, every shop had it and every customer, the ale, houses discussed it avidly, and the general agreement was that neither Hugh Beringar nor any other man need look further for the sheriff’s murderer. The dour cattle-man with a grudge had been heard going into and leaving the death-chamber, and on being questioned had fled. Nothing could be simpler.

And that was the day when they buried Gilbert Prestcote, in the tomb he had had made for himself in a transept of the abbey church. Half the nobility of the shire was there to do him honour, and Hugh Beringar with an escort of his officers, and the provost of Shrewsbury, Geoffrey Corviser, with his son Philip and his son’s wife Emma, and all the solid merchants of the town guild. The sheriff’s widow came in deep mourning, with her small son round-eyed and awed at the end of her arm. Music and ceremony, and the immensity of the vault, and the candles and the torches, all charmed and fascinated him; he was good as gold throughout the service.

And whatever personal enemies Gilbert Prestcote might have had, he had been a fair and trusted sheriff to this county in general, and the merchant princes were well aware of the relative security and justice they had enjoyed under him, where much of England suffered a far worse fate.

So in his passing Gilbert had his due, and his people’s weighty and deserved intercession for him with his God.

“No,” said Hugh, waiting for Cadfael as the brothers came out from Vespers that evening, “nothing as yet. Crippled or not, it seems young Anion has got clean away. I’ve set a watch along the border, in case he’s lying in covert this side till the hunt is called off, but I doubt he’s already over the dyke. And whether to be glad or sorry for it, that’s more than I know. I have Welsh in my own manor, Cadfael, I know what drives them, and the law that vindicates them where ours condemns. I’ve been a frontiersman all my life, tugged two ways.”

“You must pursue it,” said Cadfael with sympathy. “You have no choice.”

“No, none. Gilbert was my chief,” said Hugh, “and had my loyalty. Very little we two had in common, I don’t know that I even liked him overmuch. But respect – yes, that we had. His wife is taking her son back to the castle tonight, with what little she brought here. I’m waiting now to conduct her.” Her stepdaughter was already departed with Sister Magdalen and the cloth-merchant’s daughter, to the solitude of Godric’s Ford. “He’ll miss his sister,” said Hugh, diverted into sympathy for the little boy.

“So will another,” said Cadfael, “when he hears of her going. And the news of Anion’s flight could not change her mind?”

“No, she’s marble, she’s damned him. Scold if you will,” said Hugh, wryly smiling, “but I’ve let fall the word in his ear already that she’s off to study the nun’s life. Let him stew for a while – he owes us that, at least. And I’ve accepted his parole, his and the other lad’s, Eliud. Either one of them has gone bail for himself and his cousin, not to stir a foot beyond the barbican, not to attempt escape, if I let them have the run of the wards. They’ve pledged their necks, each for the other. Not that I want to wring either neck, they suit very well as they are, untwisted, but no harm in accepting their pledges.”

“And I make no doubt,” said Cadfael, eyeing him closely, “that you have a very sharp watch posted on your gates, and a very alert watchman on your walls, to see whether either of the two, or which of the two, breaks and runs for it.”

“I should be ashamed of my stewardship,” said Hugh candidly, “if I had not.”

“And do they know, by this time, that a bastard Welsh cowman in the abbey’s service has cast his crutch and run for his life?”

“They know it. And what do they say? They say with one voice, Cadfael, that such a humble soul and Welsh into the bargain, without kin or privilege here in England, would run as soon as eyes were cast on him, sure of being blamed unless he could show he was a mile from the matter at the fatal time. And can you find fault with that? It’s what I said myself when you brought me the same news.”

“No fault,” said Cadfael thoughtfully. “Yet matter for consideration, would you not say? From the threatened to the threatened, that’s large grace.”