Monk's Hood (12 page)
Authors: Ellis Peters
The
pair of them, soiled and tired and harried as they were, stared in horrified
understanding at last, and drew together on the bench as threatened litters of
young in burrow and nest huddle for comfort. Years bordering on manhood dropped
from them; they were children indeed, frightened and hunted. Edwy said
strenuously: “He didn’t know! All they said was, dead, murdered. But so
quickly! He ran out, and there was nobody there but those of the house. He
never even saw any dish waiting…”
“I
did know,” said Edwin, “about the dish. She told us, I knew it was there. But
what did it matter to me? I only wanted to go home…”
“Hush,
now, hush!” said Cadfael chidingly. “You speak to a man convinced. I’ve made my
own tests, all I need. Now sit quiet, and trouble your minds no more about me,
I know you have nothing to repent.” That was much, perhaps, to say of any man,
but at least these two had nothing on their souls but the ordinary
misdemeanours of the energetic young. And now that he had leisure to look at
them without looking for prevarication or deceit, he was able to notice other
things. “You must give me a little while for thought, but the time need not be
wasted. Tell me, has either of you eaten, all these hours? The one of you, I
know, made a very poor dinner.”
They
had been far too preoccupied with worse problems, until then, to notice hunger,
but now that they had an ally, however limited in power, and shelter, however
temporary, they were suddenly and instantly ravenous.
“You’ll
not give him up?” blurted Edwy round a mouthful of oat-cake, instantly alarmed.
“That
I certainly will not do.” Yet he might well have urged the boy to give himself
up, stand fast on his innocence, and trust in justice, if he had had complete
trust himself in the law as being infallibly just. But he had not. The law
required a culprit, and the sergeant was comfortably convinced that he was in
pursuit of the right quarry, and would not easily be persuaded to look further.
Cadfael’s proofs he had not witnessed, and would shrug off contemptuously as an
old fool fondly believing a cunning young liar.
“I
can’t go home,” said Edwin, the solemnity of his face in no way marred by one
cheek distended with apple, and a greenish smudge from some branch soiling the
other. “And I can’t go to my mother’s. I should only be bringing worse trouble
on her.”
“For
tonight you can stay here, the pair of you, and keep my little brazier fed.
There are clean sacks under the bench, and you’ll be warm and safe enough. But
in the day there’s coming and going here from time to time, we must have you
out early, the one of you for home, the other… Well, we’ll hope you need stay
hidden only a matter of a few days. As well close here at the abbey as
anywhere, they’ll hardly look for you here.” He considered, long and
thoughtfully. The lofts over the stables were always warmed from the hay, and
the bodies of the horses below, but too many people came and went there, and
with travellers on the roads before the festival, there might well be servants
required to sleep there above their beasts. But outside the enclave, at one corner
of
the open space used for the horse-fairs and the abbey’s
summer fair, there was a barn where beasts brought to market could be folded
before sale, and the loft held fodder for them. The barn belonged to the abbey,
but was open to all travelling merchants. At this time of year its visitors
would be few or none, and the loft well filled with good hay and straw, a
comfortable enough bed for a few nights. Moreover, should some unforeseen
accident threaten danger to the fugitive, escape from outside the walls would
be easier than from within. Though God forbid it should come to that!
“Yes,
I know a place that will serve, we’ll get you to it early in the morning, and
see you well stocked with food and ale for the day. You’ll need patience, I
know, to lie by, but that you must endure.”
“Better,”
said Edwin fervently, “than falling into the sheriff’s clutches, and I do thank
you. But… how am I bettered by this, in the end? I can’t lie hidden for ever.”
“There’s
but one way,” said Cadfael emphatically, “that you can be bettered in this
affair, lad, and that’s by uncovering the man who did the thing you’re charged
with doing. And since you can hardly undertake that yourself, you must leave
the attempt to me. What I can do, I’ll do, for my own honour as well as for
yours. Now I must leave you and go to Matins. In the morning before Prime I’ll
come and see you safely out of here.”
Brother
Mark had done his part, the habit was there, rolled up beneath Brother
Cadfael’s bed. He wore it under his own, when he rose an hour before the bell
for Prime, and left the dortoir by the night stairs and the church. Winter
dawns come very late, and this night had been moonless and overcast; the
darkness as he crossed the court from cloister to gardens was profound, and
there was no one else stirring. There was perfect cover for Edwy to withdraw
unobserved through the church and the parish door, as he had come, and make his
chilly way to the bridge, to cross into Shrewsbury as soon as the gate was
opened. Doubtless he knew his own town well enough to reach his home by ways
devious enough to baffle
detection by the authorities, even if
they were watching the shop.
As
for Edwin, he made a demure young novice, once inside the black habit and the
sheltering cowl. Cadfael was reminded of Brother Mark, when he was new, wary
and expecting nothing but the worst of his enforced vocation; the springy,
defensive gait, the too tightly folded hands in the wide sleeves, the
flickering side-glances, wild and alert for trouble. But there was something in
this young thing’s performance that suggested a perverse enjoyment, too; for
all the danger to himself, and his keen appreciation of it, he could not help
finding pleasure in this adventure. And whether he would manage to behave
himself discreetly in hiding, and bear the inactive hours, or be tempted to
wander and take risks, was something Cadfael preferred not to contemplate.
Through
cloister and church, and out at the west door, outside the walls, they went
side by side, and turned right, away from the gatehouse. It was still fully
dark.
“This
road leads in the end to London, doesn’t it?” whispered Edwin from within his
raised cowl.
“It
does so. But don’t try leaving that way, even if you should have to run, which
God forbid, for they’ll have a check on the road out at St. Giles. You be
sensible and lie still, and give me a few days, at least, to find out what I
may.”
The
wide triangle of the horse-fair ground gleamed faintly pallid with light frost.
The abbey barn loomed at one corner, close to the enclave wall. The main door
was closed and fastened, but at the rear there was an outside staircase to the
loft, and a small door at the top of it. Early traffic was already abroad,
though thin at this dark hour, and no one paid attention to two monks of St. Peter’s
mounting to their own loft. The door was locked, but Cadfael had brought the
key, and let them in to a dry, hay-scented darkness.
“The
key I can’t leave you, I must restore it, but neither will I leave you locked
in. The door must stay unfastened for you until you may come forth freely. Here
you have a loaf, and beans, and curd, and a few apples, and here’s a flask of
small ale. Keep the gown, you may need it for warmth in the night,
but the hay makes a kindly bed. And when I come to you, as I will, you may know
me at the door by this knock… Though no one else is likely to come. Should
anyone appear without my knock, you have hay enough to hide in.”
The
boy stood, suddenly grave and a little forlorn. Cadfael reached a hand, and put
back the cowl from the shock-head of curls, and there was just filtering
dawn-light enough to show him the shape of the solemn oval face, all steady,
dilated, confronting eyes.
“You
have not slept much. If I were you, I’d burrow deep and warm, and sleep the day
out. I won’t desert you.”
“I
know,” said Edwin firmly. He knew that even together they might avail nothing,
but at least he knew he was not alone. He had a loyal family, with Edwy as
link, and he had an ally within the enclave. And he had one other thinking of
him and agonising about him. He said in a voice that lost its firmness only for
one perilous instant, and stubbornly recovered: “Tell my mother I did not ever
do him or wish him harm.”
“Fool
child,” said Cadfael comfortably, “I’ve been assured of that already, and who
do you suppose told me, if not your mother?” The very faint light was magically
soft, and the boy stood at that stage between childhood and maturity when his
face, forming but not yet formed, might have been that of boy or girl, woman or
man. “You’re very like her,” said Cadfael, remembering a girl not much older
than this sprig, embraced and kissed by just such a clandestine light, her
parents believing her abed and asleep in virginal solitude.
At
this pass he had momentarily forgotten all the women he had known between, east
and west, none of them, he hoped and believed, left feeling wronged. “I’ll be
with you before night,” he said, and withdrew to the safety of the winter air
outside.
Good
God, he thought with reverence, making his way back by the parish door in good
time for Prime, that fine piece of young flesh, as raw and wild and faulty as
he is, he might
have been mine! He and the other, too, a son
and a grandson both! It was the first and only time that ever he questioned his
vocation, much less regretted it, and the regret was not long. But he did
wonder if somewhere in the world, by the grace of Arianna, or Bianca, or
Mariam, or—were there one or two others as well loved here and there, now
forgotten?—he had left printings of himself as beautiful and formidable as this
boy of Richildis’s bearing and another’s getting.
IT
WAS NOW IMPERATIVE TO FIND THE MURDERER, otherwise the boy could not emerge
from hiding and take up his disrupted life. And that meant tracing in detail
the passage of the ill-fated dish of partridge from the abbot’s kitchen to
Gervase Bonel’s belly. Who had handled it? Who could have tampered with it?
Since Prior Robert, in his lofty eminence within the abbot’s lodging, had
eaten, appreciated and digested the rest of it without harm, clearly it had
been delivered to him in goodwill and in good condition. And he, certainly
without meddling, had delivered it in the same condition to his cook.
Before
High Mass, Cadfael went to the abbot’s kitchen. He was one of a dozen or so
people within these walls who were not afraid of Brother Petrus. Fanatics are
always frightening, and Brother Petrus was a fanatic, not for his religion or
his vocation, those he took for granted, but for his art. His dedicated fire
tinted black hair and black eyes, scorching both with a fiery red. His northern
blood boiled like his own cauldron. His temper, barbarian from the borders, was
as hot as his own oven. And as hotly as he loved Abbot Heribert, for the same reasons
he detested Prior Robert.
When
Cadfael walked in upon him, he was merely surveying the day’s battlefield, and
mustering his army of pans,
pots, spits and dishes, with
less satisfaction than the exercise should have provided, because it was
Robert, and not Heribert, who would consume the result of his labours. But for
all that, he could not relax his hold on perfection.
“That
partridge!” said Petrus darkly, questioned on the day’s events. “As fine a bird
as ever I saw, not the biggest, but the best-fed and plumpest, and could I have
dressed it for my abbot, I would have made him a masterwork. Yes, this prior
comes in and bids me set aside a portion—for one only, mark!—to be sent to the
guest at the house by the millpond, with his compliments. And I did it. I made
it the best portion, in one of Abbot Heribert’s own dishes. My dishes, says
Robert! Did anyone else here touch it? I tell you, Cadfael, the two I have here
know me, they do what I say, and let all else ride. Robert? He came in to give
his orders and sniff at my pan, but it was all in one pan then, it was only
after he left my kitchen I set aside the dish for Master Bonel. No, take it as
certain, none but myself touched that dish until it left here, and that was
close on the dinner hour, when the manservant—Aelfric, is it?—brought his
tray.”
“How
do you find this man Aelfric?” asked Cadfael. “You’re seeing him daily.”
“A
surly fellow, or at least a mute one,” said Petrus without animosity, “but
keeps exact time, and is orderly and careful.”
So
Richildis had said, perhaps even to excess, and with intent to aggrieve his
master.
“I
saw him crossing the court with his load that day. The dishes were covered, he
has but two hands, and certainly he did not halt this side the gatehouse, for I
saw him go out.”
