The Devils Novice (20 page)

“You’ve
left him safe?” asked Cadfael anxiously, but half-ashamed to doubt whatever
Brother Mark thought fit to do.

“There
are two good souls keeping an eye on him, but I think he will sleep. He has
unloaded his mind upon me, and here I discharge the burden,” said Brother Mark,
and he had the erect and simple solitude of a priest, standing small and plain
between them and Meriet. “He bids me say to Hugh Beringar that he must let this
prisoner go, for he never did that slaying with which he is charged. He bids me
say that he speaks of his own knowledge, and confesses to his own mortal sin,
for it was he who killed Peter Clemence. Shot him down in the woods, says Meriet,
more than three miles north of Aspley. And he bids me say also that he is
sorry, so to have disgraced his father’s house.”

He
stood fronting them, wide-eyed and open-faced as was his nature, and they
stared back at him with withdrawn and thoughtful faces. So simple an ending!
The son, passionate of nature and quick to act, kills, the father, upright and
austere yet jealous of his ancient honour, offers the sinner a choice between
the public contumely that will destroy his ancestral house, or the lifelong
penance of the cloister, and his father’s son prefers his personal purgatory to
shameful death, and the degradation of his family. And it could be so! It could
answer every question.

“But
of course,” said Brother Mark, with the exalted confidence of angels and
archangels, and the simplicity of children, “it is not true.”

“I
need not quarrel with what you say,” said Hugh mildly, after a long and
profound pause for thought, “if I ask you whether you speak only on belief in
Brother Meriet—for which you may feel you have good cause—or from knowledge by
proof? How do you know he is lying?”

“I
do know by what I know of him,” said Mark firmly, “but I have tried to put that
away. If I say he is no such person to shoot down a man from ambush, but rather
to stand square in his way and challenge him hand to hand, I am saying what I
strongly believe. But I was born humble, out of this world of honour, how
should I speak to it with certainty? No, I have tested him. When he told me
what he told me, I said to him that for his soul’s comfort he should let me
call our chaplain, and as a sick man make his confession to him and seek
absolution. And he would not do it,” said Mark, and smiled upon them. “At the
very thought he shook and turned away. When I pressed him, he was in great
agitation. For he can lie to me and to you, to the king’s law itself, for a
cause that seems to him good enough,” said Mark, “but he will not lie to his
confessor, and through his confessor to God.”

Chapter Ten

AFTER
LONG AND SOMBRE CONSIDERATION, Hugh said: “For the moment, it seems, this boy
will keep, whatever the truth of it. He is in his bed with a broken head, and
not likely to stir for a while, all the more if he believes we have accepted
what, for whatever cause, he wishes us to believe. Take care of him, Mark, and
let him think he has done what he set out to do. Tell him he can be easy about
this prisoner of ours, he is not charged, and no harm will come to him. But
don’t let it be put abroad that we’re holding an innocent man who is in no
peril of his life. Meriet may know it. Not a soul outside. For the common ear,
we have our murderer safe in hold.”

One
deceit partnered another deceit, both meant to some good end; and if it seemed
to Brother Mark that deceit ought not to have any place in the pilgrimage after
truth, yet he acknowledged the mysterious uses of all manner of improbable
devices in the workings of the purposes of God, and saw the truth reflected
even in lies. He would let Meriet believe his ordeal was ended and his
confession accepted, and Meriet would sleep without fears or hopes, without
dreams, but with the drear satisfaction of his voluntary sacrifice, and grow
well again to a better, an unrevealed world.

“I
will see to it,” said Mark, “that only he knows. And I will be his pledge that
he shall be at your disposal whenever you need him.”

“Good!
Then go back now to your patient. Cadfael and I will follow you very shortly.”

Mark
departed, satisfied, to trudge back through the town and out along the
Foregate. When he was gone, Hugh stood gazing eye to eye with Brother Cadfael,
long and thoughtfully. “Well?”

“It’s
a tale that makes excellent sense,” said Cadfael, “and a great part of it most
likely true. I am of Mark’s way of thinking, I do not believe the boy has
killed. But the rest of it? The man who caused that fire to be built and
kindled had force enough to get his men to do his will and keep his secret. A
man well-served, well-feared, perhaps even well-loved. A man who would neither
steal anything from the dead himself, nor allow any of his people to do so. All
committed to the fire. Those who worked for him respected and obeyed him.
Leoric Aspley is such a man, and in such a manner he might behave, if he
believed a son of his had murdered from ambush a man who had been a guest in
his house. There would be no forgiveness. If he protected the murderer from the
death due, it might well be for the sake of his name, and only to serve a
lifetime’s penance.”

He
was remembering their arrival in the rain, father and son, the one severe, cold
and hostile, departing without the kiss due between kinsmen, the other
submissive and dutiful, but surely against his nature, at once rebellious and
resigned. Feverish in his desire to shorten his probation and be imprisoned
past deliverance, but in his sleep fighting like a demon for his liberty. It
made a true picture. But Mark was absolute that Meriet had lied.

“It
lacks nothing,” said Hugh, shaking his head. “He has said throughout that it
was his own wish to take the cowl—so it might well be; good reason, if he was
offered no other alternative but the gallows. The death came there, soon after
leaving Aspley. The horse was taken far north and abandoned, so that the body
should be sought only well away from where the man was killed. But whatever
else the boy knows, he did not know that he was leading his gleaners straight
to the place where the bones would be found, and his father’s careful work
undone. I take Mark’s word for that, and by God, I am inclined to take Mark’s
word for the rest. But if Meriet did not kill the man, why should he so accept
condemnation and sentence? Of his own will!”

“There
is but one possible answer,” said Cadfael. “To protect someone else.”

“Then
you are saying that he knows who the murderer is.”

“Or
thinks he knows,” said Cadfael. “For there is veil on veil here hiding these
people one from another, and it seems to me that Aspley, if he has done this to
his son, believes he knows beyond doubt that the boy is guilty. And Meriet,
since he has sacrificed himself to a life against which his whole spirit
rebels, and now to shameful death, must be just as certain of the guilt of that
other person whom he loves and desires to save. But if Leoric is so wildly
mistaken, may not Meriet also be in error?”

“Are
we not all?” said Hugh, sighing. “Come, let’s go and see this sleep-walking
penitent first, and—who knows?—if he’s bent on confession, and has to lie to
accomplish it, he may let slip something much more to our purpose. I’ll say
this for him, he was not prepared to let another poor devil suffer in his
place, or even in the place of someone dearer to him than himself. Harald has
fetched him out of his silence fast enough.”

Meriet
was sleeping when they came to Saint Giles. Cadfael stood beside the pallet in
the barn, and looked down upon a face strangely peaceful and childlike,
exorcised of its devil. Meriet’s breathing was long and deep and sweet. It was
believable that here was a tormented sinner who had made confession and
cleansed his breast, and found all things thereafter made easy. But he would
not repeat his confession to a priest. Mark had a very powerful argument there.

“Let
him rest,” said Hugh, when Mark, though reluctantly, would have awakened the
sleeper. “We can wait.” And wait they did, the better part of an hour, until
Meriet stirred and opened his eyes. Even then Hugh would have him tended and
fed and given drink before he consented to sit by him and hear what he had to
say. Cadfael had looked him over, and found nothing wrong that a few days of
rest would not mend, though he had turned an ankle and foot under him in
falling, and would find it difficult and painful to put any weight upon it for
some time. The blow on the head had shaken his wits sadly, and his memory of
recent days might be hazy, though he held fast to the one more distant memory
which he so desired to declare. The gash crossing his temple would soon heal;
the bleeding had already stopped.

His
eyes, in the dim light within the barn, shone darkly green, staring up dilated
and intent. His voice was faint but resolute, as he repeated with slow emphasis
the confession he had made to Brother Mark. He was bent on convincing, very
willing and patient in dredging up details. Listening, Cadfael had to admit to
himself, with dismay, that Meriet was indeed utterly convincing. Hugh must also
be thinking so.

He
questioned, slowly and evenly: “You watched the man ride away, with your father
in attendance, and made no demur. Then you went out with your bow—mounted or
afoot?”

“Mounted,”
said Meriet with fiery readiness; for if he had gone on foot, how could he have
circled at speed, and been ahead of the rider after his escort had left him to
return home? Cadfael remembered Isouda saying that Meriet had come home late
that afternoon with his father’s party, though he had not ridden out with them.
She had not said whether he was mounted when he returned or walking; that was
something worth probing.

“With
murderous intent?” Hugh pursued mildly. “Or did this thing come on you
unawares? For what can you have had against Master Clemence to warrant his
death?”

“He
had made far too free with my brother’s bride,” said Meriet. “I did hold it
against him—a priest, playing the courtier, and so sure of his height above us.
A manorless man, with only his learning and his patron’s name for lands and
lineage, and looking down upon us, as long rooted as we are. On grievance for
my brother…”

“Yet
your brother made no move to take reparation,” said Hugh.

“He
was gone to the Lindes, to Roswitha… He had escorted her home the night before,
and I am sure he had quarrelled with her. He went out early, he did not even
see the guest leave, he went to make good whatever was ill between those two…
He never came home,” said Meriet, clearly and firmly, “until late in the
evening, long after all was over.”

True,
by Isouda’s account, thought Cadfael. After all was over, and Meriet brought
home a convicted murderer, to reappear only after he had chosen of his own will
to ask admittance to the cloister, and was prepared to go forth on his parole,
and so declare himself, an oblate to the abbey, fully aware of what he was
doing. So he had told his very acute and perceptive playmate, in calm control
of himself. He was doing what he wished to do.

“But
you, Meriet, you rode ahead of Master Clemence. With murder in mind?”

“I
had not thought,” said Meriet, hesitating for the first time. “I went alone…
But I was angry.”

“You
went in haste,” said Hugh, pressing him, “if you overtook the departing guest,
and by a roundabout way, if you passed and intercepted him, as you say.”

Meriet
stretched and stiffened in his bed, large eyes straining on his questioner. He
set his jaw. “I did hasten, though not for any deliberate purpose. I was in
thick covert when I was aware of him riding towards me, in no hurry. I drew and
loosed upon him. He fell…” Sweat broke on the pallid brow beneath his bandages.
He closed his eyes.

“Let
be!” said Cadfael, quiet at Hugh’s shoulder. “He has enough.”

“No,”
said Meriet strongly. “Let me make an end. He was dead when I stooped over him.
I had killed him. And my father took me so, red-handed. The hounds—he had
hounds with him—they scented me and brought him down upon me. He has covered up
for my sake, and for the sake of an honoured name, what I did, but for whatever
he may have done that is unlawful, to keep me man alive, I take the blame upon
me, for I am the cause of it. But he would not condone. He promised me cover
for my forfeit life, if I would accept banishment from the world and take
myself off into the cloister. What was done afterwards no one ever told me. I
did by my own will and consent accept my penalty. I even hoped… and I have
tried… But set down all that was done to my account, and let me pay all.”

He
thought he had done, and heaved a great sigh out of him, Hugh also sighed and
stirred as if about to rise, but then asked carelessly: “At what hour was this,
Meriet, that your father happened upon you in the act of murder?”

“About
three in the afternoon,” said Meriet indifferently, falling headlong into the
trap.

“And
Master Clemence set out soon after Prime? It took him a great while,” said Hugh
with deceptive mildness, “to ride somewhat over three miles.”

Meriet’s
eyes, half-closed in weariness and release from tension, flared wide open in
consternation. It cost him a convulsive struggle to master voice and face, but
he did it, hoisting up out of the well of his resolution and dismay a credible
answer. “I cut my story too short, wanting it done. When this thing befell it
cannot have been even mid-morning. But I ran from him and let him lie, and wandered
the woods in dread of what I’d done. But in the end I went back. It seemed
better to hide him in the thick coverts off the pathways, where he could lie
undiscovered, and I might come by night and bury him. I was in terror, but in
the end I went back. I am not sorry,” said Meriet at the end, so simply that
somewhere in those last words there must be truth. But he had never shot down
any man. He had come upon a dead man lying in his blood, just as he had balked
and stood aghast at the sight of Brother Wolstan bleeding at the foot of the
appletree. A three-mile ride from Aspley, yes, thought Cadfael with certainty,
but well into the autumn afternoon, when his father was out with hawk and
hound. “I am not sorry,” said Meriet again, quite gently. “It’s good that I was
taken so. Better still that I have now told you all.”