Brother Cadfael's Penance bc-19 Read online

  He was speaking almost in the same terms as the Earl of Leicester, and yet his remedy was very different. Robert Bossu was trying to bring together all the wisest and most moderate minds from both factions, to force a compromise which would stop the fighting by agreement. Philip saw no possibility but to end the contention with a total victory, and after eight wasteful years cared very little which faction triumphed, provided the triumph brought back some semblance of law and normality to England. And as Philip was branded traitor and turncoat, so, some day, when he withheld his powers from battle to force his king’s hand, would Robert Bossu be branded. But he and his kind might be the saviours of a tormented land, none the less.

  “You are speaking now of king and empress,” said Cadfael, “and what you say I understand, better than I did until this moment. But I am speaking of my son Olivier. I am offering you a price for him, the price you named. If you meant it, accept it. I do not think, whatever else I might think of you, that you go back on your bargains, bad or good.”

  “Wait!” said Philip, and raised a hand, but very tolerantly. “I said: perhaps a life. I am not committed by so qualified a declaration. And, forgive me, brother!, would you consider yourself fair exchange, old as you are, against his youth and strength? You appealed to me as a fairminded man, so do I turn to you.”

  “I see the imbalance,” said Cadfael. Not in age and beauty and vigour, however glaring that discrepancy might be, but in the passion of confident trust and affection that could never be adequately paid by the mild passing liking this man felt now for his challenger. When it came to the extreme of testing, surely those two friends had failed to match minds, and that was a disintegration that could never be forgiven, so absolute had been the expectation of understanding. “Nevertheless, I have offered you what you asked, and it is all that is mine to offer you. I cannot raise my stake. There is no more to give. Now be as honest, and admit to me, it is more than you expected.”

  “It is more,” said Philip. “I think, brother, you must allow me time. You come as a surprise to me. How could I know that Olivier had such a father? And if I asked you concerning this so strangely fathered son of yours, I doubt you would not tell me.”

  “I think,” said Cadfael, “that I would.”

  The dark eyes flared into amused interest. “Do you confide so easily?”

  “Not to every man,” said Cadfael, and saw the sparks burn down into a steady glow. And again there was a silence, that lay more lightly on the senses than the previous silences.

  “Let us leave this,” said Philip abruptly. “Unresolved, not abandoned. You came on behalf of two men. Speak of the second. You have things to argue for Yves Hugonin,”

  “What I have to argue for Yves Hugonin,” said Cadfael, “is that he had no part in the death of Brien de Soulis. Him you have altogether mistaken. First, for I know him, have known him from a child, as arrow-straight for his aim as any living man. I saw him, as you did not, not that time, I saw him when first he rode into the priory gate at Coventry, and saw de Soulis in his boldness, armed, and cried out on him for a turncoat and traitor, and laid hand to hilt against him, yes, but face to face before many witnesses. If he had killed, that would have been his way, not lurking in dark places, in ambush with a bared blade. Now consider the night of the man’s death. Yves Hugonin says that he came late to Compline, when the office had begun, and remained crowded into the last dark corner within the door, and so was first out to clear the way for the princes. He says that he stumbled in the dark over de Soulis’s body, and kneeled to see how bad was the man’s case, and called out to us to bring lights. And so was taken in all men’s sight with bloody hands. All which is patently true, whatever else you attribute to him. For you say he never was in the church, but had killed de Soulis, cleaned his sword and bestowed it safely and innocently in his lodging, where it should be, and returned in good time to cry the alarm in person over a dead man. But if that were true, why call to us at all? Why be there by the body? Why not elsewhere, in full communion with his fellows, surrounded by witnesses to his innocence and ignorance of evil?”

  “Yet it could be so,” said Philip relentlessly. “Men with limited time to cover their traces do not always choose the most infallible way. What do you object to my most bitter belief?”

  “A number of things. First, that same evening I examined Yves’ sword, which was sheathed and laid by as he had said. It is not easy to cleanse the last traces of blood from a grooved blade, and of such quests I have had experience. I found no blemish there. Second, after you were gone, with the bishop’s leave I examined de Soulis’s body. It was no sword that made that wound, no sword ever was made so lean and fine. A thin, sharp dagger, long enough to reach the heart. And a firm stroke, in deep and out clean before he could bleed. The flow of blood came later as he lay, he left the mark outlined on the flagstones under him. And now, third, tell me how his open enemy can have approached him so close, and de Soulis with sword and poniard ready to hand. He would have had his blade out as soon as he saw his adversary nearing, long before ever he came within dagger range. Is that good sense, or no?”

  “Good sense enough,” Philip allowed, “so far as it goes.”

  “It goes to the heart of the matter. Brien de Soulis bore arms, he had no mind to be present at Compline, he had another assignation that night. He waited in a carrel of the cloister, and came forth into the walk when he heard and saw his man approaching. A quiet time, with everyone else in the church, a time for private conference with no witnesses. Not with an avowed enemy, but with a friend, someone trusted, someone who could walk up to him confidently, never suspected of any evil intent, and stab him to the heart. And walked away and left him lying, for a foolish young man to stumble over, and yell his discovery to the night, and put his neck in a noose.”

  “His neck,” said Philip dryly, “is still unwrung. I have not yet determined what to do with him.”

  “And I am making your decision no easier, I trust. For what I tell you is truth, and you cannot but recognize it, whether you will or no. And there is more yet to tell, and though it does not remove from Yves Hugonin all cause for hating Brien de Soulis, it does open the door to many another who may have better cause to hate him even more. Even among some he may formerly have counted his friends.”

  “Go on,” said Philip equably. “I am still listening.”

  “After you were gone, under the bishop’s supervision we put together all that belonged to de Soulis, to deliver to his brother. He had with him his personal seal, as was to be expected. You know the badge?”

  “I know it. The swan and willow wands.”

  “But we found also another seal, and another device. Do you also know this badge?” He had drawn the rolled leaf out of the breast of his habit, and leaned to flatten it upon the table, between Philip’s long muscular hands. “The original is with the bishop. Do you know it?”

  “Yes, I have seen it,” said Philip with careful detachment. “One of de Soulis’s captains in the Faringdon garrison used it. I knew the man, though not well. His own raising, a good company he had. Geoffrey FitzClare, a half-brother to Gilbert de Clare of Hertford, the wrong side the sheets.”

  “And you must have heard, I think, that Geoffrey FitzClare was thrown from his horse, and died of it, the day Faringdon was surrendered. He was said to have ridden for Cricklade during the night, after he had affixed his seal, like all the other captains who had their own followings within, to the surrender. He did not return. De Soulis and a few with him went out next day to look for him, and brought him home in a litter. Before night they told the garrison he was dead.”

  “I do know of this,” said Philip, his voice for the first time tight and wary. “A very ill chance. He never reached me. I heard of it only afterwards.”

  “And you were not expecting him? You had not sent for him?”

  Philip was frowning now, his level black brows knotted tightly above the deep eyes. “No. There was no need. De Soulis had full pow
ers. There is more to this. What is it you are saying?”

  “I am saying that it was convenient he should die by accident so aptly, the day after his seal was added to the agreement that handed over Faringdon to King Stephen. If, indeed, he did not die in the night, before some other hand impressed his seal there. For there are those, and I have spoken with one of them, who will swear that Geoffrey FitzClare never would have consented to that surrender, had he still had voice to cry out or hand to lift and prevent. And if voice and hand had been raised against it, his men within, and maybe more than his would have fought on his side, and Faringdon would never have been taken.”

  “You are saying,” said Philip, brooding, “that his death was no accident. And that it was another, not he, who affixed that seal to the surrender with all the rest. After the man was dead.”

  “That is what I am saying. Since he would never have set it there himself, nor let it go into other hands while he lived. And his consent was essential, to convince the garrison. I think he died as soon as the thing was broached to him, and he condemned it. There was no time to lose.”

  “Yet they rode out next day, to look for him, and brought him back to Faringdon openly, before the garrison.”

  “Wrapped in cloaks, in a litter. No doubt his men saw him pass, saw the recognizable face plainly. But they never saw him close. They were never shown the body after they were told that he had died. A dead man in the night can very easily be carried out to be somewhere in hiding, against his open return next day. The postern that was opened to let the king’s negotiators in could as well let FitzClare’s dead body out, to some hiding-place in the woods. And how else, for what purpose,” said Cadfael heavily, “should FitzClare’s seal go with Brien de Soulis to Coventry, and be found in his saddlebag there.”

  Philip rose abruptly from his seat, and rounded the table sharply to pace across the room. He moved in silence, with a kind of contained violence, as if his mind was forcing his body into motion as the only means of relief from the smouldering turmoil within. He quartered the room like a prowling cat, and came to rest at length with clenched fists braced on the heavy chest in the darkest corner, his back turned to Cadfael and the source of light. His stillness was as tense as his pacing, and he was silent for long moments. When he turned, it was clear from the bright composure of his face that he had come to a reconciliation with everything he had heard.

  “I knew nothing of all this. If it is truth, as my blood in me says it is truth, I had no hand in it, nor never would have allowed it.”

  “I never thought it,” said Cadfael. “Whether the surrender was at your wish, no, at your decree!, I neither know nor ask, but no, you were not there, whatever was done was done at de Soulis’s orders. Perhaps by de Soulis’s hand. It would not be easy to get four other captains, with followings to be risked, to connive at murder. Better to draw him aside, man to man, and give out that he had been sent to confer with you at Cricklade, while one or two who had no objection to murder secretly conveyed away a dead man and the horse he was said to be riding on his midnight mission. And his seal was first on the vellum. No, you I never thought of as conniving at murder, whatever else I may have found within your scope. But FitzClare is dead, and de Soulis is dead, and you have not, I think, the reason you believed you had to mourn or avenge him. Nor any remaining cause to lay his death at the charge of a young man openly and honestly his enemy. There were many men in Faringdon who would be glad enough to avenge the murder of FitzClare. Who knows if some of them were also present at Coventry? He was well liked, and well served. And not every man of his following believed what he was told of that death.”

  “De Soulis would have been as ready for such as for Hugonin,” said Philip.

  “You think they would betray themselves as enemies? No, whoever set out to get close to him would take good care not to give any warning. But Yves had already cried out loud before the world his anger and enmity. No, yourself you know it, he would never have got within a sword’s reach, let alone a slender little knife. Set Yves Hugonin free,” said Cadfael, “and take me in my son’s stead.”

  Philip came back slowly to his place at the table, and sat down, and finding his book left open and unregarded, quietly closed it. He leaned his head between long hands, and fixed his unnerving eyes again on Cadfael’s face.

  “Yes,” he said, rather to himself than to Cadfael, “yes, there is the matter of your son Olivier. Let us not forget Olivier.” But his voice was not reassuring. “Let us see if the man I have known, I thought well, is the same as the son you have known. Never has he spoken of a father to me.”

  “He knows no more than his mother told him, when he was a child. I have told him nothing. Of his father he knows only a too kindly legend, coloured too brightly by affection.”

  “If I question too close, refuse me answers. But I feel a need to know. A son of the cloister?”

  “No,” said Cadfael, “a son of the Crusade. His mother lived and died in Antioch. I never knew I had left her a son until I met with him here in England, and he named her, mentioned times, left me in no doubt at all. The cloister came later.”

  “The Crusade!” Philip echoed. His eyes burned up into gold. He narrowed their brightness curiously upon Cadfael’s grizzled tonsure and lined and weathered face. “The Crusade that made a Christian kingdom in Jerusalem? You were there? Of all battles, surely the worthiest.”

  “The easiest to justify, perhaps,” Cadfael agreed ruefully. “I would not say more than that.”

  The bright, piercing gaze continued to weigh and measure and wonder, with a sudden personal passion, staring through Cadfael into far distances, beyond the fabled Midland Sea, into the legendary Frankish kingdoms of Outremer. Ever since the fall of Edessa Christendom had been uneasy in its hopes and fears for Jerusalem, and popes and abbots were stirring in their sleep to consider their beleaguered capital, and raise their voices like clarions calling to the defence of the Church. Philip was not yet so old but he could quicken to the sound of the trumpet.

  “How did it come that you encountered him here, all unknown? And once only?”

  “Twice, and by God’s grace there will be a third time,” said Cadfael stoutly. He told, very briefly, of the circumstances of both those meetings.

  “And still he does not know you for his sire? You never told him?”

  “There is no need for him to know. No shame there, but no pride, either. His course is nobly set, why cause any tremor to deflect or shake it?”

  “You ask nothing, want nothing of him?” The perilous bitterness was back in Philip’s voice, husky with the pain of all he had hoped for from his own father, and failed to receive. Too fierce a love, perverted into too fierce a hate, corroded all his reflections on the anguished relationship between fathers and sons, too close and too separate, and never in balance.

  “He owes me nothing,” said Cadfael. “Nothing but such friendship and liking as we have deserved of each other by free will and earned trust, not by blood.”

  “And yet it is by blood,” said Philip softly, “that you conceive you owe him so much, even to a life. Brother, I think you are telling me something I have learned to know all too well, though it took me years to master it. We are born of the fathers we deserve, and they engender the sons they deserve. We are our own penance and theirs. The first murderous warfare in the world, we are told, was between two brothers, but the longest and the bitterest is between fathers and sons. Now you offer me the father for the son, and you are offering me nothing that I want or need, in a currency I cannot spend. How could I ease my anger on you? I respect you, I like you, there are even things you might ask of me that I would give you with goodwill. But I will not give you Olivier.”

  It was a dismissal. There was no more speech between them that night. From the chapel, hollowly echoing along the corridors of stone, the bell chimed for Compline.

  Chapter Nine.

  CADFAEL ROSE at midnight, waking by long habit even without the matins bell, a
nd being awake, recalled that he was lodged in a tiny cell close to the chapel. That gave him further matter for thought, though he had not considered earlier that it might have profound implications. He had declared himself honestly enough in his apostasy to Philip, and Philip, none the less, had lodged him here, where a visiting cleric might have expected such a courtesy. And being so close, and having been so considerately housed there, why should he not at least say Matins and Lauds before the altar? He had not surrendered or compromised his faith, however he had forfeited his rights and privileges.

  The very act of kneeling in solitude, in the chill and austerity of stone, and saying the familiar words almost silently, brought him more of comfort and reassurance than he had dared to expect. If grace was not close to him, why should he rise from his knees so cleansed of the doubts and anxieties of the day, and clouded by no least shadow of the morrow’s uncertainties?

  He was in the act of withdrawing, and a pace or two from the open door, which he had refrained from closing in case it should creak loudly enough to wake others, when one who was awake, and as silent as he, looked in upon him. The faint light showed them to each other clearly enough.

  “For an apostate,” said Philip softly, “you keep the hours very strictly, brother.” He wore a heavy furred gown over his nakedness, and walked barefooted on the stone. “Oh, no, you did not disturb me. I sat late tonight. For that you may take the blame if you wish.”

  “Even a recusant,” said Cadfael, “may cling by the hems of grace. But I am sorry if I have kept you from sleep.”

  “There may be better than sorrow in it for you,” said Philip. “We will speak again tomorrow. I trust you have all you need here, and lie at least as softly as in the dortoir at home? There is no great difference between the soldier’s bed and the monk’s, or so they tell me. I have tried only the one, since I came to manhood.”