The Devil's Novice Read online

  Chapter 9

  FROST SET IN THAT NIGHT, heralding a week of hard weather. No snow fell, but a blistering east wind scoured the hills, wild birds ventured close to human habitations to pick up scraps of food, and even the woodland foxes came skulking a mile closer to the town. And so did some unknown human predator who had been snatching the occasional hen from certain outlying runs, and now and then a loaf of bread from a kitchen. Complaints began to be brought in to the town provost of thefts from the garden stores outside the walls, and to the castle of poultry taken from homesteads at the edge of the Foregate, and not by foxes or other vermin. One of the foresters from the Long Forest brought in a tale of a gutted deer lost a month ago, with evidence enough that the marauder was in possession of a good knife. Now the cold was driving someone living wild nearer to the town, where nights could be spent warmer in byre or barn than in the bleak woods.

  King Stephen had detained his sheriff of Shropshire in attendance about his person that autumn, after the usual Michaelmas accounting, and taken him with him in the company now paying calculated courtesies to the earl of Chester and William of Roumare in Lincoln, so that this matter of the henhouse marauder, along with all other offences against the king’s peace and good order, fell into Hugh’s hands. “As well!” said Hugh, “for I’d just as lief keep the Clemence affair mine without interference, now it’s gone so far.”

  He was well aware that he had not too much time left in which to bring it to a just end single-handed, for if the king meant to be back in Westminster for Christmas, then the sheriff might return to his shire in a very few days. And certainly this wild man’s activities seemed to be centred on the eastern fringe of the forest, which was engaging Hugh’s interest already for a very different reason.

  In a country racked by civil war, and therefore hampered in keeping ordinary law and order, everything unaccountable was being put down to outlaws living wild; but for all that, now and then the simplest explanation turns out to be the true one. Hugh had no such expectations in this case, and was greatly surprised when one of his sergeants brought in to the castle wards in triumph the thief who had been living off the more unwary inhabitants of the Foregate. Not because of the man himself, who was very much what might have been expected, but because of the dagger and sheath which had been found on him, and were handed over as proof of his villainies. There were even traces of dried blood, no doubt from someone’s pullet or goose, engrained in the grooved blade.

  It was a very elegant dagger, with rough gems in the hilt, so shaped as to be comfortable to the hand, and its sheath of metal covered with tooled leather had been blackened and discoloured by fire, the leather frayed away for half its length from the tip. An end of thin leather strap still adhered to it. Hugh had seen the loop from which it, or its fellow, should have depended.

  In the bleak space of the inner ward he jerked his head towards the anteroom of the hall, and said: “Bring him within.” There was a good fire in there, and a bench to sit on. “Take off his chains,” said Hugh, after one look at the wreck of a big man, “and let him sit by the fire. You may keep by him, but I doubt if he’ll give you any trouble.”

  The prisoner could have been an imposing figure, if he had still had flesh and sinew on his long, large bones, but he was shrunken by starvation, and with nothing but rags on him in this onset of winter. He could not be old, his eyes and his shock of pale hair were those of a young man, his bones, however starting from his flesh, moved with the live vigour of youth. Close to the fire, warmed after intense cold, he flushed and dilated into something nearer approaching his proper growth. But his face, blue-eyed, hollow-cheeked, stared in mute terror upon Hugh. He was like a wild thing in a trap, braced taut, waiting for a bolthole. Ceaselessly he rubbed at his wrists, just loosed from the heavy chains.

  “What is your name?” asked Hugh, so mildly that the creature stared and froze, afraid to understand such a tone.

  “What do men call you?” repeated Hugh patiently.

  “Harald, my lord. I’m named Harald.” The large frame produced a skeletal sound, deep but dry and remote. He had a cough that perforated his speech uneasily, and a name that had once belonged to a king, and that within the memory of old men still living, men of his own fair colouring.

  “Tell me how you came by this thing, Harald. For it’s a rich man’s weapon, as you must know. See the craftsmanship of it, and the jeweller’s work. Where did you find such a thing?”

  “I didn’t steal it,” said the wretch, trembling. “I swear I didn’t! It was thrown away, no one wanted it…”

  “Where did you find it?” demanded Hugh more sharply.

  “In the forest, my lord. There’s a place where they burn charcoal.” He described it, stammering and blinking, voluble to hold off blame. “There was a dead fire there, I took fuel from it sometimes, but I was afraid to stay so near the road. The knife was lying in the ashes, lost or thrown away. Nobody wanted it. And I needed a knife…” He shook, watching Hugh’s impassive face with frightened blue eyes. “It was not stealing… I never stole but to keep alive, my lord, I swear it.”

  He had not been a very successful thief, even so, for he had barely kept body and soul together. Hugh regarded him with detached interest, and no particular severity.

  “How long have you been living wild?”

  “Four months it must be, my lord. But I never did violence, nor stole anything but food. I needed a knife for my hunting…”

  Ah, well, thought Hugh, the king can afford a deer here and there. This poor devil needs it more than Stephen does, and Stephen in his truest mood would give it to him freely. Aloud he said: “A hard life for a man, come wintertime. You’ll do better indoors with us for a while, Harald, and feed regularly, if not on venison.” He turned to the sergeant, who was standing warily by. “Lock him away. Let him have blankets to wrap him. And see to it he eats—but none too much to start with or he’ll gorge and die on us.” He had known it happen among the wretched creatures in flight the previous winter from the storming of Worcester, starving on the road and eating themselves to death when they came to shelter. “And use him well!” said Hugh sharply as the sergeant hauled up his prisoner. “He’ll not stand rough handling, and I want him. Understood?”

  The sergeant understood it as meaning this was the wanted murderer, and must live to stand his trial and take his ceremonial death. He grinned, and abated his hold on the bony shoulder he gripped. “I take your meaning, my lord.”

  They were gone, captor and captive, off to a securely locked cell where the outlaw Harald, almost certainly a runaway villein, and probably with good reason, could at least be warmer than out in the woods, and get his meals, rough as they might be, brought to him without hunting.

  Hugh completed his daily business about the castle, and then went off to find Brother Cadfael in his workshop, brewing some aromatic mixture to soothe ageing throats through the first chills of the winter. Hugh sat back on the familiar bench against the timber wall, and accepted a cup of one of Cadfael’s better wines, kept for his better acquaintances.

  “Well, we have our murderer safely under lock and key,” he announced, straight-faced, and recounted what had emerged. Cadfael listened attentively, for all he seemed to have his whole mind on his simmering syrup.

  “Folly!” he said then, scornfully. His brew was bubbling too briskly, he lifted it to the side of the brazier.

  “Of course folly,” agreed Hugh heartily. “A poor wretch without a rag to his covering or a crust to his name, kill a man and leave him his valuables, let alone his clothes? They must be about of a height, he would have stripped him naked and been glad of such cloth. And build the clerk single-handed into that stack of timber? Even if he knew how such burnings are managed, and I doubt if he does… No, it is beyond belief. He found the dagger, just as he says. What we have here is some poor soul pushed so far by a heavy-handed lord that he’s run for it. And too timid, or too sure of his lord’s will to pursue him, to risk walking in
to the town and seeking work. He’s been loose four months, picking up what food he could where he could.”

  “You have it all clear enough, it seems,” said Cadfael, still brooding over his concoction, though it was beginning to settle in the pot, gently hiccuping. “What is it you want of me?”

  “My man has a cough, and a festered wound on his forearm, I judge a dog’s bite, somewhere he lifted a hen. Come and sain it for him, and get out of him whatever you can, where he came from, who is his master, what is his trade. We’ve room for good craftsmen of every kind in the town, as you know, and have taken in several, to our gain and theirs. This may well be another as useful.”

  “I’ll do that gladly,” said Cadfael, turning to look at his friend with a very shrewd eye. “And what has he to offer you in exchange for a meal and a bed? And maybe a suit of clothes, if you had his inches, as by your own account you have not. I’d swear Peter Clemence could have topped you by a hand’s length.”

  “This fellow certainly could,” allowed Hugh, grinning. “Though sidewise even I could make two of him as he is now. But you’ll see for yourself, and no doubt be casting an eye over all your acquaintance to find a man whose cast-offs would fit him. As for what use I have for him, apart from keeping him from starving to death—my sergeant is already putting it about that our wild man is taken, and I’ve no doubt he won’t omit the matter of the dagger. No need to frighten the poor devil worse than he’s been frightened already by charging him, but if the world outside has it on good authority that our murderer is safe behind bars, so much the better. Everyone can breathe more freely—notably the murderer. And a man off his guard, as you said, may make a fatal slip.”

  Cadfael considered and approved. So desirable an ending, to have an outlaw and a stranger, who mattered to nobody, blamed for whatever evil was done locally; and one week now to pass before the wedding party assembled, all with minds at ease.

  “For that stubborn lad of yours at Saint Giles,” said Hugh very seriously, “knows what happened to Peter Clemence, whether he had any hand in it, or no.”

  “Knows,” said Brother Cadfael, equally gravely, “or thinks he knows.”

  *

  He went up through the town to the castle that same afternoon, bespoken by Hugh from the abbot as healer even to prisoners and criminals. He found the prisoner Harald in a cell at least dry, with a stone bench to lie on, and blankets to soften it and wrap him from the cold, and that was surely Hugh’s doing. The opening of the door upon his solitude occasioned instant mute alarm, but the appearance of a Benedictine habit both astonished and soothed him, and to be asked to show his hurts was still deeper bewilderment, but softened into wonder and hope. After long loneliness, where the sound of a voice could mean nothing but threat, the fugitive recovered his tongue rustily but gratefully, and ended in a flood of words like floods of tears, draining and exhausting him. After Cadfael left him he stretched and eased into prodigious sleep.

  Cadfael reported to Hugh before leaving the castle wards.

  “He’s a farrier, he says a good one. It may well be true, it is the only source of pride he has left. Can you use such? I’ve dressed his bite with a lotion of hound’s-tongue, and anointed a few other cuts and grazes he has. I think he’ll do well enough. Let him eat little but often for a day or two or he’ll sicken. He’s from some way south, by Gretton. He says his lord’s steward took his sister against her will, and he tried to avenge her. He was not good at murder,” said Cadfael wryly, “and the ravisher got away with a mere graze. He may be better at farriery. His lord sought his blood and he ran—who could blame him?”

  “Villein?” asked Hugh resignedly.

  “Surely.”

  “And sought, probably vindictively. Well, they’ll have a vain hunt if they hunt him into Shrewsbury castle, we can hold him securely enough. And you think he tells truth?”

  “He’s too far gone to lie,” said Cadfael. “Even if lying came easily, and I think this is a simple soul who leans to truth. Besides, he believes in my habit. We have still a reputation, Hugh, God send we may deserve it.”

  “He’s within a charter town, if he is in prison,” said Hugh with satisfaction, “and it would be a bold lord who would try to take him from the king’s hold. Let his master rejoice in thinking the poor wretch held for murder, if that gives him pleasure. We’ll put it about, then, that our murderer’s taken, and watch for what follows.”

  *

  The news went round, as news does, from gossip to gossip, those within the town parading their superior knowledge to those without, those who came to market in town or Foregate carrying their news to outer villages and manors. As the word of Peter Clemence’s disappearance had been blown on the wind, and after it news of the discovery of his body in the forest, so did every breeze spread abroad the word that his killer was already taken and in prison in the castle, found in possession of the dead man’s dagger, and charged with his murder. No more mystery to be mulled over in taverns and on street-corners, no further sensations to be hoped for. The town made do with what it had, and made the most of it. More distant and isolated manors had to wait a week or more for the news to reach them.

  The marvel was that it took three whole days to reach Saint Giles. Isolated though the hospice was, since its inmates were not allowed nearer the town for fear of contagion, somehow they usually seemed to get word of everything that was happening almost as soon as it was common gossip in the streets; but this time the system was slow in functioning. Brother Cadfael had given anxious thought to consideration of what effect the news was likely to have upon Meriet. But there was nothing to be done about that but to wait and see. No need to make a point of bringing the story to the young man’s ears deliberately, better let it make its way to him by the common talk, as to everyone else.

  So it was not until two lay servants came to deliver the hospital’s customary loaves from the abbey bakery, on the third day, that word of the arrest of the runaway villein Harald came to Meriet’s ears. By chance it was he who took in the great basket and unloaded the bread in the store, helped by the two bakery hands who had brought it. For his silence they made up in volubility.

  “You’ll be getting more and more beggars coming in for shelter, brother, if this cold weather sets in in earnest. Hard frost and an east wind again, no season to be on the roads.”

  Civil but taciturn, Meriet agreed that winter came hard on the poor.

  “Not that they’re all honest and deserving,” said the other, shrugging. “Who knows what you’re taking in sometimes? Rogues and vagabonds as likely as not, and who’s to tell the difference?”

  “There’s one you might have got this week past that you can well do without,” said his fellow, “for you might have got a throat cut in the night, and whatever’s worth stealing made away with. But you’re safe from him, at any rate, for he’s locked up in Shrewsbury castle till he comes to his trial for murder.”

  “For killing a priest, at that! He’ll pay for it with his own neck, surely, but that’s poor reparation for a priest.”

  Meriet had turned, stiffly attentive, staring at them with frowning eyes. “For killing a priest? What priest? Who is this you speak of?”

  “What, have you not heard yet? Why, the bishop of Winchester’s chaplain that was found in the Long Forest. A wild man who’s been preying on the houses outside the town killed him. It’s what I was saying, with winter coming on sharp now you might have had him shivering and begging at your door here, and with the priest’s own dagger under his ragged coat ready for you.”

  “Let me understand you,” said Meriet slowly. “You say a man is taken for that death? Arrested and charged with it?”

  “Taken, charged, gaoled, and as good as hanged,” agreed his informant cheerfully. “That’s one you need not worry your head about, brother.”

  “What man is he? How did this come about?” asked Meriet urgently.

  They told him, in strophe and antistrophe, pleased to find someone who had not a
lready heard the tale.

  “And waste of time to deny, for he had the dagger on him that belonged to the murdered man. Found it, he said, in the charcoal hearth there, and a likely tale that makes.”

  Staring beyond them, Meriet asked, low-voiced: “What like is he, this fellow? A local man? Do you know his name?”

  That they could not supply, but they could describe him. “Not from these parts, some runaway living rough, a poor starving wretch, swears he’s never done worse than steal a little bread or an egg to keep himself alive, but the foresters say he’s taken their deer in his time. Thin as a fence-pale, and in rags, a desperate case…”

  They took their basket and departed, and Meriet went about his work in dead, cold silence all that day. A desperate case—yes, so it sounded. As good as hanged! Starved and runaway and living wild, thin to emaciation…

  He said no word to Brother Mark, but one of the brightest and most inquisitive of the children had stretched his ears in the kitchen doorway and heard the exchanges, and spread the news through the household with natural relish. Life in Saint Giles, however sheltered, could be tedious, it was none the worse for an occasional sensation to vary the routine of the day. The story came to Brother Mark’s ears. He debated whether to speak or not, watching the chill mask of Meriet’s face, and the inward stare of his hazel eyes. But at last he did venture a word.

  “You have heard, they have taken up a man for the killing of Peter Clemence?”

  “Yes,” said Meriet, leaden-voiced, and looked through him and far away.

  “If there is no guilt in him,” said Mark emphatically, “there will no harm come to him.”

  But Meriet had nothing to say, nor did it seem fitting to Mark to add anything more. Yet he did watch his friend from that moment with unobtrusive care, and fretted to see how utterly he had withdrawn into himself with this knowledge that seemed to work in him like poison.