An Excellent Mystery bc-11 Read online

  “Nothing of the other! The other’s gone, drowned, the Severn has taken him. And no alarm, no litter, not yet. Bear with me, Madog, for this is a desperate business, but if we tread carefully now we may come through it unscathed. Go back to them, and wait for me there. I’m coming with you as far as the town, then you go on to the hut, and I’ll come to you there as soon as I can. And never a word of this, never to any, for the sake of us all.”

  The rain had stopped by the time Cadfael turned in at the gate of Hugh’s house. Every roof glistened, every gutter streamed, as the grey remnants of cloud cleared from a sun now bright and benevolent, all its coppery malignancy gone down-river with the storm.

  “Hugh is still at the castle,” said Aline, surprised and pleased as she rose to meet him. “He has a visitor with him there-Nicholas Harnage is come back, he says with grim news, but he did not stay to confide it to me.”

  “He? He’s back?” Cadfael was momentarily distracted, even alarmed. “What can he have found, I wonder? And how wide will he have spread it already?” He shook the speculation away from him. “Well, that makes my business all the more urgent. Girl dear, it’s you I want! Had Hugh been here, I would have begged the loan of you of your lord in a proper civil fashion, but as things are… I need you for an hour or two. Will you ride with me in a good cause? We’ll need horses-one for you to go and return, and one for me to go further still-one of Hugh’s big fellows that can carry two at a pinch. Will you be my advocate, and see me back into good odour if I borrow such a horse? Trust me, the need is urgent.”

  “Hugh’s stables have always been open to you,” said Aline,”since ever we got to know you. And I’ll lend myself for any enterprise you tell me is urgent. How far have we to go?”

  “Not far. Over the western bridge and across Frankwell. I must ask the loan of some of your possessions, too,” said Cadfael.

  “Tell me what you want, and then you go and saddle the horses-Jehan is there, tell him you have my leave. And you can tell me what all this means and what I’m needed for on the way.”

  Adam Heriet looked up sharply and alertly when the door of his prison was opened at an unexpected hour of the early evening. He drew himself together with composure and caution when he saw who entered. He was practised and prepared in all the questions with which he had so far had to contend, but this promised or threatened something new. The bold oaken face the jeweller’s wife had so shrewdly observed served him well. He rose civilly in the presence of his betters, but with a formal stiffness and a blank countenance which suggested that he did not feel himself to be in any way inferior. The door closed behind them, though the key was not turned. There was no need, there would be a guard outside.

  “Sit, Adam! We have been showing some interest in your movements in Winchester, at the time you know of,” said Hugh mildly. “Would you care to add anything to what you’ve already told us? Or to change anything?”

  “No, my lord. I have told you what I did and where I went. There is no more to tell.”

  “Your memory may be faulty. All men are fallible. Can we not remind you, for instance, of a silversmith’s shop in the High Street? Where you sold three small things of value-not your property?”

  Adam’s face remained stonily stoical, but his eyes flickered briefly from one face to the other. “I never sold anything in Winchester. If anyone says so, they have mistaken me for some other man.”

  “You lie!” said Nicholas, flaring. “Who else would be carrying these very three things? A necklace of polished stones, an engraved silver bracelet-and this!”

  The ring lay in his open palm, thrust close under Adam’s nose, its enamels shining with a delicate lustre, a small work of art so singular that there could not be a second like it. And he had known the girl from infancy, and must have been familiar with her trinkets long before that journey south. If he denied this, he proclaimed himself a liar, for there were plenty of others who could swear to it.

  He did not deny it. He even stared at it with a well-assumed wonder and surprise, and said at once: “That is Julian’s! Where did you get it?”

  “From the silversmith’s wife. She kept it for her own, and she remembered very well the man who brought it, and painted as good a picture of him as the law will need to put your name to him. Yes, this is Julian’s!” said Nicholas, hoarse with passion. “That is what you did with her goods. What did you do with her?”

  “I’ve told you! I parted from her a mile or more from Wherwell, at her orders, and I never saw her again.”

  “You lie in your teeth! You destroyed her.”

  Hugh laid a hand on the young man’s arm, which started and quivered at the touch, like a pointing hound distracted from his aim.

  “Adam, you waste your lying, which is worse. Here is a ring you acknowledge for your mistress’s property, sold, according to two good witnesses, on the twentieth of August three years ago, in a Winchester shop, by a man whose description fits you better than your own clothes…”

  “Then it could fit many a man of my age,” protested Adam stoutly. “What is there singular about me? The woman has not pointed the finger at me, she has not seen me…”

  “She will, Adam, she will. We can bring her, and her husband, too, to accuse you to your face. As I accuse you,” said Hugh firmly. “This is too much to be passed off as a children’s tale, or a curious chance. We need no better case against you than this ring and those two witnesses provide-for robbery, if not for murder. Yes, murder! How else did you get possession of her jewellery? And if you did not connive at her death, then where is she now? She never reached Wherwell, nor was she expected there, it was quite safe to put her out of the world, her kin here believing her safe in a nunnery, the nunnery undisturbed by her never arriving, for she had given no forewarning. So where is she, Adam? On the earth or under it?”

  “I know no more than I’ve told you,” said Adam, setting his teeth.

  “Ah, but you do! You know how much you got from the silversmith-and how much of it you paid over to your hired assassin, outside the shop. Who was he, Adam?” demanded Hugh softly. “The woman saw you meet him, pay him, slither away round the corner with him when you saw her standing at the door. Who was he?”

  “I know nothing of any such man. It was not I who went there, I tell you.” His voice was still firm, but a shade hurried now, and had risen a tone, and he was beginning to sweat.

  “The woman has described him, too. A young fellow about twenty, slender, and kept his capuchon over his head. Give him a name, Adam, and it may somewhat lighten your load. If you know a name for him? Where did you find him? In the market? Or was he bespoken well before for the work?”

  “I never entered such a shop. If all this happened, it happened to other men, not to me. I was not there.”

  “But Julian’s possessions were, Adam! That’s certain. And brought by someone who much resembled you. When the woman sees you in the flesh, then I may say, brought by you. Better to tell us, Adam. Spare yourself a long uncovering, make your confession of your own will, and be done. Spare the silversmith’s wife a long journey. For she will point the finger, Adam. This, she will say when she sets eyes on you, this is the man.”

  “I have nothing to confess. I’ve done no wrong.”

  “Why did you choose that particular shop, Adam?”

  “I was never in the shop. I had nothing to sell. I was not there…”

  “But this ring was, Adam. How did it get there? And with neckless and bracelet, too? Chance? How far can chance stretch?”

  “I left her a mile from Wherwell…”

  “Dead, Adam?”

  “I parted from her living, I swear it!”

  “Yet you told the silversmith that the lady who had owned these gems was dead. Why did you so?”

  “I told you, it was not I, I was never in the shop.”

  “Some other man, was it? A stranger, and yet he had those ornaments, all three, and he resembled you, and he knew and said that the lady was dead. Here
are so many miraculous chances, Adam, how do you account for them?”

  The prisoner let his head fall back against the wall. His face was grey. “I never laid hand on her. I loved her!”

  “And this is not her ring?”

  “It is her ring. Anyone at Lai will tell you so.”

  “Yes, they will, Adam, they will! They will tell the court so, when your time comes. But only you can tell us how it came into your possession, unless by murder. Who was the man you paid?”

  “There was none. I was not there. It was not I…”

  The pace had steadily increased, the questions coming thick as arrows and as deadly. Round and round, over and over the same ground, and the man was tiring at last. If he was breakable at all, he must break soon.

  They were so intent, and strung so taut, like overtuned instruments, that they all three started violently when there was a knock at the door of the cell, and a sergeant put his head in, visibly agape with sensational news. “My lord, pardon, but they thought you should know at once… There’s word in town that a boat sank today in the storm. Two brothers from the abbey drowned in Severn, they’re saying, and Madog’s boat smashed to flinders by a tree the lightning fetched down. They’re searching downstream for one of the pair…”

  Hugh was on his feet, aghast. “Madog’s boat? That must be the hiring Cadfael told me of… Drowned? Are they sure of their tale? Madog never lost man nor cargo till now.”

  “My lord, who can argue with lightning? The tree crashed full on them. Someone in Frankwell saw the bolt fall. The lord abbot may not even know of it yet, but they’re all in the same story in the town.”

  “I’ll come!” said Hugh, and swung hurriedly on Nicholas. “God knows I’m sorry, Nick, if this is true. Brother Humilis-your Godfrid-had a longing to see his birthplace at Salton again, and set out with Madog this morning, or so he intended-he and Fidelis. Come with me! We’d best go find out the truth of it. Pray God they’ve made much of little, as usual, and they’ve come by nothing worse than a ducking… Madog can outswim most fish. But let’s go and make sure.”

  Nicholas had risen with him, startled and slow to take it in. “My lord? And he so sick? Oh, God, he could not live through such a shock. Yes, I’ll come… I must know!”

  And they were away, abandoning their prisoner. The door closed briskly between, and the key turned in the lock. No one had given another look or thought to Adam Heriet, who sank back slowly on his hard bed, and bowed himself into his cupped hands, a demoralised hulk of a man, worn out and emptied at heart. Gradually slow tears began to seep between his braced fingers and fall upon his pillow, but there was no one there to see and wonder, and no one to interpret.

  They took horse in haste through the town, through streets astonishingly drying out already in the gentle warmth after the deluge. It was still broad day and late sunlight, and the roofs and walls and roads steamed, so that the horses waded a shallow, frail sea of vapour. They passed by Hugh’s house without halting. As well, for they would have found no Aline there to greet them.

  People were emerging into the streets again wherever they passed, gathering in twos and threes, heads together and chins earnestly wagging. The word of tragedy had gone round rapidly, once it was whispered. Nor was it any false alarm this time. Out through the eastern gate and crossing the bridge towards the abbey, Hugh and Nicholas drew rein at sight of a small, melancholy procession crossing ahead of them. Four men carried an improvised litter, an outhouse door taken from its hinges in some Frankwell householder’s yard, and draped decently with rugs to carry the corpse of one victim, at least, of the storm. One only, for it was a narrow door, and the four bearers handled it as if the weight was light, though the swathed body lay long and large-boned on its bier.

  They fell in reverently behind, as many of the townsfolk afoot were also doing, swelling the solemn progress like a funeral cortege. Nicholas stared and strained ahead, measuring the mute and motionless body. So long and yet so light, fallen away into age before age was due, this could be no other but Godfrid Marescot, the maimed and dwindling flesh at last shed by its immaculate spirit. He stared through a mist, trying impatiently to clear his eyes.

  “That is this Madog, that man who leads them?”

  Hugh nodded silently, yes. No doubt but Madog had recruited friends from the suburb, part Welsh, as he was wholly Welsh, to help him bring the dead man home. He commanded his helpers decorously, dolorously, with great dignity.

  “The other one-Fidelis?” wondered Nicholas, recalling the retiring anonymous figure forever shrinking into shadow, yet instant in service. He felt a pang of self-reproach that he grieved so much for Godfrid, and so little for the young man who had made himself a willing slave to Godfrid’s nobility.

  Hugh shook his head. There was but one here.

  They were across the bridge and moving along the approach to the Foregate, between the Gaye on the left hand and the mill and mill-pool on the right, and so to the gatehouse of the abbey. There the bearers turned in to the right with their burden, under the arch, into the great court, where a silent, solemn assembly had massed to wait for them, and there they set down their charge, and stood in silent attendance.

  The news had reached the abbey as the brothers came from Vespers. They gathered in a stunned circle, abbot, prior, obedientiaries, monks and novices, brought thus abruptly to the contemplation of mortality. The townspeople who had followed the procession to its destination hovered within the gate, somewhat apart, and gazed in awed silence.

  Madog approached the abbot with the Welshman’s unservile readiness to accept all men as equals, and told his story simply. Radulfus acknowledged the will of God and the helplessness of man with an absolving motion of his hand, and stood looking down at the swathed body a long moment, before he stooped and drew back the covering from the face.

  Humilis in dying had shed all but his proper years. Death could not restore the lost and fallen flesh, but it had relaxed the sharp, gaunt lines, and smoothed away the engraved hollows of pain. Hugh and Nicholas, standing aloof at the corner of the cloister, caught a brief glimpse of Humilis translated, removed into superhuman serenity and repose, before Radulfus lowered the cloth again, blessed the bier and the bearers, and motioned to his obedientiaries to take up the body and carry it into the mortuary chapel.

  Only then, when Brother Edmund, reminded of old reticences those two lost brothers had shared, and manifestly deprived of Fidelis, looked round for the one other man who was in the intimate secrets of Humilis’s broken body, and failed to find him-only then did Hugh realise that Brother Cadfael was the one man missing from this gathering. He, who of all men should have been ready and dutiful in whatever concerned Humilis, to be elsewhere at this moment! The dereliction stuck fast in Hugh’s mind, until he made sense of it later. It was, after all, possible that a dead man should have urgent unfinished business elsewhere, even more dear to him than the last devotions paid to his body.

  They extended their respects and condolences to Abbot Radulfus, with the promise that search should be made downstream for the body of Brother Fidelis, as long as any hope remained of finding him, and then they rode back at a walking pace into the town, host and guest together. The dusk was closing gently in, the sky clear, bland, innocent of evil, the air suddenly cool and kind. Aline was waiting with the evening meal ready to be served, and welcomed two men returning as graciously as one. And if there was still a horse missing from the stables, Hugh did not linger to discover it, but left the horses to the grooms, and devoted his own attention to Nicholas.

  “You must stay with us,” he said over supper, “until his burial. I’ll send word to Cruce, he’ll want to pay the last honours to one who once meant to become his brother by law, and he has a right to know how things stand now with Heriet.”

  That caused Aline to prick up her ears. “And how do things stand now with Heriet? So much has happened today, I seem to have missed at least the half of it. Nicholas did say he brought grim news, but even
the downpour couldn’t delay him long enough to say more. What has happened?”

  They told her, between them, all that had passed, from the dogged search in Winchester to the point where news of Madog’s disaster had interrupted the questioning of Adam Heriet, and sent them out in consternation to find out the truth of the report. Aline listened with a slight, anxious frown.

  “He burst in crying that two brothers from the abbey were dead, drowned in the river? Named names, did he? There in the cell, in front of your prisoner?”

  “I think it was I who named names,” said Hugh. “It came at the right moment for Heriet, I fancy he was nearing the end of his tether. Now he can draw breath for the next bout, though I doubt if it will save him.”

  Aline said no more on that score until Nicholas, short of sleep after his long ride and the shocks of this day, took himself off to his bed. When he was gone, she laid by the embroidery on which she had been working, and went and sat down beside Hugh on the cushioned bench beside the empty hearth, and wound a persuasive arm about his neck.

  “Hugh, love-there’s something you must hear-and Nicholas must not hear, not yet, not until all’s over and safe and calm. It might be best if he never does hear it, though perhaps he’ll divine at least half of it for himself in the end. But you we need now.”

  “We?” said Hugh, not too greatly surprised, and turned to wind an arm comfortably about her waist and draw her closer to his side.

  “Cadfael and I. Who else?”

  “So I supposed,” said Hugh, sighing and smiling. “I did wonder at his abandoning the disastrous end of a venture he himself helped to launch.”

  “But he did not abandon it, he’s about resolving it this moment. And if you should hear someone about the stables, a little later, no need for alarm, it will only be Cadfael bringing back your horse, and you know he can be trusted to see to his horse’s comfort before he gives a thought to his own.”