The Potter's Field Read online

  “Love,” declared Hugh, at once touched and amused, “you never cease to be a wonder to me. How did you ever come to know so much about the case? And feel so hotly about it?”

  “I’ve seen them together, that was enough. From across a fairground stall it was plain to be seen how fond, and wild she was. And you men,” said Aline, with resigned tolerance, “naturally see the man’s rights first, when he sets his heart on doing what he wants, whether it’s entering the cloister or going off to war, but I’m a woman, and I see how deeply wronged the wife was. Had she no rights in the matter? And did you ever stop to think—he could have his freedom to go and become a monk, but his going didn’t confer freedom on her. She could not take another husband; the one she had, monk or no, was still alive. Was that fair? Almost,” avowed Aline roundly, “I hope she did go with a lover, rather than have to live and endure alone.”

  Hugh reached a long arm to draw his wife to him, with something between a laugh and a sigh. “Lady, there is much in what you say, and this world is full of injustice.”

  “Still I suppose it was not Ruald’s fault,” said Aline, relenting. “I daresay he would have released her if he could. It’s done, and I hope, wherever she is, she has some comfort in her life. And I suppose if a man really is overtaken by an act of God there’s nothing he can do but obey. It may even have cost him almost as much. What kind of brother has he made, Cadfael? Was it really something that could not be denied?”

  “Truly,” said Cadfael, “it seems that it was. The man is wholly devoted. I verily believe he had no choice.” He paused reflectively, finding it hard to discover the appropriate words for a degree of self-surrender which was impossible to him. “He has now that entire security that cannot be moved by well or ill, since to his present state everything is well. If martyrdom was demanded of him now, he would accept it with the same serenity as bliss. Indeed it would be bliss, he knows nothing less. I doubt if he gives a thought to any part of that life he led for forty years, or the wife he knew and abandoned. No, Ruald had no choice.”

  Aline was regarding him steadily with her wide iris eyes, that were so shrewd in their innocence. “Was it like that for you,” she asked, “when your time came?”

  “No, I had a choice. I made a choice. It was even a hard choice, but I made it, and I hold to it. I am no such elect saint as Ruald.”

  “Is that a saint?” and Aline. “It seems to me all too easy.”

  *

  The charter of the exchange of lands between Haughmond and Shrewsbury was drawn up, sealed and witnessed in the first week of September. Some days later Brother Cadfael and Brother Richard the sub-prior went to view the new acquisition, and consider its future use to the best advantage of the abbey. The morning was misty when they set out, but by the time they had reached the ferry just upstream from the field the sun was already coming through the haze, and their sandalled feet left dark tracks through the dewy grass above the shore. Across the river the further bank rose, sandy and steep, undercut here and there by the currents, and levelling off into a narrow plain of grass, with a rising ridge of bushes and trees beyond. When they stepped from the boat they had some minutes of walking along this belt of pasture, and then they stood at the corner of the Potter’s Field, and had the whole expanse obliquely before them.

  It was a very fair place. From the sandy escarpment of the river bank the slope of grass rose gradually towards a natural headland of bush and thorn and a filigree screen of birch trees against the sky. Backed into this crest in the far corner the shell of the empty cottage squatted, its garden unfenced and running wild into the embracing wildness of the unreaped grass. The crop Haughmond had not found worth his while to garner was bleaching into early autumn pallor, having ripened and seeded weeks earlier, and among the whitened standing stems all manner of meadow flowers still showed, harebell and archangel, poppy and daisy and centaury, with the fresh green shoots of new grass just breaking through the roots of the fading yield. Under the headland above, tangles of bramble offered fruit just beginning to blacken from red.

  “We could still cut and dry this for bedding,” said Brother Richard, casting a judicial eye over the wild expanse, “but would it be worth the labour? Or we could leave it to die down of itself, and plough it in. This land has not been under the plough for generations.”

  “It would be heavy work,” said Cadfael, viewing with pleasure the sheen of sunlight on the distant white trunks of the birch trees on the ridge.

  “Not so heavy as you might think. The soil beneath is good, friable loam. And we have a strong ox-team, and the field has length enough to get a team of six into the yoke. We need a deep, broad furrow for the first ploughing. I would recommend it,” said Brother Richard, secure in the experience of his farming stock, and set off up the field to the crest, by the same rural instinct keeping to the headland instead of wading through the grass. “We should leave the lower strip for pasture, and plough this upper level.”

  Cadfael was of the same mind. The field they had parted with, distant beyond Haughton, had been best left under stock; here they could very well take a crop of wheat or barley, and turn the stock from the lower pasture into the stubble afterwards, to manure the land for the next year. The place pleased him, and yet had an undefined sadness about it. The remnants of the garden fence, when they reached it, the tangled growth in which herb and weed contended for root and light and space, the doorless doorway and shutterless window, all sounded a note of humanity departed and human occupation abandoned. Without the remnants this would have been a scene wholly placid, gentle and content. But it was impossible to look at the deserted croft without reflecting that two lives had been lived there for fifteen years, joined in a childless marriage, and that of all the thoughts and feelings they had shared not a trace now remained here. Nor to note the bare, levelled site from which every stone had been plundered, without recalling that a craftsman had laboured here at loading his kiln and firing it, where now the hearth was barren and cold. There must surely have been human happiness here, satisfaction of the mind, fulfilment of the hands. There had certainly been grief, bitterness and rage, but only the detritus of that past life clung about the spot now, coldly, indifferently melancholy.

  Cadfael turned his back upon the corner which had once been inhabited, and there before him lay the sweep of meadow, gently steaming as the sun drew off the morning mist and dew, and the sharp, small colours of the flowers brightened among the seeding grasses. Birds skimmed the bushes of the headland and flickered among the trees of the crest, and the uneasy memory of man was gone from the Potter’s Field.

  “Well, what’s your judgement?” asked Brother Richard.

  “I think we should do well to sow a winter crop. Deep-plough now, then do a second ploughing, and sow winter wheat, and some beans with it. So much the better if we can get some marl on to it for the second ploughing.”

  “As good a use as any,” agreed Richard contentedly, and led the way down the slope towards the curve and glimmer of the river under its miniature cliffs of sand. Cadfael followed, the dry grasses rustling round his ankles in long, rhythmic sighs, as if for a tragedy remembered. As well, he thought, break the ground up there as soon as maybe, and get the soil to bear. Let’s have young corn greening over where the kiln was, and either pull down the cottage or put a live tenant into it, and see to it he clears and tends the garden. Either that, or plough up all. Better forget it ever was a potter’s croft and field.

  *

  In the first days of October the abbey’s plough team of six oxen, with the heavy, high-wheeled plough, was brought over by the ford, and cut and turned the first sod in Ruald’s field. They began at the upper corner, close to the derelict cottage, and drove the first furrow along beneath the ridge, under the strong growth of bushes and brambles that formed the headland. The ox-driver urged his team, the oxen lumbered stolidly ahead, the coulter bit deep through turf and soil, the ploughshare sheared through the matted roots, and the furrow-board heav
ed the sod widely away like a sullenly breaking wave, turning up black soil and the strong scent of the earth. Brother Richard and Brother Cadfael had come to see the work begun, Abbot Radulfus had blessed the plough, and every augury was good. The first straight furrow drove the length of the field, brightly black against the autumnal pallor of the grasses, and the ploughman, proud of his skill, swung his long team in a swooping curve to bring them about as neatly as possible on the return course. Richard had been right, the soil was not so heavy, the work would go briskly.

  Cadfael had turned his back on the work, and stood in the gaping doorway of the cottage, gazing into the empty interior. A full year ago, after the woman had shaken off the dust of this place from her feet and walked away from the debris of her life to look for a new beginning elsewhere, all the movable belongings of Ruald’s marriage had been removed, with the consent of his overlord at Longner, and given to Brother Ambrose the almoner, to be shared among his petitioners according to their needs. Nothing remained within. The hearthstone was still soiled with the last cold ashes, and leaves had been blown into corners and silted there into nesting-places for the hibernating hedge-pig and the dormouse. Long coils of bramble had found their way in at the vacant window from the bushes outside, and a branch of hawthorn nodded in over his shoulder, half its leaves shed, but starred with red berries. Nettle and groundsel had rooted and grown in the crevices of the flooring. It takes a very short time for earth to seal over the traces of humankind.

  He heard the distant shout from across the field, but thought nothing of it but that the driver was bawling at his team, until Richard caught at his sleeve and said sharply into his ear: “Something’s amiss, over there! Look, they’ve stopped. They’ve turned up something—or broken something—Oh, surely not the coulter!” He had flashed easily into vexation. A plough is a costly machine, and an iron-shod coulter on new and untried ground might well be vulnerable.

  Cadfael turned to stare towards the spot where the team had halted, at the far edge of the field where the tangle of bushes rose. They had taken the plough close, making the fullest use possible of the ground, and now the oxen stood still and patient in their harness, only a few yards advanced into the new furrow, while teamster and ploughman were stooped with their heads together over something in the ground. And in a moment the ploughman came springing to his feet and running headlong for the cottage, arms pumping, feet stumbling in the tufted grasses.

  “Brother… Brother Cadfael… Will you come? Come and see! There’s something there…”

  Richard had opened his mouth to question, in some irritation at so incoherent a summons, but Cadfael had taken a look at the ploughman’s face, startled and disquieted, and was off across the field at a trot. For clearly this something, whatever it might be, was as unwelcome as it was unforeseen, and of a nature for which higher authority would have to take the responsibility. The ploughman ran beside him, blurting distracted words that failed to shed much light.

  The coulter dragged it up—there’s more underground, no telling what…”

  The teamster had risen to his feet and stood waiting for them with hands dangling helplessly.

  “Brother, we could take no charge here, there’s no knowing what we’ve come on.” He had led the team a little forward to leave the place clear and show what had so strangely interrupted the work. Close under the slight slope of the bank which marked the margin of the field, with broom brushes leaning over the curve of the furrow, where the plough had turned, the coulter had cut in more deeply, and dragged along the furrow after it something that was not root or stem. Cadfael went on his knees, and stooped close to see the better. Brother Richard, shaken at last by the consternation that had rendered his fellows inarticulate and now chilled them into silence, stood back and watched warily, as Cadfael drew a hand along the furrow, touching the long threads that had entangled the coulter and been drawn upward into the light of day.

  Fibres, but fashioned by man. Not the sinewy threads of roots gouged out of the bank, but half rotted strands of cloth, once black, or the common dark brown, now the colour of the earth, but still with enough nature left in them to tear in long, frayed rags when the iron ripped through the folds from which they came. And something more, drawn out with them, perhaps from within them, and lying along the furrow for almost the length of a man’s forearm, black and wavy and fine, a long thick tress of dark hair.

  Chapter 2

  BROTHER CADFAEL returned alone to the abbey, and asked immediate audience of Abbot Radulfus.

  “Father, something unforeseen sends me back to you in this haste. I would not have troubled you for less, but in the Potter’s Field the plough has uncovered something which must be of concern both to this house and to the secular law. I have not yet gone further. I need your sanction to report this also to Hugh Beringar, and if he so permits, to pursue what as yet I have left as we found it. Father, the coulter has brought into daylight rags of cloth and a coil of human hair. A woman’s hair, or so it seems to me. It is long and fine, I think it has never been cut. And, Father, it is held fast under the earth.”

  “You are telling me,” said Radulfus, after a long and pregnant pause, “that it is still rooted in a human head.” His voice was level and firm. There were few improbable situations he had not encountered in his more than fifty years. If this was the first of its kind, it was by no means the gravest he had ever confronted. The monastic enclave is still contained within and contingent upon a world where all things are possible. “In this unconsecrated place there is some human creature buried. Unlawfully.”

  “That is what I fear,” said Cadfael. “But we have not gone on to confirm it, wanting your leave and the sheriffs attendance.”

  “Then what have you done? How have you left things there in the field?”

  “Brother Richard is keeping watch at the place. The ploughing continues, but with due care, and away from that spot. There seemed no need,” he said reasonably, “to delay it. Nor would we want to call too much attention to what is happening there. The ploughing accounts for our presence, no one need wonder at seeing us busy there. And even if it proves true, this may be old, very old, long before our time.”

  “True,” said the abbot, his eyes very shrewd upon Cadfael’s face, “though I think you do not believe in any such grace. To the best that I know from record and charter, there never at any time was church or churchyard near that place. I pray God there may be no more such discoveries to be made, one is more than enough. Well, you have my authority, do what needs to be done.”

  *

  What needed to be done, Cadfael did. The first priority was to alert Hugh, and ensure that the secular authority should be witness to whatever followed. Hugh knew his friend well enough to cast no doubts, ask no questions, and waste no time in demur, but at once had horses saddled up, taking one sergeant of the garrison with him to ride messenger should he be needed, and set off with Cadfael for the ford of Severn and the Potter’s Field.

  The plough team was still at work, lower down the slope, when they rode along the headland to the spot where Brother Richard waited by the bank of broom bushes. The long, attenuated, sinuous S-shapes of the furrows shone richly dark against the thick, matted pallor of the meadow. Only this corner under the headland had been left virgin, the plough drawn well aside after the first ominous turn. The scar the coulter had left ended abruptly, the long, dark filaments drawn along the groove. Hugh stooped to look, and to touch. The threads of cloth disintegrated under his fingers, the long strands of hair curled and clung. When he lifted them tentatively they slid through his hold, still rooted in earth. He stood back, and stared down sombrely into the deep scar.

  “Whatever you’ve found here, we’d best have it out. Your ploughman was a little too greedy for land, it seems. He could have spared us trouble if he’d turned his team a few yards short of the rise.”

  But it was already too late, the thing was done and could not be covered again and forgotten. They had brought spades
with them, a mattock to peel off, with care, the matted root-felt of long undisturbed growth, and a sickle to cut back the overhanging broom that hampered their movements and had partially hidden this secret burial place. Within a quarter of an hour it became plain that the shape beneath had indeed the length of a grave, for the rotted shreds of cloth appeared here and there in alignment with the foot of the bank, and Cadfael abandoned the spade to kneel and scoop away earth with his hands. It was not even a deep grave, rather this swathed bundle had been laid in concealment under the slope, and the thick sod restored over it, and the bushes left to veil the place. Deep enough to rest undisturbed, in such a spot; a less efficient plough would not have turned so tightly as to reach it, nor the coulter have driven deep enough to penetrate it.

  Cadfael felt along the exposed swathes of black cloth, and knew the bones within. The long tear the coulter had made slit the side distant from the bank from middle to head, where it had dragged out with the threads the tress of hair. He brushed away soil from where the face should be. Head to foot, the body was swathed in rotting woollen cloth, cloak or brychan, but there was no longer any doubt that it was a human creature, here laid underground in secret. Unlawfully, Radulfus had said. Buried unlawfully, dead unlawfully.

  With their hands they scooped away patiently the soil that shrouded the unmistakable outline of humanity, worked their way cautiously beneath it from either side, to ease it out of its bed, and hoisted it from the grave to lay it upon the grass. Light, slender and fragile it rose into light, to be handled with held breath and careful touch, for at every friction the woollen threads crumbled and disintegrated. Cadfael eased the folds apart, and turned back the cloth to lay bare the withered remains.

  Certainly a woman, for she wore a long, dark gown, ungirdled, unornamented, and strangely it seemed that the fullness of the skirt had been drawn out carefully into orderly folds, still preserved by the brychan in which she had been swathed for burial. The face was skeletal, the hands that emerged from the long sleeves were mere bone, but held in shape by her wrappings. Traces of dried and shrunken flesh showed at the wrists and at her bared ankles. The one last recollection of abundant life left to her was the great crown of black, braided hair, from which the one disordered coil had been drawn out by the coulter from beside her right temple. Strangely, she had clearly been stretched out decently for burial, her hands drawn up and crossed on her breast. More strangely still they were clasped upon a crude cross, made from two trimmed sticks bound together with a strip of linen cloth.