A Morbid Taste For Bones bc-1 Page 8

  “With all my heart,” said Prior Robert, “and so will we all.”

  The less active among them were sent along the open ride, with orders to scatter on either side and comb the surroundings as they went, while the more athletic took the narrow footpath beyond Cadwallon’s stockade. The woods here were not yet close-set, mere was thick, springy grass under the trees, and no dense undergrowth. They spread out into a half-circle, moving along within a few paces of one another, Sioned pressing purposefully forward up the path with set lips and fixed eyes, Peredur with every evidence of desperate affection following close and murmuring agitated urgings into her unheeding ears. Whether he believed in his own reassurances or not, out of all question he was a young man fathoms deep in love, and ready to do anything to serve and protect Sioned, while she saw in him nothing but the boy from the next holding, and tiresome at that.

  They were perhaps half a mile beyond Cadwallon’s enclosure when Father Huw suddenly plucked at Brother Cadfael’s sleeve.

  “We have forgotten Brother Jerome and Brother Columbanus! The hill of the chapel is off to the right here, no great way. Ask Prior Robert, should we not send and call them to join us?”

  “I had indeed forgotten,” admitted the prior. “Yes, by all means send someone. Best one of your parishioners, they’ll all know the way.”

  One of the young men swerved aside obediently between the trees, and ran. The slow-moving scythe swept on into deeper forest.

  “About here,” said Sioned, halting, “he would have come down from the clearing. If we go obliquely to the right here, and spread out as before, we shall be covering his likely way.”

  The ground rose, the trees grew closer, the undergrowth thicker. They began to thread the encroaching bushes, having to part company by a few yards, losing sight momentarily of their neighbours. They had gone thus only a short way when Bened the smith, crashing through bushes at Brother Cadfael’s left hand, uttered a great shout of discovery and dismay, and everyone in the wavering line halted and shook to the sound.

  Cadfael turned towards the cry, thrusting through thorn-branches, and came out in a narrow oval of grass surrounded every way with thick bushes, through which a used track no wider than a man’s shoulders clove, the long way of the oval. Just where he must have brushed through into the clear space, Rhisiart lay on his back, his right hip hollowing the grass under him, shoulders flattened to the ground and arms spread wide. His legs were drawn up under him with bent knees, the left leg crossed over the right. His short, defiant beard pointed at the sky. So, and at the very same slanting angle, did the feathered flight of the arrow that jutted out from under the cage of his ribs.

  Chapter Five

  From both sides they gathered, drawn to the smith’s call, breaking through bushes like the running of a startled herd of deer, and halting appalled round the oval where the body lay. Cadfael went on his knees, and looked for any sign of breath within the drawnback lips, any pulse in the stretched throat or rise and fall of the pierced breast, but there was none. And for that first moment he was the only one who moved within the open space of grass, and what he did was done in strange, too-intense silence, as though everyone round him held his breath.

  Then everything broke out at once in noise and motion. Sioned clawed through the screening circle and saw her father’s body, and uttered a great shriek that was more of fury even than of grief, and flung herself forward. Peredur caught her by the wrist and pulled her round into his arms, one hand cupped behind her head to press her face into his shoulder, but she shrieked again, and struck out at him with all her strength, and breaking loose, hurled herself to her knees facing Cadfael, and reached out to embrace her father’s body. Cadfael leaned across to ward her off, his hand braced into the grass under Rhisiart’s right armpit.

  “No! Touch nothing! Not yet! Let him alone, he has things to tell us!”

  By some intuitive quickness of mind that had not deserted her even at this moment, she obeyed the tone first, and awakened to the words immediately after. Her eyes questioned him, widening, and slowly she sat back in the grass, and drew her hands together in her lap. Her lips shaped the words after him silently: ” — things to tell us!” She looked from his face into the face of the dead man. She knew he was dead. She also knew that the dead speak, often in thunder. And she came of proud Welsh stock to which the blood-feud is sacred, a duty transcending even grief.

  When those following gathered closer, and one reached to touch, it was she who spread her arm protectively over the body, and said with authority: “No! Let him be!”

  Cadfael had drawn back his arm, and for a moment wondered what troubled him about the palm he had lifted from the grass beside Rhisiart’s breast. Then he knew. Where he knelt the grass was perceptibly damp from the morning’s sharp shower, he could feel the cling of the habit when he shifted his knee. Yet under the outflung right arm the grass was dry, his hand rose from it with no hint of moisture, no scent of rain. He touched again, ran his fingers up and down alongside Rhisiart’s right flank. He was down to the knee before he felt the dampness and stirred the green fragrance. He felt outwards, the width of the body, to find the same signs. Strange! Very strange! His mind recorded and forbore to wonder then, because there were other things to be observed, and all manner of dangers were falling in upon all manner of people.

  The tall shape looming at his back, motionless and chill, could be none other than Prior Robert, and Prior Robert in a curious state of exalted shock, nearer to Brother Columbanus’ ecstatic fit than he had ever been before or would ever be again. The high, strained voice asked, over the shuddering quietness of Sioned’s tearless sobs: “He is dead?”

  “Dead,” said Cadfael flatly, and looked into Sioned’s wide, dry eyes and held them, promising something as yet undefined. Whatever it was, she understood it and was appeased, for he was Welsh, too, he knew about the blood-feud. And she was the only heir, the only close kin, of a murdered man. She had a task far above sorrow.

  The prior’s voice soared suddenly, awed and exalted. “Behold the saint’s vengeance! Did I not say her wrath would be wreaked upon all those who stood in the way of her desire? Tell them what I am saying! Tell them to look well at the fulfilment of my prophecy, and let all other obdurate hearts take warning. Saint Winifred has shown her power and her displeasure.”

  There was hardly any need for translation, they had the sense of it already. A dozen of those standing close shrank warily away, a dozen voices muttered hurried submission. Not for worlds would they stand in the saint’s way.

  “The impious man reaps what he sows,” declaimed Robert. “Rhisiart had his warning, and did not heed it.”

  The most timorous were on their knees by then, cowed and horrified. It was not as if Saint Winifred had meant very much to them, until someone else wanted her, and Rhisiart stated a prior claim on behalf of the parish. And Rhisiart was dead by violence, struck down improbably in his own forests.

  Sioned’s eyes held Cadfael’s, above her father’s pierced heart. She was a gallant girl, she said never a word, though she had words building up in her ripe for saying, spitting, rather, into Prior Robert’s pallid, aristocratic, alabaster face. It was not she who suddenly spoke out. It was Peredur.

  “I don’t believe it!” He had a fine, clear, vehement voice that rang under the branches. “What, a gentle virgin saint, to take such vengeance on a good man? Yes, a good man, however mistaken! If she had been so pitiless as to want to slay — and I do not believe it of her! — what need would she have of arrows and bows? Fire from heaven would have done her will just as well, and shown her power better. You are looking at a murdered man, Father Prior. A man’s hand fitted that arrow, a man’s hand drew the bow, and for a man’s reason. There must have been others who had a grudge against Rhisiart, others whose plans he was obstructing, besides Saint Winifred. Why blame this killing on her?”

  This forthright Welsh sense Cadfael translated into English for Robert’s benefit, who had caught
the dissenting tone of it, but not the content. “And the young man’s right. This arrow never was shot from heaven. Look at the angle of it, up from under his ribs into the heart. Out of the earth, rather! A man with a short bow, on his knee among the bushes? True, the ground slopes, he may even have been lower than Rhisiart, but even so…”

  “Avenging saints may make use of earthly instruments,” said Robert overbearingly.

  “The instrument would still be a murderer,” said Cadfael. “There is law in Wales, too. We shall need to send word to the prince’s bailiff.”

  Bened had stood all this time darkly gazing, at the body, at the very slight ooze of blood round the wound, at the jutting shaft with its trimmed feathers. Slowly he said: “I know this arrow. I know its owner, or at least the man whose mark it bears. Where young men are living close together in a household, they mark their own with a distinctive sign, so that there can be no argument. See the tip of the feathering on one side, dyed blue.” It was as he said, and at the mention of it several there drew breath hard, knowing the mark as well as he knew it.

  “It’s Engelard’s,” said Bened outright, and three or four hushed voices bore him out.

  Sioned raised her stricken face, shocked into a false, frozen calm that suddenly melted and crumbled into dread and anger. Rhisiart was dead, there was nothing she could do now for him but mourn and wait, but Engelard was alive and vulnerable, and an outlander, with no kinship to speak for him. She rose abruptly, slender and straight, turning her fierce eyes from face to face all round the circle.

  “Engelard is the most trustworthy of all my father’s men, and would cut off his own drawing hand rather than loose against my father’s life. Who dares say this is his work?”

  “I don’t say so,” said Bened reasonably. “I do say this is marked as his arrow. He is the best shot with the short bow in all this countryside.”

  “And everybody in Gwytherin knows,” spoke up a voice from among the Welshmen, not accusing, only pointing out facts, “that he has quarrelled often and fiercely with Rhisiart, over a certain matter at issue between them.”

  “Over me,” said Sioned harshly. “Say what you mean! I, of all people, know the truth best. Better than you all! Yes, they have had high words many times, on this one matter, and only this, and would have had more, but for all that, these two have understood each other, and neither one of them would ever have done the other harm. Do you think the prize fought over does not get to know the risks to herself and both the combatants? Fight they did, but they thought more highly of each other than either did of any of you, and with good reason.”

  “Yet who can say,” said Peredur in a low voice, “how far a man may step aside even from his own nature, for love?”

  She turned and looked at him with measuring scorn. “I thought you were his friend!”

  “So I am his friend,” said Peredur, paling but steadfast. “I said what I believe of myself, no less than of him.”

  “What is this matter of one Engelard?” demanded Prior Robert, left behind in this exchange. “Tell me what they are saying.” And when Cadfael had done so, as tersely as possible: “It would seem that at least this young man must be asked to account for his movements this day,” decreed Robert, appropriating an authority to which he had no direct right here. “It may be that others have been with him, and can vouch for him. But if not…”

  “He set out this morning with your father,” said Huw, distressfully eyeing the girl’s fixed and defiant face. “You told us so. They went together as far as the cleared fields. Then your father turned to make his way down to us, and Engelard was to go a mile beyond, to the byres where the cows were in calf. We must send out and ask if any man has seen your father since he parted from Engelard. Is there any who can speak to that?”

  There was a silence. The numbers gathered about them were growing steadily. Some of the slower searchers from the open ride had made their way up here without news of their own, to find the matter thus terribly resolved. Others, hearing rumours of the missing man, had followed from the village. Father Huw’s messenger came up behind with Brother Columbanus and Brother Jerome from the chapel. But no one spoke up to say he had seen Rhisiart that day. Nor did any volunteer word of having encountered Engelard.

  “He must be questioned,” said Prior Robert, “and if his answers are not satisfactory, he must be held and handed over to the bailiff. For it’s clear from what has been said that this man certainly had a motive for wishing to remove Rhisiart from his path.”

  “Motive?” blazed Sioned, burning up abruptly as a dark and quiet fire suddenly spurts flame. Instinctively she recoiled into Welsh, though she had already revealed how well she could follow what was said around her in English, and the chief reason for her reticence concerning her knowledge had been cruelly removed. “Not so strong a motive as you had, Father Prior! Every soul in this parish knows what store you set upon getting Saint Winifred away from us, what glory it will be to your abbey, and above all, to you. And who stood in your way but my father? Yours, not the saint’s! Show me a better reason for wanting him dead! Did any ever wish to lift hand against him, all these years! Until you came here with your quest for Winifred’s relics? Engelard’s disagreement with my father was constant and understood, yours was new and urgent. Our need could wait, we’re young. Yours could not wait. And who knew better than you at what hour my father would be coming through the forest to Gwytherin? Or that he would not change his mind?”

  Father Huw spread a horrified hand to hush her long before this, but she would not be hushed. “Child, child, you must not make such dreadful accusations against the reverend prior, it is mortal sin.”

  “I state facts, and let them speak,” snapped Sioned. “Where’s the offence in that? Prior Robert may point out the facts that suit him, I showed you the others, those that do not suit him. My father was the sole obstacle in his path, and my father has been removed.”

  “Child, I tell you every soul in this valley knew mat your father was coming to my house, and the hour of his coming, and many would know all the possible ways, far better than any of these good brethren from Shrewsbury. The occasion might well suit another grudge. And you must know that Prior Robert has been with me, and with Brother Richard and Brother Cadfael here, ever since morning Mass.” And Father Huw turned in agitated supplication to Robert, wringing his hands. “Father Prior, I beg you, do not hold it against the girl that she speaks so wildly. She is in grief — a father lost…. You cannot wonder if she turns on us all.”

  “I say no word of blame,” said the prior, though coldly. “I gather she is casting doubts upon myself and my companions, but doubtless, you have answered her. Tell the young woman, in my name, mat both you and others here can witness for my own person, for all this day I have been within your sight.”

  Grateful for at least one certainty, Huw turned to repeat as much to Sioned yet again, but she blazed back with biting promptness and force, forgetting all restraints in the need to confront Robert face to face, without the tedious intervention of interpreters. “So you may have been, Father Prior,” she flashed in plain English. “In any case I don’t see you as likely to make a good bowman. But a man who would try to buy my father’s compliance would be willing and able to buy some more pliable person to do even this work for him. You still had your purse! Rhisiart spurned it!”

  “Take care!” thundered Robert, galled beyond the limits of his arduous patience. “You put your soul in peril! I have borne with you thus far, making allowances for your grief, but go no further along this road!”

  They were staring upon each other like adversaries in the lists before the baton falls, he very tall and rigid and chill as ice, she light and ferocious and very handsome, her coif long ago lost among the bushes, and her sheaves of black hair loose on her shoulders. And at that moment, before she could spit further fire, or he threaten more imminent damnation, they all heard voices approaching from higher up among the woods, a man’s voice and a girl’s i
n quick, concerned exchanges, and coming rapidly nearer with a light threshing of branches, as though they had caught the raised tones and threatening sounds of many people gathered here improbably deep in the forest, and were hurrying to discover what was happening.

  The two antagonists heard them, and their concentration on each other was shaken and disrupted. Sioned knew them, and a fleeting shadow of fear and desperation passed over her face. She glanced round wildly, but there was no help. A girl’s arm parted the bushes above the oval where they stood, and Annest stepped through, and stood in astonishment, gazing round at the inexplicable gathering before her.

  It was the narrowness of the track — no more than the shadow of a deer-path in the grass — and the abruptness with which she had halted that gave Sioned her one chance. She took it valiantly. “Go back home, Annest,” she said loudly. “I am coming with company. Go and prepare for guests, quickly, you’ll have little time.” Her voice was high and urgent. Annest had not yet lowered her eyes to the ground, and grass and shadows veiled Rhisiart’s body.

  The effort was wasted. Another hand, large and gentle, was laid on Annest’s shoulder while she hesitated, and moved her aside. “The company sounds somewhat loud and angry,” said a man’s voice, high and clear, “so, with your leave, Sioned, we’ll all go together.”

  Engelard put the girl aside between his hands, as familiarly and serenely as a brother might have done, and stepped past her into the clearing.