Dead Man's Ransom bc-9 Read online

  The girl was another matter. Within her frosty calm a faint fire had begun to burn again, deep sparks lurked in the quenched eyes. She turned one unreadable glance upon Elis, and then looked straight before her.

  Hugh checked for a moment to commit the Welshmen of the escort to his sergeants, and have them led away to the security of the castle, with due civility, since all of them might be entirely innocent of wrong, but into close and vigilant guard. He would have passed on, to see the women into their apartments before attempting any further probing, but Melicent suddenly laid a hand upon his arm.

  ‘My lord, since Brother Edmund is here, may I ask him a question, before we leave this in your hands?’ She was very still, but the fire in her was beginning to burn through, and her pallor to show sharp edges of steel. ‘Brother Edmund, you best know your own domain, and I know you watch over it well. There is no blame falls upon you. But tell us, who, if anyone, entered my father’s chamber after he was left there asleep?’ ‘I was not constantly by,’ said Edmund unhappily. ‘God forgive me, I never dreamed there could be any need. Anyone could have gone in to him.’ ‘But you know of one who certainly did go in?’ Sybilla had plucked her step, daughter by the sleeve, distressed and reproving, but Melicent shook her off without a glance. ‘And only one?’ she said sharply.

  ‘To my knowledge, yes,’ agreed Edmund uncomprehendingly, ‘but surely no harm. It was shortly before you all returned from the abbot’s lodging. I had time then to make a round, and I saw the sheriff’s door opened, and found a young man beside the bed, as though he meant to disturb his sleep. I could not have that, so I took him by the shoulder and turned him about, and pointed him out of the room. And he went obediently and made no protest. There was no word spoken,’ said Edmund simply, ‘and no harm done. The patient had not awakened.’ ‘No,’ said Melicent, her voice shaken at last out of its wintry calm, ‘nor never did again, nor never will. Name him, this one!

  And Edmund did not even know the boy’s name, so little had he had to do with him. He indicated Elis with a hesitant hand. ‘It was our Welsh prisoner.’ Melicent let out a strange, grievous sound of anger, guilt and pain, and whirled upon Elis. Her marble whiteness had become incandescent, and the blue of her eyes was like the blinding fire sunlight strikes from ice. ‘Yes, you! None but you! None but you went in there. Oh, God, what have you and I done between us! And I, fool, fool, I never believed you could mean it, when you told me, many times over, you’d kill for me, kill whoever stood between us. Oh, God, and I loved you! I may even have invited you, urged you to the deed. I never understood. Anything, you said, to keep us together a while longer, anything to prevent your being sent away, back to Wales. Anything! You said you would kill, and now you have killed, and God forgive me, I am guilty along with you.’ Elis stood facing her, the poor lucky lad suddenly most unlucky and defenceless as a babe. He stared with dropped jaw and startled, puzzled, terrified face, struck clean out of words and wits, open to any stab. He shook his head violently from side to side, as if he could shake away a nightmare, after the fashion of those clever dreamers who use their fingers to prise open eyelids beset by unbearable dreams. He could not get out a word or a sound.

  ‘I take back every evidence of love,’ raged Melicent, her voice like a cry of pain. ‘I hate you, I loathe you… I hate myself for ever loving you. You have so mistaken me, you have killed my father.’ He wrenched himself out of his stupor then, and made a wild move towards her. ‘Melicent! For God’s sake, what are you saying?’ She drew back violently out of his reach. ‘No, don’t touch me, don’t come near me. Murderer!’ This shall end,’ said Hugh, and took her by the shoulders and put her into Sybilla’s arms. ‘Madam, I had thought to spare you any further distress today, but you see this will not wait. Bring her! And sergeant, have these two into the gatehouse, where we may be private. Edmund and Cadfael, go with us, we may well need you.’ ‘Now,’ said Hugh, when he had herded them all, accused, accuser and witnesses, into the anteroom of the gatehouse out of the cold and out of the public eye, ‘now let us get to the heart of this. Brother Edmund, you say you found this man in the sheriff’s chamber, standing beside his bed. How did you read it? Did you think, by appearances, he had been long in there? Or that he had but newly come?’ ‘I thought he had but just crept in,’ said Edmund. ‘He was close to the foot of the bed, a little stooped, looking down as though he wondered whether he dared wake the sleeper.’ ‘Yet he could have been there longer? He could have been standing over a man he had smothered, to assure himself it was thoroughly done?’ ‘It might be interpretable so,’ agreed Edmund very dubiously, ‘but the thought did not enter my mind. If there had been anything so sinister in him; would it not have shown? It’s true he started when I touched him, and looked guilty, but I mean as a boy caught in mischief, nothing that caused me an ill thought. And he went, when I ordered him, as biddable as a child.’ ‘Did you look again at the bed, after he was gone? Can you say if the sheriff was still breathing then? And the coverings of the bed, were they disarranged?’ nc ‘All was smooth and quiet as when we left him sleeping. But I did not look more closely,’ said Edmund sadly. ‘I wish to God I had.’ ‘You knew of no cause, and his best cure was to be let alone to sleep. One more thing, had Elis anything in his hands?’ ‘No, nothing. Nor had he on the cloak he has on his arm now.’ It was of a dark red cloth, smooth, surfaced and close, woven.

  ‘Very well. And you have no knowledge of any other who may have made his way into the room?’ ‘No knowledge, no. But at any time entry was possible. There may well have been others.’ Melicent said with deadly bitterness: ‘One was enough! And that one we do know.’ She shook Sybilla’s hand from her arm, refusing any restraint but her own. ‘My lord Beringar, hear me speak. I say again, he has killed my father. I will not go back from that.’ ‘Have your say,’ said Hugh shortly.

  ‘My lord, you must know that this Elis and I learned to know each other in your castle where he was prisoner, but with the run of the wards on his parole, and I was with my mother and brother in my father’s apartments waiting for news of him. We came to see and touch, my bitter regret that I am forced to say it, we loved. It was not our fault, it happened to us, we had no choice. We came to extreme dread that when my father came home we must be parted, for then Elis must leave in his place. And you, my lord, who best knew my father, know that he would never countenance a match with a Welshman. Many a time we talked of it, many a time we despaired. And he said, I swear he said so, he dare not deny it!, he said he would kill for me if need be, kill any man who stood between us. Anything, he said, to hold us together, even murder. In love men say wild things. I never thought of harm, and yet I am to blame, for I was as desperate for love as he. And now he has done what he threatened, for he has surely killed my father.’ Elis got his breath, coming out of his stunned wretchedness with a heave that almost lifted him out of his boots. ‘I did not! I swear to you I never laid hand on him, never spoke word to him. I would not for any gain have hurt your father, even though he barred you from me. I would have reached you somehow, there would have been a way… You do me terrible wrong!’ ‘But you did go to the room where he lay?’ Hugh reminded him equably. ‘Why?’ ‘To make myself known to him, to plead my cause with him, what else? It was the only present hope I had, I could not let it slip through my fingers. I wanted to tell him that I love Melicent, that I am a man of lands and honour, and desire nothing better than to serve her with all my goods and gear. He might have listened! I knew, she had told me, that he was sworn enemy to the Welsh, I knew it was a poor hope, but it was all the hope I had. But I never got the chance to speak. He was deep asleep, and before I ventured to disturb him the good brother came and banished me. This is the truth, and I will swear to it on the altar.’ ‘It is truth!’ Eliud spoke up vehemently for his friend. He stood close, since Elis had refused a seat, his shoulder against Elis’s shoulder for comfort and assurance. He was as pale as if the accusation had been made against him, and his voice was husky and low
. ‘He was with me in the cloister, he told me of his love, and said he would go to the lord Gilbert and speak to him man to man. I thought it unwise, but he would go. It was not many minutes before I saw him come forth, and Brother Infirmarer making sure he departed. And there was no manner of stealth in his dealings,’ insisted Ehud stoutly, ‘for he crossed the court straight and fast, not caring who might see him go in.’ ‘That may well be true,’ agreed Hugh thoughtfully, ‘but for all that, even if he went in with no ill intent, and no great hope, once he stood there by the bedside it might come into his mind how easy, and how final, to remove the obstacle, a man sleeping and already very low.’ ‘He never would!’ cried Eliud. ‘His is no such mind.’ ‘I did not,’ said Elis, and looked helplessly at Melicent, who stared back at him stonily and gave him no aid. ‘For God’s sake, believe me! I think I could not have touched or roused him, even if there had been no one to send me away. To see a fine, strong man so, quite defenceless…’ ‘Yet no one entered there but you,’ she said mercilessly.

  ‘That cannot be proved!’ flashed Eliud. ‘Brother Infirmarer has said that the way was open, anyone might have gone in.’ ‘Nor can it be proved that anyone did,’ she said with aching bitterness.

  ‘But I think it can,’ said Brother Cadfael.

  He had all eyes on him in an instant. All this time some morsel of his memory had been worrying at the flaw he could not quite identify. He had picked up the folded sheepskin cloak from the chest, where he had watched Edmund lay it, and there had been something different about it, though he could not think what it could be. And then the encounter with death had driven the matter to the back of his mind, but it had lodged there ever since, like chaff in the throat after eating porridge. And suddenly he had it. The cloak was gone now, gone with Einon ab Ithel back to Wales, but Edmund was there to confirm what he had to say. And so was Eliud, who would know his lord’s belongings.

  ‘When we disrobed and bedded Gilbert Prestcote,’ he said, ‘the cloak that wrapped him, which belonged to Einon ab Ithel, was folded and laid by, Brother Edmund will remember it, in such case as to leave plain to be seen in the collar a great gold pin that fastened it. When Eliud, here, came to ask me to show him the room and hand out his lord’s cloak to him and I did so, the cloak was folded as before, but the pin was gone. Small wonder if we forgot the matter, seeing what else we found. But I knew there was something I should have noted, and now I have recalled what it was.’ ‘It is truth!’ cried Eliud, his face brightening eagerly. ‘I never thought! And I have let my lord go without it, never a word said. I fastened the collar of the cloak with it myself, when we laid him in the litter, for the wind blew cold. But with this upset, I never thought to look for it again. Here is Elis and has never been out of men’s sight since he came from the infirmary, ask all here! If he took it, he has it on him still. And if he has it not, then someone else has been in there before him and taken it. My foster, brother is no thief and no murderer, but if you doubt, you have your remedy.’ ‘What Cadfael says is truth,’ said Edmund. ‘The pin was there plain to be seen. If it is gone, then someone went in and took it.’ Elis had caught the fierce glow of hope, in spite of the unchanging bitterness and grief of Melicent’s face. ‘Strip me!’ he demanded, glittering. ‘Search my body! I won’t endure to be thought thief and murderer both.’ In justice to him, rather than having any real doubts in the matter, Hugh took him at his word, but allowed only Cadfael and Edmund to be witnesses with him in the borrowed cell where Elis, with sweeping, arrogant, hurt gestures, tore off his clothes and let them fall about him, until he stood naked with braced feet astride and arms outspread, and dragged disdainful fingers painfully through his thick thatch of curls and shook his head violently to show there was nothing made away there. Now that he was safe from the broken, embittered stare of Melicent’s eyes the tears he had defied came treacherously into his own, and he blinked and shook them proudly away.

  Hugh let him cool gradually and in considerate silence.

  ‘Are you content?’ the boy demanded stiffly, when he had his voice well in rein.

  ‘Are you?’ said Hugh, and smiled.

  There was a brief, almost consoling silence. Then Hugh said mildly: ‘Cover yourself, then. Take your time.’ And while Elis was dressing, with hands that shook now in reaction: ‘You do understand that I must hold you in close guard, you and your foster, brother and the others alike. As at this moment, you are no more in suspicion than many who belong here within the pale, and will not be let out of it until I know to the last moment where they spent this morn and noon. This is no more than a beginning, and you but one of many.’ ‘I do understand,’ said Elis and wavered, hesitant to ask a favour. ‘Need I be separated from Eliud?’ ‘You shall have Eliud,’ said Hugh.

  When they went out again to those who still waited in the anteroom the two women were on their feet, and plainly longing to withdraw. Sybilla had but half her mind here in support of her step, daughter, the better half was with her son; and if she had been a faithful and dutiful wife to her older husband and mourned him truly now after her fashion, love was much too large a word for what she had felt for him and barely large enough for what she felt for the boy he had given her. Sybilla’s thoughts were with the future, not the past.

  ‘My lord,’ she said, ‘you know where we may be found for the days to come. Let me take my daughter away now, we have things which must be done.’ ‘At your pleasure, madam,’ said Hugh. ‘You shall not be troubled more than is needful.’ And he added only: ‘But you should know that the matter of this missing pin remains. There has been more than one intruder into your husband’s privacy. Bear it in mind.’ ‘Very gladly I leave it all in your hands,’ said Sybilla fervently. And forth she went, her hand imperative at Melicent’s elbow. They passed close by Elis in the doorway, and his starving stare fastened on the girl’s face. She passed him by without a glance, she even drew aside her skirts for fear they should brush him in departing. He was too young, too open, too simple to understand that more than half the hatred and revulsion she felt for him belonged rather to herself, and her dread that she had gone far towards desiring the death she now so desperately repented.

  CHAPTER SEVEN.

  IN THE death, chamber, with the door closed fast, Hugh Beringar and Brother Cadfael stood beside Gilbert Prestcote’s body and turned back the brychan and sheet to the sunken breast. They had brought in lamps to set close where they would burn steadily and cast a strong light on the dead face. Cadfael took the small saucer lamp in his hand and moved it slowly across the bruised mouth and nostrils and the grizzled beard, to catch every angle of vision and pick out every mote of dust or thread.

  ‘No matter how feeble, no matter how deep asleep, a man will fight as best as he can for his breath, and whatever is clamped over his face, unless so hard and smooth it lacks any surface pile, he will inhale. And so did this one.’ The dilated nostrils had fine hairs within, a trap for tiny particles of thread. ‘Do you see colour there?’ In an almost imperceptible current of air a gossamer wisp quivered, taking the light. ‘Blue,’ said Hugh, peering close, and his breath caused the cobweb strand to dance. ‘Blue is a difficult and expensive dye. And there’s no such tint in these brychans.’ ‘Let’s have it forth,’ said Cadfael, and advanced his small tweezers, used for extracting thorns and splinters from unwary labouring fingers, to capture a filament almost too delicate to be seen. There was more of it, however, when it emerged, two or three fine strands that had the springy life of wool.

  ‘Hold your breath,’ said Cadfael, ‘till I have this safe under a lid from being blown away.’ He had brought one of the containers in which he stored his tablets and lozenges when he had moulded and dried them, a little polished wooden box, almost black in colour, and against the glossy dark surface the shred of wool shone brightly, a full, clear blue. He shut the lid upon it carefully, and probed again with the tweezers. Hugh shifted the lamp to cast its light at a new angle, and there was a brief gleam of red, the soft, pale red of
late summer roses past their prime. It winked and vanished. Hugh moved the light to find it again. Barely two frail, curling filaments of the many that must have made up this wool that had woven the cloth, but wool carries colour bravely.

  ‘Blue and rose. Both precious colours, not for the furnishings of a bed.’ Cadfael captured the elusive thing after two or three casts, and imprisoned it with the blue. The light, carefully deployed, found no more such traces in the stretched nostrils. ‘Well, he also wore a beard. Let us see!’ There was a clear thread of the blue fluttering in the greying beard. Cadfael extracted it, and carefully combed the grizzled strands out into order to search for more. When he shook and stroked out the dust and hairs from the comb into his box, two or three points of light glimmered and vanished, like motes of dust lit by the sun. He tilted the box from side to side to recover them, for they were invisible once dimmed, and one single gold spark rewarded him. He found what he sought caught between the clenched teeth. One strand had frayed from age or use, and the spasm of death had bitten and held it. He drew it forth and held it to the light in his tweezers. A first finger, joint long, brittle and bright, glinting in the lamplight, the gold thread that had shed those invisible, scintillating particles.

  ‘Expensive indeed!’ said Cadfael, shutting it carefully into his box. ‘A princely death, to be smothered under cloth of fine wool embroidered with thread of gold. Tapestry? Altar, cloth? A lady’s brocaded gown? A piece from a worn vestment? Certainly nothing here within the infirmary, Hugh. Whatever it may have been, some man brought it with him.’ ‘So it would seem,’ agreed Hugh, brooding.