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  “I can’t go home,” said Edwin, the solemnity of his face in no way marred by one cheek distended with apple, and a greenish smudge from some branch soiling the other. “And I can’t go to my mother’s. I should only be bringing worse trouble on her.”

  “For tonight you can stay here, the pair of you, and keep my little brazier fed. There are clean sacks under the bench, and you’ll be warm and safe enough. But in the day there’s coming and going here from time to time, we must have you out early, the one of you for home, the other… Well, we’ll hope you need stay hidden only a matter of a few days. As well close here at the abbey as anywhere, they’ll hardly look for you here.” He considered, long and thoughtfully. The lofts over the stables were always warmed from the hay, and the bodies of the horses below, but too many people came and went there, and with travellers on the roads before the festival, there might well be servants required to sleep there above their beasts. But outside the enclave, at one corner of the open space used for the horse-fairs and the abbey’s summer fair, there was a barn where beasts brought to market could be folded before sale, and the loft held fodder for them. The barn belonged to the abbey, but was open to all travelling merchants. At this time of year its visitors would be few or none, and the loft well filled with good hay and straw, a comfortable enough bed for a few nights. Moreover, should some unforeseen accident threaten danger to the fugitive, escape from outside the walls would be easier than from within. Though God forbid it should come to that!

  “Yes, I know a place that will serve, we’ll get you to it early in the morning, and see you well stocked with food and ale for the day. You’ll need patience, I know, to lie by, but that you must endure.”

  “Better,” said Edwin fervently, “than falling into the sheriff’s clutches, and I do thank you. But… how am I bettered by this, in the end? I can’t lie hidden for ever.”

  “There’s but one way,” said Cadfael emphatically, “that you can be bettered in this affair, lad, and that’s by uncovering the man who did the thing you’re charged with doing. And since you can hardly undertake that yourself, you must leave the attempt to me. What I can do, I’ll do, for my own honour as well as for yours. Now I must leave you and go to Matins. In the morning before Prime I’ll come and see you safely out of here.”

  *

  Brother Mark had done his part, the habit was there, rolled up beneath Brother Cadfael’s bed. He wore it under his own, when he rose an hour before the bell for Prime, and left the dortoir by the night stairs and the church. Winter dawns come very late, and this night had been moonless and overcast; the darkness as he crossed the court from cloister to gardens was profound, and there was no one else stirring. There was perfect cover for Edwy to withdraw unobserved through the church and the parish door, as he had come, and make his chilly way to the bridge, to cross into Shrewsbury as soon as the gate was opened. Doubtless he knew his own town well enough to reach his home by ways devious enough to baffle detection by the authorities, even if they were watching the shop.

  As for Edwin, he made a demure young novice, once inside the black habit and the sheltering cowl. Cadfael was reminded of Brother Mark, when he was new, wary and expecting nothing but the worst of his enforced vocation; the springy, defensive gait, the too tightly folded hands in the wide sleeves, the flickering side-glances, wild and alert for trouble. But there was something in this young thing’s performance that suggested a perverse enjoyment, too; for all the danger to himself, and his keen appreciation of it, he could not help finding pleasure in this adventure. And whether he would manage to behave himself discreetly in hiding, and bear the inactive hours, or be tempted to wander and take risks, was something Cadfael preferred not to contemplate.

  Through cloister and church, and out at the west door, outside the walls, they went side by side, and turned right, away from the gatehouse. It was still fully dark.

  “This road leads in the end to London, doesn’t it?” whispered Edwin from within his raised cowl.

  “It does so. But don’t try leaving that way, even if you should have to run, which God forbid, for they’ll have a check on the road out at St. Giles. You be sensible and lie still, and give me a few days, at least, to find out what I may.”

  The wide triangle of the horse-fair ground gleamed faintly pallid with light frost. The abbey barn loomed at one corner, close to the enclave wall. The main door was closed and fastened, but at the rear there was an outside staircase to the loft, and a small door at the top of it. Early traffic was already abroad, though thin at this dark hour, and no one paid attention to two monks of St. Peter’s mounting to their own loft. The door was locked, but Cadfael had brought the key, and let them in to a dry, hay-scented darkness.

  “The key I can’t leave you, I must restore it, but neither will I leave you locked in. The door must stay unfastened for you until you may come forth freely. Here you have a loaf, and beans, and curd, and a few apples, and here’s a flask of small ale. Keep the gown, you may need it for warmth in the night, but the hay makes a kindly bed. And when I come to you, as I will, you may know me at the door by this knock… Though no one else is likely to come. Should anyone appear without my knock, you have hay enough to hide in.”

  The boy stood, suddenly grave and a little forlorn. Cadfael reached a hand, and put back the cowl from the shock-head of curls, and there was just filtering dawn-light enough to show him the shape of the solemn oval face, all steady, dilated, confronting eyes.

  “You have not slept much. If I were you, I’d burrow deep and warm, and sleep the day out. I won’t desert you.”

  “I know,” said Edwin firmly. He knew that even together they might avail nothing, but at least he knew he was not alone. He had a loyal family, with Edwy as link, and he had an ally within the enclave. And he had one other thinking of him and agonising about him. He said in a voice that lost its firmness only for one perilous instant, and stubbornly recovered: “Tell my mother I did not ever do him or wish him harm.”

  “Fool child,” said Cadfael comfortably, “I’ve been assured of that already, and who do you suppose told me, if not your mother?” The very faint light was magically soft, and the boy stood at that stage between childhood and maturity when his face, forming but not yet formed, might have been that of boy or girl, woman or man. “You’re very like her,” said Cadfael, remembering a girl not much older than this sprig, embraced and kissed by just such a clandestine light, her parents believing her abed and asleep in virginal solitude. At this pass he had momentarily forgotten all the women he had known between, east and west, none of them, he hoped and believed, left feeling wronged. “I’ll be with you before night,” he said, and withdrew to the safety of the winter air outside.

  Good God, he thought with reverence, making his way back by the parish door in good time for Prime, that fine piece of young flesh, as raw and wild and faulty as he is, he might have been mine! He and the other, too, a son and a grandson both! It was the first and only time that ever he questioned his vocation, much less regretted it, and the regret was not long. But he did wonder if somewhere in the world, by the grace of Arianna, or Bianca, or Mariam, or—were there one or two others as well loved here and there, now forgotten?—he had left printings of himself as beautiful and formidable as this boy of Richildis’s bearing and another’s getting.

  Chapter 5

  IT WAS NOW IMPERATIVE to find the murderer, otherwise the boy could not emerge from hiding and take up his disrupted life. And that meant tracing in detail the passage of the ill-fated dish of partridge from the abbot’s kitchen to Gervase Bonel’s belly. Who had handled it? Who could have tampered with it? Since Prior Robert, in his lofty eminence within the abbot’s lodging, had eaten, appreciated and digested the rest of it without harm, clearly it had been delivered to him in goodwill and in good condition. And he, certainly without meddling, had delivered it in the same condition to his cook.

  Before High Mass, Cadfael went to the abbot’s kitchen. He was one of a dozen or so
people within these walls who were not afraid of Brother Petrus. Fanatics are always frightening, and Brother Petrus was a fanatic, not for his religion or his vocation, those he took for granted, but for his art. His dedicated fire tinted black hair and black eyes, scorching both with a fiery red. His northern blood boiled like his own cauldron. His temper, barbarian from the borders, was as hot as his own oven. And as hotly as he loved Abbot Heribert, for the same reasons he detested Prior Robert.

  When Cadfael walked in upon him, he was merely surveying the day’s battlefield, and mustering his army of pans, pots, spits and dishes, with less satisfaction than the exercise should have provided, because it was Robert, and not Heribert, who would consume the result of his labours. But for all that, he could not relax his hold on perfection.

  “That partridge!” said Petrus darkly, questioned on the day’s events. “As fine a bird as ever I saw, not the biggest, but the best-fed and plumpest, and could I have dressed it for my abbot, I would have made him a masterwork. Yes, this prior comes in and bids me set aside a portion—for one only, mark!—to be sent to the guest at the house by the millpond, with his compliments. And I did it. I made it the best portion, in one of Abbot Heribert’s own dishes. My dishes, says Robert! Did anyone else here touch it? I tell you, Cadfael, the two I have here know me, they do what I say, and let all else ride. Robert? He came in to give his orders and sniff at my pan, but it was all in one pan then, it was only after he left my kitchen I set aside the dish for Master Bonel. No, take it as certain, none but myself touched that dish until it left here, and that was close on the dinner hour, when the manservant—Aelfric, is it?—brought his tray.”

  “How do you find this man Aelfric?” asked Cadfael. “You’re seeing him daily.”

  “A surly fellow, or at least a mute one,” said Petrus without animosity, “but keeps exact time, and is orderly and careful.”

  So Richildis had said, perhaps even to excess, and with intent to aggrieve his master.

  “I saw him crossing the court with his load that day. The dishes were covered, he has but two hands, and certainly he did not halt this side the gatehouse, for I saw him go out.” But once through the gate there was a bench set in an alcove in the wall, where a tray could easily be put down for a moment, on pretense of adjusting to a better balance. And Aelfric knew his way to the workshop in the garden, and had seen the oil dispensed. And Aelfric was a soured man on two counts. A man of infinite potential, since he let so little of himself be known to any.

  “Ah, well, it’s certain nothing was added to the food here.”

  “Nothing but wholesome wine and spices. Now if it had been the rest of the bird that was poisoned,” said Petrus darkly, “I’d give you leave to look sideways at me, for you’d have reason. But if ever I did go so far as to prepare a monk’s-hood stew for that one, be sure I’d make no mistake about which bowl went to which belly.”

  No need, thought Cadfael, crossing the court to Mass, to take Brother Petrus’s fulminations too seriously. For all his ferocity he was a man of words rather than actions. Or ought it, after all, to be considered as worth pondering? The idea that a mistake had been made, and the dish intended for Robert sent instead to Bonel, had never entered Cadfael’s head until now, but clearly Petrus had credited him with just such a notion, and made haste to hammer it into absurdity before it was uttered. A shade too much haste? Murderous hatreds had been known to arise between those who were sworn to brotherhood, before this, and surely would so arise again. Brother Petrus might have started the very suspicion he had set out to scotch. Not, perhaps, a very likely murderer. But bear it in mind!

  *

  The few weeks before the main festivals of the year always saw an increase in the parochial attendance at Mass, the season pricking the easy consciences of those who took their spiritual duties lightly all the rest of the year. There were a creditable number of local people in the church that morning, and it was no great surprise to Cadfael to discover among them the white coif and abundant yellow hair of the girl Aldith. When the service ended he noticed that she did not go out by the west door, like the rest, but passed through the south door into the cloister, and so out into the great court. There she drew her cloak around her, and sat down on a stone bench against the refectory wall.

  Cadfael followed, and saluted her gravely, asking after her mistress. The girl raised to him a fair, composed face whose soft lines seemed to him to be belied by the level dark force of her eyes. She was, he reflected, as mysterious in her way as Aelfric, and what she did not choose to reveal of herself it would be hard to discover unaided.

  “She’s well enough in body,” she said thoughtfully, “but distressed in mind for Edwin, naturally. But there’s been no word of his being taken, and I’m sure we should have heard if he had been. That’s some comfort. Poor lady, she’s in need of comfort.”

  He could have sent her some reassurance by this messenger, but he did not. Richildis had taken care to speak with him alone, he should respect that preference. In so tight and closed a situation, where only the handful of people involved in one household seemed to be at risk, how could Richildis be absolutely sure even of her young kinswoman, even of her stepson or her manservant? And could he, in the end, even be sure of Richildis? Mothers may be driven to do terrible things in defence of the rights of their children. Gervase Bonel had made a bargain with her, and broken it.

  “If you’ll permit, I’ll sit with you a little while. You’re not in haste to return?”

  “Aelfric will be coming for the dinner soon,” she said. “I thought I would wait for him, and help him carry everything. He’ll have the ale and the bread as well.” And she added, as Cadfael sat down beside her: “It’s ill for him, having to do that same office daily, after what fell on us yesterday. To think that people may be eyeing him and wondering. Even you, brother. Isn’t it true?”

  “No help for that,” said Cadfael simply, “until we know the truth. The sheriff’s sergeant believes he knows it already. Do you agree with him?”

  “No!” She was mildly scornful, it even raised the ghost of a smile. “It isn’t the wild, noisy, boisterous boys, the ones who let the world all round know their grievances and their tantrums and their pleasures, who use poison. But what avails my telling you this, saying I believe or I don’t believe, when I’m deep in the same coil myself? As you know I am! When Aelfric came into my kitchen with the tray, and told me about the prior’s gift, it was I who set the dish to keep hot on the hob, while Aelfric carried the large dish into the room, and I followed with the platters and the jug of ale. The three of them were in there at table, they knew nothing about the partridge until I told them… thinking to please the master, for in there the air was so chill you could hardly breathe. I think I was back in the kitchen first of the two of us, and I sat by the hob to eat my meal, and I stirred the bowl when it simmered. More than once, and moved it aside from the heat, too. What use my saying I added nothing? Of course that is what I, or any other in my shoes would say, it carries no weight until there’s proof, one way or the other.”

  “You are very sensible and very just,” said Cadfael. “And Meurig, you say, was just coming in at the door when you returned to the kitchen. So he was not alone with the dish… even supposing he had known what it was, and for whom it was intended.”

  Her dark brows rose, wonderfully arched and vivid and striking under the pale brow and light-gold hair. “The door was wide open, that I recall, and Meurig was just scraping the dirt from his shoes before coming in. But what reason could Meurig have, in any case, to wish his father dead? He was not lavish with him, but he was of more value to him alive than dead. He had no hope of inheriting anything, and knew it, but he had a modest competence to lose.”

  That was simple truth. Not even the church would argue a bastard’s right to inherit, while the state would deny it even where marriage of the parents, every way legal, followed the birth. And this had been a commonplace affair with one of his own maidservants. N
o, Meurig had no possible stake in this death. Whereas Edwin had a manor to regain, and Richildis, her adored son’s future. And Aelfric?

  She had reared her head, gazing towards the gatehouse, where Aelfric had just appeared, the high-rimmed wooden tray under his arm, a bag for the loaves slung on his shoulder. She gathered her cloak and rose.

  “Tell me,” said Cadfael, mild-voiced beside her, “now that Master Bonel is dead, to whom does Aelfric belong? Does he go with the manor, to the abbey or some other lord? Or was he excluded from the agreement, conceded to Master Bonel as manservant in villeinage for life?”

  She looked back sharply in the act of going to meet Aelfric. “He was excluded. Granted to be my lord’s villein personally.”

  “Then whatever happens to the manor now, he will go to whoever inherits the personal effects… to widow or son, granted the son escapes a criminal charge. And Aldith, you know Mistress Bonel’s mind, would you not say that she would at once give Aelfric his freedom, with a glad heart? And would the boy do any other?”

  All she gave him by way of answer was a brief, blinding flash of the black, intelligent eyes, and the sudden, veiling swoop of large lids and long dark lashes. Then she went to cross Aelfric’s path, and fall in beside him on his way to the abbot’s lodging. Her step was light and easy, her greeting indifferent, her manner dutiful. Aelfric trudged by her side stiff and mute, and would not let her take the bag from his shoulder. Cadfael sat looking after them for a long moment, observing and wondering, though after a while the wonder subsided into mild surprise, and by the time he set off to wash his hands before dinner in the refectory, even surprise had settled into conviction and reassessment.