The Devil's Novice Part 5

"It's perpetual imprisonment he's seeking, then? Not escape?" said Hugh, with his dark head on one side, and a rueful and affectionate smile on his lips.

"Not escape, no. From all I have seen," said Cadfael heavily, "he knows of no way of escape, anywhere, for him."

At the end of his penance Meriet came forth from his cell, blinking even at the subdued light of a November morning after the chill dimness within, and was presented at chapter before austere, unrevealing faces to ask pardon for his offences and acknowledge the justice of his penalty, which he did, to Cadfael's relief and admiration, with a calm and dignified bearing and a quiet voice. He looked thinner for his low diet, and his summer brown, smooth copper when he came, had faded into dark, creamy ivory, for though he tanned richly, he had little colour beneath the skin except when enraged. He was docile enough now, or had discovered how to withdraw into himself so far that curiosity, censure and animosity should not be able to move him.

"I desire," he said, "to learn what is due from me and to deliver it faithfully. I am here to be disposed of as may best be fitting."

Well, at any rate he knew how to keep his mouth shut, for evidently he had never let out, even to Brother Paul, that Cadfael had told him what was intended for him. By Isouda's account he must have been keeping his own counsel ever since he began to grow up, perhaps even before, as soon as it burned into his child's heart that he was not loved like his brother, and goaded him to turn mischievous and obdurate to get a little notice from those who under-valued him. Thus setting them ever more against him, and rendering himself ever more outrageously exiled from grace.

And I dared trounce him for succ.u.mbing to the first misery of his life, thought Cadfael, remorseful, when half his life has been a very sharp misery.

The abbot was austerely kind, putting behind them past errors atoned for, and explaining to him what was now asked of him. "You will attend with us this morning," said Radulfus, "and take your dinner in refectory among your brothers. This afternoon Brother Cadfael will take you to the hospice at Saint Giles, since he will be going there to refill the medicine cupboard." And that, at least three days early, was news also to Cadfael, and a welcome indication of the abbot's personal concern. The brother who had shown a close interest in this troubled and troublesome young novice was being told plainly that he had leave to continue his surveillance.

They set forth from the gatehouse side by side in the early afternoon, into the common daily traffic of the high road through the Foregate. Not a great bustle at this hour on a soft, moist, melancholy November day, but always some evidence of human activity, a boy jog-trotting home with a bag on his shoulder and a dog at his heels, a carter making for the town with a load of coppice-wood, an old man leaning on his staff, two st.u.r.dy housewives of the Foregate bustling back from the town with their purchases, one of Hugh's officers riding back towards the bridge at a leisurely walk. Meriet opened his eyes wide at everything about him, after ten days of close stone walls and meagre lamplight. His face was solemn and still, but his eyes devoured colour and movement hungrily. From the gatehouse to the hospice of Saint Giles was barely half a mile's walk, alongside the enclave wall of the abbey, past the open green of the horse-fair, and along the straight road between the houses of the Foregate, until they thinned out with trees and gardens between, and gave place to the open countryside. And there the low roof of the hospital came into view, and the squat tower of its chapel, on a slight rise to the left of the highway, where the road forked.

Meriet eyed the place as they approached, with purposeful interest but no eagerness, simply as the field to which he was a.s.signed.

"How many of these sick people can be housed here?"

There might be as many as five and twenty at a time, but it varies. Some of them move on, from lazar-house to lazar-house, and make no long stay anywhere. Some come here too ill to go further. Death thins the numbers, and newcomers fill the gaps again. You are not afraid of infection?"

Meriet said: "No," so indifferently that it was almost as if he had said: "Why should I be? What threat can disease possibly be to me?"

"Your Brother Mark is in charge of all?" he asked.

"There is a lay superior, who lives in the Foregate, a decent man and a good manager. And two other helpers. But Mark looks after the inmates. You could be a great help to him if you choose," said Cadfael, "for he's barely older than you, and your company will be very welcome to him. Mark was my right hand and comfort in the herbarium, until he felt it his need to come here and care for the poor and the strays, and now I doubt I shall ever win him back, for he has always some soul here that he cannot leave, and as he loses one he finds another."

He drew in prudently from saying too much in praise of his most prized disciple; but still it came as a surprise to Meriet when they climbed the gentle slope that lifted the hospital clear of the highway, pa.s.sed through wattled fence and low porch, and came upon Brother Mark sitting at his little desk within. He was furrowing his high forehead over accounts, his lips forming figures silently as he wrote them down on his vellum. His quill needed retr.i.m.m.i.n.g, and he had managed to ink his fingers, and by scrubbing bewilderedly in his spiky, straw-coloured fringe of hair had left smudges on both his eyebrow and his crown. Small and slight and plain of face, himself a neglected waif in his childhood, he looked up at them, when they entered the doorway, with a smile of such disarming sweetness that Meriet's firmly-shut mouth fell open, like his guarded eyes, and he stood staring in candid wonder as Cadfael presented him. This little, frail thing, meagre as a sixteen-year-old, and a hungry one at that, was minister to twenty or more sick, maimed, poor, verminous and old!

"I've brought you Brother Meriet," said Cadfael, "as well as this scrip full of goods. He'll be staying with you awhile to learn the work here, and you can rely on him to do whatever you ask of him. Find him a corner and a bed, while I fill up your cupboard for you. Then you can tell me if there's anything more you need."

He knew his way here. He left them studying each other and feeling without haste for words, and went to unlock the repository of his medicines, and fill up the shelves. He was in no hurry; there was something about those two, utterly separate though they might be, the one son to a lord of two manors, the other a cottar's orphan, that had suddenly shown them as close kin in his eyes. Neglected and despised both, both of an age, and with such warmth and humility on the one side, and such pa.s.sionate and impulsive generosity on the other, how could they fail to come together?

When he had unloaded his scrip, and noted any depleted places remaining on the shelves, he went to find the pair, and followed them at a little distance as Mark led his new helper through hospice and chapel and graveyard, and the sheltered patch of orchard behind, where some of the abler in body sat for part of the day outside, to take the clean air. A household of the indigent and helpless, men, women, even children, forsaken or left orphans, dappled by skin diseases, deformed by accident, leprosy and agues; and a leaven of reasonably healthy beggars who lacked only land, craft, a place in the orders, and the means to earn their bread. In Wales, thought Cadfael, these things are better handled, not by charity but by blood-kinship. If a man belongs to a kinship, who can separate him from it? It acknowledges and sustains him, it will not let him be outcast or die of need. Yet even in Wales, the outlander without a clan is one man against the world. So are these runaway serfs, dispossessed cottagers, crippled labourers thrown out when they lose their working value. And the poor, drab, debased women, some with children at skirt, and the fathers snug and far, those that are not honest but dead.

He left them together, and went away quietly with his empty scrip and his bolstered faith. No need to say one word to Mark of his new brother's history, let them make what they could of each other in pure brotherhood, if that term has truly any meaning. Let Mark make up his own mind, unprejudiced, unprompted, and in a week we may learn something positive about Meriet, not filtered through pity.

The last he saw of them they were in the little orchard where the children ran to play; four who could run, one who hurpled on a single crutch, and one who at nine years old scuttled on all fours like a small dog, having lost the toes of both feet through a gangrene after being exposed to hard frost in a bad winter. Mark had the littlest by the hand as he led Meriet round the small enclosure. Meriet had as yet no armoury against horror, but at least horror in him was not revulsion. He was stooping to reach a hand to the dog-boy winding round his feet, and finding him unable to rise, and therefore unwilling to attempt it, he did not hoist the child w.i.l.l.y-nilly, but suddenly dropped to his own nimble haunches to bring himself to a comparable level, and squatted there distressed, intent, listening.

It was enough. Cadfael went away content and left them together.

He let them alone for some days, and then made occasion to have a private word with Brother Mark, on the pretext of attending one of the beggars who had a persistent ulcer. Not a word was said of Meriet until Mark accompanied Cadfael out to the gate, and a piece of the way along the road towards the abbey wall.

"And how is your new helper doing?" asked Cadfael then, in the casual tone in which he would have enquired of any other beginner in this testing service.

"Very well," said Mark, cheerful and unsuspicious. "Willing to work until he drops, if I would let him." So he might, of course; it is one way of forgetting what cannot be escaped. "He's very good with the children, they follow him round and take him by the hand when they can." Yes, that also made excellent sense. The children would not ask him questions he did not wish to answer, or weigh him up in the scale as grown men do, but take him on trust and if they liked him, cling to him. He would not need his constant guard with them. "And he does not shrink from the worst disfigurement or the most disgusting tasks," said Mark, "though he is not inured to them as I am, and I know he suffers."

"That's needful," said Cadfael simply. "If he did not suffer he ought not to be here. Cold kindness is only half a man's duty who tends the sick. How do you find him with you-does he speak of himself ever?"

"Never," said Mark, and smiled, feeling no surprise that it should be so. "He has nothing he wishes to say. Not yet."

"And there is nothing you wish to know of him?"

"I'll listen willingly," said Mark, "to anything you think I should should know of him. But what most matters I know already: that he is by nature honest and sweet clean through, whatever manner of wreck he and other people and ill circ.u.mstances may have made of his life. I only wish he were happier. I should like to hear him laugh." know of him. But what most matters I know already: that he is by nature honest and sweet clean through, whatever manner of wreck he and other people and ill circ.u.mstances may have made of his life. I only wish he were happier. I should like to hear him laugh."

"Not for your need, then," said Cadfael, "but in case of his, you had better know all of him that I know." And forthwith he told it.

"Now I understand," said Mark at the end of it, "why he would would take his pallet up into the loft. He was afraid that in his sleep he might disturb and frighten those who have more than enough to bear already. I was in two minds about moving up there with him, but I thought better of it. I knew he must have his own good reasons." take his pallet up into the loft. He was afraid that in his sleep he might disturb and frighten those who have more than enough to bear already. I was in two minds about moving up there with him, but I thought better of it. I knew he must have his own good reasons."

"Good reasons for everything he does?" wondered Cadfael.

"Reasons that seem good to him, at any rate. But they might not always be wise," conceded Mark very seriously.

Brother Mark said no word to Meriet about what he had learned, certainly made no move to join him in his self-exile in the loft over the barn, nor offered any comment on such a choice; but he did, on the following three nights, absent himself very quietly from his own bed when all was still, and go softly into the barn to listen for any sound from above. But there was nothing but the long, easy breathing of a man peacefully asleep, and the occasional sigh and rustle as Meriet turned without waking. Perhaps other, deeper sighs at times, seeking to heave away a heavy weight from a heart; but no outcry. At Saint Giles Meriet went to bed tired out and to some consoling degree fulfilled, and slept without dreams.

Among the many benefactors of the leper hospital, the crown was one of the greatest through its grants to the abbey and the abbey's dependencies. There were other lords of manors who allowed certain days for the gathering of wild fruits or dead wood, but in the nearby reaches of the Long Forest the lazar-house had the right to make forays for wood, both for fuel and fencing or other building uses, on four days in the year, one in October, one in November, one in December, whenever the weather allowed, and one in February or March to replenish stocks run down by the winter.

Meriet had been at the hospice just three weeks when the third of December offered a suitably mild day for an expedition to the forest, with early sun and comfortably firm and dry earth underfoot. There had been several dry days, and might not be many more. It was ideal for picking up dead wood, without the extra weight of damp to carry, and even stacked coppice-wood was fair prize under the terms. Brother Mark snuffed the air and declared what was to all intents a holiday. They marshalled two light hand-carts, and a number of woven slings to bind f.a.ggots, put on board a large leather bucket of food, and collected all the inmates capable of keeping up with a leisurely progress into the forest. There were others who would have liked to come, but could not manage the way and had to wait at home.

From Saint Giles the highway led south, leaving aside to the left the way Brother Cadfael had taken to Aspley. Some way past that divide they kept on along the road, and wheeled right into the scattered copse-land which fringed the forest, following a good, broad ride which the carts could easily negotiate. The toeless boy went with them, riding one of the carts. His weight, after all, was negligible, and his joy beyond price. Where they halted in a clearing to collect fallen wood, they set him down in the smoothest stretch of gra.s.s, and let him play while they worked.

Meriet had set out as grave as ever, but as the morning progressed, so did he emerge from his hiding-place into muted sunlight, like the day. He snuffed the forest air, and trod its sward, and seemed to expand, as a dried shoot does after the rain, drawing in sustenance from the earth on which he strode. There was no one more tireless in collecting the stouter boughs of fallen wood, no one so agile in binding and loading them. When the company halted to take meat and drink, emptying the leather bucket, they were well into the border areas of the forest, where their pickings would be best, and Meriet ate his bread and cheese and onion, and drank his ale, and lay down flat as ground-ivy under the trees, with the toeless boy sprawled in one arm. Thus deep-drowned in the last pale gra.s.s, he looked like some native ground-growth burgeoning from the earth, half-asleep towards the winter, half-wakeful towards another growing year.

They had gone no more than ten minutes deeper into the woodland, after their rest, when he checked to look about him, at the slant of the veiled sun between the trees, and the shape of the low, lichened outcrop of rocks on their right.

"Now I know just where we are. When I had my first pony I was never supposed to come further west than the highroad from home, let alone venture this far south-west into the forest, but I often did. There used to be an old charcoal-burner had a hearth somewhere here, it can't be far away. They found him dead in his hut a year and more ago, and there was no son to take on after him, and n.o.body wanted to live as lone as he did. He may have left a cord or two of coppice-wood stacked to season, that he never lived to burn. Shall we go and see, Mark? We could do well there."

It was the first time he had ever volunteered even so innocuous a recollection of his childhood, and the first time he had shown any eagerness. Mark welcomed the suggestion gladly.

"Can you find it again? We have a fair load already, but we can very well cart the best out to the roadside, and send for it again when we've unloaded the rest. We have the whole day."

"This way it should be," said Meriet, and set off confidently to the left between the trees, lengthening his step to quest ahead of his charges. "Let them follow at their own pace, I'll go forward and find the place. A hollow clearing it was-the stacks must have shelter..." His voice and his striding figure dwindled among the trees. He was out of sight for a few minutes before they heard him call, a hail as near pleasure as Mark had ever heard from him.

When Mark reached him he was standing where the trees thinned and fell back, leaving a shallow bowl perhaps forty or fifty paces across, with a level floor of beaten earth and old ash. At the rim, close to them, the decrepit remains of a rough hut of sticks and bracken and earth sagged over its empty log doorway, and on the far side of the arena there were stacked logs of coppice-wood, left in the round, and now partially overgrown at the base of the stack with coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and mosses. There was room enough on the prepared floor for two hearths some five long paces each in diameter, and their traces were still plain to be seen, though gra.s.s and herbage were encroaching from the edges of the plain, invading even the dead circles of ash with defiant green shoots. The nearer hearth had been cleared after its last burning, and no new stack built there, but on the more distant ring a mound of stacked logs, halfburned out and half still keeping its form beneath the layers of gra.s.s and leaves and earth, lay flattened and settling.

"He had built his last stack and fired it," said Meriet, gazing, "and then never had time to build its fellow while the first was burning, as he always used to do, nor even to tend the one he had lighted. You see there must have been a wind, after he was dead, and no one by to dress the gap when it began to burn through. All the one side is dead ash, look, and the other only charred. Not much charcoal to be found there, but we might get enough to fill the bucket. And at least he left us a good stock of wood, and well seasoned, too."

"I have no skill in this art," said Mark curiously. "How can such a great hill of wood be got to burn without blazing, so that it may be used as fuel over again?"

"They begin with a tall stake in the middle, and stack dry split logs round it, and then the whole logs, until the stack is made. Then you must cover it with a clean layer, leaves or gra.s.s or bracken, to keep out the earth and ash that goes over all to seal it. And to light it, when it's ready, you hoist out the stake to leave a chimney, and drop your first red-hot coals down inside, and good dry sticks after, until it's well afire. Then you cover up the vent, and it burns very slow and hot, sometimes as long as ten days. If there's a wind you must watch it all the while, for if it burns through the whole stack goes up in flames. If there's danger you must patch the place and keep it sealed. There was no one left to do that here."

Their slower companions were coming up through the trees. Meriet led the way down the slight incline into the hearth, with Mark close at his heels.

"It seems to me," said Mark, smiling, "that you're very well versed in the craft. How did you learn so much about it?"

"He was a surly old man and not well liked," said Meriet, making for the stacked cordwood, "but he was not surly with me. I was here often at one time, until I once helped him to rake down a finished burn, and went home dirtier than even I could account for. I got my tail well leathered, and they wouldn't let me have my pony again until I promised not to venture over here to the west. I suppose I was about nine years old-it's a long time ago." He eyed the piled wood with pride and pleasure, and rolled the topmost log from its place, sending a number of frightened denizens scuttling for cover.

They had left one of their hand-carts, already well filled, in the clearing where they had rested at noon. Two of the st.u.r.diest gleaners brought the second weaving between the trees, and the whole company fell gleefully upon the logs and began to load them.

"There'll be half-burned wood still in the stack," said Meriet, "and maybe some charcoal, too, if we strip it." And he was off to the tumbledown hut, and emerged with a large wooden rake, with which he went briskly to attack the misshapen mound left by the last uncontrolled burning. "Strange," he said, lifting his head and wrinkling his nose, "there's still the stink of old burning, who would have thought it could last so long?"

There was indeed a faint stench such as a woodland fire might leave after it had been damped by rain and dried out by wind. Mark could distinguish it, too, and came to Meriet's side as the broad rake began to draw down the covering of earth and leaves from the windward side of the mound. The moist, earthy smell of leaf-mould rose to their nostrils, and half-consumed logs heeled away and rolled down with the rake. Mark walked round to the other side, where the mound had sunk into a weathered ma.s.s of grey ash, and the wind had carried its fine dust as far as the rim of the trees. There the smell of dead fire was sharper, and rose in waves as Mark's feet stirred the debris. And surely on this side the leaves still left on the nearest trees were withered as though by scorching.

"Meriet!" called Mark in a low but urgent tone. "Come here to me!"

Meriet looked round, his rake locked in the covering of soil. Surprised but undisturbed, he skirted the ring of ash to come to where Mark stood, but instead of relinquishing the rake he tugged the head after him across the low crest of the mound, and tore down with it a tumble of half-burned logs, rolling merrily down into the ashen gra.s.s. It occurred to Mark that this was the first time he had seen his new helper look almost happy, using his body energetically, absorbed in what he was doing and forgetful of his own concerns. "What is it? What have you seen?"

The falling logs, charred and disintegrating, settled in a flurry of acrid dust. Something rolled out to Meriet's feet, something that was not wood. Blackened, cracked and dried, a leathern shape hardly recognisable at first sight for a long-toed riding shoe, with a tarnished buckle to fasten it across the instep; and protruding from it, something long and rigid, showing gleams of whitish ivory through fluttering, tindery rags of calcined cloth.

There was a long moment while Meriet stood staring down at it without comprehension, his lips still shaping the last word of his blithe enquiry, his face still animated and alert. Then Mark saw the same shocking and violent change Cadfael had once seen, as the brightness of the hazel eyes seemed to collapse inward into total darkness, and the fragile mask of content shrank and froze into horror. He made a very small sound in his throat, a harsh rattle like a man dying, took one reeling step backwards, stumbled in the uneven ground, and dropped cowering into the gra.s.s.

Chapter Eight.

IT WAS NO MORE THAN AN INSTANT'S WITHDRAWAL from the unbearable, recoiling into his enfolding arms, shutting out what nevertheless he could not choose but go on seeing. He had not swooned. Even as Mark flew to him, with no outcry to alarm the busy party dismantling the stack of cordwood, he was already rearing his head and doubling his fists grimly into the soil to raise himself. Mark held him with an arm about his body, for he was trembling still when he got to his feet.

"Did you see? Did you see it?" he asked in a whisper. What remained of the half-burned stack was between them and their charges, no one had turned to look in their direction.

"Yes, I saw. I know! We must get them away," said Mark. "Leave this pile as it is, touch nothing more, leave the charcoal. We must just load the wood and start them back for home. Are you fit to go? Can you be as always, and keep your face before them?"

"I can," said Meriet, stiffening, and scrubbed a sleeve over a forehead dewed with a chilly sweat. "I will! But, Mark, if you saw what I saw-we must know know ..." ..."

"We do know," said Mark, "you and I both. It's not for us now, this is the law's business, and we must let ill alone for them to see. Don't even look that way again. I saw, perhaps, more than you. I know what is there. What we must do is get our people home without spoiling their day. Now, come and see to loading the cart with me. Can you, yet?"

For answer, Meriet braced his shoulders, heaved in a great breath, and withdrew himself resolutely from the thin arm that still encircled him. "I'm ready!" he said, in a fair attempt at the cheerful, practical voice with which he had summoned them to the hearth, and was off across the level floor to plunge fiercely into the labour of hoisting logs into the cart.

Mark followed him watchfully, and against all temptation contrived to obey his own order, and give no single glance to that which had been uncovered among the ashes. But he did, as they worked, cast a careful eye about the rim of the hearth, where he had also noticed certain circ.u.mstances which gave him cause for thought. What he had been about to say to Meriet when the rake fetched down its avalanche was never said.

They loaded their haul, stacking the wood so high that there was no room for the toeless boy to ride on top on the return journey. Meriet carried him on his back, until the arms that clasped him round the neck fell slack with sleepiness, and he shifted his burden to one arm, so that the boy's tow-coloured head could nod securely on his shoulder. The load on his arm was light enough, and warm against his heart. What else he carried unseen, thought Mark watching him with reticent attention, weighed more heavily and struck cold as ice. But Meriet's calm continued rock-firm. The one moment of recoil was over, and there would be no more such lapses.

At Saint Giles Meriet carried the boy indoors, and returned to help haul the carts up the slight slope to the barn, where the wood would be stacked under the low eaves, to be sawn and split later as it was needed.

"I am going now into Shrewsbury," said Mark, having counted all his chicks safely into the coop, tired and elated from their successful foray.

"Yes," said Meriet, without turning from the neat stack he was building, end-outwards between two confining b.u.t.tresses of wood. "I know someone must."

"Stay here with them. I'll come back as soon as I can."

"I know," said Meriet. "I will. They're happy enough. It was a good day."

Brother Mark hesitated when he reached the abbey gatehouse, for his natural instinct was to take everything first to Brother Cadfael. It was plain that his errand now was to the officers of the king's law in the shire, and urgent, but on the other hand it was Cadfael who had confided Meriet to him, and he was certain in his own mind that the grisly discovery in the charcoal hearth was in some way connected with Meriet. The shock he had felt was genuine, but extreme, his wild recoil too intense to be anything but personal. He had not known, had not dreamed, what he was going to find, but past any doubt he knew it when he found it.

While Mark was hovering irresolute in the arch of the gatehouse Brother Cadfael, who had been sent for before Vespers to an old man in the Foregate who had a bad chest ailment, came behind and clapped him briskly on the shoulder. Turning to find the clemency of heaven apparently presenting him with the answer to his problem, Mark clutched him gratefully by the sleeve, and begged him: "Cadfael, come with me to Hugh Beringar. We've found something hideous in the Long Forest, business for him, surely. I was just by way of praying for you. Meriet was with me-this somehow touches Meriet..."

Cadfael fixed him with an acute stare, took him by the arm and turned him promptly towards the town. "Come on then and save your breath to tell the tale but once. I'm earlier back than anyone will expect me, I can stretch my license an hour or two, for you and for Meriet."

So they were two who arrived at the house near Saint Mary's, where Hugh had settled his family. By luck he was home before supper, and free of his labours for the day. He haled them in warmly, and had wit enough not to offer Brother Mark respite or refreshment until he had heaved his whole anxiety off his narrow chest. Which he did very consideringly, measuring words. He stepped meticulously from fact to fact, as on sure stepping-stones through a perilous stream.

"I called him round to me because I had seen that on the side of that stack where I was, and where the pile was burned out, the wind had carried fine ash right into the trees, and the near branches of the trees were scorched, the leaves browned and withered. I meant to call his attention to these things, for such a fire was no long time ago. Those were this year's leaves scorched brown, that was ash not many weeks old still showing grey. And he came readily, but as he came he held on to the rake and tugged it with him, to bring down the top of the stack, where it had not burned out. So he brought down a whole fall of wood and earth and leaves, and this thing rolled down between, at our feet."

"You saw it plainly," said Hugh gently, "tell us as plainly."

"It is a fashionable long-toed riding shoe," said Mark steadily, "shrunk and dried and twisted by fire, but not consumed. And in it a man's leg-bone, in the ashes of hose."

"You are in no doubt," said Hugh, watching him with sympathy.

"None. I saw projecting from the pile the round knee-joint from which the shin-bone had parted," said Brother Mark, pale but tranquil. "It so happened I saw it break away. I am sure the man is there. The fire broke through on the other side, a strong wind drove it, and left him, it may be, almost whole for Christian burial. At least we may collect his bones."

"That shall be done with all reverence," said Hugh, "if you are right. Go on, you have more to tell. Brother Meriet saw what you had seen. What then?"

"He was utterly stricken and shocked. He had spoken of coming there as a child, and helping the old charcoal-burner. I am certain he knew of nothing worse there than what he remembered. I told him first we must get our people home undisturbed, and he did his part valiantly," said Brother Mark, "We have left all as we found it-or as we disturbed it unwitting. In the morning light I can show you the place."

"I think, rather," said Hugh with deliberation, "Meriet Aspley shall do that. But now you have told us what you had to tell, now you may sit down with me and eat and drink a morsel, while we consider this matter."

Brother Mark sat down obediently, sighing away the burden of his knowledge. Grateful for the humblest of hospitality, he was equally unawed by the n.o.blest, and having no pride, he did not know how to be servile. When Aline herself brought him meat and drink, and the same for Cadfael, he received it gladly and simply, as saints accept alms, perpetually astonished and pleased, perpetually serene.

"You said," Hugh pressed him gently over the wine, "that you had cause, in the blown ash and the scorching of the trees, to believe that the fire was of this season, and not from a year ago, and that I accept. Had you other reasons to think so?"

"I had," said Mark simply, "for though we have brought home, to our gain, a whole cord of good coppice-wood, yet not far aside from ours there were two other flattened and whitened shapes in the gra.s.s, greener than the one we have now left, but still clear to be seen, which I think must have been bared when the wood was used for this stack. Meriet told me the logs must be left to season. These would have seasoned more than a year, dried out, it may be, too far for what was purposed. No one was left to watch the burning, and the over-dried wood burned through and burst into a blaze. You will see the shapes where the wood lay. You will judge better than I how long since it was moved."

"That I doubt," said Hugh, smiling, "for you seem to have done excellently well. But tomorrow we shall see. There are those can tell to a hair, by the burrowing insects and the spiders, and the tinder fringing the wood. Sit and take your ease awhile, before you must return, for there's nothing now can be done before morning."

Brother Mark sat back, relieved, and bit with astonished pleasure into the game pasty Aline had brought him. She thought him underfed, and worried about him because he was so meagre; and indeed he may very well have been underfed, through forgetting to eat while he worried about someone else. There was a great deal of the good woman in Brother Mark, and Aline recognised it.

"Tomorrow morning," said Hugh, when Mark rose to take his leave and make his way back to his charges, "I shall be at Saint Giles with my men immediately after Prime. You may tell Brother Meriet that I shall require him to come with me and show me the place."

That, of course, should occasion no anxiety to an innocent man, since he had been the cause of the discovery in the first place, but it might bring on a very uneasy night for one not entirely innocent, at least of more knowledge than was good for him. Mark could not object to the oblique threat, since his own mind had been working in much the same direction. But in departing he made over again his strongest point in Meriet's defence.

"He led us to the place, for good and sensible reasons, seeing it was fuel we were after. Had he known what he was to find there, he would never have let us near it."

"That shall be borne in mind," said Hugh gravely. "Yet I think you found something more than natural in his horror when he uncovered a dead man. You, after all, are much of his age, and have had no more experience of murder and violence than has he. And I make no doubt you were shaken to the soul-yet not as he was. Granted he knew nothing of this unlawful burial, still the discovery meant to him something more, something worse, than it meant to you. Granted he did not know a body had been so disposed of, may he not, nevertheless, have had knowledge of a body in need of secret disposal, and recognised it when he uncovered it?"

"That is possible," said Mark simply. "It is for you to examine all these things." And he took his leave, and set off alone on the walk back to Saint Giles.

"There's no knowing, as yet," said Cadfael, when Mark was gone, "who or what this dead man may be. He may have nothing to do with Meriet, with Peter Clemence or with the horse straying in the mosses. A live man missing, a dead man found-they need not be one and the same. There's every reason to doubt it. The horse more than twenty miles north of here, the rider's last night halt four miles southeast, and this burning hearth another four miles south-west from there. You'll have hard work linking those into one sequence and making sense of it. He left Aspley travelling north, and one thing's certain by a number of witnesses, he was man alive then. What should he be doing now, not north, but south of Aspley? And his horse miles north, and on the right route he would be taking, bar a little straying at the end?"

"I don't know but I'll be the happier," owned Hugh, "if this turns out to be some other traveller fallen by thieves somewhere, and nothing to do with Clemence, who may well be down in the peat-pools this moment. But do you know of any other gone missing in these parts? And another thing, Cadfael, would common thieves have left him his riding shoes? Or his hose, for that matter. A naked man has nothing left that could benefit his murderers, and nothing by which he may be easily known, two good reasons for stripping him. And again, since he wore long-toed shoes, he was certainly not going far afoot. No sane man would wear them for walking."

A rider without a horse, a saddled horse without a rider, what wonder if the mind put the two together?

"No profit in racking brains," said Cadfael, sighing, "until you've viewed the place, and gathered what there is to be gathered there."

"We, old friend! I want you with me, and I think Abbot Radulfus will give me leave to take you. You're better skilled than I in dead men, in how long they may have been dead, and how they died. Moreover, he'll want a watching eye on all that affects Saint Giles, and who better than you? You're waist-deep in the whole matter already, you must either sink or haul clear." old friend! I want you with me, and I think Abbot Radulfus will give me leave to take you. You're better skilled than I in dead men, in how long they may have been dead, and how they died. Moreover, he'll want a watching eye on all that affects Saint Giles, and who better than you? You're waist-deep in the whole matter already, you must either sink or haul clear."