The Devil's Novice Part 8

Hugh came down from the castle to attend on the canon and exchange the news with him, though it was a very uneven exchange. He had brought with him the relics of Peter Clemence's jewels and harness, cleaned of their encrusted filth of ash and soil, but discoloured by the marks of fire. The dead man's bones reposed now in a lead-lined coffin in the mortuary chapel of the abbey, but the coffin was not yet sealed. Canon Eluard had it opened for him, and gazed upon the remains within, grim-faced but unwincing.

"Cover him," he said, and turned away. There was nothing there that could ever again be known as any man. The cross and ring were a very different matter.

"This I do know. This I have commonly seen him wearing," said Eluard, with the cross in the palm of his hand. Over the silver surface the coloured sheen of tarnish glimmered, but the gems shone clear. "This is certainly Clemence," said Eluard heavily. "It will be grievous news for my bishop. And you have some fellow in hold for this crime?"

"We have a man in prison, true," said Hugh, "and have let it be noised abroad that he is the man, but in truth I must tell you that he is not charged, and almost certainly never will be. The worst known of him is a little thieving here and there, from hunger, and on that I continue to hold him. But a murderer I am sure he is not." He told the story of his search, but said no word of Meriet's confession. "If you intend to rest here two or three days before riding on, there may yet be more news to take with you."

It was in his mind as he said it that he was a fool to promise any such thing, but his thumbs had p.r.i.c.ked, and the words were out. Cadfael had business with Leoric Aspley when he came, and the imminent gathering here of all those closest about Peter Clemence's last hours seemed to Hugh like the thickening and lowering of a cloud before the storm breaks and the rain falls. If the rain refused to fall, then after the wedding Aspley should be made to tell all that he knew, and probe after what he did not know, taking into account such small matters as those six unrecorded hours, and the mere three miles Clemence had ridden before he met his death.

"Nothing can restore the dead," said Canon Eluard sombrely, "but it is only just and right that his murderer should be brought to account. I trust that may yet be done."

"And you'll be here yet a few days? You're not in haste to rejoin the king?"

"I go to Winchester, not Westminster. And it will be worth waiting a few days to have somewhat more to tell the bishop concerning this grievous loss. I confess to being in need of a brief rest, too, I am not so young as once I was. Your sheriff still leaves you to carry the cares of the shire alone, by the way. King Stephen wishes to retain him in his company over the feast, they go directly to London."

That was by no means unwelcome news to Hugh. The business he had begun he was strongly minded to finish, and two minds bent to the same task, the one more impatient than the other, do not make for good results. "And you are content with your visit," he said. "Something, at least, has gone well."

"It was worth all the travelling," said Eluard with satisfaction. "The king can be easy in his mind about the north, Ranulf and William between them have every mile of it well in hand, it would be a bold man who would meddle with their order. His Grace's castellan in Lincoln is on the best of terms with the earls and their ladies. And the messages I bear to the bishop are gracious indeed. Yes, it was well worth the miles I've ridden to secure it."

On the following day the wedding party arrived in modest manorial state, to apartments prepared for them in the abbey guest-halls: the Aspleys, the Lindes, the heiress of Foriet, and a great rout of their invited guests from all the neighbouring manors down the fringes of the forest. All but the common hall and dortoir for the pedlars and pilgrims and birds of pa.s.sage was given over to the party. Canon Eluard, the abbot's guest, took a benevolent interest in the bright bustle from his privileged distance. The novices and the boys looked on in eager curiosity, delighted at any distraction in their ordered lives. Prior Robert allowed himself to be seen about the court and the cloisters at his most benign and dignified, always at his best where there were ceremonies to be patronised and a patrician audience to appreciate and admire him; and Brother Jerome made himself even more than usually busy and authoritative among the novices and lay servants. In the stable-yard there was great activity, and all the stalls were filled. Brothers who had kin among the guests were allowed to receive them in the parlour. A great wave of animation and interest swept through the courts and the gardens, all the more gaily because the weather, though crisp and very cold, was clear and fine, and the daylight lasted towards evening.

Cadfael stood with Brother Paul at the corner of the cloister and watched them ride in in their best travelling array, with pack-ponies bringing their wedding finery. The Lindes came first. Wulfric Linde was a fat, flabby, middle-aged man of amiable, lethargic face, and Cadfael could not choose but wonder what his dead lady must have been like, to make it possible for the pair of them to produce two such beautiful children. His daughter rode a pretty, cream-coloured palfrey, smilingly aware of all the eyes upon her, and keeping her own eyes tantalisingly lowered, in an appearance of modesty which gave exaggerated power to every flashing sidelong glance. Swathed warmly in a fine blue cloak that concealed all but the rosy oval of her face, she still knew how to radiate beauty, and oh, she knew, how well she knew, that she had at least forty pairs of innocent male eyes upon her, marvelling at what strange delights were withheld from them. Women of all ages, practical and purposeful, went in and out regularly at these gates, with complaint, appeal, request and gift, and made no stir and asked no tribute. Roswitha came armed in knowledge of her power, and delighted in the disquiet she brought with her. There would be some strange dreams among Brother Paul's novices.

Close behind her, and for a moment hard to recognise, came Isouda Foriet on a tall spirited horse. Groomed and shod and well-mounted, her hair netted and uncovered to the light, a bright russet like autumn leaves, with her hood tossed back on her shoulders and her back straight and lissome as a birch-tree, Isouda rode without artifice, and needed none. As good as a boy! As good as the boy who rode beside her, with a hand stretched out to her bridle-hand, lightly touching. Neighbours, each with a manor to offer, would it be strange if Janyn's father and Isouda's guardian planned to match them? Excellently matched in age, in quality, having known each other from children, what could be more suitable? But the two most concerned still chattered and wrangled like brother and sister, very easy and familiar together. And besides, Isouda had other plans.

Janyn carried with him, here as elsewhere, his light, comely candour, smiling round him with pleasure on all he saw. Sweeping a bright glance round all the watching faces, he recognised Brother Cadfael, and his face lit up engagingly as he gave him a marked inclination of his fair head.

"He knows you," said Brother Paul, catching the gesture.

"The bride's brother-her twin. I encountered him when I went to talk with Meriet's father. The two families are close neighbours."

"A great pity," said Paul sympathetically, "that Brother Meriet is not well enough to be here. I am sure he would wish to be present when his brother marries, and to wish them G.o.d's blessing. He cannot walk yet?"

All that was known of Meriet among these who had done their best for him was that he had had a fall, and was laid up with a lingering weakness and a twisted foot.

"He hobbles with a stick," said Cadfael. "I would not like him to venture far as he is. In a day or two we shall see how far we may let him try his powers."

Janyn was down from his saddle with a bound, and attentive at Isouda's stirrup as she made to descend. She laid a hand heartily on his shoulder and came down like a feather, and they laughed together, and turned to join the company already a.s.sembled. After them came the Aspleys, Leoric as Cadfael had imagined and seen him, bolt-upright body and soul, appearing tall as a church column in the saddle; an irate, intolerant, honourable man, exact to his responsibilities, absolute on his privileges. A demi-G.o.d to his servants, and one to be trusted provided they in turn were trustworthy; a G.o.d to his sons. What he had been to his dead wife could scarcely be guessed, or what she had felt towards her second boy. The admirable firstborn, close at his father's elbow, vaulted out of his tall saddle like a bird lighting, large, vigorous and beautiful. At every move Nigel did honour to his progenitors and his name. Cloistered young men watching him murmured admiration, and well they might.

"Difficult," said Brother Paul always sensitive to youth and its obscure torments, "to be second to such a one."

"Difficult indeed," said Cadfael ruefully.

Kinsmen and neighbours followed, small lords and their ladies, self-confident folk, commanding limited realms, perhaps, but absolute within them, and well able to guard their own. They alighted, their grooms led away the horses and ponies, the court gradually emptied of the sudden blaze of colour and animation, and the fixed and revered order continued unbroken, with Vespers drawing near.

Brother Cadfael went to his workshop in the herbarium after supper to fetch certain dried herbs needed by Brother Petrus, the abbot's cook, for the next day's dinner, when the Aspleys and the Lindes were to dine with Canon Euard at the abbot's table. Frost was setting in again for the night, the air was crisp and still and the sky starry, and even the smallest sound rang like a bell in the pure darkness. The footsteps that followed him along the hard earth path between the pleached hedges were very soft, but he heard them; someone small and light of foot, keeping her distance, one sharp ear listening for Cadfael's guiding steps ahead, the other p.r.i.c.ked back to make sure no others followed behind. When he opened the door of his hut and pa.s.sed within, his pursuer halted, giving him time to strike a spark from his flint and light his little lamp. Then she came into the open doorway, wrapped in a dark cloak, her hair loose on her neck as he had first seen her, the cold stinging her cheeks into rose-red, and the flame of the lamp making stars of her eyes.

"Come in, Isouda," said Cadfael placidly, rustling the bunches of herbs that dangled from the beams above. "I've been hoping to find a means of talking with you. I should have known you would make your own occasion."

"But I mustn't stay long," she said, coming in and closing the door behind her. "I am supposed to be lighting a candle and putting up prayers in the church for my father's soul."

"Then should you not be doing that?" said Cadfael, smiling. "Here, sit and be easy for the short time you have, and whatever you want of me, ask."

"I have lit my candle," she said, seating herself on the bench by the wall, "it's there to be seen, but my father was a fine man, and G.o.d will take good care of his soul without any interference from me. And I need to know what is really happening to Meriet."

"They'll have told you that he had a bad fall, and cannot walk as yet?"

"Brother Paul told us so. He said it would be no lasting harm. Is it so? Will he be well again surely?"

"Surely he will. He got a gash on the head in his fall, but that's already healed, and his wrenched foot needs only a little longer rest, and it will bear him again as well as ever. He's in good hands, Brother Mark is taking care of him, and Brother Mark is his staunch friend. Tell me, how did his father take the word of his fall?"

"He kept a severe face," she said, "though he said he grieved to hear it, so coldly, who would believe him? But for all that, he does grieve."

"He did not ask to visit him?"

She made a disdainful face at the obstinacy of men. "Not he! He has given him to G.o.d, and G.o.d must fend for him. He will not go near him. But I came to ask you if you will take me me there to see him." there to see him."

Cadfael stood earnestly considering her for a long moment, and then sat down beside her and told her all that had happened, all that he knew or guessed. She was shrewd, gallant and resolute, and she knew what she wanted and was ready to fight for it. She gnawed a calculating lip when she heard that Meriet had confessed to murder, and glowed in proud acknowledgement when Cadfael stressed that she was the sole privileged person, besides himself and Mark and the law, to be apprised of it, and to know, to her comfort, that it was not believed.

"Sheer folly!" she said roundly. "I thank G.o.d you see through him as through gauze. And his fool of a father believes believes it? But he never has known him, he never has valued or come close to him, from the day Meriet was born. And yet he's a fair-minded man, I own it, he would not knowingly do any man wrong. He must have urgent cause to believe this. And Meriet cause just as grave to leave him in the mistake-even while he certainly must be holding it against him that he's so ready to believe evil of his own flesh and blood. Brother Cadfael, I tell you, I never before saw so clearly how like those two are, proud and stubborn and solitary, taking to themselves every burden that falls their way, shutting out kith and kin and liegemen and all. I could knock their two fool crowns together. But what good would that do, without an answer that would shut both their mouths-except on penitence?" it? But he never has known him, he never has valued or come close to him, from the day Meriet was born. And yet he's a fair-minded man, I own it, he would not knowingly do any man wrong. He must have urgent cause to believe this. And Meriet cause just as grave to leave him in the mistake-even while he certainly must be holding it against him that he's so ready to believe evil of his own flesh and blood. Brother Cadfael, I tell you, I never before saw so clearly how like those two are, proud and stubborn and solitary, taking to themselves every burden that falls their way, shutting out kith and kin and liegemen and all. I could knock their two fool crowns together. But what good would that do, without an answer that would shut both their mouths-except on penitence?"

"There will be such an answer," said Cadfael, "and if ever you do knock their heads together, I promise you both shall be unshaven. And yes, tomorrow I will take you to practise upon the one of them, but after dinner-for before it, I aim to bring your Uncle Leoric to visit his son, whether he will or no. Tell me, if you know, what are their plans for the morrow? They have yet one day to spare before the marriage."

"They mean to attend High Ma.s.s," she said, sparkling hopefully, "and then we women will be fitting gowns and choosing ornaments, and putting a st.i.tch in here and there to the wedding clothes. Nigel will be shut out of all that, until we go to dine with the lord abbot, and I think he and Janyn intend to go into the town for some last trifles. Uncle Leoric may be left to himself after Ma.s.s. You might snare him then, if you catch your time."

"I shall be watching for it," Cadfael a.s.sured her. "And after the abbot's dinner, if you can absent yourself, then I will take you to Meriet."

She rose joyfully when she thought it high time to leave him, and she went forth valiantly, certain of herself and her stars, and her standing with the powers of heaven. And Cadfael went to deliver his selected herbs to Brother Petrus, who was already brooding over the masterpieces he would produce the next day at noon.

After High Ma.s.s on the morning of the twentieth of December the womenfolk repaired to their own apartments, to make careful choice of the right array for dining with the abbot. Leoric's son and his son's bosom friend went off on foot into the town, his guests dispersed to pay local visits for which this was rare opportunity, and make purchases of stores for their country manors while they were close to the town, or to burnish their own finery for the morrow. Leoric walked briskly in the frosty air the length of the gardens, round fish-ponds and fields, down to the Meole brook, fringed with delicate frost like fine lace, and after that as decisively vanished. Cadfael had waited to give him time to be alone, as plainly he willed to be, and then lost sight of him, to find him again in the mortuary chapel where Peter Clemence's coffin, closed now and richly draped, waited for Bishop Henry's word as to its disposal. Two new, fine candles burned on a branched candlestick at the head, and Leoric Aspley was on his knees on the flagstones at the foot. His lips moved upon silent, methodical prayers, his open eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon the bier. Cadfael knew then that he was on firm ground. The candles might have been simply any courtly man's offering to a dead kinsman, however distant, but the grim and grievous face, silently acknowledging a guilt not yet confessed or atoned for, confirmed the part he had played in denying this dead man burial, and pointed plainly at the reason.

Cadfael withdrew silently, and waited for him to come forth. Blinking as he emerged into daylight again, Leoric found himself confronted by a short, st.u.r.dy, nut-brown brother who stepped into his path and addressed him ominously, like a warning angel blocking the way: "My lord, I have an urgent errand to you. I beg you to come with me. You are needed. Your son is mortally ill."

It came so suddenly and shortly, it struck like a lance. The two young men had been gone half an hour, time for the a.s.sa.s.sin's stroke, for the sneak-thief's knife, for any number of disasters. Leoric heaved up his head and snuffed the air of terror, and gasped aloud: "My son...?"

Only then did he recognise the brother who had come to Aspley on the abbot's errand. Cadfael saw hostile suspicion flare in the deep-set, arrogant eyes, and forestalled whatever his antagonist might have had to say.

"It's high time," said Cadfael, "that you remembered you have two sons. Will you let one of them die uncomforted?"

Chapter Eleven.

LEORIC WENT WITH HIM; striding impatiently, suspiciously, intolerantly, yet continuing to go with him. He questioned, and was not answered. When Cadfael said simply: "Turn back, then, if that's your will, and make your own peace with G.o.d and him!" Leoric set his teeth and his jaw, and went on.

At the rising path up the gra.s.s-slope to Saint Giles he checked, but rather to take stock of the place where his son served and suffered than out of any fear of the many contagions that might be met within. Cadfael brought him to the barn, where Meriet's pallet was still laid, and Meriet at this moment was seated upon it, the stout staff by which he hobbled about the hospice braced upright in his right hand, and his head leaned upon its handle. He would have been about the place as best he might since Prime, and Mark must have banished him to an interval of rest before the midday meal. He was not immediately aware of them, the light within the barn being dim and mellow, and subject to pa.s.sing shadows. He looked several years older than the silent and submissive youth Leoric had brought to the abbey a postulant, almost three months earlier.

His sire, entering with the light sidelong, stood gazing. His face was closed and angry, but the eyes in it stared in bewilderment and grief, and indignation, too, at being led here in this fashion when the sufferer had no mark of death upon him, but leaned resigned and quiet, like a man at peace with his fate.

"Go in," said Cadfael at Leoric's shoulder, "and speak to him."

It hung perilously in the balance whether Leoric would not turn, thrust his deceitful guide out of the way, and stalk back by the way he had come. He did cast a black look over his shoulder and make to draw back from the doorway; but either Cadfael's low voice or the stir of movement had reached and startled Meriet. He raised his head and saw his father. The strangest contortion of astonishment, pain, and reluctant and grudging affection twisted his face. He made to rise respectfully and fumbled it in his haste. The crutch slipped out of his hand and thudded to the floor, and he reached for it, wincing.

Leoric was before him. He crossed the s.p.a.ce between in three long, impatient strides, pressed his son back to the pallet with a brusque hand on his shoulder, and restored the staff to his hand, rather as one exasperated by clumsiness than considerate of distress. "Sit!" he said gruffly. "No need to stir. They tell me you have had a fall, and cannot yet walk well."

"I have come to no great harm," said Meriet, gazing up at him steadily. "I shall be fit to walk very soon. I take it kindly that you have come to see me, I did not expect a visit. Will you sit, sir?"

No, Leoric was too disturbed and too restless, he gazed about him at the furnishings of the barn, and only by rapid glimpses at his son. "This life-the way you consented to-they tell me you have found it hard to come to terms with it. You put your hand to the plough, you must finish the furrow. Do not expect me to take you back again." His voice was harsh but his face was wrung.

"My furrow bids fair to be a short one, and I daresay I can hold straight to the end of it," said Meriet sharply. "Or have they not told you, also, that I have confessed the thing I did, and there is no further need for you to shelter me?"

"You have confessed..." Leoric was at a loss. He pa.s.sed a long hand over his eyes, and stared, and shook. The boy's dead calm was more confounding than any pa.s.sion could have been.

"I am sorry to have caused you so much labour and pain to no useful end," said Meriet. "But it was necessary to speak. They were making a great error, they had charged another man, some poor wretch living wild, who had taken food here and there. You had not heard that? Him, at least, I could deliver. Hugh Beringar has a.s.sured me no harm will come to him. You would not have had me leave him in his peril? Give your blessing to this act, at least."

Leoric stood speechless some minutes, his tall body palsied and shaken as though he struggled with his own demon, before he sat down abruptly beside his son on the creaking pallet, and clamped a hand over Meriet's hand; and though his face was still marble-hard, and the very gesture of his hand like a blow, and his voice when he finally found words still severe and harsh, Cadfael nevertheless withdrew from them quietly, and drew the door to after him. He went aside and sat in the porch, not so far away that he could not hear the tones of the two voices within, though not their words, and so placed that he could watch the doorway. He did not think he would be needed any more, though at times the father's voice rose in helpless rage, and once or twice Meriet's rang with a clear and obstinate asperity. That did not matter, they would have been lost without the sparks they struck from each other.

After this, thought Cadfael, let him put on indifference as icily as he will, I shall know better.

He went back when he judged it was time, for he had much to say to Leoric for his own part before the hour of the abbot's dinner. Their rapid and high-toned exchanges ceased as he entered, what few words they still had to say came quietly and lamely.

"Be my messenger to Nigel and to Roswitha. Say that I pray their happiness always. I should have liked to be there to see them wed," said Meriet steadily, "but that I cannot expect now."

Leoric looked down at him and asked awkwardly: "You are cared for here? Body and soul?"

Meriet's exhausted face smiled, a pale smile but warm and sweet. "As well as ever in my life. I am very well-friended, here among my peers. Brother Cadfael knows!"

And this time, at parting, it fell out not quite as once before. Cadfael had wondered. Leoric turned to go, turned back, wrestled with his unbending pride a moment, and then stopped almost clumsily and very briefly, and bestowed on Meriet's lifted cheek a kiss that still resembled a blow. Fierce blood mantled at the smitten cheekbone as Leoric straightened up, turned, and strode from the barn.

He crossed towards the gate mute and stiff, his eyes looking inwards rather than out, so that he struck shoulder and hip against the gatepost, and hardly noticed the shock.

"Wait!" said Cadfael. "Come here with me into the church, and say whatever you have to say, and so will I. We still have time."

In the little single-aisled church of the hospice, under its squat tower, it was dim and chill, and very silent. Leoric knotted veined hands and wrung them, and turned in formidable quiet anger upon his guide. "Was this well done, brother? Falsely you brought me here! You told me my son was mortally ill."

"So he is," said Cadfael. "Have you not his own word for it how close he feels his death? So are you, so are we all. The disease of mortality is in us from the womb, from the day of our birth we are on the way to our death. What matters is how we conduct the journey. You heard him. He has confessed to the murder of Peter Clemence. Why have you not been told that, without having to hear it from Meriet? Because there was no one to tell you else but Brother Mark, or Hugh Beringar, or myself, for no one else knows. Meriet believes himself to be watched as a committed felon, that barn his prison. Now, I tell you, Aspley, that it is not so. There is not one of us three who have heard his avowal, but is heart-sure he is lying. You are the fourth, his father, and the only one to believe in his guilt."

Leoric was shaking his head violently and wretchedly. "I wish it were so, but I know better. Why do you say he is lying? What proof can you have for your trust, compared with that I have for my certainty?"

"I will give you one proof for my trust," said Cadfael, "in exchange for all your proofs of your certainty. As soon as he heard there was another man accused, Meriet made his confession of guilt to the law, which can destroy his body. But resolutely he refused then and refuses still to repeat that confession to a priest, and ask penance and absolution for a sin he has not committed. That is why I believe him guiltless. Now show me, if you can, as strong a reason why you should believe him guilty."

The lofty, tormented grey head continued its anguished motions of rejection. "I wish to G.o.d you were right and I wrong, but I know what I saw and what I heard. I never can forget it. Now that I must tell it openly, since there's an innocent man at stake, and Meriet to his honour has cleansed his breast, why should I not tell it first to you? My guest was gone on his way safely, it was a day like any other day. I went out for exercise with hawk and hounds, and three besides, my chaplain and huntsman, and a groom, honest men all, they will bear me out. There's thick woodland three miles north from us, a wide belt of it. It was the hounds picked up Meriet's voice, no more than a distant call to me until we got nearer and I knew him. He was calling Barbary and whistling for him-the horse that Clemence rode. It may have been the whistle the hounds caught first, and went eager but silent to find Meriet. By the time we came on him he had the horse tethered-you'll have heard he has a gift. When we burst in on him, he had the dead man under the arms, and was dragging him deep into a covert off the path. An arrow in Peter's breast, and bow and quiver on Meriet's shoulder. Do you want more? When I cried out on him, what had he done?-he never said word to deny. When I ordered him to return with us, and laid him under lock and key until I could consider such a shame and horror, and know my way, he never said nay to it, but submitted to all. When I told him I would keep him man alive and cover up his mortal sin, but on conditions, he accepted life and withdrawal. I do believe, as much for our name's sake as for his own life, but he chose."

"He did choose, he did far more than accept," said Cadfael, "for he told Isouda what he told us all, later, that he came to us of his own will, at his own desire. Never has he said that he was forced. But go on, tell me your own part."

"I did what I had promised him, I had the horse led far to the north, by the way Clemence should have ridden, and there turned loose in the mosses, where it might be thought his rider had foundered. And the body we took secretly, with all that was his, and my chaplain read the rites over him with all reverence, before we laid him within a new stack on the charcoal-burner's old hearth, and fired it. It was ill-done and against my conscience, but I did it. Now I will answer for it. I shall not be sorry to pay whatever is due."

"Your son has taken care," said Cadfael hardly, "to claim to himself, along with the death, all that you have done to conceal it. But he will not confess lies to his confessor, as mortal a sin as hiding truth."

"But why?" demanded Leoric wildly. "Why should he so yield and accept all, if he had an answer for me? Why?"

"Because the answer he had for you would have been too hard for you to bear, and unbearable also to him. For love, surely," said Brother Cadfael. "I doubt if he has had his proper fill of love all his life, but those who most hunger for it do most and best deliver it."

"I have loved him," protested Leoric, raging and writhing, "though he has been always so troublous a soul, for ever going contrary."

"Going contrary is one way of getting your notice," said Cadfael ruefully, "when obedience and virtue go unregarded. But let that be. You want instances. This spot where you came upon him, it was hardly more than three miles from your manor-what, forty minutes" ride? And the hour when you came there was well on in the afternoon. How many hours had Clemence lain there dead? And suddenly there is Meriet toiling to hide the dead body, and whistling up the straying horse left riderless. Even if he had run in terror, and wandered the woods fevered over his deed, would he not have dealt with the horse before he fled? Either lashed him away to ride wild, or caught and ridden him far off. What was he doing there calling and tethering the horse, and hiding the body, all those hours after the man must have died? Did you never think of that?"

"I thought," said Leoric, speaking slowly now, wide-eyed, urgent upon Cadfael's face, "as you have said, that he had run in terror from what he had done, and come back, late in the day, to hide it from all eyes."

"So he has said now, but it cost him a great heave of the heart and mind to fetch that excuse up out of the well."

"Then what," whispered Leoric, shaking now with mingled hope and bewilderment, and very afraid to trust, "what has moved him to accept so dreadful a wrong? How could he do such an injury to me and to himself?"

"For fear, perhaps, of doing you a greater. And for love of someone he had cause to doubt, as you found cause to doubt him. Meriet has a great store of love to give," said Brother Cadfael gravely, "and you would not allow him to give much of it to you. He has given it elsewhere, where it was not repelled, however it may have been undervalued. Have I to say to you again, that you have two sons?"

"No!" cried Leoric in a muted howl of protest and outrage, towering taller in his anger, head and shoulders above Cadfael's square, solid form. "That I will not hear! You presume! It is impossible!"

"Impossible for your heir and darling, yet instantly believable in his brother? In this world all men are fallible, and all things are possible."

"But I tell you I saw him hiding his dead man, and sweating over it. If he had happened on him innocently by chance he would not have had cause to conceal the death, he would have come crying it aloud."

"Not if he happened innocently on someone dear to him as brother or friend stooped over the same horrid task. You believe what you saw, why should not Meriet also believe what he saw? You put your own soul in peril to cover up what you believed he had done, why should not he do as much for another? You promised silence and concealment at a price-and that protection offered to him was just as surely protection for another-only the price was still to be exacted from Meriet. And Meriet did not grudge it. Of his own will he paid it-that was no mere consent to your terms, he wished it and tried to be glad of it, because it bought free someone he loved. Do you know of any other creature breathing that he loves as he loves his brother?"

"This is madness!" said Leoric, breathing hard like a man who has run himself half to death. "Nigel was the whole day with the Lindes, Roswitha will tell you, Janyn will tell you. He had a falling-out to make up with the girl, he was off to her early in the morning, and came home only late in the evening. He knew nothing of that day's business, he was aghast when he heard of it."

"From Linde's manor to that place in the forest is no long journey for a mounted man," said Cadfael relentlessly. "How if Meriet found him busy and bloodied over Clemence's body, and said to him: Go, get clean away from here, leave him to me-go and be seen elsewhere all this day. I will do what must be done. What then?"

"Are you truly saying," demanded Leoric in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "that Nigel killed the man? Such a crime against hospitality, against kinship, against his nature?"

"No," said Cadfael. "But I am saying that it may be true that Meriet did so find him, just as you found Meriet. Why should what was such plain proof to you be any less convincing to Meriet? Had he not overwhelming reason to believe his brother guilty, to fear him guilty, or no less terrible, to dread that he might be convicted in innocence? For bear this ever in mind, if you could be mistaken in giving such instant credence to what you saw, so could Meriet. For those lost six hours still stick in my craw, and how to account for them I don't yet know."

"Is it possible?" whispered Leoric, shaken and wondering. "Have I so wronged him? And my own part-must I not go straight to Hugh Beringar and let him judge? In G.o.d's name, what are we to do, to set right what can be righted?"

"You must go, rather, to Abbot Radulfus's dinner," said Cadfael, "and be such a convivial guest as he expects, and tomorrow you must marry your son as you have planned. We are still groping in the dark, and have no choice but to wait for enlightenment. Think of what I have said, but say no word of it to any other. Not yet. Let them have their wedding day in peace."

But for all that he was certain then, in his own mind, that it would not be in peace.

Isouda came to find him in his workshop in the herbarium. He took one look at her, forgot his broodings, and smiled. She came in the austere but fine array she had thought suitable for dining with abbots, and catching the smile and the lighting of Cadfael's eyes, she relaxed into her impish grin and opened her cloak wide, putting off the hood to let him admire her.

"You think it will do?"

Her hair, too short to braid, was bound about her brow by an embroidered ribbon fillet, just such a one as Meriet had hidden in his bed in the dortoir, and below the confinement it cl.u.s.tered in a thick mane of curls on her neck. Her dress was an over-tunic of deep blue, fitting closely to the hip and there flowing out in gentle folds, over a long-sleeved and high-necked cotte of a pale rose-coloured wool; Exceedingly grown-up, not at all the colours or the cut to which a wild child would fly, allowed for once to dine with the adults. Her bearing, always erect and confident, had acquired a lordly dignity to go with the dress, and her gait as she entered was princely. The close necklace of heavy natural stones, polished but not cut, served beautifully to call the eye to the fine carriage of her head. She wore no other ornaments.

"It would do for me," said Cadfael simply, "if I were a green boy expecting a hoyden known from a child. Are you as unprepared for him, I wonder, as he will be for you?"