Authors: Ellis Peters
Monk's Hood (19 page)
The
porter departed. It was almost the hour for retirement, and most of the
brothers would certainly be in the warming-room, but Cadfael was not there, nor
was Brother Mark. The porter found them in the workshop in the garden, not even
compounding mysteries, either, but sitting somewhat glumly, talking in low and
anxious tones. The news of the capture had not yet gone round; by day it would
have been known everywhere within minutes. It was common knowledge, of course,
how the sheriff’s men had spent their day, but it was not yet common knowledge
with what an achievement they had crowned it.
“Brother
Cadfael, you’re wanted at the gatehouse,” announced the porter, leaning in at
the doorway. And as Cadfael looked up at him in surprise: “There’s a young
fellow there asks for you as his spiritual adviser, though if you want my view,
he’s very much in command of his own spirit, and has
let Prior
Robert know it, too. A company of the sheriff’s men rode in towards the end of
Compline with a prisoner. Yes, they’ve taken young Gurney at last.”
So
that was how it had ended, after all Mark’s efforts and prayers, after all his
own ineffective reasonings and seekings and faith. Cadfael got up in grieving
haste. “I’ll come to him. With all my heart I’ll come. Now we have the whole
battle on our hands, and little time left. The poor lad! But why have they not
taken him straight into the town?” Though of that one small mercy he was glad,
seeing he himself was confined within the abbey walls, and only this odd chance
provided him with a brief meeting.
“Why,
the only thing they can charge him with, and nobody can question, is stealing
the horse he rode off on this morning, and that was from our premises and our
care, the abbey court has rights in it. In the morn they’ll fetch him away on
the count of murder.”
Brother
Mark fell in at their heels and followed to the gatehouse, altogether cast down
and out of comfort, unable to find a hopeful word to say. He felt in his heart
that that was sin, the sin of despair; not despair for himself, but despair of
truth and justice and right, and the future of wretched mankind. Nobody had
bidden him attend, but he went, all the same, a soul committed to a cause about
which, in fact, he knew very little, except the youth of the protagonist, and
the absolute nature of Cadfael’s faith in him, and that was enough.
Cadfael
entered the porter’s room with a heavy heart but not in despair; it was a
luxury he could not afford. All eyes turned upon him, understandably, since he
entered upon a heavy silence. Robert had abandoned his kindly meant but
patronising exhortations, and the men of law had given up the attempt to get
any admissions out of their captive, and were content to see him safely under
lock and key, and get to their beds in the castle. A ring of large,
well-equipped men on guard round a willowy lad in country homespun, bareheaded
and cloakless on a frosty night, who sat braced and neat and alert on a bench
by the wall, pleasantly flushed
now from the fire, and
looking, incredibly, almost complacent. His eyes met Brother Cadfael’s eyes,
and danced; clear, dark-fringed, greenish eyes. His hair was light brown, like
seasoned oak. He was lightly built but tall for his years. He was tired,
sleepy, bruised and dirty, and behind the wary eyes and solemn face he was
undoubtedly laughing.
Brother
Cadfael looked long, and understood much, enough at that moment to have no
great worries about what as yet he did not understand. He looked round the
attentive circle, looked last and longest at Prior Robert.
“Father
Prior, I am grateful that you sent for me, and I welcome the duty laid on me,
to do what may be done for the prisoner. But I must tell you that these
gentlemen are in some error. I cast no doubt on what they may have to report of
how this boy was taken, but I do advise them to make enquiry how and where he
spent this morning’s hours, when he is said to have escaped from the abbey barn
on the horse belonging to Mistress Bonel. Gentlemen,” he informed the sheriff’s
bewildered patrol very gravely, “this is not Edwin Gurney you have captured,
but his nephew, Edwy Bellecote.”
THE
ABBEY PRISON WAS TWO LITTLE CELLS attached to the rear of the gatehouse, very
clean, furnished with benchbeds no worse than the novices endured, and very
rarely occupied. The summer period of Saint Peter’s fair was the chief
populator of the cells, since it could be relied upon to provide two happy
drunken servants or lay brothers nightly, who slept off their excesses and
accepted their modest fines and penances without rancour, thinking the game well
worth the candle. From time to time some more serious disturbance might cast up
an inmate, some ill-balanced brother who nursed a cloistered hate long enough
to attempt violence, or a lay servant who stole, or a novice who offended too
grossly against the imposed code. The abbey court was not a busy one.
In
one of the two cells Brother Cadfael and Edwy sat side by side, warmly and
companionably. There was a grille in the door, but it was most improbable that
anyone was paying attention to anything that could be heard through it. The
brother who held the keys was sleepy, and in any case indifferent to the cause
that had brought him a prisoner. The difficulty would probably be to batter
loudly enough to wake him when Cadfael wanted to leave.
“It
wasn’t so hard,” said Edwy, sitting back with a grateful sigh after demolishing
the bowl of porridge a tolerant cook
had provided him,
“there’s a cousin of father’s lives along the riverside, just beyond your
property of the Gaye, he has an orchard there, and a shed for the donkey and
cart, big enough to hide Rufus. His boy brought word into the town to us, and I
took father’s horse and came out to meet Edwin there. Nobody was looking for a
bony old piebald like our Japhet, I never got a second glance as I crossed the bridge,
and I didn’t hurry. Alys came with me pillion, and kept watch in case they got
close. Then we changed clothes and horses, and Edwin made off towards—“
“Don’t
tell me!” said Cadfael quickly.
“No,
you can truly say you don’t know. Plainly not the way I went. They were slow
sighting me,” said Edwy scornfully, “even with Alys helping them. But once they
had me in view it was a matter of how long I could keep them busy, to give him
time to get well away. I could have taken them still further, but Rufus was
tiring, so I let them have me. I had to, in the end, it kept them happy several
more hours, and they sent one man ahead to call off the hunt. Edwin’s had a
clear run. Now what do you think they’ll do with me?”
“If
you hadn’t already been in abbey charge, and the prior by, at that,” said
Cadfael frankly, “they’d have had the hide off you for leading them such a
dance and making such fools of them. I wouldn’t say Prior Robert himself
wouldn’t have liked to do as much, but dignity forbids, and authority forbids
letting the secular arm skin you on his behalf. Though I fancy,” he said with
sympathy, viewing the blue bruises that were beginning to show on Edwy’s jaw
and cheekbone, “they’ve already paid you part of your dues.”
The
boy shrugged disdainfully. “I can’t complain. And it wasn’t all one way. You
should have seen the sergeant flop belly-down into the bog… and heard him when
he got up. It was good sport, and we got Edwin away. And I’ve never had such a
horse under me before, it was well worth it. But now what’s to happen? They
can’t accuse me of murder, or of stealing Rufus, or even the gown, because I
was never near the barn this morning, and there are plenty of witnesses to
where I was, about the shop and the yard.”
Edwy
shook his head vigorously. “He need take no notice of that, he knows in the end
there’s nothing criminal they can lay against me. And I can sit out threats
better than he. He loses his temper. He’s getting better, but he has far to go
yet.” Was he as buoyant about his prospects as he made out? Cadfael could not
be quite sure, but certainly this elder of the pair had turned his four months
seniority into a solid advantage, perhaps by reason of feeling responsible for
his improbable uncle from the cradle. “I can keep my mouth shut and wait,” said
Edwy serenely.
“Well,
since Prior Robert has so firmly demanded that the sheriff come in person
tomorrow to remove you,” sighed Cadfael, “I will at least make sure of being
present, and try what can be got for you. The prior has given me a spiritual
charge, and I’ll stand fast on it. And now you’d better get your rest. I am
supposed to be here to exhort you to an amended life, but to tell the truth,
boy, I find your life no more in need of amendment than mine, and I think it
would be presumption in me to meddle. But if you’ll join your voice to mine in
the night prayers, I think God may be listening.”
“Willingly,”
said Edwy blithely, and plumped to his knees like a cheerful child, with
reverently folded hands and closed eyes. In the middle of the prayers before
sleeping his lips fluttered in a brief smile; perhaps he was remembering the
extremely secular language of the sergeant rising dripping from the bog.
Cadfael
was up before Prime, alert in case the prisoner’s escort should come early.
Prior Robert had been extremely angry at last night’s comedy, but grasped
readily at the plain fact that it gave him full justification for demanding
that the sheriff should at once relieve him of an offender who had
turned out to be no concern of his at all. This was not the boy who had taken
away a Benedictine habit and a horse in Benedictine care, he was merely the
mischievous brat who had worn the one and ridden the other to the ludicrous
discomfiture of several gullible law officers. They could have him, and
welcome; but the prior considered that it was due to his dignity—in this mood
fully abbatial—that the senior officer then in charge, sheriff or deputy,
should come in person to make amends for the inconvenience to which the abbey
had been subjected, and remove the troublesome element. Robert wanted a public
demonstration that henceforth all responsibility lay with the secular arm, and
none within his sacred walls.
Brother
Mark hovered close at Cadfael’s elbow as the escort rode in, about half past
eight in the morning, before the second Mass. Four mounted men-at-arms, and a
spruce, dark, lightly built young nobleman on a tall, gaunt and self-willed horse,
dappled from cream to almost black. Mark heard Brother Cadfael heave a great,
grateful sigh at the sight of him, and felt his own heart rise hopefully at the
omen.
“The
sheriff must have gone south to keep the feast with the king,” said Cadfael
with immense satisfaction. “God is looking our way at last. That is not Gilbert
Prestcote, but his deputy, Hugh Beringar of Maesbury.”
“Now,”
said Beringar briskly, a quarter of an hour later, “I have placated the prior,
promised him deliverance from the presence of this desperate bravo, sent him
off to Mass and chapter in tolerable content, and retrieved you, my friend,
from having to accompany him, on the grounds that you have questions to
answer.” He closed the door of the room in the gatehouse from which all his
men-at-arms had been dismissed to wait his pleasure, and came and sat down
opposite Cadfael at the table. “And so you have, though not, quite as he
supposes. So now, before we go and pick this small crab out of his shell, tell
me everything you know about this curious business. I know you must know more
of it than any other man, however confidently my sergeant sets out his case.
Such a break in the monastic monotony could never occur, and you
not
get wind of it and be there in the thick of it. Tell me everything.”
And
now that it was Beringar in the seat of authority, while Prestcote attended
dutifully at his sovereign lord’s festal table, Cadfael saw no reason for
reserve, at least so far as his own part was concerned. And all, or virtually
all, was what he told.
“He
came to you, and you hid him,” mused Beringar.
“I
did. So I would again, in the same circumstances.”
“Cadfael,
you must know as well as I the strength of the case against this boy. Who else
has anything to gain? Yet I know you, and where you have doubts, I shall
certainly not be without them.”
“I
have no doubts,” said Cadfael firmly. “The boy is innocent even of the thought
of murder. And poison is so far out of his scope, he never would or could
conceive the idea. I tested them both, when they came, and they neither of them
even knew how the man had died, they believed me when I said he had been cut
down in his blood. I stuck the means of murder under the child’s nose, and he
never paled. All it meant to him was a mild memory of sniffing the same sharp
smell while Brother Rhys was having his shoulders rubbed in the infirmary.”
“I
take your word for all that,” said Beringar, “and it is good evidence, but it
is not in itself proof. How if we should both of us underestimate the cunning
of the young, simply because they are young?”
“True,”
agreed Cadfael with a wry grin, “you are none so old yourself, and of your
cunning, as I know, the limit has not yet been found. But trust me, these two
are not of the same make as you. I have known them, you have not; agreed? I
have my duty to do, according to such lights as I see. So have you your duty to
do, according to your office and commission. I don’t quarrel with that. But at
this moment, Hugh, I don’t know and have no means of guessing where Edwin Gurney
is, or I might well urge him to give himself up to you and rely on your
integrity. You will not need me to tell you that this loyal nephew of his, who
has taken some
sharp knocks for him, does know where he is, or
at least knows where he set out to go. You may ask him, but of course he won’t
tell you. Neither for your style of questioning nor Prestcote’s.”