One Corpse Too Many (4 page)

“No, it’s not that. I’m in no danger and no need. I came only to look for Godith. They’re saying he left it too late to send her away with FitzAlan’s family. Where can I find her?”

“Did someone send you here to look for her?” asked Edric.

“No, no, none… But where else would he place her? Who is there to be trusted like her nurse? Of course I came first to you! Never tell me she was not here!”

“She was here,” said Petronilla. “Until a week ago we had her. But she’s gone, Hugh, you’re too late. He sent two knights to fetch her away, and not even we were told where she was bound. What we don’t know we can’t be made to tell, he said. But it’s my belief they got her away out of the town in good time, and she’s far off by now, and safe, pray God!” No doubt about the fervency of that prayer, she would fight and die for her nurseling. And lie for her, too, if need be!

“But for God’s sake, friends, can you not help me to her at all? I’m her intended husband. I’m responsible for her if her father is dead, as by now, for all I know, he may well be…”

That got him something for his trouble, at any rate, if it was no more than the flicker of a glance passing between them, before they exclaimed their “God forbid!” in unison. They knew very well, by the frenzied search, that FitzAlan and Adeney had been neither killed nor taken. They could not yet be sure that they were clean away and safe, but they were staking their lives and loyalty on it. So now he knew he would get nothing more from them, he, the renegade.

Not, at any rate, by this direct means.

“Sorry I am, lad,” said Edric Flesher weightily, “to have no better comfort for you, but so it is. Take heart that at least no enemy has laid hand on her, and we pray none ever will.” Which could well be taken, reflected Beringar whimsically, as a thrust at me.

“Then I must away, and try what I can discover elsewhere,” he said dejectedly. “I’ll not put you in further peril. Open, Petronilla, and look if the street’s empty for me.” Which she did, nothing loth, and reported it as empty as a beggar’s palm. Beringar clasped Edric’s hand, and leaned and kissed Ethic’s wife, and was rewarded and avenged by a vivid, guilty blush.

“Pray for her,” he said, asking one thing at least they would not grudge him, and slipped through the half-open door, and heard it closed firmly behind him. Not too loudly, since he was supposed to be affecting stealth, but still audibly, he tramped with hasty steps along the street as far as the corner of the house. Then, whirling, he skipped back silently on his toes to lay an ear to the shutter.

“Hunting for his bride!” Petronilla was saying scornfully. “Yes, and a fair price he’d pay for her, too, and she a certain decoy for her father’s return, if not for FitzAlan’s! He has his way to make with Stephen now, and my girl’s his best weapon.”

“Maybe we’re too hard on him,” responded Edric mildly. “Who’s to say he doesn’t truly want to see the girl safe? But I grant you we dared take no chances. Let him do his own hunting.”

“Thank God,” she said fiercely, “he can’t well know I’ve hid my lamb away in the one place where no sane man will look for her!” And she chuckled at the word “man.”

“There’ll be a time to get her out of there later, when all the hue and cry’s forgotten. Now I pray her father’s miles from here and riding hard. And that those two lads in Frankwell will have a lucky run westward with the sheriff’s treasury tonight. May they all come safe to Normandy, and be serviceable to the empress, bless her!”

“Hush, love!” said Edric chidingly. “Even behind locked doors…”

They had moved away into an inner room; a door closed between. Hugh Beringar abandoned his listening-post and walked demurely away down the long, curving hill to the town gate and the bridge, whistling softly and contentedly as he went.

He had got more even than he had bargained for. So they were hoping to smuggle out FitzAlan’s treasury, as well as his person, and this very night, westward into Wales! And had had the forethought to stow it away meantime, against this desperate contingency, outside the walls of the town, somewhere in the suburb of Frankwell. No gates to pass, no bridges to cross. As for Godith—he had a shrewd idea now where to look for her. With the girl and the money, he reflected, a man could buy the favour of far less corruptible men than King Stephen!

Godith was in the herbarium workshop, obstinately stirring, diluting and mixing as she had been shown, an hour before Vespers, with her heart in anguished suspense, and her mind in a twilight between hope and despair. Her face was grubby from smearing away tears with a hand still soiled from the garden, and her eyes were rimmed with the washed hollows and grimed uplands of her grief and tension. Two tears escaped from her angry efforts at damming them, while both hands were occupied, and fell into a brew which should not have been weakened. Godith swore, an oath she had learned in the mews, long ago, when the falconers were suffering from a careless and impudent apprentice who had been her close friend.

“Rather say a blessing with them,” said Brother Cadfael’s voice behind her shoulder, gently and easily. “That’s likely to be the finest tisane for the eyes I ever brewed. Never doubt God was watching.” She had turned her dirty, dogged, appealing face to him in silence, finding encouragement in the very tone of his voice. “I’ve been to the gate house, and the mill, and the bridge. Such ill news as there is, is ill indeed, and presently we’ll go pray for the souls of those quitting this world. But all of us quit it at last, by whatever way, that’s not the worst of evils. And there is some news not all evil. From all I can hear this side Severn, and at the bridge itself—there’s an archer among the guard there was with me in the Holy Land—your father and FitzAlan are neither dead, wounded nor captive, and all search of the town has failed to find them. They’re clear away, Godric, my lad. I doubt if Stephen for all his hunting will lay hand on them now. And now you may tend to that wine you’re watering, and practise your young manhood until we can get you safely out of here after your sire.”

Just for a moment she rained tears like the spring thaw, and then she glinted radiance like the spring sun. There was so much to grieve over, and so much to celebrate, she did not know which to do first, and essayed both together, like April. But her age was April, and the hopeful sunshine won.

“Brother Cadfael,” she said when she was calm, “I wish my father could have known you. And yet you are not of his persuasion, are you?”

“Child, dear,” said Cadfael comfortably, “my monarch is neither Stephen nor Maud, and in all my life and all my fighting I’ve fought for only one king. But I value devotion and fidelity, and doubt if it matters whether the object falls short. What you do and what you are is what matters. Your loyalty is as sacred as mine. Now wash your face and bathe your eyes, and you can sleep for half an hour before Vespers—but no, you’re too young to have the gift!”

She had not the gift that comes with age, but she had the exhaustion that comes of youthful stress, and she fell asleep on her bench-bed within seconds, drugged with the syrup of relief. He awoke her in time to cross the close for Vespers. She walked beside him discreetly, her shock of clipped curls combed forward on her brow to hide her still reddened eyes.

Driven to piety by shock and terror, all the inhabitants of the guest house were also converging on the church, among them Hugh Beringar; not, perhaps, a victim of fear, but drawn by the delicate bait of Aline Siward, who came hastening from her house by the mill with lowered eyes and heavy heart. Beringar had, none the less, a quick eye for whatever else of interest might be going on round about him. He saw the two oddly contrasted figures coming in from the gardens, the squat, solid, powerful middle-aged monk with the outdoor tan and the rolling, seaman’s gait, with his hand protectively upon the shoulder of a slip of a boy in a cotte surely inherited from an older and larger kinsman, a bare-legged, striding youth squinting warily through a bush of brown hair. Beringar looked, and considered; he smiled, but so inwardly that on his long, mobile mouth the smile hardly showed.

Godith controlled both her face and her pace, and gave no sign of recognition. In the church she strolled away to join her fellow-pupils, and even exchanged a few nudges and grins with them. If he was still watching, let him wonder, doubt, change his mind. He had not seen her for more than five years. Whatever his speculations, he could not be sure. Nor was he watching this part of the church, she noted; his eyes were on the unknown lady in mourning most of the time. Godith began to breathe more easily, and even allowed herself to examine her affianced bridegroom almost as attentively as he was observing Aline Siward. When last seen, he had been a coltish boy of eighteen, all elbows and knees, not yet in full command of his body. Now he had a cat’s assured and contemptuous grace, and a cool, aloof way with him. A presentable enough fellow, she owned critically, but no longer of interest to her, or possessed of any rights in her. Circumstances alter fortunes. She was relieved to see that he did not look in her direction again.

All the same, she told Brother Cadfael about it, as soon as they were alone together in the garden after supper, and her evening lesson with the boys was over. Cadfael took it gravely.

“So that’s the fellow you were to marry! He came here straight from the king’s camp, and has certainly joined the king’s party, though according to Brother Dennis, who collects all the gossip that’s going among his guests, he’s on sufferance as yet, and has to prove himself before he’ll get a command.” He scrubbed thoughtfully at his blunt, brown nose, and pondered. “Did it seem to you that he recognised you? Or even looked over-hard at you, as if you reminded him of someone known?”

“I thought at first he did give me a hard glance, as though he might be wondering. But then he never looked my way again, or showed any interest. No, I think I was mistaken. He doesn’t know me. I’ve changed in five years, and in this guise… In another year,” said Godith, astonished and almost alarmed at the thought, “we should have been married.”

“I don’t like it!” said Cadfael, brooding. “We shall have to keep you well out of his sight. If he wins his way in with the king, maybe he’ll leave here with him in a week or so. Until then, keep far from the guest house or the stables, or the gate house, or anywhere he may be. Never let him set eyes on you if you can avoid.”

“I know!” said Godith, shaken and grave. “If he does find me he may turn me to account for his own advancement. I do know! Even if my father had reached shipboard, he would come back and surrender himself, if I were threatened. And then he would die, as all those poor souls over there have died…” She could not bear to turn her head to look towards the towers of the castle, hideously ornamented. They were dying there still, though she did not know it; the work went on well into the hours of darkness. “I will avoid him, like the plague,” she said fervently, “and pray that he’ll leave soon.”

Abbot Heribert was an old, tired and peace-loving man, and disillusionment with the ugly tendencies of the time, combined with the vigour and ambition of his prior, Robert, had disposed him to withdraw from the world ever deeper into his own private consolations of the spirit. Moreover, he knew he was in disfavour with the king, like all those who had been slow to rally to him with vociferous support. But confronted with an unmistakable duty, however monstrous, the abbot could still muster courage enough to rise to the occasion. There were ninety-four dead or dying men being disposed of like animals, and every one had a soul, and a right to proper burial, whatever his crimes and errors. The Benedictines of the abbey were the natural protectors of those rights, and Heribert did not intend King Stephen’s felons to be shovelled haphazard and nameless into an unmarked grave. All the same, he shrank from the horror of the task, and looked about him for someone more accomplished in these hard matters of warfare and bloodshed than himself, to lend support. And the obvious person was Brother Cadfael, who had crossed the world in the first Crusade, and afterwards spent ten years as a sea captain about the coasts of the Holy Land, where fighting hardly ever ceased.

After Compline, Abbot Heribert sent for Cadfael to his private parlour.

“Brother, I am going—now, this night—to ask King Stephen for his leave and authority to give Christian burial to all those slaughtered prisoners. If he consents, tomorrow we must take up their poor bodies, and prepare them decently for the grave. There will be some who can be claimed by their own families, the rest we shall bury honourably with the rites due to them. Brother, you have yourself been a soldier. Will you—if I speak with the king—will you take charge of this work?”

“Not gladly, but with all my heart, for all that,” said Brother Cadfael, “yes, Father, I will.”

Chapter Three

“YES, I WILL,” SAID GODITH, “if that’s how I can best be useful to you. Yes, I will go to my morning lesson and my evening lesson, eat my dinner without a word or a look to anyone, and then make myself scarce and shut myself up here among the potions. Yes, and drop the bar on the door, if need be, and wait until I hear your voice before I open again. Of course I’ll do as you bid. But for all that, I wish I could go with you. These are my father’s people and my people, I wish I could have some small part in doing them these last services.”

“Even if it were safe for you to venture there,” said Cadfael firmly, “and it is not, I would not let you go. The ugliness that man can do to man might cast a shadow between you and the certainty of the justice and mercy God can do to him hereafter. It takes half a lifetime to reach the spot where eternity is always visible, and the crude injustice of the hour shrivels out of sight. You’ll come to it when the time’s right. No, you stay here and keep well out of Hugh Beringar’s way.”

He had even thought of recruiting that young man into his working-party of able-bodied and devoutly inclined helpers, to make sure that he spent the day away from anywhere Godith might be. Whether in a bid to acquire merit for their own souls, out of secret partisan sympathy with the dead men’s cause, or to search anxiously for friends or kin, three of the travellers in the guest house had volunteered their aid, and it might have been possible, with such an example, to inveigle others, even Beringar, into feeling obliged to follow suit. But it seemed that the young man was already out and away on horseback, perhaps dancing hopeful attendance on the king; a newcomer seeking office can’t afford to let his face be forgotten. He had also ridden out the previous evening as soon as Vespers was over, so said the lay brothers in the stables. His three men-at-arms were here, idling their day away with nothing to do once the horses were groomed, fed and exercised, but they saw no reason why they should involve themselves in an activity certainly unpleasant, and possibly displeasing to the king. Cadfael could not blame them. He had a muster of twenty, brothers, lay brothers and the three benevolent travellers, when they set out across the bridge and through the streets of the town to the castle.

Probably King Stephen had been glad enough to have a service offered voluntarily which he might otherwise have had to impose by order. Someone had to bury the dead, or the new garrison would be the first to suffer, and in an enclosed fortress in a tightly walled town disease can fester and multiply fearfully. All the same, the king would perhaps never forgive Abbot Heribert for the implied reproach, and the reminder of his Christian duty. Howbeit, the old man had brought back the needful authority; Cadfael’s party was passed through the gates without question, and Cadfael himself admitted to Prestcote’s presence.

“Your lordship will have had orders about us,” he said briskly. “We are here to take charge of the dead, and I require clean and adequate space where they may be decently laid until we take them away for burial. If we may draw water from the well, that’s all besides that we need ask. Linen we have brought with us.”

“The inner ward has been left empty,” said Prestcote indifferently. “There is room there, and there are boards you may use if you need them.”

“The king has also granted that such of these unfortunates as were men of this town, and have families or neighbours here, can be claimed and taken away for private burial. Will you have that cried through the town, when I am satisfied that all is ready? And give them free passage in and out?”

“If there are any bold enough to come,” said Prestcote drily, “they may have their kin and welcome. The sooner all this carrion is removed, the better shall I be pleased.”

“Very well! Then what have you done with them?” For the walls and towers had been denuded before dawn of their sudden crop of sorry fruit. The Flemings must have worked half the night to put the evidence out of sight, which was surely not their idea, but might well be Prestcote’s. He had approved these deaths, he did not therefore have to take pleasure in them, and he was an old soldier of strict and orderly habits, who liked a clean garrison.

“We cut them down, when they were well dead, and dropped them over the parapet into the green ditch under the wall. Go out by the Foregate, and between the towers and the road you’ll find them.”

Cadfael inspected the small ward offered him, and it was at least clean and private, and had room for all. He led his party out through the gate in the town wall, and down into the deep, dry ditch beneath the towers. Long, fruiting grasses and low bushes partially hid what on closer approach looked like a battlefield. The dead lay piled deep at one spot close under the wall, and were sprawled and scattered like broken toys for yards on either side. Cadfael and his helpers tucked up their gowns and went to work in pairs, without word spoken, disentangling the knotted skein of bodies, carrying away first the most accessible, lifting apart those shattered into boneless embraces by their fall from above. The sun climbed high, and the heat was reflected upon them from the stone of the walls. The three pious travellers shed their cottes. In the deep hollow the air grew heavy and stifling, and they sweated and laboured for breath, but never flagged.

“Pay close attention always,” said Cadfael warningly, “in case some poor soul still breathes. They were in haste, they may have cut someone down early. And in this depth of cushioning below, a man could survive even the fall.”

But the Flemings, for all their hurry, had been thorough. There was no live man salvaged out of that massacre.

They had started work early, but it was approaching noon by the time they had all the dead laid out in the ward, and were beginning the work of washing and composing the bodies as becomingly as possible, straightening broken limbs, closing and weighting eyelids, even brushing tangled hair into order, and binding fallen jaws, so that the dead face might be no horror to some unfortunate parent or wife who had loved it in life. Before he would go to Prestcote and ask for the promised proclamation to be made, Cadfael walked the range of his salvaged children, and checked that they were as presentable as they could well be made. And as he paced, he counted. At the end he frowned, and stood to consider, then went back and counted again. And that done, he began a much closer scrutiny of all those he had not himself handled, drawing down the linen wrappings that covered the worst ravages. When he rose from the last of them, his face was grim, and he marched away in search of Prestcote without a word to any.

“How many,” demanded Cadfael, “did you say you despatched at the king’s order?”

“Ninety-four,” said Prestcote, puzzled and impatient.

“Either you did not count,” said Cadfael, “or you miscounted. There are ninety-five here.”

“Ninety-four or ninety-five,” said Prestcote, exasperated, “one more or less, what does it matter? Traitors all, and condemned, am I to tear my hair because the number does not tally?”

“Not you, perhaps,” said Cadfael simply, “but God will require an accounting. Ninety-four, including Arnulf of Hesdin, you had orders to slay. Justified or not, that at least was ordered, you had your sanction, the thing is registered and understood. Any accounting for those comes later and in another court. But the ninety-fifth is not in the reckoning, no king authorised his removal out of this world, no castellan had orders to kill him, never was he accused or convicted of rebellion, treason or any other crime, and the man who destroyed him is guilty of murder.”

“God’s wounds!” exploded Prestcote violently. “An officer in the heat of fighting miscounts by one, and you would make a coram rege case out of it! He was omitted in the count delivered, but he was taken in arms and hanged like the rest, and no more than his deserts. He rebelled like the rest, he is hanged like the rest, and that’s an end of it. In God’s name, man, what do you want me to do?”

“It would be well,” said Cadfael flatly, “if you would come and look at him, to begin with. For he is not like the rest. He was not hanged like the rest, his hands were not bound like the rest—he is in no way comparable, though someone took it for granted we would all see and think as you, and omit to count. I am telling you, my lord Prestcote, there is a murdered man among your executed men, a leaf hidden in your forest. And if you regret that my eyes found him, do you think God had not seen him long before? And supposing you could silence me, do you think God will keep silence?”

Prestcote had stopped pacing by that time, and stood staring very intently. “You are in good earnest,” he said, shaken. “How could there be a man there dead in some other way? Are you sure of what you say?”

“I am sure. Come and see! He is there because some felon put him there, to pass for one among the many, and arouse no curiosity, and start no questions.”

“Then he would need to know that the many would be there.”

“Most of this town and all this garrison would know that, by nightfall. This was a deed of night. Come and see!”

And Prestcote went with him, and showed every sign of consternation and concern. But so would a guilty man, and who was better placed to know all a guilty man needed to know, to protect himself? Still, he kneeled with Cadfael beside the body that was different, there in the confines of the ward, between high walls, with the odour of death just spreading its first insidious pall over them.

A young man, this. No armour on him, but naturally the rest had been stripped of theirs, nail and plate being valuable. But his dress was such as to suggest that he had worn neither mail nor leather, he was clad in lightweight, dark cloth, but booted, the manner of dress a man would wear for a journey in summer weather, to ride light, be warm enough by night, and shed the short cotte to be cool enough by day. He looked about twenty-five years old, no more, reddish brown in colouring and round and comely of face, if the eye could make allowance for the congestion of strangulation, now partially smoothed out by Cadfael’s experienced fingers. The bulge and stare of the eyes was covered, but the lids stood large.

“He died strangled,” said Prestcote, relieved to see the signs.

“He did, but not by a rope. And not with hands bound, like these others. Look!” Cadfael drew down the folds of the capuchon from the round young throat, and showed the sharp, cruel line that seemed to sever head from body. “You see the thinness of this cord that took his life? No man ever dangled from such a noose. It runs level round his neck, and is fine as fishing line. It may well have been fishing line. You see the edges of this furrow in his flesh, discoloured, and shiny? The cord that killed him was waxed, to bite smooth and deep. And you see this pit here behind?” He raised the lifeless head gently on his arm, and showed, close to the knotted cord of the spine, a single, deep, bruised hollow, with a speck of black blood at its heart. “The mark of one end of a wooden peg, a hand-hold to twist when the cord was round the victim’s throat. Stranglers use such waxed cords, with two hand-holds at the ends—killers by stealth, highway birds of prey. Given strength of hand and wrist, it is a very easy way of seeing your enemies out of this world. And do you see, my lord, how his neck, where the thong bites, is lacerated and beaded with dried blood? Now see here, both hands—Look at his nails, black at the tips with his own blood. He clawed at the cord that was killing him. His hands were free. Did you hang any whose hands were not tied?”

“No!” Prestcote was so fascinated by the details he could not deny that the answer escaped him involuntarily. It would have been futile to snatch it back. He looked up at Brother Cadfael across the unknown young man’s body, and his face sharpened and hardened into hostility. “There is nothing to be gained,” he said deliberately, “by making public so wild a tale. Bury your dead and be content. Let the rest be!”

“You have not considered,” said Cadfael mildly, “that as yet there is no one who can put a name or a badge to this boy. He may as well be an envoy of the king as an enemy. Better treat him fairly, and keep your peace with both God and man. Also,” he said, in a tone even more cloistrally innocent, “you may raise doubts of your own integrity if you meddle with truth. If I were you, I would report this faithfully, and send out that proclamation to the townsfolk at once, for we are ready. Then, if any can claim this young man, you have delivered your soul. And if not, then clearly you have done all man can do to right a wrong. And your duty ends there.”

Prestcote eyed him darkly for some moments, and then rose abruptly from his knees. “I will send out the word,” he said, and stalked away into the hail.

The news was cried through the town, and word sent formally to the abbey, so that the same announcement might be made at the guest house there. Hugh Beringar, riding in from the east on his return from the king’s camp, having forded the river at an island downstream, heard the proclamation at the gate house of the abbey, and saw among those anxiously listening the slight figure of Aline Siward, who had come out from her house to hear the news. For the first time he saw her with head uncovered. Her hair was the light, bright gold he had imagined it would be, and shed a few curling strands on either side her oval face. The long lashes shadowing her eyes were many shades darker, a rich bronze. She stood listening intently, gnawed a doubtful lip, and knotted her small hands together. She looked hesitant, and burdened, and very young.

Beringar dismounted only a few paces from her, as if he had by mere chance chosen that spot in order to be still and hear to the end what Prior Robert was saying.

“—and his Grace the king gives free warranty to any who may wish, to come and claim their kin, if there be any such among the executed, and give them burial in their own place and at their own charge. Also, since there is one in particular whose identity is not known, he desires that all who come may view him, and if they can, name him. All which may be done without fear of penalty or disfavour.”

Not everyone would take that at its face value, but she did. What was troubling her was not fear of any consequences to herself, but a desperate feeling that she ought to make this dolorous pilgrimage, while equally earnestly she shrank from the horrors she might have to see. She had, Beringar remembered, a brother who had defied his father and run off to join the empress’s adherents; and though she had heard rumours that he might have reached France, she had no means of knowing if they were true. Now she was struggling to escape the conviction that wherever there were garrisons of her brother’s faction fallen victims of this civil war, she ought to go and assure herself that he was not among them. She had the most innocent and eloquent of faces, her every thought shone through.