One Corpse Too Many (5 page)

“Madam,” said Beringar, very softly and respectfully, “if there is any way I can be of service to you, I beg you command me.”

She turned to look at him, and smiled, for she had seen him in church, and knew him to be a guest here like herself, and stress had turned Shrewsbury into a town where people behaved to one another either as loyal neighbours or potential informers, and of the latter attitude she was incapable. Nevertheless, he saw fit to establish his credentials. “You will remember I came to offer the king my troth when you did. My name is Hugh Beringar of Maesbury. It would give me pleasure to serve, you. And it seemed to me that you were finding cause for perplexity and distress in what we have just heard. If there is any errand I can do for you, I will, gladly.”

“I do remember you,” said Aline, “and I take your offer very kindly, but this is something only I can do, if it must be done. No one else here would know my brother’s face. To tell the truth, I was hesitating… But there will be women from the town, I know, going there with certain knowledge to find their sons. If they can do it, so can I.”

“But you have no good reason,” he said, “to suppose that your brother may be among these unfortunates.”

“None, except that I don’t know where he is, and I do know he embraced the empress’s cause. It would be better, wouldn’t it, to be sure? Not to miss any possibility? As often as I do not find him dead, I may hope to see him again alive.”

“Was he very dear to you?” asked Beringar gently.

She hesitated to answer that, taking it very gravely. “No, I never knew him as sister should know brother. Giles was always for his own friends and his own way, and five years my elder. By the time I was eleven or twelve he was for ever away from home, and came back only to quarrel with my father. But he is the only brother I have, and I have not disinherited him. And they’re saying there’s one there more than they counted, and unknown.”

“It will not be Giles,” he said firmly.

“But if it were? Then he needs his name, and his sister to do what’s right.” She had made up her mind. “I must go.”

“I think you should not. But I am sure you should not go alone.” He thought ruefully that her answer to that would be that she had her maid to accompany her, but instead she said at once: “I will not take Constance into such a scene! She has no kin there, and why should she have to suffer it as well as I?”

“Then, if you will have me, I will go with you.”

He doubted if she had any artifice in her; certainly at this pass she showed none. Her anxious face brightened joyfully, she looked at him with the most ingenuous astonishment, hope and gratitude. But she still hesitated. “That is kind indeed, but I can’t let you do it. Why should you be subjected to such pain, just because I have a duty?”

“Oh, come now!” he said indulgently, sure of himself and of her. “I shall not have a moment’s peace if you refuse me and go alone. But if you tell me I shall only be adding to your distress by insisting, then I’ll be silent and obey you. On no other condition.”

It was more than she could do. Her lips quivered. “No—it would be a lie. I am not very brave!” she said sadly. “I shall be grateful indeed.”

He had what he had wanted; he made the most of it. Why ride, when the walk through the town could be made to last so much longer, and provide so much more opportunity to get to know her better? Hugh Beringar sent his horse to the stables, and set out with Aline along the highway and over the bridge into Shrewsbury.

Brother Cadfael was standing guard over his murdered man in a corner of the inner ward, beside the archway, where every citizen who came in search of child or kinsman must pass close, and could be questioned. But all he got so far was mute shaking of heads and glances half-pitying, half-relieved. No one knew the young man. And how could he expect great concern from these poor souls who came looking, every one, for some known face, and barely saw the rest?

Prestcote had made good his word, there was no tally kept of those who came, and no hindrance placed in their way, or question asked of them. He wanted his castle rid of its grim reminders as quickly as possible. The guard, under Adam Courcelle, had orders to remain unobtrusive, even to help if that would get the unwelcome guests off the premises by nightfall.

Cadfael had persuaded every man of the guard to view his unknown, but none of them could identify him. Courcelle had frowned down at the body long and sombrely, and shaken his head.

“I never saw him before, to my knowledge. What can there possibly have been about a mere young squire like this, to make someone hate him enough to kill?”

“There can be murders without hate,” said Cadfael grimly. “Footpads and forest robbers take their victims as they come, without any feeling of liking or disliking.”

“Why, what can such a youth have had to make him worth killing for gain?”

“Friend,” said Cadfael, “there are those in the world would kill for the few coins a beggar has begged during the day. When they see kings cut down more than ninety in one sweep, whose fault was only to be in arms on the other side, is it much wonder rogues take that for justification? Or at least for licence!” He saw the colour burn high in Courcelle’s face, and a momentary spark of anger in his eye, but the young man made no protest. “Oh, I know you had your orders, and no choice but to obey them. I have been a soldier in my time, and borne the same discipline and done things I would be glad now to think I had not done. That’s one reason I’ve accepted, in the end, another discipline.”

“I doubt,” said Courcelle drily, “if I shall ever come to that.”

“So would I have doubted it, then. But here I am, and would not change again to your calling. Well, we do the best we can with our lives!” And the worst, he thought, viewing the long lines of motionless forms laid out along the ward, with other men’s lives, if we have power.

There were some gaps in the silent ranks by then. Some dozen or so had been claimed by parents and wives. Soon there would be piteous little hand-carts pushed up the slope to the gate, and brothers and neighbours lifting limp bodies to carry them away. More of the townspeople were still coming timidly in through the archway, women with shawls drawn close over their heads and faces half-hidden, gaunt old men trudging resignedly to look for their sons. No wonder Courcelle, whose duties could hardly have encompassed this sort of guard before, looked almost as unhappy as the mourners.

He was frowning down at the ground in morose thought when Aline came into view in the archway, her hand drawn protectively through Hugh Beringar’s arm. Her face was white and taut, her eyes very wide and her lips stiffly set, and her fingers clutched at her escort’s sleeve as drowning men clutch at floating twigs, but she kept her head up and her step steady and firm. Beringar matched his pace attentively to hers, made no effort to divert her eyes from the sorry spectacle in the ward, and cast only few and brief, but very intent, side-glances at her pale countenance. It would certainly have been a tactical error, Cadfael thought critically, to attempt the kind of protective ardour that claims possession; young and ingenuous and tender as she might be, this was a proud patrician girl of old blood, not to be trifled with if once that blood was up. If she had come here on her own family business, like these poor, prowling citizens, she would not thank any man to try and take it out of her hands. She might, none the less, be deeply thankful for his considerate and reticent presence.

Courcelle looked up, almost as though he had felt a breath of unease moving before them, and saw the pair emerge into the sunlight in the ward, cruel afternoon sunlight that spared no detail. His head jerked up and caught the light, his bright hair burning up like a furze fire. “Christ God!” he said in a hissing undertone, and went plunging to intercept them on the threshold.

“Aline!—Madam, should you be here? This is no place for you, so desolate a spectacle. I marvel,” he said furiously to Beringar, “that you should bring her here, to face a scene so harrowing.”

“He did not bring me,” said AIine quickly. “It was I insisted on coming. Since he could not prevent me, he has been kind enough to come with me.”

“Then, dear lady, you were foolish to impose such a penance on yourself,” said Courcelle fiercely. “Why, how can you have business here? Surely there’s none here belonging to you.”

“I pray you may be right,” she said. Her eyes, huge in the white face, ranged in fearful fascination over the shrouded ranks at her feet, and visibly the first horror and revulsion changed gradually into appalled human pity. “But I must know! Like all these others! I have only one way of being certain, and it’s no worse for me than for them. You know I have a brother—you were there when I told the king  

“But he cannot be here. You said he was fled to Normandy.”

“I said it was rumoured so—but how can I be sure? He may have won to France, he may have joined some company of the empress’s men nearer home, how can I tell? I must see for myself whether he chose Shrewsbury or not.”

“But surely the garrison here were known. Your name is very unlikely to have been among them.”

“The sheriff’s proclamation,” said Beringar mildly, speaking up for the first time in this encounter, “mentioned that there was one here, at least, Who was not known. One more, apparently, than the expected tally.”

“You must let me see for myself,” said AIine, gently and firmly, “or how can I have any peace?”

Courcelle had no right to prevent, however it grieved and enraged him. And at least this particular corpse was close at hand, and could bring her nothing but reassurance. “He lies here,” he said, and turned her towards the corner where Brother Cadfael stood. She gazed, and was surprised into the faint brightness of a smile, a genuine smile though it faded soon.

“I think I should know you. I’ve seen you about the abbey, you are Brother Cadfael, the herbalist.”

“That is my name,” said. Cadfael. “Though why you should have learned it I hardly know.”

“I was asking the porter about you,” she owned, flushing. “I saw you at Vespers and Compline, and—Forgive me, brother, if I have trespassed, but you had such an air—as though you had lived adventures before you came to the cloister. He told me you were in the Crusade—with Godfrey of Bouillon at the siege of Jerusalem! I have only dreamed of such service… Oh!” She had lowered her eyes from his face, half abashed by her own ardour, and seen the young, dead face exposed at his feet. She gazed and gazed, in controlled silence. The face was not offensive, rather its congestion had subsided; the unknown lay youthful and almost comely,

“This a most Christian service you are doing now,” said Aline, low-voiced, “for all these here. This is the unexpected one? The one more than was counted?”

“This is he.” Cadfael stooped and drew down the linen to show the good but simple clothing, the absence of anything warlike about the young man. “But for the dagger, which every man wears when he travels, he was unarmed.”

She looked up sharply. Over her shoulder Beringar was gazing down with frowning concentration at the rounded face that must have been cheerful and merry in life. “Are you saying,” asked AIine, “that he was not in the fight here? Not captured with the garrison?”

“So it seems to me. You don’t know him?”

“No.” She looked down with pure, impersonal compassion. “So young! It’s great pity! I wish I could tell you his name, but I never saw him before.”

“Master Beringar?”

“No. A stranger to me.” Beringar was still staring down very sombrely at the dead. They were almost of an age, surely no more than a year between them. Every man burying his twin sees his own burial.

Courcelle, hovering solicitously, laid a hand on the girl’s arm, and said persuasively: “Come now, you’ve done your errand, you should quit this sad place at once, it is not for you. You see your fears were groundless, your brother is not here.”

“No,” said Aline, “this is not he, but for all that he may—How can I be sure unless I see them all?” She put off the urging touch, but very gently. “I’ve ventured this far, and how is it worse for me than for any of these others?” She looked round appealingly. “Brother Cadfael, this is your charge now. You know I must ease my mind. Will you come with me?”

“Very willingly,” said Cadfael, and led the way without more words, for words were not going to dissuade her, and he thought her right not to be dissuaded. The two young men followed side by side, neither willing to give the other precedence. Aline looked down at every exposed face, wrung but resolute.

“He was twenty-four years old—not very like me, his hair was darker… Oh, here are all too many no older than he!”

They had traversed more than half of the dolorous passage when suddenly she caught at Cadfael’s arm, and froze where she stood. She made no outcry, she had breath only for a soft moan, audible as a word only to Cadfael, who was nearest. “Giles!” she said again more strongly, and what colour she had drained from her face and left her almost translucent, staring down at a face once imperious, wilful and handsome. She sank to her knees, stooping to study the dead face close, and then she uttered the only cry she ever made over her brother, and that very brief and private, and swooped breast to breast with him, gathering the body into her arms. The mass of her hair slipped out of its coils and spilled gold over them both.

Brother Cadfael, who was experienced enough to let her alone until she seemed to need comfort for her grief instead of decent reticence, would have waited quietly, but he was hurriedly thrust aside, and Adam Courcelle fell on his knees beside her, and took her beneath the arms to lift her against his shoulder. The shock of discovery seemed to have shaken him fully as deeply as it had Aline, his face was stricken and dismayed, his voice an appalled stammer.

“Madam!—Aline—Dear God, is this indeed your brother? If I’d known… if I’d known, I’d have saved him for you… Whatever the cost, I would have delivered him… God forgive me!”

She lifted a tearless face from the curtain of her yellow hair, and looked at him with wonder and compunction, seeing him so shattered. “Oh, hush! How can this be any fault of yours? You could not know. You did only what you were ordered to do. And how could you have saved one, and let the rest die?”