One Corpse Too Many (6 page)

“Then truly this is your brother?”

“Yes,” she said, gazing down at the dead youth with a face now drained even of shock and grief. “This is Giles.” Now she knew the worst, and now she had only to do what was needful, what fell to her for want of father and brothers. She crouched motionless in Courcelle’s arm, earnestly regarding the dead face. Cadfael, watching, was glad he had managed to mould some form back into features once handsome, but in death fallen into a total collapse of terror. At least she was not viewing that hardly human disintegration.

Presently she heaved a short, sharp sigh, and made to rise, and Hugh Beringar, who had shown admirably judicious restraint throughout, reached a hand to her on the other side, and lifted her to her feet. She was mistress of herself as perhaps she had never been before, never having had to meet such a test until now. What was required of her she could and would do.

“Brother Cadfael, I do thank you for all you have done, not only for Giles and me, but for all these. Now, if you permit, I will take my brother’s burial into my charge, as is only fitting.”

Close and anxious at her shoulder, still deeply shaken, Courcelle asked: “Where would you have him conveyed? My men shall carry him there for you, and be at your orders as long as you need them. I wish I might attend you myself, but I must not leave my guard.”

“You are very kind,” she said, quite composed now. “My mother’s family has a tomb. at St. Alkmund’s church, here in the town. Father Elias knows me. I shall be grateful for help in taking my brother there, but I need not keep your men from their duties longer. All the rest I will do.” Her face had grown intent and practical, she had work to do, all manner of things to take into account, the need for speed, the summer heat, the provision of all the materials proper to decent preparation for the grave. She made her dispositions with authority.

“Messire Beringar, you have been kind, and I do value it, but now I must stay to see to my family’s rites. There is no need to sadden all the rest of your day, I shall be safe enough.”

“I came with you,” said Hugh Beringar, “and I shall not return without you.” The very way to talk to her now, without argument, without outward show of sympathy. She accepted his resolve simply, and turned to her duty. Two of the guards brought a narrow litter, and lifted Giles Siward’s body into it, and she herself steadied and straightened the lolling head.

At the last moment Courcelle, frowning down distressfully at the corpse, said abruptly: “Wait! I have remembered—I believe there is something here that must have belonged to him.”

He went hastily through the archway and across the outer ward to the guard-towers, and in a few moments came back carrying over his arm a black cloak. “This was among the gear they left behind in the guardroom at the end. I think it must have been his—this clasp at the neck has the same design, see, as the buckle of his belt.”

It was true enough, there was the same dragon of eternity, tail in mouth, lavishly worked in bronze. “I noticed it only now. That cannot be by chance. Let me at least restore him this.” He spread out the cloak and draped it gently over the litter, covering the dead face. When he looked up, it was into Aline’s eyes, and for the first time they regarded him through a sheen of tears.

“That was very kindly done,” she said in a low voice, and gave him her hand. “I shall not forget it.”

Cadfael went back to his vigil by the unknown, and continued his questioning, but it brought no useful response. In the coming night all these dead remaining must be taken on carts down the Wyle and out to the abbey; this hot summer would not permit further delay. At dawn Abbot Heribert would consecrate a new piece of ground at the edge of the abbey enclosure, for a mass grave. But this unknown, never condemned, never charged with any crime, whose dead body cried aloud for justice, should not be buried among the executed, nor should there be any rest until he could go to his grave under his own rightful name, and with all the individual honours due to him.

In the house of Father Elias, priest of St. Alkmund’s church, Giles Siward was reverently stripped, washed, composed and shrouded, all by his sister’s hands, the good father assisting. Hugh Beringar stood by to fetch and carry for them, but did not enter the room where they worked. She wanted no one else, she was quite sufficient to the task laid on her, and if she was robbed of any part of it now she would feel deprivation and resentment, not gratitude. But when all was done, and her brother laid ready for rest before the altar of the church, she was suddenly weary to death, and glad enough of Beringar’s almost silent company and ready arm back to her house by the mill.

On the following morning Giles Siward was interred with all due ceremony in the tomb of his maternal grandfather in the church of St. Alkmund, and the monks of the abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul buried with due rites all the sixty-six soldiers of the defeated garrison still remaining in their charge.

Chapter Four

ALINE BROUGHT BACK WITH HER THE COTTE and hose her brother had worn, and the cloak that had covered him, and herself carefully brushed and folded them. The shirt no one should ever wear again, she would burn it and forget; but these stout garments of good cloth must not go to waste, in a world where so many went half-naked and cold. She took the neat bundle, and went in at the abbey gate house, and finding the whole courtyard deserted, crossed to the ponds and the gardens in search of Brother Cadfael. She did not find him. The digging out of a grave large enough to hold sixty-six victims, and the sheer repetitious labour of laying them in it, takes longer than the opening of a stone tomb to make room for one more kinsman. The brothers were hard at work until past two o’clock, even with every man assisting.

But if Cadfael was not there, his garden-boy was, industriously clipping off flower-heads dead in the heat, and cutting leaves and stems of blossoming savory to hang up in bunches for drying. All the end of the hut, under the eaves, was festooned with drying herbs. The diligent boy worked barefoot and dusty from the powdery soil, and a smear of green coloured one cheek. At the sound of approaching footsteps he looked round, and came out in haste from among his plants, in a great wave of fragrance, which clung about him and distilled from the folds of his coarse tunic like the miraculous sweetness conferred upon some otherwise unimpressive-looking saint. The hurried swipe of a hand over his tangle of hair only served to smear the other cheek and half his forehead.

“I was looking,” said Aline, almost apologetically, “for Brother Cadfael. You must be the boy called Godric, who works for him.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Godith gruffly. “Brother Cadfael is still busy, they are not finished yet.” She had wanted to attend, but he would not let her; the less she was seen in full daylight, the better.

“Oh!” said Aline, abashed. “Of course, I should have known. Then may I leave my message with you? It is only—I’ve brought these, my brother’s clothes. He no longer needs them, and they are still good, someone could be glad of them. Will you ask Brother Cadfael to dispose of them somewhere they can do good? However he thinks best.”

Godith had scrubbed grubby hands down the skirts of her cotte before extending them to take the bundle. She stood suddenly very still, eyeing the other girl and clutching the dead man’s clothes, so startled and shaken that she forgot for a moment to keep her voice low. “No longer needs… You had a brother in there, in the castle? Oh, I am sorry! Very sorry!”

Aline looked down at her own hands, empty and rather lost now that even this last small duty was done. “Yes. One of many,” she said. “He made his choice. I was taught to think it the wrong one, but at least he stood by it to the end. My father might have been angry with him, but he would not have had to be ashamed.”

“I am sorry!” Godith hugged the folded garments to her breast and could find no better words. “I’ll deliver your message to Brother Cadfael as soon as he comes. And he would want me to give you his thanks for your most feeling charity, until he can do it for himself.”

“And give him this purse, too. It is for Masses for them all. But especially a Mass for the one who should not have been there—the one nobody knows.”

Godith stared in bewilderment and wonder. “Is there one like that? One who did not belong? I didn’t know!” She had seen Cadfael for only a few hurried moments when he came home late and weary, and he had had no time to tell her anything. All she knew was that the remaining dead had been brought to the abbey for burial; this mysterious mention of one who had no place in the common tragedy was new to her.

“So he said. There were ninety-five where there should have been only ninety-four, and one did not seem to have been in arms. Brother Cadfael was asking all who came, to look and see if they knew him, but I think no one has yet put a name to him.”

“And where, then is he now?” asked Godith, marvelling.

“That I don’t know. Though they must have brought him here to the abbey. Somehow I don’t think Brother Cadfael will let him be put into the earth with all the rest, and he nameless and unaccounted for. You must know his ways better than I. Have you worked with him long?”

“No, a very short time,” said Godith, “but I do begin to know him.” She was growing a little uneasy, thus innocently studied at close quarters by those clear iris eyes. A woman might be more dangerous to her secret than a man. She cast a glance back towards the beds of herbs where she had been working.

“Yes,” said Aline, taking the allusion, “I must not keep you from your proper work.”

Godith watched her withdraw, almost regretting that she dared not prolong this encounter with another girl in this sanctuary of men. She laid the bundle of clothing on her bed in the hut, and went back to work, waiting in some disquiet for Cadfael to come; and even when he did appear he was tired, and still burdened with business.

“I’m sent for to the king’s camp. It seems his sheriff has thought best to let him know what sort of unexpected hare I’ve started, and he wants an accounting from me. But I’m forgetting,” he said, passing a hard palm over cheeks stiff with weariness, “I’ve had no time to talk to you at all, you’ve heard nothing of all that—“

“Ah, but I have,” said Godith’ “Aline Siward was here looking for you. She brought these, see, for you to give as alms, wherever you think best. They were her brother’s. She told me. And this money is for Masses—she said especially a Mass for this one man more than was looked for. Now tell me, what is this mystery?”

It was pleasant to sit quietly for a while and let things slide, and therefore he relaxed and sat down with her, and told her. She listened intently, and when he was done she asked at once: “And where is he now, this stranger nobody knows?”

“He is in the church, on a bier before the altar. I want all who come to services to pass by him, in the hope that someone must know him, and give him a name. We can’t keep him beyond tomorrow,” he said fretfully, “the season is too hot. But if we must bury him unknown, I intend it to be where he can as easily be taken up again, and to keep his clothes and a drawing of his face, until we discover the poor lad.”

“And you truly believe,” she questioned, awed, “that he was murdered? And then cast in among the king’s victims, to hide the crime away for ever?”

“Child, I’ve told you! He was taken from behind, with a strangler’s cord ready prepared for the deed. And it was done in the same night that the others died and were flung over into the ditch. What better opportunity could a murderer have? Among so many, who was to count, and separate, and demand answers? He had been dead much the same time as some of those others. It should have been a certain cover.”

“But it was not!” she said, vengefully glowing. “Because you came. Who else would have cared to be so particular among ninety-five dead men? Who else would have stood out alone for the rights of a man not condemned—killed without vestige of law? Oh, Brother Cadfael, you have made me as irreconcilable as you are on this. Here am I, and have not seen this man. Let the king wait a little while! Let me go and see! Or go with me, if you must, but let me look at him.”

Cadfael considered and got to his feet, groaning a little at the effort. He was not so young as he once had been, and he had had a hard day and night. “Come, then, have your will, who am Ito shut you out where I invite others in? It should be quiet enough there now, but keep close to me. Oh, girl, dear, I must also be about getting you safe out of here as soon as I may.”

“Are you so eager to get rid of me?” she said, offended. “And just when I’m getting to know sage from marjoram! What would you do without me?”

“Why, train some novice I can expect to keep longer than a few weeks. And speaking of herbs,” said Cadfael, drawing out a little leather bag from the breast of his habit, and shaking out a six-inch sprig of sun-dried herbage, a thin, square stem studded at intervals with pairs of spreading leaves, with tiny brown balls set in the joints of them, “do you know what this one is?”

She peered at it curiously, having learned much in a few days. “No. We don’t grow it here. But I might know it if I saw it growing fresh.”

“It’s goose-grass—-cleavers it’s also called. A queer, creeping thing that grows little hooks to hold fast, even on these tiny seeds you see here. And you see it’s broken in the middle of this straight stem?”

She saw, and was curiously subdued. There was something here beyond her vision; the thing was a wisp of brown, bleached and dry, but indeed folded sharply in the midst by a thin fracture. “What is it? Where did you find it?”

“Caught into the furrow in this poor lad’s throat,” he said, so gently that she could take it in without shock, “broken here by the ligament that strangled him. And it’s last year’s crop, not new. The stuff is growing richly at this season, seeding wild everywhere, this was in fodder, or litter, grass cut last autumn and dried out. Never turn against the herb, it’s sovereign for healing green wounds that are stubborn to knit. All the things of the wild have their proper uses, only misuse makes them evil.” He put the small slip of dryness away carefully in his bosom, and laid an arm about her shoulders. “Come, then, let’s go and look at this youngster, you and I together.”

It was mid-afternoon, the time of work for the brothers, play for the boys and the novices, once their limited tasks were done. They came down to the church without meeting any but a few half-grown boys at play, and entered the cool dimness within.

The mysterious young man from the castle ditch lay austerely shrouded on his bier in the choir end of the nave, his head and face uncovered. Dim but pure light fell upon him; it needed only a few minutes to get accustomed to the soft interior glow in this summer afternoon, and he shone clear to view. Godith stood beside him and gazed in silence. They were alone there, but for him, and they could speak, in low voices. But when Cadfael asked softly: “Do you know him?” he was already sure of the answer.

A fine thread of a whisper beside him said: “Yes.”

“Come!” He led her out as softly as they had come. In the sunlight he heard her draw breath very deep and long. She made no other comment until they were secure together in the herbarium, in the drowning summer sweetness, sitting in the shade of the hut.

“Well, who is he, this young fellow who troubles both you and me?”

“His name,” she said, very low and wonderingly, “is Nicholas Faintree. I’ve known him, by fits and starts, since I was twelve years old. He is a squire of FitzAlan’s, from one of his northern manors, he’s ridden courier for his lord several times in the last few years. He would not be much known in Shrewsbury, no. If he was waylaid and murdered here, he must have been on his lord’s business. But FitzAlan’s business was almost finished in these parts.” She hugged her head between her hands, and thought passionately. “There are some in Shrewsbury could have named him for you, you know, if they had reason to come looking for men of their own. I know of some who may be able to tell you what he was doing here that day and that night. If you can be sure no ill will come to them?”

“Never by me,” said Cadfael, “that I promise.”

“There’s my nurse, the one who brought me here and called me her nephew. Petronilla served my family all her grown life, until she married late, too late for children of her own, and she married a good friend to FitzAlan’s house and ours, Edric Flesher, the chief of the butchers’ guild in town. The two of them were close in all the plans when FitzAlan declared for the empress Maud. If you go to them from me,” she said confidently, “they’ll tell you anything they know. You’ll know the shop, it has the sign of the boar’s head, in the butchers’ row.”

Cadfael scrubbed thoughtfully at his nose. “If I borrow the abbot’s mule, I can make better speed, and spare my legs, too. There’ll be no keeping the king waiting, but on the way back I can halt at the shop. Give me some token, to show you trust me, and they can do as much without fear.”

“Petronilla can read, and knows my hand. I’ll write you a line to her, if you’ll lend me a little leaf of vellum, a mere corner will do.” She was alight with ardour, as intent as he. “He was a merry person, Nicholas, he never did harm to anyone, that I know, and he was never out of temper. He laughed a great deal… But if you tell the king he was of the opposite party, he won’t care to pursue the murderer, will he? He’ll call it a just fate, and bid you leave well alone.”

“I shall tell the king,” said Cadfael, “that we have a man plainly murdered, and the method and time we know, but not the place or the reason. I will also tell him that we have a name for him—it’s a modest name enough, it can mean nothing to Stephen. As at this moment there’s no more to tell, for I know no more. And even if the king should shrug it off and bid me let things lie, I shall not do it. By my means or God’s means, or the both of us together, Nicholas Faintree shall have justice before I let this matter rest.”

Having the loan of the abbot’s own mule, Brother Cadfael took with him in this errand the good cloth garments Aline had entrusted to him. It was his way to carry out at once whatever tasks fell him, rather than put them off until the morrow, and there were beggars enough on his way through the town. The hose he gave to an elderly man with eyes whitened over with thick cauls, who sat with stick beside him and palm extended in the shade of the town gate. He looked of a suitable figure, and was in much-patched and threadbare nethers that would certainly fall apart very soon. The good brown cotte went to a frail creature no more than twenty years old who begged at the high cross, a poor feeble-wit with hanging lip and a palsied shake, who had a tiny old woman holding him by the hand and caring for him jealously. Her shrill blessings followed Cadfael down towards the castle gate. The cloak he still had folded before him when he came to the guard-post of the king’s camp, and saw Lame Osbern’s little wooden trolley tucked into the bole of a tree close by, and marked the useless, withered legs, and the hands callused and muscular from dragging all that dead weight about by force. His wooden pattens lay beside him in the grass. Seeing a frocked monk approaching on a good riding mule, Osbern seized them and propelled himself forward into Cadfael’s path. And it was wonderful how fast he could move, over short distances and with intervals for rest, but all the same so immobilised a creature, half his body inert, must suffer cold in even the milder nights, and in the winter terribly.