The Heretic's Apprentice (16 page)

*

Hugh arrived towards the end of chapter, alone and, somewhat to Cadfael's surprise, as well as to his profound relief, ahead of any other and untoward report. Rumour was usually so blithe and busy about the town and the Foregate that he had expected word of Aldwin's death to worm its way in with inconvenient speed and a good deal of regrettable embroidery to the plain tale, but it had not happened. Hugh could tell the story his own way, and in the privacy of Abbot Radulfus's parlour, with Cadfael to confirm and supplement. And the abbot did not say what, inevitably, someone else very soon would. Instead he said directly:

‘Who last saw the man alive?'

‘From what we know so far,' said Hugh, ‘those who saw him go out of the house early yesterday afternoon. Jevan of Lythwood, who came enquiring for him here this morning, as Cadfael says, before ever I got the word to him of his man's death. The fosterchild Fortunata, she who was made a witness to the charge yesterday. The woman of the house. And the shepherd Conan. But that was broad daylight, he must have been seen by others, at the town gate, on the bridge, here in the Foregate, or wherever he turned aside. We shall trace his every step, to fill in the time before he died.'

‘But we cannot know when that was,' said Radulfus.

‘No, true, no better than a guess. But Madog judges he was put into the river as soon as it grew dark, and that he'd lain hidden somewhere after his death, waiting for dark. Perhaps two or three hours, but there's no knowing. I have men out looking for any trace of where he may have lain hidden. If we find that, we find where he was murdered, for he could not have been moved far.'

‘And all Lythwood's household are in one tale together – that the clerk, when he heard the young man made no claim to his place, started to come here, to confess his malice and withdraw the charge he had made?'

‘Further, the girl says that she had parted from Elave in the trees, there not far from the bridge, and told Aldwin so. She believes he went off in such haste in the hope of overtaking him. She says also,' said Hugh with emphasis, ‘that she urged Elave to take to his heels, and he refused.'

‘Then what he did accords with what he said,' Radulfus allowed. ‘And his accuser set out to confess and beg pardon. Yes – it argues against,' he said, holding Hugh eye to eye.

‘There are those who will argue for. And it must be said,' Hugh owned fairly, ‘that circumstances give body to what they'll say. He was at liberty, he had good reason to bear a grudge. We know of no one else who had cause to strike at Aldwin. He set off to meet Elave, there in the trees. In cover. It hangs together, on the face of it, all too well, for the body must surely have gone into the water below the bridge, and cover is scant there along the Gaye.'

‘All true,' said Radulfus. ‘But equally true, I think, that if the young man had killed he would hardly have walked back into our precinct of his own will, as admittedly he did. Moreover, if the dead man was cast into the river after dark, that was not done by Elave. At least we know at what hour he returned here, it was just when the Vesper bell sounded. That does not prove past doubt that he did not kill, but it casts it into question. Well, we have him safe.' He smiled, a little grimly. It was an ambiguous reassurance. A stone cell, securely locked, ensured Elave's personal safety not less than his close custody. ‘And now you wish to question him.'

‘In your presence,' said Hugh, ‘if you will.' And catching the sharp, intelligent eye he said simply: ‘Better with a witness who cannot be suspect. You are as good a judge of a man as I am, and better.'

‘Very well,' said Radulfus. ‘He shall not come to us. We will go to him, while they are all in the frater. Robert is in attendance on Canon Gerbert.' So he would be, thought Cadfael uncharitably. Robert was not the man to let slip the chance to ingratiate himself with a man of influence with the archbishop. For once his predilection for the powerful would be useful. ‘Anselm has been asking me to send the boy books to read,' said the abbot. ‘He points out, rightly, that we have a duty to provide good counsel and exhortation, if we are to combat erroneous beliefs. Do you feel fitted, Cadfael, to undertake an advocacy on God's behalf?'

‘I am not sure,' said Cadfael bluntly, thus brought up against the measure of his own concern and partisanship, ‘that the instructed would not be ahead of the instructor. I see my measure more in tending his broken head than in meddling with the sound mind inside it.'

*

Elave sat on his narrow pallet in one of the two stone penitential cells which were seldom occupied, and told what he had to tell, while Cadfael renewed the dressings on his gashes, and bandaged him afresh. He still looked somewhat the worse for wear, bruised and stiff from the attentions of Gerbert's over-zealous grooms, but by no means subdued. At first, indeed, he was inclined to be belligerent, on the assumption that all these officials, religious and secular alike, must be hostile, and predisposed to find fault in every word he said. It was an attitude which did not consort well with his customary openness and amiability, and Cadfael was sorry to see him thus maimed, even for a brief time. But it seemed that he did not find in his visitors quite the animosity and menace he had expected, for in a little while his closed and wary face eased and warmed, and the chill edge melted from his voice.

‘I gave my word I would not quit this place,' he said firmly, ‘until I was fairly dismissed as free and fit to go, and I never meant to do otherwise than as I said. You told me, my lord, that I was free to come and go on my own business meantime, and so I did, and never thought wrong. I went after the lady because she was in distress for me, and that I could not abide. You saw it yourself, Father Abbot. I overtook her before the bridge. I wanted to tell her not to fret, for she did me no wrong, what she said of me I had indeed said, and I would not for the world have had her grieve at speaking truth, whatever might fall on me. And also,' said Elave, taking heart in remembering, ‘I wanted to show her my thankfulness, that she felt gently towards me. For it showed plain, you also saw it, and I was glad of it.'

‘And when you parted from her?' said Hugh.

‘I would have come back straightway, but I saw them come boiling out of the gate here and quartering the Foregate, and it was plain they were hot on my heels already. So I drew off into the trees to wait my chance. I had no mind to be dragged back by force,' said Elave indignantly, ‘when I had nothing in mind but to walk in of my own will, and sit and wait for my judgement. But they left the big fellow standing guard, and I never got my chance to get past him. I thought if I waited for Vespers I might take cover and slip in among the folk coming to church.'

‘But you did not spend all that time close here in hiding,' said Hugh, ‘for I hear they drew every covert for half a mile from the road. Where did you go?'

‘Made my way back through the trees, round behind the Gaye and a fair way down the river, and lay up in cover there till I thought it must be almost time for vespers.'

‘And you saw nobody in all that time? Nobody saw or spoke to you?'

‘It was my whole intent that nobody should see me,' said Elave reasonably. ‘I was hiding from a hue and cry. No, there's no one can speak for me all that time. But why should I come back as I did, if I meant to run? I could have been halfway to the border in that time. Acquit me at least of going back on my word.'

‘That you certainly have not done,' said Abbot Radulfus. ‘And you may believe that I knew nothing of this pursuit of you, and would not have countenanced it. No doubt it was done out of pure zeal, but it was misdirected and blameworthy, and I am sorry you should have fallen victim to violence. No one now supposes that you had any intent of running away. I accepted your word, I would do so again.'

Elave peered from beneath Brother Cadfael's bandages with brows drawn together in puzzlement, looking from face to face without understanding. ‘Then why these questions? Does it matter where I went, since I came back again? How is it to the purpose?' He looked longest and most intently at Hugh, whose authority was secular, and should have had nothing to do or say in a charge of heresy. ‘What is it? Something has happened. What can there be new since yesterday? What is it that I do not know?'

They were all studying him hard and silently, wondering indeed whether he did or did not know, and whether a relatively simple young man could dissemble so well, and one whose word the abbot had taken without question only one day past. Whatever conclusion they came to could not then be declared. Hugh said with careful mildness: ‘First, perhaps you should know what Fortunata and her family have told us. You parted from her between here and the bridge, that she confirms, and she then went home. There she encountered and reproached your accuser Aldwin for bringing such a charge against you, and it came out that he had been afraid of losing his place to you, a matter of great gravity to him, as you'll allow.'

‘But it was no such matter,' said Elave, astonished. ‘That was settled the first time I set foot in the house. I never wanted to elbow him out, and Dame Margaret told me fairly enough they would not oust him. He had nothing to fear from me.'

‘But he thought he had. No one had put it in plain terms to him until then. And when he heard it, as they all four agree – the shepherd, too – he declared his intent of running after you to confess and ask pardon, and if he failed to overtake you – the girl having told him where she had left you – of following you here to the abbey to do his best to undo what he had done against you.'

Elave shook his head blankly. ‘I never saw him. I was among the trees ten minutes or more, watching the road, before I gave up and went off towards the river. I should have seen him if he'd passed. Maybe he took fright when he saw them beating all the converts and baying after me along the Foregate, and thought better of repenting.' It was said without bitterness, even with a resigned grin. ‘It's easier and safer to set the hounds on than to call them off.'

‘A true word!' said Hugh. ‘They have been known to bite the huntsman, if he came between them and the quarry once their blood was up. So you never saw and had speech with him, and have no notion where he went or what happened to him?'

‘None in the world. Why?' asked Elave simply. ‘Have you lost him?'

‘No,' said Hugh, ‘we have found him. Brother Cadfael found him early this morning lodged under the bank of the Severn beyond the Gaye. Dead, stabbed in the back.'

*

‘Did he know or did he not?' wondered Hugh, when they were out in the great court, and the cell door closed and locked on the prisoner. ‘You saw him, do you know what to make of him? Fix him as watchfully as you will, any man can lie if he must. I would rather rely on things solid and provable. He did come back. Would a man who had killed do so? He has a good, serviceable knife, well able to kill, but it's in his bundle in the guest-hall still, not on him, and we know he no sooner showed his face in the gateway than he was set on, and attended every moment after, until that door closed on him. If he had another knife, and had it on him, he must have discarded it. Father Abbot, do you believe this lad? Is he telling truth? When he offered his word, you accepted it. Do you still do so?'

‘I neither believe nor disbelieve,' said Radulfus heavily. ‘How dare I? But I hope!'

William Warden, who was the longest serving and most experienced of Hugh's sergeants, came looking for the sheriff just as Hugh and Cadfael were crossing to the gatehouse; a big, bearded, burly man of middle age, grizzled and weatherbeaten, and with a solid conceit of himself that sometimes tended to undervalue others. He had taken Hugh for a lightweight when first the young man succeeded to the sheriff's office, but time had considerably tempered that opinion, and brought them into a relationship of healthy mutual respect. The sergeant's beard was bristling with satisfaction now. Clearly he had made progress, and was pleased with himself accordingly.

‘My lord, we've found it – the place where he was laid up till dark. Or at least, where he or some other bled long enough to leave his traces clear enough. While we were beating the bushes Madog thought to search through the grass under the arch of the bridge. Some fisherman had drawn up his light boat there, and turned it up to do some caulking on the boards. He wouldn't be working on it yesterday, a feast day. When we hoisted it, there was the grass flattened the length of it, and a small patch of it blackened with blood. What with the dry weather, that ground has been uncovered a month or more, it's bleached pale as straw. There's no missing that stain, meagre though it is. A dead man could lie snug enough under there, with a boat upturned over him and nothing to show.'

‘So that was the place!' said Hugh on a long, thoughtful breath. ‘And no great risk, slipping a body into the water there in the dark, from under the arch. No sound, no splash, nothing to see. With an oar, or a pole, you could thrust him well out into the current.'

‘We were right, it seems,' said Cadfael. ‘You have to deal only with that length of the water, from the bridge to where he fetched up. You did not find the knife?'

The sergeant shook his head. ‘If he killed his man there, under the arch or in the bushes, he'd clean the knife in the edge of the water and take it away with him. Why waste a good knife? And why leave it lying about for some neighbour to find, and say: I know that, it belongs to John Weaver, or whoever it might be, and how comes it to have blood on it? No, we shan't find the knife.'

‘True,' said Hugh, ‘a man would have to be scared out of his wits to throw it away to be found, and I fancy this man was in sharp command of his. Never mind, you've done well, we know now where the thing was done, there or close by.'

‘There's more yet to tell you, my lord,' said Will, gratified, ‘and stranger, if he was in such a hurry as they told us, when he ran off to recant his charges. We asked the porter on the town gate if he'd seen him pass out and cross the bridge, and he said yes, he had, and spoke to him, but barely got an answer. But he hadn't come straight from Lythwood's house, that's certain. It was more than an hour later, maybe as much as an hour and a half.'