The Heretic's Apprentice (18 page)

Girard was half a head shorter than his younger brother, but a good deal broader in the shoulders and thicker in the bone, a portly man in the best of health and spirits, round-faced and cheerful, with a thick thorn-bush of reddish brown hair and a close trimmed beard. His good humour was seldom shaken even by the unexpected, but even he was taken aback at arriving home after a week's absence to find his pilgrim Uncle William dead and buried, William's young companion back safely from all the perils of his travels only to fall headlong into mortal trouble at home, his clerk dead and laid out for burial in one of the outhouses in his yard, the parish priest of Saint Alkmund's probing anxiously into the dead man's spiritual health before he would bury him, and his shepherd sweating and dumbstruck in Jevan's shop with one of the sheriff's men standing over him. It was no help to have three people all attempting to explain at the same time how these chaotic events had come about in his absence.

But Girard was a man who saw to first things first. If Uncle William was dead, and buried with all propriety, then there was nothing to be done about that, no haste even about coming to terms with the truth of it. If Aldwin, of all improbable people had come by a violent death, then that, too, though requiring a just resolution, was hardly within his competence to set right. Father Elias's doubts about the poor fellow's spiritual condition was another matter, and would need consideration. If Elave was in a locked cell at the abbey, then at least nothing worse could happen to him at this moment. As for Conan, he was solid enough, it would do him no harm to sweat a little. There would be time to salvage him, if it proved necessary. Meantime, Girard's horse had done a good few miles that day, and needed stabling, and Girard himself was hungry.

‘Come within, lass,' he said briskly, flinging a bracing arm about his wife's waist and sweeping her towards the hall, ‘and, Jevan, see to my beast for me, will you, till I get this tale straight. It's too late for lamentation and too soon for panic. Whatever's gone wrong, there'll be a time for putting it right. The more haste, the less speed! Fortunata, my chick, go and draw me some ale, I'm dry as a lime-pit. And set the supper forward, for if I'm to be any use I need my food.'

They did as he bade, every one of them. The pivot of the house, hearty and heartening, was home. Jevan, who had left most of the exclaiming to the women, allowed his brother his position as prop and stay of household, business and all, as from a relaxed and acknowledged distance, having his own separate kingdom among the membranes of vellum. He stabled, groomed and fed the tired horse at leisure, before he went into the house to join the rest at table. By that time Conan had been whisked away to the castle, to answer to Hugh Beringar. Jevan smiled, somewhat wryly, as he shuttered the frontage, and went into the hall.

‘Well, it's a strange thing,' said Girard, sitting back with a satisfied sigh, ‘that a man can't be off about his business one week in the year but everything must happen in that week. Just as well Conan never caught up with me, or I should have missed two new customers, for I should have set off back with him if he had reached me. The wool of four hundred sheep I got from those two villages, and some of it the lowland breed, too. But I'm sorry, love, that you've had the worry of all this, and me not here to lift it from you. We'll see now what's to be done. The first thing, as I reckon, is this matter of Aldwin. Whatever he may have done and said against another man in his fret – was there ever such a one as Aldwin for fearing the worst and being afraid to ask in case it came true? Well, whatever he may have done, he was our man, and we'll see him properly buried. But Father Elias here is troubled about the funeral.'

Father Elias, parish priest of Saint Alkmund's, was there with them at the end of the table, swept in to supper in Girard's hospitable arm from his conscientious brooding over the dead. Small, elderly, grey and fierce in his piety, Father Elias ate like a little bird, whenever he remembered to eat at all, and ran about among his flock busy and bothered, like a flustered hen trying to round up alien ducklings under her wings. Souls tended to elude him, every one seeming at the time the only one to matter, and he spent much of his time on his knees apologising to God for the soul that slipped through his fingers. But he would not let even that fugitive in upon false recommendation.

‘The man was my parishioner,' said the little priest, in a wisp of a voice that yet had an irascible resolution in it, ‘and I grieve for him and will pray for him. But he died by violence, and as it were in the act of bringing mortal charges against another in malice, and what can the health of his soul be? He has not been to Mass in my church these many weeks, nor to confession. He was never regular in his worship, as all men should be. I would not ban him for his slackness. But when did he last confess, and gain absolution? How can I accept him unless I know he died penitent?'

‘One little act of contrition will do?' ventured Girard mildly. ‘He may have gone to another priest. Who knows? The thought could have come upon him somewhere else, and seemed to him a mortal matter there and then.'

‘There are four parishes within the walls,' said Elias with grudging tolerance. ‘I will ask. Though one who misses Mass so often... Well, I will ask, here within the town and beyond. It may even be that he feared to come to me. Men are feeble, and go aside to hide their feebleness.'

‘So they are, Father, so they do! Wouldn't he be ashamed to come to you, if he'd never shown his face at Mass for so long? And mightn't he go rather to another, one who didn't know him so well, and might be easier on his sins? You ask, Father, and you'll find excuse for him somewhere. Then there's this matter of Conan. He's our man, too, whatever he may have been up to. You say he gave evidence, about this lad of William's talking some foolishness about the Church? What do you say, Jevan, did they put their heads together to do him harm?'

‘It's likely enough,' said Jevan, shrugging. ‘Though I wouldn't say they understood rightly what they were doing. It turns out Aldwin, the silly soul, feared he'd be thrown out to let Elave back in.'

‘That would be like him, surely!' agreed Girard, sighing. ‘Always one to look on the black side. Though he should have had more sense, all the years he's known us. I daresay he thought the youngster would take to his heels, and be off to find his fortune elsewhere, as soon as he felt the threat. But why should Conan want to be rid of him?'

There was a brief, blank silence and some head-shaking, then Jevan said with his small, rueful smile: ‘I think our shepherd has also taken to thinking of Elave as a perilous rival, though not for employment. He has an eye on Fortunata...'

‘On me?' Fortunata sat bolt upright with astonishment, and gaped at her uncle across the table. ‘I've never seen signs of it! And I'm sure I never gave him any cause.'

‘...and fancies and fears,' continued Jevan, his smile deepening, ‘that Elave, if he stays, will make a more personable suitor. Not to say a more welcome one! And who's to say he's wrong?' And he added, his black eye bent on the girl in teasing affection: ‘On both counts!'

‘Conan has never paid me any attention,' said Fortunata, past sheer amazement now, and quick to examine what might very well be true, even if it had eluded her notice. ‘Never! I can't believe he has ever given me a thought.'

‘He would certainly never make a winning lover,' said Jevan, ‘but there's been a change in these last few days. You've been too busy looking in another direction to notice it.'

‘You mean he's been casting sheep's eyes at my girl?' demanded Girard, and laughed aloud at the notion.

‘Hardly that! I would call it a very calculating eye. Has not Margaret told you, Fortunata has an endowment now from William, to be her dowry.'

‘There was a box mentioned that has yet to be opened. Why, does any man think I would let my girl want for a dowry, when she has a mind to marry? Though it's good that the old man remembered her, and thought to send her his blessing, too. If she did have a mind to Conan, well, I suppose he's not a bad fellow, a girl could do worse. He should have known I'd never let her go empty-handed, whoever she chose.' And he added, with an appreciative glance at Fortunata: ‘Though our girl might do a great deal better, too!'

‘Coin in the hand,' said Jevan sardonically, ‘is more worth than all the promises.'

‘Ah, you surely do the man an injustice! What's to prevent him waking up to the fact that our little lass has grown into a beauty, and as good as she is pretty, too. And even if he did bear witness against Elave to elbow him out of the running, and urge Aldwin not to recant for the same none too creditable reason, men have done worse, and not been made to pay too highly for it. But this business of Aldwin is murder. No, that's out of Conan's scope, surely!' He looked down the length of the table to Father Elias, sitting small, attentive and sharp-eyed under his wispy grey tonsure. ‘Surely, Father?'

‘I have learned,' said the little priest, ‘not to put any villainy out of any man's reach. Nor any goodness, either. A life is a very fragile thing, created in desperate labour and snuffed out by a breath of wind – anger, or drunkenness, or mere horseplay, it takes no more than an instant.'

‘Conan has merely a few hours of time to account for,' Jevan pointed out mildly. ‘He must surely have met with someone who knew him on his way out to the sheep, he has only to name them, they have only to say where and when they saw him. This time, if he tells all the truth instead of half, he cannot miscarry.'

And that would leave only Elave. The grossly offended, the most aggrieved, suddenly approached by his accuser, among trees, without witnesses, too enraged to wait to hear what his enemy wanted to say to him. It was what almost every soul in Shrewsbury must be saying, taking the ending for granted. One charge of heresy, one of murder. All that afternoon until Vespers he was at liberty, and who had seen Aldwin alive since he passed the porter on the town gate? Two and a half hours between then and Vespers, when Elave was again in custody, two and a half hours in which he could have done murder. Even the objection that Aldwin's wound was in the back could easily be set aside. He came running to plead his penitence, Elave turned on him so furious a face and so menacing a front that he took fright and turned to flee, and got the knife in his back as he fled. Yes, they would all say so. And if it was argued that Elave had no knife on him, that it was left in his bundle in the guest-hall? He had another, doubtless at the bottom of the river by now. There was an answer to everything.

‘Father,' said Fortunata abruptly, rising from her place, ‘will you open my box for me now? Let us see what I am worth. And then I must talk to you. About Elave!'

*

Margaret brought the box from the corner press, and cleared an end of the table to make room for it before her husband. Girard's bushy brows rose appreciatively at the sight of it, and he handled it admiringly.

‘Why, this is a beautiful thing in itself. This could bring you in an extra penny or two if you ever need it.' He took up the gilded key and fitted it into the lock. It turned smoothly and silently, and Girard opened the lid to reveal a neat, thick swathing of felt, folded in such a way that it could be opened to disclose what the box contained without removing it. Six little bags of similar felt were packed within. All of a size, snugly fitted together to fill the space.

‘Well, they're yours,' said Girard, smiling at Fortunata, who was leaning over to stare at them with her face in shadow. ‘Open one!'

She drew out one of the bags, and the soft chink of silver sounded under her fingers. There was no drawstring, the top of the bag was simply folded over. She tipped the contents streaming out upon the table, a flood of silver pennies, more than she had ever seen at one time, and yet somehow curiously disappointing. The casket was so beautiful and unusual, a work of art, the contents, however valuable, mere everyday money, the traffic of trade. But yes, they might have their uses, urgent uses if it came to the worst.

‘There you are, girl!' said Girard, delighted. ‘Good coin of the realm, and all yours. Nigh on a hundred pence there, I should guess. And five more like it. Uncle William did well by you. Shall we count them for you?'

She hesitated for a moment, and then she said: ‘Yes!' and herself curved a hand round the little pile of thin, small silver pieces, and began to tell them over one by one back into the bag. There were ninety-three of them. By the time she had folded the bag closed again and restored it to its corner in the box, Girard was half-way through the next.

Father Elias had drawn back a little from the table, averting his eyes from this sudden dazzling display of comparative wealth with a curious mixture of desire and detestation. A poor parish priest seldom saw even ten silver pennies together, let alone a hundred. He said hollowly: ‘I will go and enquire about Aldwin at Saint Julian's,' and walked quietly out of the room and out of the house, and only Margaret noticed his going, and ran after him to see him courteously out to the street.

There were five hundred and seventy pennies in the six bags. Fortunata fitted them all snugly back into their places in the box, and closed the lid upon them.

‘Lock it again, and put it away safely for me,' she said. ‘It is mine, isn't it? To use as I like?' They were all looking at her with steady, benevolent interest, and the indulgent respect they had always shown towards her, even from her intense and serious childhood.

‘I wanted you to know. Since Elave came back, even more since this shadow fell, I have come close to him afresh, closer than ever I was. I think I love him. So I did long ago, but this is love in a different kind. He brought me this money to help me to a good marriage, but now I know that the marriage I want is with him, and even if I cannot have it, I want to use this gift to help him out of the shadow, even if it means he must go away from here, where they can't lay hands on him again. Money can buy a lot of things, even ways out of prison, even men to open the doors. At least I can try.'