The Heretic's Apprentice (19 page)

‘Girl dear,' said Girard, gently but firmly, ‘it was you told me, just a while since, how you urged him to run for his life when he had the chance. And he was the one who refused. A man who won't run can't be made to run. And to my way of thinking he's right. And not only because he gave his word, but because of why he gave his word. He said he'd done no wrong, and wouldn't afford any man proof that he went in fear of justice.'

‘I know it,' said Fortunata. ‘But
he
has absolute faith in the justice of Church and state. And I am not sure that I have. I would rather buy him his life against his will than see him throw it away.'

‘You would not get him to take it,' warned Jevan. ‘He has refused you once.'

‘That was before Aldwin was murdered,' she said starkly. ‘Then he was accused only of heresy. Now, if he is not yet charged, it's a matter of murder. He never did it, I won't believe it, murder is not in his nature. But there he is helpless under lock and key, already in their hands. It
is
his life now.'

‘He still has his life,' said Girard robustly, and flung an arm about her to draw her to his solid side. ‘Hugh Beringar is not the man to take the easy answer and never look beyond. If the lad is blameless he'll come out of it whole and free. Wait! Wait a little and see what the law can discover. I won't meddle with murder. Do I know for sure that any man is innocent, whether it's Elave or Conan? But if it comes down to the simple matter of heresy, then I'll throw all the weight I have into the balance to bring him off safely. You shall have him, he shall have the place poor Aldwin grudged to him, and I'll be guarantor for his good behaviour. But murder – no! Am I God, to see guilt or innocence in a man's face?'

Father Elias, having visited all his fellow-priests within the town, came down to the abbey next morning, and appealed at chapter as to whether any of the brothers who were also priests had by any chance taken confession from the clerk Aldwin before the services of Saint Winifred's translation. The eve of a festival day must have found plenty of work for the confessors, since it was natural for any worshippers who had neglected their spiritual condition for some time to find their consciences pricking them into the confessional, to come purged and refreshed to the celebrations of the day, and rest content in their renewed virtue and peace of mind. If any cleric here had been approached by Aldwin, he would be able to declare it. But no one had. It ended with Father Elias scurrying out of the chapter-house disappointed and distrait, shaking his shaggy grey head and trailing the wide, frayed sleeves of his gown like a small, dishevelled bird.

Brother Cadfael went out from chapter to his work in the garden with the rear view of that shabby little figure still before his mind's eye. A stickler, was Father Elias, he would not easily give up. Somewhere, somehow, he must find a reason to convince himself that Aldwin had died in a state of grace, and see to it that his soul had all the consolation and assistance the rites of the Church could provide. But it seemed he had already tried every cleric in the town and the Foregate, and so far fruitlessly. And he was not a man who could simply shut his eyes and pretend that all was well, his conscience had a flinty streak, and would pay him out with a vengeance if he lowered his standards without due grounds for clemency. Cadfael felt a dual sympathy for the perfectionist priest and back-sliding parishioner. At this moment their case seemed to him to take precedence even over Elave's plight. Elave was safe enough now until Bishop Roger de Clinton declared his will towards him. If he could not get out, neither could any zealot get in, to break his head again. His wounds were healing and his bruises fading, and Brother Anselm, precentor and librarian, had given him the first volume of Saint Augustine's ‘Confessions' to pass the time away. So that he might discover, said Anselm, that Augustine did write on other themes besides predestination, reprobation and sin.

Anselm was ten years younger than Cadfael, a lean, active, gifted soul with a grain of irrepressible mischief still alive if usually dormant within him. Cadfael had suggested that he should rather give Elave Augustine's ‘Against Fortunatus' to read. There he might find, written some years before the saint's more orthodox outpourings, in one of his periods of sharply changing belief: ‘There is no sin unless through a man's own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own will.' Let Elave commit that to memory, and he could quote it in his own defence. More than likely Anselm would take him at his word, and feed the suspect all manner of quotations supportive to his cause. It was a game any well-read student of the early fathers could play, and Anselm better than most.

So for some days at least, until Serlo could reach his bishop in Coventry and return with his response, Elave was safe enough, and could do with the time to get over his rough handling. But Aldwin, dead and in need of burial, could not wait.

Cadfael could not but wonder how things were going with Hugh's enquiries within the town. He had seen nothing of him since the morning of the previous day, and the revelation of murder had removed the centre of action from the abbey into the wide and populated field of the secular world. Even if the original root of the case was within these walls, in the cloudy issue of heresy, and the obvious suspect here in close keeping, there outside the walls the last hours of Aldwin's life remained to be filled in, and there were hundreds of men in town and Foregate who had known him, who might have old grudges or new complaints against him, nothing whatever to do with the charges against Elave. And there were frailties in the case against Elave which Hugh had seen for himself, and would not lightly discard in favour of the easy answer. No, Aldwin was the more urgent priority.

After dinner, in the half-hour or so allowed for rest, Cadfael went into the church, into the grateful stony coolness, and stood for some minutes silent before Saint Winifred's altar. Of late, if he felt the need to speak to her in actual words at all, he found himself addressing her in Welsh, but usually he relied on her to know all the preoccupations of his mind without words. Doubtful, in any case, if the young and beautiful Welsh girl of her first brief life had known any English or Latin, or even been able to read and write her own language, though the stately prioress of her second life, pilgrim to Rome and head of a community of holy women, must have had time to learn and study to her heart's content. But it was as the girl that Cadfael always imagined her. A girl whose beauty was legendary, and caused her to be coveted by princes.

Before he left her, though he was not conscious of having expressed any need or request, he felt the quietude and certainty the thought of her always gave him. He circled the parish altar into the nave, and there was Father Boniface just filling the little altar lamp and straightening the candles in their holders. Cadfael stopped to pass the time of day.

‘You'll have had Father Elias from Saint Alkmund's after you this morning, I daresay? He came to us at chapter on the same errand. A sad business, this of Aldwin's death.'

Father Boniface nodded his solemn dark head, and wiped oily fingers, boylike, in the skirt of his gown. He was thin but wiry, and almost as taciturn as his verger, but that deferent shyness was gradually easing as he worked his way into the confidence of his flock.

‘Yes, he came to me after Prime. I never knew this Aldwin, living. I wish I could have helped him, dead, but to my knowledge I never saw him until the wool-merchant's funeral, the day before the festival. Certainly he never came to me for confession.'

‘Nor to any of those within here,' said Cadfael. ‘Nor in the town, for Elias asked there first. And your parish is a wide one. Poor Father Elias would have to walk a few miles to find the next priest. And if Aldwin never knocked on the door of any of his own neighbours, I doubt if he made a long journey to seek his penance elsewhere.'

‘True, I have occasion to walk a few miles myself in the way of duty,' agreed Boniface, with pride rather than regret in the breadth of his cure. ‘Not that I grudge it, God knows! Night or day, it's a joy to know that from the furthest hamlet they can call me when they need me, and know that I'll come. Sometimes I question my fortune, knowing it so little deserved. Only two days ago I was called away to Betton, and missed all but the morning Mass. I was sorry it should be that day, but no choice, there was a man dying, or he and all his kin thought he was dying. It was worth the journey, for he took the turn for life and I stayed until we were sure. It was getting dusk when I got back –' He broke off suddenly, open mouthed and round-eyed. ‘So it was!' he said slowly. ‘And I never thought to say!'

‘What is it?' asked Cadfael curiously. It had been a long and confiding speech for this quiet, reticent young man, and this sudden halt was almost startling. ‘What have you thought of now?'

‘Why, that there was one more priest here then who is not here now. Father Elias will not know. I had a visitor came for the day of Saint Winifred's translation, one who was my fellow-student, and ordained only a month ago. He came on the eve of the festival, early in the afternoon, and stayed through the next day, and when I was called away that morning after Mass I left him here to take part in all the offices in my place. I knew that would please him. He stayed until I came back, but that was when it was growing dark, and he was in haste then to be on his way home. It's only a short while, from past noon one day to nightfall the next, but how if he did have a penitent come asking?'

‘He said no word of any such before he went?' asked Cadfael.

‘He was in haste to be off, he had a walk of four miles. I never asked him. He was very proud to take my place, he said Compline for me. It could be!' said Boniface. ‘Thin it may be, but it is a chance. Should we not make sure?'

‘So we can,' said Cadfael heartily, ‘if he's still within reach. But where should we look for him now? Four miles, you said? That's no great way.'

‘He's nephew to Father Eadmer at Attingham, and named for his uncle. Whether he's still there, with him, is more than I know. But he has no cure yet. I would go,' said Boniface, hesitating, ‘but I could hardly get back for Vespers. If I'd thought of it earlier...'

‘Never trouble yourself,' said Cadfael. ‘I'll ask leave of Father Abbot and go myself. For such a cause he'll give permission. It's the welfare of a soul at stake. And in this warm weather,' he added practically, ‘there's need of haste.'

*

It was, as it chanced, the first day for over a week to grow lightly overcast, though before night the cloud cover cleared again. To set out along the Foregate with the abbot's blessing behind him and a four-mile walk ahead was pure pleasure, and the lingering
vagus
left in Cadfael breathed a little deeper when he reached the fork of the road at Saint Giles, and took the left-hand branch towards Attingham. There were times when the old wandering desire quickened again within him, and the very fact that he had been sent on an errand even beyond the limits of the shire, only three months back, in March, had rather roused than quenched the appetite. The vow of stability, however gravely undertaken, sometimes proved as hard to keep as the vow of obedience, which Cadfael had always found his chief stumbling-block. He greeted this afternoon's freedom – and justified freedom, at that, since it had sanction and purpose – as a refreshment and a holiday.

The highroad had a broad margin of turf on either side, soft green walking, the veil of cloud had tempered the sun's heat, the meadows were green on either hand, full of flowers and vibrant with insects, and in the bushes and headlands of the fields the birds were loud and full of themselves, shrilling off rivals, their first brood already fledged and trying their wings. Cadfael rolled contentedly along the green verge, the grass stroking silken cool about his ankles. Now if the end came up to the journey, every step of the way would be repaid with double pleasure.

Before him, beyond the level of the fields, rose the wooded hogback of the Wrekin, and soon the river reappeared at some distance on his left, to wind nearer as he proceeded, until it was close beside the highway, a gentle, innocent stream between flat grassy banks, incapable of menace to all appearances, though the local people knew better than to trust it. There were cattle in the pastures here, and waterfowl among the fringes of reeds. And soon he could see the square, squat tower of the parish church of Saint Eata beyond the curve of the Severn, and the low roofs of the village clustered close to it. There was a wooden bridge somewhat to the left, but Cadfael made straight for the church and the priest's house beside it. Here the river spread out into a maze of green and golden shallows, and at this summer level could easily be forded. Cadfael tucked up his habit and splashed through, shaking the little rafts of water crowfoot until the whole languid surface quivered.

Over the years, summer by summer, so many people had waded the river here instead of turning aside to the bridge that they had worn a narrow, sandy path up the opposite bank and across the grassy level between river and church, straight to the priest's house. Behind the mellow red stone of the church and the weathered timber of the modest dwelling in its shadow a circle of old trees gave shelter from the wind, and shaded half of the small garden. Father Eadmer had been many years in office here, and worked lovingly upon his garden. Half of it was producing vegetables for his table, and by the look of it a surplus to eke out the diet of his poorer neighbours. The other half was given over to a pretty little herber full of flowers, and the undulation of the ground had made it possible for him to shape a short bench of earth, turfed over with wild thyme, for a seat. And there sat Father Eadmer in his midsummer glory, a man lavish but solid of flesh, his breviary unopened on his knees, his considerable weight distilling around him, at every movement, a great aureole of fragrance. Before him, hatless in the sun, a younger man was busy hoeing between rows of young cabbages, and the gleam of his shaven scalp above the ebullient ring of curly hair reassured Cadfael, as he approached, that he had not had his journey for nothing. At least enquiry was possible, even if it produced disappointing answers.