A Rare Benedictine (13 page)

And
out they came, the sergeant to thrust across at once to bar any escape by the
hatch, Cadfael to set his lantern safely on a beam well clear of the hay and
straw, and tap away diligently with flint and steel until the tinder caught and
glowed, and the wick burned up into a tiny flame. Eddi’s captive had uttered
one despairing oath, and made one frantic effort to throw off the weight that
held him down and break for the open air, but was flattened back to the boards
with a thump, a large, vengeful hand splayed on his chest.

“He
dares, he dares,” Eddi was grating through his teeth, “to try and buy my
father’s head from me with money stolen money, abbey money! You heard? You
heard?”

The
sergeant leaned from the hatch and whistled for the two men he had had in
hiding below in the barn. He was glad he had given the plan a hearing. The
injured man live and mending well, the money located and safe everything would
redound to his credit. Now send the prisoner bound and helpless with his escort
to the castle, and off to the abbey to unearth the money.

The
guarded flame of the lantern burned up and cast a yellow light about the loft.
Eddi rose and stood back from his enemy, who sat up slowly and sullenly, still
breathless and bruised, and blinked round them all with the large, ingenuous
eyes and round, youthful face of Jacob of Bouldon, that paragon of clerks, so
quick to learn the value of a rent-roll, so earnest to win the trust and
approval of his master, and lift from him every burden, particularly the burden
of a full satchel of the abbey’s dues.

He
was grazed and dusty now, and the cheerful, lively mask had shrivelled into
hostile and malevolent despair. With flickering, sidelong glances he viewed
them all, and saw no way out of the circle. Longest he looked at the little,
spry, bowed old man who came forth smiling at Cadfael’s shoulder. For in the
wrinkled, lively face the lantern-light showed two eyes that caught reflected
light though they had none of their own, eyes opaque as grey pebbles and as
insensitive. Jacob stared and moaned, and softly and viciously began to curse.

“Yes,”
said Brother Cadfael, “you might have saved yourself so vain an effort. I fear
I was forced to practise a measure of deceit, which would hardly have taken in
a true-born Shrewsbury man. Rhodri Fychan has been blind from birth.”

It
was in some way an apt ending, when Brother Cadfael and the sergeant arrived
back at the abbey gatehouse, about first light, to find Warin Harefoot waiting
in the porter’s room for the bell for Prime to rouse the household and deliver
him of his charge, which he had brought here for safety in the night. He was
seated on a bench by the empty hearth, one hand clutching firmly at the neck of
a coarse canvas sack. “He has not let go of it all night,” said the porter,
“nor let me leave sitting t’other side of it as guard.”

Warin
was willing enough, however, even relieved, to hand over his responsibility to
the law, with a monk of the house for witness, seeing abbot and prior were not
yet up to take precedence. He undid the neck of the sack proudly, and displayed
the coins within.

“You
did say, brother, there might be a reward, if a man was so lucky as to find it.
I had my doubts of that young clerk. I never trust a too-honest face! And if it
was he well, I reasoned he must hide what he stole quickly. And he had a pouch
on him the like of the other, near enough, and nobody was going to wonder at
seeing him wearing it, or having money in it, either, seeing he had a small
round of his own. And if he came a thought late, well, he’d made a point he
might make a slower job of it than he’d expected, being a novice at the
collecting. So I kept my eye on him, and got my chance this night, when I saw
him creep forth after dark. In his bed it was, sewn into a corner of the straw
pallet. And here it is, and speak for me with the lord abbot. Trade’s none so
good, and a poor pedlar must live...”

Gaping
down at him long and wonderingly, the sergeant questioned at last: “And did you
never for a moment consider slipping the whole into your own pack, and out
through the gates with it in the morning?”

Warin
cast up a shy, disarming glance. “Well, sir, for a moment it may be I did. But
I was never the lucky sort if I did the like, never a once but I was found out.
Wisdom and experience turned me honest. Better, I hold, a small profit come by
honestly than great gains gone down the wind, and me in prison for it just the
same. So here’s the abbey’s gold again, every penny, and now I look to the lord
abbot to treat a poor, decent man fair.”

About
the Author

ELLIS PETERS is
the
nom-de-crime
of English novelist Edith Pargeter, author of scores of books
under her own name. She is the recipient of the Silver Dagger Award, conferred
by the Crime Writers Association in Britain, as well as the coveted Edgar,
awarded by the Mystery Writers of America. Miss Pargeter is also well known as
a translator of poetry and prose from the Czech and has been awarded the Gold
Medal and Ribbon of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations for her
services to Czech literature. She passed away in 1995, at the age of 82, at
home in her beloved Shropshire.