Monk's Hood (15 page)

So
that was why neither Richildis nor anyone else had mentioned Edwin’s peace
offering. Peace or war, for that matter? It had been meant to assert both his
forgiveness and his independence, neither very pleasing to an elderly autocrat.
But well-meant, for all that, an achievement, considering the lad was not yet
fifteen years old. But no one had known of
it. No one but the
maker had ever had the chance to admire—as Richildis would have done most
dotingly!—the nice dove-tailing of the joints of his little box, or the fine
setting of the slips of silver and pearl and lapis which had flashed just once
in the light as they hurtled into the river.

“Tell
me, this was a well-fitted lid, and closed when you threw it over?”

“Yes.”
He was very fairly visible now, and all startled eyes. He did not understand
the question, but he was sure of his work. “Is that important, too, I wish now
I hadn’t done it, I see I’ve made everything worse. But how was I to know?
There wasn’t any hue and cry for me then, there wasn’t any murder, I knew I
hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“A
small wooden box, tightly closed, will float gallantly where the river carries
it, and there are men who live by the river traffic and fishing, yes, and
poaching, too, and they’ll know every bend and beach from here to Atcham where
things fetch up on the current. Keep your heart up, lad, you may yet see your
work again if I can get the sheriff to listen to me, and put out the word to
the watermen to keep a watch. If I give them a description of what was thrown
away—oh, be easy, I’ll not reveal how I got it!—and somewhere downstream that
very thing is discovered, that’s a strong point in your favour, and I may even
be able to get them to look elsewhere for the bottle, somewhere where Edwin
Gurney was not, and therefore could not have left it. You bide yet a day or two
here in quiet, if you can bear it, and if need be, I’ll get you away to some
more distant place, where you can wait the time out in better comfort.”

“I
can bear it,” said Edwin sturdily. And added ruefully: “But I wish it may not
be long!”

The
brothers were filing out at the end of Compline when it dawned upon Cadfael
that there was one important question which he and everyone else had neglected
to ask, and the only person he could think of who might conceivably be able to
answer it was Richildis. There was still time to ask it before night, if he
gave up his final half-hour in the warming-room.
Not, perhaps,
a tactful time to visit, but everything connected with this business was
urgent, and Richildis could at least sleep a little more easily for the
knowledge that Edwin was, thus far at least, safe and provided for. Cadfael
drew up his cowl, and made purposefully for the gates.

It
was bad luck that Brother Jerome should be coming across the court towards the
porter’s lodge at the same time, probably with some officious orders for the
morrow, or some sanctimonious complaint of irregularities today. Brother Jerome
already felt himself to be in the exalted position of clerk to the abbot-elect,
and was exerting himself to represent adequately his master Robert, now that
that worthy man had availed himself of the abbot’s privilege and privacy.
Authority delegated to Brother Richard, and sedulously avoided by him wherever
possible, would be greedily taken up by Brother Jerome. Some of the novices and
boy pupils had already had cause to lament his zeal.

“You
have an errand of mercy at so late an hour, brother?” Jerome smiled odiously.
“Can it not wait until morning?”

“At
the risk of further harm,” snapped Cadfael, “it might.” And he made no further
halt, but proceeded on his way, well aware of the narrowed eyes following his
departure. He had, within reason, authority to come and go as he thought fit,
even to absent himself from services if his aid was required elsewhere, and he
was certainly not going to explain himself, either truthfully or mendaciously,
to Brother Jerome, however others less bold might conform for the sake of
staying out of Robert’s displeasure. It was unfortunate, but he had nothing ill
to conceal, and to turn back would have suggested the contrary.

There
was still a small light burning in the kitchen of the house beyond the
mill-pond, he could see it through a tiny chink in the shutter as he
approached. Yes, now, there was something he had failed to take into account:
the kitchen window overlooked the pond, and close, at that, closer than from
the road, and yesterday it had been open because of the brazier standing under
it, an outlet for the smoke. An outlet, too, for a small vial hurled out there
as soon as emptied, to
be lost for ever in the mud at the
bottom of the pond? What could be more convenient? No odour on clothing, no
stains, no dread of being discovered with the proof.

Tomorrow,
thought Cadfael, elated, I’ll search from that window down to the water. Who
knows but this time the thing thrown may really have fallen short, and be lying
somewhere in the grass by the water’s edge for me to find? That would be
something gained! Even if it cannot prove who threw it there, it may still tell
me something.

He
knocked softly at the door, expecting Aldith to answer, or Aelfric, but it was
the voice of Richildis herself that called out quietly from within: “Who’s
there?”

“Cadfael!
Open to me for a few minutes.”

His
name had been enough, she opened eagerly, and reached a hand to draw him into
the kitchen. “Hush, softly! Aldith is asleep in my bed, and Aelfric within, in
the room. I could not sleep yet, I was sitting late, thinking about my boy. Oh,
Cadfael, can you give me no comfort? You will stand his friend if you can?”

“He
is well, and still free,” said Cadfael, sitting down beside her on the bench
against the wall. “But mark me, you know nothing, should any ask. You may truly
say he has not been here, and you don’t know where he is. Better so!”

“But
you do know!” The tiny, steady light of the rush-candle showed him her face
smoothed of its ageing lines and softly bright, very comely. He did not answer;
she might read that for herself, and could still say truly that she knew
nothing.

“And
that’s all you can give me?” she breathed.

“No,
I can give you my solemn word that he never harmed his stepfather. That I know.
And truth must come out. That you must believe.”

“Oh,
I will, I do, if you’ll help to uncover it. Oh, Cadfael, if you were not here I
should despair. And such constant vexations, pin-pricks, when I can think of
nothing but Edwin. And Gervase not in his grave until tomorrow! Now that he’s
gone, I no longer have a claim to livery for his horse, and with so many
travellers coming now before the feast, they
want his
stable-room, and I must move him elsewhere, or else sell him… But Edwin will
want him, if…” She shook her head distractedly, and would not complete that
doubt. “They told me they’ll find him a stall and feed somewhere until I can
arrange for him to be stabled elsewhere. Perhaps Martin could house him…”

They
might, Cadfael thought indignantly, have spared her such small annoyances, at
least for a few days. She had moved a little closer to him, her shoulder
against his. Their whispering voices in the dimly lit room, and the lingering
warmth from a brazier now mostly ash, took him back many years, to a stolen
meeting in her father’s outhouse. Better not linger, to be drawn deeper still!

“Richildis,
there’s something I came to ask you. Did your husband ever actually draw up and
seal the deed that made Edwin his heir?”

“Yes,
he did.” She was surprised by the question, “It was quite legal and binding,
but naturally this agreement with the abbey has a later date, and makes the
will void now. Or it did…” She was brought back sharply to the realisation that
the second agreement, too, had been superseded, more roughly even than the
first. “Of course, that’s of no validity now. So the grant to Edwin stands. It
must, our man of law drew it properly, and I have it in writing.”

“So
all that stands between Edwin and his manor, now, is the threat of arrest for
murder, which we know he did not do. But tell me this, Richildis, if you know
it: supposing the worst happened—which it must not and will not—and he was
convicted of killing your husband—then what becomes of Mallilie? The abbey
cannot claim it, Edwin could not then inherit it. Who becomes the heir?”

She
managed to gaze resolutely beyond the possibility of the worst, and considered
what sense law would make of what was left.

“I
suppose I should get my dower, as the widow. But the manor could only revert to
the overlord, and that’s the earl of Chester, for there’s no other legitimate
heir. He could
bestow it where he pleased, to his best
advantage. It might go to any man he favoured in these parts. Sheriff
Prestcote, as like as not, or one of his officers.”

It
was true, and it robbed all others here, except Edwin, of any prospect of
gaining by Bonel’s death; or at least, of any material gain. An enemy
sufficiently consumed by hate might find the death in itself gain enough, yet
that seemed an excessive reaction to a man no way extreme, however difficult
Edwin had found him.

“You’re
sure? There’s no nephew, or cousin of his somewhere about the shire?”

“No,
no one, or he would never have promised me Mallilie for Edwin. He set great
store by his own blood.”

What
had been going through Cadfael’s mind was the possibility that someone with his
own fortune in view might have planned to remove at one stroke both Bonel and
Edwin, by ensuring the boy’s arrest for the man’s murder. But evidently that
was far from the mark. No one could have calculated with any certainty on
securing for himself what the house of Bonel forfeited.

By
way of comfort and encouragement, Cadfael laid his broad, gnarled hand on her
slender one, and marked in the slanting tight, with roused tenderness, its
enlarged knuckles and tracery of violet veins, more touching than any girlish
smoothness could ever have been. Her face was beautiful, too, even in its
ageing, lined, now that he saw it almost at peace, with good-humour and the
long experience of happiness, which this brief ordeal of exasperation,
disruption and pain could do little now to deflower. It was his youth he was
lamenting, not any waste of Richildis. She had married the right man and been
blessed, and a late mistake with the wrong man was over without irreparable
damage, provided her darling could be extricated from his present danger. That,
and only that, Cadfael thought gratefully, is my task.

The
warm hand under his turned and closed, holding him fast. The still beguiling
face turned to gaze at him closely and earnestly, with limpid, sympathetic eyes
and a mouth with delicate, self-congratulatory guilt. “Oh, Cadfael, did you
take it so hard? Did it have to be the cloister? I wondered about
you so often, and so long, but I never knew I had done you such an injury. And
you have forgiven me that broken promise?”

“The
whole fault was mine,” said Cadfael, with somewhat over-hearty fervour. “I’ve
wished you well always, as I do now.” And he made to rise from the bench, but
she kept her hold on his hand and rose with him. A sweet woman, but dangerous,
like all her innocent kind.

“Do
you remember,” she was saying, in the hushed whisper the hour demanded, but
with something even more secret in its intimacy, “the night we pledged our
troth? That was December, too. I’ve been thinking of it ever since I knew you
were here—a Benedictine monk! Who would ever have dreamed it would end so! But
you stayed away so long!”

It
was certainly time to go. Cadfael retrieved his hand gently, made her a
soothing good night, and discreetly withdrew, before worse could befall him.
Let her by all means attribute his vocation to the loss of her own delightful
person, for the conviction would stand by her well until her world was restored
in safety. But as for him, he had no regrets whatever. The cowl both fitted and
became him.

He
let himself out and returned enlarged through the chill and sparkle of the
frosty night, to the place he had chosen, and still and for ever now preferred.

Behind him, as
he neared the gatehouse, a meagre shadow detached itself from the shelter of
the eaves of Richildiss house, and slid contentedly along the road after him,
keeping well to the side in case he looked back. But Brother Cadfael did not
look back. He had just had a lesson in the perils of that equivocal exercise;
and in any case, it was not his way.

Chapter Six

CHAPTER
NEXT MORNING PROMISED TO BE AS DULL as usual, once Brother Andrew’s readings
were done, and the business of the house reached; but Cadfael, dozing gently
behind his pillar, remained alert enough to prick his ears, when Brother
Matthew the cellarer announced that the guest-hall was full to capacity, and
more stabling space was needed for still more expected gentlefolk, so that it
would be necessary to transfer some of the horses and mules belonging to the
abbey to some other housing, to accommodate the travellers’ beasts within the
walls. Late merchants, taking advantage of the clement autumn after the summer
of siege and disorder, were now on the roads making for home for the feast, and
nobles with manors in the county were seeking their own retired firesides, to
celebrate Christmas away from the burden of arms and the stress of faction in
the south. It was manifestly true that the stables were overcrowded, and the
great court daily brighter and busier with arrivals and departures.