Monk's Hood (18 page)

Will
might well have followed, though with small hope of keeping that yellow,
billowing tail in sight; but by then the clamour of the pursuers was
approaching along the Foregate,
and he was only too glad to
surrender the task to them. It was, after all, their business to apprehend
malefactors, and whatever else this pseudo-monk had done, he had certainly
stolen a horse belonging to the Widow Bonel, and in the abbey’s care. Obviously
the theft should be reported at once. He rode into the path of the galloping
guards, waving a delaying hand, and all three of his colleagues closed in to
give their versions of what had happened.

There
was a substantial audience by then. Passersby had happily declined to pass by
such a promising mêlée, and people had darted out from nearby houses to
discover what all the hard riding meant. During the pause to exchange
information, several of the children had drawn close to listen and stare, and
that in itself somewhat slowed the resumption of the chase. Mothers retrieved
children, and managed to keep the way blocked a full minute more. But there
seemed no reasonable explanation for the fact that at the last moment, when
they were virtually launched, the horse under the captain of the guard suddenly
shrieked indignantly, reared, and almost spilled his rider, who was not
expecting any such disturbance, and had to spend some minutes mastering the
affronted horse, before he could muster his men and gallop away after the
fugitive.

Brother
Mark, craning and peering with the rest of the curious, watched the guards
stream away towards the town, secure that the chestnut horse had had time to
get clean out of sight. The rest was up to Edwin Gurney. Mark folded his hands
in his wide sleeves, drew his cowl well forward to shadow a modest face, and
turned back towards the gatehouse of the abbey, with very mixed news. On the
way he discarded the second pebble he had picked up by the barn. On his uncle’s
manor he had been set to work for his meagre keep at four years old, following
the plough with a small sack full of stones, to scare off the birds that took
the seed. It had taken him two years to discover that he sympathised with the
hungry birds, and did not really want to harm them; but by then he was already
a dead shot, and he had not lost his skills.

“And
you followed as far as the bridge?” Cadfael questioned anxiously. “And the
bridge-keepers had not so much as seen him? And the sheriff’s men had lost
him?”

“Clean
vanished,” Brother Mark reported with pleasure. “He never crossed into the
town, at least, not that way. If you ask me, he can’t have turned from the road
by any of the alleys short of the bridge, he wouldn’t be sure he was out of
sight. I think he must have dived down along the Gaye, the shoreward side where
the orchard trees give some cover. But what he would do after that I can’t
guess. But they haven’t taken him, that’s certain. They’ll be hounding his kin
within the town, but they’ll find nothing there.” He beamed earnestly into
Cadfael’s troubled face, and urged: “You know you’ll prove he has nothing to
answer for. Why do you worry?”

It
was more than enough worry to have someone depending so absolutely on the
victory of truth, and the credit with heaven of Brother Cadfael, but it seemed
that this morning’s events had cast no shadow upon young Mark, and that was
matter for gratitude.

“Come
to dinner,” said Cadfael thankfully, “and then take your ease, for with such a
faith as yours you can. I do believe when you come to cast a pebble with
intent, it must hit the mark. Whoever named you foresaw your future. And since
it arises, what is your own mark? A bishopric?”

“Pope
or cardinal,” said Brother Mark happily. “Nothing less.”

“Oh,
no,” said Brother Cadfael seriously. “Beyond bishop, and a pastoral cure, I
think you would be wasted.”

All
that day the sheriff’s men hunted Edwin Gurney through the town, where they
reckoned he must have sought help, somehow evading notice in crossing the
bridge. Finding no trace there, they sent out patrols to cover all the major
roads out of the peninsula. In a close loop of the Severn, Shrewsbury had only
two bridges, one towards the abbey and Lon
don, by which he was
thought to have entered, one towards Wales, with a fan of roads branching out
westwards.

They
were convinced that the fugitive would make for Wales, that being his quickest
way out of their jurisdiction, though his future there might well be hazardous.
So it came as a surprise when a party patrolling the abbey side of the river,
where they had little expectation of picking up the trail, was accosted by an
excited young person of about eleven, who ran to them through the fields to
demand breathlessly if it was true the man they were looking for was in monk’s
gown, and riding a bright-brown horse with a primrose mane and tail. Yes, she
had seen him, and only a short time since, breaking cautiously out of that
copse and trotting away eastwards, as if he wanted to cross the next loop of
the river and move round to join the highroad to London, some way past St.
Giles. Since he had first set out in that direction, and found the way blocked
at the rim of the town, her report made sense. Evidently he had managed to find
cover and lie up for a while, in the hope that the hunt would take the opposite
direction, and now he felt secure in moving again. The girl said he might be
making for the ford at Uffington.

They
thanked her heartily, sent back one man to report the trail hot again and bring
reinforcements after, and set off briskly for the ford. And Alys, having
watched them out of sight, made her way back as briskly to the highroad and the
bridge. No one was on the watch for eleven-year-old girls going in and out.

Beyond
the ford at Uffington the hunters got their first glimpse of the quarry,
jogging along almost sedately on the narrow road towards Upton. From the moment
he turned and saw them, he flashed away at speed; the colour and the gait of
the horse were unmistakable, and the pursuers could not but wonder why the
rider had retained his purloined habit, which was now more liability than
asset, for everyone in the countryside must be looking out for it.

It
was then mid-afternoon, and the light beginning to dim. The chase went on for
hours. The boy seemed to know every
byway and every covert,
and managed to lose them several times, and lead them into some unexpected and
perilous places, often leaving the roads for marshy meadows where one stout
man-at-arms was thrown into odorous bog, or broken places where it was soon
impossible to see the easiest passage, and one horse picked up a stone and went
lame. Through Atcham, Cound and Cressage he held them off, and from time to
time lost them, until Rufus tired and stumbled in the woods beyond Acton, and
they were on him and round him, grasping at gown and cowl and pinioning him
fast. They pulled him down and tied his hands, and for the chase he had led
them they gave him some rough handling, which he bore philosophically and in
silence. All he asked was that the miles they had to go back to Shrewsbury
should be taken at an easy pace, for the horse’s sake.

At
some stage he had rigged a serviceable bridle from the rope girdle of his
habit. They borrowed that back to secure him behind the lightest weight among
them, for fear he should leap clear even with bound hands, and make off into
the darkening woods on foot. Thus they brought their prisoner back the lengthy
journey to Shrewsbury, and turned in at the abbey gatehouse late in the
evening. The stolen horse might as well be returned at once where he belonged;
and since that was, at present, the only crime that stood manifestly proven
against the culprit, his proper place, until further examination had been made
of his deeds, was in the abbey prison. There he could safely be left to kick
his heels until the law was ready to proceed against him on graver charges of
acts committed outside the pale, and therefore within the sheriff’s
jurisdiction.

Prior
Robert, courteously informed that the wanted youth was brought in captive, and
must remain in abbey keeping at least overnight, was torn between satisfaction
at the prospect of getting rid of the criminal implications of Master Bonel’s
death, in order to be able to deal more skilfully with the legal ones, and the
vexation of having temporarily to accommodate
the criminal
within his own domain. Still, an arrest for the murder must follow in the
morning, the inconvenience was not so great.

“You
have this youth in the gatehouse now?” he asked the man-at-arms who had brought
the news to his lodging.

“We
have, Father. Two of your abbey sergeants are with him there, and if you please
to give orders that they hold him in charge until tomorrow, the sheriff will
certainly take him off your hands on the graver count. Would it please you come
and examine him for yourself on the matter of the horse? If you see fit, there
could be charges of assault against your grooms, a serious matter even without
the theft.”

Prior
Robert was not immune to human curiosity, and was not adverse to taking a look
at this youthful demon who had poisoned his own stepfather and led the sheriff’s
men a dance over half the shire. “I will come,” he said. “The church must not
turn its back upon the sinner, but only deplore the sin.”

In
the porter’s room at the gatehouse the boy sat stolidly on a bench opposite the
welcome fire, hunched defensively against the world, but looking far from
cowed, for all his bruises and wariness. The abbey sergeants and the sheriff’s
patrol circled him with brooding eyes and hectoring questions, which he
answered only when he chose to do so, and then briefly. Several of them were
soiled and mud-stained from the hunt, one or two had scratches and bruises of
their own to show. The boy’s bright eyes flickered from one to another, and it
even seemed that his lips twitched with the effort to suppress a smile when he
contemplated the one who had gone head over heels in the meadows near Cound.
They had stripped his borrowed habit from him and restored it to the porter’s
care; the boy showed now slender and light-haired, smooth and fair of skin,
with ingenuous-seeming hazel eyes. Prior Robert was somewhat taken aback by his
youth and comeliness; truly the devil can assume fair shapes!

“So
young and marred!” he said aloud. The boy was not meant to hear that, it was
uttered in the doorway as Robert
entered, but at fourteen the
hearing is keen. “So, boy,” said the prior, drawing near, “you are the troubler
of our peace. You have much upon your conscience, and I fear it is even late to
pray that you may have time to amend. I shall so pray. You know, for you are
old enough to know, that murder is mortal sin.”

The
boy looked him in the eye, and said with emphatic composure: “I am not a
murderer.”

“Oh,
child, is it now of any avail to deny what is known? You might as well say that
you did not steal a horse from our barn this morning, when four of our servants
and many other people saw the act committed.”

“I
did not steal Rufus,” the boy retorted promptly and firmly. “He is mine. He was
my stepfather’s property, and I am my stepfather’s heir, for his agreement with
the abbey has never been ratified, and the will that made me his heir is sound
as gold. What belongs to me how could I steal? From whom?”

“Wretched
child,” protested the prior, bristling at such bold defiance, and even more at
a dawning suspicion that this imp, in spite of his dire situation, was daring
to enjoy himself, “think what you say! You should rather be repenting while you
have time. Have you not yet realised that the murderer cannot live to inherit
from his victim?”

“I
have said, and say again, I am not a murderer. I deny, on my soul, on the
altar, on whatever you wish, that ever I did my stepfather harm. Therefore
Rufus is mine. Or when the will is proven, and my overlord gives his consent as
he promised, Rufus and Mallilie and all will be mine. I have committed no
crime, and nothing you can do or say can make me admit to any. And nothing you
can do,” he added, his eyes suddenly flashing, “can ever make me guilty of
any.”

“You
waste your goodwill, Father Prior,” growled the sheriff’s sergeant, “he’s an
obdurate young wretch meant for the gallows, and his come-uppance will be
short.” But under Robert’s august eye he refrained from clouting the impudent
brat round the ears, as otherwise he might well have done.
“Think
no more of him, but let your servants clap him into safe hold in your cell
here, and put him out of your mind as worth no more pains. The law will take
care of him.”

“See
that he has food,” said Robert, not altogether without compassion, and
remembering that this child had been in the saddle and in hiding all the day,
“and let his bed be hard, but dry and warm enough. And should he relent and
ask… Boy, listen to me, and give a thought to your soul’s welfare. Will you
have one of the brothers come and reason and pray with you before you sleep?”

The
boy looked up with a sudden sparkle in his eye that might have been penitent
hope, but looked more like mischief, and said with deceptive meekness: “Yes,
and gratefully, if you could be so kind as to send for Brother Cadfael.” It was
time, after all, to take thought for his own situation, he had surely done
enough now.

He
expected the name to raise a frown, and so it did, but Robert had offered a
grace, and could not now withdraw it or set conditions upon it. With dignity he
turned to the porter, who hovered at the door. “Ask Brother Cadfael to come
here to us at once. You may tell him it is to give counsel and guidance to a
prisoner.”