The Devils Novice (21 page)

Hugh
rose, and stood looking down at him with an unreadable face. “Very well! You
should not yet be moved, and there is no reason you should not remain here in
Brother Mark’s care. Brother Cadfael tells me you would need crutches if you
tried to walk for some days yet. You’ll be secure enough where you are.”

“I
would give you my parole,” said Meriet sadly, “but I doubt if you would take
it. But Mark will, and I will submit myself to him. Only—the other man—you will
see he goes free?”

“You
need not fret, he is cleared of all blame but a little thieving to fill his
belly, and that will be forgotten. It is to your own case you should be giving
thought,” said Hugh gravely. “I would urge you receive a priest and make your
confession.”

“You
and the hangman can be my priests,” said Meriet, and fetched up from somewhere
a wry and painful smile.

“He
is lying and telling truth in the selfsame breath,” said Hugh with resigned
exasperation on the way back along the Foregate. “Almost surely what he says of
his father’s part is truth, so he was caught, and so he was both protected and
condemned. That is how he came to you, willing-unwilling. It accounts for all
the to-and-fro you have had with him, waking and sleeping. But it does not give
us our answer to who killed Peter Clemence, for it’s as good as certain Meriet
did not. He had not even thought of that glaring error in the time of day,
until I prodded him with it. And considering the shock it gave him, he did
pretty well at accounting for it. But far too late. To have made that mistake
was enough. Now what is our best way? Supposing we should blazon it abroad that
young Aspley has confessed to the murder, and put his neck in a noose? If he is
indeed sacrificing himself for someone else, do you think that person would
come forward and loose the knot and slip his own neck in it, as Meriet has for
him?”

With
bleak conviction Cadfael said: “No. If he let him go unredeemed into one hell
to save his own sweet skin, I doubt if he’d lift a hand to help him down from
the gallows. God forgive me if I misjudge him, but on that conscience there’ll
be no relying. And you would have committed yourself and the law to a lie for
nothing, and brought the boy deeper into grief. No. We have still a little
time, let things be. In two or three days more this wedding party will be with
us in the abbey, and Leoric Aspley could be brought to answer for his own part,
but since he’s truly convinced Meriet is guilty, he can hardly help us to the
real murderer. Make no move to bring him to account, Hugh, until after the
marriage. Let me have him to myself until then. I have certain thoughts
concerning this father and son.”

“You
may have him and welcome,” said Hugh, “for as things are I’m damned if I know
what to do with him. His offence is rather against the church than against any
law I administer. Depriving a dead man of Christian burial and the proper rites
due to him is hardly within my writ. Aspley is a patron of the abbey, let the lord
abbot be his judge. The man I want is the murderer. You, I know, want to hammer
it into that old tyrant’s head that he knows his younger son so poorly that
mere acquaintances of a few weeks have more faith in the lad, and more
understanding of him, than his sire has. And I wish you success. As for me,
Cadfael, I’ll tell you what troubles me most. I cannot for my life see what
cause anyone in these parts, Aspley or Linde or Foriet or who you will, had to
wish Peter Clemence out of the world. Shoot him down for being too bold and too
ingratiating with the girl? Foolery! The man was leaving, none of them had seen
much of him before, none need ever see him again, and the bridegroom’s only
concern, it seems, was to make his peace with his bride after too sharp reproaches.
Kill for such a cause? Not unless a man ran utterly mad. You tell me the girl
will flutter her lashes at every admirer, but none has ever died for it. No,
there is, there must be, another cause, but for my life I cannot see what it
can be.”

It
had troubled Cadfael, too. Minor brawls of one evening over a girl, and over
too assiduous compliments to her, not affronts, a mere bubble in one family’s
hitherto placid life—no, men do not kill for such trivial causes. And no one
had ever yet suggested a deeper quarrel with Peter Clemence. His distant
kinsmen knew him but slightly, their neighbours not at all. If you find a new
acquaintance irritating, but know he remains for only one night, you bear with
him tolerantly, and wave him away from your doorsill with a smile, and breathe
the more easily thereafter. But you do not skulk in woods where he must pass,
and shoot him down.

But
if it was not the man himself, what else could there be to bring him to his
death? His errand? He had not said what it was, at least while Isouda was by to
hear. And even if he had, what was there in that to make it necessary to halt
him? A civil diplomatic mission to two northern lords, to secure their
allegiance to Bishop Henry’s efforts for peace. A mission Canon Eluard had since
pursued successfully, to such happy effect that he had now conducted his king
thither to seal the accord, and by this time was accompanying him south again
to keep his Christmas in high content. There could be nothing amiss there.
Great men have their private plans, and may welcome at one time a visit they
repel at another, but here was the proof of the approach, and a reasonably
secure Christmas looming.

Back
to the man, and the man was harmless, a passing kinsman expanding and preening
himself under a family roof, then passing on.

No
personal grudge, then. So what was left but the common hazard of travel, the
sneak-thief and killer loose in the wild places, ready to pull a man from his
horse and bludgeon his head to pulp for the clothes he wore, let alone a
splendid horse and a handful of jewellery? And that was ruled out, because
Peter Clemence had not been robbed, not of a silver buckle, not of a jewelled
cross. No one had benefited in goods or gear from his death, even the horse had
been turned loose in the mosses with his harness untouched.

“I
have wondered about the horse,” said Hugh, as though he had been following
Cadfael’s thoughts.

“I,
too. The night after you brought the beast back to the abbey, Meriet called him
in his sleep. Did they ever tell you that? Barbary, Barbary—and he whistled
after him. His devil whistled back to him, the novices said. I wonder if he
came, there in the woods, or if Leoric had to send out men after him later? I
think he would come to Meriet. When he found the man dead, his next thought
would be for the beast, he went calling him.”

“The
hounds may well have picked up his voice,” said Hugh ruefully, “before ever
they got his scent. And brought his father down on him.”

“Hugh,
I have been thinking. The lad answered you very valiantly when you fetched him
up hard against that error in time. But I do not believe it had dawned on him
at all what it meant. See, if Meriet had simply blundered upon a lone body dead
in the forest, with no sign to turn his suspicions towards any man, all he
would then have known was that Clemence had ridden but a short way before he
was shot. Then how could the boy know or even guess by whom? But if he chanced
upon some other soul trapped as he was, stooped over the dead, or trying to
drag him into hiding—someone close and dear to him—then he has not realised,
even now, that this someone else came to this spot in the forest, even as he
himself did, at least six hours too late to be the murderer!”

On
the eighteenth day of December Canon Eluard rode into Shrewsbury in very good
conceit of himself, having persuaded his king into a visit which had turned out
conspicuously well, and escorted him thus far south again towards his customary
London Christmas, before leaving him in order to diverge westward in search of
news of Peter Clemence. Chester and Lincoln, both earls now in name as well as
in fact, had made much of Stephen, and pledged him their unshakable loyalty,
which he in turn had recognised with gifts of land as well as titles. Lincoln
castle he retained in his own hand, well-garrisoned, but the city and the shire
were open to his new earl. The atmosphere in Lincoln had been of holiday and
ease, aided by clement weather for December. Christmas in the north-east bade
fair to be a carefree festival.

Hugh
came down from the castle to attend on the canon and exchange the news with
him, though it was a very uneven exchange. He had brought with him the relics
of Peter Clemence’s jewels and harness, cleaned of their encrusted filth of ash
and soil, but discoloured by the marks of fire. The dead man’s bones reposed
now in a lead-lined coffin in the mortuary chapel of the abbey, but the coffin
was not yet sealed. Canon Eluard had it opened for him, and gazed upon the
remains within, grim-faced but unwincing.

“Cover
him,” he said, and turned away. There was nothing there that could ever again
be known as any man. The cross and ring were a very different matter.

“This
I do know. This I have commonly seen him wearing,” said Eluard, with the cross in
the palm of his hand. Over the silver surface the coloured sheen of tarnish
glimmered, but the gems shone clear. “This is certainly Clemence,” said Eluard
heavily. “It will be grievous news for my bishop. And you have some fellow in
hold for this crime?”

“We
have a man in prison, true,” said Hugh, “and have let it be noised abroad that
he is the man, but in truth I must tell you that he is not charged, and almost
certainly never will be. The worst known of him is a little thieving here and
there, from hunger, and on that I continue to hold him. But a murderer I am
sure he is not.” He told the story of his search, but said no word of Meriet’s
confession. “If you intend to rest here two or three days before riding on,
there may yet be more news to take with you.”

It
was in his mind as he said it that he was a fool to promise any such thing, but
his thumbs had pricked, and the words were out. Cadfael had business with
Leoric Aspley when he came, and the imminent gathering here of all those
closest about Peter Clemence’s last hours seemed to Hugh like the thickening
and lowering of a cloud before the storm breaks and the rain falls. If the rain
refused to fall, then after the wedding Aspley should be made to tell all that
he knew, and probe after what he did not know, taking into account such small
matters as those six unrecorded hours, and the mere three miles Clemence had
ridden before he met his death.

“Nothing
can restore the dead,” said Canon Eluard sombrely, “but it is only just and
right that his murderer should be brought to account. I trust that may yet be
done.”

“And
you’ll be here yet a few days? You’re not in haste to rejoin the king?”

“I
go to Winchester, not Westminster. And it will be worth waiting a few days to
have somewhat more to tell the bishop concerning this grievous loss. I confess
to being in need of a brief rest, too, I am not so young as once I was. Your
sheriff still leaves you to carry the cares of the shire alone, by the way.
King Stephen wishes to retain him in his company over the feast, they go
directly to London.”

That
was by no means unwelcome news to Hugh. The business he had begun he was
strongly minded to finish, and two minds bent to the same task, the one more
impatient than the other, do not make for good results. “And you are content
with your visit,” he said. “Something, at least, has gone well.”

“It
was worth all the travelling,” said Eluard with satisfaction. “The king can be
easy in his mind about the north, Ranulf and William between them have every
mile of it well in hand, it would be a bold man who would meddle with their
order. His Grace’s castellan in Lincoln is on the best of terms with the earls
and their ladies. And the messages I bear to the bishop are gracious indeed.
Yes, it was well worth the miles I’ve ridden to secure it.”

On
the following day the wedding party arrived in modest manorial state, to
apartments prepared for them in the abbey guest-halls: the Aspleys, the Lindes,
the heiress of Foriet, and a great rout of their invited guests from all the
neighbouring manors down the fringes of the forest. All but the common hall and
dortoir for the pedlars and pilgrims and birds of passage was given over to the
party. Canon Eluard, the abbot’s guest, took a benevolent interest in the
bright bustle from his privileged distance. The novices and the boys looked on
in eager curiosity, delighted at any distraction in their ordered lives. Prior
Robert allowed himself to be seen about the court and the cloisters at his most
benign and dignified, always at his best where there were ceremonies to be
patronised and a patrician audience to appreciate and admire him; and Brother
Jerome made himself even more than usually busy and authoritative among the
novices and lay servants. In the stable-yard there was great activity, and all
the stalls were filled. Brothers who had kin among the guests were allowed to
receive them in the parlour. A great wave of animation and interest swept
through the courts and the gardens, all the more gaily because the weather,
though crisp and very cold, was clear and fine, and the daylight lasted towards
evening.

Cadfael
stood with Brother Paul at the corner of the cloister and watched them ride in
in their best travelling array, with pack-ponies bringing their wedding finery.
The Lindes came first. Wulfric Linde was a fat, flabby, middle-aged man of
amiable, lethargic face, and Cadfael could not choose but wonder what his dead
lady must have been like, to make it possible for the pair of them to produce
two such beautiful children. His daughter rode a pretty, cream-coloured
palfrey, smilingly aware of all the eyes upon her, and keeping her own eyes
tantalisingly lowered, in an appearance of modesty which gave exaggerated power
to every flashing sidelong glance. Swathed warmly in a fine blue cloak that concealed
all but the rosy oval of her face, she still knew how to radiate beauty, and
oh, she knew, how well she knew, that she had at least forty pairs of innocent
male eyes upon her, marvelling at what strange delights were withheld from
them. Women of all ages, practical and purposeful, went in and out regularly at
these gates, with complaint, appeal, request and gift, and made no stir and
asked no tribute. Roswitha came armed in knowledge of her power, and delighted
in the disquiet she brought with her. There would be some strange dreams among
Brother Paul’s novices.