The Heretic's Apprentice (13 page)

They were all there, Margaret, Jevan, Conan and Aldwin, gathered in an agitated group, baffled question and oblique answer flying at the same time, Conan standing back to be the innocent bystander caught up in someone else's quarrel, Aldwin bleating aloud as Fortunata entered: ‘How could I know? I was worried that such things should be said, I feared for my own soul if I hid them. All I did was tell Brother Jerome what was troubling me –'

‘And he told Prior Robert,' cried Fortunata from the doorway, ‘and Prior Robert told everyone, especially that great man from Canterbury, as you knew very well he would. How can you pretend you never meant Elave harm? Once you launched it, you knew where it would end.'

They had all swung about to face her, startled by her anger rather than by the suddenness of her entry.

‘No!' protested Aldwin, recovering his breath. ‘No, I swear I only thought the prior might speak to him, warn him, turn him to better counsel...'

‘And therefore,' she said sharply, ‘you told him who had been present to hear. Why do that unless you meant it to go further? Why force me into your plans? That I shall never forgive you!'

‘Wait, wait, wait!' cried Jevan, throwing up his hands. ‘Are you telling me, chick, that
you
were called to witness? In God's name, man, what possessed you? How dared you bring our girl into such a business?'

‘It was not I who wanted that,' protested Aldwin. ‘Brother Jerome got it out of me who was there, I never meant to bring her into the tangle. But I am a son of the Church, I needed to slough the load from my conscience, but then it got out of hand.'

‘I never knew you all that constant in observance,' said Jevan ruefully. ‘You could as well have refused to name any names but your own. Well, what's done is done. Is it over even now? Need we expect her to be called to more enquiries, more interrogations? Is it to drag on to exhaustion, now it's begun?'

‘It isn't over,' said Fortunata. ‘They have not pronounced any judgement, but they won't let go so easily. Elave is pledged not to go away until he's freed of the charge. I know it because I have just left him, among the trees close by the bridge, and he's on his way back now to the abbey to stand his ground. I wanted him to run, I begged him to run, but he refuses. See what you've done, Aldwin, to a poor young man who never did you any harm, who has no family or patron now, no safe home and secure living, as you have. Here are you provided for life, without a care for your old age, and he has to find work again wherever he can, and now you have put a shadow upon him that will cling round him whatever the judgement, and turn men away from employing him for fear of being thought suspect by contagion. Why did you do it? Why?'

Aldwin had been gradually recovering his composure since the shock of her entrance had upset it, but now it seemed he had lost it altogether, and his wits with it. He stood gaping at her mutely, and from her to Jevan. Twice he swallowed hard before he could find a word to say, and even then he brought out the words with infinite caution, disbelieving.

‘Provided for life?'

‘You know you are,' she said impatiently, and herself was struck mute the next moment, suddenly sensible that for Aldwin nothing had ever been known beyond possibility of doubt. Every evil was to be expected, every good suspect and to be watched jealously, lest it evaporate as he breathed on it. ‘Oh, no!' she said on a despairing breath. ‘Was
that
it? Did you think he was come to turn you out and take your place? Was that why you wanted rid of him?'

‘What?' cried Jevan. ‘Is the girl right, man? Did you suppose you were to be thrown out on the roads to make way for him to get his old place back again? After all the years you've lived here and worked for us? Did this house ever treat any of its people so? You know better than that!'

But that was Aldwin's trouble, that he valued himself so low he expected as low a regard from everyone else, even after years, and the respect and consideration the house of Lythwood showed towards its other dependants could not, in his eyes, be relied on as applying equally to him. He stood dumbstruck, his mouth working silently.

‘My dear soul!' said Margaret, grieving. ‘The thought never entered our heads to part with you. Certainly he was a good lad when we had him, but we wouldn't have displaced you for the world. Why, the boy didn't want it, either. I told him how it was, the first time he came back here, and he said surely, the place was yours, he never had the least wish to take it from you. Have you been fretting all this time over that? I thought you knew us better.'

‘I've damaged him for no reason,' said Aldwin, as though to himself. ‘No reason at all!' And suddenly, with a convulsive moment that shook his aging body as a gale shakes a bush, he turned and blundered towards the doorway. Conan caught him by the arm and held him fast.

‘Where are you going? What can you do? It's done. You told no lies, what was said was said.'

‘I'll overtake him,' said Aldwin with unaccustomed resolution. ‘I'll tell him I'm sorry for it. I'll go with him to the monks, and see if I can undo what I've done – any part of what I've done. I'll own why I did it. I'll withdraw the charge I made.'

‘Don't be a fool!' urged Conan roughly. ‘What difference will that make? The charge is laid now, the priests won't let it be dropped, not they. It's no small matter to accuse a man of heresy and then go back on it, you'll only end in as bad case as he. And they have my witness, and Fortunata's, what use is it taking back yours? Let be, and show some sense!'

But Aldwin's courage was up, and his conscience stricken too deeply for sense. He dragged himself free from the detaining hand. ‘I can but try! I will! That at least.' And he was out at the door, and halfway across the yard towards the street. Conan would have gone after him, but Jevan called him back sharply.

‘Let him alone! At the very least, if he owns to his own fear and malice, he must surely shake the case against the lad. Words, words, I don't doubt they were spoken, but words can be interpreted many ways, and even a small doubt cast can alter the image. You get back to work, and let the poor devil go and ease his mind the best way he can. If he falls foul of the priests, we'll put in a word for him and get him out of it.'

Conan gave up reluctantly, shrugging off his misgivings about the whole affair. ‘Then I'd best get out to the folds until nightfall. God knows how he'll fare, but by then, one way or another, I suppose we shall find out.' And he went out still shaking his head disapprovingly over Aldwin's foolishness, and they heard his solid footsteps cross the yard to the passage into the street.

‘What a coil!' said Jevan with a gusty sigh. ‘And I must be off, too, and fetch some more skins from the workshop. There's a canon of Haughmond coming tomorrow, and I've no notion yet what size of book he has in mind. Don't take things too much to heart, girl,' he said, and embraced Fortunata warmly in a long arm. ‘If it comes to the worst we'll get the prior of Haughmond to say a word to Gerbert for any man of ours – one Augustinian must surely listen to another, and the prior owes me a favour or two.'

He released her and was off towards the door in his turn, when she demanded abruptly: ‘Uncle – does Elave count as a man of ours?'

Jevan swung about to stare at her, his thin black brows raised, and the dark, observant eyes beneath them flashed into the smile that came seldom but brilliantly, a little teasing, a little intimidating, but for her always reassuring.

‘If you want him,' he said, ‘he shall.'

*

Elave had gone but a few yards back towards the abbey gatehouse when he saw half a dozen men come boiling out of the open gate, and split two ways along the Foregate. The suddenness of the eruption and the distant clamour of their raised voices as they emerged and separated made him draw back hastily into the cover of the trees, to consider what this hubbub might have to do with him. They were certainly sent forth in a body, and carrying staves, which boded no good if they were indeed hunting for him. He worked his way cautiously along the grove to get a closer view, for they were sweeping the open road first before enlarging their field, and two were away on the run along the further length of the enclave wall, to reach the corner and get a view along the next stretch of the road. Someone or something was certainly being hunted. Not by any of the brothers. Here were no black habits, but sober workaday homespun and hard-wearing leather, on sturdy laymen. Three of them he knew for the grooms attendant on Canon Gerbert, a fourth was his body servant, for Elave had seen the man about the guest-hall, busy and pompous, jack in office by virtue of his master's status. The others must surely have been recruited from among those pilgrims ablest in body and readiest for zealous mischief. It was not the abbot who had set the dogs on him, but Gerbert.

He drew back deeper into cover, and stood scowling at the intent hunters quartering the Foregate. He had no mind to show himself, however boldly, and risk being set upon and dragged back like a felon, when he had not, in his reading of his commitment, ever broken his parole. Maybe Canon Gerbert read the terms differently, and considered his going outside the gate, even without his gear, as proof of a guilty mind and instant flight. Well, he should not have the satisfaction of being able to sustain that view. Elave was going back through that gate on his own two feet, of his own obstinate will, true to his bond and staking his liberty and perhaps his life. The peril in which he could not bring himself to believe looked more real and sinister now.

They had left a single groom, the brawniest of Gerbert's three, sentinel before the gatehouse, prowling up and down as though neither time nor force could shift him. Small hope of slipping past that great sinewy hulk! And a couple of the hounds, having beaten the road, the gardens and the cottages along the Foregate for a hundred paces either way, were crossing the road purposefully towards the trees. Better remove himself from here to a safe distance until they either abandoned the hunt, or pursued it into more remote coverts, and allowed him safe passage back into the fold. Elave drew off hastily through the trees, and followed their dwindling course north-eastward until he came round into the orchards beyond the Gaye, and the belt of bushes that clothed the riverside. They were more likely to search for him westward. Along the border, English fugitives made for Wales, Welsh fugitives for England. The two laws baulked and held off at the dyke, though trade crossed back and forth merrily enough.

There was still a matter of three hours or so before Vespers, when he could hope that everyone would be in church again, and he might be able to slip in either through the gatehouse, if the burly guard had departed, or into the church by the west door among the local parishioners. No point in going back, meantime, to risk running his head into a snare. He found himself a comfortable nest among the tall grass above the river, screened by bushes and islanded in a silence that would give him due warning of any foot rustling the grass or shoulders brushing through the branches of alder and willow for a hundred yards around, and sat thinking of Fortunata. He could not credit that he was in the kind of danger she envisaged, and yet he could not quite put the shadow away from him.

Across the swift and sinuous currents of the Severn, sparkling in sunlight, the hill of the town rose sharply, its long, enfolding wall terminating here opposite his hiding-place in the thick sandstone towers of the castle, and giving place to the highroad launching away to the north from the Castle Foregate towards Whitchurch and Wem. And even now he could have forded the river only a little way downstream and made off at speed by that road, but he was damned if he would! He had committed no crime, he had said only what he held to be right, and there was nothing in it of blasphemy or disrespect to the Church, and he would not take back a word of it, or run away from his own utterances and afford his accusers a cheap triumph.

He had no way of knowing the time, but when he thought it must be drawing near to Vespers he left his nest, and made his way cautiously back by the same route, keeping in cover, until he could see between the trees the dusty whiteness of the road, the people passing along it, and the lively bustle about the gatehouse. He had a while to wait before the Vesper bell rang, and he spent it moving warily from one cover to another, to see whether any of his pursuers were to be noted among the people gathering outside the west door of the church. He recognised none, but in the constant movement it was difficult to be sure. The big man who had been left to guard the gate was nowhere within view. Elave's best moment would come when the little bell was heard, and the gossips passing the time of day there in the early evening sunshine would gather and move into the church.

The moment was on him as fast as the thought. The bell chimed, and the worshippers gathered their families, saluted their friends, and began to move in by the west door. Elave darted out in time to mingle with them and hide himself in the middle of the procession, and there was no outcry, no rough hand grasping him by the shoulder. Now he had a choice between continuing left with the good people of the Foregate into the church, or slipping through the open gate of the enclave into the great court, and walking calmly across to the guest-hall. If he had chosen the church all might have been well, but the temptation to walk openly into the court as from a respectable stroll was too much for him. He left the shelter of the worshippers, and turned in through the gate.

From the doorway of the porter's lodge on his right a great howl of triumph soared, and was echoed from the road he had left behind. The canon's giant groom had been talking with the porter, vengeance in ambush, and two of his colleagues were just coming back from a foray into the town. All three of them fell upon the returning prodigal at once. A heavy cudgel struck him on the back of the head, sending him staggering, and before he could regain his balance or his wits he was grappled in the big man's muscular arms, while one of the others caught him by the hair, dragging his head back. He let out a yell of rage, and laid about him with fist and foot, heaving off his assailant from behind, wrenching one arm free from the big man's embrace and lashing out heartily at his nose. A second blow on the head drove him to his knees, half stunned. Distantly he heard dismayed voices crying out at such violence on sacred ground, and sandalled feet running hastily over the cobbles. Lucky for him that the brothers were just gathering from their various occupations to the sound of the bell.