“If only I had been as quick to see what ailed Eliud as he always was to put trouble away from me…”
“If none of us ever fell short, or put a foot astray,” said Cadfael sadly, “everything would be good in this great world, but we stumble and fall, every one. We must deal with what we have. He did it, and all we must share the gall.”
Out of a drear hush Elis asked: “What will become of him? Will there be mercy? Surely he need not die?”
“It rests with the law, and with the law I have no weight.”
“Melicent relented to me,” said Elis, “before ever she knew I was clean of her father’s blood…”
“Ah, but I did know!” she said quickly. “I was sick in mind that ever I doubted.”
“And I love her the more for it. And Eliud has made confession when no man was accusing, and that must count for virtue to him, as you said, and speak on his side.”
“That and all else that speaks for him,” promised Cadfael fervently, “shall be urged in his defence. I will see to that.”
“But you are not hopeful,” said Elis bleakly, watching his face with eyes all too sharp.
He would have liked to deny it, but to what end, when Eliud himself had accepted and embraced, with resignation and humility, the inevitable death? Cadfael made what comfort he could, short of lying, and left them together. The last glimpse, as he closed the door, was of two braced, wary faces following his going with a steady, veiled stare, their minds shuttered and secret. Only the fierce alliance of hand clasping hand on the brychan betrayed them.
Hugh Beringar came next day in a hurry, listened in dour silence as Eliud laboured with desolate patience through the story yet again, as he had already done for the old priest who said Mass for the sisters. As Eliud’s soul faced humbly toward withdrawal from the world, Cadfael noted his misused body began to heal and find ease, very slowly, but past any doubt. His mind consented to dying, his body resolved to live. The wounds were clean, his excellent youth and health fought hard, whether for or against him who could say?
“Well, I am listening,” said Hugh somewhat wearily, pacing the bank of the brook with Cadfael at his side. “Say what you have to say.” But Cadfael had never seen his face grimmer.
“He made full and free confession,” said Cadfael, “before ever a finger was pointed at him, as soon as he felt he might die. He was in desperate haste to do justice to all, not merely Elis, who might lie under the shadow of suspicion because of him. You know me, I know you. I have said honestly, I was about to tell him that I knew he had killed. I swear to you he took that word clean out of my mouth. He wanted confession, penance, absolution. Most of all he wanted to lift the threat from Elis and any other who might be overcast.”
“I take your word absolutely,” said Hugh, “and it is something. But enough? This was no hot-blood squall blown up in a moment before he could think, it was an old man, wounded and sick, sleeping in his bed.”
“It was not planned. He went to reclaim his lord’s cloak. That I am sure is true. But if you think the blood was cold, dear God, how wrong you are! The boy was half-mad with the long bleeding of hopeless love, and had just come to the point of rebellion, and the thread of a life—one he had been nursing in duty!—cut him off from the respite his sudden courage needed. God forgive him, he had hoped Gilbert would die! He has said so honestly. Chance showed him a thread so thin it could be severed by a breath, and before ever he took thought, he blew! He says he has repented of it every moment that has passed since that moment, and I believe it. Did you never, Hugh, do one unworthy thing on impulse, that grieved and shamed you ever after?”
“Not to the length of killing an old man in his bed,” said Hugh mercilessly.
“No! Nor nothing to match it,” said Cadfael with a deep sigh and briefer smile. “Pardon me, Hugh! I am Welsh and you are English. We Welsh recognise degrees. Theft, theft absolute, without excuse, is our most mortal offence, and therefore we hedge it about with degrees, things which are not theft absolute—taking openly by force, taking in ignorance, taking without leave, providing the offender owns to it, and taking to stay alive, where a beggar has starved three days—no man hangs in Wales for these. Even in dying, even in killing, we acknowledge degrees. We make a distinction between homicide and murder, and even the worst may sometimes be compounded for a lesser price than hanging.”
“So might I make distinctions,” said Hugh, brooding over the placid ford. “But this was my lord, into whose boots I step, for want of my king to give orders. He was no close friend of mine, but he was fair to me always, he had an ear to listen, if I was none too happy with some of his more austere judgments. He was an honourable man and did his duty by this shire of mine as he best knew, and his death fetters me.” Cadfael was silent and respectful. It was a discipline removed now from his, but once there had been such a tie, such a fealty, and he remembered it, and they were none so far apart.
“God forbid,” said Hugh, “that I should hurl out of the world any but such as are too vile to be let live in it. And this is no such monster. One mortal error, one single vileness, and a creature barely—what’s his age? Twenty-one? And driven hard, but which of us is not? He shall have his trial and I shall do what I must,” said Hugh hardly. “But I would to God it was taken out of my hands!”
Chapter Fifteen
BEFORE HE LEFT THAT EVENING HE MADE HIS WILL CLEAR for the others. “Owain may be pressed, if Chester moves again, he wants his men. I have sent to say that all who are clear now shall leave here the day after tomorrow. I have six good men-at-arms belonging to him in Shrewsbury. They are free, and I shall equip them for their journey home. The day after tomorrow as early as may be, around dawn, they will be here to take Elis ap Cynan with them, back to Tregeiriog.”
“Impossible,” said Cadfael flatly. “He cannot yet ride. He has a twisted knee and a cracked rib, besides the arm wound, though that progresses well. He will not ride in comfort for three or four weeks. He will not ride hard or into combat for longer.”
“He need not,” said Hugh shortly. “You forget we have horses borrowed from Tudur ap Rhys, rested and ready for work now, and Elis can as well ride in a litter as could Gilbert in far worse condition. I want all the men of Gwynedd safely out of here before I move against Powys, as I mean to. Let’s have one trouble finished and put by before we face another.” So that was settled and no appeal. Cadfael had expected the order to be received with consternation by Elis, both on Eliud’s account and his own, but after a brief outcry of dismay, suddenly checked, there was a longer pause for thought, while Elis put the matter of his own departure aside, not without a hard, considering look, and turned only to confirm that there was no chance of Eliud escaping trial for murder and very little of any sentence but death being passed upon him. It was a hard thing to accept, but in the end it seemed Elis had no choice but to accept it. A strange, embattled calm had taken possession of the lovers, they had a way of looking at each other as though they shared thoughts that needed no words to be communicated, but were exchanged in a silent code no one else could read. Unless, perhaps, Sister Magdalen understood the language. She herself went about in thoughtful silence and with a shrewd eye upon them both.
“So I am to be fetched away early, the day after tomorrow,” said Elis. He cast one brief glance at Melicent and she at him. “Well, I can and will send in proper form from Gwynedd, it’s as well the thing should be done openly and honestly when I pay my suit to Melicent. And there will be things to set right at Tregeiriog before I shall be free.” He did not speak of Cristina, but the thought of her was there, desolate and oppressive in the room with them. To win her battle, only to see the victory turn to ash and drift through her fingers. “I’m a sound sleeper,” said Elis with a sombre smile, “they may have to roll me in my blankets and carry me out snoring, if they come too early.” And he ended with abrupt gravity: “Will you ask Hugh Beringar if I may have my bed moved into the cell with Eliud these last two nights? It is not a great thing to ask of him.”