‘I am as concerned as you for justice,’ the abbot avowed. ‘Not so much that I want the life of this or any man, but I do want an accounting for the woman’s. Of course, go. I hope we may be nearer the truth this time. Without it there can be no absolution.’
‘May I borrow Brother Cadfael, Father? He first brought me word of this man, he knows best what the old fellow at Saint Giles said of him. He may be able to pick up details that would elude me.’
Prior Robert looked down his patrician nose at the suggestion, and thinned his long lips in disapproval. He considered that Cadfael was far too often allowed a degree of liberty outside the enclave that offended the prior’s strict interpretation of the Rule. But Abbot Radulfus nodded thoughtful agreement.
‘Certainly a shrewd witness may not come amiss. Yes, take him with you. I do know his memory is excellent, and his nose for discrepancies keen. And he has been in this business from the beginning, and has some right, I think, to continue with it to the end.’
So it came about that Cadfael, coming from supper in the refectory, instead of going dutifully to Collations in the chapterhouse, or less dutifully recalling something urgent to be attended to in his workshop, in order to avoid the dull, pedestrian reading of Brother Francis, whose turn it was, was haled out of his routine to go with Hugh up through the town to the castle, there to confront the prisoner.
He was as the old man had reported him, big, red-haired, capable of throwing out far more powerful intruders than a scabby old vagabond and, to an unprejudiced eye, a personable enough figure of a man to captivate a high-spirited and self-sufficient woman as streetwise as himself. At any rate for a time. If they had been together long enough to fall easily into fighting, he might well use those big, sinewy hands too freely and once too often, and find that he had killed without ever meaning to. And if ever he blazed into the real rage his bush of flaming hair suggested, he might kill with intent. Here in the cell where Hugh had chosen to encounter him, he sat with wide shoulders braced back against the wall, stiffly erect and alert, his face as stony as the wall itself, but for the wary eyes that fended off questions and questioners with an unwavering stare. A man, Cadfael judged, who had been in trouble before, and more than once, and coped with it successfully. Nothing mortal, probably, a deer poached here and there, a hen lifted, nothing that could not be plausibly talked out of court, in these somewhat disorganised days when in many places the king’s foresters had little time or inclination to impose the rigours of forest law.
As for his present situation, there was no telling what fears, what speculations were going through his mind, how much he guessed at, or what feverish compilations of lies he was putting together against whatever he felt could be urged against him. He waited without protestations, so stiffly tensed that even his hair seemed to be erected and quivering. Hugh closed the door of the cell, and looked him over without haste.
‘Well, Britricthat is your name? You have frequented the abbey fair, have you not, these past two years?’
‘Longer,’ said Britric. His voice was low and guarded, and unwilling to use more words than he need. ‘Six years in all.’ A small sidelong flicker of uneasy eyes took in Cadfael’s habited figure, quiet in the corner of the cell.
Perhaps he was recalling the tolls he had evaded paying, and wondering if the abbot had grown tired of turning a blind eye to the small defaulters.
‘It’s with last year we’re concerned. Not so long past that your memory should fail you. The eve of Saint Peter ad Vincula, and the three days afterwards, you were offering your wares for sale. Where did you spend the nights?’
He was astray now, and that made him even more cautious, but he answered without undue hesitation: ‘I knew of a cottage was left empty. They were talking of it in the market, how the potter had taken a fancy to be a monk, and his wife was gone, and left the house vacant. Over the river, by Longner. I thought it was no harm to take shelter there. Is that why I’m brought here? But why now, after so long? I never stole anything. I left all as I found it. All I wanted was a roof over me, and a place to lay down in comfort.’
‘Alone?’ asked Hugh.
No hesitation at all this time. He had already calculated that the same question must have been answered by others, before ever a hand was laid on him to answer for himself. ‘I had a woman with me. Gunnild, she was called. She travelled the fairs and markets, entertaining for her living. I met her in Coventry, we kept together a while.’
‘And when the fair here was over? Last year’s fair? Did you then leave together, and keep company still?’
Britric’s narrowed glance flickered from one face to the other, and found no helpful clue. Slowly he said: ‘No. We went separate ways. I was going westward, my best trade is along the border villages.’
‘And when and where did you part from her?’
‘I left her there at the cottage where we’d slept. The fourth day of August, early. It was barely light when I started out. She was going east from there, she had no need to cross the river.’
‘I can find no one in the town or the Foregate,’ said Hugh deliberately, ‘who saw her again.’
“They would not,’ said Britric. ‘I said, she was going east.’
‘And you have never seen her since? Never made effort for old kindness’ sake to find her again?’
‘I never had occasion.’ He was beginning to sweat, for whatever that might mean. ‘Chance met, nothing more than that. She went her way, and I went mine.’
‘And there was no falling out between you? Never a blow struck? No loud disputes? Ever gentle and amiable together, were you, Britric? There are some report differently of you,’ said Hugh. ‘There was another fellow, was there not, had hoped to lie snug in that cottage? An old man you drove away. But he did not go far. Not out of earshot of the pair of you, when you did battle in the nights. A stormy partnership, he made it. And she was pressing you to marry her, was she not? And marriage was not to your mind. What happened? Did she grow too wearisome? Or too violent? A hand like yours over her mouth or about her throat could very easily quiet her.’
Britric had drawn his head hard back against the stone like a beast at bay, sweat standing on his forehead in quivering drops under the fall of red hair. Between his teeth he got out, in a voice so short of breath it all but strangled in his throat: ‘This is mad
mad
I tell you, I left her there snoring, alive and lusty as ever she was. What is this? What are you thinking of me, my lord? What am I held to have done?’
‘I will tell you, Britric, what I think you have done. There was no Gunnild at this year’s fair, was there? Nor has she been seen in Shrewsbury since you left her in Ruald’s field. I think you fell out and fought once too often, one of those nights, perhaps the last, and Gunnild died of it. And I think you buried her there in the night, under the headland, for the abbey plough to turn up this autumn. As it did! A woman’s bones, Britric, and a woman’s black hair, a mane of black hair still on the skull.’
Britric uttered a small, half-swallowed sound, and let out his breath in a great, gasping sigh, as if he had been hit in the breast with an iron fist. When he could articulate, though in a strangled whisper understood rather by the shaping of his lips than by any sound, he got out over and over: ‘No
no
no! Not Gunnild, no!’
Hugh let him alone until he had breath to make sense, and time to consider and believe, and reason about his own situation. For he was quick to master himself, and to accept, with whatever effort, the fact that the sheriff was not lying, that this was the reason for his arrest and imprisonment here, and he had better take thought in his own defence.