Brother Cadfael spent the early part of that afternoon in the herb-garden, and having seen everything left in order there, went out to view the work along the Gaye. The weather continued sunny and warm, and the urchins of the town and the Foregate, born and bred by the water and swimmers almost before they could walk, were in and out of the shallows, and the bolder and stronger among them even venturing across where the Severn ran smoothly. The spring spate from the mountains was over now, the river showed a bland face, but these water-children knew its tricks, and seldom trusted it too far.
Cadfael walked through the flowering orchard, very uneasy in his mind after the night’s alarms, and continued downstream until he stood somewhere opposite the gardens of the burgages along the approach to the castle. Halfway up the slope the tall stone barrier of the town wall crossed, its crest crumbled into disrepair in places, not yet restored after the rigours of the siege two years ago. Within his vision it was pierced by two narrow, arched doorways, easily barred in dangerous times. One of the two must be in the Aurifaber grounds, but he could not be sure which. Below the wall the greensward shone fresh and vivid, and the trees were in pale young leaf and snowy flower. The alders leaned over the shallows lissome and rosy with catkins. Willow withies shone gold and silver with the fur-soft flowers. So sweet and hopeful a time to be threatening a poor young man with hanging or bludgeoning a single household with loss and death.
The boys of the Foregate and the boys of the town were rivals by tradition, earring into casual warfare the strong local feeling of their sires. Their water-games sometimes became rough, though seldom dangerous, and if one rash spirit overstepped the mark, there was usually an older and wiser ally close by, to clout him off and haul his victim to safety. There was some horse-play going on in the shallows opposite as Cadfael watched. An imp of the Foregate had ventured the crossing, plunged into a frolic of town children before they were aware, and ducked one of them spluttering below the surface. The whole incensed rout closed on him and pursued him some way downstream, until he splashed ashore up a slope of grass to escape them, falling flat in the shallows in his haste, and clawing and scrambling clear in a flurry of spray. From a smooth greensward where he certainly had no right to be, he capered and crowed at them as they drew off and abandoned the chase.
It seemed that he had fished something up with him out of the shallow water and gravel under the bushes. He sat down and scrubbed at it in his palm, intent and curious. He was still busy with it when another boy hardly older than himself came naked out of the orchard above, dropping his shirt into the grass, and trotting down towards the water. He saw the intruder, and checked at gaze, staring.
The distance was not so great but Cadfael knew him, and knew, in consequence, at whose extended burgage he was looking. Thirteen years old, well-grown and personable; Baldwin Peche’s simpleton boy, Griffin, let loose from his labours for an hour to run down through the wicket in the wall, and swim in the river like other boys.
Griffin had seen, far better than Cadfael across the river could hope to see, whatever manner of trophy the impudent invader from the Foregate had discovered in the shallows. He let out an indignant cry, and came running down the grass to snatch at the cupped hand. Something dropped, briefly glinting, into the turf, and Griffin fell upon it like a hawk swooping and caught it up jealously. The other boy, startled, leaped to his feet and made to grab at it in his turn, but gave back before a taller challenger. He was not greatly disturbed at losing his toy. There was some exchange, light-hearted on his side, slow and sober on Griffin’s. The two youthful voices floated light, excited sounds across the water. The Foregate urchin shrilled some parting insult, dancing backwards towards the river, jumped in with a deliberate splash, and struck out for his home waters, sudden and silvery as a trout.
Cadfael moved alertly to where the child must come ashore, but kept one eye on the slope opposite also, and saw how Griffin, instead of plunging in after his repulsed rival, went back to lay his trophy carefully in the folds of the shirt he had discarded by the bushes. Then he slid down the bank and waded out into the water, and lay facedown upon the current in so expert and easy a fashion that it was plain he had been a swimmer from infancy. He was rolling and playing in the eddies when the other boy hauled himself ashore into the grass of Cadfael’s bank, shedding water and glowing from his play, and began to caper and clap his arms about his slender body in the sunny air. Grown men would hardly be trying that water for a month or so yet, but the young have energy enough to keep them warm, and as old men tend to say tolerantly, where there’s no sense there’s no feeling.
‘Well, troutling,” said Cadfael, knowing this imp as soon as he drew close, ‘what was that you fished out of the mud over yonder? I saw you take to the land. Not many yards ahead of the vengeance, either! You picked the wrong haven.’
The boy had aimed expertly for the place where he had left his clothes. He darted for his cotte, and slung it round his nakedness, grinning. ‘I’m not afeared of all the town hobbledehoys. Nor of that big booby of the locksmith’s, neither, but he’s welcome to his bit of trumpery. Knew it for his master’s, he said! Just a little round piece, with a man’s head on it with a beard and a pointed hat. Nothing to fall out over.’
‘Besides that Griffin is bigger than you,’ said Cadfael innocently.
The imp made a scornful face, and having scrubbed his feet and ankles through the soft grass, and slapped his thighs dry, set to work to wriggle into his hose. ‘But slow, and hasn’t all his wits. What was the thing doing drifted under the gravel in the water there, if there was any good in it? He can have it for me!’
And he was off at an energetic run to rejoin his friends, leaving Cadfael very thoughtful. A coin silted into the gravel under the bank there, where the river made a shallow cove, and clawed up in the fist of a scrambling urchin who happened to sprawl on his face there in evading pursuit. Nothing so very strange in that. All manner of things might turn up in the waters of Severn, queerer things than a lost coin. All that made it notable was that this one should turn up in that particular place. Too many cobweb threads were tangling around the Aurifaber burgage, nothing that occurred there could any longer be taken as ordinary or happening by chance. And what to make of all these unrelated strands was more than Cadfael could yet see.
He went back to his seedlings, which at least were innocent of any mystery, and worked out the rest of the afternoon until it drew near the time to return for Vespers; but there was still a good half-hour in hand when he was hailed from the river, and looked round to see Madog rowing upstream, and crossing the main current to come to shore where Cadfael was standing. He had abandoned his coracle for a light skiff, quite capable, as Cadfael reflected with a sudden inspiration, of ferrying an inquisitive brother across to take a look for himself at that placid inlet where the boy had dredged up the coin of which he thought so poorly.
Madog brought his boat alongside, and held it by an oar dug into the soft turf of the bank. ‘Well, Brother Cadfael, I hear the old dame’s gone, then. Trouble broods round that house. They tell me you were there to see her set out.’
Cadfael owned it. ‘After fourscore years I wonder if death should be accounted troublous. But yes, she’s gone. Before midnight she left them.’ Whether with a blessing or a curse, or only a grim assertion of her dominance over them and defence of them, loved or unloved, was something he had been debating in his own mind. For she could have spoken, but had said only what she thought fit to say, nothing to the point. The disputes of the day, surely relevant, she had put clean away. They were her people. Whatever needed judgement and penance among them was her business, no concern of the world outside. And yet those few enigmatic words she had deliberately let him hear. Him, her opponent, physician and - was friend too strong a word? To her priest she had responded only with the suggested movements of her eyelids saying yea and nay, confessing to frailties, agreeing to penitence, desiring absolution. But no words.