“This I can tell you,” said Hugh. “What he said of the woman who followed Ailnoth and was struck down by him is certainly true. Mistress Hammet claimed then that she had fallen on the icy ground. That was a lie. The priest did that to her, she has owned it since to Brother Cadfael, who treated her injuries. And since I have now brought Cadfael into this, I think you would do well, my lord, to send for him. I have had no chance to speak with him since the events of this morning, and it’s in my mind that he may have something further to say in this matter. He was missing from the ranks of the brothers in the cemetery when I came, for I looked for him and couldn’t find him. He came later, not from the Foregate but from within the court. He would not have absented himself but for good reason. If he has things to tell me, I cannot afford to neglect them.”
“Neither, it seems, can I,” said Radulfus, and reached for the little bell that lay on his desk. The small silver chime brought in his secretary from the ante-room. “Brother Vitalis, will you find Brother Cadfael, and ask him to come here to us?”
When the door had closed again the abbot sat silent for a while, considering. “I know now, of course,” he said at last, “that Father Ailnoth was indeed grossly deceived, and that is some extenuation for him. But the woman—I gather she is no kin to the youth she sheltered, the one we knew as Benet?—she had been an exemplary servant to her master for three years, her only offence was in protecting the young man, an offence which sprang only from affection. There shall be no penalty visited upon her, never by my authority. She shall have quiet living here, since it was I who brought her here. If we get a new priest who has neither mother nor sister to mind his dwelling, then she may serve him as she did Ailnoth, and I hope there may never be reason for her to kneel to him but in the confessional, and none ever for him to strike her. And as for the boy…” He looked back with a resigned and tolerant eye, and shook his head a little, smiling. “I remember we gave him to Cadfael to do the rough work before the winter freeze. I saw him once in the garden, digging the long butt. At least he gave honest value. FitzAlan’s squire was not afraid to dig, nor ashamed.” He looked up, head tilted, into Hugh’s face. “You don’t, by any chance, know…?”
“I have been rather careful not to know,” said Hugh.
“Well… I am glad he never fouled his hands with murder. I saw them black enough with soil, from plucking out the weeds too gross to be dug in,” said Radulfus, and smiled distantly, looking out of the window at a pearl-grey, low hanging sky. “I expect he’ll do well enough. Pity of all pities there should be one such young man in arms against another in this land, but at least let the steel be bared only in the open field, not privily in the dark.”
Cadfael laid out on the abbot’s desk the remaining relics of Father Ailnoth, the ebony staff, the draggled black skullcap with its torn binding, and the unravelled woollen remnant of braid that completed the circle.
“Cynric told simple truth, and here are the proofs of it. Only this morning, when I saw Mistress Hammet’s open hand once again, and remembered the grazes I had dressed, did I understand how she got those injuries. Not from a fall—there was no fall. The wound on her head was dealt by this staff, for I found several long hairs of her greying light-brown colour here, caught in the frayed edges of this silver band. You see it’s worn wafer-thin, and the edges turned and cracking.”
Radulfus ran a long, lean finger round the crumpled, razor-sharp rim, and nodded grimly. “Yes, I see. And from this same band she got the grazes to her hands. He swung his staff at her a second time, so Cynric said, and she caught and clung to it, to save her head…”
“… and he tugged at it with all his strength, and tore it by main force out of her hands,” said Hugh, “to his own undoing.”
“They could not have been many paces past the mill,” said Cadfael, “for Cynric was some way beyond, among the willows. On the side of that first stump that overhangs the pool I found a few broken withies, and this black ravelling of wool braid snagged in the cracked, dead wood of the stump. The priest went stunned or dazed into the water, the cap flew from his head, leaving this scrap held fast in the tree, as the silver band held her torn hairs. The staff was flung from his hand. The winter turf is tufted and rough there, no wonder if he caught his heel, as he reeled backwards when she loosed her hold. He crashed into the stump. The axe that felled it, long ago, left it uneven, the jagged edge took him low at the back of the head. Father, you saw the wound. So did the sheriff.”
“I saw it,” said Radulfus. “And the woman knew nothing from the time she ran from him?”
“She barely knows how she got home. Certainly she waited out the night in dread, expecting him to finish what he intended against the boy, and return to his house to denounce and cast her out. But he never came.”
“Could he have been saved?” wondered the abbot, grieving as much for the roused and resentful flock as for the dead shepherd.
“In the dark,” said Cadfael, “I doubt if any one man could have got him from under that bank, however he laboured at it. Even had there been help within reach, I think he would have drowned before ever they got him out.”
“At the risk of falling into sin,” said Radulfus, with a smile that began sourly and ended in resignation, “I find that comforting. We have not a murderer among us, at any rate.”
“Talk of falling into sin,” said Cadfael later, when he and Hugh were sitting easy together in the workshop in the herb garden, “forces me to examine my own conscience. I enjoy some privileges, by reason of being called on to attend sick people outside the enclave, and also by virtue of having a godson to visit. But I ought not to take advantage of that permission for my own ends. Which I have done shamelessly on three or four occasions since Christmas. Indeed, Father Abbot must be well aware that I went out from the precinct this very morning without leave, but he’s said no word about it.”
“No doubt he takes it for granted you’ll be making proper confession voluntarily, at chapter tomorrow,” said Hugh, straight-faced.
“That I doubt! He’d hardly welcome it. I should have to explain the reason, and I know his mind by now. There are old hawks like Radulfus and myself in here, who can stand the gales, but there are also innocents who will not benefit by too stormy a wind blowing through the dovecote. He’s fretted enough about Ailnoth’s influence, now he wants it put by and soon forgotten. And I prophesy, Hugh, that the Foregate will soon have a new priest, and one who is known and welcome not only to us who have the bestowing of the benefice, but to those who are likely to reap the results. No better way of burying Ailnoth.”
“In all fairness,” said Hugh thoughtfully, “it would have been a very delicate matter to reject a priest recommended by the papal legate, even for a man of your abbot’s stature. And the fellow was impressive to the eye and the ear, and had scholarship… No wonder Radulfus thought he was bringing you a treasure. God send you a decent, humble, common man next time.”
“Amen! Whether he has Latin or not! And here am I the well-wisher, if not the accomplice, of an enemy of the King, criminal as well as sinner! Did I say I was being obliged to search my conscience? But not too diligently—that always leads to trouble.”
“I wonder,” said Hugh, smiling indulgently into the glow of the brazier, “if they’ll have set out yet?”