Miles broke then, crumpling into himself and clutching his head between spread hands, at once to hide it and hold it together. “No!” he protested hoarsely between rigid fingers. “Not murder, no! He came at me like a madman, I never meant him harm, only to get away!“
And it was done, so simply, at so little cost in the end. After that admission he had no defence; whatever else he had to tell would be poured out freely at last, in the hope of mitigation. He had trapped himself into a situation and a character he could not sustain. And all for ambition and greed!
“Perhaps also for the murder of Bertred,” went on Hugh mercilessly, but in the same dispassionate tone.
There was no outcry this time. He had caught his breath in chilling and sobering astonishment, for this he had never foreseen.
“... and thirdly, for the attempt to murder your cousin, in the forest close by Godric’s Ford. Much play has been made, Miles Coliar, and reasonably enough, seeing what happened, with the many suitors who have plagued Mistress Perle, and the motive they had for desiring marriage, and marriage to her whole estate, not the half only. But when it came to murder, there was only one person who had anything to gain by that, and that was you, her nearest kin.”
Judith turned from her cousin lamely, and slowly sat down again beside Sister Magdalen, folding her arms about her body as if she felt the cold, but making no sound at all, neither of revulsion nor fear nor anger. Her face looked pinched and still, the flesh hollowed and taut under her white cheekbones, and the stare of her grey eyes turned within rather than without. And so she sat, silent and apart, while Miles stood helplessly dangling the hands he had lowered from a face now dulled and slack, and repeating over and over, with strenuous effort: “Not murder! Not murder! He came at me like a madman - I never meant to kill. And Bertred drowned; he drowned! It was not my doing. Not murder!” But he said no word of Judith, and kept his face turned away from her to the last, in a kind of horror, until Hugh stirred and shook himself in wondering detestation, and made a motion of his hand towards the two sergeants at the door.
“Take him away!”
Chapter Fourteen
When he was gone, and the last receding footstep had sunk into silence, she stirred and breathed deeply, and said rather to herself than to any other: “This I never thought to see!” And to the room in general, with reviving force: “Is it true?”
“As to Bertred,” said Cadfael honestly, “I cannot be sure, and we never shall be quite sure unless he tells us himself, as I believe he may. As to Eluric - yes, it is true. You heard your aunt - as soon as he realised what witness he had left behind against himself, he got rid of the boots that left it. Simply to be rid of them, not then, I think, with any notion of sloughing off his guilt upon Bertred. I think he had come to believe that you really would take the veil, and leave the shop and the trade in his hands, and therefore it seemed worth his while to try and break the abbey’s hold on the Foregate house, and have all.”
“He never urged me to take vows,” she said wonderingly, “rather opposed it. But he did somehow touch on it now and then - keeping it in mind.”
“But that night made him a murderer, a thing he never intended. That I am sure is truth. But it was done, and could not be undone, and then there was no turning back. What he would have done if he had heard in time of your resolve to go to the abbot and make your gift absolute, there’s no knowing, but he did not hear of it until too late, and it was someone else who took action to prevent. There was no question but his desperation then was real enough, he was frantic to recover you, fearing you might give way and commit your person and estate to your abductor, and he be left out in the cold, with a new master, and no hope of the power and wealth he had killed to gain.”
“And Bertred?” she asked. “How did Bertred come into it?”
“He joined my men in the hunt for you,” said Hugh, “and by the look of things he had found you, or had a shrewd notion where you were hidden, and said never a word to me or any, but set out by night to free you himself, and have the credit for it. But he took a fall, and roused the dog - you’ll have heard. The next of him was being fished out of the Severn on the other bank, next day. What happened between, and just how he came by his death, is still conjecture. But you’ll recall you heard, or thought you heard, sounds as of someone else abroad in the night, after Bertred was gone. While you were making your plans to ride to Godric’s Ford the next night.”
“And you think that must have been Miles?” She spoke her cousin’s name with a strange, lingering regret. She had never dreamed that the man who was her right hand could strike at her with mortal intent.
“It makes sense of all,” said Cadfael sadly. “Who else had such close opportunity to note some suspect complacency about Bertred, who else could so easily watch and follow him, when he slipped out in the night? And if your cousin then crept close, after Bertred was hunted away, and overheard what you intended, see how all things played into his hands! In the forest, well away from the town, once the other man parted from you, how simple a matter it was to leave you dead and plundered, and the blame would fall first on outlaws, and if ever that was brought in question, on the man who had held you prisoner and brought you there into remote forest, to make sure you should never betray him. I do not think,” said Cadfael with careful consideration, “that the idea of murder had ever occurred to him until then, when chance so presented it that it must have seemed to him the perfect solution. Better than persuading you into a nunnery. For he would have been your heir. Everything would have fallen into his hands. And how if then, with this intent already filling his mind, he came upon Bertred, already half-stunned from one blow, and was visited by yet another fearful inspiration - for Bertred alive could possibly meddle with his plans, but Bertred dead could tell nothing, and Bertred dead would be found to be wearing the boots of Eluric’s murderer. Thus he was provided with a scapegoat even for that.”
“But this is conjecture,” said Judith, wringing at disbelief. “There is nothing, nothing to bear witness to it.”
“Yes,” said Cadfael heavily, “I fear there is. For it so happened that when your cousin came down to the abbey with a cart, to bring home Bertred’s body, he found that those who had stripped off the boy’s sodden clothes had paid no heed to his boots, and neither did I pay any heed, or give a thought to them, when I brought out the bundle of clothing to the cart. Miles had to tilt the cart and spill the boots at my feet for me to pick up, before I looked at them, and knew what I was seeing. He did not intend that that infallible proof should be overlooked.”
“It was not so clever a move,” she said doubtfully, “for Alison would have been able to tell you that her son had the boots from Miles.”
“True, if ever she was asked. But bear in mind, this was a dead murderer discovered - no trial to come, no mystery, no point in asking questions, and none in hounding a dead body, let alone a wretched, bereaved woman. Even if I had had no doubts,” said Hugh, “and somehow a crumb of doubt there always was, I should not have kept his body from peaceable burial, or put her to any more grief than she already bore. Nevertheless, it was a risk, he might have had to brazen it out. But not even the shrewdest schemer can think of everything. And he,” said Hugh, “was new to such roguery.”
“He must have gone in torment,” said Judith, marvelling, “all night long since I escaped him, knowing I should return, not knowing how much I might be able to tell. And then I made it plain enough I had no notion who it was who had struck at me, and he felt himself safe. Strange!” she said, frowning over things now beyond help or remedy. “When he went out, he did not seem to me evil, or malicious, or aware of guilt. Only bewildered! As though he found himself where he had never thought or meant to be, in some place he could not even recognise, and not knowing how he made his way there.”