"If the unfortunate man drowned in the river, having fallen from his boat," said Robert firmly, "there can be no possibility of murder. That is a foolish and wicked saying."

They began to bay from several directions. "Father Prior, Master Peche was not a foolhardy man..."

"He knew the Severn from his childhood..."

"So do many," said Robert crisply, "who fall victim to it in the end, men no more foolhardy than he. You must not attribute evil to what is natural misfortune."

"And why should natural misfortune crowd so on one house?" demanded an excited voice from the rear. "Baldwin was a guest the night Walter was struck down and his coffer emptied."

"And next-door neighbour, and liked to nose out whatever was hidden. And who's to say he didn't stumble on some proof that would be very bad news to the villain that did the deed, and lurks here swearing to his innocence?"

It was out, they took it up on all sides. "That's how it was! Baldwin found out something the wretch wouldn't have been able to deny!"

"And he's killed the poor man to stop his mouth..."

"A knock on the head and souse into the river..."

"No trick to turn his boat loose for the river to take down after him..."

Cadfael was relieved to see Hugh Beringar riding briskly in at the gatehouse then with a couple of officers behind him. This was getting all too predictable. When men have elected a villain, and one from comfortably outside their own ranks, without roots or kin, they need feel nothing for him, he is hardly a man, has no blood to be shed or heart to be broken, and whatever else needs a scapegoat will be laid on him heartily and in the conviction of righteousness. Nor will reason have much say in the matter. But he raised his voice powerfully to shout them down: "The man you accuse is absolutely clear of this, even if it were murder. He is in sanctuary here, dare not leave the precinct, and has not left it. The king's officers wait for him outside, as you all know. Be ashamed to make such senseless charges!"

He said afterwards, rather resignedly than bitterly, that it was a precise measure of Liliwin's luck that he should appear innocently from the cloister at that moment, bewildered and shocked by the incursion of a dead body into the pale, and coming anxiously to enquire about it, but utterly ignorant of any connection it might be thought to have with him. He came hastening out of the west walk, solitary, apart, marked at once by two or three of the crowd. A howl went up, hideously triumphant. Liliwin took it like a great blast of cold wind in his face, shrank and faltered, and his countenance, healing into smooth comeliness these last two days, collapsed suddenly into the disintegration of terror.

The wildest of the young bloods moved fast, hallooing, but Hugh Beringar moved faster. The raw-boned grey horse, his favourite familiar, clattered nimbly between quarry and hounds, and Hugh was out of the saddle with a hand on Liliwin's shoulder, in a grip that could have been ambiguously arrest or protection, and his neat, dark, saturnine visage turned blandly towards the threatening a.s.sault. The foremost hunters froze discreetly, and thawed again only to draw back by delicate inches from challenging his command.

The nimble young novice had acquitted himself well, and shown an excellent grasp of his charge, for Hugh had the half of it clear in his mind already and understood its perilous application here. He kept his hold-let them read it however they would-on Liliwin throughout the questioning that followed, and listened as narrowly to Daniel Aurifaber's heated witness as to Cadfael's account.

"Very well! Father Prior, it would be as well if you yourself would convey this in due course to the lord abbot. The drowned man I must examine, as also the place where he was cast ash.o.r.e and that where his boat came to rest. I must call upon the help of those who found out these matters. For the rest of you, if you have anything to say, say it now."

Say it they did, intimidated but still smouldering, and determined to pour out their heat. For this was no chance death in the river, of that they were certain. This was the killing of a witness, close, curious, likely of all men to uncover some irrefutable evidence. He had found proof of the jongleur's strenuously-denied guilt, and he had been slipped into the Severn to drown before he could open his mouth. They began by muttering it, they ended by howling it. Hugh let them rave. He knew they were no such monsters as they made themselves out to be, but knew, too, that given a following wind and a rash impulse, they could be, to their own damage and that of every other man.

They ran themselves out of words at length, and dwindled like sails bereft of wind.

"My men have been camped outside the gates here," said Hugh then, calmly, "all this while and have seen no sign of this man you accuse. To my knowledge he has not set foot outside these walls. How, then, can he have had any hand in any man's death?"

They had no answer ready to that, though they sidled and exchanged glances and shook their heads as though they knew beyond doubt that there must be an answer if they could only light on it. But out of the prior's shadow the insinuating voice of Brother Jerome spoke up mildly: "Pardon, Father Prior, but is it certain that the young man has been every moment within here? Only recall, last night Brother Anselm was enquiring after him and had not seen him since just after noon, and remarked, moreover, that he did not come to the kitchen for his supper as is customary. And being concerned for any guest of our house, I felt it my duty to look for him and did so everywhere. That was just when twilight was falling. I found no trace of him anywhere within the walls."

They took it up gleefully on the instant and Liliwin, as Cadfael observed with a sigh, shook and swallowed hard, and could not get out a word, and drops of sweat gathered on his upper lip and ran down, to be licked off feverishly.

"You see, the good brother says it! He was not here! He was out about his foul business!"

"Say rather," Prior Robert reproached gently, "that he could not be found." But he was not altogether displeased.

"And go without his supper? A half-starved rat scorn his food unless he had urgent business elsewhere?" cried Daniel fiercely.

"Very urgent! He took his life in his hands to make sure Baldwin should not live to speak against him."

"Speak up!" said Hugh drily, shaking Liliwin by the shoulder. "You have a tongue, too. Did you leave the abbey enclave at any time?"

Liliwin gulped down gall, hung in anguished silence a moment, and got out in a great groan: "No!"

"You were within here yesterday, when you were sought and could not be found?"

"I didn't want to be found. I hid myself." His voice was firmer when he had at least a morsel of truth to utter. But Hugh pressed him still.

"You have not once set foot outside this pale since you took refuge here?"

"No, never!" he gasped, and dragged in breath as though he had run a great way.

"You hear?" said Hugh crisply, putting Liliwin aside and behind him. "You have your answer. A man penned securely here cannot have committed murder outside, even if this proves to be murder, as at this moment there is no proof whatsoever. Now go, get back to your own crafts, and leave to the law what is the law's business. If you doubt my thoroughness, try crossing me." And to his officers he said simply: "Clear the court of those who have no business here. I will speak with the provost later."

In the mortuary chapel Baldwin Peche lay stripped naked, stretched now on his back, while Brother Cadfael, Hugh Beringar, Madog of the Dead-Boat and Abbot Radulfus gathered about him attentively. In the corners of his eyes, now closed, traces of ingrained mud lingered, drying, like the pigments vain women use to darken and brighten their eyes. From his thick tangle of grizzled brown hair Cadfael had coaxed out two or three strands of water crowfoot, cobweb-fine stems with frail white flowers withering into veined brown filaments as they died, and a broken twig of alder leaves. There was nothing strange in either of those. Alders cl.u.s.tered in many places along the riverside, and this was the season when delicate rafts of crowfoot swayed and trembled wherever there were shallows or slower water.

"Though the water where I found him," said Cadfael, "runs fast, and will not anchor these flowers. The opposite bank I fancy, harbours them better. That is reasonable-if he launched his boat to go fishing it would be from that bank. And now see what more he has to show us."

He cupped a palm under the dead man's cheek, turned his face to the light, and hoisted the bearded chin. The light falling into the stretched cavities of the nostrils showed them only as shallow hollows silted solid with river mud. Cadfael inserted the stem of the alder twig into one of them, and scooped out a smooth, thick slime of fine gravel and a wisp of crowfoot embedded within it.

"So I thought, when I hefted him to empty out the water from him and got only a miserable drop or two. The drainings of mud and weed, not of a drowned man." He inserted his fingers between the parted lips, and showed the teeth also parted, as if in a grimace of pain or a cry. Carefully he drew them wider. Tendrils of crowfoot clung in the large, crooked teeth. Those peering close could see that the mouth within was clogged completely with the debris of the river.

"Give me a small bowl," said Cadfael, intent, and Hugh was before Madog in obeying. There was a silver saucer under the unlighted lamp on the altar, the nearest receptacle, and Abbot Radulfus made no move to demur. Cadfael eased the stiffening jaw wider, and with a probing finger drew out into the bowl a thick wad of mud and gravel, tinted with minute fragments of vegetation. "Having drawn in this, he could not draw in water. No wonder I got none out of him." He felt gently about the dead mouth, probing out the last threads of crowfoot, fine as hairs, and set the bowl aside.

"What you are saying," said Hugh, closely following, "is that he did not drown."

"No, he did not drown."

"But he did die in the river. Why else these river weeds deep in his throat?"

"True. So he died. Bear with me, I am treading as blindly as you. I need to know, like you, and like you, I must examine what we have." Cadfael looked up at Madog, who surely knew all these signs at least as well as any other man living. "Are you with me so far?"

"I am before you," said Madog simply. "But tread on. For a blind man you have not gone far astray."

"Then, Father, may we now turn him again on his face, as I found him?"

Radulfus himself set his two long, muscular hands either side of the head, to steady the dead man over, and settled him gently on one cheekbone.

For all his self-indulgent habits of life, Baldwin Peche showed a strong, hale body, broad-shouldered, with thick, muscular thighs and arms. The discolorations of death were beginning to appear on him now, and they were curious enough. The broken graze behind his right ear, that was plain and eloquent, but the rest were matter for speculation.

"That was never got from any floating branch," said Madog with certainty, "nor from being swept against a stone, either, not in that stretch of water. Up here among the islands I wouldn't say but it might be possible, though not likely. No, that was a blow from behind, before he went into the water."

"You are saying," said Radulfus gravely, "that the charge of murder is justified."

"Against someone," said Cadfael, "yes."

"And this man was indeed next-door neighbour to the household that was robbed, and may truly have found out something, whether he understood its meaning or not, that could shed light on that robbery?"

"It is possible. He took an interest in other men's business," agreed Cadfael cautiously.

"And that would certainly be a strong motive for his removal, if the guilty man got to know of it," said the abbot, reflecting. "Then since this cannot be the work of one who was here within our walls throughout, it is strong argument in favour of the minstrel's innocence of the first offence. And somewhere at large is the true culprit."

If Hugh had already perceived and accepted the same logical consequence, he made no comment on it. He stood looking down at the p.r.o.ne body in frowning concentration. "So it would seem he was. .h.i.t on the head and tossed into the river. And yet he did not drown. What he drew in, in his fight for breath-in his senses or out-was mud, gravel, weed."

"You have seen," said Cadfael. "He was smothered. Held down somewhere in the shallows, with his face pressed into the mud. And set afloat in the river afterwards, with the intent he should be reckoned as one more among the many drowned in Severn. A mistake! The current cast him up before the river had time to wash away all these evidences of another manner of death."

He doubted, in fact, if they would ever have been completely washed away, however long the body had been adrift. The stems of crowfoot were very tenacious. The fine silt clung tightly where it had been inhaled in the struggle for breath. But what was more mysterious was the diffused area of bruising that spread over Peche's back at the shoulder-blades, and the two or three deep indentations in the swollen flesh there. In the deepest the skin was broken, only a tiny lesion, as though something sharp and jagged had pierced him. Cadfael could make nothing of these marks. He memorised them and wondered.

There remained the contents of the silver bowl. Cadfael took it out to the stone basin in the middle of the garth and carefully sluiced away the fine silt, drawing aside and retaining the fragments of weed. Fine threads of crowfoot, a tiny, draggled flower, a morsel of an alder leaf. And something else, a sudden speck of colour. He picked it out and dipped it into the water to wash away the dirt that clouded it, and there it lay glistening in the palm of his hand, a mere sc.r.a.p, two tiny florets, the tip of a head of flowers of a reddish purple colour, speckled at the lip with a darker purple and a torn remnant of one narrow leaf, just large enough to show a blackish spot on its green.

They had followed him out and gathered curiously to gaze. "Fox-stones, we call this," said Cadfael, "for the two swellings at its root like pebbles. The commonest of its kind, and the earliest, but I don't recall seeing it much here. This, like the broken twig of alder, he took down with him when he was pushed into the water. It might be possible to find that place somewhere on the town bank-where crowfoot and alder and fox-stones all grow together."

The place where Baldwin Peche had been cast ash.o.r.e had little to tell beyond what it had already told. The spot where Madog had turned down the dead man's coracle on the meadow gra.s.s was well down-river, and so feather-light a boat, loose without a man's weight aboard, might well have gone on bobbing gaily downstream a mile or more beyond, before the first strong curve and encroaching sandbank would inevitably have arrested it. They would have to comb the town bank, Madog reckoned, from below the Watergate, to establish where he had been a.s.saulted and killed. A place where crowfoot grew insh.o.r.e under alders, and fox-stones were in flower close to the very edge of the water.

The first two could be found together all along the reach. The third might occur in only one place.

Madog would search the riverside, Hugh would question the Aurifaber household and the immediate neighbours, as well as the tavern-keepers of the town, for everything they knew about the recent movements of Baldwin Peche: where he had last been seen, who had spoken with him, what he had had to say. For someone, surely, must have seen him after he left his shop about mid-morning of the previous day, which was the last John Boneth knew of him.

Meantime, Cadfael had business of his own, and much to think about. He came back from the riverside too late for Vespers, but in time to visit his workshop and make sure all was in order there before supper. Brother Oswin, left in charge alone, was developing a deft touch and a proprietorial pride. He had not broken or burned anything for several weeks.

After supper Cadfael went in search of Liliwin, and found him sitting in deep shadow in the darkest corner of the porch, drawn up defensively against the stone with his arms locked about his knees. At this hour the light was too far gone for work to proceed on the mending of his rebec, or his new studies under Brother Anselm, and it seemed that the day's alarms had driven him back into distrust and despair, so that he hunched himself as small as possible into his corner and kept a wary face against the world. Certainly he gave Cadfael a bright, nervous, sidelong flash of his eyes as the monk hitched his habit comfortably and sat down beside him.

"Well, young man, have you fetched your supper tonight?" said Cadfael placidly.

Liliwin acknowledged that with a silent nod, watching him warily.

"It seems you did not yesterday, and Brother Jerome tells us that a maidservant came to visit you in the afternoon and brought you a basket of food from her lady's table. He had, he said, occasion to admonish you both." The silence beside him was charged and uneasy. "Now, granted Brother Jerome is uncommonly good at finding grounds for admonishment, yet I fancy there is but one maidservant whose presence here would have caused him qualms for the propriety of your conduct-let alone the well-being of your soul." It was said with a smile in his voice, but he did not miss the slight shudder that convulsed the thin body beside him or the stiffening of the hands that were clasped so tightly round Liliwin's knees. Now why in the world should the lad quake at the mention of his soul's health, just when Cadfael was becoming more and more convinced that he had no guilt whatever upon his conscience, bar an understandable lie or two.

"Was it Rannilt?"

"Yes," said Liliwin, just audibly.

"She came with good leave? Or of her own accord?"

Liliwin told him, in as few words as possible.

"So that was how it befell. And Jerome bade her do her errand and go, and stood over you to make sure she obeyed. And it was from that hour, as I understand-after he had witnessed her going-that no one saw you again until Prime this morning. Yet you say you were here within the pale and what you say, that I accept. Did you speak?"

"No," said Liliwin, none too happily. Not speech, exactly, but a small, shamed sound hurriedly suppressed.

"You let her go somewhat tamely, did you not?" remarked Cadfael critically. "Seeing the magnitude of the step she had taken for you."

The evening was closing down tranquilly all round them, there was no one else to hear, and Liliwin had spent much of the day wrestling alone with the belated conviction of his mortal sin. Terror of men was surely enough to bear, without being suddenly visited by the terror of d.a.m.nation, let alone the awful sense of having brought about the d.a.m.nation of another person as dear to him as himself. He uncurled abruptly from his dark corner, slid his legs over the edge of the stone bench, and clutched Cadfael impulsively by the arm.

"Brother Cadfael, I want to tell you... I must tell someone! I did-we did, but the fault was mine!-we did a terrible thing. I never meant it, but she was going away from me, and I might never see her again, and so it happened. A mortal sin and I've caused her to share in it!" The words spurted out like blood from a new wound, but the first flow eased him. From incoherent he grew quiet, and his shaking subsided and was gone. "Let me tell you, and then do whatever you think is just. I couldn't bear it that she must go so soon, and it might be for ever. We went through the church, and I hid her within there, behind the altar in the transept chapel. There's a s.p.a.ce behind there, I found it when I came new here and was afraid they might come for me in the night. I knew I could creep in there, and she is smaller than I. And when that brother had gone away, I went back to her there. I took my blankets in with me, and the new clothes she brought me-it's hard and chill on the stone. All I wanted," said Liliwin simply, "was to be with her as long as we dared. We did not even talk very much. But then we forgot where we were, and what was due..."

Brother Cadfael said no word either to help or check him, but waited in silence.

"I couldn't think of anything but that she would go away, and I might never be with her again," blurted Liliwin miserably, "and I knew she was in the selfsame pain. We never intended evil, but we committed a terrible sacrilege. Here in the church, behind one of the holy altars... we couldn't bear it... We lay together as lovers do!"

He had said it, it was out, the very worst of it. He sat humbly waiting for condemnation, resigned to whatever might come, even relieved at having shifted the burden to other shoulders. There was no exclamation of horror, but this brother was not so given to prodigal admonishment as that sour one who had frowned on Rannilt.

"You love this girl?" asked Cadfael after some thought, and very placidly.

"Yes, I do love her! With all my heart I want her for my wife. But what is there for her if I am brought out of here to trial and the matter goes blackly for me? As they mean it should! Don't let it be known that she has been with me. Her hopes of marriage are wretched enough, a poor servant-girl without folk of her own. I don't want to damage them further. She may still get a decent man, if I..." He let that die away unfinished. It was no comforting thought.

"I think," said Cadfael, "she would rather have the man she has already chosen. Where mutual love is, I find it hard to consider any place too holy to house it. Our Lady, according to the miracles they tell of her, has been known to protect even the guilty who sinned out of love. You might try a few prayers to her, that will do no harm. Don't trouble too much for what was done under such strong compulsion and pure of any evil intent. And how long, then," enquired Cadfael, eyeing his penitent tolerantly, "did you remain hidden there? Brother Anselm was worried about you."

"We fell asleep, both of us." Liliwin shook again at the memory. "When we roused, it was late and dark, they were singing Compline. And she had to go back all that way into the town in the night!"

"And you let her go alone?" demanded Cadfael with deceitful indignation.

"I did not! What do you take me for?" Liliwin had flared and fallen into the snare before he stopped to think, and it was too late to take it back. He sat back with a deflated sigh, stooping his face into deeper shadow.

"What do I take you for?" Cadfael's smile was hidden by the dusk. "A bit of a rogue, perhaps, but no worse than the most of us. A bit of a liar when the need's great enough, but who isn't? So you did slip out of here to take the child home. Well, I think the better of you for it, it must have cost you some terrors." And provided a salutary stiffening of self-respect, he thought but did not say.

In a small and perversely resentful voice Liliwin asked: "How did you know?"

"By the effort it cost you to get the denial out. For you will never make a really good liar, lad, and the more you hate doing it, the worse you'll manage, and it seems to me you've taken strongly against lying these last few days. How did you contrive to get out and in again?"

Liliwin took heart and told him, how the new clothes had got him past the guards on the heels of the worshippers, and how he had taken Rannilt to her very doorway, and made his way back under cover of the returning lay servants. What had pa.s.sed between himself and Rannilt on the way he kept to himself, and it did not enter his mind to say any word of what else he had noticed, until Cadfael took him up alertly on that very subject.

"So you were there, outside the shop, about an hour after Compline?" Night is the favoured time for ridding oneself of enemies, and this was the one night that had pa.s.sed since Baldwin Peche was last seen alive.

"Yes, I watched her safe into the courtyard. Only I fret," said Liliwin, "over what sort of welcome she may have found. Though her lady did say she might stay the day out. I hope no one was angry with her."

"Well, since you were there, did you see ought of anything or anyone stirring about the place?"

"I did see one man who was out and about," said Liliwin, remembering. "It was after Rannilt had gone in. I was standing opposite, in a dark doorway, and Daniel Aurifaber came out through the pa.s.sage, and went away to the left along the lane. He can't have gone far without turning aside, for when I went back to the Cross and down the Wyle he was gone already, I never saw sign of him after."

"Daniel? You're sure it was he?" That young man had been very prompt and present this afternoon, as soon as the usual idlers saw a body being lifted ash.o.r.e under the bridge. Very prompt and very forward to lead the accusers who made haste to fling this, like the other offences, on the stranger's head, reason or no reason, sanctuary or no sanctuary.

"Oh, yes, there's no mistaking him." He was surprised that such a point should be made of it. "Is it important?"

"It may be. But no matter now. One thing you haven't said," pointed out Cadfael gravely, "and yet I'm sure you are not so dull but you must have thought on it. Once you were out of here and no alarm, and the night before you, you might have made off many miles from here, and got clean away from your accusers. Were you not tempted?"

"So she prompted me, too," said Liliwin, remembering, and smiled. "She urged me to go while I could."

"Why did you not?"

Because she did not truly want me to, thought Liliwin, with a joyful lift of the heart for all his burdens. And because if ever she does come to me, it shall not be to an accused felon, but to a man acknowledged honest before the world. Aloud he voiced only the heart of that revelationary truth: "Because now I won't go without her. When I leave-if I leave-I shall take Rannilt with me."

Chapter Eight.