Ellis Peters - Brother Cadfael's Penance

Spread out upon the bench before their eyes, handled scrupulously as another man’s property, Brien de Soulis’s equipment showed Spartan and orderly. Changes of shirt and hose, the compact means of a gentleman’s toilet, a well-furnished purse. Plainly he travelled light, and was a man of neat habit. A leather pouch in the second saddlebag yielded a compartmented box with flint and tinder, wax and a seal. A man of property, travelling far, would certainly not be without his personal seal. Hugh held it on his palm for the bishop’s inspection. The device, sharply cut, was a swan with arched neck, facing left, and framed between two wands of willow.

“That is his,” Hugh confirmed. “We saw it on the buckle of his sword-belt when we carried in the body. But embossed and facing the other way, of course. And that is all.”

“No,” said Cadfael, his hand groping along the seams of the empty bag. “Some other small thing is here at the bottom.” He drew it out and held it up to the light. “Also a seal! Now what would a man want with carrying two on a journey?”

What indeed? For to risk carrying both, if two had actually been made, was to risk theft or loss of one, with all the dire possibilities of having it fall into the hands of an enemy or a sharper, and being misused in many and profitable ways, to its owner’s loss.

“It is not the same,” said Hugh sharply, and carried it to the window to examine it more carefully. “A lizard like a little dragon, no, a salamander, for he’s in a nest of little pointed flames. No border but a single line at the rim. Engraved deep, little used. I have never seen this. Do you know it, my lord?”

The bishop studied it, and shook his head. “No, strange to me. For what purpose could one man be carrying another man’s personal seal? Unless it had been confided to him as the owner’s proxy, for attachment to some document in absence?”

“Certainly not here,” said Hugh wryly, “for here there have been no documents to seal, no agreement on any matter, the worse for us all. Cadfael, do you see any significance in this?”

“Of all his possessions,” said Cadfael, “a man would be least likely to be parted from his seal. The thing carries his sanction, his honour, his reputation with it. If he did trust it to a known friend, it would be kept very securely, not dropped into the corner of a saddlebag, thus disregarded. Yes, Hugh, I should very much like to know whose device this is, and how it came into de Soulis’s possession. His recent history has not shown him as a man to be greatly trusted by his acquaintances, or lightly made proxy for another man’s honour.”

He hesitated, turning the small artifact in his fingers. A circlet measuring as far across as the length of his first thumb joint, its handle of a dark wood polished high, fitting smoothly in the palm. The engraving was skilled and precise, the little conventional flames sharply incised. The head with its open mouth and darting tongue faced left. The positive would face right. Mirror images, the secret faces of real beings, hold terrifying significances. It seemed to Cadfael that the sharp ascending flames of the salamander’s cradling fire were searing the fingers that touched them, and crying out for recognition and understanding.

“My lord bishop,” he said slowly, “may I, on my oath to return it to you unless I find its true owner, borrow this seal? In my deepest conscience I feel the need of it. Or, if that is not permitted, may I make a drawing of it, in every detail, for credentials in its place?”

The bishop gave him a long, penetrating look, and then said with deliberation: “At least in taking the copy there can be no harm. But you will have small opportunity of enquiring further into either this death, or the whereabouts of the prisoners you are seeking, if, as I suppose, you are going home to Shrewsbury now the conference is over.”

“I am not sure, my lord,” said Cadfael, “that I shall be going home.”

“YOU KNOW, do you not,” said Hugh very gravely, as they came from one more Compline together in the dusk, “that if you go further, I cannot go with you. I have work of my own to do. If I turn my back upon Madog ap Meredudd many more days he’ll be casting covetous eyes at Oswestry again. He’s never stopped hankering after it. God knows I’d be loth to go back without you. And you know, none better, you’ll be tearing your own life up by the roots if you fail to keep your time.”

“And if I fail to find my son,” said Cadfael, gently and reasonably, “my life is nothing worth. No, never fret for me, Hugh, one alone on this labour can do as much as a company of armed men, and perhaps more. I have failed already to find any trace here, what remains but to go where he served, where he was betrayed and made prisoner? There someone must know what became of him. In Faringdon there will be echoes, footprints, threads to follow, and I will find them.”

He made his drawings with care, on a leaf of vellum from the scriptorium, one to size, with careful precision, one enlarged to show every detail of the salamander seal. There was no motto nor legend, only the slender lizard in its fiery nest. Surely that, too, harked back in some way to the surrender of Faringdon, and had somewhat to say concerning the death of Brien de Soulis, if only its language could be interpreted.

Hugh cast about, without overmuch comfort, for something to contribute to these vexed puzzles that drove his friend into unwilling exile, but there was little of help to be found. He did venture, for want of better: “Have you thought, Cadfael, that of all those who may well have hated de Soulis, there’s none with better reason than the empress? How if she prompted some besotted young man to do away with him? She has a string of raw admirers at her disposal. It could be so.”

“To the best of my supposing,” said Cadfael soberly, “it was so. Do you remember she sent for Yves that first evening, after she had seen the lad show his paces against de Soulis? I fancy she had accepted the omen, and found him a work he could do for her, a trace more privately, perhaps, than at his first attempt.”

“No!” gasped Hugh, stricken, and halted in mid-stride. “Are you telling me that Yves …”

“No, no such matter!” Cadfael assured him chidingly. “Oh, he took her meaning, or I fear he did, though he surely damned himself for ever believing it was meant so. He did not do it, of course not! Even she might have had the wit to refrain, with such an innocent. But stupid he is not! He understood her!”

“Then may she not have singled out a second choice for the work?” suggested Hugh, brightening.

“No, you may forget that possibility. For she is convinced that Yves took the nudge, and rid her of her enemy. No, there’s no solution there.”

“How so?” demanded Hugh, pricked. “How can you know so much?”

“Because she rewarded him with a gold ring. No great prize, but an acknowledgement. He tried to refuse it, but he was not brave enough, small blame to the poor lad. Oh, nothing was ever openly said, and of course he would deny it, she would avoid even having to make him say as much. The child is out of his depth with such women. He’s bent on getting rid of her gift as soon as he safely may. Her gratitude is short, that he knows. But no, she never hired another murderer, she is certain she needed none.”

“That can hardly have added to his happiness,” said Hugh with a sour grimace. “And no help to us in lifting the weight from him, either.”

They had reached the door of their lodging. Overhead the sky was clear and cold, the stars legion but infinitesimal in the early dark. The last night here, for Hugh had duties at home that could not be shelved.