Ellis Peters - The Potter's Field

Sulien had shut his lips and clenched his teeth, as though he would never speak another word. It was too late to deploy any more lies.

‘l think,’ said Hugh,’that when you heard what the abbey plough had turned up out of the soil, you were never in a moment’s doubt as to her name. I think you knew very well that she was there. And you were quite certain that Ruald was not her murderer. Oh, that I believe! A certainty, Sulien, to which only God can be entitled, who knows all things with certainty. Only God, and you, who knew all too well who the murderer was.’

‘Child,’ said Radulfus into the prolonged silence, ‘if you have an answer to this, speak out now. If there is guilt on your soul, do not continue obdurate, but confess it. If not, then tell us what your answer is, for you have brought this suspicion upon yourself. To your credit, it seems that you would not have another man, be he friend or stranger, bear the burden of a crime not his to answer. That I should expect of you. But the lies are not worthy, not even in such a cause. Better by far to deliver all others, and say outright: I am the man, look no further.’

Silence fell again, and this time lasted even longer, so that Cadfael felt the extreme stillness in the room as a weight upon his flesh and a constriction upon his breath. Outside the window dusk had gathered in thin, low, featureless cloud, a leaden grey sucking out all colour from the world. Sulien sat motionless, shoulders braced back to feel the solid wall supporting him, eyelids half lowered over the dimmed blue of his eyes. After a long tune he stirred, and raised both hands to press and flex with stiff fingers at his cheeks, as though the desperation in which he found himself had cramped even his flesh, and he must work the paralysing chill out of it before he could speak. But when he did speak, it was in a voice low, reasonable and persuasive, and he lifted his head and confronted Hugh with the composure of one who has reached a decision and a stance from which he will not easily be shifted.

‘Very well! I have lied, and lied again, and I love lies no more than you do, my lord. But if I make a bargain with you, I swear to you I shall keep it faithfully. I have not confessed to anything, yet. But I will give you my confession to murder, upon conditions!’

‘Conditions?’ said Hugh, with black brows obliquely raised in wry amusement.

‘They need not limit in any degree what can be done to me,’ said Sulien, as gently as if he argued a sensible case to which all sane men must consent once they heard it. ‘All I want is that my mother and my family shall suffer no dishonour and no disgrace by me. Why should not a bargain be struck even over matters of life and death, if it can spare all those who are not to blame, and destroy only the guilty?’

‘You are offering me a confession,’ said Hugh, ‘in exchange for blanketing this whole matter in silence?’

The abbot had risen to his feet, a hand raised in indignant protest. ‘There can be no bargaining over murder. You must withdraw, my son, you are adding insult to your offence.’

‘No,’ said Hugh, ‘let him speak. Every man deserves a hearing. Go on, Sulien, what is it you are offering and asking?’

‘Something which could very simply be done. I have been summoned here, where I chose to abandon my calling,’ Sulien began in the same measured and persuasive voice. ‘Would it be so strange if I should change yet again, and return to my vocation here as a penitent? Father Abbot here, I’m sure, could win me if he tried.’ Radulfus was frowning at this moment in controlled disapproval, not of the misuse being made of his influence and office, but of the note of despairing levity which had crept into the young man’s voice. ‘My mother is in her death illness,’ said Sulien, ‘and my brother has an honoured name, like our father before us, a wife, and a child to come next year, and has done no wrong to any man, and knows of none. For God’s sake leave them in peace, let them keep their name and reputation as clean as ever it was. Let them be told that I have repented of my recantation, and returned to the Order, and am sent away from here to seek out Abbot Walter, wherever he may be, submit myself to his discipline and earn my return to the Order. He would not refuse me, they will be able to believe it. The Rule allows the stray to return and be accepted even to the third time. Do this for me, and I will give you my confession to murder.’

‘So in return for your confession,’ said Hugh, begging silence of the abbot with a warning gesture of his hand, ‘I am to let you go free, but back into the cloister?’

‘I did not say that. I said let them believe that. No, do this for me,’ said Sulien in heavy earnest, and paler than his shirt, ‘and I will take my death however you may require it, and you may shovel me into the ground and forget me.’

‘Without benefit of a trial?’

‘What should I want with a trial? I want them to be left in peace, to know nothing. A life is fair pay for a life, what difference can a form of words make?’

It was outrageous, and only a very desperate shiner would have dared advance it to a man like Hugh, whose grip on his office was as firm and scrupulous as it was sometimes unorthodox. But still Hugh sat quiet, fending off the abbot with a sidelong flash of his black eyes, and tapping the fingertips of one long hand upon the desk, as if seriously considering. Cadfael had an inkling of what he was about, but could not guess how he would set about it. The one thing certain was that no such abominable bargain could ever be accepted. To wipe a man out, murderer or no, in cold blood and in secret was unthinkable. Only an inexperienced boy, driven to the end of his tether, could ever have proposed it, or cherished the least hope that it could be taken seriously. This was what he had meant by saying that he had made provision. These children, Cadfael thought in a sudden blaze of enlightened indignation, how dare they, with such misguided devotion, do their progenitors such insult and offence? And themselves such grievous injury!

‘You interest me, Sulien,’ said Hugh at length, holding him eye to eye across the desk. ‘But I need to know somewhat more about this death before I can answer you. There are details that may temper the evil. You may as well have the benefit of them, for your own peace of mind and mine, whatever happens after.’

‘I cannot see the need,’ said Sulien wearily but resignedly.

‘Much depends on how this thing happened,’ Hugh persisted. ‘Was it a quarrel? When she rejected and shamed you? Even a mere unhappy chance, a struggle and a fall? For we do know by the manner of her burial, there under the bushes by Ruald’s garden

” He broke off there, for Sulien had stiffened sharply and turned his head to stare. ‘What is it?’

‘You are confused, or trying to confuse me,’ said Sulien, again withdrawing into the apathy of exhaustion. ‘It was not there, you must know it. It was under the clump of broom bushes in the headland.’

‘Yes, true, I had forgotten. Much has happened since then, and I was not present when the ploughing began. We do know, I was about to say, that you laid her in the ground with some evidence of respect, regret, even remorse. You buried a cross with her. Plain silver,’ said Hugh, ‘we could not trace it back to you or anyone, but it was there.’

Sulien eyed him steadily and made no demur.

‘It leads me to ask,’ Hugh pursued delicately, ‘whether this was not simply mischance, a disaster never meant to happen. For it may take no more than a struggle, perhaps flight, an angry blow, a fall, to break a woman’s skull as hers was broken. She had no other broken bones, only that. So tell us, Sulien, how this whole thing befell, for it may go some way to excuse you.’