Ellis Peters - A Rare Benedictine

It was beginning to grow dusk when he was startled wide awake by the hollow splash of something heavy plunging into the water, just upstream. Alert in a moment, he shoved off a yard or so from shore to look that way, but saw nothing to account for the sound, until an eddy in midstream showed him a dun-coloured sleeve breaking surface, and then the oval pallor of a face rising and sinking again from sight. A man’s body turned slowly in the current as it sailed past. Madog was out after it instantly, his paddle plying. Getting a body from river into a coracle is a tricky business, but he had practised it so long that he had it perfect, balance and heft and all, from his first grasp on the billowing sleeve to the moment when the little boat bobbed like a cork and spun like a drifting leaf, with the drowned man in-board and streaming water. They were halfway across the river by that time, and there were half a dozen lay brothers just leaving their work in the vegetable gardens along the Gaye, on the other side, the nearest help in view. Madog made for their shore, and sent a halloo ahead of him to halt their departure and bring them running.

He had the salvaged man out on the bank by the time they reached him, and had turned him face-down into the grass and hoisted him firmly by the middle to shake the water out of him, squeezing energetically with big, gnarled hands.

“He’s been in the river no more than a breath or two, I heard him souse into the water. Did you see ought over there by the water-gate?” But they shook their heads, concerned and anxious, and stooped to the drenched body, which at that instant heaved in breath, choked, and vomited the water it had swallowed. “He’s breathing. He’ll do. But he was meant to drown, sure enough. See here!”

On the back of the head of thick, greying hair blood slowly seeped, along a broken and indented wound.

One of the lay brothers exclaimed aloud, and kneeled to turn up to the light the streaked and pallid face. “Master William! This is our steward! He was collecting rents in the town… See, the pouch is gone from his belt!” Two rubbed and indented spots showed where the heavy satchel had bruised the leather beneath, and the lower edge of the stout belt itself showed a nick from a sharp knife, where the thongs had been sliced through in haste. “Robbery and murder!”

“The one, surely, but not the other not yet,” said Madog practically. “He’s breathing, you’ve not lost him yet. But we’d best get him to the nearest and best-tended bed, and that’ll be in your infirmary, I take it. Make use of those hoes and spades of yours, lads, and here’s a coat of mine to spare, if some of you will give up yours…”

They made a litter to carry Master William back to the abbey, as quickly and steadily as they could. Their entry at the gatehouse brought out porters, guests and brothers in alarm and concern. Brother Edmund the infirmarer came running and led the way to a bed beside the fire in the sick quarters. Jacob of Bouldon, rushing to confirm his fears, set up a distressed cry, but recovered himself gallantly, and ran for Brother Cadfael. The sub-prior, once informed of the circumstances by Madog, who was too accustomed to drowned and near-drowned men to get excited, sensibly sent a messenger hot-foot into the town to tell provost and sheriff what had happened, and the hunt was up almost before the victim was stripped of his soaked clothes, rolled in blankets and put to bed.

The sheriff’s sergeant came, and listened to Madog’s tale, with only a momentary narrowing of eyes at the fleeting suspicion that the tough old Welsh waterman might be adept at putting men into the water, as well as pulling them out. But in that case he would have been more likely to make sure that his victim went under, unless he was certain he could not name or identify his attacker. Madog saw the moment of doubt, and grinned scornfully.

“I get my living better ways. But if you need to question, there must be some among those gardeners from the Gaye who saw me come downriver and drop my line in under the trees there, and can tell you I never set foot ashore until I brought this one over, and shouted them to come and help with him. Maybe you don’t know me, but these brothers here do.”

The sergeant, surely one of the few new enough to service in Shrewsbury castle to be ignorant of Madog’s special position along the river, accepted Brother Edmund’s warm assurances, and shrugged off his doubts.

“But sorry I am,” allowed Madog, mollified, “that I neither saw nor heard anything until he plumped into the water, for I was drowsing. All I can say is that he went in upstream of me, but not far I’d say someone slid him in from the cover of the water-gate.”

“A narrow, dark place, that,” said the sergeant.

“And a warren of passages above. And the light fading, though not far gone… Well, maybe when he comes round he’ll be able to tell you. something he may have seen the man that did it.”

The sergeant settled down resignedly to wait for Master William to stir, which so far he showed no sign of doing. Cadfael had cleaned and bandaged the wound, dressing it with a herbal salve, and the steward lay with eyes closed and sunken, mouth painfully open upon snoring breath. Madog reclaimed his coat, which had been drying before the fire, and shrugged into it placidly. “Let’s hope nobody’s thought the time right to help himself to my fish while my back was turned.” He had wrapped his salmon in an armful of wet grass and covered it with his upturned boat. “I’ll bid you goodnight, brothers, and wish your sick man hale again and his pouch recovered, too, though that I doubt.”

From the infirmary doorway he turned back to say: “You have a patient lad here sitting shivering on the doorstep, waiting for word. Can he not come in and see his master, he says. I’ve told him the man’s likely to live his old age out with no worse than a dunt on the head to show for it, and he’d best be off to his bed, for he’ll get nothing here as yet. Would you want him in?”

Cadfael went out with him to shoo away any such premature visits. Jacob of Bouldon, pale and anxious, was sitting with arms folded closely round his drawn-up knees, hunched against the chill of the night. He looked up hopefully as they came out to him, and opened his mouth eagerly to plead. Madog clouted him amiably on the shoulder as he passed, and made off towards the gatehouse, a squat, square figure, brown and crusty as the bole of an oak.

“You’d best be off, too, into the warm,” said Brother Cadfael, not unkindly. “Master William will recover well enough, but he’s likely to be without his wits some time yet, no call for you to catch your death here on the stone.”

“I couldn’t rest,” said Jacob earnestly. “I told him, I begged him, take me with you, you should have someone. But he said, folly, he had collected rents for the abbey many years, and never felt any need for a guard. And now, see… Could I not come in and sit by him? I’d make no sound, never trouble him… He has not spoken?”

“Nor will for some hours yet, and even then I doubt he can tell us much. I’m here with him in case of need, and Brother Edmund is on call. The fewer about him, the better.”

“I’ll wait a little while yet,” said Jacob, fretting, and hugged his knees the tighter.

Well, if he would, he would, but cramp and cold would teach him better sense and more patience. Cadfael went back to his vigil, and closed the door. Still, it was no bad thing to encounter one lad whose devotion gave the lie to Master William’s forebodings concerning the younger generation.

Before midnight there was another visitor enquiring. The porter opened the door softly and came in to whisper that Master William’s son was here, asking after his father and wanting to come in and see him. Since the sergeant, departing when it seemed certain his vigil was fruitless until morning, had pledged himself to go and reassure Mistress Rede that her man was alive, well cared for, and certain to make a good recovery, Cadfael might well have gone out to bid the young man go home and take care of his mother rather than waste his time here, if the young man had not forestalled him by making a silent and determined entry on his herald’s heels. A tall, shock-headed, dark-eyed youth, hunched of shoulder just now, and grim of face, but admittedly very quiet in movement, and low-voiced. His look was by no means tender or solicitous. His eyes went at once to the figure in the bed, sweaty-browed now, and breathing somewhat more easily and naturally. He brooded, glaring, and wasting no time on question or explanation, said in a level whisper: “I will stay.” And with aggressive composure stayed, settling himself on the bench beside his father’s bed, his two long, muscular hands gripped tightly between his knees.