Ellis Peters - A Rare Benedictine

“As whole and hearty as ever he was.”

“And you’ll take good care of him?”

“So we will,” agreed Cadfael innocently, “even though he may be a cantankerous worrit and a plague.”

“I‘m sure none of you here have any call to say so,” flashed the young man with abrupt ferocity. “The abbey has had loyal and solid service from him all these years, and owes him more thanks than abuse.” And he turned his back and stalked away out of the great court, leaving Cadfael looking after him with a thoughtful face and the mere trace of a smile.

He was careful to wipe off the smile before he went back to Master William, who was in no mood to take himself, his son and his troubles anything but seriously. He lay trying to blink and frown away his headache, and fulminating about his offspring in a glum undertone.

“You see what I have to complain of, who should be able to look for comfort and support at home. A wild, unbiddable good-for-nothing, and insolent into the bargain…”

“So he is,” agreed Cadfael sympathetically, wooden-faced. “No wonder you mean to let him pay for his follies in prison, and small blame to you.” He got an acid glare as reward. “I shall do no such thing!” snapped Master William sharply. “The boy’s no worse than you or I at his age, I daresay. Nothing wrong with him that time won’t cure.”

Master William’s disaster, it seemed, had shaken the serenity of the abbey from choir to guest-hall. The enquiries were many and assiduous. Young Jacob had been hopping about outside the infirmary from dawn, unable to tear himself away even to the duties he owed his injured master, until Cadfael had taken pity on his obvious anxiety, and stopped to tell him that there was no need for such distress, for the worst was over, and all would be well with Master William.

“You are sure, brother? He has regained his senses? He has spoken? His mind is clear?”

Patiently Cadfael repeated his reassurances.

“But such villainy! Has he been able to help the sheriff’s men? Did he see his attacker? Has he any notion who it could have been?”

“Not that, no. Never a glimpse, he was struck from behind, and knew no more until he came to this morning in the infirmary. He’s no help to the law, I fear. It was not to be expected.”

“But he himself will be well and strong again?”

“As ever he was, and before long, too.”

“Thank God, brother!” said Jacob fervently, and went away satisfied to his accounts. For even with the town rents lost, there was still bookwork to be done on what remained.

More surprising it seemed to be stopped on the way to the dortoir by Warin Harefoot, the haberdasher, with a very civil enquiry after the steward’s health. Warin did not presume to display the agitation of a favoured colleague like Jacob, but rather the mannerly sympathy of a humble guest of the house, and the law-abiding citizen’s indignation at evildoing, and desire that justice should pursue the evildoer. Had his honour been able to put a name or a face to his attacker? A great pity! Yet justice, he hoped, might still be done. And would there should any man be so fortunate as to trace the missing satchel with its treasure would there be a small reward for such a service? To an honest man who restored it, Cadfael thought, there well might. Warin went off to his day’s peddling in Shrewsbury, humping his heavy pack. The back view of him, for some reason, looked both purposeful and jaunty.

But the strangest and most disturbing enquirer made, in fact, no enquiry, but came silently in, as Cadfael was paying another brief visit to the infirmary in the early afternoon, after catching up with some of his lost sleep. Brother Eutropius stood motionless and intent at the foot of the steward’s bed, staring down with great hollow eyes in a face like a stone mask. He gave never a glance to Cadfael. All he regarded was the sleeping man, now so placid and eased for all his bandaged head, a man back from the river, back from the grave. He stood there for a long time, his lips moving on inaudible formulae of prayer. Suddenly he shuddered, like someone waking from a trance, and crossed himself, and went away as silently as he had come.

Cadfael was so concerned at his manner and his closed face that he went out after him, no less quietly, and followed him at a distance through the cloisters and into the church.

Brother Eutropius was on his knees before the high altar, his marble face upraised over clasped hands. His eyelids were closed, but the dark lashes glittered. A handsome, agonised man of thirty, with a strong body and a fierce, tormented heart, his lips framing silently but readably in the altar-light. “Mea culpa… maxima mea culpa …”

Cadfael would have liked to pierce the distance and the ice between, but it was not the time. He went away quietly, and left Brother Eutropius to the remnant of his disrupted solitude, for whatever had happened to him, the shell was cracked and disintegrating, and never again would he be able to reassemble it about him.

Cadfael went into the town before Vespers, to call upon Mistress Rede, and take her the latest good word of her man. It was by chance that he met the sergeant at the High Cross, and stopped to exchange news. It had been a routine precaution to round up a few of the best-known rogues in Shrewsbury, and make them account for their movements the previous day, but that had yielded nothing. Eddi’s fellow-marksmen at the butts under the town wall had sworn to his story willingly, but seeing they were all his cronies from boyhood, that meant little enough. The one new thing, and it marked the exact spot of the attack past question, was the discovery in the passage above the water-gate of the one loop of leather from Master William’s pouch, the one which had been sliced clean through and left lying in the thief’s haste, and the dim light under the high walls.

“Right under the clothier’s cart-yard. The walls are ten feet high, and the passage narrow. Never a place from which the lane can be overlooked. No chance in the world of an eye witness. He chose his place well.”

“Ah, but there is one place, then, from which a man might have watched the deed,” said Cadfael, enlightened. “The loft above that cart-house and barn has a hatch higher than the wall, and close to it. And Roger Clothier lets Rhodri Fychan sleep up there - the old Welshman who begs at Saint Mary’s church. By that time of the evening he may have been up in the hay already, and on a fine evening he’d be sitting by the open hatch. And even if he had not come home at that time, who’s to be sure of that? It’s enough that he could have been there.

He had been right about the sergeant; the man was an incomer, not yet acquainted with the half of what went on in Shrewsbury. He had not known Madog of the Dead-Boat, he did not know Rhodri Fychan. Pure chance had cast this particular affair into the hands of such a man, and perhaps no ill chance, either.

“You have given me a notion,” said Cadfael, “that may bring us nearer the truth yet. Not that I’d let the old man run any risk, but no need for that. Listen, there’s a baited trap we might try, if you’re agreeable. If it succeeds you may have your man. If it fails, we shall have lost nothing. But it’s a matter of doing it quietly - no public proclamation, leave the baiting to me. Will you give it a trial? It’s your credit if we hook our fish, and it costs but a night-watch.”

The sergeant stared, already sniffing at the hope of praise and promotion, but cautious still. “What is it you have in mind?”

“Say you had done this thing, there between blind walls, and then suddenly heard that an old man slept above every night of the year, and may have been there when you struck. And say you were told that this old beggar has not yet been questioned but tomorrow he will be…”