Ellis Peters - The Heretic's Apprentice

“What was Jevan of Lythwood wanting here?” Cadfael asked of the porter, who was making himself useful holding a very handsome and lively young mare while her master buckled on his saddle roll behind. A good number of the guests would be moving on today, having paid their annual tribute to Saint Winifred.

“He wanted to know if his clerk had been here,” said the porter.

“Why did he suppose his clerk should have been here?”

“He says he changed his mind, yesterday, about laying charges against that lad we’ve got under lock and key, as soon as he found out the young fellow had no intention of elbowing him out of his employment. Said he was all for rushing off down here on the spot to take back what he’d laid against him. Much good that would do! Small use running after the arrow once it’s loosed. But that’s what he wanted to do, so his master says.”

“What did you tell him?” asked Cadfael.

“What should I tell him? I told him we’d seen nor hide nor hair of his clerk since he went out of the gate here early yesterday afternoon. If seems he’s been missing overnight. But wherever he’s been, he hasn’t been here.”

Cadfael pondered this new turn of events with misgiving. “When was it he took this change of heart, and started back here? What time of the day?”

“Very near as soon as he got home, so Jevan says. No more than an hour after he’d left here. But he never came,” said the porter placidly. “Changed his mind again, I daresay, when he got near, and began to reason how it might fall back on him, without delivering the other fellow.”

Cadfael went on down the court very thoughtfully. He had already missed Prime, but there was ample time before the Mass. He might as well take himself off to his workshop and unload his scrip, and try to get all these confused and confusing events clear in his mind. If Aldwin had come running back with the idea of undoing what he had done, then even if he had encountered an angry and resentful Elave, it would have needed only the first hasty words of penitence and restitution to disarm the avenger. Why kill a man who is willing at least to try to make amends? Still, some might argue, an angry man might not wait for any words, but strike on sight. In the back? No, it would not do. That Elave had killed his accuser might be the first thought to spring into other minds, but it could find no lodging in Cadfael’s. And not for mere obstinate liking, either, but because it made no sense.

Hugh arrived towards the end of chapter, alone, and somewhat to Cadfael’s surprise, as well as to his profound relief, ahead of any other and untoward report. Rumor was usually so blithe and busy about the town and the Foregate that he had expected word of Aldwin’s death to worm its way in with inconvenient speed and a good deal of regrettable embroidery to the plain tale, but it had not happened. Hugh could tell the story his own way, and in the privacy of Abbot Radulfus’s parlor, with Cadfael to confirm and supplement. And the abbot did not say what, inevitably, someone else very soon would. Instead he said directly:

“Who last saw the man alive?”

“From what we know so far,” said Hugh, “those who saw him go out of the house early yesterday afternoon. Jevan of Lythwood, who came enquiring for him here this morning, as Cadfael says, before ever I got the word to him of his man’s death. The foster child Fortunata, she who was made a witness to the charge yesterday. The woman of the house. And the shepherd Conan. But that was broad daylight. He must have been seen by others, at the town gate, on the bridge, here in the Foregate, or wherever he turned aside. We shall trace his every step, to fill in the time before he died.”

“But we cannot know when that was,” said Radulfus.

“No, true, no better than a guess. But Madog judges he was put into the river as soon as it grew dark, and that he’d lain hidden somewhere after his death, waiting for dark. Perhaps two or three hours, but there’s no knowing. I have men out looking for any trace of where he may have lain hidden. If we find that, we find where he was murdered, for he could not have been moved far.”

“And all Lythwood’s household are in one tale together - that the clerk, when he heard the young man made no claim to his place, started to come here, to confess his malice and withdraw the charge he had made?”

“Further, the girl says that she had parted from Elave in the trees, there not far from the bridge, and told Aldwin so. She believes he went off in such haste in the hope of overtaking him. She says also,” said Hugh with emphasis, “that she urged Elave to take to his heels, and he refused.”

“Then what he did accords with what he said,” Radulfus allowed. “And his accuser set out to confess and beg pardon. Yes - it argues against,” he said, holding Hugh eye-to-eye.

“There are those who will argue for. And it must be said,” Hugh owned fairly, “that circumstances give body to what they’ll say. He was at liberty, he had good reason to bear a grudge. We know of no one else who had cause to strike at Aldwin. He set off to meet Elave, there in the trees. In cover. It hangs together, on the face of it, all too well, for the body must surely have gone into the water below the bridge, and cover is scant there along the Gaye.”

“All true,” said Radulfus. “But equally true, I think, that if the young man had killed he would hardly have walked back into our precinct of his own will, as admittedly he did. Moreover, if the dead man was cast into the river after dark, that was not done by Elave. At least we know at what hour he returned here, it was just when the Vesper bell sounded. That does not prove past doubt that he did not kill, but it casts it into question. Well, we have him safe.” He smiled, a little grimly. It was an ambiguous reassurance. A stone cell, securely locked, ensured Elave’s personal safety no less than his close custody. “And now you wish to question him.”

“In your presence,” said Hugh, “if you will.” And catching the sharp, intelligent eye he said simply: “Better with a witness who cannot be suspect. You are as good a judge of a man as I am, and better.”

“Very well,” said Radulfus. “He shall not come to us. We will go to him, while they are all in the frater. Robert is in attendance on Canon Gerbert.” So he would be, thought Cadfael uncharitably. Robert was not the man to let slip the chance to ingratiate himself with a man of influence with the archbishop. For once his predilection for the powerful would be useful. “Anselm has been asking me to send the boy books to read,” said the abbot. “He points out, rightly, that we have a duty to provide good counsel and exhortation, if we are to combat erroneous beliefs. Do you feel fitted, Cadfael, to undertake an advocacy on God’s behalf?”

“I am not sure,” said Cadfael bluntly, thus brought up against the measure of his own concern and partisanship, “that the instructed would not be ahead of the instructor. I see my measure more in tending his broken head than in meddling with the sound mind inside it.”

Elave sat on his narrow pallet in one of the two stone penitential cells which were seldom occupied, and told what he had to tell, while Cadfael renewed the dressings on his gashes, and bandaged him afresh. He still looked somewhat the worse for wear, bruised and stiff from the attentions of Gerbert’s overzealous grooms, but by no means subdued. At first, indeed, he was inclined to be belligerent, on the assumption that all these officials, religious and secular alike, must be hostile, and predisposed to find fault in every word he said. It was an attitude which did not consort well with his customary openness and amiability, and Cadfael was sorry to see him thus maimed, even for a brief time. But it seemed that he did not find in his visitors quite the animosity and menace he had expected, for in a little while his closed and wary face eased and warmed, and the chill edge melted from his voice.