Ellis Peters - The Raven in the Foregate

“She came by it,” said Cadfael, “by the mill that night, when she followed the priest in desperation, to plead with him to let well alone and turn a blind eye to the boy’s deception, instead of confronting him like an avenging demon and fetching your sergeants down on him to throw him into prison. She was Ninian’s nurse, she would dare almost anything for his sake. She clung about Ailnoth’s skirts and begged him to let be, and because he could not shake her off, he clubbed this staff of his and struck her on the head, and would have struck again if she had not loosed him and scrambled away half-stunned, and run for her life back to the house.”

He told the whole of it as he had had it from Diota herself, and Hugh listened with a grave face but the hint of the smile lingering thoughtfully in his eyes. “You believe this,” he said at the end of it; not a question, but a fact, and relevant to his own thinking.

“I do believe it. Entirely.”

“And she can add nothing more, to point us to any other person. Or would she, even if she could?” wondered Hugh. “She may very well feel with the Foregate, and prefer to keep her own counsel.”

“So she might, I won’t deny, but for all that, I think she knows no more. She ran from him dazed and in terror. I think there’s no more to be got from her.”

“Nor from your boy Benet?” said Hugh slyly, and laughed at seeing Cadfael turn a sharp glance on him and bridle for a moment. “Oh, come now, I do accept that it was not you who warned the boy to make himself scarce when Giffard brought the law down on him. But only because someone else had already spared you the trouble. You were very well aware that he was gone, when you so helpfully led us all round the garden here hunting for him. I’ll even believe that you had seen him here not half an hour before. You have a way of telling simple truths which is anything but simple. And when did you ever have a young fellow in trouble under your eye, and not wind your way into his confidence? Of course he’ll have opened his mind to you. I daresay you know where he is this very moment. Though I’m not asking!” he added hastily.

“No,” said Cadfael, well satisfied with the way that was phrased, “no, that I don’t know, so you may ask, for I can’t tell you.”

“Having gone to some trouble not to find out or be told,” agreed Hugh, grinning. “Well, I did tell you to keep him out of sight if you should happen on him. I might even turn a blind eye myself, once this other matter is cleared up.”

“As to that,” said Cadfael candidly, “he’s of the same mind as you, for until he knows that all’s made plain, and Dame Hammet safe and respected, he won’t budge. Much as he wants to get to honest service in Gloucester, here he stays while she’s in trouble. Which is only fair, seeing the risks she has taken for him. But once this is over, he’ll be away, out of your territory. And not alone!” said Cadfael, meeting Hugh’s quizzical glance with a complacent countenance. “Is it possible I still know something you do not know?”

Hugh furrowed his brow and considered this riddle at leisure. “Not Giffard, that’s certain! He could not get himself out of the trap fast enough. Two women in the affair, you said, one of them young… Do you tell me this young venturer has found himself a wife in these parts? Already? These imps of Anjou work briskly, I grant them that! Let’s see, then…” He pondered, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the rim of the clay saucer. “He had got himself into a monastery, where women do not abound, and I think you will have got your due of work out of him, he had small opportunity to go wooing among the townswomen. And as far as I know, he made no approach to any other of the local lordlings. I’m left with Giffard’s household, where the boy’s embassage may have been a none too well-kept secret, and where there’s a very pleasing young woman, of the Empress’s faction by blood, and bold and determined enough to choose differently from her step-father. Why, pure curiosity would have brought her to have a close look at such a paladin of romance, come in peril of his liberty and life from over the sea. Sanan Bernières? Is he truly wanting to take her with him?”

“Sanan it is. But I think it was she who made the decision. They have horses hidden away ready for departure, and she has her own small estate in jewels from her mother, easily carried. No doubt she’s provided him sword and dagger, too. She’ll not let him come before the Empress or Robert of Gloucester shabby, or without arms and horse.”

“They mean this earnestly?” wondered Hugh, frowning over a private doubt as to what his own course ought to be in such a case.

“They mean it. Both of them. I doubt if Giffard will mind much, though he’s done his duty by her fairly enough. It saves him a dowry. And the man’s had his losses, and is ambitious for his son.”

“And what,” demanded Hugh, “does she get out of it?”

“She gets her own way. She gets what she wants, and the man she’s chosen for herself. She gets Ninian. I think it may not be a bad bargain.”

Hugh sat silent for a brooding while, weighing the rights and wrongs of allowing such a flight, and recalling, perhaps, his own determined pursuit of Aline, not so long past. After a while his brow smoothed, and the private gleam of mischief quickened in his black eyes and twitched at the corner of his mouth. An eloquent eyebrow tilted above a covert glance at Cadfael.

“Well, I can as easily put a stop to that as cross the court here, yes, and bring the lad flying out of hiding into my arms, if I choose. You’ve taught me the way to flush him out of cover. All I need do is arrest Mistress Hammet, or even put it abroad that I’m about to, and he’ll come running to defend her. If I accused her of murder, as like as not he’d go so far as to confess to an act he never committed, to see her free and vindicated.”

“You could do it,” Cadfael admitted, without any great concern, “but you won’t. You are as convinced as I am that neither he nor Dame Diota ever laid hand on Ailnoth, and you certainly won’t pretend otherwise.”

“I might, however,” said Hugh, grinning, “try the same trick with another victim, and see if the man who did drown Ailnoth will be as honest and chivalrous as your lad would be. For I came here today with a small item of news you will not yet have heard, concerning one of Ailnoth’s flock who’ll be none the worse for a salutary shock. Who knows, there are plenty of rough and ready fellows who would kill lightly enough, but not stand by and let another man be hanged for it. It would be worth the trial, to hook a murderer, and even if it failed, the bait would come to no lasting harm.”

“I would not do it to a dog!” said Cadfael.

“Neither would I, dogs are honest, worthy creatures that fight fair and bear no grudges. When they set out to kill, they do it openly in broad daylight, and never care how many witnesses there may be. I have less scruples about some men. This one—ah, he’s none so bad, but a fright won’t hurt him, and may do a very sound turn for his poor drab of a wife.”

“You have lost me,” said Cadfael.

“Let me find you again! This morning Alan Herbard brought me a man he’d happened on by chance, a country kinsman of Erwald’s who came to spend Christmas with the provost and his family here in the Foregate. The man’s a shepherd by calling, and Erwald had a couple of ewes too early in lamb, penned in his shed out beyond the Gaye, and one of them threatened to cast her lamb too soon. So his cousin the shepherd went to the shed after Matins and Lauds on Christmas morning, to take a look at them, and brought off the threatened lamb safely, too, and was on his way back, just coming up from the Gaye and along to the Foregate at first light. And who do you suppose he saw sneaking very furtively up from the path to the mill and heading for home, but Jordan Achard, rumpled and bleared from sleep and hardly expecting to be seen at that hour. By chance one of the few people our man would have known by sight and name here, being the baker from whose oven he’d fetched his cousin’s bread the day before. It came out in purest gossip, in all innocence. The countryman knew Jordan’s reputation, and thought it a harmless joke to have seen him making for home from some strange bed.”