Ellis Peters: The Raven in the Foregate

Cadfael was still wondering what that ending was to be. Hugh’s device might provoke some man’s conscience and make him speak out, to deliver a neighbour mistakenly accused, but equally it might come as an immense relief to the guilty, and be accepted as a gift—certainly not from heaven, rather from the other place! At every step along the Foregate he fretted at the tangle of details churning in his mind, and found no coherence among them. Not until the little jar of ointment he had thrust into the breast of his habit nodded against his middle as his foot slid in a muddy rut. The touch was like an impatient nudge at his mind. He saw it again, resting in the palm of a shapely but work-worn hand, as Diota held it out to him. A hand seamed with the lines proper to the human palm, graven deep with lifelong use, but also bearing thread-like white lines that crossed these, fanning from wrist to fingers, barely visible now, soon to vanish altogether.

An icy night, certainly, he had trodden cautiously through it himself, he knew. And a woman slipping as she turned to step back on to the frozen doorstone of a house, and falling forward, naturally puts out her hands to save herself, and her hands take the rough force of the fall, even though they may not quite save her head. Except that Diota had not fallen. Her head injury was sustained in quite a different way. She had fallen on her knees that night, yes, but of desperate intent, with hands clutching not at frozen ground, but at the skirts of Ailnoth’s cassock and cloak. So how did she get those scored grazes in both palms?

In innocence she had told him but half a story, believing she told him all. And here was he helpless now, he must hold his place in this funeral procession, and she must hold hers, and he could not get to her, to probe the corners of memory which had eluded her then. Not until this solemn rite was over and done would he be able to speak again with Diota. No, but there were other witnesses, mute by their nature but possibly eloquent in what they might be able to demonstrate. He walked on perforce, keeping pace with Brother Henry along the Foregate and round the corner by the horse-fair ground, unable to break the decorum of burial. Not yet! But perhaps within? For there would be no procession through the street afterwards, not for the brethren. They would be already within their chosen enclave, to disperse severally to their ablutions and their dinner in the refectory. Once within, why should he be missed if he slipped quietly away?

The broad double doors in the precinct wall stood wide open to let the mourning column into the wide prospect of the cemetery garth, giving place on the left to kitchen gardens, and beyond, the long roof of the abbot’s lodging, and the small enclosed flower garden round it. The brothers were buried close under the east end of the church, the vicars of the parish a little removed from them, but in the same area. The number of graves as yet was not large, the foundation being no more than fifty-eight years old, and though the parish was older, it had then been served by the small wooden church Earl Roger had replaced in stone and given to the newly founded abbey. There were trees here, and grass, and meadow flowers in the summer, a pleasant enough place. Only the dark, raw hole close to the wall marred the green enclosure. Cynric had placed trestles to receive the coffin before it was lowered into the grave, and he was stooped over the planks he had just removed, stacking them tidily against the wall.

Half the Foregate and a good number of the inhabitants of the town came thronging through the open doors after the brothers, crowding close to see all there was to be seen. Cadfael drew back from his place in the ranks, and contrived to be swallowed up by their inquisitive numbers. No doubt Brother Henry would eventually miss him from his side, but in the circumstances he would say no word. By the time Prior Robert had got out the first sonorous phrases of the committal, Cadfael was round the corner of the chapter house and scurrying across the great court towards the wicket by the infirmary, that led through to the mill.

Hugh had brought down with him from the castle two sergeants and two of the young men of the garrison, all mounted, though they had left their horses tethered at the abbey gatehouse, and allowed the funeral procession to make its way along the Foregate to the cemetery before they showed themselves. While all eyes were on the prior and the coffin Hugh posted two men outside the open doors, to make a show of preventing any departures, while he and the sergeants went within, and made their way unobtrusively forward through the press. The very discretion with which they advanced, and the respectful silence they preserved when they had drawn close to the bier, which should have kept them inconspicuous, perversely drew every eye, so that by the time they were where Hugh had designed they should be, himself almost facing the prior across the coffin, the sergeants a pace or two behind Jordan Achard, one on either side, many a furtive glance had turned on them, and there was a wary shifting and staring and stealthy shuffling of feet on all sides. But Hugh held his hand until all was over.

Cynric and his helpers hoisted the coffin, and fitted the slings to lower it into the grave. Earth fell dully. The last prayer was said. There was the inevitable stillness and hush, before everyone would sigh and stir, and very slowly begin to move away. The sigh came like a sudden gust of wind, it fell from so many throats. The stir followed like the rustle of leaves in the gust. And Hugh said loudly and clearly, in a voice calculated to arrest any movement on the instant:

“My lord abbot, Father prior… I must ask your pardon for having placed a guard at your gate-outside your walls, but even so I beg your indulgence. No one must leave here until I’ve made known my purpose. Hold me excused that I must come at such a time, but there’s no help for it. I am here in the name of the King’s law, and in pursuit of a murderer. I am here to take into charge a felon suspected of the slaying of Father Ailnoth.”

THERE WAS NOT VERY MUCH TO BE FOUND, but there was enough. Cadfael stood on the rim of the high bank where Ailnoth’s body had bobbed and nestled, held fast there by the slight side impulse from the tail-race of the mill. The stump of the felled willow, no more than hip-high, bristled with its whips of blanched green hair. Some broken shoots among them, at the rim of the barren, dead surface, dried and cracked with time and jagged from the axe. And a finger length of black thread fluttering, one end securely held in the frayed ridge of dead wood. A finger length of unravelled woollen braid, just enough to complete the binding of a black skull-cap. Frost and thaw had come and gone, whitened and moistened and changed and obliterated whatever else had once been there to be found, a smear of blood, perhaps, some minute fragments of torn skin. Nothing left but a fluttering black roving, clawed loose when the cap flew wide and went with the current into the reeds.

Cadfael went back in haste with the infinitesimal scrap of wool in his hand. Halfway across the great court he heard the clamour of voices howling protest, excitement and confusion, and slackened his pace, for clearly there was no more need for haste. The trap was sprung, and must hold whatever it caught. Too late to prevent, at least he could undo whatever harm came of it, and if none came, so much the better. What he had to say and to show would keep.

Ninian reached the open track and the bridge over the Meole Brook in a glow from running most of the way, and remembered to slow to a walk before he reached the highway, close to the end of the bridge into Shrewsbury, and to haul up the hood of Sweyn’s capuchon to shadow his face. At the turning into the Foregate he first checked in mild alarm, and then realised his luck and took heart, for so many people were still hurrying out of the town towards the abbey that it was very simple to mingle with them and be lost. He went with the stream, ears pricked for every word uttered around him, and heard his own name bandied back and forth with anticipatory relish. So that was the arrest some of these were expecting, though it could hardly be what Hugh Beringar had in mind, since he had lost the scent some days ago, and had no reason to suppose that he would recover it today. But others spoke of the woman, the priest’s servant, not even knowing a name by which to call her. Others again were speculating wildly between two or three names unknown to Ninian, but who had evidently suffered under Ailnoth’s unbending severities.