Ellis Peters: The Raven in the Foregate

Ninian leaned his forehead against the warm hide that quivered gently under his touch, and offered devout thanks for so timely a deliverance.

In the heart of the tumult Abbot Radulfus raised a voice that seldom found it necessary to thunder, and thundered to instant effect.

“Silence! You bring shame on yourselves and desecrate this holy place. Silence, I say!”

And there was silence, sudden and profound, though it might as easily break out in fresh chaos if the rein was not tightened.

“So, and keep silence, all you who have nothing here to plead or deny. Let those speak and be heard who have. Now, my lord sheriff, you accuse this man Jordan Achard of murder. On what evidence?”

“On the evidence,” said Hugh, “of a witness who has said and will say again that he lies in saying he spent that night at home. Why, if he has nothing to hide, should he find it necessary to lie? On the evidence also of a witness who saw him creeping out from the mill path and making for his home at earliest light on Christmas morning. It is enough to hold him upon suspicion,” said Hugh crisply, and motioned to the two sergeants, who grasped the terrified Jordan almost tenderly by the arms. “That he had a grievance against Father Ailnoth is known to everyone.”

“My lord abbot,” babbled Jordan, quaking, “on my soul I swear I never touched the priest. I never saw him, I was not there… it’s false… they lie about me…”

“It seems there are those,” said Radulfus, “who will equally swear that you were there.”

“It was I who told that I’d seen him,” spoke up the reeve’s shepherd cousin, worried and shaken by the result he had achieved. “I could say no other, for I did see him, and it was barely light, and all I’ve told is truth. But I never intended mischief, and I never thought any harm but that he was at his games, for I knew what’s said of him…”

“And what is said of you, Jordan?” asked Hugh mildly.

Jordan swallowed and writhed, agonised between shame at owning where he had spent his night, and terror of holding out and risking worse. Sweating and wriggling, he blurted: “No evil, I’m a man well respected… If I was there, it was for no wrong purpose. I… I had business there early, charitable business there early—with the old Widow Warren who lives along there…”

“Or late, with her slut of a maidservant,” called a voice from the safe anonymity of the crowd, and a great ripple of laughter went round, hastily suppressed under the abbot’s flashing glare.

“Was that the truth of it? And by chance under Father Ailnoth’s eye?” demanded Hugh. “He would look very gravely upon such depravity, from all accounts. Did he catch you sneaking into the house, Jordan? I hear he was apt to reprove sin on the spot, and harshly. Is that how you came to kill him and leave him in the pool?”

“I never did!” howled Jordan. “I swear I never had ado with him. If I did fall into sin with the girl, that was all I did. I never went past the house. Ask her, she’ll tell you! I was there all night long…”

And all this time Cynric had gone on patiently and steadily filling in the grave, without haste, without apparently paying any great attention to all the tumult at his back. During this last exchange he had straightened up creakily, and stretched until his joints cracked. Now he turned to thrust his way into the centre of the circle, the iron-shod spade still dangling in his hand.

So strange an intrusion from so solitary and withdrawn a man silenced all voices and drew all eyes.

“Let him be, my lord,” said Cynric. “Jordan had nought to do with the man’s death.” He turned his greying head and long, sombre, deep-eyed face from Hugh to the abbot, and back again. “There’s none but I,” he said simply, “knows how Ailnoth came by his end.”

Then there was utter silence, beyond what the abbot’s authority had been able to invoke, a silence deep enough to drown in, as Ailnoth had drowned. The verger stood tall and dignified in his rusty black, waiting to be questioned further, without fear or regret, seeing nothing strange in what he had said, and no reason why he should have said more or said it earlier, but willing to bear with those who demanded explanations.

“You know?” said the abbot, after long and astonished contemplation of the man before him. “And you have not spoken before?”

“I saw no need. There was no other soul put in peril, not till now. The thing was done, best leave well alone.”

“Are you saying,” demanded Radulfus doubtfully,”that you were there, that you witnessed it?… Was it you …?”

“No,” said Cynric with a slow shake of his long, grizzled head. “I did not touch him.” His voice was patient and gentle, as it would have been to questioning children. “I was there, I witnessed it. But I did not touch him.”

“Then tell us now,” said Hugh quietly. “Who killed him?”

“No one killed him,” said Cynric. “Those who do violence die by the same. It’s only just.”

“Tell us,” said Hugh again as softly. “Tell us how this befell. Let us all know, and be at peace again. You are saying his death was an accident?”

“No accident,” said Cynric, and his eyes burned in their deep sockets. “A judgement.”

He moistened his lips, and lifted his head to stare into the wall of the Lady Chapel, above their heads, as if he, who was illiterate, could read there the words he had to say, he who was a man of few words by nature.

“I went out that night to the pool. I have often walked there by night, when there has been no moon, and none awake to see. Between the willow trees there, beyond the mill, where she went into the water… Eluned, Nest’s girl… because Ailnoth refused her confession and the uses of the church, denounced her before all the parish and shut the door in her face. He could as well have stabbed her to the heart, it would have been kinder. All that brightness and beauty taken from us… I knew her well, she came so often for comfort while Father Adam lived, and he never failed her. And when she was not fretting over her sins she was like a bird, like a flower, a joy to see. There are not so many things of beauty in the world that a man should destroy one of them, and make no amends. And when she fell into remorse she was like a child… she was a child, it was a child he cast out…”

He fell silent for a moment, as though the words had become hard to read by reason of the blindness of grief, and furrowed his high forehead to decipher them the better, but no one ventured to speak.

“There I was standing, where Eluned went into the pool, when he came along the path. I did not know who it was, he did not come as far as where I stood—but someone, a man stamping and muttering, there by the mill. A man in a rage, or so it sounded. Then a woman came stumbling after him, I heard her cry out to him, she went on her knees to him, weeping, and he was trying to shake her off, and she would not let go of him. He struck her—I heard the blow. She made no more than a moan, but then I did go towards them, thinking there could be murder done, and therefore I saw dimly, but I had my night eyes, and I did see—how he swung his stick at her again, and she clung with both hands to the head of it to save herself, and how he tugged at it with all his strength and tore it out of her hands… The woman ran from him, I heard her stumbling away along the path, but I doubt she ever heard what I heard, or knows what I know. I heard him reel backwards and crash into the stump of the willow. I heard the withies lash and break. I heard the splash—it was not a great sound—as he went into the water.”

There was another silence, long and deep, while he thought, and laboured to remember with precision, since that was required of him. Brother Cadfael, coming up quietly behind the ranks of the awestruck brothers, had heard only the latter part of Cynric’s story, but he had the poor, draggled proof of it in his hand as he listened. Hugh’s trap had caught nothing, rather it had set everyone free. He looked across the mute circle to where Diota stood, with Sanan’s arm about her. Both women had drawn their hoods close round their faces. One of the hands torn by the sharp edges of the silver band held the folds of Diota’s cloak together.