Ellis Peters: The Raven in the Foregate

“I have been rather careful not to know,” said Hugh.

“Well… I am glad he never fouled his hands with murder. I saw them black enough with soil, from plucking out the weeds too gross to be dug in,” said Radulfus, and smiled distantly, looking out of the window at a pearl-grey, low hanging sky. “I expect he’ll do well enough. Pity of all pities there should be one such young man in arms against another in this land, but at least let the steel be bared only in the open field, not privily in the dark.”

Cadfael laid out on the abbot’s desk the remaining relics of Father Ailnoth, the ebony staff, the draggled black skullcap with its torn binding, and the unravelled woollen remnant of braid that completed the circle.

“Cynric told simple truth, and here are the proofs of it. Only this morning, when I saw Mistress Hammet’s open hand once again, and remembered the grazes I had dressed, did I understand how she got those injuries. Not from a fall—there was no fall. The wound on her head was dealt by this staff, for I found several long hairs of her greying light-brown colour here, caught in the frayed edges of this silver band. You see it’s worn wafer-thin, and the edges turned and cracking.”

Radulfus ran a long, lean finger round the crumpled, razor-sharp rim, and nodded grimly. “Yes, I see. And from this same band she got the grazes to her hands. He swung his staff at her a second time, so Cynric said, and she caught and clung to it, to save her head…”

“… and he tugged at it with all his strength, and tore it by main force out of her hands,” said Hugh, “to his own undoing.”

“They could not have been many paces past the mill,” said Cadfael, “for Cynric was some way beyond, among the willows. On the side of that first stump that overhangs the pool I found a few broken withies, and this black ravelling of wool braid snagged in the cracked, dead wood of the stump. The priest went stunned or dazed into the water, the cap flew from his head, leaving this scrap held fast in the tree, as the silver band held her torn hairs. The staff was flung from his hand. The winter turf is tufted and rough there, no wonder if he caught his heel, as he reeled backwards when she loosed her hold. He crashed into the stump. The axe that felled it, long ago, left it uneven, the jagged edge took him low at the back of the head. Father, you saw the wound. So did the sheriff.”

“I saw it,” said Radulfus. “And the woman knew nothing from the time she ran from him?”

“She barely knows how she got home. Certainly she waited out the night in dread, expecting him to finish what he intended against the boy, and return to his house to denounce and cast her out. But he never came.”

“Could he have been saved?” wondered the abbot, grieving as much for the roused and resentful flock as for the dead shepherd.

“In the dark,” said Cadfael, “I doubt if any one man could have got him from under that bank, however he laboured at it. Even had there been help within reach, I think he would have drowned before ever they got him out.”

“At the risk of falling into sin,” said Radulfus, with a smile that began sourly and ended in resignation, “I find that comforting. We have not a murderer among us, at any rate.”

“Talk of falling into sin,” said Cadfael later, when he and Hugh were sitting easy together in the workshop in the herb garden, “forces me to examine my own conscience. I enjoy some privileges, by reason of being called on to attend sick people outside the enclave, and also by virtue of having a godson to visit. But I ought not to take advantage of that permission for my own ends. Which I have done shamelessly on three or four occasions since Christmas. Indeed, Father Abbot must be well aware that I went out from the precinct this very morning without leave, but he’s said no word about it.”

“No doubt he takes it for granted you’ll be making proper confession voluntarily, at chapter tomorrow,” said Hugh, straight-faced.

“That I doubt! He’d hardly welcome it. I should have to explain the reason, and I know his mind by now. There are old hawks like Radulfus and myself in here, who can stand the gales, but there are also innocents who will not benefit by too stormy a wind blowing through the dovecote. He’s fretted enough about Ailnoth’s influence, now he wants it put by and soon forgotten. And I prophesy, Hugh, that the Foregate will soon have a new priest, and one who is known and welcome not only to us who have the bestowing of the benefice, but to those who are likely to reap the results. No better way of burying Ailnoth.”

“In all fairness,” said Hugh thoughtfully, “it would have been a very delicate matter to reject a priest recommended by the papal legate, even for a man of your abbot’s stature. And the fellow was impressive to the eye and the ear, and had scholarship… No wonder Radulfus thought he was bringing you a treasure. God send you a decent, humble, common man next time.”

“Amen! Whether he has Latin or not! And here am I the well-wisher, if not the accomplice, of an enemy of the King, criminal as well as sinner! Did I say I was being obliged to search my conscience? But not too diligently—that always leads to trouble.”

“I wonder,” said Hugh, smiling indulgently into the glow of the brazier, “if they’ll have set out yet?”

“Not until dark, I fancy. Overnight they’ll be gone. I hope she has somehow left word for Ralph Giffard,” said Cadfael, considering. “He’s no bad man, only driven, as so many are now, and mainly for his son. She had no complaint of him, except that he had compounded with fortune, and given up his hopes for the Empress. Being more than thirty years short of his age, she finds that incomprehensible. But you and I, Hugh, can comprehend it all too well. Let the young ones go their own gait, and find their own way.”

He sat smiling, thinking of the pair of them, but chiefly of Ninian, lively and bold and impudent, and a stout performer with the spade, even though he had never had one in his hand before, and had to learn the craft quickly. “I never had such a stout-hearted labourer under me here since Brother John—that must be nearly five years now! The one who stayed in Gwytherin, and married the smith’s niece. He’ll have made a doughty smith himself by now. Benet reminded me of him, some ways… all or nothing, and ready for every venture.”

“Ninian,” said Hugh, correcting him almost absently.

“True, Ninian we must call him now, but I tend to forget. But I haven’t told you,” said Cadfael, kindling joyfully to the recollection, “the very best of the ending. In the middle of so much aggravation and suspicion and death, a joke is no bad thing.”

“I wouldn’t say no to that,” agreed Hugh, leaning forward to mend the fire with a few judiciously placed pieces of charcoal, with the calculated pleasure of one for whom such things are usually done by others. “But I saw very little sign of one today. Where did you find it?”

“Why, you were kept busy talking with Father Abbot, close by the grave, while the rest were dispersing. You had no chance to observe it. But I was loose, and so was Brother Jerome, with his nose twitching for officious mischief, as usual. Sanan saw it,” said Cadfael, with fond recollection. “It scared the wits out of her for a moment or two, but then it was all resolved. You know, Hugh, how wide those double doors of ours are, in the wall…”

“I came that way,” said Hugh patiently, a little sleepy with relief from care, the fumes of the brazier, and the early start to a day now subsiding into a dim and misty evening. “I know!”

“There was a young fellow holding a horse, out there in the Foregate. Who was to notice him until everyone began streaming out by that way? Jerome was running like a sheep-dog about the fringes, hustling them out, he was bound to take a frequent look out there to the streets. He saw a man he thought he recognised, and went closer to view, all panting with fervour and zeal—you know him!”