Ellis Peters - Dead Man's Ransom

“To make myself known to him, to plead my cause with him, what else? It was the only present hope I had, I could not let it slip through my fingers. I wanted to tell him that I love Melicent, that I am a man of lands and honour, and desire nothing better than to serve her with all my goods and gear. He might have listened! I knew, she had told me, that he was sworn enemy to the Welsh, I knew it was a poor hope, but it was all the hope I had. But I never got the chance to speak. He was deep asleep, and before I ventured to disturb him the good brother came and banished me. This is the truth, and I will swear to it on the altar.”

“It is truth!” Eliud spoke up vehemently for his friend. He stood close, since Elis had refused a seat, his shoulder against Elis’s shoulder for comfort and assurance. He was as pale as if the accusation had been made against him, and his voice was husky and low. “He was with me in the cloister, he told me of his love, and said he would go to the lord Gilbert and speak to him man to man. I thought it unwise, but he would go. It was not many minutes before I saw him come forth, and Brother Infirmarer making sure he departed. And there was no manner of stealth in his dealings,” insisted Ehud stoutly, “for he crossed the court straight and fast, not caring who might see him go in.”

“That may well be true,” agreed Hugh thoughtfully, “but for all that, even if he went in with no ill intent, and no great hope, once he stood there by the bedside it might come into his mind how easy, and how final, to remove the obstacle—a man sleeping and already very low.”

“He never would!” cried Eliud. “His is no such mind.”

“I did not,” said Elis, and looked helplessly at Melicent, who stared back at him stonily and gave him no aid. “For God’s sake, believe me! I think I could not have touched or roused him, even if there had been no one to send me away. To see a fine, strong man so—quite defenceless…”

“Yet no one entered there but you,” she said mercilessly.

“That cannot be proved!” flashed Eliud. “Brother Infirmarer has said that the way was open, anyone might have gone in.”

“Nor can it be proved that anyone did,” she said with aching bitterness.

“But I think it can,” said Brother Cadfael.

He had all eyes on him in an instant. All this time some morsel of his memory had been worrying at the flaw he could not quite identify. He had picked up the folded sheepskin cloak from the chest, where he had watched Edmund lay it, and there had been something different about it, though he could not think what it could be. And then the encounter with death had driven the matter to the back of his mind, but it had lodged there ever since, like chaff in the throat after eating porridge. And suddenly he had it. The cloak was gone now, gone with Einon ab Ithel back to Wales, but Edmund was there to confirm what he had to say. And so was Eliud, who would know his lord’s belongings.

“When we disrobed and bedded Gilbert Prestcote,” he said, “the cloak that wrapped him, which belonged to Einon ab Ithel, was folded and laid by, Brother Edmund will remember it, in such case as to leave plain to be seen in the collar a great gold pin that fastened it. When Eliud, here, came to ask me to show him the room and hand out his lord’s cloak to him and I did so, the cloak was folded as before, but the pin was gone. Small wonder if we forgot the matter, seeing what else we found. But I knew there was something I should have noted, and now I have recalled what it was.”

“It is truth!” cried Eliud, his face brightening eagerly. “I never thought! And I have let my lord go without it, never a word said. I fastened the collar of the cloak with it myself, when we laid him in the litter, for the wind blew cold. But with this upset, I never thought to look for it again. Here is Elis and has never been out of men’s sight since he came from the infirmary—ask all here! If he took it, he has it on him still. And if he has it not, then someone else has been in there before him and taken it. My foster-brother is no thief and no murderer—but if you doubt, you have your remedy.”

“What Cadfael says is truth,” said Edmund. “The pin was there plain to be seen. If it is gone, then someone went in and took it.” Elis had caught the fierce glow of hope, in spite of the unchanging bitterness and grief of Melicent’s face. “Strip me!” he demanded, glittering. “Search my body! I won’t endure to be thought thief and murderer both.”

In justice to him, rather than having any real doubts in the matter, Hugh took him at his word, but allowed only Cadfael and Edmund to be witnesses with him in the borrowed cell where Elis, with sweeping, arrogant, hurt gestures, tore off his clothes and let them fall about him, until he stood naked with braced feet astride and arms outspread, and dragged disdainful fingers painfully through his thick thatch of curls and shook his head violently to show there was nothing made away there. Now that he was safe from the broken, embittered stare of Melicent’s eyes the tears he had defied came treacherously into his own, and he blinked and shook them proudly away.

Hugh let him cool gradually and in considerate silence.

“Are you content?” the boy demanded stiffly, when he had his voice well in rein.

“Are you?” said Hugh, and smiled.

There was a brief, almost consoling silence. Then Hugh said mildly: “Cover yourself, then. Take your time.” And while Elis was dressing, with hands that shook now in reaction: “You do understand that I must hold you in close guard, you and your foster-brother and the others alike. As at this moment, you are no more in suspicion than many who belong here within the pale, and will not be let out of it until I know to the last moment where they spent this morn and noon. This is no more than a beginning, and you but one of many.”

“I do understand,” said Elis and wavered, hesitant to ask a favour. “Need I be separated from Eliud?”

“You shall have Eliud,” said Hugh.

When they went out again to those who still waited in the anteroom the two women were on their feet, and plainly longing to withdraw. Sybilla had but half her mind here in support of her step-daughter, the better half was with her son; and if she had been a faithful and dutiful wife to her older husband and mourned him truly now after her fashion, love was much too large a word for what she had felt for him and barely large enough for what she felt for the boy he had given her. Sybilla’s thoughts were with the future, not the past.

“My lord,” she said, “you know where we may be found for the days to come. Let me take my daughter away now, we have things which must be done.”

“At your pleasure, madam,” said Hugh. “You shall not be troubled more than is needful.” And he added only: “But you should know that the matter of this missing pin remains. There has been more than one intruder into your husband’s privacy. Bear it in mind.”

“Very gladly I leave it all in your hands,” said Sybilla fervently. And forth she went, her hand imperative at Melicent’s elbow. They passed close by Elis in the doorway, and his starving stare fastened on the girl’s face. She passed him by without a glance, she even drew aside her skirts for fear they should brush him in departing. He was too young, too open, too simple to understand that more than half the hatred and revulsion she felt for him belonged rather to herself, and her dread that she had gone far towards desiring the death she now so desperately repented.

IN THE DEATH CHAMBER, with the door closed fast, Hugh Beringar and Brother Cadfael stood beside Gilbert Prestcote’s body and turned back the brychan and sheet to the sunken breast. They had brought in lamps to set close where they would burn steadily and cast a strong light on the dead face. Cadfael took the small saucer lamp in his hand and moved it slowly across the bruised mouth and nostrils and the grizzled beard, to catch every angle of vision and pick out every mote of dust or thread.