Ellis Peters - Dead Man's Ransom

“They have taken away my halter,” said Eliud, his eyes wandering languidly over the bare little room. “They’ll have to find me another one now.”

When it was all told he lay drained, very weak and utterly biddable, eased of hope and grateful for contrition. He let himself be handled for healing, though with a drear smile that said Cadfael wasted his pains on a dead man. He did his best to help the handling, and bore pain without a murmur when his wounds were probed and cleansed and dressed afresh. He tried to swallow the draughts that were held to his lips, and offered thanks for even the smallest service. When he drifted into an uneasy sleep, Cadfael went to find the two men Hugh had left to run his errands, and sent one of them riding to Shrewsbury with the news that would bring Hugh back again in haste. When he returned into the precinct, Melicent was waiting for him in the doorway. She read in his face the mixture of dismay and resignation he felt at having to tell over again what had been ordeal enough to listen to in the first place, and offered instant and firm reassurance.

“I know. I heard. I heard you talking, and his voice… I thought you might need someone to fetch and carry for you, so I came to ask. I heard what Eliud said. What is to be done now?” For all her calm, she was bewildered and lost between father killed and lover saved, and the knowledge of the fierce affection those two foster-brothers had for each other, and every way was damage and every escape was barred. “I have told Elis,” she said. “Better we should all know what we are about. God knows I am so confused now, I doubt if I know right from wrong. Will you come to Elis? He’s fretting for Eliud.” Cadfael went with her in perplexity as great as hers. Murder is murder, but if a life can pay the debt for a life, there was Elis to level the account. Was yet another life demanded? Another death justifiable? He sat down with her beside the bed, confronted by an Elis wide awake and in full possession of his senses, for all he hesitated on the near edge of fever.

“Melicent has told me,” said Elis, clutching agitatedly at Cadfael’s sleeve. “But is it true? You don’t know him as I do! Are you sure he is not making up this story, because he fears I may yet be charged? May he not even believe I did it? It would be like him to shoulder all to cover me. So he has done in old times when we were children, so he might even now. You saw, you saw what he has already done for me! Should I be here alive now but for Eliud? I can’t believe so easily…” Cadfael went about hushing him the most practical way, by examining the dressing on his arm and finding it dry, unstained and causing him no pain, let well alone for the time being. The tight binding round his damaged rib had caused him some discomfort and shortness of breath, and might be slightly slackened to ease him. And whatever dose was offered him he swallowed almost absently, his eyes never shifting from Cadfael’s face, demanding answers to desperate questions. And there would be small comfort for him in the naked truth.

“Son,” said Cadfael, “there’s no virtue in fending off truth. The tale Eliud has told fits in every particular and it is truth. Sorry I am to say it, but true it is. Put all doubts out of your head.” They received that with the same white calm and made no further protest.

After a long silence Melicent said: “I think you knew it before.”

“I did know it, from the moment I set eyes on Einon ab Ithel’s brocaded saddle, cloth. That, and nothing else, could have killed Gilbert, and it was Eliud whose duty it was to care for Einon’s horse and harness. Yes, I knew. But he made his confession willingly, eagerly, before I could question or accuse him. That must count to him for virtue, and speak on his side.”

“God knows,” said Melicent, shutting her pale face hard between her hands, as if to hold her wits together, “on what side I dare speak, who am so torn. All I know is that Eliud cannot, does not carry all the guilt. In this matter, which of us is innocent?”

“You are!” said Elis fiercely. “How did you fail? But if I had taken a little thought to see how things were with him and with Cristina… I was too easy, too light, too much in love with myself to take heed. I’d never dreamed of such a love, I didn’t know… I had all to learn.” It had been no easy lesson for him, but he had it by heart now.

“If only I had had more faith in myself and my father,” said Melicent, “we could have sent word honestly into Wales, to Owain Gwynedd and to my father, that we two loved and entreated leave to marry…”

“If only I had been as quick to see what ailed Eliud as he always was to put trouble away from me…”

“If none of us ever fell short, or put a foot astray,” said Cadfael sadly, “everything would be good in this great world, but we stumble and fall, every one. We must deal with what we have. He did it, and all we must share the gall.”

Out of a drear hush Elis asked: “What will become of him? Will there be mercy? Surely he need not die?”

“It rests with the law, and with the law I have no weight.”

“Melicent relented to me,” said Elis, “before ever she knew I was clean of her father’s blood…”

“Ah, but I did know!” she said quickly. “I was sick in mind that ever I doubted.”

“And I love her the more for it. And Eliud has made confession when no man was accusing, and that must count for virtue to him, as you said, and speak on his side.”

“That and all else that speaks for him,” promised Cadfael fervently, “shall be urged in his defence. I will see to that.”

“But you are not hopeful,” said Elis bleakly, watching his face with eyes all too sharp.

He would have liked to deny it, but to what end, when Eliud himself had accepted and embraced, with resignation and humility, the inevitable death? Cadfael made what comfort he could, short of lying, and left them together. The last glimpse, as he closed the door, was of two braced, wary faces following his going with a steady, veiled stare, their minds shuttered and secret. Only the fierce alliance of hand clasping hand on the brychan betrayed them.

Hugh Beringar came next day in a hurry, listened in dour silence as Eliud laboured with desolate patience through the story yet again, as he had already done for the old priest who said Mass for the sisters. As Eliud’s soul faced humbly toward withdrawal from the world, Cadfael noted his misused body began to heal and find ease, very slowly, but past any doubt. His mind consented to dying, his body resolved to live. The wounds were clean, his excellent youth and health fought hard, whether for or against him who could say?

“Well, I am listening,” said Hugh somewhat wearily, pacing the bank of the brook with Cadfael at his side. “Say what you have to say.” But Cadfael had never seen his face grimmer.

“He made full and free confession,” said Cadfael, “before ever a finger was pointed at him, as soon as he felt he might die. He was in desperate haste to do justice to all, not merely Elis, who might lie under the shadow of suspicion because of him. You know me, I know you. I have said honestly, I was about to tell him that I knew he had killed. I swear to you he took that word clean out of my mouth. He wanted confession, penance, absolution. Most of all he wanted to lift the threat from Elis and any other who might be overcast.”

“I take your word absolutely,” said Hugh, “and it is something. But enough? This was no hot-blood squall blown up in a moment before he could think, it was an old man, wounded and sick, sleeping in his bed.”

“It was not planned. He went to reclaim his lord’s cloak. That I am sure is true. But if you think the blood was cold, dear God, how wrong you are! The boy was half-mad with the long bleeding of hopeless love, and had just come to the point of rebellion, and the thread of a life—one he had been nursing in duty!—cut him off from the respite his sudden courage needed. God forgive him, he had hoped Gilbert would die! He has said so honestly. Chance showed him a thread so thin it could be severed by a breath, and before ever he took thought, he blew! He says he has repented of it every moment that has passed since that moment, and I believe it. Did you never, Hugh, do one unworthy thing on impulse, that grieved and shamed you ever after?”