Ellis Peters - One Corpse Too Many

“Brother Cadfael …” Godith began, distantly radiant.

“First things first,” said Cadfael briskly. “Help him out of cotte and shirt, and start unwinding the bandage until it sticks — as it will, my friend, you’re not out of the wood yet. Then wait, and I’ll ease it off.”

There was no disconcerting or chastening them. The girl was up in a moment, easing the seam of the cotte away from Torold’s wound, loosening the ties of his shirt to slip it down from his shoulder, gently freeing the end of the linen bandage and beginning to roll it up. The boy inclined this way and that to help, and never took his eyes from Godith’s face, as she seldom took hers from his absorbed countenance, and only to concentrate upon his needs.

“Well, well!” thought Cadfael philosophically. “It seems Hugh Beringar will seek his promised bride to little purpose — if, indeed, he really is seeking her?”

“Well, youngster,” he said aloud, “you’re a credit to me and to yourself, as clean-healing flesh as ever I saw. This slice of you that somebody tried to sever will stay with you lifelong, after all, and the arm will even serve you to hold a bow in a month or so. But you’ll have the scar as long as you live. Now hold steady, this may burn, but mist me, it’s the best salve you could have for green wounds. Torn muscles hurt as they knit, but knit they will.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” said Torold in a dream. “Brother Cadfael …”

“Hold your tongue until we have you all bound up trim. Then you can talk your hearts out, the both of you.”

And talk they did, as soon as Torold was helped back into his shirt, and the cotte draped over his shoulders. Each of them took up the thread from the other, as though handed it in a fixed and formal ceremony, like a favour in a dance; Even their voices had grown somehow alike, as if they matched tones without understanding that they did it. They had not the least idea, as yet, that they were in love. The innocents believed they were involved in a partisan comradeship, which was but the lesser half of what had happened to them in his absence.

“So I have told Torold all about myself,” said Godith, “and he has told me the only thing he did not tell us before. And now he wants to tell you.”

Torold picked up the tendered thread willingly. “I have FitzAlan’s treasury safely hidden,” he said simply. “I had it in two pairs of linked saddlebags, and I kept it afloat, too, all down the river, though I had to shed sword and swordbelt and dagger and all to lighten the load. I fetched up under the first arch of the stone bridge. You’ll know it as well as I. That first pier spreads, there used to be a boat-mill moored under it, some time ago, and the mooring chain is still there, bolted to a ring in the stone. A man can hold on there and get his breath, and so I did. And I hauled up the chain and hooked my saddlebags on to it, and let them down under the water, out of sight. Then I left them there, and drifted on down here just about alive, to where Godith found me.” He found no difficulty in speaking of her as Godith; the name had a jubilant sound in his mouth. “And there all that gold is dangling in the Severn still, I hope and believe, until I can reclaim it and get it away to its rightful owner. Thank God he’s alive to benefit by it.” A last qualm shook him suddenly and severely. “There’s been no word of anyone finding it?” he questioned anxiously. “We should know if they had?”

“We should know, never doubt it! No, no one’s hooked any such fish. Why should anyone look for it there? But getting it out again undetected may not be so easy. We three must put our wits together,” said Cadfael, “and see what we can do between us. And while you two have been swearing your alliance, let me tell you what I’ve been doing.”

He made it brief enough. “I found all as you told it. The traces of your horses are there, and of your enemy’s, too. One horse only. This was a thief bent on his own enrichment, no zealot trying to fill the king’s coffers. He had seeded the path for you liberally with caltrops, your kinsman collected several of them next day, for the sake of his own cattle. The signs of your struggle within the hut are plain enough. And pressed into the earth floor I found this.” He produced it from his scrip, a lump of deep yellow roughly faceted, and clenched in the broken silver-gilt claw. Torold took it from him and examined it curiously, but without apparent recognition.

“Broken off from a hilt, would you think?”

“Not from yours, then?”

“Mine?” Torold laughed. “Where would a poor squire with his way to make get hold of so fine a weapon as this must have been? No, mine was a plain old sword my grandsire wore before me, and a dagger to match, in a heavy hide sheath. If it had been light as this, I’d have tried to keep it. No, this is none of mine.”

“Nor Faintree’s, either?”

Torold shook his head decidedly. “If he had any such, I should have known. Nick and I are of the same condition, and friends three years and more.” He looked up intently into Brother Cadfael’s face. “Now I remember a very small thing that may have meaning, after all. When I broke free and left the other fellow dazed, I trod on something under the hay where we’d been struggling, a small, hard thing that almost threw me. I think it could well have been this. It was his? Yes, it must have been his! Snapped off against the ground as we rolled.”

“His, almost certainly, and the only thing we have to lead us to him,” said Cadfael, taking back the stone and hiding it again from view in his pouch. “No man would willingly discard so fine a thing because one stone was broken from it. Whoever owned it still has it, and will get it repaired when he dare. If we can find the dagger, we shall have found the murderer.”

“I wish,” said Torold fiercely, “I could both go and stay! I should be glad to be the one to avenge Nick, he was a good friend to me. But my part is to obey my orders, and get FitzAlan’s goods safely over to him in France. And,” he said, regarding Cadfael steadily, “to take with me also Fulke Adeney’s daughter, and deliver her safe to her father. If you will trust her to me.”

“And help us,” added Godith with immense confidence.

“Trust her to you — I might,” said Cadfael mildly. “And help you both I surely will, as best I can. A very simple matter! All I have to do — and mark you, she has the assurance to demand it of me! — is to conjure you two good horses out of the empty air, where even poor hacks are gold, retrieve your hidden treasure for you, and see you well clear of the town, westward into Wales. Just a trifle! Harder things are done daily by the saints …”

He had reached this point when he stiffened suddenly, and spread a warning hand to enjoin silence. Listening with ears stretched, he caught for a second time the soft sound of a foot moving warily in the edge of the rustling stubble, close to the open door.

“What is it?” asked Godith in a soundless whisper, her eyes immense in alarm.

“Nothing!” said Cadfael as softly. “My ears playing tricks.” And aloud he said: “Well, you and I must be getting back for Vespers. Come! It wouldn’t do to be late.”

Torold accepted his silent orders, and let them go without a word from him. If someone had indeed been listening … But he had heard nothing, and it seemed to him that even Cadfael was not sure. Why alarm Godith? Brother Cadfael was her best protector here, and once within the abbey walls she would again be in sanctuary. As for Torold, he was his own responsibility, though he would have been happier if he had had a sword!

Brother Cadfael reached down into the capacious waist of his habit, and drew out a long poniard in a rubbed and worn leather scabbard. Silently he put it into Torold’s hands. The young man took it, marvelling, staring as reverently as at a first small miracle, so apt was the answer to his thought. He had it by the sheath, the cross of the hilt before his face, and was still gazing in wonder as they went out from him into the evening, and drew the door closed after them. Cadfael took the memory of that look with him into the fresh, saffron air of sunset. He himself must once have worn the same rapt expression, contemplating the same uplifted hilt. When he had taken the Cross, long ago, his vow had been made on that hilt, and the dagger had gone with him to Jerusalem, and roved the eastern seas with him for ten years. Even when he gave up his’ sword along with the things of this world, and surrendered all pride of possessions, he had kept the poniard. Just as well to part with it at last, to someone who had need of it and would not disgrace it