Ellis Peters: One Corpse Too Many

I do not like the way I see England going, thought Cadfael with anxious foreboding, and above all I do not like what is about to happen, for as surely as God sees us, Hugh Beringar is set to sally forth on to a dubious field, half-armed.

He fretted through the long meal, hardly troubled by the demands of Abbot Heribert, who was always abstemious with wine, and ate very frugally. Cadfael served and poured, proffered the finger-bowl and napkin, and waited with brooding resignation.

When the dishes were cleared away, musicians playing, and only the wine on the tables, the servitors in their turn might take their pick of what was left in the kitchens, and the cooks and scullions were already helping themselves and finding quiet corners to sit and eat. Cadfael collected a bread trencher and loaded it with broken meats, and took it out through the great court to Lame Osbern at the gate. There was a measure of wine to go with it. Why should not the poor rejoice for once at the king’s cost, even if that cost was handed on down the hierarchies until it fell at last upon the poor themselves? Too often they paid, but never got their share of the rejoicing.

Cadfael was walking back to the hall when his eye fell upon a lad of about twelve, who was sitting in the torchlight on the inner side of the gate house, his back comfortably against the wall, carving his meat into smaller pieces with a narrow-bladed knife. Cadfael had seen him earlier, in the kitchen, gutting fish with the same knife, but he had not seen the halt of it, and would not have seen it now if the boy had not laid it down beside him on the ground while he ate.

Cadfael halted and gazed, motionless. It was no kitchen knife, but a well-made dagger, and its hilt was a slender shaft of silver, rounded to the hand, showing delicate lines of filigree-work, and glowing round the collar of the blade with small stones. The hilt ended in a twist of silver broken off short. It was hard to believe, but impossible not to believe. Perhaps thought really is prayer.

He spoke to the boy very softly and evenly; the unwitting means of justice must not be alarmed. “Child, where did you get so fine a knife as that?”

The boy looked up, untroubled, and smiled. When he had gulped down the mouthful with which his cheeks were bulging, he said cheerfully: “I found it. I didn’t steal it.”

“God forbid, lad, I never thought it. Where did you find it? And have you the sheath, too?”

It was lying beside him in the shadow, he patted it proudly. “I fished them out of the river. I had to dive, but I found them. They really are mine, father, the owner didn’t want them, he threw them away. I suppose because this was broken. But it’s the best knife for slitting fish I ever had.”

So he threw them away! Not, however, simply because the jewelled hilt was broken.

“You saw him throw it into the river? Where was this, and when?”

“I was fishing under the castle, and a man came down alone from the water-gate to the bank of the river, and threw it in, and went back to the castle. When he’d gone I dived in where I saw it fall, and I found it. It was early in the evening, the same night all the bodies were carried down to the abbey — a week ago, come tomorrow. It was the first day it was safe to go fishing there again.”

Yes, it fitted well. That same afternoon Aline had taken Giles away to St Alkmund’s, and left Courcelle stricken and wild with unavailing regrets, and in possession of a thing that might turn Aline against him for ever, if once she set eyes on it. And he had done the only, the obvious thing, consigned it to the river, never thinking that the avenging angel, in the shape of a fisherboy, would redeem it to confront him when most he believed himself safe.

“You did not know who this man was? What like was he? What age?” For there remained the lingering doubt; all he had to support his conviction was the memory of Courcelle’s horrified face and broken voice, pleading his devotion over Giles Siward’s body.

The child hoisted indifferent shoulders, unable to picture for another what he himself had seen clearly and memorably. “Just a man. I didn’t know him. Not old like you, father, but quite old.” But to him anyone of his father’s generation would be old, though his father might be only a year or two past thirty.

“Would you know him if you saw him again? Could you point him out among many?”

“Of course!” said the boy almost scornfully. His eyes were young, bright, and very observant, if his tongue was none too fluent, of course he would know his man again.

“Sheathe your knife, child, and bring it, and come with me,” said Cadfael with decision. “Oh, don’t fret, no one will take your treasure from you, or if later you must give it up, you shall be handsomely paid for it. All I need is for you to tell again what you have told to me, and you shan’t be the loser.”

He knew, when he entered the hall with the boy beside him, a little apprehensive now but even more excited, that they came late. The music was stilled, and Hugh Beringar was on his feet and striding towards the dais on which the high table stood. They heard his voice raised, high and clear, as he mounted and stood before the king. “Your Grace, before you depart for Worcester, there is a matter on which I beg you’ll hear me and do right. I demand justice on one here in this company, who has abused his position in your confidence. He has stolen from the dead, to the shame of his nobility, and he has committed murder, to the shame of his manhood. I stand on my charges, to prove them with my body. And here is my gage!”

Against his own doubts, he had accepted Cadfael’s intuition, to the length of staking his life upon it. He leaned forward, and rolled something small and bright across the table, to clang softly against the king’s cup. The silence that had fallen was abrupt and profound. All round the high table heads craned to follow the flash of yellow brilliance that swayed irregularly over the board, limping on its broken setting, and then were raised to stare again at the young man who had launched it. The king picked up the topaz and turned it in his large hands, his face blank with incomprehension at first, and then wary and brooding. He, too, looked long at Hugh Beringar. Cadfael, picking his way between the lower tables, drew the puzzled boy after him and kept his eyes upon Adam Courcelle, who sat at his end of the table stiff and aware. He had command of his face, he looked no more astonished or curious than any of those about him; only the taut hand gripping his drinking-horn betrayed his consternation. Or was even that imagined, to fit in with an opinion already formed? Cadfael was no longer sure of his own judgment, a state he found distressing and infuriating.

“You have bided your time to throw your thunderbolt,” said the king at length, and looked up darkly at Beringar from the stone he was turning in his hands.

“I was loth to spoil your Grace’s supper, but neither would I put off what should not be put off. Your Grace’s justice is every honest man’s right.”

“You will need to explain much. What is this thing?”

“It is the tip of a dagger-hilt. The dagger to which it belongs is now by right the property of the lady Aline Siward, who has loyally brought all the resources of her house to your Grace’s support. It was formerly in the possession of her brother Giles, who was among those who garrisoned this castle against your Grace, and have paid the price for it. I say that it was taken from his dead body, an act not unknown among the common soldiery, but unworthy of knight or gentleman. That is the first offence. The second is murder — that murder of which your Grace was told by Brother Cadfael, of the Benedictine house here in Shrewsbury, after the count of the dead was made. Your Grace and those who carried out your orders were used as a shield for one who strangled a man from behind, as your Grace will well remember.”