Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

He had sworn the other version, too. But fear does so, the fear bred of a lifetime’s hounding and battering.

“And then you left? And you saw no more of him? More to the point still, did you see ought of any other who may have been lurking as you did, and entered to him afterwards?”

“No, there was no one. I went, I was glad to go, it was all over. If he lives, he’ll tell you he gave me the second penny.”

“He lives, and will,” said Cadfael. “It was not a fatal blow. But he’s said nothing yet.”

“But he will, he will, he’ll tell you how I begged him, and how he took pity on me. I was afraid,” he said quivering, “I was afraid! If I’d said I went there, it would have been all over with me.”

“Well, but consider,” said Cadfael reasonably, “when Walter is his own man again, and comes forth with that very tale, how would it look if he brought it out when you had said no word of it? And besides, when his wits settle and he recalls what befell, it may well be that he’ll be able to name his attacker, and clear you of all blame.”

He was watching closely as he said it, for to an innocent man that notion would come as powerful comfort, but to a guilty one as the ultimate terror; and Liliwin’s troubled countenance gradually cleared and brightened into timid hope. It was the first truly significant indication of how far he should be believed.

“I never thought of that. They said murdered. A murdered man can’t accuse or deliver. If I’d known then he was well alive I would have told the whole truth. What must I do now? It will look bad to have to own I lied.”

“What you should do for the best,” Cadfael said after some thought, “is let me take this word myself to the lord abbot, not as my discovery—for the evidence is gone with a puff of wind—but as your confession. And if Hugh Beringar comes tonight, as I hope and hear he may, then you may tell the tale over again to him in full, yourself. Whatever follows then, you may rest out your days of grace here with a clear conscience and truth will speak on your side.”

Hugh Beringar of Maesbury, deputy sheriff of the shire, reached the abbey for Vespers, after a long conference with the sergeant concerning the lost treasury. In search of it, every yard of ground between the goldsmith’s house and the bushes from which Liliwin had been flushed at midnight had been scoured without result. Every voice in the town declared confidently that the jongleur was the guilty man, and had successfully hidden his plunder before he was sighted and pursued.

“But you, I think,” said Beringar, walking back towards the gatehouse with Cadfael beside him and twitching a thin dark eyebrow at his friend, “do not agree. And not wholly because this enforced guest of yours is young and hungry and in need of protection. What is it convinces you? For I do believe you are convinced he’s wronged.”

“You’ve heard his story,” said Cadfael. “But you did not see his face when I put it into his head that the goldsmith may get back his memory of the night in full, and be able to put a name or a face to his assailant. He took that hope to him like a blessed promise. The guilty man would hardly do so.”

Hugh considered that gravely and nodded agreement. “But the fellow is a player, and has learned hard to keep command of his face in all circumstances. No blame to him, he has no other armour. To appear innocent of all harm must now be his whole endeavour.”

“And you think I am easily fooled,” said Cadfael drily.

“Far from it. Yet it is well to remember and admit the possibility.” And that was also true, and Hugh’s dark smile, slanted along his shoulder, did nothing to blunt the point. “Though I grant it would be nothing new for you to be the only creature who holds against the grain, and makes his wager good.”

“Not the only one,” said Cadfael almost absently, with Rannilt’s wan, elfin face before his mind’s eye. “There’s one other more certain than I.” They had reached the arch of the gatehouse, the broad highway of the Foregate crossed beyond, and the evening was just greening and dimming towards twilight. “You say you found the place where the lad bedded down for the night? Shall we take a look there together?”

They passed through the arch, an odd pair to move so congenially side by side, the monk squat and square and sturdy, rolling in his gait like a seaman, and well launched into his sixtieth year, the sheriff’s deputy more than thirty year younger and half a head taller, but still a small man, of graceful, nimble movements and darkly saturnine features. Cadfael had seen this young man win his appointment fairly, and a wife to go with it, and had witnessed the christening of their first son only a few months ago. They understood each other better than most men ever do, but they could still take opposing sides in a matter of the king’s justice.

They turned towards the bridge that led into the town, but turned aside again on the right, a little way short of the riverside, into the belt of trees that fringed the road. Beyond, towards the evening gleam of the Severn, the ground declined to the lush level of the main abbey gardens, along the meadows called the Gaye. They could see the green, clear light through the branches as they came to the place where Liliwin had settled down sadly to sleep before leaving this unfriendly town. And it was a nest indeed, rounded and coiled into the slope of thick new grass, and so small, like the haunt of a dormouse.

“He started up in alarm, in one leap clear of his form, like a flushed hare,” said Hugh soberly. “There are young shoots broken here—do you see?—where he crashed through. This is unquestionably the place.” He looked round curiously, for Cadfael was casting about among the bushes, which grew thickly here for cover. “What are you seeking?”

“He had his rebec in a linen bag on his shoulder,” said Cadfael. “In the dark a branch caught the string and jerked it away, and he dared not stop to grope after it. So he told me, like a man bereaved. I am sure that was truth. I wonder what became of it?”

He found the answer that same evening, but not until he had parted from Hugh and was on his way back to the gatehouse. It was a luminous evening and Cadfael was in no hurry to go in, and had plenty of time before Compline. He stood to watch the leisurely evening walk of the Foregate worthies, and the prolonged games of the urchins of the parish of Holy Cross reluctant to go home to their beds, just as he was. A dozen or so of them swept by in a flurry of yelling and laughter, shrill as starlings, some still half-naked from the river, but not yet so cold that they must make for the home hearth. They were kicking a shapeless rag ball among them, and some of them swiping at it with sticks, and one with something broader and shorter. Cadfael heard the impact of hollow wood, and the thrumming reverberation of one surviving string. A lamentable sound, like a cry for help with little expectation that the plea would be heard.

The imp with this weapon loitered, dragging his implement in the dust. Cadfael pursued, and drew alongside like a companion ship keeping station rather than a pirate boarding. The brat looked up and grinned, knowing him. He had but a short way to go home, and was tired of his plaything.

“Now what in the world have you found there?” said Cadfael amicably. “And where did you happen on such an odd thing?”

The child waved a hand airily back towards the trees that screened the Gaye. “It was lying in there, in a cloth bag, but I lost that down by the water. I don’t know what it is. I never saw a thing like it. But it’s no use that I can see.”

“Did you find,” asked Cadfael, eyeing the wreckage, “a stick, with fine hairs stretched along it, that went with this queer thing?”