Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

“Father Prior, we saw our fellow-townsman carried in here, dead…”

“No one had seen him since yesterday…”

“My neighbour and tenant, the locksmith,” cried Daniel. “Father robbed and assaulted, and now Master Peche fetched in dead!”

The prior held up a silencing hand, frowning them down. “Let one speak. Brother Cadfael, do you know what this is all about?”

Cadfael saw fit to tell the bare facts, without mention of any speculations that might be going on in his own mind. He took care to be audible to them all, though he doubted if they would be setting any limits to their own speculations, however careful he might be. “Madog here has found the man’s boat overturned, down-river past the castle,” he concluded. “And we have sent to notify the deputy-sheriff, the matter will be in his hands now. He should be here very soon.”

That was for the more excitable ears. There were some wild youngsters among them, the kind who are always at leisure to follow up every sensation, who might well lose their heads if they sighted their scapegoat. For the implication was already there, present in the very air. Walter robbed and battered, now his tenant dead, and all evil must light upon the same head.

“If the unfortunate man drowned in the river, having fallen from his boat,” said Robert firmly, “there can be no possibility of murder. That is a foolish and wicked saying.”

They began to bay from several directions. “Father Prior, Master Peche was not a foolhardy man…”

“He knew the Severn from his childhood…”

“So do many,” said Robert crisply, “who fall victim to it in the end, men no more foolhardy than he. You must not attribute evil to what is natural misfortune.”

“And why should natural misfortune crowd so on one house?” demanded an excited voice from the rear. “Baldwin was a guest the night Walter was struck down and his coffer emptied.”

“And next-door neighbour, and liked to nose out whatever was hidden. And who’s to say he didn’t stumble on some proof that would be very bad news to the villain that did the deed, and lurks here swearing to his innocence?”

It was out, they took it up on all sides. “That’s how it was! Baldwin found out something the wretch wouldn’t have been able to deny!”

“And he’s killed the poor man to stop his mouth…”

“A knock on the head and souse into the river…”

“No trick to turn his boat loose for the river to take down after him…”

Cadfael was relieved to see Hugh Beringar riding briskly in at the gatehouse then with a couple of officers behind him. This was getting all too predictable. When men have elected a villain, and one from comfortably outside their own ranks, without roots or kin, they need feel nothing for him, he is hardly a man, has no blood to be shed or heart to be broken, and whatever else needs a scapegoat will be laid on him heartily and in the conviction of righteousness. Nor will reason have much say in the matter. But he raised his voice powerfully to shout them down: “The man you accuse is absolutely clear of this, even if it were murder. He is in sanctuary here, dare not leave the precinct, and has not left it. The king’s officers wait for him outside, as you all know. Be ashamed to make such senseless charges!”

He said afterwards, rather resignedly than bitterly, that it was a precise measure of Liliwin’s luck that he should appear innocently from the cloister at that moment, bewildered and shocked by the incursion of a dead body into the pale, and coming anxiously to enquire about it, but utterly ignorant of any connection it might be thought to have with him. He came hastening out of the west walk, solitary, apart, marked at once by two or three of the crowd. A howl went up, hideously triumphant. Liliwin took it like a great blast of cold wind in his face, shrank and faltered, and his countenance, healing into smooth comeliness these last two days, collapsed suddenly into the disintegration of terror.

The wildest of the young bloods moved fast, hallooing, but Hugh Beringar moved faster. The raw-boned grey horse, his favourite familiar, clattered nimbly between quarry and hounds, and Hugh was out of the saddle with a hand on Liliwin’s shoulder, in a grip that could have been ambiguously arrest or protection, and his neat, dark, saturnine visage turned blandly towards the threatening assault. The foremost hunters froze discreetly, and thawed again only to draw back by delicate inches from challenging his command.

The nimble young novice had acquitted himself well, and shown an excellent grasp of his charge, for Hugh had the half of it clear in his mind already and understood its perilous application here. He kept his hold—let them read it however they would—on Liliwin throughout the questioning that followed, and listened as narrowly to Daniel Aurifaber’s heated witness as to Cadfael’s account.

“Very well! Father Prior, it would be as well if you yourself would convey this in due course to the lord abbot. The drowned man I must examine, as also the place where he was cast ashore and that where his boat came to rest. I must call upon the help of those who found out these matters. For the rest of you, if you have anything to say, say it now.”

Say it they did, intimidated but still smouldering, and determined to pour out their heat. For this was no chance death in the river, of that they were certain. This was the killing of a witness, close, curious, likely of all men to uncover some irrefutable evidence. He had found proof of the jongleur’s strenuously-denied guilt, and he had been slipped into the Severn to drown before he could open his mouth. They began by muttering it, they ended by howling it. Hugh let them rave. He knew they were no such monsters as they made themselves out to be, but knew, too, that given a following wind and a rash impulse, they could be, to their own damage and that of every other man.

They ran themselves out of words at length, and dwindled like sails bereft of wind.

“My men have been camped outside the gates here,” said Hugh then, calmly, “all this while and have seen no sign of this man you accuse. To my knowledge he has not set foot outside these walls. How, then, can he have had any hand in any man’s death?”

They had no answer ready to that, though they sidled and exchanged glances and shook their heads as though they knew beyond doubt that there must be an answer if they could only light on it. But out of the prior’s shadow the insinuating voice of Brother Jerome spoke up mildly:

“Pardon, Father Prior, but is it certain that the young man has been every moment within here? Only recall, last night Brother Anselm was enquiring after him and had not seen him since just after noon, and remarked, moreover, that he did not come to the kitchen for his supper as is customary. And being concerned for any guest of our house, I felt it my duty to look for him and did so everywhere. That was just when twilight was falling. I found no trace of him anywhere within the walls.”

They took it up gleefully on the instant and Liliwin, as Cadfael observed with a sigh, shook and swallowed hard, and could not get out a word, and drops of sweat gathered on his upper lip and ran down, to be licked off feverishly.

“You see, the good brother says it! He was not here! He was out about his foul business!”

“Say rather,” Prior Robert reproached gently, “that he could not be found.” But he was not altogether displeased.

“And go without his supper? A half-starved rat scorn his food unless he had urgent business elsewhere?” cried Daniel fiercely.

“Very urgent! He took his life in his hands to make sure Baldwin should not live to speak against him.”

“Speak up!” said Hugh drily, shaking Liliwin by the shoulder. “You have a tongue, too. Did you leave the abbey enclave at any time?”