Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

They had followed him out and gathered curiously to gaze. “Fox-stones, we call this,” said Cadfael, “for the two swellings at its root like pebbles. The commonest of its kind, and the earliest, but I don’t recall seeing it much here. This, like the broken twig of alder, he took down with him when he was pushed into the water. It might be possible to find that place somewhere on the town bank—where crowfoot and alder and fox-stones all grow together.”

The place where Baldwin Peche had been cast ashore had little to tell beyond what it had already told. The spot where Madog had turned down the dead man’s coracle on the meadow grass was well down-river, and so feather-light a boat, loose without a man’s weight aboard, might well have gone on bobbing gaily downstream a mile or more beyond, before the first strong curve and encroaching sandbank would inevitably have arrested it. They would have to comb the town bank, Madog reckoned, from below the Watergate, to establish where he had been assaulted and killed. A place where crowfoot grew inshore under alders, and fox-stones were in flower close to the very edge of the water.

The first two could be found together all along the reach. The third might occur in only one place.

Madog would search the riverside, Hugh would question the Aurifaber household and the immediate neighbours, as well as the tavern-keepers of the town, for everything they knew about the recent movements of Baldwin Peche: where he had last been seen, who had spoken with him, what he had had to say. For someone, surely, must have seen him after he left his shop about mid-morning of the previous day, which was the last John Boneth knew of him.

Meantime, Cadfael had business of his own, and much to think about. He came back from the riverside too late for Vespers, but in time to visit his workshop and make sure all was in order there before supper. Brother Oswin, left in charge alone, was developing a deft touch and a proprietorial pride. He had not broken or burned anything for several weeks.

After supper Cadfael went in search of Liliwin, and found him sitting in deep shadow in the darkest corner of the porch, drawn up defensively against the stone with his arms locked about his knees. At this hour the light was too far gone for work to proceed on the mending of his rebec, or his new studies under Brother Anselm, and it seemed that the day’s alarms had driven him back into distrust and despair, so that he hunched himself as small as possible into his corner and kept a wary face against the world. Certainly he gave Cadfael a bright, nervous, sidelong flash of his eyes as the monk hitched his habit comfortably and sat down beside him.

“Well, young man, have you fetched your supper tonight?” said Cadfael placidly.

Liliwin acknowledged that with a silent nod, watching him warily.

“It seems you did not yesterday, and Brother Jerome tells us that a maidservant came to visit you in the afternoon and brought you a basket of food from her lady’s table. He had, he said, occasion to admonish you both.” The silence beside him was charged and uneasy. “Now, granted Brother Jerome is uncommonly good at finding grounds for admonishment, yet I fancy there is but one maidservant whose presence here would have caused him qualms for the propriety of your conduct—let alone the well-being of your soul.” It was said with a smile in his voice, but he did not miss the slight shudder that convulsed the thin body beside him or the stiffening of the hands that were clasped so tightly round Liliwin’s knees. Now why in the world should the lad quake at the mention of his soul’s health, just when Cadfael was becoming more and more convinced that he had no guilt whatever upon his conscience, bar an understandable lie or two.

“Was it Rannilt?”

“Yes,” said Liliwin, just audibly.

“She came with good leave? Or of her own accord?”

Liliwin told him, in as few words as possible.

“So that was how it befell. And Jerome bade her do her errand and go, and stood over you to make sure she obeyed. And it was from that hour, as I understand—after he had witnessed her going—that no one saw you again until Prime this morning. Yet you say you were here within the pale and what you say, that I accept. Did you speak?”

“No,” said Liliwin, none too happily. Not speech, exactly, but a small, shamed sound hurriedly suppressed.

“You let her go somewhat tamely, did you not?” remarked Cadfael critically. “Seeing the magnitude of the step she had taken for you.”

The evening was closing down tranquilly all round them, there was no one else to hear, and Liliwin had spent much of the day wrestling alone with the belated conviction of his mortal sin. Terror of men was surely enough to bear, without being suddenly visited by the terror of damnation, let alone the awful sense of having brought about the damnation of another person as dear to him as himself. He uncurled abruptly from his dark corner, slid his legs over the edge of the stone bench, and clutched Cadfael impulsively by the arm.

“Brother Cadfael, I want to tell you… I must tell someone! I did— we did, but the fault was mine!—we did a terrible thing. I never meant it, but she was going away from me, and I might never see her again, and so it happened. A mortal sin and I’ve caused her to share in it!” The words spurted out like blood from a new wound, but the first flow eased him. From incoherent he grew quiet, and his shaking subsided and was gone. “Let me tell you, and then do whatever you think is just. I couldn’t bear it that she must go so soon, and it might be for ever. We went through the church, and I hid her within there, behind the altar in the transept chapel. There’s a space behind there, I found it when I came new here and was afraid they might come for me in the night. I knew I could creep in there, and she is smaller than I. And when that brother had gone away, I went back to her there. I took my blankets in with me, and the new clothes she brought me—it’s hard and chill on the stone. All I wanted,” said Liliwin simply, “was to be with her as long as we dared. We did not even talk very much. But then we forgot where we were, and what was due…”

Brother Cadfael said no word either to help or check him, but waited in silence.

“I couldn’t think of anything but that she would go away, and I might never be with her again,” blurted Liliwin miserably, “and I knew she was in the selfsame pain. We never intended evil, but we committed a terrible sacrilege. Here in the church, behind one of the holy altars—We couldn’t bear it… We lay together as lovers do!”

He had said it, it was out, the very worst of it. He sat humbly waiting for condemnation, resigned to whatever might come, even relieved at having shifted the burden to other shoulders. There was no exclamation of horror, but this brother was not so given to prodigal admonishment as that sour one who had frowned on Rannilt.

“You love this girl?” asked Cadfael after some thought, and very placidly.

“Yes, I do love her! With all my heart I want her for my wife. But what is there for her if I am brought out of here to trial and the matter goes blackly for me? As they mean it should! Don’t let it be known that she has been with me. Her hopes of marriage are wretched enough, a poor servant-girl without folk of her own. I don’t want to damage them further. She may still get a decent man, if I…” He let that die away unfinished. It was no comforting thought.

“I think,” said Cadfael, “she would rather have the man she has already chosen. Where mutual love is, I find it hard to consider any place too holy to house it. Our Lady, according to the miracles they tell of her, has been known to protect even the guilty who sinned out of love. You might try a few prayers to her, that will do no harm. Don’t trouble too much for what was done under such strong compulsion and pure of any evil intent. And how long, then,” enquired Cadfael, eyeing his penitent tolerantly, “did you remain hidden there? Brother Anselm was worried about you.”