Ellis Peters: The Sanctuary Sparrow

Brother Oswin came, burdened with a scrip full of wine-flask and unguent-jar, a roll of clean linen under one arm, and a bowl of water in both hands. His lighted candle he must have stuck to the bench in the porch, where a tiny, flickering light played. He arrived abrupt, urgent and glowing, the light-brown curls round his tonsure erected like a thorn-hedge. He laid down his bowl, laid out his linen, and leaned eagerly to support the patient as Cadfael drew him to the light.

“Be thankful for small mercies, I see no sign of broken bones in you. You’ve been trampled and hacked, and I make no doubt you’re a lump of bruises, but that we can deal with. Lean here your head—so! That’s a nasty welt across your temple and cheek. A cudgel did that. Hold still, now!”

The fair head leaned submissively into his hands. The weal grazed the crest of the left cheekbone, and broke the skin along the left side of his head, oozing blood into the pale hair. As Cadfael bathed it, stroking back the tangled locks, the skin quivered under the cold water, and the muck of dust and drying blood drained away. This was not the newest of his injuries. The smoothing of the linen over brow, cheek and chin uncovered a thin, pure, youthful face.

“What’s your name, child?” said Cadfael.

“Liliwin,” said the young man, still eyeing him warily.

“Saxon. So are your eyes, and your hair. Where born? Not here along the borders.”

“How should I know?” said the youth, listless. “In a ditch, and left there. The first I know is being taught to tumble, as soon as I walked.”

He was past fending for himself; perhaps he was even past lying. As well to get out of him whatever he was willing to tell, now, while he was forced to surrender himself to the hands of others, with his own helplessness like a weight of black despair on him.

“Is that how you’ve lived? Travelling the road, cutting capers at fairs, doing a little juggling and singing for your supper? It’s a hard life, with more kicks than kindnesses, I dare say. And from a child?” He could guess at the manner of training that went to school a childish body to the sort of contortions a fairground crowd would gape at. There were ways of hurting, by way of punishment, without spoiling the agility of growing limbs. “And solitary now? They’re gone, are they, that picked you out of your ditch and bent you to their uses?”

“I ran from them as soon as I was half-grown,” said the soft, weary voice. “Three mummers padding the road, a lad come by for nothing was a gift to them, they had their worth out of me. All I owed them was kicks and blows. I work for myself now.”

“At the same craft?”

“It’s all I know. But that I know well,” said Liliwin, suddenly raising his head proudly, and not wincing from the sting of the lotion bathing his grazed cheek.

“And that’s what brought you to Walter Aurifaber’s house last night,” said Cadfael mildly, stripping back a torn sleeve from a thin, sinewy forearm marked by a long slash from a knife. “To play at his son’s wedding-feast.”

One dark-blue eye peered up at him sidelong. “You know them?”

“There are few people in the town that I don’t know. I tend many folk within the walls, the old Aurifaber dame among them. Yes, I know that household. But it had slipped my mind that the goldsmith was marrying his son yesterday.” Knowing them as well as he did, he was sure that for all their wish to make an impressive show, they would not pay out money enough to attract the better sort of musicians, such as the nobility welcomed as guests. But a poor vagrant jongleur trying his unpromising luck in the town, that they might consider. All the more if his performance outdid his appearance, and genuine music could be had dead cheap. “So you heard of the celebration, and got yourself hired to entertain the guests. Then what befell, to bring the jollity to such a grim ending? Reach me here a pad of cloth, Oswin, and hold the candle nearer.”

“They promised me three pence for the evening,” said Liliwin, trembling now as much with indignation as fear and cold, “and they cheated me. It was none of my fault! I played and sang my best, did all my tricks… The house was full of people, they crowded me, and the young fellows, they were drunk and lungeous, they hustled me! A juggler needs room! It was not my fault the pitcher was broken. One of the youngsters jumped to catch the balls I was spinning, he knocked me flying, and the pitcher went over from the table, and smashed. She said it was her best… the old beldame… she screeched at me, and hit out with her stick…”

“She did this?” questioned Cadfael gently, touching the swathed wound on the jongleur’s temple.

“She did! Lashed out like a fury, and swore the thing was worth more than I’d earned, and I must pay for it. And when I complained, she threw me a penny, and told them to put me out!”

So she would, thought Cadfael ruefully, seeing her life-blood spilled if a prized possession was broken, she who hoarded every groat that was not spent on her perverse tenderness for her soul, which brought alms flowing to the abbey altars, and rendered Prior Robert her cautious friend.

“And they did it?” It would not have been a gentle ejection, they would all have been inflamed and boisterous by them. “How late was that? An hour before midnight?”

“More. None of them had left, then. They tossed me out of door, and wouldn’t let me in again.” He had long experience of his own helplessness in similar circumstances, his voice sagged despondently. “I couldn’t even pick up my juggling balls, I’ve lost them all.”

“And you were left chill in the night, thrown out of the burgage. Then how came this hunt after you?” Cadfael smoothed a turn of his linen roll round the thin arm that jerked in his hands with frustrated rage. “Hold still, child, that’s right! I want this slit well closed, it will knit clean if you take ease. What did you do?”

“Crept away,” said Liliwin bitterly. “What else could I do? The watch let me out of the wicket in the town gate, and I crossed the bridge and slipped into the bushes this side, meaning to make off from this town in the morning, and make for Lichfield. There’s a decent grove above the path down to the river, the other side the highroad from the abbey here, I went in there and found me a good place in the grass to sleep the night out.” But with his grievance boiling and festering in him, and his helplessness over and above, if what he told was truth. And long acquaintance with injustice and despite does not reconcile the heart.

“Then how comes it the whole pack of them should be hunting you an hour or so later, and crying murder and theft on you?”

“As God sees me,” blurted the youth, quaking, “I know no more than you! I was near to sleeping when I heard them come howling across the bridge. I’d no call to suppose it was ought to do with me, not until they were streaming down into the Foregate, but it was a noise to make any man afraid, whether he’d anything on his conscience or no. And then I could hear them yelling murder and vengeance, and crying it was the mumper who did it, and baying for my blood. They spread out and began to beat the bushes, and I ran for my life, being sure they’d find me. And all the pack of them came roaring after. They were all but plucking at my hair when I stumbled in here at the door. But God strike me blind if I know what I’m held to have done—and dead if I’m lying to you now!”

Cadfael completed his bandage, and drew the tattered sleeve down over it. “According to young Daniel, it seems his father’s been struck down and his strong-box emptied. A poor way of rounding off a wedding night! Do you tell me all this can have happened after you were put out without your pay? On the face of it, that might turn their minds to you and your grievance, if they were casting about for a likely felon.”