Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

Liliwin shook his head firmly. “I didn’t even know it went beyond the wall until the day Rannilt came here. I could see as far as the wall when I went through to the hall in the morning, but I thought it ended there. It was Rannilt told me the drying-ground was beyond there. It was their washing day, you see, she’d done all the scrubbing and rinsing, and had it all ready to go out by mid-morning. But usually she has the dinner to prepare as well, and watches the weather, and fetches the clothes in before evening. But that day Mistress Susanna had said she would see to everything, and let Rannilt come here to visit me. That was truly kind!”

Strange how sitting here listening to the boy’s recollections brought up clearly the picture of that drying-ground he had never seen but through Rannilt’s eyes, the slope of grass, the pebbles for anchors, the alders screening the riverside, the town wall shielding the sward from the north and leaving it open to the south…

“And I remember she said Mistress Susanna had her shoes and the hems of her skirts wet when she came in from putting out the washing and found Rannilt crying. But still she took note first for my girl being so sad… Never mind my wet feet, she said, what of your wet eyes? Rannilt told me so!”

All ready to go out by mid-morning… As Baldwin Peche had gone out in mid-morning for the last time. The fish rising… Cadfael, away pursuing his own thoughts, suddenly baulked, realising, belatedly, what he had heard.

“What was that you said? She had her feet and skirts wet?”

“The river was a little high then,” explained Liliwin, undisturbed. “She’d slipped on the smooth grass into the shallows. Hanging out a shirt on the alders…”

And she came in calmly, and sent the maidservant away so that none other but herself should go to bring in the linen. What other reason would any have for passing through the wicket in the wall? And only yesterday Rannilt had been sitting in the doorway to have the light on her work, mending a rent in the skirt of a gown. And the brown at the hem had been mottled and faded, leaving a tide-mark of dark colour round the pallor…

“Brother Cadfael,” called the porter softly from the archway into the cloister, “Hugh Beringar is here for you. He said you would be expecting him.”

“I am expecting him,” said Cadfael, recalling himself with an effort from the Aurifaber hall. “Bid him come through here. I think we have word for each other.”

It was not quite dark, the sky being so clear, and Hugh knew his way everywhere within these walls. He came briskly, made no objection to Liliwin’s presence, and sat down at once in the porch to show the silver coin in his palm.

“I’ve already viewed it in a better light. It’s a silver penny of the sainted Edward, king before the Normans came, a beautiful piece minted in this town. The moneyer was one Godesbrond, there are a few of his pieces to be found, but few indeed in the town where they were struck. Aurifaber’s inventory listed three such. And this was stuck between the boards of the bucket in their well the morning after the theft. A scrap of coarse blue cloth, the lad says, was caught in with it, but he thought nothing of that. But it seems to me that whoever emptied Aurifaber’s coffer tipped all into a blue cloth bag and dropped it into that bucket—the work of a mere few moments—to be retrieved later at leisure in the dark hours, before the earliest riser went to draw water.”

“And whoever hoisted it out again,” said Cadfael, “snagged a corner of the bag on a splinter… a small tear, just enough to let through one of the smaller coins. It could be so. And Peche’s boy had found this?”

“He was the earliest riser. He went to draw water and lit on this. He took it to his master, and was rewarded, and told not to let it out to any other ears that the locksmith possessed any such. A great value, Peche said, he set on this.”

So he well might, if it meant to him that someone there in that very household must be the thief, and could be milked of the half of his gains in return for silence. The fish were rising! Now Cadfael began gradually to comprehend all that had happened. He forgot the young man hugging his knees and stretching his amazed ears in the corner of the bench close to them. Hugh had hardly given the boy a thought, so silent and so still he was.

“I think,” said Cadfael, picking his way without too much haste, for there might yet be pitfalls, “that when he saw this he knew, or could divine with very fair certainty, which of that household must be the robber. He foresaw good pickings. What would he ask? A half-share in the booty? But it would not have made any difference had he been far more modest than that, for the one he approached had the force and the passion and the ruthlessness to act at once and waste no time on parley. Listen to me, Hugh, and remember that night. They sought Master Walter, found him stunned in his shop, and carried him up to his bed. And then someone—no one seems certain who—cried that it must be the jongleur who had done this, and sent the whole mob haring out after him, as we here witnessed. Who, then, was left there to tend the stricken man, and the old woman threatened by her fit?”

“The women,” said Hugh.

“The women. Of whom the bride was left to care for the victims upstairs in their own chambers. It was Susanna who ran for the physician. Very well, so she did. But did she run for him at once, or take but a few moments to run first to the well and place what she found there in safer hiding?”

In a brief and awed silence they sat staring at each other.

“Is it possible?” said Hugh marvelling. “ His daughter ?”

“Among humankind all things are possible. Consider! This locksmith had the key to the mystery put into his hands. If he had been honest he would have gone straight to Walter or to Daniel and showed it, and told what he knew. He did not, for he was not honest. He meant to gain by what he had found out. If he did not approach the one he believed guilty until the Monday, it was because he had no chance until then of doing so in private. He was as able as we to remember how all the menfolk had gone baying after Liliwin here, and to reason that it was a woman who reclaimed the treasury from the well and put it safely away until all the hue and cry should be over, and a stray lad, with luck, hanged for the deed. And who kept the keys of the house and had the best command over all its hiding-places? He chose Susanna. And on Monday his time came, when she took her basket of linen and went down through the wall to spread it out in the drying-ground. About mid-morning Baldwin Peche was last seen in his shop, and went off with some remark about the fish rising. No one saw him, living, ever again.”

Liliwin, hitherto mute in his corner, leaned forward with a soft, protesting cry: “You can’t mean it! She… But she was the only one, the only one who showed Rannilt some kindness. She let her come to me for her comfort… She did not truly believe that I …” He saw in time where he was headed, and halted with a great groan.

“She had good reason to know that you never harmed her father’s person or stole his goods. The best! And a sound reason, also, for sending Rannilt away out of the house so that she herself, and none but she, should fetch in the washing, or have any other occasion to go down to the riverside, where she had left the extortioner dead.”

“I cannot believe,” whispered Liliwin, shaking, “that she could, even if she would, do such a thing. A woman… kill?”

“You underrate Susanna,” said Cadfael grimly. “So did all her kin. And women have killed, many a time.”

“Granted, then, that he followed her down to the river,” said Hugh. “You had better go on. Tell us what you believe happened there, and how this thing came about.”