Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

He was eased, if not verily glad, when Hugh came back to relieve him of his watch.

He sat slack and discouraged in the spring grass under the hedge of bushes, and Liliwin came plucking softly but urgently at his sleeve. “Brother Cadfael, come with me! Come!” The whisper was excited and hopeful, where hope was in no very lavish supply.

“What is it? Come with you where?”

“He said there’s no other way out,” whispered Liliwin, tugging at the sleeve he held, “and by that token none in, but there is… there could be. Come and see!”

Cadfael went where he was led, up through the bushes on the headland, and along the slope in cover, just below the level of the stable roof and at no great distance from it, to the western end of the building. The timbers of the roof projected above the low gable, the fellow to the eastern one in which Iestyn crouched on watch. “See there—the starlight shows dappling. They let in a lattice there for air.”

Peering narrowly, Cadfael could just discern a square shape that might well be what Liliwin described, but measured barely the span of hand and forearm either way, as close as he could estimate. The interstices between the slats, which the straining eye could either discern or imagine for a moment, only to lose them again, were surely too small even to admit a fist. Nor was there any way of reaching them, short of a ladder or the light weight and claws of a cat, even though the timbers of the wall below were rough and uneven.

“That?” breathed Cadfael, aghast. “Child, a spider might get up there and get in, but scarcely a man.”

“Ah, but I’ve been down there, I know. There are toe-holds enough. And I think one of the slats is hanging loose already, and there’ll be others ready to give way. If a man could get in there, while you hold them busy at the other end… She is up there, I know it! You heard, when they ran to hold her, how far it was to run.”

It was true. Moreover, if she had any choice she would be huddled as far away from her captors as she could get.

“But, boy, even if you stripped away two or three of the boards—could you do more, unheard? I doubt it! There’s not a man among us could get through that keyhole to her. No, not if you had time to strip the whole square.”

“Yes, I can ! You forget,” whispered Liliwin eagerly, “I’m small and light and I’m an acrobat, bred to it from three or four years old. It’s my craft. I can reach her. Where a cat can go I can go. And she’s even smaller than I, though she may not be trained as a tumbler. If I had a rope, I could make it fast there, and take my time opening up the way for her. Oh, surely, surely it’s worth the attempt! We’ve no other way. And I can do it, and I will !”

“Wait!” said Cadfael. “Sit you here in cover, and I’ll go broach it to Hugh Beringar and get you your rope, and make ready to hold them fast in talk, as far as may be away from you. Not a word, not a movement until I come back.”

“No madder than whatever else we may do to break this dam,” said Hugh when he had listened and considered. “If you put some trust in it, I’ll go with you. Can he really creep in there, do you think? Is it possible?”

“I’ve seen him tie himself in a knot a serpent might be proud of,” said Cadfael, “and if he says there’s room enough there for him to pass, I say he’s the better judge of that than I. It’s his profession, he takes pride in it. Yes, I put my trust in him.”

“We’ll send to fetch him his rope, and a chisel, too, to pry loose the slats, but he must wait for them. We’ll make good certain they stay wakeful and watchful at this end, and try a feint or two, if need be, short of driving them to panic. And let him take his time, for I think we might be advised to wait for the first light, to give Alcher a clear view of that hatch and whatever body fills it, and a shaft fitted and aimed in case of need. If we must let a decent poor lad risk his life, at least we’ll stand ready with all the cover we can give him.”

“I had rather,” said Cadfael sadly, “there should be no killing at all.”

“So would I,” agreed Hugh grimly, “but if there must be, rather the guilty than the innocent.”

The dawn was still more than an hour and a half away when they brought the rope Liliwin needed, but already the eastern sky had changed, turned from deepest blue to paler blue-green, and a faint line of green paler still outlined the curves of the fields behind them, and the towered hill of the town.

“Rather round my waist than my neck,” whispered Liliwin hardily, as Cadfael fastened the rope about him among the bushes.

“There, I see you have the true spirit in you. God keep you, the pair of you! But can she come down the rope, even if you reach her? Girls are not such acrobats as you.”

“I can guide her. She’s so light and small, she can hold by the rope and walk backwards down the wall… Only keep them busy there at the far end.”

“But go slowly and quietly, no haste,” cautioned Cadfael, anxious as for a son going into battle. “I shall be running messenger between. And daylight will be on our side, not on theirs.”

Liliwin kicked off his shoes. He had holes in the toes of both feet of his hose, Cadfael saw. Perhaps none the worse for this enterprise, but when he came to be sent out into the world—God so willing, as surely God must—he must go better provided.

The boy slid silently down from the headland to the foot of the stable wall, felt with stretched arms above his head, found grips a heavier man would never have considered, set a toe to a first hold, and drew himself up like a squirrel on to the timbers.

Cadfael waited and watched until he had seen the rope slipped through the firmest boards of the lattice and made fast, and the first rotten slat prised free, slowly and carefully, and let fall silently at arm’s-length into the thick grass below. More than half an hour had passed by then. From time to time he caught the sound of voices in weary but alert exchanges to eastward. The criss-cross of boards at the air-vent showed perceptibly now. The removal of one board had uncovered a space big enough to let a cat in and out, but surely nothing larger or less agile. The vault of the sky lightened very gradually before there was any visible source of light.

Liliwin worked with a bight of the tethered rope fast round him, and half-naked toes braced into the timbers of the wall. He had begun patiently prising loose the second slat, when Cadfael made his way back in cover to report what he knew.

“God knows it looks impossible, but the lad knows his business, and if he is sure he can pass, as a cat knows by its whiskers, then I take his word for it. But for God’s sake keep this parley alive.”

“Take it over for me,” said Hugh, drawing back with eyes still fixed on the hatch. “Only some few moments… A fresh voice causes them to prick their ears afresh.”

Cadfael took up the vain pleas he had used before. The voice that answered him was hoarse with weariness, but still defiant.

“We shall not go from here,” said Cadfael, roused out of his own weariness by a double anxiety, “until all these troubled here, body and soul, have freedom and quiet, whether in this world or another. And who so prevents to the last, on him the judgement fall! Nevertheless, God’s mercy is infinite to those who seek it, However late, however feebly.”

“The light will not be long,” Hugh was saying at that same moment to Alcher, who was the finest marksman in the castle garrison, and had long since chosen his ground with the dawn in view, and found no reason to change it. “Be ready, the instant I shall call, to put an arrow clean into that hatch, and through whoever lurks there. But no shooting unless I do call. And pray God I am not forced to it.”