Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

Cadfael followed a glum and taciturn Daniel through the passage between the shops. The hall door stood wide open on the yard, at this hour in long shadow, but with a pale blue sky radiant overhead. Within, timber-scented gloom closed on them. There was a chamber door on the right, the daughter’s room, and beyond that the household stores over which she presided. Beyond that doorway the stairs went up to the upper floor. Cadfael climbed the broad, unguarded wooden steps, needing no guidance here. Juliana’s chamber was the first door off the narrow gallery that ran along the side wall. Daniel, without a word, had slouched back out of the hall below, and made for the shop. For a few days, at least, he was the goldsmith. A good workman, too, they said, when he chose, or when his elders could hold him to it.

A woman came out of the room as Cadfael approached it. Tall, like her young brother, of the same rich brown colouring, past thirty years old and mistress of this household for the last fifteen of those years, Walter’s daughter Susanna had a cool dignity about her that went very ill with violence and crime. She had stepped into the shoes of her mother, whom she was said to resemble, as soon as Dame Juliana began to ail. The keys were hers, the stores were hers, the pillars and the roof of the house were held up by her, calmly and competently. A good girl, people said. Except that her girlhood was gone.

She smiled at Brother Cadfael, though even her smile was distant and cool. She had a pale, clear oval face with wide-set grey eyes, that went very strangely with her wealth of russet hair, braided and bound austerely on her head. Her housewifely gown was neat, dark and plain. The keys at her waist were her only jewellery.

They were old acquaintances. Cadfael could not claim more or better than that.

“No call to fret,” said the girl briskly. “She’s over it already, though frightened. In good case to take advice, I hope. Margery is in there with her.”

Margery? Of course, the bride! Strange office for a bride, the day after the wedding, to be nursing her bridegroom’s grandam. Margery Bele, Cadfael recalled, daughter to the cloth-merchant Edred Bele, had a very nice little fortune in line for her some day, since she had no brother, and brought with her a very proper dowry even now. Well worth a miserly family’s purchase for their heir. But was she, then, so bereft of suitors that this one offer must buy her? Or had she already seen and wanted that curly-haired, spoiled, handsome brat now no doubt frowning and fretting over his losses in the shop here?

“I must leave her to you and God,” said Susanna. “She takes no notice of anyone else. And I have the dinner to prepare.”

“And what of your father?”

“He’ll do well enough,” she said practically. “He was very mellow, it did him good service, he fell soft as a cushion. Go along and see him, when she’s done with you.” She gave him her wry smile, and slipped away silently down the stairs.

If Dame Juliana’s attack had affected her speech at all on this occasion, she had made a remarkable recovery. Flat on her pillows she might be, and indeed had better remain for a day or so, but her tongue wagged remorselessly all the time Cadfael was feeling her forehead and the beat of her heart, and drawing back an eyelid from a fierce grey eye to look closely at the pupil. He let her run on without response or encouragement, though he missed nothing of what she had to say.

“And I expected better of the lord abbot,” she said, curling thin, bluish lips, “than to take the part of a vagabond footpad, murderer and thief as he is, against honest craftsmen who pay their dues and their devotions like Christians. It’s great shame to you all to shelter such a rogue.”

“Your son, I’m told,” said Cadfael mildly, rummaging in his scrip for the little flask of powder dried from oak mistletoe, “is not dead, nor like to be yet, though the pack of your guests went baying off through the night yelling murder.”

“He well might have been a corpse,” she snapped. “And dead or no, either way this is a hanging matter, as well you know. And how if I had died, eh? Whose fault would that have been? There could have been two of us to bury, and the family left ruined into the bargain. Mischief enough for one wretched little minstrel to wreak in one night. But he’ll pay for it! Forty days or no, we shall be waiting for him, he won’t escape us.”

“If he ran from here loaded with your goods,” said Cadfael, shaking out a little powder into his palm, “he certainly brought none of them into the church with him. If he has your one miserly penny on him, that’s all.” He turned to the young woman who stood anxiously beside the head of the bed. “Have you wine there, or milk? Either does. Stir this into a cup of it.”

She was a small, round, homely girl, this Margery, perhaps twenty years old, with fresh, rosy colouring and a great untidy mass of yellow hair. Her eyes were round and wary. No wonder if she felt lost in this unfamiliar and disrupted household, but she moved quietly and sensibly, and her hands were steady on pitcher and cup.

“He had time to hide his plunder somewhere,” the old woman insisted grimly. “Walter was gone above half an hour before Susanna began to wonder, and went to look for him. The wretch could have been over the bridge and into the bushes by then.”

She accepted the drink that was presented to her lips, and swallowed it down readily. Whatever her dissatisfaction with abbot and abbey, she trusted Cadfael’s remedies. The two of them were unlikely to agree on any subject under the sun, but for all that they respected each other. Even this avaricious, formidable old woman, tyrant of her family and terror of her servants, had certain virtues of courage, spirit and honesty that were not to be despised.

“He swears he never touched your son or your gold,” said Cadfael. “As I grant he may be lying, so you had better grant that you and yours may be mistaken.”

She was contemptuous. She pushed away from under her wrinkled neck the skimpy braid of brittle grey hair that irritated her skin. “Who else could it have been? The only stranger, and with a grudge because I docked him the value of what he broke…”

“Of what he says some boisterous young fellow hustled him and caused him to break.”

“He must take a company as he finds it, wherever he hires himself out. And now I recall,” she said, “we put him out without those painted toys of his, wooden rings and balls. I want nothing of his, and what he’s taken of mine I’ll have back before the end. Susanna will give you the playthings for him, and welcome. He shall not be able to say we’ve matched his thievery.”

She would give him, scrupulously, what was his, but she would see his neck wrung without a qualm.

“Be content, you’ve already broken his head for him. One more blow like that, and you might have had the law crying murder on you . And you’d best listen to me soberly now! One more rage like that, and you’ll be your own death. Learn to take life gently and keep your temper, or there’ll be a third and worse seizure, and it may well be the last.”

She looked, for once, seriously thoughtful. Perhaps she had been saying as much to herself, even without his warning. “I am as I am,” she said, rather admitting than boasting.

“Be so as long as you may, and leave it to the young to fly into frenzies over upsets that will all pass, given time. Now here I’m leaving you this flask—it’s the decoction of heart trefoil, the best thing I know to strengthen the heart. Take it as I taught you before, and keep your bed today, and I’ll take another look at you tomorrow. And now,” said Cadfael, “I’m going along to see how Master Walter fares.”