The Sanctuary Sparrow Part 2

"Rannilt is daft about the boy," said Susanna simply, scornfully tolerant of folly. "He ate with her in the kitchen, and played and sang for her. She's sorry for him. But what's done is done."

"And when you found your father lying so, of course you ran back here to call help for him?"

"I couldn't lift him alone. I cried out what had happened, and those guests who were still here came running, and Iestyn, our journeyman, came rus.h.i.+ng up the stairs from the undercroft where he sleeps-he'd gone to bed an hour or more earlier, knowing he'd have to man the shop alone this morning..." Of course, in expectation of the goldsmith's thick head and his son's late tarrying with his bride. "We carried father up to his bed, and someone-I don't know who was the first-cried out that this was the jongleur's doing, and that he couldn't be far, and out they all went streaming, every man, to hunt for him. And I left Margery to watch by father, while I ran off to fetch Master Arnald."

"You did what was possible," Cadfael allowed. "Then when was it Dame Juliana took her fit?"

"While I was gone. She'd gone to her chamber, she may even have been asleep, though with the larking and laughing in the gallery I should doubt it. But I was hardly out of the door when she hobbled along to father's room, and saw him lying, with his b.l.o.o.d.y head, and senseless. She clutched at her heart, Margery says, and fell down. But it was not such a bad fit this time. She was already wake and talking," said Susanna, "when I came back with the physician. We had help then for both of them."

"Well, they've both escaped the worst," said Cadfael, brooding, "for this time. Your father is a strong, hale man, and should live his time out without harm. But for the dame, more shocks of the kind could be the death of her, and so I've told her."

"The loss of her treasury," said Susanna drily, "was shock enough to kill her. If she lives through that, she's proof against all else until her full time comes. We are a durable kind, Brother Cadfael, very durable."

Cadfael turned aside from leaving by the pa.s.sage to the street, and entered Walter Aurifaber's workshop by the side door. Here Walter would have let himself in, when he came burdened with several choice items in gold and silver, enamel and fine stones, to lock them up with his other wealth in the strong-box; from which, in all likelihood, Mistress Margery would have had much ado to get them out again for her wearing. Unless, of course, that soft and self-effacing shape concealed a spirit of unsuspected toughness. Women can be very deceptive.

As he entered the shop from the pa.s.sage, the street door was on his left, there was a trestled show-table, cloth-covered, and the rear part of the room was all narrow shelving, the small furnace, cold, and the work-benches, at which Daniel was working on a setting for a clouded mossa gate, brows locked in a gloomy knot. But his fingers were deft enough with the fine tools, for all his preoccupation with the family misfortunes. The journeyman was bent over a scale on the bench beside the furnace, weighing small tablets of silver. A st.u.r.dy, compact person, this Iestyn, by the look of him about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, with cropped, straight dark hair in a thick cap. He turned his head, hearing someone entering, and his face was broad but bony, dark-skinned, thick-browed, deep-eyed, wholly Welsh. A better-humoured man than his master, though not so comely.

At sight of Cadfael, Daniel put his tools aside. "You've seen them both? How is it with them?"

"The pair of them will do well enough for this time," said Cadfael. "Master Walter is under his own physician, and held to be out of any danger, if his memory is shaken. Dame Juliana is over this fit, but any further shock could be mortal, it's only to be expected. Few reach such an age."

By the young man's face, he was pondering whether any ever should. But for all that, he knew she favoured him, and had a use for her indulgence. He might even be fond of her, after his fas.h.i.+on, and as far as affection was possible between sour age and impatient youth. He did not seem altogether a callous person, only spoiled. Sole heirs of merchant houses can be as deformed by their privilege as those of baronies.

In the far corner of the shop Walter's pillaged strong-box stood, a big, iron-banded wooden coffer, securely bolted to floor and wall. Intent on impressing the magnitude of the crime upon any representative of the abbey that insisted on sheltering the felon, Daniel unlocked the double locks and heaved up the lid to display what was left within, a few heavy dishes of plate, too c.u.mbersome to be concealed about the person. The tale he told, and would tell and retell indignantly as often as he found a listener, matched Susanna's account. Iestyn, called to bear witness at every other aggrieved sentence, could only nod his black head solemnly, and confirm every word.

"And you are all sure," said Cadfael, "that the jongleur must be the guilty man? No thought of any other possible thief? Master Walter is known to be a wealthy man. Would a stranger know how wealthy? I daresay there are some here in the town may well envy a craftsman better-off than themselves."

"That's a true word," agreed Daniel darkly. "And there's one no farther away than the width of the yard that I might have wondered about, if he had not been there in my eye every minute of the time. But he was, and there's an end. I fancy he was the first to hit on it that it was the jongleur we wanted."

"What, your tenant the locksmith? A harmless soul enough, I should have thought. Pays his rent and minds his shop, like the rest."

"His man John Boneth minds the shop," said Daniel, with a snort of laughter, "and the daft lad helps him. Peche is more often out poking his long nose into other people's business, and carrying the gossip round the ale-houses than tending to his craft. A smiling, sneaking toady of a man to your face, and back-biting as soon as you turn away. There's no sneak-thievery I'd put past him, if you want to know. But he was there in the hall the whole time, so it was not he. No, make no mistake, we were on the right trail when we set the pack after that rogue Liliwin, and so it will be proved in the end."

They were all in the same story, and the story might well be true. There was but one point to be put to them counter: where would a stranger to the town, and out in the dark, stow away so valuable a booty safely enough and secretly enough to hide it from all others, and yet be able to recover it himself? The aggrieved family might brush that aside. Cadfael found it a serious obstacle to belief.

He was withdrawing by the same door at which he had entered, and drawing it closed after him by the iron latch, when the draught of the movement and the lengthening shaft of sunlight piercing the pa.s.sage fluttered and illumined a single primrose-coloured thread, waving at the level of his eyes from the doorpost. The doorpost now on his right, on his left when he entered, but then out of range of the sun's rays. Pale as flax, and long and s.h.i.+ning. He took it between finger and thumb, and plucked it gently from the wood, and a little blotch of dark, brownish red which had gummed it to the post came away with it, a second, shorter hair coiled and stuck in the blot. Cadfael stared at it for an instant, and cast one glance back over his shoulder before he closed the door. From here the coffer in the far corner was plainly in view, and so would a man be, bending over it.

A small thing, to make so huge a hole in the defence a man put up for his life. Someone had stood pressed against that doorpost, looking in, someone about Cadfael's own height-a small man with flaxen hair, and a bloodied graze on the left side of his head.

Chapter Three.

Sat.u.r.day, from Noon to Night .

CADFAEL WAS STILL STANDING WITH THE TINY, ominous speck in his palm when he heard his name called from the hall door, and in the same moment a freshening puff of wind took the floating hairs and carried them away. He let them go. Why not? They had already spoken all too eloquently, they had nothing to add. He turned to see Susanna withdrawing into the hall, and the little maidservant scurrying towards him, with a knotted bundle of cloth held out before her.

"Mistress Susanna says, Dame Juliana wants these out of the house." She opened the twist of cloth, and showed a glimpse of painted wood, scarred from much use. "They belong to Liliwin. She said you would take them to him." The great dark eyes that dwelt unwaveringly on Cadfael's face dilated even more. "Is it true?" she asked, low and urgently. "He's safe, there in the church? And you'll protect him? You won't let them fetch him away?"

"He's with us, and safe enough," said Cadfael. "No one dare touch him now."

"And they haven't hurt him?" she questioned earnestly.

"No worse than will mend now, in peace. No need to fret for a while. He has forty days grace. I think," he said, studying the thin face, the delicate, staring cheekbones under the wide-set eyes, "you like this young man."

"He made such lovely music," said the child wistfully. "And he spoke me gently, and was glad of being with me in the kitchen. It was the best hour I ever spent. And now I'm frightened for him. What will happen to him when the forty days are up?"

"Why, if it goes so far-for forty days is time enough to change many things-but even if it goes so far, and he must come forth, it will be into the hands of the law, not into the hands of his accusers. Law is grim enough, but tries to be fair. And by then those who accuse him will have forgotten their zeal, but even if they have not, they cannot touch him. If you want to help him, keep eyes and ears open, and if you learn of anything to the purpose, then speak out." Clearly the very thought terrified her. Who ever listened to anything she might say? "To me you may speak freely," he said. "Do you know anything of what went on here last night?"

She shook her head, casting wary glances over her shoulder. "Mistress Susanna sent me away to my bed. I sleep in the kitchen, I never even heard... I was very tired." The kitchen was set well apart from the house for fear of fire, as was customary with these close-set and timber-framed town houses, she might well sleep through all the alarm after her long hours of labour. "But I do know this," she said, and lifted her chin gallantly, and he saw that for all her youth and frailty it was a good chin, with a set to it that he approved. "I know Liliwin never harmed anyone, not my master nor any other man. What they say of him is not true."

"Nor ever stole?" asked Cadfael gently. She was no way put down, she held him steadily in her great lamps of eyes. "To eat, yes, perhaps, when he was hungry, an egg from under a hen somewhere, a partridge in the woods, even a loaf... that may be. He has been hungry all his life." She knew, for much of her life so had she. "But steal more than that? For money, for gold? What good would that do him? And he is not like that... never!"

Cadfael was aware of the head emerging from the hall door before Rannilt was, and warned her softly: "There, run! Say I kept you with questions, and you knew no answers."

She was very quick, she had whirled and was speeding back when Susanna's voice pealed impatiently: "Rannilt!"

Cadfael did not wait to see her vanish within on the heels of her mistress, but turned at once to resume his way along the pa.s.sage to the street.

Baldwin Peche was sitting with a pot of ale on the steps of his shop. The fact that the street was narrow, and the frontages here faced north-west and were in deep shadow, suggested that he had a reason beyond idleness and ease for being where he was at this hour. No doubt all those townsmen who had been guests at the Aurifaber wedding were up and alert this morning, as soon as they could shake off the effects of their entertainment, roused and restored by the sensational gossip they had to spread, and the possibility of further revelations.

The locksmith was a man in his fifties; short, st.u.r.dy, but beginning to grow a round paunch, a noted fisherman along the Severn, but a weak swimmer, unusually for this river-circled town. He had, truly enough, a long nose that quivered to every breath of scandal, though he was cautious in the use he made of it, as though he enjoyed mischief for its own sake rather than for any personal profit. A cold, inquisitive merriment twinkled in his pale-blue eyes, set in, a round, ruddy and smiling face. Cadfael knew him well enough to pa.s.s the time of day, and gave him good morrow as though making the approach himself, whereas he was well apprised Peche had been waiting to make it.

"Well, Brother Cadfael," said the locksmith heartily, "you'll have been tending these unlucky neighbours of mine. I trust you find them bearing up under their griefs? The lad tells me they'll make good recoveries, the both of them."

Cadfael said what was required of him, which was rather enquiry than response, and kept his mouth shut and his ears open to listen to the tale all over again, with more and richer detail, since this was Peche's chosen craft. The journeyman locksmith, a fine-looking young man who lived with his widowed mother a street or two away in the town, looked out once from the shop doorway, cast a knowledgeable eye on his master, and withdrew, a.s.sured of having work to himself, as he preferred it. By this time John Boneth knew everything his skilled but idle tutor could teach him, and was quite capable of running the business single-handed. There was no son to inherit it, he was trusted and depended on, and he could wait.

"A lucky match, mark," said Peche, prodding a knowing finger into Brother Cadfael's shoulder, "especially if this treasury of Walter's is really lost, and can't be recovered. Edred Bele's girl has money enough coming to her to make up the half, at least. Walter's worked hard to get her for his lad, and the old dame's done her share, too. Trust them!" He rubbed finger and thumb together suggestively, and nudged and winked. "And the girl no beauty and without graces-neither sings nor dances well, and dumb in company. No monster, though, she'll pa.s.s well enough, or that youngster would never have been brought to... not with what he has in hand!"

"He's a fine-looking lad," said Cadfael mildly, "and they say not unskilled. And a good inheritance waiting for him."

"Ah, but short now!" whispered Baldwin, leaning closer still and stabbing with a stiff forefinger, his knowing face gleeful. "It's the waiting is hard to bear. Young folk live now, not tomorrow, and this side marriage-you take my meaning?-not t'other. Oh, the old dame may dote on him, the sun s.h.i.+nes out of his tail for her, but she keeps her hold on the purse and doles out sweets very sparingly. Not enough for the sort he fancies!"

It occurred to Cadfael, rather belatedly, that it was hardly becoming behaviour in one of his habit to listen avidly to local scandal, but if he did nothing to encourage confidences, he certainly did not stop listening. Encouragement, in any case, was unnecessary. Peche had every intention of making the most of his probings.

"I wouldn't say," he breathed into Cadfael's ear, "but he's had his fingers in her purse a time or two, for all her sharpness. His present fancy comes expensive, not to speak of the game there'll be if ever her husband gets to know of their cantrips. It's a fair guess the bride's dowry, as much of it as he can get his hands on, will go to deck out another wench's neck. Not that he had any objections to this match-not he, he likes the girl well enough, and he likes her money a good deal better. But he likes somebody else best of all. No names, no revenges! But you should have seen her as a guest last night! Bold as a royal wh.o.r.e, and the old man puffed up beside her, proud of owning the handsomest thing in the hall, and she and the bridegroom eyeing each other fit to laugh out loud at the old fool. As well I was the only one there had sharp enough eyes to see the sparks pa.s.s!"

"As well, indeed!" said Cadfael almost absently, for he was busy reflecting how understandable it was that Daniel should view his father's tenant with such ill-will. No need to doubt Peche's information, really devoted pryers make sure of their facts. Doubtless, though never a word need have been said, certain quiverings of that inquisitive nose and knowing glances from those coldly merry eyes had warned Daniel, evidently not quite a fool, that his gallivantings were no secret.

And the other, the old fool, welcome guest at the wedding-of consequence, therefore, among the merchants of Shrewsbury and with a young, bold, handsome wife... A second marriage, then, on the man's part? The town was not so great that Cadfael had to look very far. Ailwin Corde, widowed a few years ago and married again, against his grown son's wishes, to a fine, flaunting beauty a third his age, called Cecily...

"I'd keep your tongue within your teeth," he advised amiably. "Wool merchants are a power in this town, and not every husband will thank you for opening his eyes."

"What, I? Speak out of turn?" The merry eyes sparkled with all the cordiality of ice, and the long nose twitched. "Not I! I have a decent landlord and a snug corner, and no call to overturn what suits me well. I take my fun where I find it, Brother, but quietly and privately. No harm in what does none."

"None in the world," agreed Cadfael, and took his leave peaceably, and went on towards the winding descent of the Wyle, very thoughtful, but none too sure of what he should be thinking. For what had he learned? That Daniel Aurifaber was paddling palms, and probably more, with mistress Cecily Corde, whose wool-merchant husband collected fleeces from the bordering district of Wales, and traded them into England, and therefore was often absent for some days at a time, and that the lady, however fond, was accustomed to gifts, and did not come cheaply, whereas the young man was baulked by equally parsimonious father and grandmother, and was reputed already to be filching such small sums as he could get his fingers on. And no easy matter, either! And had his father not gone to lock up at least half of the bride's dowry out of reach? Out of reach now in good earnest-or had last night's events snugged it away well within reach? Such things can happen in families.

What else? That Daniel held no good opinion, reasonably enough, of the tenant who spent his leisure so inconveniently, and claimed he would have held him to be a prime suspect, if he had not been in full view throughout the time when the deed was done.

Well, time would show. They had forty days in hand.

High Ma.s.s was over when Cadfael had crossed the bridge and made his way back to the gatehouse and the great court. Prior Robert's shadow, Brother Jerome, was hovering in the cloister to intercept him when he came.

"The lord abbot asks that you will wait upon him before dinner." Jerome's pinched, narrow nose quivered with a suggestion of deprecation and distaste which Cadfael found more offensive than Baldwin Peche's full-blooded enjoyment of his own mischief. "I trust, Brother, that you mean to let time and law take their course, and not involve our house beyond the legal obligations of sanctuary, in so sordid a matter. It is not for you to take upon yourself the burdens that belong to justice."

Jerome, if he had not explicit orders, had received his charge from Prior Robert's knotted brow and quivering nostril. So low and ragged and miserable a manifestation of humanity as Liliwin, lodged here within the pale, irked Robert like a burr working through his habit and fretting his aristocratic skin. He would have no peace while the alien body remained, he wanted it removed, and the symmetry of his life restored. To be fair, not merely his own life, but the life of this house, which fretted and itched with the infection thus hurled in from the world without. The presence of terror and pain is disruptive indeed.

"All the abbot wants from me is an account of how my patients fare," said Cadfael, with unwonted magnanimity towards the narrow preoccupations of creatures so uncongenial to him as Robert and his clerk. For their distress, however strange to him, was still comprehensible. The walls did, indeed, tremble, the sheltered souls did quake. "And I have burdens enough with them, and am hardly looking for any others. Is that lad fed and doctored? That's all my business with him."

"Brother Oswin has taken care of him," said Jerome.

"That's well! Then I'll go pay my respects to the lord abbot, and get to my dinner, for I missed breakfast, and those up there in the town are too distraught to think of offering a morsel."

He wondered, however, as he crossed the court to the abbot's lodging, how much of what he had gleaned he was about to impart. Salacious gossip can be of no interest to abbatial ears, nor was there much to be said about a tiny plaque of dried blood tethering a couple of flaxen hairs; not, at least, until the vagabond, with every hand against him and his life at stake, had exercised the right to answer for himself.

Abbot Radulfus received without surprise the news that the entire wedding party was united in insisting on the jongleur's guilt. He was not, however, quite convinced that Daniel, or any other of those attending could be certain who had, or had not, been in full view throughout.

"With a hall full of so many people, so much being drunk, and over so many hours of celebration, who can say how any man came and went? Yet so many voices all in one tale cannot be disregarded. Well, we must do our part, and leave the law to deal with the rest. The sergeant tells me his master the sheriff is gone to arbitrate in a dispute between neighbour knights in the east of the s.h.i.+re, but his deputy is due in the town before night."

That was good news in Cadfael's ear. Hugh Beringar would see to it that the search for truth and justice should not go sliding down the easiest way, and erase such minor details as failed to fit the pattern. Meantime, Cadfael had just such a detail to take up with Liliwin, besides restoring him the tools of his juggling trade. After dinner he went to look for him, and found him sitting in the cloister, with borrowed needle and thread, trying to cobble together the rents in his coat. Beneath the bandaged brow he had washed his face scrupulously, it showed pale and thin but clear-skinned, with good, even delicate features. And if he could not yet wash the dust and mire from his fair hair, at least he had combed it into decent order.

The sop first, perhaps, and then the switch! Cadfael sat down beside him, and dumped the cloth bundle in his lap. "Here's a part of your property restored you, for an earnest. There, open it!"

But Liliwin already knew the faded wrapping. He sat gazing down for a moment in wonder and disbelief, and then untied the knotted cloth and sank his hand among his modest treasures with affection and pleasure, faintly flus.h.i.+ng and brightening, as though for the first time recovering faith that some small comforts and kindnesses existed for him in the world.

"But how did you get them? I never thought I should see them again. And you thought to ask for them... for me... That was kind!"

"I did not even have to ask. That old dame who struck you, terror though she may be, is honest. She won't keep what is not hers, if she won't forgo a groat of what is. She sends them back to you." Not graciously, but no need to go into that. "There, take it for a good sign. And how do you find yourself today? Have they fed you?"

"Very well! I'm to fetch my food from the kitchen at breakfast, dinner and supper." He sounded almost incredulous, naming three meals a day. "And they've given me a pallet in the porch here. I'm afraid to be away from the church at night." He said it simply and humbly. "They don't all like it that I'm here. I stick in their craw like a husk."

"They're accustomed to calm," said Cadfael sympathetically. "It is not calm you bring. You must make allowances, as they must. At least from tonight you may sleep secure. The deputy sheriff should be in town by this evening. In his authority, I promise you, you can trust."

Trust would still come very hard to Liliwin, after all he had experienced in a short life, but the toys he had tucked away so tenderly under his pallet were a promise. He bent his head over his patient st.i.tching, and said no word.

"And therefore," said Cadfael briskly, "You'd best consider on the half-tale you told me, and own to the part you left out. For you did not creep away so docilely as you let us all think, did you? What were you doing, hugging the door-post of Master Walter's workshop, long after you claim you had made off into the night? With the door open, and your head against the post, and the goldsmith's coffer in full view... and also open? And he bending over it!"

Liliwin's needle had started in his fingers and p.r.i.c.ked his left hand. He dropped needle, thread and coat, and sat sucking his pierced thumb, and staring at Brother Cadfael with immense, frightened eyes. He began to protest shrilly: "I never went there... I know nothing about it..." Voice and eyes sank together. He blinked down at his open hands, lashes long and thick as a well-bred cow's brus.h.i.+ng his staring cheekbones.

"Child," said Cadfael, sighing, "you were there in the doorway, peering in. You left your mark there. A lad your size, with a bloodied head, leaned long enough against that door-post to leave a little clot of his blood, and two flax-white hairs gummed into it. No, no other has seen it, it's gone, blown away on the wind, but I saw it, and I know. Now tell me truth. What pa.s.sed between you and him?"

He did not ask why Liliwin had lied in omitting this part of his story, there was no need. What, place himself there on the spot, there were the blow had been struck? Innocence would have avoided admission every bit as desperately as guilt.

Liliwin sat and s.h.i.+vered, fluttering like a leaf in that same wind which had carried off his stray hairs. Here in the cloister the air was still chilly, and he had only a patched s.h.i.+rt and hose on him, the half-mended coat lying on his knees. He swallowed hard and sighed.

"It's true, I did wait... It was not fair!" he blurted, shaking. "I stayed there in the dark. They were not all as hard as she, I thought I might plead... I saw him go to the shop with a light and I followed. He was not so furious when the pitcher was broken, he did try to calm her, I dared approach him. I went in and pleaded for the fee I was promised, and he gave me a second penny. He gave it to me and I went. I swear it!"

He had sworn the other version, too. But fear does so, the fear bred of a lifetime's hounding and battering.

"And then you left? And you saw no more of him? More to the point still, did you see ought of any other who may have been lurking as you did, and entered to him afterwards?"

"No, there was no one. I went, I was glad to go, it was all over. If he lives, he'll tell you he gave me the second penny."

"He lives, and will," said Cadfael. "It was not a fatal blow. But he's said nothing yet."

"But he will, he will, he'll tell you how I begged him, and how he took pity on me. I was afraid," he said quivering, "I was afraid! If I'd said I went there, it would have been all over with me."

"Well, but consider," said Cadfael reasonably, "when Walter is his own man again, and comes forth with that very tale, how would it look if he brought it out when you had said no word of it? And besides, when his wits settle and he recalls what befell, it may well be that he'll be able to name his attacker, and clear you of all blame."

He was watching closely as he said it, for to an innocent man that notion would come as powerful comfort, but to a guilty one as the ultimate terror; and Liliwin's troubled countenance gradually cleared and brightened into timid hope. It was the first truly significant indication of how far he should be believed.

"I never thought of that. They said murdered. A murdered man can't accuse or deliver. If I'd known then he was well alive I would have told the whole truth. What must I do now? It will look bad to have to own I lied."

"What you should do for the best," Cadfael said after some thought, "is let me take this word myself to the lord abbot, not as my discovery-for the evidence is gone with a puff of wind-but as your confession. And if Hugh Beringar comes tonight, as I hope and hear he may, then you may tell the tale over again to him in full, yourself. Whatever follows then, you may rest out your days of grace here with a clear conscience and truth will speak on your side."

Hugh Beringar of Maesbury, deputy sheriff of the s.h.i.+re, reached the abbey for Vespers, after a long conference with the sergeant concerning the lost treasury. In search of it, every yard of ground between the goldsmith's house and the bushes from which Liliwin had been flushed at midnight had been scoured without result. Every voice in the town declared confidently that the jongleur was the guilty man, and had successfully hidden his plunder before he was sighted and pursued.

"But you, I think," said Beringar, walking back towards the gatehouse with Cadfael beside him and twitching a thin dark eyebrow at his friend, "do not agree. And not wholly because this enforced guest of yours is young and hungry and in need of protection. What is it convinces you? For I do believe you are convinced he's wronged."

"You've heard his story," said Cadfael. "But you did not see his face when I put it into his head that the goldsmith may get back his memory of the night in full, and be able to put a name or a face to his a.s.sailant. He took that hope to him like a blessed promise. The guilty man would hardly do so."

Hugh considered that gravely and nodded agreement. "But the fellow is a player, and has learned hard to keep command of his face in all circ.u.mstances. No blame to him, he has no other armour. To appear innocent of all harm must now be his whole endeavour."

"And you think I am easily fooled," said Cadfael drily.

"Far from it. Yet it is well to remember and admit the possibility." And that was also true, and Hugh's dark smile, slanted along his shoulder, did nothing to blunt the point. "Though I grant it would be nothing new for you to be the only creature who holds against the grain, and makes his wager good."

"Not the only one," said Cadfael almost absently, with Rannilt's wan, elfin face before his mind's eye. "There's one other more certain than I." They had reached the arch of the gatehouse, the broad highway of the Foregate crossed beyond, and the evening was just greening and dimming towards twilight. "You say you found the place where the lad bedded down for the night? Shall we take a look there together?"

They pa.s.sed through the arch, an odd pair to move so congenially side by side, the monk squat and square and st.u.r.dy, rolling in his gait like a seaman, and well launched into his sixtieth year, the sheriff's deputy more than thirty year younger and half a head taller, but still a small man, of graceful, nimble movements and darkly saturnine features. Cadfael had seen this young man win his appointment fairly, and a wife to go with it, and had witnessed the christening of their first son only a few months ago. They understood each other better than most men ever do, but they could still take opposing sides in a matter of the king's justice.

They turned towards the bridge that led into the town, but turned aside again on the right, a little way short of the riverside, into the belt of trees that fringed the road. Beyond, towards the evening gleam of the Severn, the ground declined to the lush level of the main abbey gardens, along the meadows called the Gaye. They could see the green, clear light through the branches as they came to the place where Liliwin had settled down sadly to sleep before leaving this unfriendly town. And it was a nest indeed, rounded and coiled into the slope of thick new gra.s.s, and so small, like the haunt of a dormouse.

"He started up in alarm, in one leap clear of his form, like a flushed hare," said Hugh soberly. "There are young shoots broken here-do you see?-where he crashed through. This is unquestionably the place." He looked round curiously, for Cadfael was casting about among the bushes, which grew thickly here for cover. "What are you seeking?"

"He had his rebec in a linen bag on his shoulder," said Cadfael. "In the dark a branch caught the string and jerked it away, and he dared not stop to grope after it. So he told me, like a man bereaved. I am sure that was truth. I wonder what became of it?"

He found the answer that same evening, but not until he had parted from Hugh and was on his way back to the gatehouse. It was a luminous evening and Cadfael was in no hurry to go in, and had plenty of time before Compline. He stood to watch the leisurely evening walk of the Foregate worthies, and the prolonged games of the urchins of the parish of Holy Cross reluctant to go home to their beds, just as he was. A dozen or so of them swept by in a flurry of yelling and laughter, shrill as starlings, some still half-naked from the river, but not yet so cold that they must make for the home hearth. They were kicking a shapeless rag ball among them, and some of them swiping at it with sticks, and one with something broader and shorter. Cadfael heard the impact of hollow wood, and the thrumming reverberation of one surviving string. A lamentable sound, like a cry for help with little expectation that the plea would be heard.

The imp with this weapon loitered, dragging his implement in the dust. Cadfael pursued, and drew alongside like a companion s.h.i.+p keeping station rather than a pirate boarding. The brat looked up and grinned, knowing him. He had but a short way to go home, and was tired of his plaything.

"Now what in the world have you found there?" said Cadfael amicably. "And where did you happen on such an odd thing?"