Part 6 (1/2)
”If the unfortunate man drowned in the river, having fallen from his boat,” said Robert firmly, ”there can be no possibility of murder. That is a foolish and wicked saying.”
They began to bay from several directions. ”Father Prior, Master Peche was not a foolhardy man...”
”He knew the Severn from his childhood...”
”So do many,” said Robert crisply, ”who fall victim to it in the end, men no more foolhardy than he. You must not attribute evil to what is natural misfortune.”
”And why should natural misfortune crowd so on one house?” demanded an excited voice from the rear. ”Baldwin was a guest the night Walter was struck down and his coffer emptied.”
”And next-door neighbour, and liked to nose out whatever was hidden. And who's to say he didn't stumble on some proof that would be very bad news to the villain that did the deed, and lurks here swearing to his innocence?”
It was out, they took it up on all sides. ”That's how it was! Baldwin found out something the wretch wouldn't have been able to deny!”
”And he's killed the poor man to stop his mouth...”
”A knock on the head and souse into the river...”
”No trick to turn his boat loose for the river to take down after him...”
Cadfael was relieved to see Hugh Beringar riding briskly in at the gatehouse then with a couple of officers behind him. This was getting all too predictable. When men have elected a villain, and one from comfortably outside their own ranks, without roots or kin, they need feel nothing for him, he is hardly a man, has no blood to be shed or heart to be broken, and whatever else needs a scapegoat will be laid on him heartily and in the conviction of righteousness. Nor will reason have much say in the matter. But he raised his voice powerfully to shout them down: ”The man you accuse is absolutely clear of this, even if it were murder. He is in sanctuary here, dare not leave the precinct, and has not left it. The king's officers wait for him outside, as you all know. Be ashamed to make such senseless charges!”
He said afterwards, rather resignedly than bitterly, that it was a precise measure of Liliwin's luck that he should appear innocently from the cloister at that moment, bewildered and shocked by the incursion of a dead body into the pale, and coming anxiously to enquire about it, but utterly ignorant of any connection it might be thought to have with him. He came hastening out of the west walk, solitary, apart, marked at once by two or three of the crowd. A howl went up, hideously triumphant. Liliwin took it like a great blast of cold wind in his face, shrank and faltered, and his countenance, healing into smooth comeliness these last two days, collapsed suddenly into the disintegration of terror.
The wildest of the young bloods moved fast, hallooing, but Hugh Beringar moved faster. The raw-boned grey horse, his favourite familiar, clattered nimbly between quarry and hounds, and Hugh was out of the saddle with a hand on Liliwin's shoulder, in a grip that could have been ambiguously arrest or protection, and his neat, dark, saturnine visage turned blandly towards the threatening a.s.sault. The foremost hunters froze discreetly, and thawed again only to draw back by delicate inches from challenging his command.
The nimble young novice had acquitted himself well, and shown an excellent grasp of his charge, for Hugh had the half of it clear in his mind already and understood its perilous application here. He kept his hold-let them read it however they would-on Liliwin throughout the questioning that followed, and listened as narrowly to Daniel Aurifaber's heated witness as to Cadfael's account.
”Very well! Father Prior, it would be as well if you yourself would convey this in due course to the lord abbot. The drowned man I must examine, as also the place where he was cast ash.o.r.e and that where his boat came to rest. I must call upon the help of those who found out these matters. For the rest of you, if you have anything to say, say it now.”
Say it they did, intimidated but still smouldering, and determined to pour out their heat. For this was no chance death in the river, of that they were certain. This was the killing of a witness, close, curious, likely of all men to uncover some irrefutable evidence. He had found proof of the jongleur's strenuously-denied guilt, and he had been slipped into the Severn to drown before he could open his mouth. They began by muttering it, they ended by howling it. Hugh let them rave. He knew they were no such monsters as they made themselves out to be, but knew, too, that given a following wind and a rash impulse, they could be, to their own damage and that of every other man.
They ran themselves out of words at length, and dwindled like sails bereft of wind.
”My men have been camped outside the gates here,” said Hugh then, calmly, ”all this while and have seen no sign of this man you accuse. To my knowledge he has not set foot outside these walls. How, then, can he have had any hand in any man's death?”
They had no answer ready to that, though they sidled and exchanged glances and shook their heads as though they knew beyond doubt that there must be an answer if they could only light on it. But out of the prior's shadow the insinuating voice of Brother Jerome spoke up mildly: ”Pardon, Father Prior, but is it certain that the young man has been every moment within here? Only recall, last night Brother Anselm was enquiring after him and had not seen him since just after noon, and remarked, moreover, that he did not come to the kitchen for his supper as is customary. And being concerned for any guest of our house, I felt it my duty to look for him and did so everywhere. That was just when twilight was falling. I found no trace of him anywhere within the walls.”
They took it up gleefully on the instant and Liliwin, as Cadfael observed with a sigh, shook and swallowed hard, and could not get out a word, and drops of sweat gathered on his upper lip and ran down, to be licked off feverishly.
”You see, the good brother says it! He was not here! He was out about his foul business!”
”Say rather,” Prior Robert reproached gently, ”that he could not be found.” But he was not altogether displeased.
”And go without his supper? A half-starved rat scorn his food unless he had urgent business elsewhere?” cried Daniel fiercely.
”Very urgent! He took his life in his hands to make sure Baldwin should not live to speak against him.”
”Speak up!” said Hugh drily, shaking Liliwin by the shoulder. ”You have a tongue, too. Did you leave the abbey enclave at any time?”
Liliwin gulped down gall, hung in anguished silence a moment, and got out in a great groan: ”No!”
”You were within here yesterday, when you were sought and could not be found?”
”I didn't want to be found. I hid myself.” His voice was firmer when he had at least a morsel of truth to utter. But Hugh pressed him still.
”You have not once set foot outside this pale since you took refuge here?”
”No, never!” he gasped, and dragged in breath as though he had run a great way.
”You hear?” said Hugh crisply, putting Liliwin aside and behind him. ”You have your answer. A man penned securely here cannot have committed murder outside, even if this proves to be murder, as at this moment there is no proof whatsoever. Now go, get back to your own crafts, and leave to the law what is the law's business. If you doubt my thoroughness, try crossing me.” And to his officers he said simply: ”Clear the court of those who have no business here. I will speak with the provost later.”
In the mortuary chapel Baldwin Peche lay stripped naked, stretched now on his back, while Brother Cadfael, Hugh Beringar, Madog of the Dead-Boat and Abbot Radulfus gathered about him attentively. In the corners of his eyes, now closed, traces of ingrained mud lingered, drying, like the pigments vain women use to darken and brighten their eyes. From his thick tangle of grizzled brown hair Cadfael had coaxed out two or three strands of water crowfoot, cobweb-fine stems with frail white flowers withering into veined brown filaments as they died, and a broken twig of alder leaves. There was nothing strange in either of those. Alders cl.u.s.tered in many places along the riverside, and this was the season when delicate rafts of crowfoot swayed and trembled wherever there were shallows or slower water.
”Though the water where I found him,” said Cadfael, ”runs fast, and will not anchor these flowers. The opposite bank I fancy, harbours them better. That is reasonable-if he launched his boat to go fis.h.i.+ng it would be from that bank. And now see what more he has to show us.”
He cupped a palm under the dead man's cheek, turned his face to the light, and hoisted the bearded chin. The light falling into the stretched cavities of the nostrils showed them only as shallow hollows silted solid with river mud. Cadfael inserted the stem of the alder twig into one of them, and scooped out a smooth, thick slime of fine gravel and a wisp of crowfoot embedded within it.
”So I thought, when I hefted him to empty out the water from him and got only a miserable drop or two. The drainings of mud and weed, not of a drowned man.” He inserted his fingers between the parted lips, and showed the teeth also parted, as if in a grimace of pain or a cry. Carefully he drew them wider. Tendrils of crowfoot clung in the large, crooked teeth. Those peering close could see that the mouth within was clogged completely with the debris of the river.
”Give me a small bowl,” said Cadfael, intent, and Hugh was before Madog in obeying. There was a silver saucer under the unlighted lamp on the altar, the nearest receptacle, and Abbot Radulfus made no move to demur. Cadfael eased the stiffening jaw wider, and with a probing finger drew out into the bowl a thick wad of mud and gravel, tinted with minute fragments of vegetation. ”Having drawn in this, he could not draw in water. No wonder I got none out of him.” He felt gently about the dead mouth, probing out the last threads of crowfoot, fine as hairs, and set the bowl aside.
”What you are saying,” said Hugh, closely following, ”is that he did not drown.”
”No, he did not drown.”
”But he did die in the river. Why else these river weeds deep in his throat?”
”True. So he died. Bear with me, I am treading as blindly as you. I need to know, like you, and like you, I must examine what we have.” Cadfael looked up at Madog, who surely knew all these signs at least as well as any other man living. ”Are you with me so far?”
”I am before you,” said Madog simply. ”But tread on. For a blind man you have not gone far astray.”
”Then, Father, may we now turn him again on his face, as I found him?”
Radulfus himself set his two long, muscular hands either side of the head, to steady the dead man over, and settled him gently on one cheekbone.
For all his self-indulgent habits of life, Baldwin Peche showed a strong, hale body, broad-shouldered, with thick, muscular thighs and arms. The discolorations of death were beginning to appear on him now, and they were curious enough. The broken graze behind his right ear, that was plain and eloquent, but the rest were matter for speculation.
”That was never got from any floating branch,” said Madog with certainty, ”nor from being swept against a stone, either, not in that stretch of water. Up here among the islands I wouldn't say but it might be possible, though not likely. No, that was a blow from behind, before he went into the water.”
”You are saying,” said Radulfus gravely, ”that the charge of murder is justified.”
”Against someone,” said Cadfael, ”yes.”
”And this man was indeed next-door neighbour to the household that was robbed, and may truly have found out something, whether he understood its meaning or not, that could shed light on that robbery?”
”It is possible. He took an interest in other men's business,” agreed Cadfael cautiously.