More than a mile from where Brother Elyas had been battered and left for dead!
Not here, thought Cadfael, looking round at a hillside as bare and bleak, almost, as the bald, craggy head of Clee. It did not happen here. She was brought here afterwards. But why? These outlaws otherwise had left all their victims where they fell, and cared nothing to hide them. And if she had been brought here, from where? No one would choose to carry a dead body very far. Somewhere nearby there must be some kind of shelter.
“They’ll be running sheep, rather than cattle, up here,” he said, scanning the slopes above them.
“So they do, but they’ll have got the most of them folded now. It’s ten years since we had a spell such as this.”
“Then there’ll be a hut or two, somewhere about, for the shepherds’ use. Would you know where the nearest may be?”
“A piece back along the traverse here towards Bromfield, the half of a mile it might be.” That must be along the selfsame track Cadfael had ridden with Yves on his saddle-bow, going home to Bromfield from Thurstan’s assart in the forest. He could not recall seeing such a hut that day, but evening had been setting in by then.
“We’ll go that way,” he said, and turned his mule back along the path.
A good half-mile it certainly was before Reyner pointed left, to a shallow bowl below the track. The roof of the hut was almost completely screened by the mounds of snow that covered it. Only a straight black shadow under the eaves betrayed its presence from above. They descended the gentle slope to come round to the southern side, where the door was, and found it thrust open, and saw by the sill of the previous night’s snow along the threshold that it had not stood thus longer than a matter of hours, for within there was no snow, except for the infinitely fine powder blown between the boards.
Cadfael halted on the brink. In two places, close together, a foot had trampled flat the ridge of snow which had built against the door while it remained closed. A line of icicles fringed the eaves, and successive noons had warmed them enough to drip for a brief while each day, and freeze again before the approach of evening, for the roof was open to the south, and sheltered from the north by the rise of the land. A slow drip fell as Cadfael gazed, and a line of fine black perforations punctured the whiteness of the layer of snow below the eaves, where the wind during the night had already thinned it. At the corner of the hut the drips had bored a small pit, revealing the ripe, rounded brownness of something that was not turf nor soil. Cadfael stirred more snow away with the toe of his boot.
Frost is a great preserver. All the sunshine of all the noons had not produced thaw enough to do more than pierce the crest of this pile of horse-droppings with one tiny shaft. The next snow would cover it again, and the frost seal it. But the hole the drip had bored in it went too deep to be the result of this one day’s grudging sun. No knowing exactly how many days had passed since a horse had stood here, but Cadfael judged it might be as many as five or six. Tethered? The wood of the hut was rough-hewn, and there were props under the low, projecting eaves to which a bridle could easily be hitched.
He might never have noticed the hair, pale almost to white as it was, if a sudden rising breeze had not caused it to flutter, somewhat above the level of his eye, from the rough timber of the corner. Had it been motionless it would have passed for one with the snow plastered and frozen there. It was the wind that had shaken the weight from its waving strands, and given it play to catch his eyes. He detached it carefully from the splinters that held it, and smoothed out in his hand a tress of coarse, springy hair the color of fading primroses. The horse tethered here had rubbed shoulder and mane against the corner of the hut, and left a token behind.
And this must be the nearest roof to the brook where he had found her. And given a horse to carry it, it would be no great labor to transport the body of a murdered girl that distance. But that might be going too fast. Better see what else the place had to tell, before he jumped to such doubtful conclusions.
He stowed away the scrap of horse-hair carefully in the breast of his habit, and went into the hut. The slight tempering of the bitter air without closed round him gratefully, and the dry, faint odor of the piled hay tickled his nostrils. Behind him, Reyner watched in attentive silence.
Someone had done well with his hay harvest in the past season, and had still a plentiful store here. A bed and bedding provided together, a stout roof overhead?yes, anyone benighted would be thankful to hit on such a refuge. Someone had made use of it in the night just past, the great pile of hay was pressed down by the weight of a long body. So it might have been during other nights. So it might have been by two bodies. Yes, this could well be the place he was looking for. Yet even this place was at least half a mile from the spot where Brother Elyas had been left for dead, and his murderers had been making their way home, not scouring half a mile of deserted countryside.
“Are you thinking,” wondered Reyner, watching him, “that it may be the pair we’re seeking who were in here last night? For someone was, and there are two breadths of foot have trampled the snow on the doorsill here.”
“It could be so,” said Cadfael abstractedly. “Let’s hope so, for whoever was here went forth live and able this morning, it seems, and has left tracks we’ll follow in a moment. If we’ve found all there is to be found here.”
“What more can there be, and they gone?” But Reyner watched Cadfael’s concentration with respect, and was willing to use his own eyes. He came within, looked all round him sharply, and stirred the great pile of hay with a vigorous foot. “Not bad lying, if they got this far. They may haven taken no real harm, after all.” His disturbance of the pile had loosed a wave of scent and a tickling haze of dust, and uncovered a corner of black cloth, well buried under the load. He stooped and tugged at it, and a long black garment emerged, unrolling in his hands, creased and dusty. He held it up, astonished. “What’s here? Who would throw away a good cloak?”
Cadfael took it from him and spread it out to see. A plain travelling cloak, in the coarse black cloth of the Benedictines. A man’s cloak, a monk’s cloak. The cloak of Brother Elyas?
He dropped it without a word, and plunged both arms into the pile, scooping a way down to the floor like a terrier after a rat. More black cloth there, rolled up and thrust deep, deep, to be hidden from all eyes. He brought up the roll and shook it out, and a crumpled ball of white fell clear. He snatched it back and smoothed it in his hands, the austere linen wimple of a nun, soiled now and crushed. And the black, held up to view, was a slender habit tied with its own girdle, and a short cloak of the same cloth. And all thrust away into hiding, where no chance shepherd would ever think to delve until all that hay was used.
Cadfael spread out the habit and felt at the right shoulder, sleeve and breast, and the traces, all but invisible in the shroud in black, confided to his touch what his eyes could not distinguish. On the right breast a patch the size of a man’s hand was stiff and caked, crusted threads crumbled away as he handled it. The folds of shoulder and sleeve bore streaks and specks of the same corruption.
“Blood?” said Reyner, watching and marveling.
Cadfael did not answer that. He was grimly rolling up habit and cloaks together, the wimple tucked inside, and hoisting the bundle under his arm. “Come, let’s see where they went, who slept the night here.”
