‘If I loose, they’ll kill me
‘
‘Not while I have hands or voice,’ said Cadfael. ‘Our abbot has held his hand over you, they’ll make no further move tonight. Leave go of the cloth and come within. There are relics enough there, trust me, holier even than this.’
The grubby fingers, with black and bitten nails, released the cloth reluctantly, the flaxen head drooped resignedly on Cadfael’s shoulder. Cadfael bore him round into the choir and laid him in the nearest and most commodious stall, which was that of Prior Robert. The usurpation was not unpleasing. The young man was shivering violently from head to toe, but relaxed into the stall with a huge sigh, and was still.
‘They’ve hunted you into the ground,’ Cadfael allowed, settling him into shelter, ‘but at least into the right earth. Abbot Radulfus won’t give you up, never think it. You can draw breath, you have a home here for some days to come. Take heart! Nor are that pack out there so bad as you suppose, once the drink’s out of them they’ll cool. I know them.’
‘They meant to kill me,’ said the youth, trembling.
No denying that. So they would have done, had they got their hands on him out of this enclave. And there was a note of simple bewilderment in the high voice, of terror utterly at a loss, that caught Cadfael’s leaning ear. The lad was far gone in weakness, and relief from fear, and truly it sounded as if he did not know why he had ever been threatened. So the fox must feel, acting innocently after his kind, and hearing the hounds give tongue.
Brother Oswin came, burdened with a scrip full of wine-flask and unguent-jar, a roll of clean linen under one arm, and a bowl of water in both hands. His lighted candle he must have stuck to the bench in the porch, where a tiny, flickering light played. He arrived abrupt, urgent and glowing, the light-brown curls round his tonsure erected like a thorn-hedge. He laid down his bowl, laid out his linen, and leaned eagerly to support the patient as Cadfael drew him to the light.
‘Be thankful for small mercies, I see no sign of broken bones in you. You’ve been trampled and hacked, and I make no doubt you’re a lump of bruises, but that we can deal with. Lean here your head?so! That’s a nasty welt across your temple and cheek. A cudgel did that. Hold still, now!’
The fair head leaned submissively into his hands. The weal grazed the crest of the left cheekbone, and broke the skin along the left side of his head, oozing blood into the pale hair. As Cadfael bathed it, stroking back the tangled locks, the skin quivered under the cold water, and the muck of dust and drying blood drained away. This was not the newest of his injuries. The smoothing of the linen over brow, cheek and chin uncovered a thin, pure, youthful face.
‘What’s your name, child?’ said Cadfael.
‘Liliwin,’ said the young man, still eyeing him warily.
‘Saxon. So are your eyes, and your hair. Where born? Not here along the borders.’
‘How should I know?’ said the youth, listless. ‘In a ditch, and left there. The first I know is being taught to tumble, as soon as I walked.’
He was past fending for himself; perhaps he was even past lying. As well to get out of him whatever he was willing to tell, now, while he was forced to surrender himself to the hands of others, with his own helplessness like a weight of black despair on him.
‘Is that how you’ve lived? Travelling the road, cutting capers at fairs, doing a little juggling and singing for your supper? It’s a hard life, with more kicks than kindnesses, I dare say. And from a child?’ He could guess at the manner of training that went to school a childish body to the sort of contortions a fairground crowd would gape at. There were ways of hurting, by way of punishment, without spoiling the agility of growing limbs. ‘And solitary now? They’re gone, are they, that picked you out of your ditch and bent you to their uses?’
‘I ran from them as soon as I was half-grown,’ said the soft, weary voice. ‘Three mummers padding the road, a lad come by for nothing was a gift to them, they had their worth out of me. All I owed them was kicks and blows. I work for myself now.’
‘At the same craft?’
‘It’s all I know. But that I know well,’ said Liliwin, suddenly raising his head proudly, and not wincing from the sting of the lotion bathing his grazed cheek.
‘And that’s what brought you to Walter Aurifaber’s house last night,’ said Cadfael mildly, stripping back a torn sleeve from a thin, sinewy forearm marked by a long slash from a knife. ‘To play at his son’s wedding-feast.’
One dark-blue eye peered up at him sidelong. ‘You know them?’
‘There are few people in the town that I don’t know. I tend many folk within the walls, the old Aurifaber dame among them. Yes, I know that household. But it had slipped my mind that the goldsmith was marrying his son yesterday.’ Knowing them as well as he did, he was sure that for all their wish to make an impressive show, they would not pay out money enough to attract the better sort of musicians, such as the nobility welcomed as guests. But a poor vagrant jongleur trying his unpromising luck in the town, that they might consider. All the more if his performance outdid his appearance, and genuine music could be had dead cheap. ‘So you heard of the celebration, and got yourself hired to entertain the guests. Then what befell, to bring the jollity to such a grim ending? Reach me here a pad of cloth, Oswin, and hold the candle nearer.’
‘They promised me three pence for the evening,’ said Liliwin, trembling now as much with indignation as fear and cold, ‘and they cheated me. It was none of my fault! I played and sang my best, did all my tricks
The house was full of people, they crowded me, and the young fellows, they were drunk and lungeous, they hustled me! A juggler needs room! It was not my fault the pitcher was broken. One of the youngsters jumped to catch the balls I was spinning, he knocked me flying, and the pitcher went over from the table, and smashed. She said it was her best . . the old beldame
she screeched at me, and hit out with her stick
‘
‘She did this?’ questioned Cadfael gently, touching the swathed wound on the jongleur’s temple.
‘She did! Lashed out like a fury, and swore the thing was worth more than I’d earned, and I must pay for it. And
