leather cheek and chilling brow somewhat better than dutifully, and still with that face of marble calm. Then she went down to see Brother Cadfael courteously out of the house, and thank him for all his attentions to the dead.
‘She gave you, I know, more work than ever she repaid you for,’ said Susanna, with the slight, bitter curl to her lips and the wry serenity in her voice.
‘And is it you who tell me so?’ he said, and watched the hollows at the corners of her lips deepen. ‘I came to have a certain reverence for her, short of affection. Not that she ever required that of me. And you?’
Susanna stepped from the bottom stair, close to where Rannilt huddled against the wall, afraid to trespass, unwilling to abandon her devoted watch. Since Susanna had emerged from her room with the light, her cloak shed within now there was work to do, Rannilt had hovered attentive, waiting to be used.
‘I doubt,’ said Brother Cadfael, considering, ‘whether there was any here who loved her half so well as you.’
‘Or hated her half so well,’ said Susanna, lifting her head with one measured flash of grey eyes.
‘The two are often bed-fellows,’ he said, unperturbed. ‘You need not question either.’
‘I will not. Now I must go back to her. She is my charge, I’ll pay her what’s due.’ She looked round and said quite gently: ‘Rannilt, take Master Walter’s lantern, and light Brother Cadfael out. Then go to your bed, there is no more for you to do here.’
‘I’d rather stay and watch with you,’ said Rannilt timidly. ‘You’ll need hot water and cloths, and a hand to lift her, and to run errands for you.’ As if there were not enough of them, up there now about the bed, son, grandson, and grandson’s woman, and how much grief among the lot of them? For Dame Juliana had outstayed her time by a number of years and was one mouth less to feed once her burial was accomplished; not to speak of the whiplash tongue and the too-sharp eye removed from vexing.
‘So you may, then,’ said Susanna, gazing long upon the small, childlike figure regarding her with great eyes from the shadows, where Walter had quenched all but one candle, but inadvertently left his lantern burning. ‘You shall sleep tomorrow in the day, you’ll be ready then for your bed and your mind quiet. Come up, when you’ve shown Brother Cadfael out to the lane. You and I will care for her together.’
‘You were there?’ asked Cadfael mildly, walking on the girl’s heels along the pitch-dark passage. ‘You saw what happened?’
‘Yes, sir. I couldn’t sleep. You were there this morning when they all turned against her, and even the old woman said she must yield her place
You know
‘
‘I know, yes. And you were aggrieved for her.’
‘She?was never unkind to me
‘ How was it possible to say that Susanna had been kind, where the chill forbade any such word? ‘It was not fair that they should turn and elbow her out, like that.’
‘And you were watching and listening, and grieving. And you went in. When was that?’
She told him, as plainly as if she lived it again. She told him, as far as she could recall it, and that was almost word for word, what she had heard pass between grandmother and grandchild, and how she had heard the shriek that heralded the old woman’s seizure, and burst in to see her panting and swaying and clutching her bosom, the lamp tilting out of her hand, before she rolled headlong down the stairs.
‘And there was no other soul stirring then? No one within hand’s-touch of her, there above?’
‘Oh no, no one. She dropped the lamp just as she fell.’ The little snake of fire, spitting sparks and sudden leaping flame as it found the end of tow, seemed to Rannilt to have nothing to do with what had happened. ‘And then it was dark, and the mistress said keep still, and went for a light.’
Certain, then, yes quite certain she fell. No one was there to help her fall, the only witnesses were below. And if they had not gone to her aid at once, and sent as promptly for him, he would never have arrived here in time to see Dame Juliana die. Let alone hear the only words she had spoken before dying. For what they were worth! ‘I bred them all
For all that, I should have liked to hold my great-grandchild
‘
Well, her grandson, the only being she was reported to dote upon, was now a husband, her proud old mind might well strain forward to embrace a future generation.
‘No, don’t come out into the lane, child, time for you to be withindoors, and I know my way.’
She went, shy, wild and silent. And Cadfael made his way back thoughtfully to his own cell in the dortoir and took what comfort he might, and what enlightenment, but it was not much. In this death, at least, there was no question of foul play. Juliana had fallen when no other person was near by, and in an unquestionable seizure such as she had suffered twice before. The dissensions within the house, moreover, had broken out in a disturbing form that same day, cause enough for an old woman’s body and heart and irascible nature to fail her. The wonder was this had not happened earlier. Yet for all he could do, Cadfael’s mind could not separate this death from the first, nor that from the felony of which Liliwin stood accused. There was, there must be, a thread that linked them all together. Not by freakish chance was an ordinary burgess household thus suddenly stricken with blow after blow. A human hand had set off the chain; from that act all these later events stemmed, and where the impetus would finally run out and the sequence of fatalities end was a speculation that kept Cadfael awake half the night.
In Dame Juliana’s death chamber the single lamp burned, a steady eye of fire, at the head of the bed. The night hung deep and silent over the town, past the mid-point between dusk and dawn. On a stool on one side Susanna sat, her own hands folded in her lap, quiet at last. Rannilt crouched at the foot of the bed, very weary but unwilling to go to her humble place, and certain that sleep would not come to her if she did. The lofty timbers of the roof soared above them into deep darkness. The three women, two living and one dead, were drawn together into a close, mute intimacy, for these few hours islanded from the world.
Juliana lay straight and austere, her grey hair combed into smooth order, her face uncovered, the sheet folded
