said I was less than I was?children draw more alms.’
So they would, and the boy was lightly built, spare and small. He might be as much as two and twenty, perhaps, surely no more.
‘Well, Liliwin, if you can sleep do so, it will be aid and comfort, and you have need of it. You need not watch, I shall be doing that.’
Cadfael sat down in the abbot’s stall, and trimmed the attendant candles, so that he might have a fair view of his charge. The quiet came in, on the heels of their silence, very consolingly. The night without might well have its disquiets, but here the vault of the choir was like linked hands sheltering their threatened and precarious peace. It was strange to Cadfael to see, after prolonged calm, two great tears welling from beneath Liliwin’s closed eyelids, and rolling slowly over the jut of his gaunt cheekbone, to fall into the brychan.
‘What is it? What troubles you?’ For himself he had shivered, argued, burned, but not wept.
‘My rebec?I had it with me in the bushes, in a linen bag for my shoulder. When they flushed me out?I don’t know how, a branch caught in the string, and plucked it away. And I dared not stop to grope for it in the dark
And now I can’t go forth! I’ve lost it!’
‘In the bushes, this side the bridge?across the highway from here?’ It was a grief Cadfael could comprehend. ‘You cannot go forth lad, no, not yet, true enough. But I can. I’ll look for it. Those who hunted you would not go aside once they had you in view. Your rebec may be lying safe enough among the bushes. Go to sleep and leave grieving,’ said Cadfael. ‘It’s too early to despair. For despair,’ he said vigorously, ‘it is always too early. Remember that, and keep up your heart’.’
One startled blue eye opened at him, he caught the gleam of the candles in it before it closed again. There was silence. Cadfael lay back in the abbot’s stall, and resigned himself to a long watch. Before Prime he must rouse himself to remove the interloper to a less privileged place, or Prior Robert would be rigid with offence. Until then, let God and his saints take charge, there was nothing more mere man could do.
As soon as the first light of dawn began to pluck colours out of the dark, on this clear May morning, Griffin, the locksmith’s boy who slept in the shop as a watchman, got up from his pallet and went to draw water from the well in the rear yard. Griffin was always the first up, from either household of the two that shared the yard, and had usually kindled the fire and made all ready for the day’s work before his master’s journeyman came in from his home two streets away. On this day in particular Griffin took it for granted that all those who had kept it up late at the wedding would be in no condition to rise early about their work. Griffin himself had not been invited to the feast, though Mistress Susanna had sent Rannilt across to bring him a platter of meats and bread, a morsel of cake and a draught of small ale, and he had eaten his fill, and slept innocently through whatever uproar had followed at midnight.
Griffin was thirteen years old, offspring of a maidservant and a passing tinker. He was well-grown, comely, of contented nature and good with his hands, but he was a simpleton. Baldwin Peche the locksmith preened himself on his goodness in giving house-room to such an innocent, but the truth was that Griffin, for all his dimness of wit, had a gift for picking up practical skills, and far more than earned his keep.
The great wooden bucket, its old boards worn and fretted within and without from long use, came up out of the depths sparkling in the first slanting ray of the rising sun. Griffin filled his two pails, and was slinging the bucket back over the shaft when the gleam caught a flash of silver between two of the boards, lodged edgeways in the crevice. He balanced the bucket on the stone rim of the well, and leaned and fished out the shining thing, tugging it free between finger and thumb, and shaking off a frayed shred of blue cloth that came away with it. It lay in his palm shining, a round disc of silver prettily engraved with a head, and some strange signs he did not know for letters. On the reverse side there was a round border and a short cross within it, and more of the mysterious signs. Griffin was charmed. He took his prize back with him to the workshop, and when Baldwin Peche finally arose from his bed and came forth blear-eyed and cross-grained, the boy presented him proudly with what he had found. Whatever belonged here belonged to his master.
The locksmith clapped eyes on it and kindled like a lighted lamp, head and eyes clearing marvellously. He turned it in his fingers, examining both sides closely, and looked up with a curious, private grin and a cautious question:
‘Where did you find this, boy? Have you shown it to anyone else?’
‘No, master, I brought it straight in for you. It was in the bucket of the well,’ said Griffin, and told him how it had lodged between the boards.
‘Good, good! No need to let others know I have such. Stuck fast in the boards, was it?’ mused Baldwin, brooding gleefully over his treasure. ‘You’re a good lad! A good lad! You did right to bring it straight to me, I set a great value on this! A great value! He was grinning to himself with immense satisfaction, and Griffin reflected his content proudly. I’ll give you some sweetmeats to your dinner I got from last night’s feast. You shall see I can be grateful to a dutiful boy.’
Chapter Two
Saturday, from Prime to noon
Brother Cadfael had Liliwin awake and made as presentable as possible before the brothers came down to Prime. He had risked helping him out at first light to the necessary offices, where he might at least wash his battered face and relieve himself, and return to stand up before the assembled convent at Prime with some sad dignity. Not to speak of the urgent need to have Prior Robert’s stall vacant and ready for him, for Robert’s rigid disapproval of the intrusion and the intruder was already sufficiently clear, and there was no need to aggravate his hostility. The accused had enough enemies already.
And in they came at the gatehouse, just as the brothers emerged from Prime, a solid phalanx of citizens intent on lodging their accusations this time in due and irreproachable form. Sheriff Prestcote had deputed the enquiry and negotiations to his own sergeant, having more important items of the king’s business on his hands than a passing assault and robbery in a town dwelling. He was newly back from his Easter attendance at King Stephen’s court and the delivery of the shire accounts and revenues, and his early summer survey of the county’s royal defences was about to begin. Already Hugh Beringar, his deputy, was in the north of the shire about the same necessary business, though Cadfael, who relied on Hugh’s good sense in all matters of poor souls fetched up hard against the law, hoped fervently that he would soon be back in Shrewsbury to lend a shrewd eye and willing ear to both sides in the dispute. The accusers had always the advantage without a healthy sceptic in attendance.
Meantime, here was the sergeant, large, experienced and sharp enough, but disposed to the accusers rather than the accused, and with a formidable array of townsmen behind him, led by the provost, Geoffrey Corviser. A decent, stout, patient man, and in no hurry to condemn without conscientious probing, but already primed with the complaints of several equally solid citizens, in addition to the aggrieved family. A wedding party provides at once large numbers of witnesses, and a powerful argument for doubting the half of their evidence.
