the fair mind of Shrewsbury, and with your leave I would wish to hear what the young man may say for himself.’
The abbot agreed to that willingly. ‘Come, then, into the church. And you, good people, may disperse in peace.’ So they did, still with some reluctance at not getting their hands immediately on their prey. Only Daniel, instead of withdrawing, stepped forward hastily to arrest the abbot’s attention, his manner now anxious and ingratiating, his grievance put away in favour of a different errand.
‘Father Abbot, if you please! It’s true we all ran wild last night, finding my poor father laid flat as he was, and bleeding. Truly we did believe him murdered, and cried it too soon, but even now there’s no knowing how badly he’s hurt. And my old grandmother, when she heard it, fell in a seizure, as she has once before, and though she’s better of it now, she’s none too well. And from the last fit she had, she puts more faith in Brother Cadfael’s remedies than in all the physicians. And she bid me ask if he may come back with me and medicine her, for he knows what’s needed when this breathlessness takes her, and the pains in her breast.’
The abbot looked round for Cadfael, who had come forth from the shadow of the cloister at hearing this plea. There was no denying he felt a distinct quiver of anticipation. After the night he had spent beside Liliwin, he could not help being consumed with curiosity as to what had really happened at Daniel Aurifaber’s wedding supper.
‘You may go with him, Brother Cadfael, and do what you can for the woman. Take whatever time you need.’
‘I will, Father,’ said Cadfael heartily, and went off briskly into the garden, to fetch what he thought might be required from his workshop.
The goldsmith’s burgage was situated on the street leading to the gateway of the castle, where the neck of land narrowed, so that the rear plots of the houses on either side the street ran down to the town wall, while the great rondel of Shrewsbury lay snug to the south-west in the loop of the
Severn. It was one of the largest plots in the town, as its owner was thought to be one of the wealthiest men; a right-angled house with a wing on the street, and the hall and main dwelling running lengthwise behind. Aurifaber, ever on the lookout for another means of making money, had divided off the wing and let it as a shop and dwelling to the locksmith Baldwin Peche, a middle-aged widower without children, who found it convenient and adequate to his needs. A narrow passage led through between the two shops to the open yard behind, with its well, and the separate kitchens, byres and privies. Rumour said of Walter Aurifaber that he even had his cesspit stone-lined, which many considered to be arrogating to himself the privileges of minor nobility. Beyond the yard the ground fell away gradually in a long vegetable-garden and fowl-run to the town wall, and the family holding extended even beyond, through an arched doorway to an open stretch of smooth grass going down to the riverside.
Cadfael had paid several visits to the house at the old woman’s insistence, for she was now turned eighty years old, and held that her gifts to the abbey entitled her to medical care in this world, as well as purchasing sanctity for the next. At eighty there is always something ailing the body, and Dame Juliana was given to ulcers of the leg if she suffered any slight wound or scratch, and stirred very little from her own chamber, which was one of the two over the hall. If she had presided at Daniel’s wedding supper, as clearly she had, it must have been with her walking- stick ready to hand?unluckily for Liliwin! She was known to be willing to lash out with it readily if anything displeased her.
The only person on whom she doted, people said, was this young sprig of a grandson of hers, and even he had never yet found a way to get her to loose her purse-strings. Her son Walter was made in her own image, as parsimonious as the dame, but either surer of his own virtue as admitting him by right to salvation, or else not yet so old as to be worrying about the after-life, for the abbey altars owed no great benefits to him. There would have been an impressive show for the heir’s wedding, but the pence that paid for it would be screwed out of the housekeeping for the next few months. It was a sour joke among those who did not like the goldsmith that his wife had died of starvation as soon as she had borne him a son, spending on her keep being no longer necessary.
Cadfael followed a glum and taciturn Daniel through the passage between the shops. The hall door stood wide open on the yard, at this hour in long shadow, but with a pale blue sky radiant overhead. Within, timber-scented gloom closed on them. There was a chamber door on the right, the daughter’s room, and beyond that the household stores over which she presided. Beyond that doorway the stairs went up to the upper floor. Cadfael climbed the broad, unguarded wooden steps, needing no guidance here. Juliana’s chamber was the first door off the narrow gallery that ran along the side wall. Daniel, without a word, had slouched back out of the hall below, and made for the shop. For a few days, at least, he was the goldsmith. A good workman, too, they said, when he chose, or when his elders could hold him to it.
A woman came out of the room as Cadfael approached it. Tall, like her young brother, of the same rich brown colouring, past thirty years old and mistress of this household for the last fifteen of those years, Walter’s daughter Susanna had a cool dignity about her that went very ill with violence and crime. She had stepped into the shoes of her mother, whom she was said to resemble, as soon as Dame Juliana began to ail. The keys were hers, the stores were hers, the pillars and the roof of the house were held up by her, calmly and competently. A good girl, people said. Except that her girlhood was gone.
She smiled at Brother Cadfael, though even her smile was distant and cool. She had a pale, clear oval face with wide-set grey eyes, that went very strangely with her wealth of russet hair, braided and bound austerely on her head. Her housewifely gown was neat, dark and plain. The keys at her waist were her only jewellery.
They were old acquaintances. Cadfael could not claim more or better than that.
‘No call to fret,’ said the girl briskly. ‘She’s over it already, though frightened. In good case to take advice, I hope. Margery is in there with her.’
Margery? Of course, the bride! Strange office for a bride, the day after the wedding, to be nursing her bridegroom’s grandam. Margery Bele, Cadfael recalled, daughter to the cloth-merchant Edred Bele, had a very nice little fortune in line for her some day, since she had no brother, and brought with her a very proper dowry even now. Well worth a miserly family’s purchase for their heir. But was she, then, so bereft of suitors that this one offer must buy her? Or had she already seen and wanted that curly-haired, spoiled, handsome brat now no doubt frowning and fretting over his losses in the shop here?
‘I must leave her to you and God,’ said Susanna. ‘She takes no notice of anyone else. And I have the dinner to prepare.’
‘And what of your father?’
‘He’ll do well enough,’ she said practically. ‘He was very mellow, it did him good service, he fell soft as a cushion. Go along and see him, when she’s done with you.’ She gave him her wry smile, and slipped away silently down the stairs.
If Dame Juliana’s attack had affected her speech at all on this occasion, she had made a remarkable recovery. Flat on her pillows she might be, and indeed had better remain for a day or so, but her tongue wagged remorselessly all the time Cadfael was feeling her forehead and the beat of her heart, and drawing back an eyelid
