how much he guessed at, or what feverish compilations of lies he was putting together against whatever he felt could be urged against him. He waited without protestations, so stiffly tensed that even his hair seemed to be erected and quivering. Hugh closed the door of the cell, and looked him over without haste.
‘Well, Britric?that is your name? You have frequented the abbey fair, have you not, these past two years?’
‘Longer,’ said Britric. His voice was low and guarded, and unwilling to use more words than he need. ‘Six years in all.’ A small sidelong flicker of uneasy eyes took in Cadfael’s habited figure, quiet in the corner of the cell.
Perhaps he was recalling the tolls he had evaded paying, and wondering if the abbot had grown tired of turning a blind eye to the small defaulters.
‘It’s with last year we’re concerned. Not so long past that your memory should fail you. The eve of Saint Peter ad Vincula, and the three days afterwards, you were offering your wares for sale. Where did you spend the nights?’
He was astray now, and that made him even more cautious, but he answered without undue hesitation: ‘I knew of a cottage was left empty. They were talking of it in the market, how the potter had taken a fancy to be a monk, and his wife was gone, and left the house vacant. Over the river, by Longner. I thought it was no harm to take shelter there. Is that why I’m brought here? But why now, after so long? I never stole anything. I left all as I found it. All I wanted was a roof over me, and a place to lay down in comfort.’
‘Alone?’ asked Hugh.
No hesitation at all this time. He had already calculated that the same question must have been answered by others, before ever a hand was laid on him to answer for himself. ‘I had a woman with me. Gunnild, she was called. She travelled the fairs and markets, entertaining for her living. I met her in Coventry, we kept together a while.’
‘And when the fair here was over? Last year’s fair? Did you then leave together, and keep company still?’
Britric’s narrowed glance flickered from one face to the other, and found no helpful clue. Slowly he said: ‘No. We went separate ways. I was going westward, my best trade is along the border villages.’
‘And when and where did you part from her?’
‘I left her there at the cottage where we’d slept. The fourth day of August, early. It was barely light when I started out. She was going east from there, she had no need to cross the river.’
‘I can find no one in the town or the Foregate,’ said Hugh deliberately, ‘who saw her again.’
“They would not,’ said Britric. ‘I said, she was going east.’
‘And you have never seen her since? Never made effort for old kindness’ sake to find her again?’
‘I never had occasion.’ He was beginning to sweat, for whatever that might mean. ‘Chance met, nothing more than that. She went her way, and I went mine.’
‘And there was no falling out between you? Never a blow struck? No loud disputes? Ever gentle and amiable together, were you, Britric? There are some report differently of you,’ said Hugh. ‘There was another fellow, was there not, had hoped to lie snug in that cottage? An old man you drove away. But he did not go far. Not out of earshot of the pair of you, when you did battle in the nights. A stormy partnership, he made it. And she was pressing you to marry her, was she not? And marriage was not to your mind. What happened? Did she grow too wearisome? Or too violent? A hand like yours over her mouth or about her throat could very easily quiet her.’
Britric had drawn his head hard back against the stone like a beast at bay, sweat standing on his forehead in quivering drops under the fall of red hair. Between his teeth he got out, in a voice so short of breath it all but strangled in his throat: ‘This is mad
mad
I tell you, I left her there snoring, alive and lusty as ever she was. What is this? What are you thinking of me, my lord? What am I held to have done?’
‘I will tell you, Britric, what I think you have done. There was no Gunnild at this year’s fair, was there? Nor has she been seen in Shrewsbury since you left her in Ruald’s field. I think you fell out and fought once too often, one of those nights, perhaps the last, and Gunnild died of it. And I think you buried her there in the night, under the headland, for the abbey plough to turn up this autumn. As it did! A woman’s bones, Britric, and a woman’s black hair, a mane of black hair still on the skull.’
Britric uttered a small, half-swallowed sound, and let out his breath in a great, gasping sigh, as if he had been hit in the breast with an iron fist. When he could articulate, though in a strangled whisper understood rather by the shaping of his lips than by any sound, he got out over and over: ‘No
no
no! Not Gunnild, no!’
Hugh let him alone until he had breath to make sense, and time to consider and believe, and reason about his own situation. For he was quick to master himself, and to accept, with whatever effort, the fact that the sheriff was not lying, that this was the reason for his arrest and imprisonment here, and he had better take thought in his own defence.
‘I never harmed her,’ he said at length, slowly and emphatically. ‘I left her sleeping. I have never set eyes on her since. She was well alive.’
‘A woman’s body, Britric, a year at least in the ground. Black hair. They tell me Gunnild was black.’
‘So she was. So she is, wherever she may be. So are many women along these borderlands. The bones you found cannot be Gunnild’s.’ Hugh had let slip too easily that all they had, virtually, was a skeleton, never to be identified by face or form. Now Britric knew that he was safe from too exact an accusing image. ‘I tell you truly, my lord,’ he said, with more insinuating care, she was well alive when I crept out and left her in the cottage. I won’t deny she’d grown too sure of me. Women want to own a man, and that grows irksome. That was why I rose early, while she was deep asleep, and made off westward alone, to be rid of her without a screeching match. No, I never harmed her. This poor creature they found must be some other woman. It is not Gunnild.’
‘What other woman, Britric? A solitary place, the tenants already gone, why should anyone so much as go there, let alone die there?’
