sliver of brown cloth. If the intruder had worn a shirt, he had worn it with sleeves rolled up, and it had emerged unscathed, and could now cover his graze, and if the wound had needed one, his bandage. Cadfael returned to tend the few matters needing him in his workshop, and be ready for Vespers in good time, more because he was at a loss how to proceed than for any other reason. An interlude of quiet and thought might set his wits working again.
In the great court his path towards the garden happened to cross Philip’s from the guest-hall to the gatehouse. Deep hi his own purposes, the young man almost passed by unnoticing, but then he checked sharply, and turned to look back.
“Brother Cadfael!” Cadfael swung to face him, startled out of just as deep a preoccupation. “It is you!” said Philip. “It was you who spoke for me, after Emma, in the sheriff’s court. And I knew you then for the one who came to help me to my feet and out of trouble, when the sergeants broke up the fight on the jetty. I never had the chance to thank you, brother, but I do thank you now.”
“I fear the getting you out of trouble didn’t last the night,” said Cadfael ruefully, looking this lanky youngster over with a sharp eye, and approving what he saw. Whether it was time spent in self-examination in the gaol, or time spent more salutarily still in thinking of Emma, Philip had done a great deal of growing up in a very short time. “I’m glad to see you about again among us, and none the worse.”
“I’m not clear of the load yet,” said Philip. “The chargestill stands, even the charge of murder has not been withdrawn.”
“Then it stands upon one leg only,” said Cadfael heartily, “and may fall at any moment. Have you not heard there’s been another death?”
“So they told me, and other violence, also. But surely this last bears no connection with the rest? Until this, all was malice against Master Thomas. This man was a stranger, and from Chester.” He laid a hand eagerly on Cadfael’s sleeve. “Brother, spare me some minutes. I was not very clear in my wits that night, now I need to know?all that I did, all that was done to me. I want to trace every minute of an evening I can barely piece together for myself.”
“And no wonder, after that knock on the head. Come and sit in the garden, it’s quiet there.” He took the young man by the arm, and turned him towards the archway through the pleached hedge, and sat him down on the very seat, had Philip known it, where Emma and Ivo had sat together the previous day. “Now, what is it you have in mind? I don’t wonder your memory’s hazy. That’s a good solid skull you have on you, and a blessedly thick thatch of hair, or you’d have been carried away on a board.”
Philip scowled doubtfully into distance between the roses, hesitated how much to say, how much to keep painfully to himself, caught Brother Cadfael’s comfortably patient eye, and blurted: “I was coming now from Emma. I know she is in better care than I could provide her, but I have found one thing, at least, that might still be done for her. She wants and needs to see the man who killed her uncle brought to justice. And I mean to find him.”
“So does the sheriff, so do all his men,” said Cadfael, “but they’ve had little success as yet.” But he did not say it in reproof or discouragement, but very thoughtfully. “So, for that matter, do I, but I’ve done no better. One more mind probing the matter could just as well be the mind that uncovers the truth. Why not? But how will you set about it?”
“Why, if I can prove?prove!?that I did not do it, I may also rub up against something that will lead me to the man who did. At least I can make a start by trying to follow what happened to me that night. Not only for my own defence,”
he said earnestly, “but because it seems to me that I gave cover to the deed by what I had begun, and whoever did it may have had me and my quarrel in mind, and been glad of the opening I made for him, knowing that when murder came of the night, the first name that would spring to mind would be mine. So whoever he may be, he must have marked my comings and goings, or I could be no use to him. If I had been with ten friends throughout, I should have been out of the reckoning, and the sheriff would have begun at once to look elsewhere. But I was drunk, and sick, and took myself off alone to the river for a long time, so much I do know.
Long enough for it to have been true. And the murderer knew it.”
“That is sound thinking,” agreed Cadfael approvingly. “What, then, do you mean to do?”
“Begin from the riverside, where I got my clout on the head, and follow my own scent until I get clear what’s very unclear now. I do remember what happened there, as far as you hauling me out of the way of the sheriff’s men, and then being hustled away between two others, but my legs were grass and my wits were muddied, and I can’t for my life recall who they were. It’s a place to start, if you knew them.”
“One of them was Edric Flesher’s journeyman,” said Cadfael. “The other I’ve seen, though I don’t know his name, a big, sturdy young fellow twice your width, with tow-coloured hair …”
“John Norreys!” Philip snapped his fingers. “I seem to recall him later in the night. It’s enough, I’ll begin with them, and find out where they left me, and how?or where I shook them off, for so I might have done, I was no fit company for Christians.” He rose, draping his coat over one shoulder. “That whole evening I’ll unravel, if I can.”
“Good lad!” said Cadfael heartily. “I wish you success with all my heart. And if you’re going to be threading your way through a few of the alehouses of the Foregate, as you seem to have done that night, keep your eyes open on my behalf, will you? If you can find your murderer, you may very well also be finding mine.” Carefully and emphatically he told him what to look for. “An arm raising a flagon, or spread over a table, may show you what I’m seeking. The left sleeve sliced open for a hand’s-length from the cuff of a russet-brown coat, that was sewn with a lighter linen thread. It would be on the underside of the arm. Or where arms are bared, look for the long scratch the knife made when it slit the sleeve, or for the binding that might cover it if it still bleeds. But if you find him, don’t challenge him or say word to him, only bring me, if you can, his name and where to find him again.”
“This was the glover’s slayer?” asked Philip, marking the details with grave nods of his brown head. “You think they may be one and the same?”
“If not the same, well known to each other, and both in the same conspiracy.
Find one, and we shall be very close to the other.”
“I’ll keep a good watch, at any rate,” said Philip, and strode away purposefully towards the gatehouse to begin his quest.
CHAPTER 3
Afterwards Brother Cadfael pondered many times over what followed, and wondered if prayer can even have a retrospective effect upon events, as well as influencing the future. What had happened had already happened, yet
