before ever the rain came. You have shown it clearly. But he was not turned on his back to receive Engelard’s arrow until after the rain stopped. More than half an hour. Why? Was his murderer startled away by someone passing close? Did he wait in the bushes to be sure Rhisiart was dead before he dared touch him? Or did he only think of this devilish trick later, and have to go and fetch the shaft for his purpose? Why so long?”
“That,” said Cadfael honestly, “I do not know.”
“What do we know? That whoever it was wished to pin this thing upon Engelard. Was that the whole cause? Was my father just a disposable thing, to get rid of Engelard? Bait to trap another man? Or did someone want my father disposed of, and only afterwards realise how easy, how convenient, to dispose of Engelard, too?”
“I know no more than you,” said Cadfael, himself shaken. And he thought, and wished he had not, of that young man fretting his feet tormentedly among the leaves, and flinching from Sioned’s trust as from a death-wound. “Perhaps whoever it was did the deed, and slipped away, and then paused to think, and saw how easy it might be to point the act away from himself, and went back to do it. All we are sure of is this, and, child, thank God for it. Engelard has been set up as a sacrificial victim, and is clear of all taint. Keep that at heart, and wait.”
“And whether we discover the real murderer or not, if ever it should be needful you will speak out for Engelard?”
“That I will, with all my heart. But for now, say nothing of this to anyone, for we are still here, the troublers of Gwytherin’s peace, and never think that I have set us apart as immaculate. Until we know the guilty, we do not know the innocent.”
“I take back nothing,” said Sioned firmly, “of what I said concerning your prior.”
“Nevertheless, he could not have done it. He was not out of my sight.”
“No, that I accept. But he buys men, and he is utterly set upon getting his saint, and now, as I understand, he had his will. It is a cause. And never forget, Welshmen, as well as Englishmen may be for sale. I pray not many. But a few.”
“I don’t forget,” said Cadfael.
“Who is he? Who? He knows my father’s movements. He knows where to lay hands on Engelard’s arrows. He wants God knows what from my father’s death, but certainly he wants to pin murder on Engelard. Brother Cadfael, who can this man be?”
“That, God willing,” he said, “you and I between us will find out. But as at this moment, I cannot judge nor guess, I am utterly astray. What was done I see, but why, or by whom, I know no more than you. But you have reminded me how the dead are known to rebel against the touch of those who struck them down, and as Rhisiart has told us much, so he may tell us all.”
He told her, then, of the three nights of prayer and vigil Prior Robert had decreed, and how all the monks and Father Huw, by turns, would share the duty. But he did not tell her how Columbanus, in his single-minded innocence and his concern for his own conscience, had added one more to those who had had the opportunity to lie in wait for her father in the forest. Nor did he admit to her, and hardly to himself, that what they had discovered here lent a sinister meaning to Columbanus’s revelation. Jerome out hunting his man with bow and arrow was a most unlikely conception, but Jerome creeping up behind a man’s back in thick cover, with a sharp dagger in hand….
Cadfael put the thought behind him, but it did not go far. There was a certain credibility about it that he did not like at all.
“Tonight and for two nights following, two of us will be keeping watch in the chapel from after Compline in the evening until Prime in the morning. All six of us can be drawn into the same trial, and not one can feel himself singled out. After that, we’ll see. Now this,” said Brother Cadfael, “is what you must do….”
Chapter Seven
After Compline, in the soft evening light, with the slanting sunset filtering through young viridian leaves, they went up, all six together, to the wooden chapel and the solitary graveyard, to bring their first pair of pilgrims to the vigil. And there, advancing to meet them in the clearing before the gate, came another procession, eight of Rhisiart’s household officers and servants, winding down out of the woods with their lord’s bier upon their shoulders, and their lord’s daughter, now herself their lord, walking erect and dignified before them, dressed in a dark gown and draped with a grey veil, under which her long hair lay loose in mourning. Her face was calm and fixed, her eyes looked far. She could have daunted any man, even an abbot. Prior Robert baulked at sight of her. Cadfael was proud of her.
So far from checking at sight of Robert, she gave a slight spring of hope and purpose to her step, and came on without pause. Face to face with him at three paces distance, she halted and stood so still and quiet that he might have mistaken this for submission, if he had been fool enough. But he was not a fool, and he gazed and measured silently, seeing a woman, a mere girl, who had come to match him, though not yet recognising her as his match.
“Brother Cadfael,” she said, without taking her eyes from Robert’s face, “stand by me now and make my words plain to the reverend prior, for I have a prayer to him for my father’s sake.”
Rhisiart was there at her back, not coffined, only swathed and shrouded in white linen, every line of the body and face standing clear under the tight wrappings, in a cradle of leafy branches, carried on a wooden bier. All those dark, secret Welsh eyes of the men who bore him glowed like little lamps about a catafalque, betraying nothing, seeing everything. And the girl was so young, and so solitary. Prior Robert, even in his assured situation, was uneasy. He may have been moved.
“Make your prayer, daughter,” he said.
“I have heard that you intend to watch three nights in reverence to Saint Winifred, before you take her hence with you. I ask that for the ease of my father’s soul, if he has offended against her, which was never his intent, he may be allowed to He those three nights before her altar, in the care of those who keep watch. I ask that they will spare one prayer for forgiveness and rest to his soul, one only, in a long night of prayer. Is that too much to ask?”
“It is a fair asking,” said Robert, “from a loyal daughter.” And after all, he came of a noble family, and knew how to value the ties of blood and birth, and he was not all falsity.
“I hope for a sign of grace,” said Sioned, “all the more if you approve me.”
There was no way that such a request could do anything but add lustre and glory to his reputation. His opponent’s heiress and only child came asking his countenance and patronage. He was more than gratified, he was charmed. He gave his consent graciously, aware of more pairs of Gwytherin eyes watching him than belonged to
