garden and the herbarium, was accosted suddenly by an Eliud evidently looking about him for a guide, and pleased to recognise a face he knew.
‘Brother, if I may trouble you, I’ve been neglecting my duty, there’s something I had forgotten. My lord Einon left his cloak wrapping the lord Gilbert in the litter, for an extra covering. Of sheared sheepskins, you’ll have seen it? I must reclaim it, but I don’t want to disturb the lord Gilbert. If you will show me the place, and hand it forth to me…’ ‘Very willingly,’ said Cadfael, and led the way briskly. He eyed the young man covertly as they walked together. That passionate, intense face was closed and sealed, but trouble showed in his eyes. He would always be carrying half the weight of that easy fosterbrother of his who went so light through the world. And a fresh parting imminent, after so brief a reunion; and that marriage waiting to make parting inevitable and lifelong. ‘You’ll know the place,’ said Cadfael,’though not the room. He was deep asleep when we all left him. I hope he is still. Sleep in his own town, with his family by and his charge in good heart, is all he needs.’ ‘There was no mortal harm, then?’ asked Eliud, low, voiced.
‘None that time should not cure. And here we are. Come in with me. I remember the cloak. I saw Brother Edmund fold it aside on the chest.’ The door of the narrow chamber had been left ajar, to avoid the noise of the iron latch, but it creaked on being opened far enough to admit entrance. Cadfael slipped through the opening sidewise, and paused to look attentively at the long, still figure in the bed, but it remained motionless and oblivious. The brazier made a small, smokeless eye of gold in the dimness within. Reassured, Cadfael crossed to the chest on which the clothes lay folded and gathered up the sheepskin cloak. Unquestionably it was the one Eliud sought, and yet even at this moment Cadfael was oddly aware that it did not answer exactly to his recollection of it, though he did not stop to try and identify what was changed about it. He had turned back to the door, where Eliud hovered half, in, “half, out, peering anxiously, when the young man made a step aside to let him go first into the passage, and knocked over the stool that stood in the corner. It fell with a loud wooden clap and rolled. Eliud bent to arrest its flight and snatch it up from the tiled floor and Cadfael, waving a hand furiously at him for silence, whirled round to see if the noise had startled the sleeper awake.
Not a movement, not a sharp breath, not a sigh. The long body, scarcely lifting the bedclothes, lay still as before. Too still. Cadfael went close, and laid a hand to draw down the brychan that covered the grizzled beard and hid the mouth. The bluish eyelids in their sunken hollows stared up like carven eyes in a tomb sculpture. The lips were parted and drawn a little back from clenched teeth, as if in some constant and customary pain. The gaunt breast did not move at all. No noise could ever again disturb Gilbert Prestcote’s sleep.
‘What is it?’ whispered Eliud, creeping close to gaze.
Take this,’ ordered Cadfael, thrusting the folded cloak into the boy’s hands. ‘Come with me to your lord and Hugh Beringar, and God grant the women are safe indoors.’ He need not have been in immediate anxiety for the women, he saw as he emerged into the open court with Eliud mute and quivering at his heels. It was chilly out there, and this was men’s business now the civilities were properly attended to, and Lady Prestcote had made her farewells and withdrawn with Melicent into the guest, hall. The Welsh party were waiting with Hugh in an easy group near the gatehouse, ready to mount and ride, the horses saddled and tramping the cobbles with small, ringing sounds. Elis stood docile and dutiful at Einon’s stirrup, though he did not look overjoyed at being on his way home. His face was overcast like the sky. At the sound of Cadfael’s rapid steps approaching, and the sight of his face, every eye turned to fasten on him.
‘I bring black news,’ said Cadfael bluntly. ‘My lord, your labour has been wasted, and I doubt your departure must wait yet a while. We are just come from the infirmary. Gilbert Prestcote is dead.’
CHAPTER SIX.
THEY WENT with him, Hugh Beringar and Einon ab Ithel, jointly responsible here for this exchange of prisoners which had suddenly slithered away out of their control. They stood beside the bed in the dim, quiet room, the little lamp a mild yellow eye on one side, the brazier a clear red one on the other. They gazed and touched, and held a bright, smooth blade to the mouth and nose, and got no trace of breath. The body was warm and pliable, no long time dead; but dead indeed.
‘Wounded and weak, and exhausted with travelling,’ said Hugh wretchedly. ‘No blame to you, my lord, if he had sunk too far to climb back again.’ ‘Nevertheless, I had a mission,’ said Einon. ‘My charge was to bring you one man, and take another back from you in exchange. This matter is void, and cannot be completed.’ ‘So you did bring him, living, and living you delivered him over. It is in our hands his death came. There is no bar but you should take your man and go, according to the agreement. Your part was done, and done well.’ ‘Not well enough. The man is dead. My prince does not countenance the exchange of a dead man for one living,’ said Einon haughtily. ‘I split no hairs, and will have none split in my favour. Nor will Owain Gwynedd. We have brought you, however innocently, a dead man. I will not take a live one for him. This exchange cannot go forward. It is null and void.’ Brother Cadfael, though with one ear pricked and aware of these meticulous exchanges, which were no more than he had foreseen, had taken up the small lamp, shielding it from draughts with his free hand, and held it close over the dead face. No very arduous or harsh departure. The man had been deeply asleep, and very much enfeebled, to slip over a threshold would be all too easy. Not, however, unless the threshold were greased or had too shaky a doorstone. This mute and motionless face, growing greyer as he gazed, was a face familiar to him for some years, fallen and aged though it might be. He searched it closely, moving the lamp to illumine every plane and every cavernous hollow. The pitted places had their bluish shadows, but the full lips, drawn back a little, should not have shown the same livid tint, nor the pattern of the large, strong teeth within, and the staring nostrils should not have gaped so wide and shown the same faint bruising.
‘You will do what seems to you right,’ said Hugh at his back, ‘but I, for my part, make plain that you are free to depart in company as you came, and take both your young men with you. Send back mine, and I consider the terms will have been faithfully observed. Or if Owain Gwynedd still wants a meeting, so much the better, I will go to him on the border, wherever he may appoint, and take my hostage from him there.’ ‘Owain will speak his own mind,’ said Einon, ‘when I have told him what has happened. But without his word I must leave Elis ap Cynan unredeemed, and take Eliud back with me. The price due for Elis has not been paid, not to my satisfaction. He stays here.’ ‘I am afraid,’ said Cadfael, turning abruptly from the bed, ‘Elis will not be the only one constrained to remain here.’ And as they fixed him with two blank and questioning stares: ‘There is more here than you know. Hugh said well, there was no mortal harm to him, all he needed was time, rest and peace of mind, and he would have come back to himself. An older self before his time, perhaps, but he would have come. This man did not simply drown in his own weakness and weariness. There was a hand that held him under.’ ‘You are saying,’ said Hugh, after a bleak silence of dismay and doubt,’that this was murder?’ ‘I am saying so. There are the signs on him clear.’ ‘Show us,’ said Hugh.
He showed them, one intent face stooped on either side to follow the tracing of his finger. ‘It would not take much pressure, there would not be anything to be called a struggle. But see what signs there are. These marks round nose and mouth, faint though they are, are bruises he had not when we bedded him. His lips are plainly bruised, and if you look closely you will see the shaping of his teeth in the marks on the upper lip. A hand was clamped over his face to cut off breath. I doubt if he awoke, in his deep sleep and low state it would not take long.’ Einon looked at the furnishings of the bed, and asked, low, voiced: ‘What was used to muffle nose and mouth, then? These covers?’ ‘There’s no knowing yet. I need better light and time enough. But as sure as God sees us, the man was murdered.’ Neither of them raised a word to question further. Einon had experience of many kinds of dying, and Hugh had implicit trust by now in Brother Cadfael’s judgement. They looked wordlessly at each other for a long, thinking while.
