stare of Melicent’s eyes the tears he had defied came treacherously into his own, and he blinked and shook them proudly away.
Hugh let him cool gradually and in considerate silence.
‘Are you content?’ the boy demanded stiffly, when he had his voice well in rein.
‘Are you?’ said Hugh, and smiled.
There was a brief, almost consoling silence. Then Hugh said mildly: ‘Cover yourself, then. Take your time.’ And while Elis was dressing, with hands that shook now in reaction: ‘You do understand that I must hold you in close guard, you and your foster, brother and the others alike. As at this moment, you are no more in suspicion than many who belong here within the pale, and will not be let out of it until I know to the last moment where they spent this morn and noon. This is no more than a beginning, and you but one of many.’ ‘I do understand,’ said Elis and wavered, hesitant to ask a favour. ‘Need I be separated from Eliud?’ ‘You shall have Eliud,’ said Hugh.
When they went out again to those who still waited in the anteroom the two women were on their feet, and plainly longing to withdraw. Sybilla had but half her mind here in support of her step, daughter, the better half was with her son; and if she had been a faithful and dutiful wife to her older husband and mourned him truly now after her fashion, love was much too large a word for what she had felt for him and barely large enough for what she felt for the boy he had given her. Sybilla’s thoughts were with the future, not the past.
‘My lord,’ she said, ‘you know where we may be found for the days to come. Let me take my daughter away now, we have things which must be done.’ ‘At your pleasure, madam,’ said Hugh. ‘You shall not be troubled more than is needful.’ And he added only: ‘But you should know that the matter of this missing pin remains. There has been more than one intruder into your husband’s privacy. Bear it in mind.’ ‘Very gladly I leave it all in your hands,’ said Sybilla fervently. And forth she went, her hand imperative at Melicent’s elbow. They passed close by Elis in the doorway, and his starving stare fastened on the girl’s face. She passed him by without a glance, she even drew aside her skirts for fear they should brush him in departing. He was too young, too open, too simple to understand that more than half the hatred and revulsion she felt for him belonged rather to herself, and her dread that she had gone far towards desiring the death she now so desperately repented.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
IN THE death, chamber, with the door closed fast, Hugh Beringar and Brother Cadfael stood beside Gilbert Prestcote’s body and turned back the brychan and sheet to the sunken breast. They had brought in lamps to set close where they would burn steadily and cast a strong light on the dead face. Cadfael took the small saucer lamp in his hand and moved it slowly across the bruised mouth and nostrils and the grizzled beard, to catch every angle of vision and pick out every mote of dust or thread.
‘No matter how feeble, no matter how deep asleep, a man will fight as best as he can for his breath, and whatever is clamped over his face, unless so hard and smooth it lacks any surface pile, he will inhale. And so did this one.’ The dilated nostrils had fine hairs within, a trap for tiny particles of thread. ‘Do you see colour there?’ In an almost imperceptible current of air a gossamer wisp quivered, taking the light. ‘Blue,’ said Hugh, peering close, and his breath caused the cobweb strand to dance. ‘Blue is a difficult and expensive dye. And there’s no such tint in these brychans.’ ‘Let’s have it forth,’ said Cadfael, and advanced his small tweezers, used for extracting thorns and splinters from unwary labouring fingers, to capture a filament almost too delicate to be seen. There was more of it, however, when it emerged, two or three fine strands that had the springy life of wool.
‘Hold your breath,’ said Cadfael, ‘till I have this safe under a lid from being blown away.’ He had brought one of the containers in which he stored his tablets and lozenges when he had moulded and dried them, a little polished wooden box, almost black in colour, and against the glossy dark surface the shred of wool shone brightly, a full, clear blue. He shut the lid upon it carefully, and probed again with the tweezers. Hugh shifted the lamp to cast its light at a new angle, and there was a brief gleam of red, the soft, pale red of late summer roses past their prime. It winked and vanished. Hugh moved the light to find it again. Barely two frail, curling filaments of the many that must have made up this wool that had woven the cloth, but wool carries colour bravely.
‘Blue and rose. Both precious colours, not for the furnishings of a bed.’ Cadfael captured the elusive thing after two or three casts, and imprisoned it with the blue. The light, carefully deployed, found no more such traces in the stretched nostrils. ‘Well, he also wore a beard. Let us see!’ There was a clear thread of the blue fluttering in the greying beard. Cadfael extracted it, and carefully combed the grizzled strands out into order to search for more. When he shook and stroked out the dust and hairs from the comb into his box, two or three points of light glimmered and vanished, like motes of dust lit by the sun. He tilted the box from side to side to recover them, for they were invisible once dimmed, and one single gold spark rewarded him. He found what he sought caught between the clenched teeth. One strand had frayed from age or use, and the spasm of death had bitten and held it. He drew it forth and held it to the light in his tweezers. A first finger, joint long, brittle and bright, glinting in the lamplight, the gold thread that had shed those invisible, scintillating particles.
‘Expensive indeed!’ said Cadfael, shutting it carefully into his box. ‘A princely death, to be smothered under cloth of fine wool embroidered with thread of gold. Tapestry? Altar, cloth? A lady’s brocaded gown? A piece from a worn vestment? Certainly nothing here within the infirmary, Hugh. Whatever it may have been, some man brought it with him.’ ‘So it would seem,’ agreed Hugh, brooding.
They found nothing more, but what they had found was puzzling enough.
‘So where is the cloth that smothered him?’ wondered Cadfael, fretting. And where is the gold pin that fastened Einon ab Ithel’s cloak?’ ‘Search for the cloth,’ said Hugh,’since it has a richness that could well be found somewhere within the abbey walls. And I will search for the pin. I have six Welshmen of the escort and Eliud yet to question and strip, and if that fails, we’ll burrow our way through the entire enclave as best we can. If they are here, we’ll find them.’ They searched, Cadfael for a cloth, any cloth which could show the rich colours and the gold thread he was seeking, Hugh for the gold pin. With the abbot’s leave and the assistance of Prior Robert, who had the most comprehensive knowledge of the riches of the house and demonstrated its treasures with pride, Cadfael examined every hanging, tapestry and altar, cloth the abbey possessed, but none of them matched the quivering fragments he brought to the comparison. Shades of colour are exact and consistent. This rose and this blue had no companions here.
Hugh, for his part, thoroughly searched the clothing and harness of all the Welshmen made prisoners by this death, and Prior Robert, though with disapproval, sanctioned the extension of the search into the cells of the brothers and novices, and even the possessions of the boys, for children may be tempted by a bright thing, without realising the gravity of what they do. But nowhere did they find any trace of the old and massive pin that had held the collar of Einon’s cloak close to keep the cold away from Gilbert Prestcote on his journey.
The day was spent by then and the evening coming on, but after Vespers and supper Cadfael returned to the quest. The inhabitants of the infirmary were quite willing to talk; they had not often so meaty a subject on which to debate. Yet neither Cadfael nor Edmund got much information out of them. Whatever had happened had happened during the half, hour or more when the brothers were at dinner in the refectory, and at that time the infirmary, already fed, was habitually asleep. There was one, however, who, being bedridden, slept a great deal at odd times, and was well able to remain wakeful if something more interesting than usual was going on.
