and brief, for time’s short. But we may as well be comfortable with what we have. And here’s food and drink for you.” Young hands, invisible, clasped his offerings gladly. They felt their way to a snug place in the hay, side by side.
“Is there any better news for me?” asked Edwin anxiously.
“Not yet. What I have for you, young man, is a question. Why did you leave out half the tale?”
Edwin sat up sharply beside him, in the act of biting heartily into a crust of bread. “But I didn’t! I told you the truth. Why should I keep anything from you, when I came asking for your help?”
“Why, indeed! Yet the sheriff’s men have had speech with a certain carter who was crossing the bridge from Shrewsbury when you went haring away from your mother’s house, and he testifies that he saw you heave something over the parapet into the river. Is that true?”
Without hesitation the boy said: “Yes!” his voice a curious blend of bewilderment, embarrassment and anxiety. Cadfael had the impression that he was even blushing in the darkness, and yet obviously with no sense of guilt at having left the incident unmentioned, rather as though a purely private folly of his own had been accidentally uncovered.
“Why did you not tell me that yesterday? I might have had a better chance of helping you if I’d known.”
“I don’t see why.” He was a little sullen and on his dignity now, but wavering and wondering. “It didn’t seem to have anything to do with what happened … and I wanted to forget it. But I’ll tell you now, if it does matter. It isn’t anything bad.”
“It matters very much, though you couldn’t have known that when you threw it away.” Better tell him the reason now, and show that by this examiner, at least, he was not doubted. “For what you sent over the parapet, my lad, is being interpreted by the sheriff’s man as the bottle that held the poison, newly emptied by you before you ran out of the house, and disposed of in the river. So now, I think, you had better tell me what it really was, and I’ll try to convince the law they are on the wrong scent, over that and everything else.”
The boy sat very still, not stunned by this blow, which was only one more in a beating which had already done its worst and left him still resilient. He was very quick in mind, he saw the implications, for himself and for Brother Cadfael. Slowly he said: “And you don’t need first to be convinced?”
“No. For a moment I may have been shaken, but not longer. Now tell me!”
“I didn’t know! How could I know what was going to happen?” He drew breath deeply, and some of the tension left the arm and shoulder that leaned confidingly into Cadfael’s side, “No one else knew about it, I hadn’t said a word to Meurig, and I never got so far as to show it even to my mother—I never had the chance. You know I’m learning to work in wood, and in fine metals, too, a little, and I had to show that I meant to be good at what I did. I made a present for my stepfather. Not because I liked him,” he made haste to add, with haughty honesty, “I didn’t! But my mother was unhappy about our quarrel, and it had made him hard and ill-tempered even to her—he never used to be, he was fond of her, I know. So I made a present as a peace offering… and to show I should make a craftsman, too, and be able to earn my living without him. He had a relic he valued greatly, he bought it in Walsingham when he was on pilgrimage, a long time ago. It’s supposed to be a piece of Our Lady’s mantle, from the hem, but I don’t believe it’s true. But he believed it. It’s a slip of blue cloth as long as my little finger, with a gold thread in the edge, and it’s wrapped in a bit of gold. He paid a lot of money for it, I know. So I thought I would make him a little reliquary just the right size for it, a little box with a hinge. I made it from pearwood, and jointed and polished it well, and inlaid the lid with a little picture of Our Lady in nacre and silver, and blue stone for the mantle. I think it was not bad.” The light-ache in his voice touched Brother Cadfael’s relieved heart; he had loved his work and destroyed it, he was entitled to grieve.
“And you took it with you to give to him yesterday?” he asked gently.
“Yes.” He bit that off short. Cadfael remembered how he had been received, according to Richildis, when he made his difficult, courageous appearance at their table, his gift secreted somewhere upon him.
“And you had it in your hand when he drove you out of the house with his malice. I see how it could happen.”
The boy burst out bitterly, shivering with resentment still: “He said I’d come to crawl to him for my manor … he taunted me, and if I kneeled to him … How could I offer him a gift, after that? He would have taken it as proof positive … I couldn’t bear that! It was meant to be a gift, without any asking.”
“I should have done what you did, boy, kept it clutched in my hand, and run from there without a word more.”
“But not thrown it in the river, perhaps,” sighed Edwin ruefully. “Why? I don’t know … Only it had been meant for him, and I had it in my hand, and Aelfric was running after me and calling, and I couldn’t go back … It wasn’t his, and it wasn’t any more mine, and I threw it over to be rid of it …”
So that was why neither Richildis nor anyone else had mentioned Edwin’s peace offering. Peace or war, for that matter? It had been meant to assert both his forgiveness and his independence, neither very pleasing to an elderly autocrat. But well-meant, for all that, an achievement, considering the lad was not yet fifteen years old. But no one had known of it. No one but the maker had ever had the chance to admire—as Richildis would have done most dotingly!—the nice dove-tailing of the joints of his little box, or the fine setting of the slips of silver and pearl and lapis which had flashed just once in the light as they hurtled into the river.
“Tell me, this was a well-fitted lid, and closed when you threw it over?”
“Yes.” He was very fairly visible now, and all startled eyes. He did not understand the question, but he was sure of his work. “Is that important, too, I wish now I hadn’t done it, I see I’ve made everything worse. But how was Ito know? There wasn’t any hue and cry for me then, there wasn’t any murder, I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“A small wooden box, tightly closed, will float gallantly where the river carries it, and there are men who live by the river traffic and fishing, yes, and poaching, too, and they’ll know every bend and beach from here to Atcham where things fetch up on the current. Keep your heart up, lad, you may yet see your work again if I can get the sheriff to listen to me, and put out the word to the watermen to keep a watch. If I give them a description of what was thrown away— oh, be easy, I’ll not reveal how I got it!—and somewhere downstream that very thing is discovered, that’s a strong point in your favour, and I may even be able to get them to look elsewhere for the bottle, somewhere where Edwin Gurney was not, and therefore could not have left it. You bide yet a day or two here in quiet, if you can bear it, and if need be, I’ll get you away to some more distant place, where you can wait the time out in better comfort.”
“I can bear it,” said Edwin sturdily. And added ruefully: “But I wish it may not be long!”
