rose and stepped warily out into the court, after one nervous side-glance to make sure Brother Cadfael was there, the deputy sheriff took him by the chin and raised his face gently enough, and studied it attentively. The bruises were purple this morning, but the hazel eyes were bright. “I’ll know you again,” said Hugh confidently. “Now, young sir! You have cost us a great deal of time and trouble, but I don’t propose to waste even more by taking it out of your skin. I’ll ask you but once: Where is Edwin Gurney?”
The phrasing of the question and the cut of the dark face left in doubt what was to happen if he got no answer; in spite of the mild tone, the potentialities were infinite. Edwy moistened dry lips, and said in the most conciliatory and respectful tone Cadfael had heard from him: “Sir, Edwin is my kin and my friend, and if I had been willing to tell where he is, I should not have gone to such pains to help him get there. I think you must see that I can’t and won’t betray him.”
Beringar looked at Brother Cadfael, and kept his face grave but for the sparkle in his eye. “Well, Edwy, I expected no other, to tell the truth. Nobody does ill to keep faith. But I want you where I may lay hand on you whenever I need to, and be sure you are not stravaiging off on another wild rescue.”
Edwy foresaw a cell in Shrewsbury castle, and stiffened a stoical face to meet the worst.
“Give me your parole not to leave your father’s house and shop,” said Beringar, “until I give you your freedom, and you may go home. Why should we feed you at public expense over the Christmas feast, when I fancy your word, once given, will be your bond? What do you say?”
“Oh, I do give you my word!” gasped Edwy, startled and radiant with relief. “I won’t leave the yard until you give me leave. And I thank you!”
“Good! And I take your word, as you may take mine. My task, Edwy, is not to convict your uncle, or any man, of murder at all costs, it is to discover truly who did commit murder, and that I mean to do. Now come, I’ll take you home myself, a word with your parents may not come amiss.”
They were gone before High Mass at ten, Beringar with Edwy pillion behind him, the raw-boned dapple being capable of carrying double his master’s light weight, the men-at-arms of the escort two by two behind. Only in the middle of Mass, when his mind should have been on higher things, did Cadfael recall vexedly two more concessions he might have gained if he had thought of them in time. Martin Bellecote, for certain, was now without a horse, and the abbey was willing to part with Rufus, while Richildis would surely be glad to have him settled with her son-in- law, and no longer be beholden to the abbey for his keep. It would probably have tickled Beringar’s humour to restore the carpenter a horse, on the pretext of relieving the abbey of an incubus. But the other thing was more important. He had meant to go searching the shores of the pond for the poison vial the previous day, and instead had found himself confined within the walls. Why had he not remembered to ask Beringar to follow up that tenuous but important line of inquiry, while he was asking him to have the watermen watch for the pearwood reliquary? Now it was too late, and he could not follow Beringar into the town to remedy the omission. Vexed with himself, he even snapped at Brother Mark, when that devoted young man questioned him about the outcome of the morning’s events. Undeterred, Mark followed him, after dinner, to his sanctuary in the garden.
“I am an old fool,” said Cadfael, emerging from his depression, “and have lost a fine chance of getting my work done for me, in places where I can no longer go myself. But that’s no fault of yours, and I’m sorry I took it out on you.”
“If it’s something you want done outside the walls,” said Mark reasonably, “why should I be of less use today than I was yesterday?”
“True, but I’ve involved you enough already. And if I had had good sense I could have got the law to do it, which would have been far better. Though this is not at all dangerous or blameworthy,” he reminded himself, taking heart, “it is only to search once again for a bottle …”
“Last time,” said Mark thoughtfully, “we were looking for something we hoped would not be a bottle. Pity we did not find it.”
“True, but this time it should be a bottle, if the omen of Beringar’s coming instead of Prestcote means anything. And I’ll tell you where.” And so he did, pointing the significance of a window open to the south, even in light frost, on a bright day.
“I’m gone,” said Brother Mark. “And you may sleep the noon away with a good conscience. My eyes are younger than yours.”
“Mind, take a napkin, and if you find it, wrap it loosely, and touch only as you must. I need to see how the oil has run and dried.”
It was when the afternoon light was dimming that Brother Mark came back. There was half an hour yet before Vespers, but from this time on any search for a small thing in a narrow slope of grass would have been a blind and hopeless quest. Winter days begin so late and end so early, like the dwindling span of life past three score.
Cadfael had taken Brother Mark at his word, and dozed the afternoon away. There was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do here, no work needing his efforts. But suddenly he started out of a doze, and there was Brother Mark, a meagre but erect and austere figure, standing over him with a benign smile on the ageless, priestly face Cadfael had seen in him ever since his scared, resentful, childish entry within these walls. The voice, soft, significant, delighted, rolled the years back; he was still eighteen, and a young eighteen at that.
“Wake up! I have something for you!”
Like a child coming on a father’s birthday: “Look! I made it for you myself!”
The carefully folded white napkin was lowered gently into Cadfael’s lap. Brother Mark delicately turned back the folds, and exposed the contents with a gesture of such shy triumph that the analogy was complete. There it lay to be seen, a small, slightly misshapen vial of greenish glass, coloured somewhat differently all down one side, where yellowish brown coated the green, from a residue of liquid that still moved very sluggishly within.
“Light me that lamp!” said Cadfael, gathering the napkin in both hands to raise the prize nearer his eyes. Brother Mark laboured industriously with flint and tinder, and struck a spark into the wick of the little oil-lamp in its clay saucer, but the conflict of light, within and without, hardly bettered the view. There was a stopper made of a small plug of wood wrapped in a twist of wool cloth. Cadfael sniffed eagerly at the cloth on the side that was coloured brown. The odour was there, faint but unmistakable, his nose knew it well. Frost had dulled but still retained it. There was a long trail of thin, crusted oil, long dried, down the outside of the vial.
“Is it right? Have I brought you what you wanted?” Brother Mark hovered, pleased and anxious.
“Lad, you have indeed! This little thing carried death in it, and, see, it can be hidden within a man’s hand. It lay thus, on its side, as you found it? Where the residue has gathered and dried the length of the vial within? And without, too … It was stoppered and thrust out of sight in haste, surely about someone’s person, and if he has not the mark of it somewhere about him still, this long ooze of oil from the leaking neck is a great deceiver. Now sit
