best.”
Godith had scrubbed grubby hands down the skirts of her cotte before extending them to take the bundle. She stood suddenly very still, eyeing the other girl and clutching the dead man’s clothes, so startled and shaken that she forgot for a moment to keep her voice low. “No longer needs … You had a brother in there, in the castle? Oh, I am sorry! Very sorry!”
Aline looked down at her own hands, empty and rather lost now that even this last small duty was done. “Yes. One of many,” she said. “He made his choice. I was taught to think it the wrong one, but at least he stood by it to the end. My father might have been angry with him, but he would not have had to be ashamed.”
“I am sorry!” Godith hugged the folded garments to her breast and could find no better words. “I’ll deliver your message to Brother Cadfael as soon as he comes. And he would want me to give you his thanks for your most feeling charity, until he can do it for himself.”
“And give him this purse, too. It is for Masses for them all. But especially a Mass for the one who should not have been there — the one nobody knows.”
Godith stared in bewilderment and wonder. “Is there one like that? One who did not belong? I didn’t know!” She had seen Cadfael for only a few hurried moments when he came home late and weary, and he had had no time to tell her anything. All she knew was that the remaining dead had been brought to the abbey for burial; this mysterious mention of one who had no place in the common tragedy was new to her.
“So he said. There were ninety-five where there should have been only ninety-four, and one did not seem to have been in arms. Brother Cadfael was asking all who came, to look and see if they knew him, but I think no one has yet put a name to him.”
“And where, then is he now?” asked Godith, marvelling.
“That I don’t know. Though they must have brought him here to the abbey. Somehow I don’t think Brother Cadfael will let him be put into the earth with all the rest, and he nameless and unaccounted for. You must know his ways better than I. Have you worked with him long?”
“No, a very short time,” said Godith, “but I do begin to know him.” She was growing a little uneasy, thus innocently studied at close quarters by those clear iris eyes. A woman might be more dangerous to her secret than a man. She cast a glance back towards the beds of herbs where she had been working.
“Yes,” said Aline, taking the allusion, “I must not keep you from your proper work.”
Godith watched her withdraw, almost regretting that she dared not prolong this encounter with another girl in this sanctuary of men. She laid the bundle of clothing on her bed in the hut, and went back to work, waiting in some disquiet for Cadfael to come; and even when he did appear he was tired, and still burdened with business.
“I’m sent for to the king’s camp. It seems his sheriff has thought best to let him know what sort of unexpected hare I’ve started, and he wants an accounting from me. But I’m forgetting,” he said, passing a hard palm over cheeks stiff with weariness, “I’ve had no time to talk to you at all, you’ve heard nothing of all that — “
“Ah, but I have,” said Godith’ “Aline Siward was here looking for you. She brought these, see, for you to give as alms, wherever you think best. They were her brother’s. She told me. And this money is for Masses — she said especially a Mass for this one man more than was looked for. Now tell me, what is this mystery?”
It was pleasant to sit quietly for a while and let things slide, and therefore he relaxed and sat down with her, and told her. She listened intently, and when he was done she asked at once: “And where is he now, this stranger nobody knows?”
“He is in the church, on a bier before the altar. I want all who come to services to pass by him, in the hope that someone must know him, and give him a name. We can’t keep him beyond tomorrow,” he said fretfully, “the season is too hot. But if we must bury him unknown, I intend it to be where he can as easily be taken up again, and to keep his clothes and a drawing of his face, until we discover the poor lad.”
“And you truly believe,” she questioned, awed, “that he was murdered? And then cast in among the king’s victims, to hide the crime away for ever?”
“Child, I’ve told you! He was taken from behind, with a. strangler’s cord ready prepared for the deed. And it was done in the same night that the others died and were flung over into the ditch. What better opportunity could a murderer have? Among so many, who was to count, and separate, and demand answers? He had been dead much the same time as some of those others. It should have been a certain cover.”
“But it was not!” she said, vengefully glowing. “Because you came. Who else would have cared to be so particular among ninety-five dead men? Who else would have stood out alone for the rights of a man not condemned — killed without vestige of law? Oh, Brother Cadfael, you have made me as irreconcilable as you are on this. Here am I, and have not seen this man. Let the king wait a little while! Let me go and see! Or go with me, if you must, but let me look at him.”
Cadfael considered and got to his feet, groaning a little at the effort. He was not so young as he once had been, and he had had a hard day and night. “Come, then, have your will, who am Ito shut you out where I invite others in? It should be quiet enough there now, but keep close to me. Oh, girl, dear, I must also be about getting you safe out of here as soon as I may.”
“Are you so eager to get rid of me?” she said, offended. “And just when I’m getting to know sage from marjoram! What would you do without me?”
“Why, train some novice I can expect to keep longer than a few weeks. And speaking of herbs,” said Cadfael, drawing out a little leather bag from the breast of his habit, and shaking out a six-inch sprig of sun-dried herbage, a thin, square stem studded at intervals with pairs of spreading leaves, with tiny brown balls set in the joints of them, “do you know what this one is?”
She peered at it curiously, having learned much in a few days. “No. We don’t grow it here. But I might know it if I saw it growing fresh.”
“It’s goose-grass — -cleavers it’s also called. A queer, creeping thing that grows little hooks to hold fast, even on these tiny seeds you see here. And you see it’s broken in the middle of this straight stem?”
She saw, and was curiously subdued. There was something here beyond her vision; the thing was a wisp of brown, bleached and dry, but indeed folded sharply in the midst by a thin fracture. “What is it? Where did you find it?”
“Caught into the furrow in this poor lad’s throat,” he said, so gently that she could take it in without shock, “broken here by the ligament that strangled him. And it’s last year’s crop, not new. The stuff is growing richly at
