‘No!’ cried Hyacinth, on his feet in one wild, smooth movement, his eyes two yellow flames of alarm and rejection. ‘Not a word to him, never a word! If we’d thought you’d go to him we’d never have let you in to us. He’s the sheriff, he must take Bosiet’s part?he has manors, he has villeins of his own, do you think he’d ever side with me against my legal lord? I should be dragged back at Aymer’s heels, and buried alive in his prison.’
Cadfael turned to Eilmund for help. ‘I swear to you I can lift this suspicion from the lad by speaking with Hugh. He’ll take my word and hold off from the hunt?withdraw his men, or send them elsewhere. He has still Richard to find. Eilmund, you know Hugh Beringar better than to doubt his fairness.’
But no, Eilmund did not know him, not as Cadfael knew him. The forester was shaking his head doubtfully. A sheriff is a sheriff, pledged to law, and law is rigid and weighted, all in all, against the peasant and the serf and the landless man. ‘He’s a decent, fair-minded man, sure enough,’ said Eilmund, ‘but I dare not stake this boy’s life on any king’s officer. No, leave us keep as we are, Cadfael. Say nothing to any man, not until Bosiet’s come and gone.’
They were all linked against him. He did his best, arguing quietly what ease it would be to know that the hunt would not be pressed home against Hyacinth, that his innocence, once communicated privily to Hugh, would set free the forces of law to look elsewhere for Drogo’s murderer, and also allow them to press their search for Richard more thoroughly, and with more resources, through these forests where the child had vanished. But they had their arguments, too, and there was matter in them.
‘If you told the sheriff, even secretly,’ urged Annet, ‘and if he did believe you, he would still have Bosiet to deal with. His father’s man will tell him it’s as good as certain his runaway is somewhere here in hiding, murderer or no. He’ll go the length of using hounds, if the sheriff draws his men off. No, say nothing to anyone, not yet. Wait until they give up and go home. Then we’ll come forth. Promise! Promise us silence until then!’
There was nothing to be done about it. He promised. They had trusted him, and against their absolute prohibition he could not hold out. He sighed and promised.
It was very late when he rose at last, his word given, to begin the night ride back to the abbey. He had given a promise also to Hugh, never thinking how hard it might be to keep. He had said that if he had anything to tell, Hugh should hear it before any other. A subtle, if guileless, arrangement of words, through which a devious mind could find several loopholes, but what he meant had been as clear to Hugh as it was to Cadfael. And now he could not make it good. Not yet, not until Aymer Bosiet should grow restive, count the costs of his vengeance, and think it better to go home and enjoy his new inheritance instead.
In the doorway he turned back to ask of Hyacinth one last question, a sudden afterthought. ‘What of Cuthred? With you two living so close?did he have any part in all this mischief of yours in Eilmund’s forest?’
Hyacinth stared at him gravely, in mild surprise, his amber eyes wide and candid. ‘How could he?’ he said simply. ‘He never leaves his own pale.’
Aymer Bosiet rode into the great court of the abbey about noon of the next day, with a young groom at his back. Brother Denis the hospitaller had orders to bring him to Abbot Radulfus as soon as he arrived, for the abbot was unwilling to delegate to anyone else the task of breaking to him the news of his father’s death. It was achieved with a delicacy for which, it seemed, there was little need. The bereaved son sat silently revolving the news and all its implications at length, and having apparently digested and come to terms with it, expressed his filial grief very suitably, but with his mind still engaged on side issues, a shrewdly calculating mind behind a face less powerful and brutal than his father’s, but showing little evidence of sorrow. He did frown over the event, for it involved troublesome duties, such as commissioning coffin and cart and extra help for the journey home, and making the best possible use of such time as he could afford here. Radulfus had already had Martin Bellecote, the master carpenter in the town, make a plain inner coffin for the body, which was not yet covered, since doubtless Aymer would want to look upon his father’s face for a last time and take his farewells.
The bereaved son revolved the matter in his mind, and asked point-blank and with sharp intent: ‘He had not found our runaway villein?’
‘No,’ said Radulfus, and if he was shaken he contrived to contain the shock. ‘There was a suggestion that the young man was in the neighbourhood, but no certainty that the youth in question was really the one sought. And I believe now no one knows where he is gone.’
‘My father’s murderer is being sought?’
‘Very assiduously, with all the sheriffs men.’
‘My villein also, I trust. Whether or not,’ said Aymer grimly, ‘the two turn out to be the same. The law is bound to do all it can to recover my property for me. The rogue is a nuisance, but valuable. For no price would I be willing to let him go free.’ He bit off the words with a vicious snap of large, strong teeth. He was as tall and long-boned as his father, but carried less flesh, and was leaner in the face; but he had the same shallowly-set eyes of an indeterminate, opaque colour, that seemed all surface and no depth. Thirty years old, perhaps, and pleasurably aware of his new status. Proprietorial satisfaction had begun to vibrate beneath the hard level of his voice. Already he spoke of ‘my property’. That was one aspect of his bereavement which certainly had not escaped him.
‘I shall want to see the sheriff concerning this fellow who calls himself Hyacinth. If he has run, does not that make it more likely he is indeed Brand? And that he had a hand in my father’s death? There’s a heavy score against him already. I don’t intend to let such a debt go unpaid.’
‘That is a matter for the secular law, not for me,’ said Radulfus with chill civility. ‘There is no proof of who killed the lord Drogo, the thing is quite open. But the man is being sought. If you will come with me, I’ll take you to the chapel where your father lies.’
Aymer stood beside the open coffin on its draped bier, and the light of the tall candles burning at Drogo’s head and feet showed no great change in his son’s face. He gazed down with drawn brows, but it was the frown of busy thought rather than grief or anger at such a death.
‘I feel it bitterly,’ said the abbot, ‘that a guest in our house should come to so evil an end. We have said Masses for his soul, but other amends are out of my scope. I trust we may yet see justice done.’
‘Indeed!’ agreed Aymer, but so absently that it was plain his mind was on other things. ‘I have no choice but to take him home for burial. But I cannot go yet. This search cannot be so soon abandoned. I must ride into the town this afternoon and see this master carpenter of yours, and have him make an outer coffin and line it with lead, and seal it. A pity, he could have lain just as properly here, but the men of our house are all buried at Bosiet. My mother would not be content else.’
He said it with a note of vexation in his musings. But for the necessity of taking home a corpse he could have lingered here for days to pursue his hunt for the escaped villein. Even as things stood he meant to make the fullest use of his time, and Radulfus could not help feeling that it was the villein he wanted most vindictively, not his father’s murderer.
