though a jagged stone had been pressed into the flesh there. Cadfael pondered this small, insignificant thing in silence for a while, and concluded that it might be by no means insignificant.
“A small, sharp cut,” he mused, peering close, “and this hollow wound beside it. The man who did this wore a ring, on the middle or third finger of his right hand. A ring with a large stone in it, to thrust so into the flesh. And it must hang rather loose on his finger, for it turned partially within as he gripped. On the middle finger, surely … if it had hung loose on the third he would have shifted it to the middle one. I can think of no other way such an injury can have been made.” He looked up into the circle of attentive faces. “Did young Lucy wear such a ring?”
Picard shrugged off all knowledge of such matters. After some thought Simon said: “I cannot recall ever noticing a ring. But neither can I say certainly that he never wore one. I might ask Guy if he knows.”
“It shall be enquired into,” said the sheriff. “Is there more to be noticed?”
“I can think of nothing. Unless it is worth wondering where this man had been, and on what errand, to find him on that path at such an hour.”
“We do not know the hour,” said Prestcote.
“No, true. It is not possible to say how long a man has been dead, not within a matter of hours. Yet the turf under him was moist. But there is another point. All the signs show?very well, let us be wary of reading too confidently, they seem to show!?that he was riding back towards his house when he was waylaid. And the trap set for him was laid and waiting before he came. Therefore whoever set it, and thereafter killed him, knew where he had gone, and by what road he must return.”
“Or must have followed him in the night, and made his plans accordingly,” said the sheriff. “We are sure now that Lucy made his way to the hay-store in the bishop’s garden and hid there, but after dark he came forth, and may well have lurked to keep watch on his lord’s movements, with this fell intent in mind. He knew Domville would be supping here at the abbey, for all the household knew it. It would not be difficult to wait in hiding for his return, and to see him riding on alone and dismissing his squire provided the very chance revenge needed. Small doubt but Lucy is our man.”
There was no more then to be said. The sheriff returned to his hunt, convinced of his rightness; and on the face of it, Cadfael allowed, no blame at all to him for the case was black. Huon de Domville was left to the care of Brother Edmund and his helpers, and his coffin bespoken from Martin Bellecote, the master carpenter in the town, for whether he was to find his burial here or elsewhere, he must be decently coffined for his journey to the grave, and with suitable grandeur. His body had no more now to tell.
Or so Brother Cadfael thought, until he consented to recount the circumstances of death and enquiry to Brother Oswin in the workshop, over the sorting of beans for the next year’s seed. Oswin listened intently to all. At the end he said with apparent inconsequence: “I wonder that he should ride in a late October night without a capuchon. And he bald, too!”
Cadfael stood at gaze, contemplating him with wonder across a handful of seed. “What was that you said?”
“Why, for an old man to go bareheaded in the night…”
He had put his finger firmly on the one thing Cadfael had missed. Domville had not ridden away bareheaded from the abbey gatehouse, that was certain. Cadfael himself had seen him depart, the fine crimson capuchon twisted up into an elaborate hat, gold fringe swinging, and yet he had not thought to look for it where the body lay fallen, or question its absence.
“Child,” said Cadfael heartily, “I am always underestimating you. Remind me of it when next I breathe down your neck over your work, for I shall deserve it. He did indeed have a capuchon, and I had better be about finding it.”
He asked no permission, preferring to consider that the morning’s leave to join in the search might reasonably be extended to cover a further stage in the same quest. There was still time before Vespers if he hurried, and the place was marked with their improvised cross.
The turf under the oak still retained the vague shape of Domville’s body, but already the grasses were rising again. Cadfael prowled the pathway with his eyes on the ground, penetrated into the trees on both sides, and found nothing. It was a sudden shaft of sunlight through the branches, filtering through thick underbrush, that finally located for him what he sought, by picking out the glitter of the gold fringe that bordered the cape of the capuchon. It had been flung from its wearer’s head when he was thrown, and buried itself in a clump of bushes three yards from the path, its fashionable twisted arrangement making it all too easy to dislodge in such a shock. Cadfael hauled it out. The turban-like folds had been well wound, it was still a compact cap, with one draped edge left to swing gracefully to a shoulder. And in the dark crimson folds a cluster of bright blue shone. Somewhere in his nocturnal ride Huon de Domville had added to his adornments a little bunch of frail, straight stems bearing long, fine green leaves and starry flowers of a heavenly blue, even now, when they had lain all day neglected. Cadfael drew the posy out of the folds, and marveled at it, for though it had commoner cousins, this plant was a rarity.
He knew it well, though it was seldom to be found even in the shady places in Wales where he had occasionally seen it. He knew of no place here in England where it had ever, to his knowledge, been discovered. When he wanted seed to make powders or infusions against colic or stone, he had to be content with the poor relatives of this rarity. Now what, he wondered, viewing its very late and now somewhat jaded flowers, is a bunch of the blue creeping gromwell doing in these parts? Certainly Domville had not had it when he left the abbey.
It was a pity there was no time to go further, since he must be back to attend Iveta and go to Vespers. He was beginning to be very curious indeed about Domville’s nightly ramblings. Had not Picard mentioned by the way that the baron had a hunting-lodge near the Long Forest? From the Foregate this path might well be the most direct way to that lodge. True, the place might lie anywhere along some miles of the forest borders, but it would be well worth following the road the dead man had taken. But not today, that was out of the question.
Cadfael tucked the little bunch of blue and the capuchon in the breast of his habit, and made his way back. No doubt it was his duty to hand over both, with due explanations, to the sheriff, but he was not at all sure that he was going to do so. The capuchon, certainly, that added nothing to what was already known. But this small knot of fading beauty was eloquent indeed. Where that grew, Domville had been, and there surely could not be more than one such place in all this shire. He knew of only three in Gwynedd, where it had its home, here he was astonished to find even one. And Prestcote was an honest and just man, but arbitrary in his decisions, and already convinced of Joscelin’s guilt. Who else had a grudge against the baron? Cadfael was not convinced. Loose talk about killing did not delude him. There are people who are capable of murder by stealth, and people who are not, and nothing would persuade him to the contrary. Every man may be driven to kill, but not every man can be driven to kill by cunning, the knife in the back, the rope across the path.
He went back dutifully to the abbey, delivered the capuchon to the sergeant Prestcote had left at the gatehouse, and went to fetch the poppy syrup for Iveta from his workshop.
