” Giffard had more to say, and had plainly taken great encouragement from his own eloquence and Hugh’s acquiescence, for he had burned into sudden hopeful fervour. “Now I see more in this than either you or I have thought. For I have not quite told you all, there has hardly been time to think of everything. For see, it was this young man who came here under the protection of Father Ailnoth, vilely deceiving the priest in the pretence that he was a harmless youth seeking work, and kin to the woman who kept the priest’s household. And is not Father Ailnoth, who brought him here in all innocence, now done to death and waiting for burial? Who is more likely to stand guilty of his murder than the man who took wicked advantage of his goodness, and made him an unwitting accomplice in treason?”
He knew very well what manner of bolt he was hurling into the circle of listeners, he had even drawn back a pace or two to observe the shock and to distance himself from it. There was no length to which he would not go, now, to prove his own loyal integrity, to keep what he still had, if he must eternally grudge and lament what he had lost by his former allegiance. Perhaps he was secretly relieved that the boy he traduced was well away, and need never answer, but what most troubled him was his own inviolability.
“You’re accusing him of the priest’s murder?” said Hugh, eyeing him narrowly. “That’s going far. On what grounds do you make such a charge?”
“The very fact that he is fled points to him.”
“That might be valid enough, but not?mark me!?not unless the priest had got wind of the deception practised on him. To the best we know there was no quarrel between them, nothing had arisen to set them at odds. Unless the priest had found out how he had been abused, there could be no ground for any hostility between them.”
“He did know,” said Giffard.
“Go on,” said Hugh after a brief, profound silence. “You cannot stop there. How do you know the priest had found him out?”
“For the best reason. I told him! I said there was still more that I had not yet told you. On the eve of the Nativity I came down here to his house, and told him how he was cheated and abused by one he had helped. I had given it anxious thought, and though I did not go to your deputy, I felt it only right to warn Father Ailnoth how he had harboured an enemy unawares. Those of the Empress’s party are threatened with excommunication now, as you, my lord sheriff, are witness. The priest had been shamefully imposed upon, and so I told him.”
So that was the way of it! That was where he had been bound in such determined haste before Compline. And that was why Father Ailnoth had rushed away vengefully to keep the nocturnal tryst and confront in person the youth who had imposed upon him. Give him his due, he was no coward, he would not run first to the sergeants and get a bodyguard, he would storm forth by the mill-pool to challenge his opponent face to face, denounce, possibly even attempt to overpower him with his own hands, certainly cry him outlaw to the abbot and to the castle if he could not himself hale him to judgement. But things had gone very differently, for Ninian had come unharmed to church, and Ailnoth had ended in the pool with a broken head. And who could avoid making the simple connection now? Who that had not spent so many days in Ninian’s blithe company as had Cadfael, and got to know him so well?
“And after you had left him,” said Hugh, eyeing Giffard steadily, “he knew the time and place appointed for you to meet with Bachiler, and the invitation you had rejected you think he went to accept? But without an acceptance from you, would Bachiler keep the appointment?”
“I made no answer. I had not rejected it outright. He was asking for help, for news, for a horse. He would come! He could not afford not to come.”
And he would meet with a very formidable and very angry enemy, bent on betraying him to the law, a man who verily held himself to be the instrument of the wrath of God. Yes, death could well come of such a meeting.
“Will,” said Hugh, turning abruptly to his sergeant, “get back to the castle and bring down more men. We’ll get the lord abbot’s permission to search the gardens here, and the stables and the barns, grange court, storehouses, all. Begin with the mill, and have a watch on the bridge and the highway. If this youngster was in the hut here not half an hour ago, as Cadfael says, he cannot be far. And whether he has killed or not is still open, but the first need is to lay hands on him and have him safe in hold.”
“You will not forget,” said Cadfael, alone with Hugh in the workshop later,”that there are others, many others, who had as good reason as Ninian, and better, to wish Ailnoth dead?”
“I don’t forget it. Far too many others,” agreed Hugh ruefully. “And all you tell me of this boy?not that I’m dull enough, mind, to suppose you’ve told me all you could!?shows him as one who might very well hit out boldly in his own defence, but scarcely from behind. Yet he might, in the heat of conflict. Who knows what any of us might do, in extremes? And by what I hear of the priest, he would lash out with all his might and whatever weapon came to hand. It’s the lad’s vanishing now that suggests the worst.”
“He had good reason to vanish,” pointed out Cadfael, “if he heard that Giffard was on his way to the castle to betray him. You’d have had to clap him into prison, guilty or innocent of the priest’s death. Your hand’s forced. Of course he’d run.”
“If someone warned him,” agreed Hugh with a wry smile. “You, for instance?”
“No, not I,” said Cadfael virtuously. “I knew nothing about Giffard’s errand, or I might have dropped a word in the boy’s ear. But no, certainly not I. I do know that Benet?Ninian we must call him now, I suppose!?was in the church some time before midnight on Christmas Eve. If he went to the mill at all, he went early for the meeting, and left early, also.”
“So you told me, and I believe it. But so, by your own account, did Ailnoth go early to the meeting place, perhaps to hide himself and spring out on Bachiler by surprise. There was still time for them to clash and one to die.”
“The boy had not the marks of any agitation or dismay upon him in the church. A little excitement, perhaps, but pleasurable, I would say. And how much have you managed to worm out of the parish folk about this business? There are a number who had justifiable grudges against Ailnoth, what have they to say for themselves?”
“In general, as you’d expect, as little as possible. One or two make no secret of their gratitude that the man’s gone, none at all. Eadwin, the one whose boundary stone he moved, he’s neither forgotten nor forgiven, even if the stone was replaced afterwards. His wife and children swear he never left the house that night?but so do they all, and so, of course, they would. Jordan Achard, the baker, now there’s a man who might kill in a rage. He has a real grievance. His bread is his pride, and there was never any amends made for that insult. It hurt far more than if the priest had denounced him for a notorious lecher, which would at least have had the merit of being true. There are some give him the credit for being the father of that poor girl’s baby, the lass who drowned herself, but from all I hear it could as well have been half the other men in the parish, for she couldn’t say no to any of them. Our Jordan says he was home and sober every moment of Christmas Eve, and his wife bears him out, but she’s a poor, subdued creature who wouldn’t dare cross him. But from all accounts it’s few nights he does spend in his own bed,
