She turned from him abruptly, but with a suggestion rather of balance and resolution than shock and dread, and sat down on the bench where Sanan had been sitting on his former visit. She sat erect, drawn up with elbows tight at her sides and feet firmly planted.
“Do you know where he is?” she asked in a low voice.
“I do not, though he made to tell me. Rest easy, I talked with him only last night, I know he is well. What I have to say has to do with you, and with what happened on the eve of the Nativity, when Father Ailnoth died, and you
had a fall on the ice.”
She was already certain that he had knowledge she had hoped to keep from the light, but she did not know what it was. She kept silence, her eyes lifted steadily to his face, and left it to him to continue.
“A fall?yes! You won’t have forgotten. You fell on the icy road and struck your head on the doorstone. I dressed the wound then, I saw it again yesterday, and it has healed over, but it still shows the bruise, and the scar where the skin was broken. Now hear what I have found this morning, in the mill-pond. Father Ailnoth’s staff, drifted across to the far shore, and caught in the worn silver band, where the thin edges have turned, and are rough and sharp, five long hairs, the like of yours. Yours I saw closely, when I bathed your wound, I know there were broken ends there. I have the means to match them now.”
She had sunk her head into her hands, the long, work-worn fingers clutched cheek and temple hard.
“Why should you hide your face?” he said temperately. “That was not your sin.”
In a little while she raised a tearless face, blanched and wary, and peered at him steadily between her supporting hands. “I was here,” she said slowly, “when the nobleman came. I knew him again, I knew why he was here. Why else should he come?”
“Why, indeed! And when he was gone, the priest turned upon you. Reviled you, perhaps cursed you, for an accomplice in treason, for a liar and deceiver
We have learned to know him well enough to know that he would not be merciful, nor listen to excuse or pleading. Did he threaten you? Tell you how he would crush your nurseling first, and discard you with ignominy afterwards?”
Her back stiffened. She said with dignity: “I nursed my lamb at this breast after my own child was born dead. He had a sickly mother, poor sweet lady. When he came to me, it was as if a son of my own had come home in need. Do you think I cared what he?my master?might do against me?”
“No, I believe you,” said Cadfael. “Your thought was all of Ninian when you went out after Father Ailnoth that night, to try to turn him from his purpose of challenge and betrayal. For you did follow him, did you not? You must have followed him. How else have I teased your hairs out of the worn band of his staff? You followed and pleaded with him, and he struck you. Clubbed his staff and struck out at your head.”
“I clung to him,” she said, with stony calm now, “fell on my knees in the frosty grass there by the mill, and clung to the skirts of his gown to hold him, and would not let go. I prayed him, I pleaded, I begged him for mercy, but he had none. Yes, he struck me. He could not endure to be so held and crossed, it enraged him, he might well have killed me. Or so I dreaded then. I tried to fend off his blows, but I knew he would strike again if he could not rid himself of me. So I loosed hold and got to my feet, God knows how, and ran from him. And that was the last I ever saw of him living.”
“And you neither saw nor heard any other creature there? You left him whole, and alone?”
“I tell you truth,” she said, shaking her head, “I neither heard nor saw any other soul, not even when I reached the Foregate. But neither my eyes nor my ears were clear, my head so rang, and I was in such sick despair. The first I was truly aware of was blood running down my forehead, and then I was in this house, crouched on the floor by the hearth, and shivering with the cold of fear, with no notion how I got here. I ran like an animal to its den, and that was all I knew. Only I am sure I met no one on the way, because if I had I should have had to master myself, walk like a woman in her senses, even give a greeting. And when you have to, you can. No, I know nothing more after I fled from him. All night I waited in fear of his return, knowing he would not spare me, and dreading he had already done his worst against Ninian. I was sure then that we were both lost?that everything was lost.”
“But he did not come,” said Cadfael.
“No, he did not come. I bathed my head, and stanched the blood, and waited without hope, but he never came. It was no help to me. Fear of him turned about into fear for him, for what could he be doing, out in the frost all night long? Even if he had gone up to the castle and called out the guard there, still it could not have kept him so long. But he didn’t come. Think for yourself what manner of night I spent, sleepless in his house, waiting.”
“There was also, perhaps worst of all,” said Cadfael gently, “your fear that he had indeed met with Ninian at the mill after you fled, and come to grief at Ninian’s hands.”
She said, “Yes,” in a dry whisper, and shivered. “It could have been so. A boy of such spirit, challenged, accused, perhaps attacked
It could have been so. Thanks be to God, it was not so!”
“And in the morning? You could not leave it longer or leave it to others to raise an alarm. So you came to the church.”
“And told half a story,” she said with a brief, twisted smile, like a contortion of pain. “What else could I do?”
“And while we went searching for the priest, Ninian stayed with you, and told you, doubtless, how he had spent the night, knowing nothing at all of what had happened after he left the mill. As doubtless you told him the rest of your story. But neither of you could shed light on the man’s death.”
“That is true,” said Diota, “I swear it. Neither then nor now. And now what do you intend for me?”
“Why, simply that you should do what Abbot Radulfus charged you, continue here and keep this house in readiness for another priest, and trust his word that you shall not be abandoned, since the church brought you here. I must be free to make use of what I know, but it shall be done with as little harm to you as possible, and only when I have understood more than now I understand. I wish you could have helped me one more step on the road, but never mind, truth is there to be found, and there must be a way to it. There were three people, besides Ailnoth, went to the mill that night,” said Cadfael, pausing at the door. “Ninian was the first, you were the second. I wonder?I wonder!?who was the third?”
