consequence, and evidently well known here. Just as well for me his grooms are not equally well known, and all over fifty and bearded, or I should have been a lost man.
A lucky escape, thought Cadfael, heaving a great sigh of relief, and turning back to where Hugh still stood in earnest talk with Abbot Radulfus, under the great east window of the Lady Chapel. Salvation comes from strange places and unexpected friends. And a very apt ending, too!
A lucky escape, thought Sanan, shaking with dismay and fear suddenly transmuted into triumphant laughter. And he has no idea what has just happened! Neither of them has! Oh, to see Ninian’s face when I tell him!
A lucky escape, thought Jerome, scurrying thankfully back to his proper duties. I should have made a sorry fool of myself if I had challenged him. A mere chance resemblance in figure and bearing, after all, nothing more. What a blessing for me that his master brushed by in time to acknowledge him as his, and warn me of my error.
For of course, Ralph Giffard, of all people, could scarcely be harbouring in his own service the very man he himself had so properly denounced to the law!
Chapter Thirteen
There is one question,” said the abbot, “which not only has not been answered, it has not yet been asked.”
He had waited until the table was cleared, and his guest supplied with the final cup of wine. Radulfus never allowed business of any kind to be discussed during a meal. The pleasures of the table were something he used sparingly, but respected.
“What is that?” asked Hugh.
“Has he told all the truth?”
Hugh looked up sharply across the table. “Cynric? Who can say of any man that he never lies? But general report of Cynric says that he never speaks at all unless he must, and then to the point. It is why he said nothing until Jordan was accused. Words come very hard to Cynric. I doubt if he ever in his life used as many in one day as we heard from him in a handful of moments this morning. I doubt if he would waste breath on lying, when even necessary truth costs him such labour.”
“He was eloquent enough today,” said Radulfus with a wry smile. “But I should be glad if we had some sure sign to confirm what he told us. He may very well have done no more than turn and walk away, and leave the issue of life and death to God, or whatever force he regards as the arbiter of justice in such a strange case. Or he may have struck the blow himself. Or he may have seen the thing happen, much as he says, but helped the priest into the water while he was stunned. Granted I do not think Cynric would be very ingenious at making up plausible tales to cover the event, yet we cannot know. Nor do I think him at all a man of violence, even where he found much to provoke it, but again we cannot know. And even if we have the entire truth from him, what should be done about such a man? How proceed with him?”
“For my part,” said Hugh firmly, “nothing can or will be done. There is no law he has broken. It may be a sin to allow a death to take place, it is not a crime. I hold fast to my own writ. Sinners are in your province, not mine.” He did not add that there was some accounting due from the man who had brought Ailnoth, a stranger scarcely known, to assume the pastoral care of a bereaved flock that had no voice in the choosing of their new shepherd. But he suspected that the thought was in the abbot’s mind, and had been ever since the first complaints were brought to his ears. He was not a man to shut his eyes to his own errors, or shirk his own responsibilities.
“This I can tell you,” said Hugh. “What he said of the woman who followed Ailnoth and was struck down by him is certainly true. Mistress Hammet claimed then that she had fallen on the icy ground. That was a lie. The priest did that to her, she has owned it since to Brother Cadfael, who treated her injuries. And since I have now brought Cadfael into this, I think you would do well, my lord, to send for him. I have had no chance to speak with him since the events of this morning, and it’s in my mind that he may have something further to say in this matter. He was missing from the ranks of the brothers in the cemetery when I came, for I looked for him and couldn’t find him. He came later, not from the Foregate but from within the court. He would not have absented himself but for good reason. If he has things to tell me, I cannot afford to neglect them.”
“Neither, it seems, can I,” said Radulfus, and reached for the little bell that lay on his desk. The small silver chime brought in his secretary from the ante-room. “Brother Vitalis, will you find Brother Cadfael, and ask him to come here to us?”
When the door had closed again the abbot sat silent for a while, considering. “I know now, of course,” he said at last, “that Father Ailnoth was indeed grossly deceived, and that is some extenuation for him. But the woman?I gather she is no kin to the youth she sheltered, the one we knew as Benet??she had been an exemplary servant to her master for three years, her only offence was in protecting the young man, an offence which sprang only from affection. There shall be no penalty visited upon her, never by my authority. She shall have quiet living here, since it was I who brought her here. If we get a new priest who has neither mother nor sister to mind his dwelling, then she may serve him as she did Ailnoth, and I hope there may never be reason for her to kneel to him but in the confessional, and none ever for him to strike her. And as for the boy
” He looked back with a resigned and tolerant eye, and shook his head a little, smiling. “I remember we gave him to Cadfael to do the rough work before the winter freeze. I saw him once in the garden, digging the long butt. At least he gave honest value. FitzAlan’s squire was not afraid to dig, nor ashamed.” He looked up, head tilted, into Hugh’s face. “You don’t, by any chance, know
?”
“I have been rather careful not to know,” said Hugh.
“Well
I am glad he never fouled his hands with murder. I saw them black enough with soil, from plucking out the weeds too gross to be dug in,” said Radulfus, and smiled distantly, looking out of the window at a pearl-grey, low hanging sky. “I expect he’ll do well enough. Pity of all pities there should be one such young man in arms against another in this land, but at least let the steel be bared only in the open field, not privily in the dark.”
Cadfael laid out on the abbot’s desk the remaining relics of Father Ailnoth, the ebony staff, the draggled black skullcap with its torn binding, and the unravelled woollen remnant of braid that completed the circle.
“Cynric told simple truth, and here are the proofs of it. Only this morning, when I saw Mistress Hammet’s open hand once again, and remembered the grazes I had dressed, did I understand how she got those injuries. Not from a fall?there was no fall. The wound on her head was dealt by this staff, for I found several long hairs of her greying light-brown colour here, caught in the frayed edges of this silver band. You see it’s worn wafer-thin, and the edges turned and cracking.”
