“He was not in attendance at Prime, and he is nowhere to be found. Nowhere, at least, that he should be at this hour. It is not like him to absent himself from the office,” said the prior fairly.
“It is not. He is a devoted soul.” The abbot spoke almost absently, for his mind was back in the privacy of his parlour, facing that all too brittle devotee as he poured out his illicit and bravely resisted love. This reminder came all too aptly. How if confession and absolution and the release from temptation had not been enough? Radulfus, not a hesitant man, was still hesitating how to act now, when they were interrupted by the sight of the porter coming down from the gatehouse at a scurrying run, skirts and sleeves flying.
“Father Abbot, there’s one here at the gate, the bronzesmith who rents the Widow Perle’s old house, says he has dire news that won’t wait. He asks for you?would not give me the message?”
“I’ll come,” said Radulfus instantly. And to the prior, who would have made to follow him: “Robert, do you have someone search further, the gardens, the grange court
If you do not find him, come back to me.” And he was off at a long, raking stride towards the gate, and the authority of his voice and the vehemence of his going forbade pursuit. There were too many interwoven threads here ?the lady of the rose, the house of the rose, the tenant who had willingly undertaken the errand Eluric dreaded, and now Eluric lost from within, and dire news entering from without. A woven pattern began to appear, and its colours were sombre.
Niall was waiting at the door of the porter’s lodge, his broad, strongly boned face very still and blanched with shock under its summer brown.
“You asked for me,” said Radulfus quietly, viewing him with a steady, measuring stare. “I am here. What is this news you bring?”
“My lord,” said Niall, “I thought best you should know it first alone, and then dispose as you see fit. Last night I lay at my sister’s house overnight because of the rain. When I came back this morning I went into the garden. My lord, Mistress Perle’s rose-bush has been hacked and broken, and one of your brothers lies dead there under it.”
After a brief, profound silence Radulfus said: “If you know him, name him.”
“I do know him. For three years he came to the garden to cut the rose for Mistress Perle. He is Brother Eluric, the custodian of Saint Mary’s altar.”
This time the silence was longer and deeper. Then the abbot asked simply: “How long since you discovered him there?”
“About the length of Prime, my lord, for it was nearly the hour when I passed the church on my way home. I came at once, but the porter would not disturb you during the office.”
“And you left all as you found it? Touched nothing?”
“I lifted his head to see his face. Nothing else. He lies just as I found him.”
“Good!” said Radulfus, and winced at using the word even for one right act, where everything else went grimly awry. “Then wait but a moment, while I send for certain others, and we will go back with you to that garden.”
Those he took with him, saying nothing as yet to any other, even the prior, were Brother Anselm and Brother Cadfael, witnesses for the abbey to the charter drawn up with Judith Perle. They alone had been told of Brother Eluric’s trouble, and shared the sorry knowledge that might be relevant here. The young man’s confessor was silenced by his office, and in any case Sub-Prior Richard was not the man Radulfus would have chosen as a wise counsellor in such dark matters.
The four of them stood in silence round the body of Brother Eluric, taking in the pitiful heap of black folds, the outflung hand, the mangled tree and the bloody knife. Niall had withdrawn a few paces to leave them alone, but stood watchful in attendance, to answer whatever they might ask.
“Poor, tormented child,” said Radulfus heavily. “I doubt I failed him fatally, his disease was worse than I knew. He begged to be relieved of his task, but surely he grudged it to any other, and has tried here to destroy the bush. And himself with it.”
Cadfael was silent, his eyes roving thoughtfully over the trampled ground. They had all refrained from treading too close, nothing had been disturbed since Niall went on his knees to turn the pallid face up to the light.
“Is that how you read it?” asked Anselm. “Are we to condemn him as a suicide? However we may pity?”
“What else can it be? Surely this involuntary love had so eaten into him that he could not bear another should take his place with the woman. Why else should he steal out by night and come here to this garden, why else should he hack at the roots of the tree? And from that it would be but a step, in his despair, to the unholy temptation to destroy himself with the roses. What could fix his image more terribly and for ever in her memory than such a death? For you know ?you two do know ?the measure of his desperation. And there lies the knife beside his hand.”
It was not a dagger, but a good, long-hafted knife, sharp and thin, such as any practical man might carry on him for a dozen lawful purposes, from carving his meat at the table to scaring off footpads on ajourney, or the occasional wild boar in the forest.
“Beside it,” said Cadfael shortly, “not in it.”
They turned their eyes on him cautiously, even hopefully.
“You see how his hand is clenched into the soil,” he went on slowly, “and there is no blood upon it, though the knife is bloodied to the hilt. Touch his hand ?I think you’ll find it is already stiffening as it lies, clutching the earth. He never held this knife. And if he had, would not the sheath be on his girdle? No man in his senses would carry such a knife about him unsheathed.”
“A man not in his right senses might, however,” said Radulfus ruefully. “He needed it, did he not, for what he has done to the rose-bush.”
“What was done to the rose-bush,” said Cadfael firmly, “was not done with that knife. Could not be! A man would have to saw away for half an hour or more, even with a sharp knife, at such a thick bole. That was done with a heavier weapon, meant for such work, a broom-hook or a hatchet. Moreover, you see the gash begins higher, where a single blow, or two at the most, should have severed the stem, but it swerves downwards into the thick of the bole, where dead wood has been cut away for years, and left this woody encrustation.”
