shed was shuttered because the looms were at rest. “This is the boot that made the print I took from the soil under Niall’s vine, and the man who wore it is the man who tried to hack down the rose-bush, the same who also killed Brother Eluric. I made the mould, I know I am not mistaken. But here is the mould itself, for I brought it with me. You will find it matches exactly.”
“I take your word for it,” said Hugh. But as one who must verify for himself every morsel of evidence, he took the boot and the waxen mould, and carried them out to the doorway to match the two together. “There is no doubt.” The two fitted like seal and matrix. There was the oblique tread that had worn down outer heel and inner toe, and the crack reaching half across the sole at the ball of the foot. “It seems,” said Hugh, “the Severn has saved us the cost of a trial, and him a worse fate than drowning.”
Miles had remained standing somewhat apart, looking from face to face with the same baffled wonder with which he had brooded over Bertred’s body in the mortuary chapel.
“I don’t understand,” he said dubiously at last. “Are you saying that it was Bertred who got into the smith’s garden to spoil Judith’s rose-bush? And killed
” The same vigorous, even violent, shaking of his head, trying to toss the unwelcome belief from him, like a bull trying to throw off a dog that had him by the soft nose. And with as little success, for slowly the conviction began to penetrate his mind, to judge by the slackening of the lines of his face, and his final resigned calm and glint of rising interest. A very eloquent face, had Miles; Cadfael could follow every change. “Why should he do such a thing?” he said slowly, but rather as if his own wit was already beginning to supply answers.
“The killing he never meant, as like as not,” said Hugh reasonably. “But as for hacking down the bush ?it was you yourself gave us a good reason why a man might do so.”
“But what did it benefit Bertred? All it would have done was to prevent my cousin getting her rent paid. What was that to him? He had no rights in it.” But there Miles halted to reflect again. “I don’t know ?it seems reaching far. I know I said he fancied he had some small chance with her. He did presume, sometimes, he had a good conceit of himself. He may even have believed he might win her favour, such things have been known. Well
there’s no denying, if he had such vaulting ideas, the Foregate house was a good half of her property, worth a man’s while trying to regain.”
“As all her suitors may have reasoned,” said Hugh, “not merely Bertred. He slept in here?”
“He did.”
“And therefore could go in and out at will, by night or day, without disturbing any other creature.”
“Well, so he could. It seems so he did, last night, for none of us within heard a sound.”
“But granted we have the proof now that links him to the death of Brother Eluric,” said Hugh, frowning, “we are still floundering when it comes to the vanishing of Mistress Perle. There’s nothing whatever to connect him with that, and we have still a second malefactor to find. Bertred has been among the most assiduous of our helpers in the search for her. I don’t think he would have spent quite so much energy if he had had any knowledge of where she was, however desirable it might be to make a show of zeal.”
“My lord,” said Miles slowly, “I never would have believed such devious work of Bertred, but now you have shown me so far into his guilt I cannot help following further. It’s a strange thing, his own mother has been pouring out to us all, since we brought him home, what he said to her last night. You may ask her yourself, my lord, she will surely repeat it to you as she has to us. I would rather not be the bearer, nor risk being suspect of mangling the purport. If it means anything, let her deliver it, not I.”
The widow, bloated with tears and surrounded by her would-be comforters, was indeed still spouting words between her bouts of weeping, and had no objection to continuing her threnody for the benefit of the sheriff, when he drove her companions away for a short while, to have the bereaved woman to himself.
“A good son he was always to me, a good worker to his mistress, and deserved well of her, and well she thought of him. But great notions he had, like his father before him, and where have they got him now? How would I like, says he to me last night, how would I like to be better than a servant in this house ?a gentlewoman, fit for the hall instead of the kitchen? ‘Only wait a day or so’, says he, ‘and you’ll see, I mean to make your fortune and my own’. ‘There’s not one’, he says, ‘knows what I know’. If there’s ought you know to the purpose, I said, why haven’t you told? But would he? ‘And spend the credit along with my breath?’ he says. ‘No, you leave all to me’.”
“And did he say anything about what he intended in the night?” asked Hugh, slipping his question quietly and unobtrusively into the first chink in her outpourings, while she drew breath.
“He said he must go out again when it was full dark, but he wouldn’t tell me where, or why, nor what he was about at all. ‘Wait till tomorrow’, he says, ‘and not a word to any tonight’. But what does it matter now? Speak or keep silent, it does him no good now. Don’t you go running your head into trouble, I told him. There may be more than you out about risky business in the night.”
Her flow of words was by no means exhausted, but its matter became repetitive, for she had told everything she knew. They left her to the ministrations of the women and the diminishing bitterness of her grief as it drained away into exhaustion. The house of Vestier, Miles assured them earnestly as they left the premises, would not let any of its old servants go short of the means of a decent life. Alison was safe enough.
Chapter Ten
Come with me,” said Hugh, setting off briskly up the hill towards the high cross, and turning his back with some relief on the troubled household at the clothiers’ shop. “Since you have honest leave to be out, you may as well join me on the errand you delayed for me a while ago. I was all but out of the town gate when your messenger came and Will came running after me to say I was wanted at the Vestiers’. I sent him on ahead with a couple of men, he’s down there and at it by now, but I’d as lief see to it for myself.”
“Where are we going?” asked Cadfael, falling in willingly beside his friend up the steep street.
“To talk to Fuller’s watchman. That’s the one place outside the town walls where there’d be a waking witness even in the night, and a watchdog to alert him if anyone came prowling close by. If the fellow did by any chance go into the water this side the river, works and warehouse are only a little way upstream from where you found him. Fuller’s man has both places in charge. He may have heard something. And as we go, tell me what you make of all that ?Bertred’s night affairs, and the fortune he was going to make.”
“By reason of knowing something no one else knew -hmm! For that matter, I noticed he stayed behind when your men left the jetty yesterday afternoon. He let you all go on well before, and then slipped back alone into the trees. And he came late for his supper, told his mother she should be a gentlewoman in the house instead of a cook, and went off again in the night to set about making his word good. And according to Miles he not only fancied his mistess, but had the assurance to feel there was no reason he should not bring her to fancy him.”
