The Devils Novice (17 page)

But
there were other things to lay beside him. Metal is very durable. The silver
buckles on his shoes, blackened as they were, kept the form a good workman had
given them. There was the twisted half of a tooled leather belt, with another
silver buckle, large and elaborate, and traces of silver ornamenting in the
leather. There was a broken length of tarnished silver chain attached to a
silver cross studded with what must surely be semi-precious stones, though now
they were blackened and encrusted with dirt. And one of the men, running fine
ash from close to the body through the sieve, came to lay down for examination
a finger-bone and the ring it had loosely retained while the flesh was burned
from between. The ring bore a large black stone engraved with a design fouled
by clotted ash, but which seemed to be a decorative cross. There was also
something which had lain within the shattered rib-cage, burned almost clean by
the fire, the head of the arrow that had killed him.

Hugh
stood over the remnants of a man and his death for a long while, staring down
with a grim face. Then he turned to where Meriet stood, rigid and still at the rim
of the decline.

“Come
down here, come and see if you cannot help us further. We need a name for this
murdered man. Come and see if by chance you know him.”

Meriet
came, ivory-faced, drew close as he was ordered, and looked at what lay
displayed. Cadfael held off, but at no great distance, and watched and
listened. Hugh had not only his work to do, but his own wrung senses to avenge,
and if there was some resultant savagery in his handling of Meriet, at least it
was not purposeless. For now there was very little doubt of the identity of
this dead man they had before them, and the chain that drew Meriet to him was
contracting.

“You
observe,” said Hugh, quite gently and coldly, “that he wore the tonsure, that
his own hair was brown, and his height, by the look of his bones, a tall man’s.
What age would you say, Cadfael?”

“He’s
straight, and without any of the deformities of ageing. A young man. Thirty he
might be, I doubt more.”

“And
a priest,” pursued Hugh mercilessly.

“By
the ring, the cross and the tonsure, yes, a priest.”

“You
perceive our reasoning, Brother Meriet. Have you knowledge of such a man lost
hereabouts?”

Meriet
continued to stare down at the silent relics that had been a man. His eyes were
huge in a face blanched to the palest ivory. He said in a level voice: “I see
your reasoning. I do not know the man. How can anyone know him?”

“Not
by his visage, certainly. But by his accoutrements, perhaps? The cross, the
ring, even the buckles—these could be remembered, if a priest of such years,
and so adorned, came into your acquaintance? As a guest, say, in your house?”

Meriet
lifted his eyes with a brief and restrained flash of green, and said: “I
understand you. There was a priest who came and stayed the night over in my
father’s house, some weeks ago, before I came into the cloister. But that one
travelled on the next morning, northwards, not this way. How could he be here?
And how am I, or how are you, to tell the difference between one priest and
another, when they are brought down to this?”

“Not
by the cross? The ring? If you can say positively that this is
not
the
man,” said Hugh insinuatingly, “you would be helping me greatly.”

“I
was of no such account in my father’s house,” said Meriet with chill
bitterness, “to be so close to the honoured guest. I stabled his horse—to that
I have testified. To his jewellery I cannot swear.”

“There
will be others who can,” said Hugh grimly. “And as to the horse, yes, I have
seen in what confortable esteem you held each other. You said truly that you
are good with horses. If it became advisable to convey the mount some twenty
miles or more away from where the rider met his death, who could manage the
business better? Ridden or led, he would not give any trouble to you.”

“I
never had him in my hands but one evening and the morning after,” said Meriet,
“nor saw him again until you brought him to the abbey, my lord.” And though
sudden angry colour had flamed upward to his brow, his voice was ready and
firm, and his temper well in hand.

“Well,
let us first find a name for our dead man,” said Hugh, and turned to circle the
dismembered mound once more, scanning the littered and fouled ground for any
further detail that might have some bearing. He pondered what was left of the
leather belt, all but the buckle end burned away, the charred remnant extending
just far enough to reach a lean man’s left hip. “Whoever he was, he carried
sword or dagger, here is the loop of the strap by which it hung—a dagger, too
light and elegant for a sword. But no sign of the dagger itself. That should be
somewhere here among the rubble.”

They
raked through the debris for a further hour, but found no more of metal or
clothing. When he was certain there was nothing more to be discovered, Hugh
withdrew his party. They wrapped the recovered bones and the ring and cross
reverently in a linen cloth and a blanket, and rode back with them to Saint
Giles. There Meriet dismounted, but halted in silence to know what was the
deputy-sheriff’s will with him.

“You
will be remaining here at the hospice?” asked Hugh, eyeing him impartially.
“Your abbot has committed you to this service?”

“Yes,
my lord. Until or unless I am recalled to the abbey, I shall be here.” It was
said with emphasis, not merely stating a fact, but stressing that he felt
himself to have taken vows already, and not only his duty of obedience but his
own will would keep him here.

“Good!
So we know where to find you at need. Very well, continue your work here
without hindrance, but subject to your abbot’s authority, hold yourself also at
my disposal.”

“So
I will, my lord. So I do,” said Meriet, and turned on his heel with a certain
drear dignity, and stalked away up the incline to the gate in the wattle fence.

“And
now, I suppose,” sighed Hugh, riding on towards the Foregate with Cadfael
beside him, “you will be at odds with me for being rough with your fledgling.
Though I give you due credit, you held your tongue very generously.”

“No,”
said Cadfael honestly, “he’s none the worse for goading. And there’s no
blinking it, suspicion drapes itself round him like cobwebs on an autumn bush.”

“It
is
the man, and he knows that it is. He knew it as soon as he raked out
the shoe and the foot within it. That, and not the mere matter of some unknown
man’s ugly death, was what shook him almost out of his wits. He knew—quite
certainly he knew—that Peter Clemence was dead, but just as certainly he did
not
know what had been done with the body. Will you go with me so far?”

“So
far,” said Cadfael ruefully, “I have already gone. An irony, indeed, that he led
them straight to the place, when for once he was thinking of nothing but
finding his poor folk fuel for the winter. Which is on the doorstep this very
evening, unless my nose for weather fails me.”

The
air had certainly grown still and chill, and the sky was closing down upon the
world in leaden cloud. Winter had delayed, but was not far away.

“First,”
pursued Hugh, harking back to the matter in hand, “we have to affix a name to
these bones. That whole household at Aspley saw the man, spent an evening in
his company, they must all know these gems of his, soiled as they may be now.
It might put a rampaging cat among pigeons if I sent to summon Leoric here to
speak as to his guest’s cross and ring. When the birds fly wild, we may pick up
a feather or two.”

“But
for all that,” said Cadfael earnestly, “I should not do it. Say never a probing
word to any, leave them lulled. Let it be known we’ve found a murdered man, but
no more. If you let out too much, then the one with guilt to hide will be off
and out of reach. Let him think all’s well, and he’ll be off his guard. You’ll
not have forgotten, the older boy’s marriage is set for the twenty-first of
this month, and two days before that the whole clan of them, neighbours,
friends and all, will be gathering in our guest-halls. Bring them in, and you
have everyone in your hand. By then we may have the means to divine truth from
untruth. And as for proving that this is indeed Peter Clemence—not that I’m in
doubt!—did you not tell me that Canon Eluard intends to come back to us on the
way south from Lincoln, and let the king go without him to Westminster?”

“True,
so he said he would. He’s anxious for news to take back to the bishop at
Winchester, but it’s no good news we have for him.”

“If
Stephen means to spend his Christmas in London, then Canon Eluard may very well
be here before the wedding party arrives. He knew Clemence well, they’ve both
been close about Bishop Henry. He should be your best witness.”

“Well,
a couple of weeks can hardly hurt Peter Clemence now,” agreed Hugh wryly. “But
have you noticed, Cadfael, the strangest thing in all this coil? Nothing was
stolen from him, everything burned with him. Yet more than one man, more than
two, worked at building that pyre. Would you not say there was a voice in
authority there, that would not permit theft though it had been forced to
conceal murder? And those who took his orders feared him—or at the least minded
him—more than they coveted rings and crosses.”

It
was true. Whoever had decreed that disposal of Peter Clemence had put it clean
out of consideration that his death could be the work of common footpads and
thieves. A mistake, if he hoped to set all suspicion at a distance from himself
and his own people. That rigid honesty had mattered more to him, whoever he
was, than safety. Murder was within the scope of his understanding, if not of
his tolerance; but not theft from the dead.

Chapter Nine

FROST
SET IN THAT NIGHT, heralding a week of hard weather. No snow fell, but a
blistering east wind scoured the hills, wild birds ventured close to human
habitations to pick up scraps of food, and even the woodland foxes came
skulking a mile closer to the town. And so did some unknown human predator who
had been snatching the occasional hen from certain outlying runs, and now and
then a loaf of bread from a kitchen. Complaints began to be brought in to the
town provost of thefts from the garden stores outside the walls, and to the
castle of poultry taken from homesteads at the edge of the Foregate, and not by
foxes or other vermin. One of the foresters from the Long Forest brought in a
tale of a gutted deer lost a month ago, with evidence enough that the marauder
was in possession of a good knife. Now the cold was driving someone living wild
nearer to the town, where nights could be spent warmer in byre or barn than in
the bleak woods.

King
Stephen had detained his sheriff of Shropshire in attendance about his person
that autumn, after the usual Michaelmas accounting, and taken him with him in
the company now paying calculated courtesies to the earl of Chester and William
of Roumare in Lincoln, so that this matter of the henhouse marauder, along with
all other offences against the king’s peace and good order, fell into Hugh’s
hands. “As well!” said Hugh, “for I’d just as lief keep the Clemence affair
mine without interference, now it’s gone so far.”

He
was well aware that he had not too much time left in which to bring it to a
just end single-handed, for if the king meant to be back in Westminster for
Christmas, then the sheriff might return to his shire in a very few days. And
certainly this wild man’s activities seemed to be centred on the eastern fringe
of the forest, which was engaging Hugh’s interest already for a very different
reason.

In
a country racked by civil war, and therefore hampered in keeping ordinary law
and order, everything unaccountable was being put down to outlaws living wild;
but for all that, now and then the simplest explanation turns out to be the
true one. Hugh had no such expectations in this case, and was greatly surprised
when one of his sergeants brought in to the castle wards in triumph the thief
who had been living off the more unwary inhabitants of the Foregate. Not
because of the man himself, who was very much what might have been expected,
but because of the dagger and sheath which had been found on him, and were
handed over as proof of his villainies. There were even traces of dried blood,
no doubt from someone’s pullet or goose, engrained in the grooved blade.

It
was a very elegant dagger, with rough gems in the hilt, so shaped as to be
comfortable to the hand, and its sheath of metal covered with tooled leather
had been blackened and discoloured by fire, the leather frayed away for half
its length from the tip. An end of thin leather strap still adhered to it. Hugh
had seen the loop from which it, or its fellow, should have depended.

In
the bleak space of the inner ward he jerked his head towards the anteroom of
the hall, and said: “Bring him within.” There was a good fire in there, and a
bench to sit on. “Take off his chains,” said Hugh, after one look at the wreck
of a big man, “and let him sit by the fire. You may keep by him, but I doubt if
he’ll give you any trouble.”

The
prisoner could have been an imposing figure, if he had still had flesh and
sinew on his long, large bones, but he was shrunken by starvation, and with
nothing but rags on him in this onset of winter. He could not be old, his eyes
and his shock of pale hair were those of a young man, his bones, however
starting from his flesh, moved with the live vigour of youth. Close to the
fire, warmed after intense cold, he flushed and dilated into something nearer
approaching his proper growth. But his face, blue-eyed, hollow-cheeked, stared
in mute terror upon Hugh. He was like a wild thing in a trap, braced taut,
waiting for a bolthole. Ceaselessly he rubbed at his wrists, just loosed from
the heavy chains.