The Devils Novice (23 page)

Leoric
was before him. He crossed the space between in three long, impatient strides,
pressed his son back to the pallet with a brusque hand on his shoulder, and
restored the staff to his hand, rather as one exasperated by clumsiness than
considerate of distress. “Sit!” he said gruffly. “No need to stir. They tell me
you have had a fall, and cannot yet walk well.”

“I
have come to no great harm,” said Meriet, gazing up at him steadily. “I shall be
fit to walk very soon. I take it kindly that you have come to see me, I did not
expect a visit. Will you sit, sir?”

No,
Leoric was too disturbed and too restless, he gazed about him at the
furnishings of the barn, and only by rapid glimpses at his son. “This life—the
way you consented to—they tell me you have found it hard to come to terms with
it. You put your hand to the plough, you must finish the furrow. Do not expect
me to take you back again.” His voice was harsh but his face was wrung.

“My
furrow bids fair to be a short one, and I daresay I can hold straight to the
end of it,” said Meriet sharply. “Or have they not told you, also, that I have
confessed the thing I did, and there is no further need for you to shelter me?”

“You
have confessed…” Leoric was at a loss. He passed a long hand over his eyes, and
stared, and shook. The boy’s dead calm was more confounding than any passion
could have been.

“I
am sorry to have caused you so much labour and pain to no useful end,” said
Meriet. “But it was necessary to speak. They were making a great error, they
had charged another man, some poor wretch living wild, who had taken food here
and there. You had not heard that? Him, at least, I could deliver. Hugh
Beringar has assured me no harm will come to him. You would not have had me
leave him in his peril? Give your blessing to this act, at least.”

Leoric
stood speechless some minutes, his tall body palsied and shaken as though he
struggled with his own demon, before he sat down abruptly beside his son on the
creaking pallet, and clamped a hand over Meriet’s hand; and though his face was
still marble-hard, and the very gesture of his hand like a blow, and his voice
when he finally found words still severe and harsh, Cadfael nevertheless
withdrew from them quietly, and drew the door to after him. He went aside and
sat in the porch, not so far away that he could not hear the tones of the two
voices within, though not their words, and so placed that he could watch the
doorway. He did not think he would be needed any more, though at times the
father’s voice rose in helpless rage, and once or twice Meriet’s rang with a
clear and obstinate asperity. That did not matter, they would have been lost
without the sparks they struck from each other.

After
this, thought Cadfael, let him put on indifference as icily as he will, I shall
know better.

He
went back when he judged it was time, for he had much to say to Leoric for his
own part before the hour of the abbot’s dinner. Their rapid and high-toned
exchanges ceased as he entered, what few words they still had to say came
quietly and lamely.

“Be
my messenger to Nigel and to Roswitha. Say that I pray their happiness always.
I should have liked to be there to see them wed,” said Meriet steadily, “but
that I cannot expect now.”

Leoric
looked down at him and asked awkwardly: “You are cared for here? Body and
soul?”

Meriet’s
exhausted face smiled, a pale smile but warm and sweet. “As well as ever in my
life. I am very well-friended, here among my peers. Brother Cadfael knows!”

And
this time, at parting, it fell out not quite as once before. Cadfael had
wondered. Leoric turned to go, turned back, wrestled with his unbending pride a
moment, and then stopped almost clumsily and very briefly, and bestowed on
Meriet’s lifted cheek a kiss that still resembled a blow. Fierce blood mantled
at the smitten cheekbone as Leoric straightened up, turned, and strode from the
barn.

He
crossed towards the gate mute and stiff, his eyes looking inwards rather than
out, so that he struck shoulder and hip against the gatepost, and hardly
noticed the shock.

“Wait!”
said Cadfael. “Come here with me into the church, and say whatever you have to
say, and so will I. We still have time.”

In
the little single-aisled church of the hospice, under its squat tower, it was
dim and chill, and very silent. Leoric knotted veined hands and wrung them, and
turned in formidable quiet anger upon his guide. “Was this well done, brother?
Falsely you brought me here! You told me my son was mortally ill.”

“So
he is,” said Cadfael. “Have you not his own word for it how close he feels his
death? So are you, so are we all. The disease of mortality is in us from the
womb, from the day of our birth we are on the way to our death. What matters is
how we conduct the journey. You heard him. He has confessed to the murder of
Peter Clemence. Why have you not been told that, without having to hear it from
Meriet? Because there was no one to tell you else but Brother Mark, or Hugh
Beringar, or myself, for no one else knows. Meriet believes himself to be
watched as a committed felon, that barn his prison. Now, I tell you, Aspley,
that it is not so. There is not one of us three who have heard his avowal, but
is heart-sure he is lying. You are the fourth, his father, and the only one to
believe in his guilt.”

Leoric
was shaking his head violently and wretchedly. “I wish it were so, but I know
better. Why do you say he is lying? What proof can you have for your trust,
compared with that I have for my certainty?”

“I
will give you one proof for my trust,” said Cadfael, “in exchange for all your
proofs of your certainty. As soon as he heard there was another man accused,
Meriet made his confession of guilt to the law, which can destroy his body. But
resolutely he refused then and refuses still to repeat that confession to a
priest, and ask penance and absolution for a sin he has not committed. That is
why I believe him guiltless. Now show me, if you can, as strong a reason why
you should believe him guilty.”

The
lofty, tormented grey head continued its anguished motions of rejection. “I
wish to God you were right and I wrong, but I know what I saw and what I heard.
I never can forget it. Now that I must tell it openly, since there’s an
innocent man at stake, and Meriet to his honour has cleansed his breast, why
should I not tell it first to you? My guest was gone on his way safely, it was
a day like any other day. I went out for exercise with hawk and hounds, and
three besides, my chaplain and huntsman, and a groom, honest men all, they will
bear me out. There’s thick woodland three miles north from us, a wide belt of
it. It was the hounds picked up Meriet’s voice, no more than a distant call to
me until we got nearer and I knew him. He was calling Barbary and whistling for
him—the horse that Clemence rode. It may have been the whistle the hounds
caught first, and went eager but silent to find Meriet. By the time we came on
him he had the horse tethered—you’ll have heard he has a gift. When we burst in
on him, he had the dead man under the arms, and was dragging him deep into a
covert off the path. An arrow in Peter’s breast, and bow and quiver on Meriet’s
shoulder. Do you want more? When I cried out on him, what had he done?—he never
said word to deny. When I ordered him to return with us, and laid him under lock
and key until I could consider such a shame and horror, and know my way, he
never said nay to it, but submitted to all. When I told him I would keep him
man alive and cover up his mortal sin, but on conditions, he accepted life and
withdrawal. I do believe, as much for our name’s sake as for his own life, but
he chose.”

“He
did choose, he did far more than accept,” said Cadfael, “for he told Isouda
what he told us all, later, that he came to us of his own will, at his own
desire. Never has he said that he was forced. But go on, tell me your own
part.”

“I
did what I had promised him, I had the horse led far to the north, by the way
Clemence should have ridden, and there turned loose in the mosses, where it
might be thought his rider had foundered. And the body we took secretly, with
all that was his, and my chaplain read the rites over him with all reverence,
before we laid him within a new stack on the charcoal-burner’s old hearth, and
fired it. It was ill-done and against my conscience, but I did it. Now I will
answer for it. I shall not be sorry to pay whatever is due.”

“Your
son has taken care,” said Cadfael hardly, “to claim to himself, along with the
death, all that you have done to conceal it. But he will not confess lies to
his confessor, as mortal a sin as hiding truth.”

“But
why?” demanded Leoric wildly. “Why should he so yield and accept all, if he had
an answer for me? Why?”

“Because
the answer he had for you would have been too hard for you to bear, and unbearable
also to him. For love, surely,” said Brother Cadfael. “I doubt if he has had
his proper fill of love all his life, but those who most hunger for it do most
and best deliver it.”

“I
have loved him,” protested Leoric, raging and writhing, “though he has been
always so troublous a soul, for ever going contrary.”

“Going
contrary is one way of getting your notice,” said Cadfael ruefully, “when
obedience and virtue go unregarded. But let that be. You want instances. This
spot where you came upon him, it was hardly more than three miles from your
manor—what, forty minutes” ride? And the hour when you came there was well on
in the afternoon. How many hours had Clemence lain there dead? And suddenly
there is Meriet toiling to hide the dead body, and whistling up the straying
horse left riderless. Even if he had run in terror, and wandered the woods
fevered over his deed, would he not have dealt with the horse before he fled?
Either lashed him away to ride wild, or caught and ridden him far off. What was
he doing there calling and tethering the horse, and hiding the body, all those
hours after the man must have died? Did you never think of that?”

“I
thought,” said Leoric, speaking slowly now, wide-eyed, urgent upon Cadfael’s
face, “as you have said, that he had run in terror from what he had done, and
come back, late in the day, to hide it from all eyes.”

“So
he has said now, but it cost him a great heave of the heart and mind to fetch
that excuse up out of the well.”

“Then
what,” whispered Leoric, shaking now with mingled hope and bewilderment, and
very afraid to trust, “what has moved him to accept so dreadful a wrong? How
could he do such an injury to me and to himself?”

“For
fear, perhaps, of doing you a greater. And for love of someone he had cause to
doubt, as you found cause to doubt him. Meriet has a great store of love to
give,” said Brother Cadfael gravely, “and you would not allow him to give much
of it to you. He has given it elsewhere, where it was not repelled, however it
may have been undervalued. Have I to say to you again, that you have two sons?”

“No!”
cried Leoric in a muted howl of protest and outrage, towering taller in his
anger, head and shoulders above Cadfael’s square, solid form. “That I will not
hear! You presume! It is impossible!”

“Impossible
for your heir and darling, yet instantly believable in his brother? In this
world all men are fallible, and all things are possible.”

“But
I tell you I saw him hiding his dead man, and sweating over it. If he had
happened on him innocently by chance he would not have had cause to conceal the
death, he would have come crying it aloud.”

“Not
if he happened innocently on someone dear to him as brother or friend stooped
over the same horrid task. You believe what you saw, why should not Meriet also
believe what he saw? You put your own soul in peril to cover up what you
believed he had done, why should not he do as much for another? You promised
silence and concealment at a price—and that protection offered to him was just
as surely protection for another—only the price was still to be exacted from
Meriet. And Meriet did not grudge it. Of his own will he paid it—that was no
mere consent to your terms, he wished it and tried to be glad of it, because it
bought free someone he loved. Do you know of any other creature breathing that
he loves as he loves his brother?”

“This
is madness!” said Leoric, breathing hard like a man who has run himself half to
death. “Nigel was the whole day with the Lindes, Roswitha will tell you, Janyn
will tell you. He had a falling-out to make up with the girl, he was off to her
early in the morning, and came home only late in the evening. He knew nothing
of that day’s business, he was aghast when he heard of it.”

“From
Linde’s manor to that place in the forest is no long journey for a mounted
man,” said Cadfael relentlessly. “How if Meriet found him busy and bloodied
over Clemence’s body, and said to him: Go, get clean away from here, leave him
to me—go and be seen elsewhere all this day. I will do what must be done. What
then?”

“Are
you truly saying,” demanded Leoric in a hoarse whisper, “that Nigel killed the
man? Such a crime against hospitality, against kinship, against his nature?”

“No,”
said Cadfael. “But I am saying that it may be true that Meriet did so find him,
just as you found Meriet. Why should what was such plain proof to you be any
less convincing to Meriet? Had he not overwhelming reason to believe his
brother guilty, to fear him guilty, or no less terrible, to dread that he might
be convicted in innocence? For bear this ever in mind, if you could be mistaken
in giving such instant credence to what you saw, so could Meriet. For those
lost six hours still stick in my craw, and how to account for them I don’t yet
know.”