The Potter's Field (15 page)

As for his present situation, there was no telling what fears, what speculations were going through his mind, how much he guessed at, or what feverish compilations of lies he was putting together against whatever he felt could be urged against him. He waited without protestations, so stiffly tensed that even his hair seemed to be erected and quivering. Hugh closed the door of the cell, and looked him over without haste.

“Well, Britric—that is your name? You have frequented the abbey fair, have you not, these past two years?”

“Longer,” said Britric. His voice was low and guarded, and unwilling to use more words than he need. “Six years in all.” A small sidelong flicker of uneasy eyes took in Cadfael's habited figure, quiet in the corner of the cell. Perhaps he was recalling the tolls he had evaded paying, and wondering if the abbot had grown tired of turning a blind eye to the small defaulters.

“It's with last year we're concerned. Not so long past that your memory should fail you. The eve of Saint Peter ad Vincula, and the three days afterwards, you were offering your wares for sale. Where did you spend the nights?”

He was astray now, and that made him even more cautious, but he answered without undue hesitation: “I knew of a cottage was left empty. They were talking of it in the market, how the potter had taken a fancy to be a monk, and his wife was gone, and left the house vacant. Over the river, by Longner. I thought it was no harm to take shelter there. Is that why I'm brought here? But why now, after so long? I never stole anything. I left all as I found it. All I wanted was a roof over me, and a place to lay down in comfort.”

“Alone?” asked Hugh.

No hesitation at all this time. He had already calculated that the same question must have been answered by others, before ever a hand was laid on him to answer for himself. “I had a woman with me. Gunnild, she was called. She travelled the fairs and markets, entertaining for her living. I met her in Coventry, we kept together a while.”

“And when the fair here was over? Last year's fair? Did you then leave together, and keep company still?”

Britric's narrowed glance flickered from one face to the other, and found no helpful clue. Slowly he said: “No. We went separate ways. I was going westward, my best trade is along the border villages.”

“And when and where did you part from her?”

“I left her there at the cottage where we'd slept. The fourth day of August, early. It was barely light when I started out. She was going east from there, she had no need to cross the river.”

“I can find no one in the town or the Foregate,” said Hugh deliberately, “who saw her again.”

“They would not,” said Britric. “I said, she was going east.”

“And you have never seen her since? Never made effort for old kindness” sake to find her again?”

“I never had occasion.” He was beginning to sweat, for whatever that might mean. “Chance met, nothing more than that. She went her way, and I went mine.”

“And there was no falling out between you? Never a blow struck? No loud disputes? Ever gentle and amiable together, were you, Britric? There are some report differently of you,” said Hugh. “There was another fellow, was there not, had hoped to lie snug in that cottage? An old man you drove away. But he did not go far. Not out of earshot of the pair of you, when you did battle in the nights. A stormy partnership, he made it. And she was pressing you to marry her, was she not? And marriage was not to your mind. What happened? Did she grow too wearisome? Or too violent? A hand like yours over her mouth or about her throat could very easily quiet her.”

Britric had drawn his head hard back against the stone like a beast at bay, sweat standing on his forehead in quivering drops under the fall of red hair. Between his teeth he got out, in a voice so short of breath it all but strangled in his throat: “This is mad… mad… I tell you, I left her there snoring, alive and lusty as ever she was. What is this? What are you thinking of me, my lord? What am I held to have done?”

“I will tell you, Britric, what I think you have done. There was no Gunnild at this year's fair, was there? Nor has she been seen in Shrewsbury since you left her in Ruald's field. I think you fell out and fought once too often, one of those nights, perhaps the last, and Gunnild died of it. And I think you buried her there in the night, under the headland, for the abbey plough to turn up this autumn. As it did! A woman's bones, Britric, and a woman's black hair, a mane of black hair still on the skull.”

Britric uttered a small, half-swallowed sound, and let out his breath in a great, gasping sigh, as if he had been hit in the breast with an iron fist. When he could articulate, though in a strangled whisper understood rather by the shaping of his lips than by any sound, he got out over and over: “No… no… no! Not Gunnild, no!”

Hugh let him alone until he had breath to make sense, and time to consider and believe, and reason about his own situation. For he was quick to master himself, and to accept, with whatever effort, the fact that the sheriff was not lying, that this was the reason for his arrest and imprisonment here, and he had better take thought in his own defence.

“I never harmed her,” he said at length, slowly and emphatically. “I left her sleeping. I have never set eyes on her since. She was well alive.”

“A woman's body, Britric, a year at least in the ground. Black hair. They tell me Gunnild was black.”

“So she was. So she
is
, wherever she may be. So are many women along these borderlands. The bones you found cannot be Gunnild's.” Hugh had let slip too easily that all they had, virtually, was a skeleton, never to be identified by face or form. Now Britric knew that he was safe from too exact an accusing image. “I tell you truly, my lord,” he said, with more insinuating care, she was well alive when I crept out and left her in the cottage. I won't deny she'd grown too sure of me. Women want to own a man, and that grows irksome. That was why I rose early, while she was deep asleep, and made off westward alone, to be rid of her without a screeching match. No, I never harmed her. This poor creature they found must be some other woman. It is not Gunnild.”

“What other woman, Britric? A solitary place, the tenants already gone, why should anyone so much as go there, let alone die there?”

“How could I know, my lord? I never heard of the place until the eve of the fair, last year. I know nothing about the neighbourhood that side of the river. All I wanted was a place to sleep snug.” He had himself well in hand now, knowing that no name could ever be confidently given to a mere parcel of female bones, however black the hair on her skull. That might not save him, but it gave him some fragile armour against guilt and death, and he would cling to it and repeat his denials as often and as tirelessly as he must. “I never hurt Gunnild. I left her alive and well.”

“What did you know of her?” Cadfael asked suddenly, going off at so abrupt a tangent that for a moment Britric was thrown off-balance, and lost his settled concentration on simple denial. “If you kept company for a while, surely you learned something of the girl, where she came from, where she had kin, the usual pattern of her travelling year. You say she is alive, or at least that you left her alive. Where should she be looked for, to prove as much?”

“Why, she never told much.” He was hesitant and uncertain, and plainly knew little about her, or he would have poured it out readily, as proof of his good intent towards the law. Nor had he had time to put together a neat package of lies to divert attention to some distant region where she might well be pursuing her vagabond living. “I met her in Coventry. We came from there together, but she was close-mouthed. I doubt she went further south than that, but she never said where she was from, nor a word of any kinsfolk.”

“You said she was going east, after you left her. But how can you know that? She had not said so, and agreed to part there, or you need not have stolen away early to avoid her.”

“I spoke too loosely,” owned Britric, writhing. “I own it. I believed—I believe—she would turn eastward, when she found me gone. Small use taking her singing and tumbling into Wales, not alone. But I tell you truly, I never harmed her. I left her alive.”

And that was his simple, stubborn answer to all further questions, that and the one plea he advanced between obstinate denials.

“My lord, deal fairly with me. Make it known that she is sought, have it cried in the town, ask travellers to carry the word wherever they go, that she should send word to you, and show she is still living. I have not lied to you. If she hears I am charged with her death she will come forward. I never harmed her. She will tell you so.”

*

“And so we will have her name put about, and see if she appears,” agreed Hugh, when they had locked Britric in his stone ceil and left him to his uneasy repose, and were walking back towards the castle gatehouse. “But I doubt if a lady who lives Gunnild's style of life will be too eager to come near the law, even to save Britric's neck. What do you think of him? Denials are denials, worth very little by themselves. And he has something on his conscience, and something to do with that place and that woman, too. First thing he cries when we pin him to the place is: “I never stole anything. I left all as I found it.” So I take it he did steal. When it came to the mention of Gunnild dead, then he took fright, until he realised I, like a fool, had let it out that she was mere bones. Then he knew how best to deal, and only then did he begin to plead that we seek her out. It looks and sounds well, but I think he knows she will never be found. Rather, he knows all too well that she
is
found, a thing he hoped would never happen.”

“And you'll keep him in hold?” asked Cadfael.

“Very surely! And go on following his traces wherever he's been since that time, and picking the brains of every innkeeper or potman or village customer who's had to deal with him. There must be someone somewhere who can fill in an hour or two of his life—and hers. Now I have him I'll keep him until I know truth, one way or the other. Why? Have you a thing to add that has passed me by? I would not refuse any detail you may have in mind.”

“A mere thought,” said Cadfael abstractedly. “Let it grow a day or two. Who knows, you may not have to wait too long for the truth.”

*

On the following morning, which was Sunday, Sulien Blount came riding in from Longner to attend Mass in the abbey church, and brought with him, shaken and brushed and carefully folded, the habit in which he had made his way home after the abbot dismissed him. In his own cotte and hose, linen shirt and good leather shoes, he looked, if anything, slightly less at ease than in the habit, so new was his release after more than a year of the novitiate. He had not yet regained the freedom of a young man's easy stride, unhampered by monastic skirts. Nor, strangely, did he look any the happier or more carefree for having made up his mind. There was a solemn set to his admirable jaw, and a silent crease of serious thought between his straight brows. The ring of hair that had grown over-long on his journey from Ramsey had been trimmed into tidiness, and the down of dark gold curls within it had grown into a respectable length to blend with the brown. He attended Mass with the same grave concentration he had shown when within the Order, delivered up the clothing he had abandoned, paid his reverences to Abbot Radulfus and Prior Robert, and went to find Brother Cadfael in the herb garden.

“Well, well!” said Cadfael. “I thought you might be looking in on us soon. And how do you find things out in the world? You've seen no reason to change your mind?”

“No,” said the boy starkly, and for the moment had nothing more to say. He looked round the high-walled garden, its neat, patterned beds now growing a little leggy and bare with the loss of leaves, the bushy stems of thyme dark as wire. “I liked it here, with you. But no, I wouldn't turn back. I was wrong to run away. I shall not make the same mistake again.”

“How is your mother faring?” asked Cadfael, divining that she might well be the insoluble grief from which Sulien had attempted flight. For the young man to live with the inescapable contemplation of perpetual pain and the infinitely and cruelly slow approach of lingering death might well be unendurable. For Hugh had reported her present condition very clearly. If that was the heart of it, the boy had braced himself now to make reparation, and carry his part of the load in the house, thereby surely lightening hers.

“Poorly,” said Sulien bluntly. “Never anything else. But she never complains. It's as if she had some hungry beast for ever gnawing at her body from within. Some days are a little better than others.”

“I have herbs that might do something against the pain,” said Cadfael. “Some time ago she did use them for a while.”

“I know. We have all told her so, but she refuses them now. She says she doesn't need them. All the same,” he said, warming, “give me some, perhaps I may persuade her.”

He followed Cadfael into the workshop, under the rustling bunches of dried herbs hanging from the roof beams, and sat down on the wooden bench within while Cadfael filled a flask from his supply of the syrup he made from his eastern poppies, calmer of pain and inducer of sleep.

“You may not have heard yet,” said Cadfael, with his back turned, “that the sheriff has a man in prison for the murder of the woman we thought was Generys, until you showed us that was impossible. A fellow named Britric, a pedlar who works the border villages, and bedded down in Ruald's croft last year, through Saint Peter's Fair.”

He heard a soft stir of movement at his back, as Sulien's shoulders shifted against the timber wall. But no word was said.

“He had a woman there with him, it seems, one Gunnild, a tumbler and singer entertaining at the fairground. And no one has seen her since last year's fair ended. A black-haired woman, they report her. She could very well be the poor soul we found. Hugh Beringar thinks so.”