The Potter's Field (5 page)

“Yes. Strange!” he said, half to himself. “Someone surely felt tenderness towards her, and respected her rights, if he felt he dared not provide them. One man to kill, perhaps, and another to bury? A priest, do you suppose? But why cover up her death, if he had no guilt in it? Is it possible the same man both killed and buried her?”

“Such things have been known,” said Cadfael.

“A lover, perhaps? Some fatal mischance, never intended? A moment of violence, instantly regretted? But no, there would be no need to conceal, if that were all.”

“And there is no trace of violence,” said Cadfael.

“Then how did she die? Not from illness, or she would have been in the churchyard, shriven and hallowed. How else? By poison?”

“That is possible. Or a stab wound that reached her heart may have left no trace now in her bones, for they are whole and straight, never deformed by blow or fracture.”

Radulfus replaced the linen cloth, smoothing it tidily over her. “Well, I see there is little here a man could match with a living face or a name. Yet I think even that must be tried. If she has been here, living, within the past five years, then someone has known her well, and will know when last she was seen, and have marked her absence afterwards. Come,” said the abbot, “let us go back and consider carefully all the possibilities that come to mind.”

It was plain to Cadfael then that the first and most ominous possibility had already come to the abbot's mind, and brought deep disquiet with it. Once they were all three back in the quiet of the parlour, and the door shut against the world, the name must be spoken.

“Two questions wait to be answered,” said Hugh, taking the initiative. “Who is she? And if that cannot be answered with certainty, then who may she be? And the second: Has any woman vanished from these parts during these last few years, without word or trace?”

“Of one such,” said the abbot heavily, “we certainly know. And the place itself is all too apt. Yet no one has ever questioned that she went away, and of her own choice. That was a hard case for me to accept, as the wife never accepted it. Yet Brother Ruald could no more be barred from following his soul's bent than the sun from rising. Once I was sure of him, I had no choice. To my grief, the woman never was reconciled.”

So now the man's name had been spoken. Perhaps no one even recalled the woman's. Many within the walls could never have set eyes on her, or heard mention of her until her husband had his visitation and came to stand patiently at the gates and demand entry.

“I must ask your leave,” said Hugh, “to have him view this body. Even if she is indeed his wife, truly he may not be able to say so now with any certainty, yet it must be asked of him that he make the assay. The field was theirs, the croft there was her home after he left it.” He was silent for a long moment, steadily eyeing the abbot's closed and brooding face. “After Ruald entered here, until the time when she is said to have gone away with another man, was he ever at any time sent back there? There were belongings he gave over to her, there could be agreements to be made, even witnessed. Is he known to have met with her, after they first parted?”

“Yes,” said Radulfus at once. “Twice in the first days of his novitiate he did visit her, but in company with Brother Paul. As master of the novices Paul was anxious for the man's peace of mind, no less than for the woman's, and tried his best to bring her to acknowledge and bless Ruald's vocation. Vainly! But with Paul he went, and with Paul he returned. I know of no other occasion when he could have seen or spoken with her.”

“Nor ever went out to field work or any other errand close to that field?”

“It is more than a year,” said the abbot reasonably. “Even Paul would be hard put to it to say where Ruald served in all that time. Commonly, during his novitiate he would always be in company with at least one other brother, probably more, whenever he was sent out from the enclave to work. But doubtless,” he said, returning Hugh's look no less fixedly, “you mean to ask the man himself.”

“With your leave, Father, yes.”

“And now, at once?”

“If you permit, yes. It will not yet be common knowledge what we have found. Best he should be taken clean, with no warning, and knowing no need for deception. In his own defence,” said Hugh emphatically, “should he later find himself in need of defence.”

“I will send for him,” said Radulfus. “Cadfael, will you find him, and perhaps, if the sheriff sees fit, bring him straight to the chapel? As you say, let him come to the proof in innocence, for his own sake. And now I remember,” said the abbot, “a thing he himself said when first this exchange of land was mooted. Earth is innocent, he said. Only the use we make of it mars it.”

*

Brother Ruald was the perfect example of obedience, the aspect of the Rule which had always given Cadfael the most trouble. He had taken to heart the duty to obey instantly any order given by a superior as if it were a divine command, “without half-heartedness or grumbling”, and certainly without demanding “Why?” which was Cadfael's first instinct, tamed now but not forgotten. Bidden by Cadfael, his elder and senior in vocation, Ruald followed him unquestioning to the mortuary chapel, knowing no more of what awaited him than that abbot and sheriff together desired his attendance.

Even on the threshold of the chapel, suddenly confronted by the shape of the bier, the candles, and Hugh and Radulfus conferring quietly on the far side of the stone slab, Ruald did not hesitate, but advanced and stood awaiting what should be required of him, utterly docile and perfectly serene.

“You sent for me, Father.”

“You are a man of these parts,” said the abbot, “and until recently well acquainted with all of your neighbours. You may be able to help us. We have here, as you see, a body found by chance, and none of us here can by any sign set a name to the dead. Try if you can do better. Come closer.”

Ruald obeyed, and stood faithfully staring upon the shrouded shape as Radulfus drew away the linen in one sharp motion, and disclosed the rigidly ordered bones and the fleshless face in its coils of dark hair. Certainly Ruald's tranquility shook at the unexpected sight, but the waves of pity, alarm and distress that passed over his face were no more than ripples briefly stirring a calm pool, and he did not turn away his eyes, but continued earnestly viewing her from head to foot, and again back to the face, as if by long gazing he could build up afresh in his mind's eye the flesh which had once clothed the naked bone. When at last he looked up at the abbot it was in mild wonder and resigned sadness.

“Father, there is nothing here that any man could recognise and name.”

“Look again,” said Radulfus. “There is a shape, a height, colouring. This was a woman, someone must once have been near to her, perhaps a husband. There are means of recognition, sometimes, not dependent on features of a face. Is there nothing about her that stirs any memory?”

There was a long silence while Ruald in duty repeated his careful scrutiny of every rag that clothed her, the folded hands still clasping the improvised cross. Then he said, with a sorrow rather at disappointing the abbot than over a distant death: “No, Father. I am sorry. There is nothing. Is it so grave a matter? All names are known to God.”

“True,” said Radulfus, “as God knows where all the dead are laid, even those hidden away secretly. I must tell you, Brother Ruald, where this woman was found. You know the ploughing of the Potter's Field was to begin this morning. At the turn of the first furrow, under the headland and partly screened by bushes, the abbey plough team turned up a rag of woollen cloth and a lock of dark hair. Out of the field that once was yours, the lord sheriff has disinterred and brought home here this dead woman. Now, before I cover her, look yet again, and say if there is nothing cries out to you what her name should be.”

It seemed to Cadfael, watching Ruald's sharp profile, that only at this moment was its composure shaken by a tremor of genuine horror, even of guilt, though guilt without fear, surely not for a physical death, but for the death of an affection on which he had turned his back without ever casting a glance behind. He stooped closer over the dead woman, staring intently, and a fine dew of sweat broke out on his forehead and lip. The candlelight caught its sheen. This final silence lasted for long moments, before he looked up pale and quivering, into the abbot's face.

“Father, God forgive me a sin I never understood until now. I do repent what now I find a terrible lack in me. There is nothing, nothing cries out to me. I feel nothing in beholding her. Father, even if this were indeed Generys, my wife Generys, I should not know her.”

In the abbot's parlour, some twenty minutes later, he had regained his calm, the calm of resignation even to his own shortcomings and failures, but he did not cease to accuse himself. “In my own need I was armed against hers. What manner of man can sever an affection half a lifetime long, and within the year feel nothing? I am ashamed that I could stand by that bier and look upon the relics of a woman, and be forced to say: I cannot tell. It may be Generys, for all I know. I cannot see why it should, or how it could so happen, but nor can I say: It is not so. Nothing moved in me from the heart. And for the eyes and the mind, what is there now in those bones to speak to any man?”

“Except,” said the abbot austerely, “inasmuch as it speaks to all men. She was buried in unconsecrated ground, without rites, secretly. It is but a short step to the conclusion that she came by her death in a way equally secret and unblessed, at the hands of man. She requires of me due if belated provision for her soul, and from the world justice for her death. You have testified, and I believe it, that you cannot say who she is. But since she was found on land once in your possession, by the croft from which your wife departed, and to which she has never returned, it is natural that the sheriff should have questions to ask you. As he may well have questions to ask of many others, before this matter is resolved.”

“That I do acknowledge,” said Ruald meekly, “and I will answer whatever may be put to me. Willingly and truthfully.”

And so he did, even with sorrowful eagerness, as if he wished to flagellate himself for his newly realised failings towards his wife, in rejoicing in his own fulfilment while she tasted only the poison of bitterness and deprivation.

“It was right that I should go where I was summoned, and do what it was laid on me to do. But that I should embrace my joy and wholly forget her wretchedness, that was ill done. Now the day is come when I cannot even recall her face, or the way she moved, only the disquiet she has left with me, too long unregarded, now come home in full. Wherever she may be, she has her requital. These six months past,” he said grievously, “I have not even prayed for her peace. She has been clean gone out of mind, because I was happy.”

“You visited her twice, I understand,” said Hugh, “after you were received here as a postulant.”

“I did, with Brother Paul, as he will tell you. I had goods which Father Abbot allowed me to give over to her, for her living. It was done lawfully. That was the first occasion.”

“And when was that?”

“The twenty-eighth day of May, of last year. And again we went there to the croft in the first days of June, after I had made up the sum I had from selling my wheel and tools and what was left of use about the croft. I had hoped that she might have become reconciled, and would give me her forgiveness and goodwill, but it was not so. She had contended with me all those weeks to keep me at her side as before. But that day she turned upon me with hatred and anger, scorned to touch any part of what was mine, and cried out at me that I might go, for she had a lover worth the loving, and every tenderness ever she had had for me was turned to gall.”

“She told you that?” said Hugh sharply. “That she had another lover? I know that was the gossip, when she left the cottage and went away secretly. But you had it from her own lips?”

“Yes, she said so. She was bitter that after she had failed to keep me at her side, neither could she now be rid of me and free in the world's eyes, for still I was her husband, a millstone about her neck, and she could not slough me off. But that should not prevent, she said, but she would take her freedom by force, for she had a lover, a hundred times my worth, and she would go with him, if he beckoned, to the ends of the earth. Brother Paul was witness to all,” said Ruald simply. “He will tell you.”

“And that was the last time you saw her?”

“That was the last time. By the end of that month of June she was gone.”

“And since that time, have you ever been back to that field?”

“No. I have worked on abbey land, in the Gaye for the most part, but that field has only now become abbey land. Early in October, a year ago now, it was given to Haughmond. Eudo Blount of Longner, who was my overlord, made the gift to them. I never thought to see or hear of the place again.”

“Or of Generys?” Cadfael interjected mildly, and watched the lines of Ruald's thin face tighten in a brief spasm of pain and shame. And even these he would endure faithfully, mitigated and rendered bearable by the assurance of joy that now never deserted him. “I have a question to ask,” said Cadfael, “if Father Abbot permits. In all the years you spent with her, had you ever cause to complain of your wife's loyalty and fidelity, or the love she bore to you?”

Without hesitation Ruald said: “No! She was always true and fond. Almost too fond! I doubt I ever could match her devotion. I brought her out of her own land,” said Ruald, setting truth before his own eyes and scarcely regarding those who overheard, “into a country strange to her, where her tongue was alien and her ways little understood. Only now do I see how much more she gave me than I ever had it in me to repay.”

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