The Raven in the Foregate (19 page)

“So what did you do?”

“It was still early. I couldn’t leave Giffard to come
to the meeting all unsuspecting, could I? I didn’t know if he meant to come at
all, but still he might, I couldn’t take the risk. I hared away back through
the court and out at the gatehouse, and went to earth among the bushes close by
the end of the bridge. If he came at all, he had to come that way from the
town. And I didn’t even know what the man looked like, though I knew his name
and his allegiance from others. But I thought there’d be very few men coming
out from the town at that hour, and I could risk accosting any who looked of
his age and quality.”

“Ralph Giffard had already come over the bridge,” said
Cadfael, “a good hour earlier, to visit the priest and send him hot-foot to
confront you at the mill, but you could hardly know that. I fancy he was
already back in his own house while you were watching for him in the bushes.
Did you see any others pass by you there?”

“Only one, and he was too young, and too poor and
simple in his person and gear to be Giffard. He went straight along the
Foregate and turned in at the church.”

Centwin, perhaps, thought Cadfael, coming from paying
his debt, to have his mind free and at peace, owing no man, as he went to
celebrate the birth of Christ. Well for him if it proved that Ninian could
speak for him, and show clearly that his own bitter debt had gone unreclaimed.

“And you?”

“I waited until I was sure he was not coming—it was
past the time. So I made haste back to be in time for Matins.”

“Where you met with Sanan.” Cadfael’s smile was
invisible in the dark, but perceptible in his voice. “She was not so foolish as
to go to the mill, for like you, she could not be quite sure her step-father
would not keep the tryst. But she knew where to find you, and she was determined
to respond to the appeal Giffard had preferred to reject. Indeed, as I recall,
she had already taken steps to get a good look at you, as you yourself told me.
Maybe you’ll do for a lady’s page, after all. With a little polishing!”

Within the muffling folds of the cloak he heard Ninian
laughing softly. “I never believed, that first day, that anything would really
come of it. And now see—everything I owe to her. She would not be put off…
You’ve seen her, you’ve talked to her, you know how splendid she is… Cadfael, I
must tell you—she’s coming with me to Gloucester, she’s promised herself to me
in marriage.” His voice was low and solemn now, as though he had already come
to the altar. It was the first time Cadfael had known him in awe of anything or
anyone.

“She is a very valiant lady,” said Cadfael slowly,
“and knows her own mind very well, and I, for my part, wouldn’t say a word
against her choice. But, lad, is it right to let her do this for you? Is she
not abandoning property, family, everything? Have you considered that?”

“I have, and urged her to consider it, too. How much
do you know, Cadfael, of her situation? She has no land to abandon. Her
father’s manor was taken from him after the siege here, because he supported
FitzAlan and the Empress. Her mother is dead. Her step-father—she has no
complaint of him, he has always cared for her in duty bound, but not gladly. He
has a son by his first marriage to inherit from him, he will be only too
pleased to have an estate undivided, and to escape providing her a dowry. But
from her mother she has a good provision in jewels, undeniably her own. She
says she loses nothing by coming with me, and gains what she most wants in the
world. I do love her!” said Ninian with abrupt and moving gravity. “I will make
a fit place for her. I can! I will!”

Yes, thought Cadfael on reflection, on balance she may
be getting none so bad a bargain. Giffard himself lost certain lands for his
adherence to the Empress, no wonder he wants all he has left to go to his son.
It may even be more for his son’s sake than his own that he has so ruthlessly
severed himself now from any lingering devotion to his former overlord, and
even sought to buy his own security with this boy’s freedom. Men do things far
out of their nature when deformed by circumstances. And the girl knew a good
lad when she saw one, she’ll be his fair match.

“Well, I wish you a fortunate journey through Wales,
with all my heart,” he said. “You’ll need horses for the journey, is that
already arranged?”

“We have them, she procured them. They’re stabled
where I’m in hiding,” said Ninian, candid and thoughtless, “out by—”

Cadfael clapped a hand hastily over the boy’s mouth,
fumbling in the dark but effectively silencing him out of sheer surprise. “No,
hush, tell me nothing! Better I know nothing of where you are, or where you got
your horses. What I don’t know I can’t even be expected to tell.”

“But I can’t go,” said Ninian firmly, “while there’s a
shadow hanging over me. I won’t be remembered, here or anywhere, as a fugitive
murderer. Still less can I go while there’s such a shadow hanging over Diota. I
owe her more already than I know how to repay, I must see her secure and
protected before I go.”

“The more credit to you, and we must try by any means
we have for a resolution. As it seems we’ve both been doing tonight, though
with very sorry success. But now, had you not best be getting back to your
hiding place? How if Sanan should send to you, and you not there?”

“And you?” retorted Ninian. “How if Prior Robert
should make a round of the dortoir, and you not there?”

They rose together, and unwound the cloak from about
them, drawing in breath sharply at the invading cold.

“You haven’t told me,” said Ninian, opening the heavy
door on the comparative light outside, “just what thought brought you here
tonight—though I’m glad it did. I was not happy at leaving you without a word.
But you can hardly have been hunting for me! What were you hoping to find?”

“I wish I knew. This morning I found a gaggle of
goslings playing in the snow with a black skull-cap that surely belonged to
Ailnoth, for the boys had found it here in the shallows of the pool, among the
reeds. And I had seen him wearing it that evening, and clean forgotten so small
a thing. And it’s been nagging at me all day long since then that there was
something else I had noted about him, and likewise never missed and never
looked for afterwards. I don’t know that I came here with any great expectation
of finding anything. Perhaps I simply hoped that being here might bring the
thing back to mind. Did ever you get up to do something, and then clean forget
what it was?” wondered Cadfael. “And have to go back to where you first thought
of it, to bring it back to mind? No, surely not, you’re too young, for you to
think of doing a thing is to do it. But ask the elders like me, they’ll all
admit to it.”

“And it still hasn’t come back to you?” asked Ninian,
delicately sympathetic towards the old and forgetful.

“It has not. Not even here. Have you fared any
better?”

“It was a thin hope to find what I came for,” said
Ninian ruefully,”though I did risk coming before the light was quite gone. But
at least I know what I came looking for. I was there with Diota when you
brought him back on Christmas Day, and I never thought what was missing until
later. After all, it’s a thing that could well go astray, not like the clothes
he was wearing. But I knew he had it with him when he came stamping along the
path and stabbing at the ground. Coming all this way through England in his
company, I got to know it very well. That great staff he was always so lungeous
with—ebony, tall as his elbow, with a stag’s-horn handle—that’s what I came to
look for. And somewhere here it must still be.”

They had emerged on to the low shore, dappled now with
moist dark patches of grass breaking through the tattered snow. The dull, pale
level of the water stretched away to the dark slope of the further bank.
Cadfael had stopped abruptly, staring over the shield of pallor in startled
enlightenment.

“So it must!” he said devoutly. “So it must! Child,
that’s the will-o’-the-wisp I’ve been chasing all this day. You get back to
your refuge and keep snug within, and leave this search to me now. You’ve read
my riddle for me.”

By morning half the snow had melted and vanished, and
the Foregate was like a coil of tattered and threadbare lace. The cobbles of
the great court shone moist and dark, and in the graveyard east of the church
Cynric had broken the turf for Father Ailnoth’s grave.

Cadfael came from the last chapter of the year with a
strong feeling that more things than the year were ending. No word had yet been
said of who was to succeed to the living of Holy Cross, no word would be said
until Ailnoth was safely under the ground, with every proper rite and as much
mourning as brotherhood and parish could muster between them. The next day, the
birth of another year, would see the burial of a brief tyranny that would soon
be gratefully forgotten. God send us, thought Cadfael, a humble soul who thinks
himself as fallible as his flock, and labours modestly to keep both from
falling. If two hold fast together they stand steadily, but if one holds aloof
the other may find his feet betraying him in slippery places. Better a limping
prop than a solid rock for ever out of reach of the stretched hand.

Cadfael made for the wicket in the wall, and went
through to the shores of the mill-pond. He stood on the edge of the overhanging
bank between the pollarded willows, at the spot where he had found Ailnoth’s
body, the pool widening and shallowing on his right hand into the reed beds
below the highway, and on his left gradually narrowing to the deeper stream
that carried the water back to the brook, and shortly thereafter to the Severn.
The body had entered the water probably a few yards to the right, and been
nudged aside here under the bank by the tail-race. The skull-cap had been found
in the reeds, somewhere accessible from the path on the opposite side. A small,
light thing, it would go with the current until reeds or branch or debris in
the water arrested it. But where would a heavy ebony staff be carried, whether
it flew from his hand as he was struck down, or whether it was thrown in after
him, from this spot? It would either be drifted aside in the same direction as
the body, in which case it might be sunk deep somewhere in the narrowing
channel, or else, if it fell on the other side of the main force of the
tail-race, edged away like the skull-cap into the far shore. At least there was
no harm in circling the shallow bowl and looking for it.

He re-crossed the little bridge over the head-race,
circled the mill and went down to the edge of the water. There was no real path
here, the gardens of the three small houses came almost to the lip of the bank,
where a narrow strip of open grass just allowed of passage. For some way the
path was still raised above water level, and somewhat hollowed out beneath,
then it dropped gradually into the first growth of reeds, and he walked in
tufted grass, with moisture welling round every step he took. Under the
miller’s house and garden, under the house where the deaf old woman lived with
her pretty slattern of a maidservant, and then he was bearing somewhat away
from the final house, round the rim of the broad shallows. Silver of water gleamed
through the blanched, pallid green of winter reeds, but though an accumulation
of leaves, dead twigs and branches had drifted and lodged here, he saw no sign
of an ebony walking-staff. Other cast-offs, however, showed themselves, broken
crockery, discarded shards and a holed pot, too far gone to be worth mending.

He went on, round the broad end of the pool, to the
trickle of water that came down from the conduit under the highway, stepped
over that, and on beneath the gardens of the second trio of abbey houses.
Somewhere here the boys had found the cap, but he could not believe he would
find the staff here. Either he had missed it, or, if it had been flung well out
over the drift of the tail-race, he must look for it on the far side of the
channel opposite where the body had been found. The water was still fairly wide
there, but what fell beyond its centre might well fetch up on this far side.

He halted to consider, glad he had put on boots to
wade about this thawing quagmire. His friend and fellow Welshman, Madog of the
Dead Boat, who knew everything there was to be known about water and its
properties, given an idea of the thing sought, could have told him exactly
where to seek it. But Madog was not here, and time was precious, and he must
manage on his own. Ebony was heavy and solid, but still it was wood, and would
float. Nor would it float evenly, having a stag’s-horn handle, a tip should
break the surface, wherever it lodged, and he did not believe it would be
carried so far as the brook and the river. Doggedly he went on, and on this
side of the water there was a trodden path, which gradually lifted out of the
boggy ground, and carried him dry-shod a little above the surface of the pool.

He drew level with the mill opposite, and was past the
sloping strips of garden on this side the water. The stunted willow stump,
defiantly sprouting its head of startled hair, matched his progress and held
his eye. Just beyond that the body had lain, nuzzling the undercut bank.

Three paces more, and he found what he was seeking.
Barely visible through the fringe of rotting ice and the protruding ends of
grass, only its tip emerging, Ailnoth’s staff lay at his feet. He took it
gingerly by its tapered end, and plucked it out of the water. No mistaking it,
once found, there could hardly be two exactly alike. Black and long, with a
metal-shod tip and a grooved horn handle, banded to the shaft by a worn silver
band embossed in some pattern worn very smooth with age. Whether flying out of
the victim’s hand or thrown in afterwards, it must have fallen into the water
on this side of the current’s main flow, and so been cast up here into the
encroaching border of grass.