“And whether we discover the real murderer or not, if ever it should be needful you will speak out for Engelard?”
“That I will, with all my heart. But for now, say nothing of this to anyone, for we are still here, the troublers of Gwytherin’s peace, and never think that I have set us apart as immaculate. Until we know the guilty, we do not know the innocent.”
“I take back nothing,” said Sioned firmly, “of what I said concerning your prior.”
“Nevertheless, he could not have done it. He was not out of my sight.”
“No, that I accept. But he buys men, and he is utterly set upon getting his saint, and now, as I understand, he had his will. It is a cause. And never forget, Welshmen, as well as Englishmen may be for sale. I pray not many. But a few.”
“I don’t forget,” said Cadfael.
“Who is he? Who? He knows my father’s movements. He knows where to lay hands on Engelard’s arrows. He wants God knows what from my father’s death, but certainly he wants to pin murder on Engelard. Brother Cadfael, who can this man be?”
“That, God willing,” he said, “you and I between us will find out. But as at this moment, I cannot judge nor guess, I am utterly astray. What was done I see, but why, or by whom, I know no more than you. But you have reminded me how the dead are known to rebel against the touch of those who struck them down, and as Rhisiart has told us much, so he may tell us all.”
He told her, then, of the three nights of prayer and vigil Prior Robert had decreed, and how all the monks and Father Huw, by turns, would share the duty. But he did not tell her how Columbanus, in his single-minded innocence and his concern for his own conscience, had added one more to those who had had the opportunity to lie in wait for her father in the forest. Nor did he admit to her, and hardly to himself, that what they had discovered here lent a sinister meaning to Columbanus’s revelation. Jerome out hunting his man with bow and arrow was a most unlikely conception, but Jerome creeping up behind a man’s back in thick cover, with a sharp dagger in hand…
Cadfael put the thought behind him, but it did not go far. There was a certain credibility about it that he did not like at all.
“Tonight and for two nights following, two of us will be keeping watch in the chapel from after Compline in the evening until Prime in the morning. All six of us can be drawn into the same trial, and not one can feel himself singled out. After that, we’ll see. Now this,” said Brother Cadfael, “is what you must do…”
Chapter Seven
After Compline, in the soft evening light, with the slanting sunset filtering through young viridian leaves, they went up, all six together, to the wooden chapel and the solitary graveyard, to bring their first pair of pilgrims to the vigil. And there, advancing to meet them in the clearing before the gate, came another procession, eight of Rhisiart’s household officers and servants, winding down out of the woods with their lord’s bier upon their shoulders, and their lord’s daughter, now herself their lord, walking erect and dignified before them, dressed in a dark gown and draped with a grey veil, under which her long hair lay loose in mourning. Her face was calm and fixed, her eyes looked far. She could have daunted any man, even an abbot. Prior Robert baulked at sight of her. Cadfael was proud of her.
So far from checking at sight of Robert, she gave a slight spring of hope and purpose to her step, and came on without pause. Face to face with him at three paces distance, she halted and stood so still and quiet that he might have mistaken this for submission, if he had been fool enough. But he was not a fool, and he gazed and measured silently, seeing a woman, a mere girl, who had come to match him, though not yet recognising her as his match.
“Brother Cadfael,” she said, without taking her eyes from Robert’s face, “stand by me now and make my words plain to the reverend prior, for I have a prayer to him for my father’s sake.”
Rhisiart was there at her back, not coffined, only swathed and shrouded in white linen, every line of the body and face standing clear under the tight wrappings, in a cradle of leafy branches, carried on a wooden bier. All those dark, secret Welsh eyes of the men who bore him glowed like little lamps about a catafalque, betraying nothing, seeing everything. And the girl was so young, and so solitary. Prior Robert, even in his assured situation, was uneasy. He may have been moved.
“Make your prayer, daughter,” he said.
“I have heard that you intend to watch three nights in reverence to Saint Winifred, before you take her hence with you. I ask that for the ease of my father’s soul, if he has offended against her, which was never his intent, he may be allowed to lie those three nights before her altar, in the care of those who keep watch. I ask that they will spare one prayer for forgiveness and rest to his soul, one only, in a long night of prayer. Is that too much to ask?”
“It is a fair asking,” said Robert, “from a loyal daughter.” And after all, he came of a noble family, and knew how to value the ties of blood and birth, and he was not all falsity.
“I hope for a sign of grace,” said Sioned, “all the more if you approve me.”
There was no way that such a request could do anything but add lustre and glory to his reputation. His opponent’s heiress and only child came asking his countenance and patronage. He was more than gratified, he was charmed. He gave his consent graciously, aware of more pairs of Gwytherin eyes watching him than belonged to Rhisiart’s bearers. Scattered though the households were, apart from the villein community that fanned as one family, the woods were full of eyes now wherever the strangers went. A pity they had not kept as close a watch on Rhisiart when he was man alive!
They installed his green bier on the trestles before the altar, beside the reliquary that awaited Saint Winifred’s bones. The altar was small and plain, the bier almost dwarfed it, and the light that came in through the narrow east window barely illuminated the scene even by morning sunlight. Prior Robert had brought altar-cloths in the chest, and with these the trestles were draped. There the party from Rhisiart’s hall left their lord lying in state, and quietly withdrew on the way home.
“In the morning,” said Sioned, before she went with them, “I shall come to say my thanks to those who have asked grace for my father during the night. And so I shall do each morning, before we bury him.”
She made the reverence due to Prior Robert, and went away without another word, without so much as a glance at Brother Cadfael, drawing the veil close round her face.
So far, so good! Robert’s vanity and self-interest, if not his compunction, had assured her of her chance, it remained to be seen what would come of it. The order of their watches had been decreed by Robert himself, in consultation with no one but Father Huw, who wished to be the first to spend the night opening his heart to the saint’s influence, if she pleased to make her presence known. His partner was Brother Jerome, of whose obsequious attendance the prior occasionally grew weary, and Cadfael was thankful for the accidental choice that suited him best. That first morning, at least, no one would know what to expect. After that the rest would have due warning, but surely no way of evading the issue.
In the morning, when they went to the chapel, it was to find a fair number of the inhabitants of Gwytherin already gathered there, though unobtrusively, lurking in the edges of the woods and under the fragrant shadow of the hawthorn hedges. Only when the prior and his companions entered the chapel did the villagers emerge silently from cover and gather close, and the first of them to draw near was Sioned, with Annest at her elbow. Way was opened for the two girls, and the people of Gwytherin closed in after them, filling the doorway of the chapel and blocking off the early light, so that only the candles on the altar cast a pale glow over the bier where the dead man lay.
Father Huw got up from his knees somewhat creakily, leaning on the solid wood of the desk till he could get his old legs straightened and working again. From the other desk beside him Jerome rose briskly and supply. Cadfael thought suspiciously of devout watchkeepers who fell asleep as comfortably as possible on their folded arms, but at the moment that was of no importance. He would hardly have expected heaven to open and rain down roses of forgiveness at Jerome’s request, in any case.