“Get up!” he growled, standing over the wreckage. “Get up now, and I’ll give you time to rest and breathe, and then you can fight a man to the death, without a dagger in your hand, instead of writhing through the undergrowth and stabbing him in the back, or carving up a defenceless girl. Take your time, I can wait to kill you till you’ve got your breath.”
Sioned flew to him, breast to breast, and held him fast in her arms, pressing him back. “No! Don’t touch him again! I don’t want the law to have any hold on you, even the slenderest.”
“He tried to kill you—you’re hurt…”
“No! It’s nothing… only a cut. It bleeds, but it’s nothing!”
His rage subsided slowly, shaking him. He folded his arms round her and held her to him, and with a disdainful but restrained jab of a toe urged his prostrate enemy again: “Get up! I won’t touch you. The law can have you, and welcome!”
Columbanus did not move, not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid or the twitching of a finger. All three of them stood peering down at him in sudden silence, aware how utterly still he was, and how rare such stillness is among living things.
“He’s foxing,” said Engelard scornfully, “for fear of worse, and by way of getting himself pitied. I’ve heard he’s a master at that.”
Those who feign sleep and hear themselves talked of, usually betray themselves by some exaggeration of innocence. Columbanus lay in a stillness that was perfectly detached and indifferent.
Brother Cadfael knelt down beside him, shook him by the shoulder gently, and sat back with a sharp sigh at the broken movement of the head. He put a hand inside the breast of the habit, and stooped to the parted lips and wide nostrils. Then he took the head between his hands, and gently turned and tilted it. It rolled back, as he released it, into a position so improbable that they knew the worst even before Cadfael said, quite practically: “You’d have waited a long time for him to get his breath back, my friend. You don’t know your own strength! His neck is broken. He’s dead.”
Sobered and shocked, they stood dumbly staring down at what they had hardly yet recognised for disaster. They saw a regrettable accident which neither of them had ever intended, but which was, after all, a kind of justice. But Cadfael saw a scandal that could yet wreck their young lives, and others, too, for without Columbanus alive, and forced by two respected witnesses to repeat his confession, how strong was all their proof against him? Cadfael sat back on his heels, and thought. It was startling to realise, now that the unmoved silence of the night came down on them again, how all this violence and passion had passed with very little noise, and no other witnesses. He listened, and no stirring of foot or wing troubled the quiet. They were far enough away from any dwelling, not a soul had been disturbed. That, at least, was time gained.
“He can’t be dead,” said Engelard doubtfully. “I barely handled him at all. Nobody dies as easily as that!”
“This one did. And now what’s to be done? I hadn’t bargained for this.” He said it not complainingly, but as one pointing out that further urgent planning would now be necessary, and they had better keep their minds flexible.
“Why, what can be done?” To Engelard it was simple, though troublesome. “We shall have to call up Father Huw and your prior, and tell them exactly what’s happened. What else can we do? I’m sorry to have killed the fellow, I never meant to, but I can’t say I feel any guilt about it.”
Nor did he expect any blame. The truth was always the best way. Cadfael felt a reluctant affection for such innocence. The world was going to damage it sooner or later, but one undeserved accusation had so far failed even to bruise it, he still trusted men to be reasonable. Cadfael doubted if Sioned was so sure. Her silence was anxious and foreboding. And her grazed arm was still oozing blood. First things first, and they might as well be sensibly occupied while he thought.
“Here, make yourself useful! Help me get this carrion back into the chapel, out of sight. And, Sioned, find his dagger, we can’t leave that lying about to bear witness. Then let’s get that arm of yours washed and bound up. There’s a stream at the back of the hawthorn hedge, and of linen we’ve plenty.”
They had absolute faith in him, and did his bidding without question, though Engelard, once he had assured himself that Sioned was not gravely hurt, and had himself carefully and deftly bandaged her scratch, returned to his dogged opinion that their best course was to tell the whole story, which could hardly cast infamy upon anyone but Columbanus. Cadfael busied himself with flint and tinder until he had candles lighted, and the lamp refilled, from which he himself had drained a judicious quantity of oil before Sioned took her place under the draperies of the saint’s catafalque.
“You think,” he said at length, “that because you’ve done nothing wrong, and we’ve all of us banded together to expose a wrong, that the whole world will be of the same opinion, and honestly come out and say so. Child, I know better! The only proof we have of Columbanus’ guilt is his confession, which both of us here heard. Or rather, the only proof we had, for we no longer have even that. Alive, we two could have forced the truth out of him a second time. Dead, he’s never going to give us that satisfaction. And without that, our position is vulnerable enough. Make no mistake, if we accuse him, if this fearful scandal breaks, to smirch the abbey of Shrewsbury, and all the force of the Benedictine order, backed here by the bishop and the prince, take my word for it, all the forces of authority will band together to avert the disaster, and nobody, much less a friendless outlander, will be allowed to stand in the way. They simply can’t afford to have the acquisition of Saint Winifred called in question and brought to disrepute. Rather than that, they’ll call this an outlaw killing by a desperate man, a fugitive already, wanted for another crime, and trying to escape both together. A pity,” he said, “I ever suggested that Sioned should call you in to wait in reserve, in case we had trouble. But none of this is your fault, and I won’t have you branded with it. I made the plot, and I must unravel it. But give up all idea of going straight to Father Huw, or the bailiff, or anyone else, with the true story. Far better use the rest of this night to rearrange matters to better advantage. Justice can be arrived at by more routes than one.”
“They wouldn’t dare doubt Sioned’s word,” said Engelard stoutly.
“Fool boy, they’d say that Sioned, for love’s sake, might go as far aside from her proper nature as Peredur did. And as for me, my influence is small enough, and I am not interested in protecting only myself, but as many of those in this coil as I can reach. Even my prior, who is arrogant and rigid, and to tell the truth, sometimes rather stupid, but not a murderer and not a liar. And my order, which has not deserved Columbanus. Hush, now, and let me think! And while I do, you can be clearing away the remains of the syrup bottle. This chapel must be as neat and quiet tomorrow as before we ever brought our troubles into it.”
Obediently they went about removing the traces of the night’s alarms, and let him alone until he should have found them a way through the tangle.
“And I wonder, now,” he said at length, “what made you improve on all the speeches I made for you, and put such fiery words into Saint Winifred’s mouth? What put it into your head to say that you’d never wanted to leave Gwytherin, and did not want it now? That Rhisiart was not merely a decent, honest man, but your chosen champion?”
She turned and looked at him in astonishment and wonder. “Did I say that?”
“You did, and very well you delivered it, too. And very proper and apt it sounded, but I think we never rehearsed it so. Where did you get the words?”
“I don’t know,” said Sioned, puzzled. “I don’t remember what I did say. The words seemed to come freely of themselves, I only let them flow.”
“It may be,” said Engelard, “that the saint was taking her chance when it offered. All these strangers having visions and ecstasies, and interpreting them to suit themselves, yet nobody ever really asked Saint Winifred what she wanted. They all claimed they knew better than she did.”