“If you’ll permit, I’ll sit with you a little while. You’re not in haste to return?”
“Aelfric will be coming for the dinner soon,” she said. “I thought I would wait for him, and help him carry everything. He’ll have the ale and the bread as well.” And she added, as Cadfael sat down beside her: “It’s ill for him, having to do that same office daily, after what fell on us yesterday. To think that people may be eyeing him and wondering. Even you, brother. Isn’t it true?”
“No help for that,” said Cadfael simply, “until we know the truth. The sheriff’s sergeant believes he knows it already. Do you agree with him?”
“No!” She was mildly scornful, it even raised the ghost of a smile. “It isn’t the wild, noisy, boisterous boys, the ones who let the world all round know their grievances and their tantrums and their pleasures, who use poison. But what avails my telling you this, saying I believe or I don’t believe, when I’m deep in the same coil myself? As you know I am! When Aelfric came into my kitchen with the tray, and told me about the prior’s gift, it was I who set the dish to keep hot on the hob, while Aelfric carried the large dish into the room, and I followed with the platters and the jug of ale. The three of them were in there at table, they knew nothing about the partridge until I told them… thinking to please the master, for in there the air was so chill you could hardly breathe. I think I was back in the kitchen first of the two of us, and I sat by the hob to eat my meal, and I stirred the bowl when it simmered. More than once, and moved it aside from the heat, too. What use my saying I added nothing? Of course that is what I, or any other in my shoes would say, it carries no weight until there’s proof, one way or the other.”
“You are very sensible and very just,” said Cadfael. “And Meurig, you say, was just coming in at the door when you returned to the kitchen. So he was not alone with the dish… even supposing he had known what it was, and for whom it was intended.”
Her dark brows rose, wonderfully arched and vivid and striking under the pale brow and light-gold hair. “The door was wide open, that I recall, and Meurig was just scraping the dirt from his shoes before coming in. But what reason could Meurig have, in any case, to wish his father dead? He was not lavish with him, but he was of more value to him alive than dead. He had no hope of inheriting anything, and knew it, but he had a modest competence to lose.”
That was simple truth. Not even the church would argue a bastard’s right to inherit, while the state would deny it even where marriage of the parents, every way legal, followed the birth. And this had been a commonplace affair with one of his own maidservants. No, Meurig had no possible stake in this death. Whereas Edwin had a manor to regain, and Richildis, her adored son’s future. And Aelfric?
She had reared her head, gazing towards the gatehouse, where Aelfric had just appeared, the high-rimmed wooden tray under his arm, a bag for the loaves slung on his shoulder. She gathered her cloak and rose.
“Tell me,” said Cadfael, mild-voiced beside her, “now that Master Bonel is dead, to whom does Aelfric belong? Does he go with the manor, to the abbey or some other lord? Or was he excluded from the agreement, conceded to Master Bonel as manservant in villeinage for life?”
She looked back sharply in the act of going to meet Aelfric. “He was excluded. Granted to be my lord’s villein personally.”
“Then whatever happens to the manor now, he will go to whoever inherits the personal effects… to widow or son, granted the son escapes a criminal charge. And Aldith, you know Mistress Bonel’s mind, would you not say that she would at once give Aelfric his freedom, with a glad heart? And would the boy do any other?”
All she gave him by way of answer was a brief, blinding flash of the black, intelligent eyes, and the sudden, veiling swoop of large lids and long dark lashes. Then she went to cross Aelfric’s path, and fall in beside him on his way to the abbot’s lodging. Her step was light and easy, her greeting indifferent, her manner dutiful. Aelfric trudged by her side stiff and mute, and would not let her take the bag from his shoulder. Cadfael sat looking after them for a long moment, observing and wondering, though after a while the wonder subsided into mild surprise, and by the time he set off to wash his hands before dinner in the refectory, even surprise had settled into conviction and reassessment.
It was mid-afternoon, and Cadfael was picking over the stored trays of apples and pears in the loft of the abbot’s barn, discarding the few decayed specimens before they could infect their neighbours, when Brother Mark came hallooing for him from below.
“The sheriff’s man is back,” he reported, when Cadfael peered down the ladder at him and demanded what the noise was about, “and asking for you. And they’ve not captured their man—if it’s any news I’m telling you.”
“It’s no good news that I should be wanted,” admitted Cadfael, descending the ladder backwards, as nimbly as a boy. “What’s his will? Or his humour, at least?”
“No menace to you, I think,” said Mark, considering. “Vexed at not laying his hands on the boy, naturally, but I think his mind’s on small things like the level of that rubbing oil in your store. He asked me if I could tell if any had been removed from there, but I’m a slipshod hand who notices nothing, as you’ll bear witness. He thinks you’ll know to the last drop.”
“Then he’s the fool. It takes a mere mouthful or two of that to kill, and in a container too wide to get the fingers of both hands around, and tall as a stool, who’s to know if ten times that amount has been purloined? But let’s at least pick his brains of what he’s about now, and how far he thinks he has his case proven.”
In the workshop the sheriff’s sergeant was poking his bushy beard and hawk’s beak into all Cadfael’s sacks and jars and pots in somewhat wary curiosity. If he had brought an escort with him this time, he must have left them in the great court or at the gatehouse.
“You may yet be able to help us, brother,” he said as Cadfael entered. “It would be a gain to know from which supply of this oil of yours the poison was taken, but the young brother here can’t say if any is missing from this store. Can you be more forthcoming?”
“On that point,” said Cadfael bluntly, “no. The amount needed would be very small, and my stock, as you see, is large. No one could pretend to say with certainty whether any had been taken out unlawfully. This I can tell you, I examined the neck and stopper of this bottle yesterday, and there is no trace of oil at the lip. I doubt if a thief in haste would stop to wipe the lip clean before stoppering it, as I do.”
The sergeant nodded, partially satisfied that this accorded with what he believed. “It’s more likely it was taken from the infirmary, then. And that’s a smaller flask by much than this, but I’ve been there, and they can none of them hazard an opinion. Among the old the oil is in favoured use now, who can guess if it was used one more time without lawful reason?”
“You’ve made little progress, I fear,” said Brother Cadfael.
“We have not caught our man, yet. No knowing where Edwin Gurney is hiding, but there’s been no trace of him round Bellecote’s shop, and the carpenter’s horse is in its stable. I’d wager the boy is still somewhere within the town. We’re watching the shop and the gates, and keeping an eye on his mother’s house. It is but a matter of time before we take him.”
Cadfael sat back on his bench and spread his hands on his knees. “You’re very sure of him. Yet there are at least four others who were there in the house, and any number more who, for one reason or another, know the use and abuse of this preparation. Oh, I know the weight of the case you can make against this boy. I could make as good a case against one or two more, but that I won’t do. I’d rather by far consider those factors that might provide, not suspicion, but proof, and not against one chosen quarry, but against the person, whoever he may be, towards whom the facts point. The time concerned is tight, half an hour at most. I myself saw the manservant fetch the dishes from the abbot’s kitchen, and carry them out at the gate. Unless we are to look seriously at those who serve the abbot’s kitchen, the dish was still harmless when it left our enclave. I don’t say,” he added blandly, “that you should, because we wear the cowl, write off any man of us as exempt from suspicion, myself included.”