The boy stood, suddenly grave and a little forlorn. Cadfael reached a hand, and put back the cowl from the shock-head of curls, and there was just filtering dawn-light enough to show him the shape of the solemn oval face, all steady, dilated, confronting eyes.
“You have not slept much. If I were you, I’d burrow deep and warm, and sleep the day out. I won’t desert you.”
“I know,” said Edwin firmly. He knew that even together they might avail nothing, but at least he knew he was not alone. He had a loyal family, with Edwy as link, and he had an ally within the enclave. And he had one other thinking of him and agonising about him. He said in a voice that lost its firmness only for one perilous instant, and stubbornly recovered: “Tell my mother I did not ever do him or wish him harm.”
“Fool child,” said Cadfael comfortably, “I’ve been assured of that already, and who do you suppose told me, if not your mother?” The very faint light was magically soft, and the boy stood at that stage between childhood and maturity when his face, forming but not yet formed, might have been that of boy or girl, woman or man. “You’re very like her,” said Cadfael, remembering a girl not much older than this sprig, embraced and kissed by just such a clandestine light, her parents believing her abed and asleep in virginal solitude.
At this pass he had momentarily forgotten all the women he had known between, east and west, none of them, he hoped and believed, left feeling wronged. “I’ll be with you before night,” he said, and withdrew to the safety of the winter air outside.
Good God, he thought with reverence, making his way back by the parish door in good time for Prime, that fine piece of young flesh, as raw and wild and faulty as he is, he might have been mine! He and the other, too, a son and a grandson both! It was the first and only time that ever he questioned his vocation, much less regretted it, and the regret was not long. But he did wonder if somewhere in the world, by the grace of Arianna, or Bianca, or Mariam, or—were there one or two others as well loved here and there, now forgotten?—he had left printings of himself as beautiful and formidable as this boy of Richildis’s bearing and another’s getting.
Chapter Five
It was now imperative to find the murderer, otherwise the boy could not emerge from hiding and take up his disrupted life. And that meant tracing in detail the passage of the ill-fated dish of partridge from the abbot’s kitchen to Gervase Bonel’s belly. Who had handled it? Who could have tampered with it? Since Prior Robert, in his lofty eminence within the abbot’s lodging, had eaten, appreciated and digested the rest of it without harm, clearly it had been delivered to him in goodwill and in good condition. And he, certainly without meddling, had delivered it in the same condition to his cook.
Before High Mass, Cadfael went to the abbot’s kitchen. He was one of a dozen or so people within these walls who were not afraid of Brother Petrus. Fanatics are always frightening, and Brother Petrus was a fanatic, not for his religion or his vocation, those he took for granted, but for his art. His dedicated fire tinted black hair and black eyes, scorching both with a fiery red. His northern blood boiled like his own cauldron. His temper, barbarian from the borders, was as hot as his own oven. And as hotly as he loved Abbot Heribert, for the same reasons he detested Prior Robert.
When Cadfael walked in upon him, he was merely surveying the day’s battlefield, and mustering his army of pans, pots, spits and dishes, with less satisfaction than the exercise should have provided, because it was Robert, and not Heribert, who would consume the result of his labours. But for all that, he could not relax his hold on perfection.
“That partridge!” said Petrus darkly, questioned on the day’s events. “As fine a bird as ever I saw, not the biggest, but the best-fed and plumpest, and could I have dressed it for my abbot, I would have made him a masterwork. Yes, this prior comes in and bids me set aside a portion—for one only, mark!—to be sent to the guest at the house by the millpond, with his compliments. And I did it. I made it the best portion, in one of Abbot Heribert’s own dishes. My dishes, says Robert! Did anyone else here touch it? I tell you, Cadfael, the two I have here know me, they do what I say, and let all else ride. Robert? He came in to give his orders and sniff at my pan, but it was all in one pan then, it was only after he left my kitchen I set aside the dish for Master Bonel. No, take it as certain, none but myself touched that dish until it left here, and that was close on the dinner hour, when the manservant—Aelfric, is it?—brought his tray.”
“How do you find this man Aelfric?” asked Cadfael. “You’re seeing him daily.”
“A surly fellow, or at least a mute one,” said Petrus without animosity, “but keeps exact time, and is orderly and careful.”
So Richildis had said, perhaps even to excess, and with intent to aggrieve his master.
“I saw him crossing the court with his load that day. The dishes were covered, he has but two hands, and certainly he did not halt this side the gatehouse, for I saw him go out.”
But once through the gate there was a bench set in an alcove in the wall, where a tray could easily be put down for a moment, on pretense of adjusting to a better balance. And Aelfric knew his way to the workshop in the garden, and had seen the oil dispensed. And Aelfric was a soured man on two counts. A man of infinite potential, since he let so little of himself be known to any.
“Ah, well, it’s certain nothing was added to the food here.”
“Nothing but wholesome wine and spices. Now if it had been the rest of the bird that was poisoned,” said Petrus darkly, “I’d give you leave to look sideways at me, for you’d have reason. But if ever I did go so far as to prepare a monk’s-hood stew for that one, be sure I’d make no mistake about which bowl went to which belly.”
No need, thought Cadfael, crossing the court to Mass, to take Brother Petrus’s fulminations too seriously. For all his ferocity he was a man of words rather than actions. Or ought it, after all, to be considered as worth pondering? The idea that a mistake had been made, and the dish intended for Robert sent instead to Bonel, had never entered Cadfael’s head until now, but clearly Petrus had credited him with just such a notion, and made haste to hammer it into absurdity before it was uttered. A shade too much haste? Murderous hatreds had been known to arise between those who were sworn to brotherhood, before this, and surely would so arise again. Brother Petrus might have started the very suspicion he had set out to scotch. Not, perhaps, a very likely murderer. But bear it in mind!
The few weeks before the main festivals of the year always saw an increase in the parochial attendance at Mass, the season pricking the easy consciences of those who took their spiritual duties lightly all the rest of the year. There were a creditable number of local people in the church that morning, and it was no great surprise to Cadfael to discover among them the white coif and abundant yellow hair of the girl Aldith. When the service ended he noticed that she did not go out by the west door, like the rest, but passed through the south door into the cloister, and so out into the great court. There she drew her cloak around her, and sat down on a stone bench against the refectory wall.
Cadfael followed, and saluted her gravely, asking after her mistress. The girl raised to him a fair, composed face whose soft lines seemed to him to be belied by the level dark force of her eyes. She was, he reflected, as mysterious in her way as Aelfric, and what she did not choose to reveal of herself it would be hard to discover unaided.
“She’s well enough in body,” she said thoughtfully, “but distressed in mind for Edwin, naturally. But there’s been no word of his being taken, and I’m sure we should have heard if he had been. That’s some comfort. Poor lady, she’s in need of comfort.”
He could have sent her some reassurance by this messenger, but he did not. Richildis had taken care to speak with him alone, he should respect that preference. In so tight and closed a situation, where only the handful of people involved in one household seemed to be at risk, how could Richildis be absolutely sure even of her young kinswoman, even of her stepson or her manservant? And could he, in the end, even be sure of Richildis? Mothers may be driven to do terrible things in defence of the rights of their children. Gervase Bonel had made a bargain with her, and broken it.