At the last moment Courcelle, frowning down distressfully at the corpse, said abruptly: “Wait! I have remembered — I believe there is something here that must have belonged to him.”
He went hastily through the archway and across the outer ward to the guard-towers, and in a few moments came back carrying over his arm a black cloak. “This was among the gear they left behind in the guardroom at the end. I think it must have been his — this clasp at the neck has the same design, see, as the buckle of his belt.”
It was true enough, there was the same dragon of eternity, tail in mouth, lavishly worked in bronze. “I noticed it only now. That cannot be by chance. Let me at least restore him this.” He spread out the cloak and draped it gently over the litter, covering the dead face. When he looked up, it was into Aline’s eyes, and for the first time they regarded him through a sheen of tears.
“That was very kindly done,” she said in a low voice, and gave him her hand. “I shall not forget it.”
Cadfael went back to his vigil by the unknown, and continued his questioning, but it brought no useful response. In the coming night all these dead remaining must be taken on carts down the Wyle and out to the abbey; this hot summer would not permit further delay. At dawn Abbot Heribert would consecrate a new piece of ground at the edge of the abbey enclosure, for a mass grave. But this unknown, never condemned, never charged with any crime, whose dead body cried aloud for justice, should not be buried among the executed, nor should there be any rest until he could go to his grave under his own rightful name, and with all the individual honours due to him.
In the house of Father Elias, priest of St Alkmund’s church, Giles Siward was reverently stripped, washed, composed and shrouded, all by his sister’s hands, the good father assisting. Hugh Beringar stood by to fetch and carry for them, but did not enter the room where they worked. She wanted no one else, she was quite sufficient to the task laid on her, and if she was robbed of any part of it now she would feel deprivation and resentment, not gratitude. But when all was done, and her brother laid ready for rest before the altar of the church, she was suddenly weary to death, and glad enough of Beringar’s almost silent company and ready arm back to her house by the mill.
On the following morning Giles Siward was interred with all due ceremony in the tomb of his maternal grandfather in the church of St Alkmund, and the monks of the abbey of St Peter and St Paul buried with due rites all the sixty-six soldiers of the defeated garrison still remaining in their charge.
Chapter Four
Aline brought back with her the cotte and hose her brother had worn, and the cloak that had covered him, and herself carefully brushed and folded them. The shirt no one should ever wear again, she would burn it and forget; but these stout garments of good cloth must not go to waste, in a world where so many went half-naked and cold. She took the neat bundle, and went in at the abbey gate house, and finding the whole courtyard deserted, crossed to the ponds and the gardens in search of Brother Cadfael. She did not find him. The digging out of a grave large enough to hold sixty-six victims, and the sheer repetitious labour of laying them in it, takes longer than the opening of a stone tomb to make room for one more kinsman. The brothers were hard at work until past two o’clock, even with every man assisting.
But if Cadfael was not there, his garden-boy was, industriously clipping off flower-heads dead in the heat, and cutting leaves and stems of blossoming savory to hang up in bunches for drying. All the end of the hut, under the eaves, was festooned with drying herbs. The diligent boy worked barefoot and dusty from the powdery soil, and a smear of green coloured one cheek. At the sound of approaching footsteps he looked round, and came out in haste from among his plants, in a great wave of fragrance, which clung about him and distilled from the folds of his coarse tunic like the miraculous sweetness conferred upon some otherwise unimpressive-looking saint. The hurried swipe of a hand over his tangle of hair only served to smear the other cheek and half his forehead.
“I was looking,” said Aline, almost apologetically, “for Brother Cadfael. You must be the boy called Godric, who works for him.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Godith gruffly. “Brother Cadfael is still busy, they are not finished yet.” She had wanted to attend, but he would not let her; the less she was seen in full daylight, the better.
“Oh!” said Aline, abashed. “Of course, I should have known. Then may I leave my message with you? It is only — I’ve brought these, my brother’s clothes. He no longer needs them, and they are still good, someone could be glad of them. Will you ask Brother Cadfael to dispose of them somewhere they can do good? However he thinks best.”
Godith had scrubbed grubby hands down the skirts of her cotte before extending them to take the bundle. She stood suddenly very still, eyeing the other girl and clutching the dead man’s clothes, so startled and shaken that she forgot for a moment to keep her voice low. “No longer needs . . . You had a brother in there, in the castle? Oh, I am sorry! Very sorry!”
Aline looked down at her own hands, empty and rather lost now that even this last small duty was done. “Yes. One of many,” she said. “He made his choice. I was taught to think it the wrong one, but at least he stood by it to the end. My father might have been angry with him, but he would not have had to be ashamed.”
“I am sorry!” Godith hugged the folded garments to her breast and could find no better words. “I’ll deliver your message to Brother Cadfael as soon as he comes. And he would want me to give you his thanks for your most feeling charity, until he can do it for himself.”
“And give him this purse, too. It is for Masses for them all. But especially a Mass for the one who should not have been there — the one nobody knows.”
Godith stared in bewilderment and wonder. “Is there one like that? One who did not belong? I didn’t know!” She had seen Cadfael for only a few hurried moments when he came home late and weary, and he had had no time to tell her anything. All she knew was that the remaining dead had been brought to the abbey for burial; this mysterious mention of one who had no place in the common tragedy was new to her.
“So he said. There were ninety-five where there should have been only ninety-four, and one did not seem to have been in arms. Brother Cadfael was asking all who came, to look and see if they knew him, but I think no one has yet put a name to him.”
“And where, then is he now?” asked Godith, marvelling.
“That I don’t know. Though they must have brought him here to the abbey. Somehow I don’t think Brother Cadfael will let him be put into the earth with all the rest, and he nameless and unaccounted for. You must know his ways better than I. Have you worked with him long?”
“No, a very short time,” said Godith, “but I do begin to know him.” She was growing a little uneasy, thus innocently studied at close quarters by those clear iris eyes. A woman might be more dangerous to her secret than a man. She cast a glance back towards the beds of herbs where she had been working.
“Yes,” said Aline, taking the allusion, “I must not keep you from your proper work.”
Godith watched her withdraw, almost regretting that she dared not prolong this encounter with another girl in this sanctuary of men. She laid the bundle of clothing on her bed in the hut, and went back to work, waiting in some disquiet for Cadfael to come; and even when he did appear he was tired, and still burdened with business.
“I’m sent for to the king’s camp. It seems his sheriff has thought best to let him know what sort of unexpected hare I’ve started, and he wants an accounting from me. But I’m forgetting,” he said, passing a hard palm over cheeks stiff with weariness, “I’ve had no time to talk to you at all, you’ve heard nothing of all that — “