King Stephen had detained his sheriff of Shropshire in attendance about his person that autumn, after the usual Michaelmas accounting, and taken him with him in the company now paying calculated courtesies to the earl of Chester and William of Roumare in Lincoln, so that this matter of the henhouse marauder, along with all other offences against the king’s peace and good order, fell into Hugh’s hands. ‘As well!’ said Hugh, ‘for I’d just as lief keep the Clemence affair mine without interference, now it’s gone so far.’
He was well aware that he had not too much time left in which to bring it to a just end single-handed, for if the king meant to be back in Westminster for Christmas, then the sheriff might return to his shire in a very few days. And certainly this wild man’s activities seemed to be centred on the eastern fringe of the forest, which was engaging Hugh’s interest already for a very different reason.
In a country racked by civil war, and therefore hampered in keeping ordinary law and order, everything unaccountable was being put down to outlaws living wild; but for all that, now and then the simplest explanation turns out to be the true one. Hugh had no such expectations in this case, and was greatly surprised when one of his sergeants brought in to the castle wards in triumph the thief who had been living off the more unwary inhabitants of the Foregate. Not because of the man himself, who was very much what might have been expected, but because of the dagger and sheath which had been found on him, and were handed over as proof of his villainies. There were even traces of dried blood, no doubt from someone’s pullet or goose, engrained in the grooved blade.
It was a very elegant dagger, with rough gems in the hilt, so shaped as to be comfortable to the hand, and its sheath of metal covered with tooled leather had been blackened and discoloured by fire, the leather frayed away for half its length from the tip. An end of thin leather strap still adhered to it. Hugh had seen the loop from which it, or its fellow, should have depended.
In the bleak space of the inner ward he jerked his head towards the anteroom of the hall, and said: ‘Bring him within.’ There was a good fire in there, and a bench to sit on. ‘Take off his chains,’ said Hugh, after one look at the wreck of a big man, ‘and let him sit by the fire. You may keep by him, but I doubt if he’ll give you any trouble.’
The prisoner could have been an imposing figure, if he had still had flesh and sinew on his long, large bones, but he was shrunken by starvation, and with nothing but rags on him in this onset of winter. He could not be old, his eyes and his shock of pale hair were those of a young man, his bones, however starting from his flesh, moved with the live vigour of youth. Close to the fire, warmed after intense cold, he flushed and dilated into something nearer approaching his proper growth. But his face, blue-eyed, hollow-cheeked, stared in mute terror upon Hugh. He was like a wild thing in a trap, braced taut, waiting for a bolthole. Ceaselessly he rubbed at his wrists, just loosed from the heavy chains.
‘What is your name?’ asked Hugh, so mildly that the creature stared and froze, afraid to understand such a tone.
‘What do men call you?’ repeated Hugh patiently.
‘Harald, my lord. I’m named Harald.’ The large frame produced a skeletal sound, deep but dry and remote. He had a cough that perforated his speech uneasily, and a name that had once belonged to a king, and that within the memory of old men still living, men of his own fair colouring.
‘Tell me how you came by this thing, Harald. For it’s a rich man’s weapon, as you must know. See the craftsmanship of it, and the jeweller’s work. Where did you find such a thing?’
‘I didn’t steal it,’ said the wretch, trembling. ‘I swear I didn’t! It was thrown away, no one wanted it…’
‘Where did you find it?’ demanded Hugh more sharply.
‘In the forest, my lord. There’s a place where they burn charcoal.’ He described it, stammering and blinking, voluble to hold off blame. ‘There was a dead fire there, I took fuel from it sometimes, but I was afraid to stay so near the road. The knife was lying in the ashes, lost or thrown away. Nobody wanted it. And I needed a knife…’ He shook, watching Hugh’s impassive face with frightened blue eyes. ‘It was not stealing… I never stole but to keep alive, my lord, I swear it.’
He had not been a very successful thief, even so, for he had barely kept body and soul together. Hugh regarded him with detached interest, and no particular severity.
‘How long have you been living wild?’
‘Four months it must be, my lord. But I never did violence, nor stole anything but food. I needed a knife for my hunting…’
Ah, well, thought Hugh, the king can afford a deer here and there. This poor devil needs it more than Stephen does, and Stephen in his truest mood would give it to him freely. Aloud he said: ‘A hard life for a man, come wintertime. You’ll do better indoors with us for a while, Harald, and feed regularly, if not on venison.’ He turned to the sergeant, who was standing warily by. ‘Lock him away. Let him have blankets to wrap him. And see to it he eats—but none too much to start with or he’ll gorge and die on us.’ He had known it happen among the wretched creatures in flight the previous winter from the storming of Worcester, starving on the road and eating themselves to death when they came to shelter. ‘And use him well!’ said Hugh sharply as the sergeant hauled up his prisoner. ‘He’ll not stand rough handling, and I want him. Understood?’
The sergeant understood it as meaning this was the wanted murderer, and must live to stand his trial and take his ceremonial death. He grinned, and abated his hold on the bony shoulder he gripped. ‘I take your meaning, my lord.’
They were gone, captor and captive, off to a securely locked cell where the outlaw Harald, almost certainly a runaway villein, and probably with good reason, could at least be warmer than out in the woods, and get his meals, rough as they might be, brought to him without hunting.
Hugh completed his daily business about the castle, and then went off to find Brother Cadfael in his workshop, brewing some aromatic mixture to soothe ageing throats through the first chills of the winter. Hugh sat back on the familiar bench against the timber wall, and accepted a cup of one of Cadfael’s better wines, kept for his better acquaintances.
‘Well, we have our murderer safely under lock and key,’ he announced, straight-faced, and recounted what had emerged. Cadfael listened attentively, for all he seemed to have his whole mind on his simmering syrup.
‘Folly!’ he said then, scornfully. His brew was bubbling too briskly, he lifted it to the side of the brazier.
‘Of course folly,’ agreed Hugh heartily. ‘A poor wretch without a rag to his covering or a crust to his name, kill a man and leave him his valuables, let alone his clothes? They must be about of a height, he would have stripped him naked and been glad of such cloth. And build the clerk single-handed into that stack of timber? Even if he knew how such burnings are managed, and I doubt if he does… No, it is beyond belief. He found the dagger, just as he says. What we have here is some poor soul pushed so far by a heavy-handed lord that he’s run for it. And too timid, or too sure of his lord’s will to pursue him, to risk walking into the town and seeking work. He’s been loose four months, picking up what food he could where he could.’
‘You have it all clear enough, it seems,’ said Cadfael, still brooding over his concoction, though it was beginning to settle in the pot, gently hiccuping. ‘What is it you want of me?’
‘My man has a cough, and a festered wound on his forearm, I judge a dog’s bite, somewhere he lifted a hen. Come and sain it for him, and get out of him whatever you can, where he came from, who is his master, what is his trade. We’ve room for good craftsmen of every kind in the town, as you know, and have taken in several, to our gain and theirs. This may well be another as useful.’
‘I’ll do that gladly,’ said Cadfael, turning to look at his friend with a very shrewd eye. ‘And what has he to offer you in exchange for a meal and a bed? And maybe a suit of clothes, if you had his inches, as by your own account you have not. I’d swear Peter Clemence could have topped you by a hand’s length.’