“My gage is now lying upon the table,” said Hugh Beringar with implacable calm. “You have only to take it up. I have not withdrawn it.”
“My lord king,” said Cadfael, raising his voice to ride over the partisan whisperings and murmurings that were running like conflicting winds about the high table, “it is not the case that there is no witness to connect the dagger with any person. And for proof positive that stone and dagger belong together, here is the very weapon itself. I ask your Grace to match the two with your own hands.”
He held up the dagger, and Beringar at the edge of the dais took it from him, staring like a man in a dream, and handed it in awed silence to the king. The boy’s eyes followed it with possessive anxiety, Courcelle’s with stricken and unbelieving horror, as if a drowned victim had risen to haunt him. Stephen looked at the thing with an eye appreciative of its workmanship, slid out the blade with rising curiosity, and fitted the topaz in its silver claw to the jagged edge of the hilt.
“No doubt but this belongs. You have all seen?” And he looked down at Cadfael. “Where, then, did you come by this?”
“Speak up, child,” said Cadfael encouragingly, “and tell the king what you told to me.”
The boy was rosy and shining with an excitement that had quite overridden his fear. He stood up and told his tale in a voice shrill with self-importance, but still in the simple words he had used to Cadfael, and there was no man there who could doubt he was telling the truth.
” . . . and I was by the bushes at the edge of the water, and he did not see me. But I saw him clearly. And as soon as he went away I dived in where it had fallen, and found it. I live by the river, I was born by it. My mother says I swam before I walked. I kept the knife, thinking no wrong, since he did not want it. And that is the very knife, my lord, and may I have it back when you are done?”
The king was diverted for a moment from the gravity of the cause that now lay in his hands, to smile at the flushed and eager child with all the good-humour and charm his nature was meant to dispense, if he had not made an ambitious and hotly contested bid for a throne, and learned the rough ways that go with such contests.
“So our fish tonight was gutted with a jewelled knife, was it, boy? Princely indeed! And it was good fish, too. Did you catch it, as well as dress it?”
Bashfully the boy said that he had helped.
“Well, you have done your part very fitly. And now, did you know this man who threw away the knife?”
“No, my lord, I don’t know his name. But I know him well enough when I see him.”
“And do you see him? Here in this hail with us now?”
“Yes, my lord,” said the child readily, and pointed a finger straight at Adam Courcelle. “That was the man.”
All eyes turned upon Courcelle, the king’s most dourly and thoughtfully of all, and there was a silence that lasted no more than a long-drawn breath, but seemed to shake the foundations of the hall, and stop every heart within its walls. Then Courcelle said, with arduous and angry calm:
“Your Grace, this is utterly false. I never had the dagger, I could not well toss it into the river. I deny that ever I had the thing in my possession, or ever saw it until now.”
“Are you saying,” asked the king drily, “that the child lies? At whose instigation? Not Beringar’s — it seems to me that he was as taken aback by this witness as I myself, or you. Am I to think the Benedictine order has procured the boy to put up such a story? And for what end?”
“I am saying, your Grace, that this is a foolish error. The boy may have seen what he says he saw, and got the dagger as he claims he got it, but he is mistaken in saying he saw me. I am not the man. I deny all that has been said against me.”
“And I maintain it,” said Hugh Beringar. “And I ask that it be put to the proof.”
The king crashed a fist upon the table so that the boards danced, and cups rocked and spilled wine. “There is something here to be probed, and I cannot let it pass now without probing it.” He turned again to the boy, and reined in his exasperation to ask more gently: “Think and look carefully, now, and say again: are you certain this is the man you saw? If you have any doubt, say so. It is no sin to be mistaken. You may have seen some other man of like build or colour. But if you are sure, say that also, without fear.”
“I am sure,” said the boy, trembling but adamant. “I know what I saw.”
The king leaned back in his great chair, and thumped his closed fists on the arms, and pondered. He looked at Hugh Beringar with grim displeasure: “It seems you have hung a millstone round my neck, when most I need to be free and to move fast. I cannot now wipe out what has been said, I must delve deeper. Either this case goes to the long processes of court law — no, not for you nor any will I now delay my going one day beyond the morrow’s morrow! I have made my plans, I cannot afford to change them.”
“There need be no delay,” said Beringar, “if your Grace countenances trial by combat. I have appealed Adam Courcelle of murder, I repeat that charge. If he accepts, I am ready to meet him without any ceremony or preparations. Your Grace may see the outcome tomorrow, and march on the following day, freed of this burden.”
Cadfael, during these exchanges, had not taken his eyes from Courcelle’s face, and marked with foreboding the signs of gradually recovered assurance. The faint sweat that had broken on his lip and brow dried, the stare of desperation cooled into calculation; he even began to smile. Since he was now cornered, and there were two ways out, one by long examination and questioning, one by simple battle, he was beginning to see in this alternative his own salvation. Cadfael could follow the measuring, narrowed glance that studied Hugh Beringar from head to foot, and understood the thoughts behind the eyes. Here was a younger man, lighter in weight, half a head shorter, much less in reach, inexperienced, over-confident, an easy victim. It should not be any problem to put him out of the world; and that done, Courcelle had nothing to fear. The judgment of heaven would have spoken, no one thereafter would point a finger at him, and Aline would be still within his reach, innocent of his dealings with her brother, and effectively separated from a too-engaging rival, without any blame to Courcelle, the wrongly accused. Oh, no, it was not so grim a situation, after all. It should work out very well.
He reached out along the table, picked up the topaz, and rolled it contemptuously back towards Beringar, to be retrieved and retained.
“Let it be so, your Grace. I accept battle, tomorrow, without formality, without need for practice. Your Grace shall march the following day,” And I with you, his confident countenance completed.
“So be it!” said the king grimly. “Since you’re bent on robbing me of one good man, between you, I suppose I may as well find and keep the better of the two. Tomorrow, then, at nine of the clock, after Mass. Not here within the wards, but in the open — the meadow outside the town gate, between road and river, will do well. Prestcote, you and Willem marshal the lists. See to it! And we’ll have no horses put at risk,” he said practically. “On foot, and with swords!”
Hugh Beringar bowed acquiescence. Courcelle said:
“Agreed!” and smiled, thinking how much longer a reach and stronger a wrist he had for sword-play.
“A l’outrance!” said the king with a vicious snap, and rose from the table to put an end to a sullied evening’s entertainment.
Chapter Twelve
On the way back through the streets of the town, dark but not quite silent, somehow uneasily astir as if rats ran in a deserted house, Hugh Beringar on his rawboned grey drew alongside Brother Cadfael and walked his mount for some few minutes at their foot-pace, ignoring Brother Jerome’s close proximity and attentive ears as though they had not existed. In front, Abbot Heribert and Prior Robert conversed in low and harried tones, concerned for one life at stake, but unable to intervene. Two young men at bitter enmity had declared for a death. Once both contestants had accepted the odds, there was no retreating; he who lost had been judged by heaven. If he survived the sword, the gallows waited for him.