Cadfael fixed him with an acute stare, took him by the arm and turned him promptly towards the town. ‘Come on then and save your breath to tell the tale but once. I’m earlier back than anyone will expect me, I can stretch my license an hour or two, for you and for Meriet.’
So they were two who arrived at the house near Saint Mary’s, where Hugh had settled his family. By luck he was home before supper, and free of his labours for the day. He haled them in warmly, and had wit enough not to offer Brother Mark respite or refreshment until he had heaved his whole anxiety off his narrow chest. Which he did very consideringly, measuring words. He stepped meticulously from fact to fact, as on sure stepping-stones through a perilous stream.
‘I called him round to me because I had seen that on the side of that stack where I was, and where the pile was burned out, the wind had carried fine ash right into the trees, and the near branches of the trees were scorched, the leaves browned and withered. I meant to call his attention to these things, for such a fire was no long time ago. Those were this year’s leaves scorched brown, that was ash not many weeks old still showing grey. And he came readily, but as he came he held on to the rake and tugged it with him, to bring down the top of the stack, where it had not burned out. So he brought down a whole fall of wood and earth and leaves, and this thing rolled down between, at our feet.’
‘You saw it plainly,’ said Hugh gently, ‘tell us as plainly.’
‘It is a fashionable long-toed riding shoe,’ said Mark steadily, ‘shrunk and dried and twisted by fire, but not consumed. And in it a man’s leg-bone, in the ashes of hose.’
‘You are in no doubt,’ said Hugh, watching him with sympathy.
‘None. I saw projecting from the pile the round knee-joint from which the shin-bone had parted,’ said Brother Mark, pale but tranquil. ‘It so happened I saw it break away. I am sure the man is there. The fire broke through on the other side, a strong wind drove it, and left him, it may be, almost whole for Christian burial. At least we may collect his bones.’
‘That shall be done with all reverence,’ said Hugh, ‘if you are right. Go on, you have more to tell. Brother Meriet saw what you had seen. What then?’
‘He was utterly stricken and shocked. He had spoken of coming there as a child, and helping the old charcoal-burner. I am certain he knew of nothing worse there than what he remembered. I told him first we must get our people home undisturbed, and he did his part valiantly,’ said Brother Mark, ‘We have left all as we found it—or as we disturbed it unwitting. In the morning light I can show you the place.’
‘I think, rather,’ said Hugh with deliberation, ‘Meriet Aspley shall do that. But now you have told us what you had to tell, now you may sit down with me and eat and drink a morsel, while we consider this matter.’
Brother Mark sat down obediently, sighing away the burden of his knowledge. Grateful for the humblest of hospitality, he was equally unawed by the noblest, and having no pride, he did not know how to be servile. When Aline herself brought him meat and drink, and the same for Cadfael, he received it gladly and simply, as saints accept alms, perpetually astonished and pleased, perpetually serene.
‘You said,’ Hugh pressed him gently over the wine, ‘that you had cause, in the blown ash and the scorching of the trees, to believe that the fire was of this season, and not from a year ago, and that I accept. Had you other reasons to think so?’
‘I had,’ said Mark simply, ‘for though we have brought home, to our gain, a whole cord of good coppice-wood, yet not far aside from ours there were two other flattened and whitened shapes in the grass, greener than the one we have now left, but still clear to be seen, which I think must have been bared when the wood was used for this stack. Meriet told me the logs must be left to season. These would have seasoned more than a year, dried out, it may be, too far for what was purposed. No one was left to watch the burning, and the over-dried wood burned through and burst into a blaze. You will see the shapes where the wood lay. You will judge better than I how long since it was moved.’
‘That I doubt,’ said Hugh, smiling, ‘for you seem to have done excellently well. But tomorrow we shall see. There are those can tell to a hair, by the burrowing insects and the spiders, and the tinder fringing the wood. Sit and take your ease awhile, before you must return, for there’s nothing now can be done before morning.’
Brother Mark sat back, relieved, and bit with astonished pleasure into the game pasty Aline had brought him. She thought him underfed, and worried about him because he was so meagre; and indeed he may very well have been underfed, through forgetting to eat while he worried about someone else. There was a great deal of the good woman in Brother Mark, and Aline recognised it.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ said Hugh, when Mark rose to take his leave and make his way back to his charges, ‘I shall be at Saint Giles with my men immediately after Prime. You may tell Brother Meriet that I shall require him to come with me and show me the place.’
That, of course, should occasion no anxiety to an innocent man, since he had been the cause of the discovery in the first place, but it might bring on a very uneasy night for one not entirely innocent, at least of more knowledge than was good for him. Mark could not object to the oblique threat, since his own mind had been working in much the same direction. But in departing he made over again his strongest point in Meriet’s defence.
‘He led us to the place, for good and sensible reasons, seeing it was fuel we were after. Had he known what he was to find there, he would never have let us near it.’
‘That shall be borne in mind,’ said Hugh gravely. ‘Yet I think you found something more than natural in his horror when he uncovered a dead man. You, after all, are much of his age, and have had no more experience of murder and violence than has he. And I make no doubt you were shaken to the soul—yet not as he was. Granted he knew nothing of this unlawful burial, still the discovery meant to him something more, something worse, than it meant to you. Granted he did not know a body had been so disposed of, may he not, nevertheless, have had knowledge of a body in need of secret disposal, and recognised it when he uncovered it?’
‘That is possible,’ said Mark simply. ‘It is for you to examine all these things.’ And he took his leave, and set off alone on the walk back to Saint Giles.
‘There’s no knowing, as yet,’ said Cadfael, when Mark was gone, ‘who or what this dead man may be. He may have nothing to do with Meriet, with Peter Clemence or with the horse straying in the mosses. A live man missing, a dead man found—they need not be one and the same. There’s every reason to doubt it. The horse more than twenty miles north of here, the rider’s last night halt four miles southeast, and this burning hearth another four miles south-west from there. You’ll have hard work linking those into one sequence and making sense of it. He left Aspley travelling north, and one thing’s certain by a number of witnesses, he was man alive then. What should he be doing now, not north, but south of Aspley? And his horse miles north, and on the right route he would be taking, bar a little straying at the end?’
‘I don’t know but I’ll be the happier,’ owned Hugh, ‘if this turns out to be some other traveller fallen by thieves somewhere, and nothing to do with Clemence, who may well be down in the peat-pools this moment. But do you know of any other gone missing in these parts? And another thing, Cadfael, would common thieves have left him his riding shoes? Or his hose, for that matter. A naked man has nothing left that could benefit his murderers, and nothing by which he may be easily known, two good reasons for stripping him. And again, since he wore long-toed shoes, he was certainly not going far afoot. No sane man would wear them for walking.’