Leoric was shaking his head violently and wretchedly. ‘I wish it were so, but I know better. Why do you say he is lying? What proof can you have for your trust, compared with that I have for my certainty?’
‘I will give you one proof for my trust,’ said Cadfael, ‘in exchange for all your proofs of your certainty. As soon as he heard there was another man accused, Meriet made his confession of guilt to the law, which can destroy his body. But resolutely he refused then and refuses still to repeat that confession to a priest, and ask penance and absolution for a sin he has not committed. That is why I believe him guiltless. Now show me, if you can, as strong a reason why you should believe him guilty.’
The lofty, tormented grey head continued its anguished motions of rejection. ‘I wish to God you were right and I wrong, but I know what I saw and what I heard. I never can forget it. Now that I must tell it openly, since there’s an innocent man at stake, and Meriet to his honour has cleansed his breast, why should I not tell it first to you? My guest was gone on his way safely, it was a day like any other day. I went out for exercise with hawk and hounds, and three besides, my chaplain and huntsman, and a groom, honest men all, they will bear me out. There’s thick woodland three miles north from us, a wide belt of it. It was the hounds picked up Meriet’s voice, no more than a distant call to me until we got nearer and I knew him. He was calling Barbary and whistling for him—the horse that Clemence rode. It may have been the whistle the hounds caught first, and went eager but silent to find Meriet. By the time we came on him he had the horse tethered—you’ll have heard he has a gift. When we burst in on him, he had the dead man under the arms, and was dragging him deep into a covert off the path. An arrow in Peter’s breast, and bow and quiver on Meriet’s shoulder. Do you want more? When I cried out on him, what had he done?—he never said word to deny. When I ordered him to return with us, and laid him under lock and key until I could consider such a shame and horror, and know my way, he never said nay to it, but submitted to all. When I told him I would keep him man alive and cover up his mortal sin, but on conditions, he accepted life and withdrawal. I do believe, as much for our name’s sake as for his own life, but he chose.’
‘He did choose, he did far more than accept,’ said Cadfael, ‘for he told Isouda what he told us all, later, that he came to us of his own will, at his own desire. Never has he said that he was forced. But go on, tell me your own part.’
‘I did what I had promised him, I had the horse led far to the north, by the way Clemence should have ridden, and there turned loose in the mosses, where it might be thought his rider had foundered. And the body we took secretly, with all that was his, and my chaplain read the rites over him with all reverence, before we laid him within a new stack on the charcoal-burner’s old hearth, and fired it. It was ill-done and against my conscience, but I did it. Now I will answer for it. I shall not be sorry to pay whatever is due.’
‘Your son has taken care,’ said Cadfael hardly, ‘to claim to himself, along with the death, all that you have done to conceal it. But he will not confess lies to his confessor, as mortal a sin as hiding truth.’
‘But why?’ demanded Leoric wildly. ‘Why should he so yield and accept all, if he had an answer for me? Why?’
‘Because the answer he had for you would have been too hard for you to bear, and unbearable also to him. For love, surely,’ said Brother Cadfael. ‘I doubt if he has had his proper fill of love all his life, but those who most hunger for it do most and best deliver it.’
‘I have loved him,’ protested Leoric, raging and writhing, ‘though he has been always so troublous a soul, for ever going contrary.’
‘Going contrary is one way of getting your notice,’ said Cadfael ruefully, ‘when obedience and virtue go unregarded. But let that be. You want instances. This spot where you came upon him, it was hardly more than three miles from your manor—what, forty minutes’ ride? And the hour when you came there was well on in the afternoon. How many hours had Clemence lain there dead? And suddenly there is Meriet toiling to hide the dead body, and whistling up the straying horse left riderless. Even if he had run in terror, and wandered the woods fevered over his deed, would he not have dealt with the horse before he fled? Either lashed him away to ride wild, or caught and ridden him far off. What was he doing there calling and tethering the horse, and hiding the body, all those hours after the man must have died? Did you never think of that?’
‘I thought,’ said Leoric, speaking slowly now, wide-eyed, urgent upon Cadfael’s face, ‘as you have said, that he had run in terror from what he had done, and come back, late in the day, to hide it from all eyes.’
‘So he has said now, but it cost him a great heave of the heart and mind to fetch that excuse up out of the well.’
‘Then what,’ whispered Leoric, shaking now with mingled hope and bewilderment, and very afraid to trust, ‘what has moved him to accept so dreadful a wrong? How could he do such an injury to me and to himself?’
‘For fear, perhaps, of doing you a greater. And for love of someone he had cause to doubt, as you found cause to doubt him. Meriet has a great store of love to give,’ said Brother Cadfael gravely, ‘and you would not allow him to give much of it to you. He has given it elsewhere, where it was not repelled, however it may have been undervalued. Have I to say to you again, that you have two sons?’
‘No!’ cried Leoric in a muted howl of protest and outrage, towering taller in his anger, head and shoulders above Cad-fael’s square, solid form. ‘That I will not hear! You presume! It is impossible!’
‘Impossible for your heir and darling, yet instantly believable in his brother? In this world all men are fallible, and all things are possible.’
‘But I tell you I saw him hiding his dead man, and sweating over it. If he had happened on him innocently by chance he would not have had cause to conceal the death, he would have come crying it aloud.’
‘Not if he happened innocently on someone dear to him as brother or friend stooped over the same horrid task. You believe what you saw, why should not Meriet also believe what he saw? You put your own soul in peril to cover up what you believed he had done, why should not he do as much for another? You promised silence and concealment at a price—and that protection offered to him was just as surely protection for another—only the price was still to be exacted from Meriet. And Meriet did not grudge it. Of his own will he paid it—that was no mere consent to your terms, he wished it and tried to be glad of it, because it bought free someone he loved. Do you know of any other creature breathing that he loves as he loves his brother?’
‘This is madness!’ said Leoric, breathing hard like a man who has run himself half to death. ‘Nigel was the whole day with the Lindes, Roswitha will tell you, Janyn will tell you. He had a falling-out to make up with the girl, he was off to her early in the morning, and came home only late in the evening. He knew nothing of that day’s business, he was aghast when he heard of it.’
‘From Linde’s manor to that place in the forest is no long journey for a mounted man,’ said Cadfael relentlessly. ‘How if Meriet found him busy and bloodied over Clemence’s body, and said to him: Go, get clean away from here, leave him to me—go and be seen elsewhere all this day. I will do what must be done. What then?’
‘Are you truly saying,’ demanded Leoric in a hoarse whisper, ‘that Nigel killed the man? Such a crime against hospitality, against kinship, against his nature?’
‘No,’ said Cadfael. ‘But I am saying that it may be true that Meriet did so find him, just as you found Meriet. Why should what was such plain proof to you be any less convincing to Meriet? Had he not overwhelming reason to believe his brother guilty, to fear him guilty, or no less terrible, to dread that he might be convicted in innocence? For bear this ever in mind, if you could be mistaken in giving such instant credence to what you saw, so could Meriet. For those lost six hours still stick in my craw, and how to account for them I don’t yet know.’