“Then even now,” said Hugh sharply, “with two murders on their souls, they have not what they wanted. He thought they were bringing it. They trusted to find it here. And neither of them had it. Both were deceived.” He brooded with a brown fist clamping his jaw, and his black brows down-drawn in unaccustomed solemnity. “And Emma came here . . . by stealth.”
“She did. Not every man,” said Cadfael, “has your view of women, or mine. Most of your kind, most of mine, would never dream of looking in a woman’s direction to find anything of importance in hand. Especially a mere child, barely grown. Not until every other road was closed, and they were forced to notice a woman there in the thick of the matter. Who just might be what they sought.”
“And who has now betrayed herself,” said Hugh grimly. “Well, at least she reached the guest-hall safely, thanks to Corbière. I have left her with Aline, very shaken, for all her strength of will, and she will not stir a step this day unguarded. That I can promise. Between us I think we can take care of Emma. Now let’s see if this poor wretch has anything to tell us that we don’t yet know.”
He stooped and drew back the coarse sack that covered half the glover’s narrow face, from eyebrow on one side to jaw on the other. A broken bruise in the greying hair above the left temple indicated a right-handed blow as soon as the door was opened to his visitor, meant to stun him, probably, until he could be muffled in the sack and gagged like Warin. Here it was a case of gaining entry and confronting a wide-awake man, not a timid sleeper.
“Much the same manner as the other one,” said Cadfael, “and I doubt if they ever meant to kill. But he was not so easily put out of the reckoning. He put up a fight. And his neck is broken. By the look of it, one made round behind him to secure this blindfold, and in the struggle he gave them, tried all too hard to haul him backwards by it. He was wiry and agile, but his bones were aging, and too brittle to sustain it. I don’t think it was intended. We should have found him neatly bound and still alive, like Warin, if he had not fought them. Once they knew he was dead, they made their search in haste, and left all as it fell.”
Beringar brushed aside the light tangle of girdles and straps and gloves that littered the floor and lay over the body. Euan’s right arm was covered from the elbow down by the skirts of his own gown, kicked out of the way of the searchers in their hunt. When the folds were drawn down Hugh let out a sharp whistle of surprise, for in the dead man’s hand was a long poniard, the naked blade grooved, and ornamented with gilding near the hilt. At his belt, half-hidden now under his right hip, the scabbard lay empty.
“A man of his hands! And see, he’s marked one of them for us!” There was blood on the point of the blade, and drawn up by the grooving for some three fingers’ breadth in two thin crimson lines, now drying to black.
“Rhodri ap Huw said of him,” Cadfael remembered, “that he was a solitary soul who trusted nobody—his own porter and his own watchman. He said he wore a weapon, and knew how to use it.” He went on his knees beside the body, and cleared away the debris that still lay about it, eying and handling from head to foot. “You’ll have him away to the castle, I suppose, or the abbey, and look him over more carefully, but I do believe the only blood he’s lost is this smear on his brow. This on the dagger is not his.”
“If only we could as easily say whose it is!” said Hugh dryly, sitting on his heels with the nimbleness of the young on the other side of the body. Brother Cadfael eased creaky elderly knees on the hard boards, and briefly envied him. The young man lifted the stiffening arm, and tested the grip of the clenched fingers. “He holds fast!” It took him some effort to loosen the convulsive grasp enough to slip the hilt of the dagger free. In the slanting light from the open hatch something gleamed briefly, waving at the tip of the blade, and again vanished, as motes of dust come and go in gold in bright sunlight. There was also what seemed at first to be a thin encrustation of blood fringing the steel on one edge. Cadfael exclaimed, leaning to point. “A yellow hair—There it shows again!” The flashing gleam curled and twisted as Hugh turned the dagger in his hand.
“Not a hair, a fine, yellowish thread. Thread of flax, not bleached. This grooving has ripped out a shred of cloth, and the blood has stuck it fast. See!”
A mere wisp of brown material it was, a fringe along the groove that had held it. Narrow as a blade of grass, but when Cadfael carefully took hold of a thread at the end and drew it out straight, it stretched to the length of his hand. The colour, though fouled by dried blood, showed plain at one edge, a light russet-brown; and at the end of the sliver floated gaily the long, fine flax thread, scalloped like a curly hair.
“A sliced tear a hand long,” said Cadfael, “and ending at a hem, for surely this thread sewed the edging, and the dagger ripped out a length of the stitching.” He narrowed his eyes, and considered, imagining Euan facing the door as he opened it, the instant blow that failed to tame him, and then his rapid drawing of his poniard and striking with it. Almost brow to brow and breast to breast, a man good with his right hand, and his attacker’s heart an open target.
“He struck for the heart,” said Cadfael with conviction. “So would I, or so would I have done once. The other man, surely, slipped behind him and spoiled the stroke, but that is where he aimed. Someone, somewhere, has a torn cotte. It might be in the left breast, or it might be in the sleeve. The man’s arms would be raised, reaching to grapple him. I should say the left sleeve, ripping from the hem halfway to the elbow. The sewing thread was caught first, and pulled out a length of stitches.”
Hugh considered that respectfully, and found no fault with it. “Much of a scratch, would you guess? He did not drip blood to the doorway. It could not have been enough to need much stanching.”
“The sleeve would hold it. Likely only a graze, but a long graze. It will be there to be seen.”
“If we knew where to look!” Hugh gave a short bark of laughter at the thought of sending sergeants about this teeming marketplace to ask every man to roll up his left sleeve and show his arm. “A simple matter! Still, no reason why you and I, and all the men I can spare and trust, should not be keeping our eyes open all the rest of this day for a torn sleeve—or a newly cobbled one.”
He rose, and turned to beckon his nearest man from the open hatch. “Well, we’ll have him away from here, and do what we can. A word with your Rhodri ap Huw wouldn’t come amiss, and I fancy you might get more out of him in his own tongue than ever I should at second hand. If he knows this man so well, prick him on to talk, and bring me what you learn.”
“That I’ll do,” said Cadfael, clambering stiffly from his knees.
“I must go first to the castle, and report what we’ve found. One thing I’ll make certain of this time,” said Hugh. “The sheriff was in no mood to listen too carefully last night, but after this he’ll have to turn young Corviser loose on his father’s warranty, like the rest of them. It would take a more pig-headed man than Prestcote to believe the lad had any part in the first death, seeing the trail of offences that have followed while he was in prison. He shall eat his dinner at home today.”
Rhodri was not merely willing to spend an hour pouring the fruits of his wisdom and experience into Brother Cadfael’s ear, he was hovering with that very thing in mind as soon as the corpse of Euan of Shotwick had been carried away, and the booth closed, with one of the sheriff’s men on guard. Though ever-present, he had the gift of being unobtrusive until he chose to obtrude, and then could appear from an unexpected direction, and as casually as if only chance had brought him there.