The Pilgram of Hate (10 page)

Cadfael
turned his back on supper in the refectory, and set off instead along the
Foregate towards the town. Over the bridge that spanned the Severn, in through
the gate, and up the curving slope of the Wyle to Hugh Beringar’s town house.
There he sat and nursed his godson Giles, a large, comely, self-willed child,
fair like his mother, and long of limb, some day to dwarf his small, dark,
sardonic father. Aline brought food and wine for her husband and his friend,
and then sat down to her needlework, favouring her menfolk from time to time
with a smiling glance of serene contentment. When her son fell asleep in
Cadfael’s lap she rose and lifted the boy away gently. He was heavy for her,
but she had learned how to carry him lightly balanced on arm and shoulder.
Cadfael watched her fondly as she bore the child away into the next room to his
bed, and closed the door between.

“How
is it possible that that girl can grow every day more radiant and lovely? I’ve
known marriage rub the fine bloom off many a handsome maid. Yet it suits her as
a halo does a saint.”

“Oh,
there’s something to be said for marriage,” said Hugh idly. “Do I look so
poorly on it? Though it’s an odd study for a man of your habit, after all these
years of celibacy… And all the stravagings about the world before that! You
can’t have thought too highly of the wedded state, or you’d have ventured on it
yourself. You took no vows until past forty, and you a well-set-up young fellow
crusading all about the east with the best of them. How do I know you have not
an Aline of your own locked away somewhere, somewhere in your remembrance, as
dear as mine is to me? Perhaps even a Giles of your own,” he added, whimsically
smiling, “a Giles God knows where, grown a man now…”

Cadfael’s
silence and stillness, though perfectly easy and complacent, nevertheless
sounded a mute warning in Hugh’s perceptive senses. On the edge of drowsiness
among his cushions after a long day out of doors, he opened a black,
considering eye to train upon his friend’s musing face, and withdrew delicately
into practical business.

“Well,
so this Simeon Poer is known in the south. I’m grateful to you and to Brother
Adam for the nudge, though so far the man has set no foot wrong here. But these
others you’ve pictured for me… At Wat’s tavern in the Foregate they’ve had
practice in marking down strangers who come with a fair or a feast, and spread
themselves large about the town. Wat tells my people he has a group moving in,
very merry, some of them strangers. They could well be these you name. Some of
them, of course, the usual young fellows of the town and the Foregate with more
pence than sense. They’ve been drinking a great deal, and throwing dice. Wat
does not like the way the dice fall.”

“It’s
as I supposed,” said Cadfael, nodding. “For every Mass of ours they’ll be
celebrating the Gamblers’ Mass elsewhere. And by all means let the fools throw
their money after their sense, so the odds be fair. But Wat knows a loaded
throw when he sees one.”

“He
knows how to rid his house of the plague, too. He has hissed in the ears of one
of the strangers that his tavern is watched, and they’d be wise to take their
school out of there. And for tonight he has a lad on the watch, to find out
where they’ll meet. Tomorrow night we’ll have at them, and rid you of them in
good time for the feast day, if all goes well.”

Which
would be a very welcome cleansing, thought Cadfael, making his way back across
the bridge in the first limpid dusk, with the river swirling its coiled
currents beneath him in gleams of reflected light, low summer water leaving the
islands outlined in swathes of drowned, browning weed. But as yet there was
nothing to shed light, even by reflected, phantom gleams, upon that death so
far away in the south country, whence the merchant Simeon Poer had set out. On
pilgrimage for his respectable soul? Or in flight from a law aroused too
fiercely for his safety, by something graver than the cozening of fools? Though
Cadfael felt too close to folly himself to be loftily complacent even about
that, however much it might be argued that gamblers deserved all they got.

The
great gate of the abbey was closed, but the wicket in it stood open, shedding
sunset light through from the west. In the mild dazzle Cadfael brushed
shoulders and sleeves with another entering, and was a little surprised to be
hoisted deferentially through the wicket by a firm hand at his elbow.

“Give
you goodnight, brother!” sang a mellow voice in his ear, as the returning guest
stepped within on his heels. And the solid, powerful, woollen-gowned form of
Simeon Poer, self-styled merchant of Guildford, rolled vigorously past him, and
crossed the great court to the stone steps of the guest-hall.

Chapter Six

THEY
WERE EMERGING from High Mass on the morning of the twenty-first day of June,
the eve of Saint Winifred’s translation, stepping out into a radiant morning,
when the abbot’s sedate progress towards his lodging was rudely disrupted by a
sudden howl of dismay among the dispersing multitude of worshippers, a wild
ripple of movement cleaving a path through their ranks, and the emergence of a
frantic figure lurching forth on clumsy, naked feet to clutch at the abbot’s
robe, and appeal in a loud, indignant cry, “Father Abbot, stand my friend and
give me justice, for I am robbed! A thief, there is a thief among us!”

The
abbot looked down in astonishment and concern into the face of Ciaran,
convulsed and ablaze with resentment and distress.

“Father,
I beg you, see justice done! I am helpless unless you help me!”

He
awoke, somewhat late, to the unwarranted violence of his behaviour, and fell on
his knees at the abbot’s feet. “Pardon, pardon! I am too loud and troublous, I
hardly know what I say!”

The
press of gossiping, festive worshippers just loosed from Mass had fallen quiet
all in a moment, and instead of dispersing drew in about them to listen and
stare, avidly curious. The monks of the house, hindered in their orderly
departure, hovered in quiet deprecation. Cadfael looked beyond the kneeling,
imploring figure of Ciaran for its inseparable twin, and found Matthew just
shouldering his way forward out of the crowd, open-mouthed and wide-eyed in
patent bewilderment, to stand at gaze a few paces apart, and frown helplessly
from the abbot to Ciaran and back again, in search of the cause of this abrupt
turmoil. Was it possible that something had happened to the one that the other
of the matched pair did not know?

“Get
up!” said Radulfus, erect and calm. “No need to kneel. Speak out whatever you
have to say, and you shall have right.”

The
pervasive silence spread, grew, filled even the most distant reaches of the
great court. Those who had already scattered to the far corners turned and
crept unobtrusively back again, large-eyed and prick-eared, to hang upon the
fringes of the crowd already assembled.

Ciaran
clambered to his feet, voluble before he was erect. “Father, I had a ring, the
copy of one the lord bishop of Winchester keeps for his occasions, bearing his
device and inscription. Such copies he uses to afford safe-conduct to those he
sends forth on his business or with his blessing, to open doors to them and
provide protection on the road. Father, the ring is gone!”

“This
ring was given to you by Henry of Blois himself?” asked Radulfus.

“No,
Father, not in person. I was in the service of the prior of Hyde Abbey, a lay
clerk, when this mortal sickness came on me, and I took this vow of mine to
spend my remaining days in the canonry of Aberdaron. My prior—you know that
Hyde is without an abbot, and has been for some years—my prior asked the lord
bishop, of his goodness, to give me what protection he could for my journey…”

So
that had been the starting point of this barefoot journey, thought Cadfael,
enlightened. Winchester itself, or as near as made no matter, for the New
Minster of that city, always a jealous rival of the Old, where Bishop Henry
presided, had been forced to abandon its old home in the city thirty years ago,
and banished to Hyde Mead, on the north-western outskirts. There was no love
lost between Henry and the community at Hyde, for it was the bishop who had
been instrumental in keeping them deprived of an abbot for so long, in pursuit
of his own ambition of turning them into an episcopal monastery. The struggle
had been going on for some time, the bishop deploying various schemes to get
the house into his own hands, and the prior using every means to resist these
manipulations. It seemed Henry had still the grace to show compassion even on a
servant of the hostile house, when he fell under the threat of disease and
death. The traveller over whom the bishop-legate spread his protecting hand
would pass unmolested wherever law retained its validity. Only those
irreclaimably outlaw already would dare interfere with him.

“Father,
the ring is gone, stolen from me this very morning. See here, the slashed
threads that held it!” Ciaran heaved forward the drab linen scrip that rode at
his belt, and showed two dangling ends of cord, very cleanly severed. “A sharp
knife—someone here has such a dagger. And my ring is gone!”

Prior
Robert was at the abbot’s elbow by then, agitated out of his silvery composure.
“Father, what this man says is true. He showed me the ring. Given to ensure him
aid and hospitality on his journey, which is of most sad and solemn import. If
now it is lost, should not the gate be closed while we enquire?”

“Let
it be so,” said Radulfus, and stood silent to see Brother Jerome, ever ready
and assiduous on the prior’s heels, run to see the order carried out. “Now,
take breath and thought, for your loss cannot be lost far. You did not wear the
ring, then, but carried it knotted securely by this cord, within your scrip?”

“Yes,
Father. It was beyond words precious to me.”

“And
when did you last ascertain that it was still there, and safe?”

“Father,
this very morning I know I had it. Such few things as I possess, here they lie
before you. Could I fail to see if this cord had been cut in the night while I
slept? It is not so. This morning all was as I left it last night. I have been
bidden to rest, by reason of my barefoot vow. Today I ventured out only for
Mass. Here in the very church, in this great press of worshippers, some
malevolent has broken every ban, and slashed loose my ring from me.”

And
indeed, thought Cadfael, running a considering eye round all the curious,
watching faces, it would not be difficult, in such a press, to find the strings
that anchored the hidden ring, flick it out from its hiding-place, cut the
strings and make away with it, discreetly between crowding bodies, and never be
seen by a soul or felt by the victim. A neat thing, done so privately and
expertly that even Matthew, who missed nothing that touched his friend, had
missed this impudent assault. For Matthew stood there staring, obviously taken
by surprise, and unsure as yet how to take this turn of events. His face was
unreadable, closed and still, his eyes narrowed and bright, darting from face
to face as Ciaran or abbot or prior spoke. Cadfael noted that Melangell had
stolen forward close to him, and taken him hesitantly by the sleeve. He did not
shake her off. By the slight lift of his head and widening of his eyes he knew
who had touched him, and he let his hand feel for hers and clasp it, while his
whole attention seemed to be fixed on Ciaran. Somewhere not far behind them
Rhun leaned on his crutches, his fair face frowning in anxious dismay, Aunt
Alice attendant at his shoulder, bright with curiosity. Here are we all,
thought Cadfael, and not one of us knows what is in any other mind, or who has
done what has been done, or what will come of it for any of those who look on
and marvel.

“You
cannot tell,” suggested Prior Robert, agitated and grieved, “who stood close to
you during the service? If indeed some ill-conditioned person has so misused
the holy office as to commit theft in the very sacredness of the Mass…”

“Father,
I was intent only upon the altar.” Ciaran shook with fervour, holding the
ravished scrip open before him with his sparse possessions bared to be seen.
“We were close pressed, so many people… as is only seemly, in such a shrine…
Matthew was close at my back, but so he ever is. Who else there may have been
by me, how can I say? There was no man nor woman among us who was not hemmed in
every way.”

“It
is truth,” said Prior Robert, who had been much gratified at the large
attendance. “Father, the gate is now closed, we are all here who were present
at Mass. And surely we all have a desire to see this wrong righted.”

“All,
as I suppose,” said Radulfus drily, “but one. One, who brought in here a knife or
dagger sharp enough to slice through these tough cords cleanly. What other
intents he brought in with him, I bid him consider and tremble for his soul.
Robert, this ring must be found. All men of goodwill here will offer their aid,
and show freely what they have. So will every guest who has not theft and
sacrilege to hide. And see to it also that enquiry be made, whether other
articles of value have not been missed. For one theft means one thief, here
within.”

“It
shall be seen to, Father,” said Robert fervently. “No honest, devout pilgrim
will grudge to offer his aid. How could he wish to share his lodging here with
a thief?”