“For God’s sake, fool daughter, why did you get within his reach? I told you, keep the bier between you and him…!”
“Get after him,” shouted Sioned wrathfully, “do you want him clean away? I’m sound enough, go get him! He killed my father!”
They headed for the door together, but Cadfael was out of it first. The girl was strong, vigorous and vengeful, a Welshwoman to the heart, barely grazed, he knew the kind. The wind of action blew her, she felt no pain and was aware of no effusion of blood, blood she wanted, and with justification. She was close on his heels as he rolled like a thunderbolt down the narrow path through the graveyard towards the gate. The night was huge, velvet, sewn with stars, their veiled and delicate light barely casting shadows. All that quiet space received and smothered the sound of their passage, and smoothed the stillness of the night over it.
Out of the bushes beyond the graveyard wall a man’s figure started, tall, slender and swift, leaping to block the gateway. Columbanus saw him, and baulked for a moment, but Cadfael was running hard behind him, and the next instant the fugitive made up his mind and rushed on, straight at the shadow that moved to intercept him. Hard on Cadfael’s heels, Sioned suddenly shrieked: “Take care, Engelard! He has a dagger!”
Engelard heard her, and swerved to the right at the very moment of collision, so that the stroke meant for his heart only ripped a fluttering ribbon of cloth from his sleeve. Columbanus would have bored his way past at speed, and run for the cover of the woods, but Engelard’s long left arm swept round hard into the back of his neck, sending him off-balance for a moment, though he kept his feet, and Engelard’s right fist got a tight grip on the flying cowl, and twisted. Half-strangled, Columbanus whirled again and struck out with the knife, and this time Engelard was ready for the flash, and took the thrusting wrist neatly in his left hand. They swayed and wrestled together, feet braced in the grass, and they were very fairly matched if both had been armed. That unbalance was soon amended. Engelard twisted at the wrist he held, ignoring the clawing of Columbanus’ free hand at his throat, and the numbed fingers opened at last and let the dagger fall. Both lunged for it, but Engelard scooped it up and flung it contemptuously aside into the bushes, and grappled his opponent with his bare hands. The fight was all but over. Columbanus hung panting and gasping, both arms pinned, looking wildly round for a means of escape and finding none.
“Is this the man?” demanded Engelard.
Sioned said: “Yes. He has owned to it.”
Engelard looked beyond his prisoner then for the first time, and saw her standing in the soft starlight that was becoming to their accustomed eyes almost as clear as day. He saw her dishevelled and bruised and gazing with great, shocked eyes, her left arm gashed and bleeding freely, though the cut was shallow. He saw smears of her blood dabbling the white sheet in which she was swathed. By starlight there is little or no colour to be seen but everything that Engelard saw at that moment was blood-red. This was the man who had murdered in coward’s fashion Engelard’s well-liked lord and good friend — whatever their differences! — and now he had tried to kill the daughter as he had killed the father.
“You dared, you dared touch her!” blazed Engelard in towering rage. “You worthless cloister rat!” And he took Columbanus by the throat and hoisted him bodily from the ground, shook him like the rat he had called him, cracked him in the air like a poisonous snake, and when he had done with him, flung him down at his feet in the grass.
“Get up!” he growled, standing over the wreckage. “Get up now, and I’ll give you time to rest and breathe, and then you can fight a man to the death, without a dagger in your hand, instead of writhing through the undergrowth and stabbing him in the back, or carving up a defenceless girl. Take your time, I can wait to kill you till you’ve got your breath.”
Sioned flew to him, breast to breast, and held him fast in her arms, pressing him back. “No! Don’t touch him again! I don’t want the law to have any hold on you, even the slenderest.”
“He tried to kill you — you’re hurt….”
“No! It’s nothing… only a cut. It bleeds, but it’s nothing!”
His rage subsided slowly, shaking him. He folded his arms round her and held her to him, and with a disdainful but restrained jab of a toe urged his prostrate enemy again: “Get up! I won’t touch you. The law can have you, and welcome!”
Columbanus did not move, not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid or the twitching of a finger. All three of them stood peering down at him in sudden silence, aware how utterly still he was, and how rare such stillness is among living things.
“He’s foxing,” said Engelard scornfully, “for fear of worse, and by way of getting himself pitied. I’ve heard he’s a master at that.”
Those who feign sleep and hear themselves talked of, usually betray themselves by some exaggeration of innocence. Columbanus lay in a stillness that was perfectly detached and indifferent.
Brother Cadfael knelt down beside him, shook him by the shoulder gently, and sat back with a sharp sigh at the broken movement of the head. He put a hand inside the breast of the habit, and stooped to the parted lips and wide nostrils. Then he took the head between his hands, and gently turned and tilted it. It rolled back, as he released it, into a position so improbable that they knew the worst even before Cadfael said, quite practically: “You’d have waited a long time for him to get his breath back, my friend. You don’t know your own strength! His neck is broken. He’s dead.”
Sobered and shocked, they stood dumbly staring down at what they had hardly yet recognised for disaster. They saw a regrettable accident which neither of them had ever intended, but which was, after all, a kind of justice. But Cadfael saw a scandal that could yet wreck their young lives, and others, too, for without Columbanus alive, and forced by two respected witnesses to repeat his confession, how strong was all their proof against him? Cadfael sat back on his heels, and thought. It was startling to realise, now that the unmoved silence of the night came down on them again, how all this violence and passion had passed with very little noise, and no other witnesses. He listened, and no stirring of foot or wing troubled the quiet. They were far enough away from any dwelling, not a soul had been disturbed. That, at least, was time gained.
“He can’t be dead,” said Engelard doubtfully. “I barely handled him at all. Nobody dies as easily as that!”
“This one did. And now what’s to be done? I hadn’t bargained for this.” He said it not complainingly, but as one pointing out that further urgent planning would now be necessary, and they had better keep their minds flexible.
“Why, what can be done?” To Engelard it was simple, though troublesome. “We shall have to call up Father Huw and your prior, and tell them exactly what’s happened. What else can we do? I’m sorry to have killed the fellow, I never meant to, but I can’t say I feel any guilt about it.”
Nor did he expect any blame. The truth was always the best way. Cadfael felt a reluctant affection for such innocence. The world was going to damage it sooner or later, but one undeserved accusation had so far failed even to bruise it, he still trusted men to be reasonable. Cadfael doubted if Sioned was so sure. Her silence was anxious and foreboding. And her grazed arm was still oozing blood. First things first, and they might as well be sensibly occupied while he thought.
“Here, make yourself useful! Help me get this carrion back into the chapel, out of sight. And, Sioned, find his dagger, we can’t leave that lying about to bear witness. Then let’s get that arm of yours washed and bound up. There’s a stream at the back of the hawthorn hedge, and of linen we’ve plenty.”