“Very willingly,” said Cadfael, and led the way without more words, for words were not going to dissuade her, and he thought her right not to be dissuaded. The two young men followed side by side, neither willing to give the other precedence. Aline looked down at every exposed face, wrung but resolute.
“He was twenty-four years old — not very like me, his hair was darker … Oh, here are all too many no older than he!”
They had traversed more than half of the dolorous passage when suddenly she caught at Cadfael’s arm, and froze where she stood. She made no outcry, she had breath only for a soft moan, audible as a word only to Cadfael, who was nearest. “Giles!” she said again more strongly, and what colour she had drained from her face and left her almost translucent, staring down at a face once imperious, wilful and handsome. She sank to her knees, stooping to study the dead face close, and then she uttered the only cry she ever made over her brother, and that very brief and private, and swooped breast to breast with him, gathering the body into her arms. The mass of her hair slipped out of its coils and spilled gold over them both.
Brother Cadfael, who was experienced enough to let her alone until she seemed to need comfort for her grief instead of decent reticence, would have waited quietly, but he was hurriedly thrust aside, and Adam Courcelle fell on his knees beside her, and took her beneath the arms to lift her against his shoulder. The shock of discovery seemed to have shaken him fully as deeply as it had Aline, his face was stricken and dismayed, his voice an appalled stammer.
“Madam! — Aline — Dear God, is this indeed your brother? If I’d known … if I’d known, I’d have saved him for you… . Whatever the cost, I would have delivered him … God forgive me!”
She lifted a tearless face from the curtain of her yellow hair, and looked at him with wonder and compunction, seeing him so shattered. “Oh, hush! How can this be any fault of yours? You could not know. You did only what you were ordered to do. And how could you have saved one, and let the rest die?”
“Then truly this is your brother?”
“Yes,” she said, gazing down at the dead youth with a face now drained even of shock and grief. “This is Giles.” Now she knew the worst, and now she had only to do what was needful, what fell to her for want of father and brothers. She crouched motionless in Courcelle’s arm, earnestly regarding the dead face. Cadfael, watching, was glad he had managed to mould some form back into features once handsome, but in death fallen into a total collapse of terror. At least she was not viewing that hardly human disintegration.
Presently she heaved a short, sharp sigh, and made to rise, and Hugh Beringar, who had shown admirably judicious restraint throughout, reached a hand to her on the other side, and lifted her to her feet. She was mistress of herself as perhaps she had never been before, never having had to meet such a test until now. What was required of her she could and would do.
“Brother Cadfael, I do thank you for all you have done, not only for Giles and me, but for all these. Now, if you permit, I will take my brother’s burial into my charge, as is only fitting.”
Close and anxious at her shoulder, still deeply shaken, Courcelle asked: “Where would you have him conveyed? My men shall carry him there for you, and be at your orders as long as you need them. I wish I might attend you myself, but I must not leave my guard.”
“You are very kind,” she said, quite composed now. “My mother’s family has a tomb. at St. Alkmund’s church, here in the town. Father Elias knows me. I shall be grateful for help in taking my brother there, but I need not keep your men from their duties longer. All the rest I will do.” Her face had grown intent and practical, she had work to do, all manner of things to take into account, the need for speed, the summer heat, the provision of all the materials proper to decent preparation for the grave. She made her dispositions with authority.
“Messire Beringar, you have been kind, and I do value it, but now I must stay to see to my family’s rites. There is no need to sadden all the rest of your day, I shall be safe enough.”
“I came with you,” said Hugh Beringar, “and I shall not return without you.” The very way to talk to her now, without argument, without outward show of sympathy. She accepted his resolve simply, and turned to her duty. Two of the guards brought a narrow litter, and lifted Giles Siward’s body into it, and she herself steadied and straightened the lolling head.
At the last moment Courcelle, frowning down distressfully at the corpse, said abruptly: “Wait! I have remembered — I believe there is something here that must have belonged to him.”
He went hastily through the archway and across the outer ward to the guard-towers, and in a few moments came back carrying over his arm a black cloak. “This was among the gear they left behind in the guardroom at the end. I think it must have been his — this clasp at the neck has the same design, see, as the buckle of his belt.”
It was true enough, there was the same dragon of eternity, tail in mouth, lavishly worked in bronze. “I noticed it only now. That cannot be by chance. Let me at least restore him this.” He spread out the cloak and draped it gently over the litter, covering the dead face. When he looked up, it was into Aline’s eyes, and for the first time they regarded him through a sheen of tears.
“That was very kindly done,” she said in a low voice, and gave him her hand. “I shall not forget it.”
Cadfael went back to his vigil by the unknown, and continued his questioning, but it brought no useful response. In the coming night all these dead remaining must be taken on carts down the Wyle and out to the abbey; this hot summer would not permit further delay. At dawn Abbot Heribert would consecrate a new piece of ground at the edge of the abbey enclosure, for a mass grave. But this unknown, never condemned, never charged with any crime, whose dead body cried aloud for justice, should not be buried among the executed, nor should there be any rest until he could go to his grave under his own rightful name, and with all the individual honours due to him.
In the house of Father Elias, priest of St Alkmund’s church, Giles Siward was reverently stripped, washed, composed and shrouded, all by his sister’s hands, the good father assisting. Hugh Beringar stood by to fetch and carry for them, but did not enter the room where they worked. She wanted no one else, she was quite sufficient to the task laid on her, and if she was robbed of any part of it now she would feel deprivation and resentment, not gratitude. But when all was done, and her brother laid ready for rest before the altar of the church, she was suddenly weary to death, and glad enough of Beringar’s almost silent company and ready arm back to her house by the mill.
On the following morning Giles Siward was interred with all due ceremony in the tomb of his maternal grandfather in the church of St Alkmund, and the monks of the abbey of St Peter and St Paul buried with due rites all the sixty-six soldiers of the defeated garrison still remaining in their charge.
Chapter Four
Aline brought back with her the cotte and hose her brother had worn, and the cloak that had covered him, and herself carefully brushed and folded them. The shirt no one should ever wear again, she would burn it and forget; but these stout garments of good cloth must not go to waste, in a world where so many went half-naked and cold. She took the neat bundle, and went in at the abbey gate house, and finding the whole courtyard deserted, crossed to the ponds and the gardens in search of Brother Cadfael. She did not find him. The digging out of a grave large enough to hold sixty-six victims, and the sheer repetitious labour of laying them in it, takes longer than the opening of a stone tomb to make room for one more kinsman. The brothers were hard at work until past two o’clock, even with every man assisting.