She peered at it curiously, having learned much in a few days. “No. We don’t grow it here. But I might know it if I saw it growing fresh.”
“It’s goose-grass — -cleavers it’s also called. A queer, creeping thing that grows little hooks to hold fast, even on these tiny seeds you see here. And you see it’s broken in the middle of this straight stem?”
She saw, and was curiously subdued. There was something here beyond her vision; the thing was a wisp of brown, bleached and dry, but indeed folded sharply in the midst by a thin fracture. “What is it? Where did you find it?”
“Caught into the furrow in this poor lad’s throat,” he said, so gently that she could take it in without shock, “broken here by the ligament that strangled him. And it’s last year’s crop, not new. The stuff is growing richly at this season, seeding wild everywhere, this was in fodder, or litter, grass cut last autumn and dried out. Never turn against the herb, it’s sovereign for healing green wounds that are stubborn to knit. All the things of the wild have their proper uses, only misuse makes them evil.” He put the small slip of dryness away carefully in his bosom, and laid an arm about her shoulders. “Come, then, let’s go and look at this youngster, you and I together.”
It was mid-afternoon, the time of work for the brothers, play for the boys and the novices, once their limited tasks were done. They came down to the church without meeting any but a few half-grown boys at play, and entered the cool dimness within.
The mysterious young man from the castle ditch lay austerely shrouded on his bier in the choir end of the nave, his head and face uncovered. Dim but pure light fell upon him; it needed only a few minutes to get accustomed to the soft interior glow in this summer afternoon, and he shone clear to view. Godith stood beside him and gazed in silence. They were alone there, but for him, and they could speak, in low voices. But when Cadfael asked softly: “Do you know him?” he was already sure of the answer.
A fine thread of a whisper beside him said: “Yes.”
“Come!” He led her out as softly as they had come. In the sunlight he heard her draw breath very deep and long. She made no other comment until they were secure together in the herbarium, in the drowning summer sweetness, sitting in the shade of the hut.
“Well, who is he, this young fellow who troubles both you and me?”
“His name,” she said, very low and wonderingly, “is Nicholas Faintree. I’ve known him, by fits and starts, since I was twelve years old. He is a squire of FitzAlan’s, from one of his northern manors, he’s ridden courier for his lord several times in the last few years. He would not be much known in Shrewsbury, no. If he was waylaid and murdered here, he must have been on his lord’s business. But FitzAlan’s business was almost finished in these parts.” She hugged her head between her hands, and thought passionately. “There are some in Shrewsbury could have named him for you, you know, if they had reason to come looking for men of their own. I know of some who may be able to tell you what he was doing here that day and that night. If you can be sure no ill will come to them?”
“Never by me,” said Cadfael, “that I promise.”
“There’s my nurse, the one who brought me here and called me her nephew. Petronilla served my family all her grown life, until she married late, too late for children of her own, and she married a good friend to FitzAlan’s house and ours, Edric Flesher, the chief of the butchers’ guild in town. The two of them were close in all the plans when FitzAlan declared for the empress Maud. If you go to them from me,” she said confidently, “they’ll tell you anything they know. You’ll know the shop, it has the sign of the boar’s head, in the butchers’ row.”
Cadfael scrubbed thoughtfully at his nose. “If I borrow the abbot’s mule, I can make better speed, and spare my legs, too. There’ll be no keeping the king waiting, but on the way back I can halt at the shop. Give me some token, to show you trust me, and they can do as much without fear.”
“Petronilla can read, and knows my hand. I’ll write you a line to her, if you’ll lend me a little leaf of vellum, a mere corner will do.” She was alight with ardour, as intent as he. “He was a merry person, Nicholas, he never did harm to anyone, that I know, and he was never out of temper. He laughed a great deal… . But if you tell the king he was of the opposite party, he won’t care to pursue the murderer, will he? He’ll call it a just fate, and bid you leave well alone.”
“I shall tell the king,” said Cadfael, “that we have a man plainly murdered, and the method and time we know, but not the place or the reason. I will also tell him that we have a name for him — it’s a modest name enough, it can mean nothing to Stephen. As at this moment there’s no more to tell, for I know no more. And even if the king should shrug it off and bid me let things lie, I shall not do it. By my means or God’s means, or the both of us together, Nicholas Faintree shall have justice before I let this matter rest.”
Having the loan of the abbot’s own mule, Brother Cadfael took with him in this errand the good cloth garments Aline had entrusted to him. It was his way to carry out at once whatever tasks fell him, rather than put them off until the morrow, and there were beggars enough on his way through the town. The hose he gave to an elderly man with eyes whitened over with thick cauls, who sat with stick beside him and palm extended in the shade of the town gate. He looked of a suitable figure, and was in much-patched and threadbare nethers that would certainly fall apart very soon. The good brown cotte went to a frail creature no more than twenty years old who begged at the high cross, a poor feeble-wit with hanging lip and a palsied shake, who had a tiny old woman holding him by the hand and caring for him jealously. Her shrill blessings followed Cadfael down towards the castle gate. The cloak he still had folded before him when he came to the guard-post of the king’s camp, and saw Lame Osbern’s little wooden trolley tucked into the bole of a tree close by, and marked the useless, withered legs, and the hands callused and muscular from dragging all that dead weight about by force. His wooden pattens lay beside him in the grass. Seeing a frocked monk approaching on a good riding mule, Osbern seized them and propelled himself forward into Cadfael’s path. And it was wonderful how fast he could move, over short distances and with intervals for rest, but all the same so immobilised a creature, half his body inert, must suffer cold in even the milder nights, and in the winter terribly.
“Good brother,” coaxed Osbern, “spare an alms for a poor cripple, and God will reward you!”
“So I will, friend,” said Cadfael, “and better than a small coin, too. And you may say a prayer for a gentle lady who sends it to you by my hand.” And he unfolded from the saddle before him, and dropped into the startled, malformed hands, Giles Siward’s cloak.
“You did right to report truly what you found,” said the king consideringly. “Small wonder that my castellan did not make the same discovery, he had his hands full. You say this man was taken from behind by stealth, with a strangler’s cord? It’s a footpad’s way, and foul. And above all, to cast his victim in among my executed enemies to cover the crime — that I will not bear! How dared he make me and my officers his accomplices! That I count an affront to the crown, and for that alone I would wish the felon taken and judged. And the young man’s name — Faintree, you said?”
“Nicholas Faintree. So I was told by one who came and saw him, where we had laid him in the church. He comes from a family in the north of the county. But that is all I know of him.”
“It is possible,” reflected the king hopefully, “that he had ridden to Shrewsbury to seek service with us. Several such young men from north of the county have joined us here.”