“Your preoccupation,” said Cadfael gently, “I understand, and sympathise with it. But you must also acknowledge mine. I have here another responsibility. Nicholas Faintree must not lie uneasy for want of justice.”
“Trust me, and stand ready to back me in whatever I shall do this night at the king’s table,” said Hugh Beringar. “Justice he shall have, and vengeance, too, but let it be as I shall devise.”
Cadfael went to his duty behind the abbot’s chair in doubt and bewilderment, with no clear idea in his mind of what Beringar intended, and no conviction that without the broken dagger any secure case could be made against Courcelle. The Fleming had not seen him take it, what he had cried out to Aline over her brother’s body, in manifest pain, was not evidence. And yet there had been vengeance and death in Hugh Beringar’s face, as much for Aline Siward’s sake as for Nicholas Faintree’s. What mattered most in the world to him, at this moment, was that Aline should never know how her brother had disgraced his blood and his name, and in that cause Beringar would not scruple to spend not only Adam Courcelle’s life, but also his own. And somehow, reflected Cadfael ruefully, I have become very much attached to that young man, and I should not like to see any ill befall him. I would rather this case went to law, even if we have to step carefully in drawing up our evidence, and leave out every word concerning Torold Blund and Godith Adeney. But for that we need, we must have, proof positive that Giles Siward’s dagger passed into the possession of Adam Courcelle, and preferably the dagger itself, into the bargain, to match with the piece of it I found on the scene of the murder. Otherwise he will simply lie and lie, deny everything, say he never saw the topaz or the dagger it came from, and has nothing to answer; and from the eminence of the position he has won with the king, he will be unassailable.
There were no ladies present that night, this was strictly a political and military occasion, but the great hall had been decked out with borrowed hangings, and was bright with torches. The king was in good humour, the garrison’s provisions were assured, and those who had robbed for the royal supplies had done their work well. From his place behind Heribert at the king’s high table Cadfael surveyed the full hall, and estimated that some five hundred guests were present. He looked for Beringar, and found him at a lower table, in his finery, very debonair and lively in conversation, as though he had no darker preoccupation. He was master of his face; even when he glanced briefly at Courcelle there was nothing in the look to attract attention, certainly nothing to give warning of any grave purpose.
Courcelle was at the high table, though crowded to its end by the visiting dignitaries. Big, vividly coloured and handsome, accomplished in arms, in good odour with the king, how strange that such a man should feel it necessary to grasp secretly at plunder, and by such degrading means! And yet, in this chaos of civil war, was it so strange after all? Where a king’s favour could be toppled with the king, where barons were changing sides according as the fortunes changed, where even earls were turning to secure their own advantage rather than that of a cause that might collapse under their feet and leave them prisoner and ruined! Courcelle was merely a sign of the times; in a few years there would be duplicates of him in every corner of the realm.
I do not like the way I see England going, thought Cadfael with anxious foreboding, and above all I do not like what is about to happen, for as surely as God sees us, Hugh Beringar is set to sally forth on to a dubious field, half-armed.
He fretted through the long meal, hardly troubled by the demands of Abbot Heribert, who was always abstemious with wine, and ate very frugally. Cadfael served and poured, proffered the finger-bowl and napkin, and waited with brooding resignation.
When the dishes were cleared away, musicians playing, and only the wine on the tables, the servitors in their turn might take their pick of what was left in the kitchens, and the cooks and scullions were already helping themselves and finding quiet corners to sit and eat. Cadfael collected a bread trencher and loaded it with broken meats, and took it out through the great court to Lame Osbern at the gate. There was a measure of wine to go with it. Why should not the poor rejoice for once at the king’s cost, even if that cost was handed on down the hierarchies until it fell at last upon the poor themselves? Too often they paid, but never got their share of the rejoicing.
Cadfael was walking back to the hall when his eye fell upon a lad of about twelve, who was sitting in the torchlight on the inner side of the gate house, his back comfortably against the wall, carving his meat into smaller pieces with a narrow-bladed knife. Cadfael had seen him earlier, in the kitchen, gutting fish with the same knife, but he had not seen the halt of it, and would not have seen it now if the boy had not laid it down beside him on the ground while he ate.
Cadfael halted and gazed, motionless. It was no kitchen knife, but a well-made dagger, and its hilt was a slender shaft of silver, rounded to the hand, showing delicate lines of filigree-work, and glowing round the collar of the blade with small stones. The hilt ended in a twist of silver broken off short. It was hard to believe, but impossible not to believe. Perhaps thought really is prayer.
He spoke to the boy very softly and evenly; the unwitting means of justice must not be alarmed. “Child, where did you get so fine a knife as that?”
The boy looked up, untroubled, and smiled. When he had gulped down the mouthful with which his cheeks were bulging, he said cheerfully: “I found it. I didn’t steal it.”
“God forbid, lad, I never thought it. Where did you find it? And have you the sheath, too?”
It was lying beside him in the shadow, he patted it proudly. “I fished them out of the river. I had to dive, but I found them. They really are mine, father, the owner didn’t want them, he threw them away. I suppose because this was broken. But it’s the best knife for slitting fish I ever had.”
So he threw them away! Not, however, simply because the jewelled hilt was broken.
“You saw him throw it into the river? Where was this, and when?”
“I was fishing under the castle, and a man came down alone from the water-gate to the bank of the river, and threw it in, and went back to the castle. When he’d gone I dived in where I saw it fall, and I found it. It was early in the evening, the same night all the bodies were carried down to the abbey — a week ago, come tomorrow. It was the first day it was safe to go fishing there again.”
Yes, it fitted well. That same afternoon Aline had taken Giles away to St Alkmund’s, and left Courcelle stricken and wild with unavailing regrets, and in possession of a thing that might turn Aline against him for ever, if once she set eyes on it. And he had done the only, the obvious thing, consigned it to the river, never thinking that the avenging angel, in the shape of a fisherboy, would redeem it to confront him when most he believed himself safe.
“You did not know who this man was? What like was he? What age?” For there remained the lingering doubt; all he had to support his conviction was the memory of Courcelle’s horrified face and broken voice, pleading his devotion over Giles Siward’s body.
The child hoisted indifferent shoulders, unable to picture for another what he himself had seen clearly and memorably. “Just a man. I didn’t know him. Not old like you, father, but quite old.” But to him anyone of his father’s generation would be old, though his father might be only a year or two past thirty.
“Would you know him if you saw him again? Could you point him out among many?”
“Of course!” said the boy almost scornfully. His eyes were young, bright, and very observant, if his tongue was none too fluent, of course he would know his man again.