“A man of his hands! And see, he’s marked one of them for us!” There was blood on the point of the blade, and drawn up by the grooving for some three fingers’ breadth in two thin crimson lines, now drying to black.
“Rhodri ap Huw said of him,” Cadfael remembered, “that he was a solitary soul who trusted nobody - his own porter and his own watchman. He said he wore a weapon, and knew how to use it.” He went on his knees beside the body, and cleared away the debris that still lay about it, eying and handling from head to foot. “You’ll have him away to the castle, I suppose, or the abbey, and look him over more carefully, but I do believe the only blood he’s lost is this smear on his brow. This on the dagger is not his.”
“If only we could as easily say whose it is!” said Hugh dryly, sitting on his heels with the nimbleness of the young on the other side of the body. Brother Cadfael eased creaky elderly knees on the hard boards, and briefly envied him.
The young man lifted the stiffening arm, and tested the grip of the clenched fingers. “He holds fast!” It took him some effort to loosen the convulsive grasp enough to slip the hilt of the dagger free. In the slanting light from the open hatch something gleamed briefly, waving at the tip of the blade, and again vanished, as motes of dust come and go in gold in bright sunlight. There was also what seemed at first to be a thin encrustation of blood fringing the steel on one edge. Cadfael exclaimed, leaning to point. “A yellow hair - There it shows again!” The flashing gleam curled and twisted as Hugh turned the dagger in his hand.
“Not a hair, a fine, yellowish thread. Thread of flax, not bleached. This grooving has ripped out a shred of cloth, and the blood has stuck it fast. See!”
A mere wisp of brown material it was, a fringe along the groove that had held it. Narrow as a blade of grass, but when Cadfael carefully took hold of a thread at the end and drew it out straight, it stretched to the length of his hand. The colour, though fouled by dried blood, showed plain at one edge, a light russet-brown; and at the end of the sliver floated gaily the long, fine flax thread, scalloped like a curly hair.
“A sliced tear a hand long,” said Cadfael, “and ending at a hem, for surely this thread sewed the edging, and the dagger ripped out a length of the stitching.”
He narrowed his eyes, and considered, imagining Euan facing the door as he opened it, the instant blow that failed to tame him, and then his rapid drawing of his poniard and striking with it. Almost brow to brow and breast to breast, a man good with his right hand, and his attacker’s heart an open target.
“He struck for the heart,” said Cadfael with conviction. “So would I, or so would I have done once. The other man, surely, slipped behind him and spoiled the stroke, but that is where he aimed. Someone, somewhere, has a torn cotte. It might be in the left breast, or it might be in the sleeve. The man’s arms would be raised, reaching to grapple him. I should say the left sleeve, ripping from the hem halfway to the elbow. The sewing thread was caught first, and pulled out a length of stitches.”
Hugh considered that respectfully, and found no fault with it. “Much of a scratch, would you guess? He did not drip blood to the doorway. It could not have been enough to need much stanching.”
“The sleeve would hold it. Likely only a graze, but a long graze. It will be there to be seen.”
“If we knew where to look!” Hugh gave a short bark of laughter at the thought of sending sergeants about this teeming marketplace to ask every man to roll up his left sleeve and show his arm. “A simple matter! Still, no reason why you and I, and all the men I can spare and trust, should not be keeping our eyes open all the rest of this day for a torn sleeve - or a newly cobbled one.”
He rose, and turned to beckon his nearest man from the open hatch. “Well, we’ll have him away from here, and do what we can. A word with your Rhodri ap Huw wouldn’t come amiss, and I fancy you might get more out of him in his own tongue than ever I should at second hand. If he knows this man so well, prick him on to talk, and bring me what you learn.”
“That I’ll do,” said Cadfael, clambering stiffly from his knees.
“I must go first to the castle, and report what we’ve found. One thing I’ll make certain of this time,” said Hugh. “The sheriff was in no mood to listen too carefully last night, but after this he’ll have to turn young Corviser loose on his father’s warranty, like the rest of them. It would take a more pig-headed man than Prestcote to believe the lad had any part in the first death, seeing the trail of offences that have followed while he was in prison. He shall eat his dinner at home today.”
Rhodri was not merely willing to spend an hour pouring the fruits of his wisdom and experience into Brother Cadfael’s ear, he was hovering with that very thing in mind as soon as the corpse of Euan of Shotwick had been carried away, and the booth closed, with one of the sheriff’s men on guard. Though ever-present, he had the gift of being unobtrusive until he chose to obtrude, and then could appear from an unexpected direction, and as casually as if only chance had brought him there.
“No doubt you’ll have sold all you brought with you,” said Cadfael, encountering him thus between the stalls, clearly untroubled by business.
“Goods of quality are recognized everywhere,” said Rhodri, sharp eyes twinkling merrily. “My lads are clearing the last few jars of honey, and the wool’s long gone. But I’ve a half-full bottle there, if you care to share a cup at this hour? Mead, not wine, but you’ll be happy with that, being a Welshman yourself.”
They sat on heaped trestles already freed from their annual use by the removal of small tradesmen who had sold out their stock, and set the bottle between them.
“And what,” asked Cadfael, with a jerk of his head towards the guarded booth, “do you make of that affair this morning? After all that’s gone before? Have we more birds of prey this way than usual, do you think? It may be they’ve taken fright and left the shires where there’s still fighting, and we get the burden of it.”
Rhodri shook his shaggy head, and flashed his large white teeth out of the thicket in a grin. “I would say you’ve had a more than commonly peaceful and well-mannered fair, myself - apart from the misfortunes of two merchants only. Oh, tonight’s the last night, and there’ll be a few drunken squabbles and a brawl or two, I daresay, but what is there in that? But chance has played no part in what has happened to Thomas of Bristol. Chance never goes hounding one man for three days through hundreds of his fellows, yet never grazes one of the others.”
“It has more than grazed Euan of Shotwick,” remarked Cadfael dryly.
“Not chance! Consider, brother! Earl Ranulf of Chester’s eyes and ears comes to a Shropshire fair and is killed. Thomas of Bristol, from a city that holds by Earl Robert of Gloucester, comes to the same fair, and is killed the very night of his coming. And after his death, everything he brought with him is turned hither and yon, but precious little stolen, from all I hear.” And certainly he had a way of hearing most of what was said within a mile of him, but at least he had made no mention of the violation of Master Thomas’s coffin. Either that had not reached his ears, and never would, or else he had been the first to know of it, and would be the last ever to admit it. The parish door was always open, no need to set foot in the great court or pass the gatehouse. “Something Thomas brought to Shrewsbury is of burning interest to somebody, it seems to me, and the somebody failed to get hold of it from man, barge or stall. And the next thing that happens is that Euan of Shotwick is also killed in the night, and all his belongings ransacked. I would not say but things were stolen there. They may have learned enough for that, and his goods are small and portable, and why despise a little gain on the side? But for all that - No, two men from opposite ends of a divided country, meeting midway, on important private business? It could be so! Gloucester’s man and Chester’s man.”