“It would need a very angry man,” Cadfael owned, “to go so far in your despite. But it takes only an instant to strike, and less than an instant to forget all caution. He had made himself a number of enemies, even in the short time we all rode together.” Names were to be suppressed at all cost, but he was thinking of the blackly murderous glare of Canon Meirion, beholding Bledri’s familiarity with his daughter, and the consequent threat to a career the good canon had no intention of risking.
“An open quarrel would be no mystery,” said Owain. “That I could have resolved. Even if it came to a death, a blood price would have paid it, the blame would not have been all one way. He did provoke hatred. But to follow him to his bedchamber and hale him out of his bed? It is a very different matter.”
They passed through the hall and entered the council chamber. Every eye turned upon them as they came in. Mark and Gwion had waited with the rest. They stood close together, silent, as though the very fact of discovering a death together had linked them in a continuing fellowship that set them apart from the captains round the council table. Hywel was back before his father, and had brought with him one of the kitchen servants, a shaggy dark boy a little puffy with sleep, but bright-eyed again with reviving wakefulness now that he knew of a sudden death, and had something, however small, to impart concerning it.
“My lord,” said Hywel, “Meurig here is the latest I could find to pass by the lodgings where Bledri ap Rhys was housed. He will tell you what he saw. He has not yet told it, we waited for you.”
The boy spoke up boldly enough. It seemed to Cadfael that he was not altogether convinced of the importance of what he had to say, though it pleased him well enough to be here declaring it. Its significance he was content to leave to the Princes.
“My lord, it was past midnight before I finished my work, and went through the passage there to my bed. There was no one about then, I was among the last. I did not see a soul until I came by the third door in that range, where they tell me now this Bledri ap Rhys was lodged. There was a man standing in the doorway, looking into the room, with the latch in his hand. When he heard me coming he closed the door, and went away along the alley.”
“In haste?” asked Owain sharply. “Furtively? In the dark he could well slip away unrecognised.”
“No, my lord, no such matter. Simply, he drew the door to, and walked away. I thought nothing of it. And he took no care not to be seen. He said a goodnight to me as he went. As though he had been seeing a guest safe to his bed, one none too steady on his feet, or too sure of his way, it might be.”
“And you answered him?”
“Surely, my lord.”
“Now name him,” said Owain, “for I think you knew him well enough to call him by name then.”
“My lord, I did. Every man in your court of Aber has got to know him and value him by now, though he came as a stranger when first the lord Hywel brought him from Deheubarth. It was Cuhelyn.”
A sharp, indrawn breath hissed round the table. All heads turned, and all eyes fixed upon Cuhelyn, who sat apparently unmoved at finding himself suddenly the centre of marked and loaded attention. His thick dark brows had risen in mild surprise, even a trace of amusement.
“That is true,” he said simply. “That I could have told you, but for all I knew or know now there could have been others there after me. As certainly there was one. The last to see him, living, no question. But that was not I.”
“Yet you offered us no word of this,” the prince pointed out quietly. “Why not?”
“True, I did none too well there. It came a little too close home for comfort,” said Cuhelyn. “I opened my mouth once to say it, and shut it again with nothing said. For sober truth is that I did have the man’s death in mind, and for all I never touched him nor went in to him, when Brother Cadfael told us he lay dead, I felt the finger of guilt cold on my neck. But for solitude, and chance, and this lad coming along when most he was needed, yes, I might have been Bledri’s murderer. But I am not, thanks be to God!”
“Why did you go there, and at that hour?” asked Owain, giving no sign whether he believed or disbelieved.
“I went there to confront him. To kill him in single combat. Why at that hour? Because the hatred had taken hours to come to the boil within me, and only then had I reached the length of killing. Also, I think, because I wished to make it clear past doubt that no other man was drawn into my quarrel, and no other could be accused even of knowing what I did.” Cuhelyn’s level voice remained quiet and composed still, but his face had tightened until pale lines stood clear over the cheekbones and round the lean, strong angle of his jaw.
Hywel said softly, filling and easing the pause: “A one-armed man against a seasoned warrior with two?”
Cuhelyn looked down indifferently at the silver circlet that secured the linen cover over the stump of his left arm. “One arm or two, the end would have been the same. But when I opened his door, there he lay fast asleep. I heard his breathing, long and placid. Is it fair dealing to startle a man out of his sleep and challenge him to the death? And while I stood there in the doorway, Meurig here came along. And I drew the door closed again, and went away, and left Bledri sleeping.
“Not that I gave up my purpose,” he said, rearing his head fiercely. “Had he been living when the morning came, my lord, I meant to challenge him openly of his mortal offence, and call him to battle for his life. And if you gave me countenance, to kill him.”
Owain was staring upon him steadily, and visibly probing the mind that fashioned this bitter speech and gave it such passionate force. With unshaken calm he said: “So far as is known to me, the man had done me no grave offence.”
“Not to you, my lord, beyond his arrogance. But to me, the worst possible. He made one among the eight that set upon us from ambush, and killed my prince at my side. When Anarawd was murdered, and this hand was lopped, Bledri ap Rhys was there in arms. Until he came into the bishop’s hall I did not know his name. His face I have never forgotten. Nor never could have forgotten, until I had got Anarawd’s price out of him in blood. But someone else has done that for me. And I am free of him.”
“Say to me again,” Owain commanded, when Cuhelyn had made an end of this declaration, “that you left the man living, and have no guilt in his death.”
“I did so leave him. I never touched him, his death is no guilt of mine. If you bid me, I will swear it on the altar.”
“For this while,” said the prince gravely, “I am forced to leave this matter unresolved until I come back from Abermenai with a more urgent matter settled and done. But I still need to know who did the thing you did not do, for not all here have your true quarrel against Bledri ap Rhys. And as I for my part take your word, there may be many who still doubt you. If you give your word to return with me, and abide what further may be found out, till all are satisfied, then come with me. I need you as I may need every good man.”
“As God sees me,” said Cuhelyn. “I will not leave you, for any reason, until you bid me go. And the happier, if you never do so bid me.”
The last and most unexpected word of a night of the unexpected lay with Owain’s steward, who entered the council chamber just as the prince was rising to dismiss his officers, sufficiently briefed for the dawn departure. Provision was already made for the rites due to the dead. Gwion would remain at Aber, according to his oath, and had pledged his services to send word to Bledri’s wife in Ceredigion, and conduct such necessary duties for the dead man as she demanded. A melancholy duty, but better from a man of the same allegiance. The morning muster was planned with precision, and order given for the proper provision due to the bishop of Lichfield’s envoy on his way to Bangor, while the prince’s force pursued the more direct road to Carnarvon, the old road that had linked the great forts by which an alien people had kept their footing in Wales, long ago. Latin names still clung to the places they had inhabited, though only priests and scholars used them now; the Welsh knew them by other names. It was all prepared, to the last detail. Except that somehow the missing horse had been lost yet again, slipping through the cracks between greater concerns into limbo. Until Goronwy ab Einion came in with the result of a long and devious enquiry into the total household within the llys.