“And when you parted from her?” said Hugh.
“I would have come back straightaway, but I saw them come boiling out of the gate here and quartering the Foregate, and it was plain they were hot on my heels already. So I drew off into the trees to wait my chance. I had no mind to be dragged back by force,” said Elave indignantly, “when I had nothing in mind but to walk in of my own will, and sit and wait for my judgment. But they left the big fellow standing guard, and I never got my chance to get past him. I thought if I waited for Vespers I might take cover and slip in among the folk coming to church.”
“But you did not spend all that time close here in hiding,” said Hugh, “for I hear they drew every covert for half a mile from the road. Where did you go?”
“Made my way back through the trees, round behind the Gaye, and a fair way down the river, and lay up in cover there till I thought it must be almost time for Vespers.”
“And you saw nobody in all that time? Nobody saw or spoke to you?”
“It was my whole intent that nobody should see me.” said Elave reasonably. “I was hiding from a hue and cry. No, there’s no one can speak for me all that time. But why should I come back as I did, if I meant to run? I could have been halfway to the border in that time. Acquit me at least of going back on my word.”
“That you certainly have not done,” said Abbot Radulfus. “And you may believe that I knew nothing of this pursuit of you, and would not have countenanced it. No doubt it was done out of pure zeal, but it was misdirected and blameworthy, and I am sorry you should have fallen victim to violence. No one now supposes that you had any intent of running away. I accepted your word, I would do so again.”
Elave peered from beneath Brother Cadfael’s bandages with brows drawn together in puzzlement, looking from face to face without understanding. “Then why these questions? Does it matter where I went, since I came back again? How is it to the purpose?” He looked longest and most intently at Hugh, whose authority was secular, and should have had nothing to do or say in a charge of heresy. “What is it? Something has happened. What can there be new since yesterday? What is it that I do not know?”
They were all studying him hard and silently, wondering indeed whether he did or did not know, and whether a relatively simple young man could dissemble so well, and one whose word the abbot had taken without question only one day past. Whatever conclusion they came to could not then be declared. Hugh said with careful mildness: “First, perhaps you should know what Fortunata and her family have told us. You parted from her between here and the bridge, that she confirms, and she then went home. There she encountered and reproached your accuser Aldwin for bringing such a charge against you, and it came out that he had been afraid of losing his place to you, a matter of great gravity to him, as you’ll allow.”
“But it was no such matter,” said Elave, astonished. “That was settled the first time I set foot in the house. I never wanted to elbow him out, and Dame Margaret told me fairly enough they would not oust him. He had nothing to fear from me.”
“But he thought he had. No one had put it in plain terms to him until then. And when he heard it, as they all four agree - the shepherd, too - he declared his intent of running after you to confess and ask pardon, and if he failed to overtake you - the girl having told him where she had left you - of following you here to the abbey to do his best to undo what he had done against you.”
Elave shook his head blankly. “I never saw him. I was among the trees ten minutes or more, watching the road, before I gave up and went off towards the river. I should have seen him if he’d passed. Maybe he took fright when he saw them beating all the coverts and baying after me along the Foregate, and thought better of repenting.” It was said without bitterness, even with a resigned grin. “It’s easier and safer to set the hounds on than to call them off.”
“A true word!” said Hugh. “They have been known to bite the huntsman, if he came between them and the quarry once their blood was up. So you never saw and had speech with him, and have no notion where he went or what happened to him?”
“None in the world. Why?” asked Elave simply. “Have you lost him?”
“No,” said Hugh, “we have found him. Brother Cadfael found him early this morning lodged under the bank of Severn beyond the Gaye. Dead, stabbed in the back.”
“Did he know or did he not?” wondered Hugh, when they were out in the great court, and the cell door closed and locked on the prisoner. “You saw him, do you know what to make of him? Fix him as watchfully as you will, any man can lie if he must. I would rather rely on things solid and provable. He did come back. Would a man who had killed do so? He has a good, serviceable knife, well able to kill, but it’s in his bundle in the guest hall still, not on him, and we know he no sooner showed his face in the gateway than he was set on, and attended every moment after, until that door closed on him. If he had another knife, and had it on him, he must have discarded it. Father Abbot, do you believe this lad? Is he telling truth? When he offered his word, you accepted it. Do you still do so?”
“I neither believe nor disbelieve,” said Radulfus heavily. “How dare I? But I hope!”
Chapter Eight
William Warden, who was the longest-serving and most experienced of Hugh’s sergeants, came looking for the sheriff just as Hugh and Cadfael were crossing to the gatehouse; a big, bearded, burly man of middle age, grizzled and weatherbeaten, and with a solid conceit of himself that sometimes tended to undervalue others. He had taken Hugh for a lightweight when first the young man succeeded to the sheriff’s office, but time had considerably tempered that opinion, and brought them into a relationship of healthy mutual respect. The sergeant’s beard was bristling with satisfaction now. Clearly he had made progress, and was pleased with himself accordingly. “My lord, we’ve found it - the place where he was laid up till dark. Or at least, where he or some other bled long enough to leave his traces clear enough. While we were beating the bushes Madog thought to search through the grass under the arch of the bridge. Some fisherman had drawn up his light boat there, and turned it up to do some caulking on the boards. He wouldn’t be working on it yesterday, a feast day. When we hoisted it, there was the grass flattened the length of it, and a small patch of it blackened with blood. What with the dry weather that ground has been uncovered a month or more, it’s bleached pale as straw. There’s no missing that stain, meager though it is. A dead man could lie snug enough under there, with a boat upturned over him and nothing to show.”
“So that was the place!” said Hugh on a long, thoughtful breath. “And no great risk, slipping a body into the water there in the dark, from under the arch. No sound, no splash, nothing to see. With an oar, or a pole, you could thrust him well out into the current.”
“We were right, it seems,” said Cadfael. “You have to deal only with that length of the water, from the bridge to where he fetched up. You did not find the knife?”
The sergeant shook his head. “If he killed his man there, under the arch or in the bushes, he’d clean the knife in the edge of the water and take it away with him. Why waste a good knife? And why leave it lying about for some neighbor to find, and say: I know that, it belongs to John Weaver, or whoever it might be, and how comes it to have blood on it? No, we shan’t find the knife.”
“True,” said Hugh, “a man would have to be scared out of his wits to throw it away to be found, and I fancy this man was in sharp command of his. Never mind, you’ve done well, we know now where the thing was done, there or close by.”