“There’s more yet to tell you, my lord,” said Will, gratified, “and stranger, if he was in such a hurry as they told us, when he ran off to recant his charges. We asked the porter on the town gate if he’d seen him pass out and cross the bridge, and he said yes, he had, and spoke to him, but barely got an answer. But he hadn’t come straight from Lythwood’s house, that’s certain. It was more than an hour later, maybe as much as an hour and a half.”
“He’s sure of that?” demanded Hugh. “There’s no real check there, not in quiet times. He could be hazy about time passing.”
“He’s sure. He saw them all come back after the hubbub they had here at chapter, Aldwin and the shepherd first and the girl after, and it seemed to him they were all of them in an upset. He’d heard nothing then of what had happened, but he did notice the fuss they were in, and long before Aldwin came down to the gate again the whole tale was out. The porter was all agog when he laid eyes on the very man coming down the Wyle. He was hoping to stop him and gossip, but Aldwin went past without a word. Oh, he’s sure enough! He knows how long had passed.”
“So all that time he was still in the town,” said Hugh, and gnawed a thoughtful lip. “Yet in the end he did cross the bridge, going where he’d said he was going. But why the delay? What can have kept him?”
“Or who?” suggested Cadfael.
“Or who! Do you think someone ran after him to dissuade him? None of his own people, or they would have said so. Who else would try to turn him back? No one else knew what he was about. Well,” said Hugh, “nothing else for it, we’ll walk every yard of the way from Lythwood’s house to the bridge, and hammer on every door, until we find out how far he got before turning aside. Someone must have seen him, somewhere along the way.”
“I fancy,” said Cadfael, pondering all he had seen and known of Aldwin, which was meager enough and sad enough, “he was not a man who had many friends, nor one of any great resolution of mind. He must have had to pluck up all his courage to accuse Elave in the first place. It would cost him more to withdraw his accusation, and put himself in the way of being suspect of perjury or malice or both. He may well have taken fright on the way, and changed his mind yet again, and decided to let well or ill alone. Where would a solitary dim soul like that go to think things out? And try to get his courage back? They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.”
It was one of the young men-at-arms of the castle garrison, not at all displeased at being given the task of enquiring at the alehouses of the town, who came up with the next link in Aldwin’s uncertain traverse of Shrewsbury. There was a small tavern in a narrow, secluded close off the upper end of the steep, descending Wyle. It was sited about midway between the house near Saint Alkmund’s church and the town gate, and the lanes leading to it were shut between high walls, and on a feast day might well be largely deserted. A man overtaken by someone bent on changing his mind for him, or suddenly possessed by misgivings calculated to change it for him without other persuasion, might well swerve from the direct way and debate the issue over a pot of ale in this quiet and secluded place. In any case, the young enquirer had no intention of missing any of the places of refreshment that lay within his commission.
“Aldwin?” said the potman, willing enough to talk about so sensational a tragedy. “I only heard the word an hour past. Of course I knew him. A silent sort, mostly. If he did come in he’d sit in a corner and say hardly a word. He always expected the worst, you might say, but who’d have thought anyone would want to do him harm? He never did anyone else any that I knew of, not till this to-do yesterday. The talk is that the lad he informed on has got his own back with a vengeance. And him with trouble enough,” said the potman, lowering his voice confidentially. “If the Church has got its claws into him, small need to go crying out for worse.”
“Did you see the man yesterday at all?” asked the man-at-arms.
“Aldwin? Yes, he was here for a while, up in the corner of the bench there, as glum as ever. I hadn’t heard anything then about this business at the abbey, or I’d have taken more notice. We’d none of us any notion the poor soul would be dead by this morning. It falls on a man without giving him time to put his affairs in order.”
“He was here?” echoed the enquirer, elated. “What time was that?”
“Well past noon. Nearly three, I suppose, when they came in.”
“They? He wasn’t alone?”
“No, the other fellow brought him in, very confidential, with an arm round his shoulders and talking fast into his ear. They must have sat there for above half an hour, and then the other one went off and left him to himself another half hour, brooding, it seemed. He was never a drinker, though, Aldwin. Sober as stone when he got up and went out at the door, and without a word, mind you. Too late for words now, poor soul.”
“Who was it with him?” demanded the questioner eagerly. “What’s his name?”
“I don’t know that I ever heard his name, but I know who he is. He works for the same master - that shepherd of theirs who keeps the flock they have out on the Welsh side of town.”
“Conan?” echoed Jevan, turning from the shelves of his shop with a creamy skin of vellum in his hands. “He’s off with the sheep, and he may very well sleep up there; these summer nights he often does. Why, is there anything new? He told you what he knew, what we all knew, this morning. Should we have kept him here? I knew of no reason you might need him again.”
“Neither did I then,” agreed Hugh grimly. “But it seems Master Conan told no more than half a tale, the half you and all the household could bear witness to. Not a word about running after Aldwin and haling him away into the tavern in the Three-Tree Shut, and keeping him there more than half an hour.”
Jevan’s level dark brows had soared to his hair, and his jaw dropped for a moment. “He did that? He said he’d be off to the flock and get on with his work for the rest of the day. I took it that’s what he’d done.” He came slowly to the solid table where he folded his skins, and spread the one he was carrying carefully over it, smoothing it out abstractedly with a sweep of one long hand. He was a very meticulous man. Everything in his shop was in immaculate order, the uncut skins draped over racks, the trimmed leaves ranged on shelves in their varied sizes, and the knives with which he cut and trimmed them laid out in neat alignment in their tray, ready to his hand. The shop was small, and open on to the street in this fine weather, its shutters laid by until nightfall.
“He went into the alehouse with Aldwin in his arm, so the potman says, about three o’clock. They were there a good half hour, with Conan talking fast and confidentially into Aldwin’s ear. Then Conan left him there, and I daresay did go to his work, and Aldwin still sat there another half hour alone. That’s the story my man unearthed, and that’s the story I want out of Conan’s hide, along with whatever more there may be to tell.”
Jevan stroked his long, well-shaven jaw and considered, with a speculative eye upon Hugh’s face. “Now that you tell me this, my lord, I must say I see more in what was said yesterday than I saw at the time. For when Aldwin said he must go and try to overtake that boy he’d done his best to ruin, and go with him to the monks to withdraw everything he’d said against him, Conan did tell him not to be a fool, that he’d only get himself into trouble, and do no good for the other lad. He tried his best to dissuade him. But I thought nothing of it but that it was good sense enough, and all he meant was to haul Aldwin back out of danger. When I said let him go, if he’s bent on it, Conan shrugged it off, and went off about his own business. Or so I thought. Now I wonder. Does not this sound to you as though he spent another half hour trying to persuade the poor fool to give up his penitent notion? You say it was he was doing the talking, and Aldwin the listening. And another half hour still before Aldwin could make up his mind to jump one way or the other.”