“My lady,” said Hugh, catching her eye and breaking into a resigned grin, “my lady, as usual, is making fun of both of us.”
“No,” said Aline, suddenly serious, “it is only that the step from perfectly ordinary things into the miraculous seems to me so small, almost accidental, that I wonder why it astonishes you at all, or why you trouble to reason about it. If it were reasonable it could not be miraculous, could it?”
In the abbot’s parlour they found not only Radulfus, but Robert of Leicester waiting for them. As soon as the civil greetings were over the earl with his nicely-judged courtesy made to withdraw.
“You have business here which is out of my writ and competence, and I would not wish to complicate the affair for you. The lord abbot here has been good enough to admit me to his confidence so far as is appropriate, since I was a witness of what happened this morning, but now you have cause to enquire further, as I understand. I have lost my small claim to the saint,” said Robert Bossu, with a flashing smile and a shrug of his high shoulder, “and should be about taking my leave here.”
“My lord,” said Hugh heartily, “the king’s peace, such as it is and as we manage to maintain it, is very much your business, and your experience in it is longer than mine. If the lord abbot agrees, I hope you will stay and give us the benefit of your judgement. There’s matter to assess concerning murder. Every man’s business, having a life to keep or lose.”
“Stay with us!” said Radulfus. “Hugh is right, we need all the good counsel we can get.”
“And I have as much human curiosity in me as the next man,” owned the earl, and willingly sat down again. The abbot tells me there is more to add to what we witnessed here this morning. I take it, sir, you have been informed, as far as the tale yet carries us?”
“Cadfael has told me,” said Hugh, “how the sortes went, and of Brother Jerome’s confession. He assures me we both, from what he and I saw on the spot, can go beyond what Jerome himself knows.”
Cadfael settled himself beside Hugh on the cushioned bench against the abbot’s dark panelling. Outside the window the light was still full and clear, for the days were drawing out. Spring was not far away when the spiny mounds of blackthorn along the headlands of the fields turned from black to white, like drifts of snow.
“Brother Jerome has told truth, the whole truth as he knows it, but it is not the whole. You saw him, he was in no case and no mind to hold anything back, nor has he done so. Recall, Father, what he said, how he stood and waited. So he did, we found the place, just withdrawn into the bushes by the path, where he had trampled uneasily and flattened the grass. How he snatched up a fallen branch, when the young man came down the path, and struck him with it, and he fell senseless, and the hood fell back from his head. All true, we found, Hugh will bear me out, the branch lying where he had cast it aside. It was partly rotten, and had broken when he struck with it, but it was sound enough and heavy enough to stun. And the body lay as Jerome described, across the path, the hood fallen from his head and face. And Jerome says that on realizing what he had done, and believing that what he had done was murder, he fled, back here into hiding. So he did, and sick indeed he was, for Brother Richard found him grey and shaking on his bed, when he failed to attend at Compline. But he never said word but that he was ill, as plainly he was, and I gave him medicine. In confession now he has spoken of but one blow, and I am convinced he struck but once.”
“Certainly,” said Radulfus, thoughtfully frowning, “he said no word of any further assault. I do not think he was holding anything back.”
“No, Father, neither do I. He has gone creeping about us like a very sick man since that night, in horror of his own act. Now that one blow is borne out by the examination I made of Aldhelm’s head. At the back it was stained with a little blood, and in the rough texture of the wool I found fragments of tinder from the broken branch. The blow to the back of his head might lay him senseless a short while, but certainly had not broken his skull, and could not have killed him. Hugh, what do you say?”
“I say his head would have ached fiercely after it,” said Hugh at once, “but nothing worse. More, it would not have left him out of his wits above a quarter of an hour at the longest. The worst Jerome could do, perhaps, but not enough to do his quarry much harm.”
“So I say also. And he says he struck, looked close and knew his error, and fled the place. And I believe him.”
“I doubt he had the hardihood left to lie,” said the earl. “No very bold villain at the best of times, I should judge, and greatly in awe of the Gospel verdict today. Yet he was sure he had killed.”
“He fled in that terror,” said Cadfael, “and the next he heard was that Tutilo had found the man dead, and so reported him. What else should Jerome think?”
“And in spite of doubts,” the abbot reminded them wryly, “should not we still be thinking the same? He who had begun so terrible an undertaking, how can we be sure he did not, after all, stay and finish it?”
“We cannot be sure. Not absolutely sure. Not until we are sure of everything, and every detail is in the open. But I think he has told us truly, so far as he knows truth. For what followed was very different. Hugh will remember, and bear out all I have to tell.”
“I remember all too well,” said Hugh.
“A few paces lower down the path we found a pile of stones, long grown in there with mosses and lichens. There is limestone cropping out on the ridge above, and in places it breaks through the thin ground cover even among the trees below. In this heap the upper stone, though it was fitted carefully back into its bed, showed the sealing growths of moss disturbed and broken. Heavy, a double handful when I raised it. On the rough underside there was blood. Quite hidden when the stone was in place, but present. We brought the stone back with us to examine more closely. It was certainly the instrument of death. As Aldhelm’s blood was blackening on the stone, so fragments of lichen and stone-dust were embedded in Aldhelm’s wounds. His head was crushed, and the stone coldly fitted back into its mound. Unless a man looked close, it appeared undisturbed. In a week or so weather and growth would have sealed up again all the raw edges that betrayed its use. I ask myself, is this something of which Jerome could be capable? To wrench up a heavy stone, batter in the head of a man lying senseless, and then fit the stone coolly back into its former place? I marvel he ever steeled himself to hit hard enough to stun, and to break the branch in the blow, even though it was partly rotted. Remember that he says he then, in his fright at what he had done, went to peer at his victim, and found that he had struck down the wrong man. With Aldhelm he had no quarrel. And recollect, too, that no one had seen him, no one then knew he had ever left the enclave. He did what any timorous man in a panic would do, ran away and hid himself within the community, where he was known and respected, and no one would ever guess he had attempted such a deed.”
“So you are saying plainly,” said Earl Robert, attentive and still, “that there were two murderers, at least in intent, and this wretched brother, once he knew he had struck down the wrong man, had no reason in the world to wish him further harm.”
“That is what I believe,” said Cadfael.
“And you, my lord sheriff?”
“By all I know of Jerome,” said Hugh, “that is how I read it.”