After Compline Brother Cadfael asked audience of Abbot Radulfus, in his own study in the abbot’s lodging. It was a good hour for grave conversation, a day of many passions over at last, the night’s needful composure closing in.
“Father, I have told you all I know of this matter, but for one thing. You know that I have knowledge of herbs. In the capuchon I brought back and delivered to the sheriff this evening, I found a herb which I know to be exceedingly rare, even in Wales, where it does habit in some places. Here I had never before met with it. Yet Huon de Domville, in his last night in this world, was where this herb grows. Father, I think this circumstance of the greatest importance, and it is my wish to find this place, and discover what business the dead man had there, on his marriage eve. I believe it may have a bearing on his death, the manner of it, and the maker of it.”
He had the little faded posy in his palm, a drying bunch of thin stems, thread-like green leaves and wilting, starry flowers, still surprisingly blue.
“Show me,” said the abbot, and gazed with wondering attention. “And you can say where such a thing grows, and where it does not grow?”
“In grows in a few, a very few places, where the chalk or limestone crops out. I have never before seen it in England.”
“And by this you believe you can divine where our murdered man spent his night?”
“We know the path by which he was returning. By that same path he surely went, when he left his squire at the gate. It is my wish, if you give leave, to follow that path, and find this flower. I believe lives - innocent of anything beyond youth, folly and anger - may hang upon so small a thing.”
“Such things have happened times without number,” said Abbot Radulfus. “Our purpose is justice, and with God lies the privilege of mercy. You have leave, Brother Cadfael, to pursue this as long as may be needful. You have my trust.”
“God knows I value it,” said Cadfael truly. “And you have, and shall have, mine. Whatever I may find, I submit to you.”
“Not to the sheriff?” asked Radulfus, and smiled.
“Surely. But through you, Father.”
Brother Cadfael went to his bed in the dortoir, and slept like an innocent babe safely cradled, until the bell rang for Matins.
7
When Cadfael emerged from Prime, the following morning, Prestcote was already abroad marshalling his renewed hunt on the northern side of the Foregate. This time they would make a great, slow sweep for some three miles out, so exhaustive that barely a weasel or a hare would elude their net. The sheriff was determined to fetter his quarry this time, and reasonably sure that he had not already slipped through the cordon, which had been strengthened overnight. Picard was out with all the men of his household marshalled at his back, and Canon Eudo was probably exhorting Domville’s people at the bishop’s house to the same forced service. And though some, no doubt, turned out reluctantly, nevertheless there is something infectious about the zeal of a hunt, that would have most of these beaters in full cry if ever they scented their quarry.
Not for the first time, Brother Cadfael wished heartily that he had Hugh Beringar here, to temper the chill of Prestcote’s proceedings. The deputy sheriff had room in his head and conscience for healthy doubts of his own omniscience, and was always perversely suspicious of what seemed a foregone conclusion to others. But Hugh Beringar was in the north of the shire, at his own manor of Maesbury, and certainly would not consent to move from there these coming fewweeks, for his wife was near her time with their first child, and that is a peak of experience in any young man’s life. No help for it, this matter would have to be settled under Gilbert Prestcote’s direction. And at that, thought Cadfael fairly, we’re luckier than many a shire. He’s an honest, fair-minded man, if he is too urgent for quick resolutions and summary justice, and not inclined to look too far beyond the obvious. Nevertheless, show him a provable truth, and he’ll accept it. Provable truths are what we need.
Meantime, he took some care over giving Brother Oswin his tasks for the day. Only a week ago, he would have found him enough rough digging and outdoor work to keep him occupied, and prayed heartily that the great maladroit need not even set foot in the workshop. Today he handed over to him some early winter pruning, but also the tending of a batch of wine just beginning to work, and the making of an ointment for the infirmary. They had made the same ointment together once, the process fully explained as they went. Cadfael nobly refrained from repeating and underlining every stage, and left Oswin with only the most modest and trusting recapitulation.
“I leave the workshop in your hands,” he said firmly. “I place full confidence in you.”
“And God forgive me the lie,” he muttered to himself when he was out of earshot, “and turn it to truth. Or at least count it as merit to me rather than sin. If I’ve been setting your teeth on edge, Oswin, my lad, now’s your chance to spread your wings on your own. Make the most of it!”
Now he had the day at his disposal, and his starting-point must be the spot where Domville had died. He took the quickest way to it, a risky and unorthodox route he had sometimes used on more obscure business of his own. The Meole brook, where it bordered the abbey fields and gardens, was fordable except in flood-time, provided a man knew it well, and Cadfael knew it perfectly. He thus cut off a detour by the roads, at the mere cost of kilting his habit above the knees, and sandals let out water as freely as they let it in. By the time chapter ended at the abbey, he was on the path where the baron had been ambushed, and pushing on along it at a good pace.
This part of the path he knew, it lay directly across a great winding bend of the brook, and he was approaching the second ford which would take him out of the loop, and away through woods and fields towards Sutton and Beistan, sparsely peopled country approaching the great stretch of the Long Forest. He did not think that Domville could have had many miles to go, nor that he had spent the night in the open. A man tough enough for that and worse when there was need, but fond of his comforts when things were going easily.
At Sutton Strange the woods fell back before fields. Cadfael exchanged the time of day with a cottar whose children he had once treated for a skin rash, and enquired if the news of Domville’s death had reached the village. It had, and was the chief gossip for miles around, and already the inhabitants were expecting that the hunt for the murderer might reach as far as their homes and byres the next day.
“I heard he had a hunting-lodge somewhere in these parts,” said Cadfael. “On the edge of the forest is what I heard, but that could mean anywhere along ten miles of country. Would you know of the place?”
“Ah, that’ll be the house over beyond Beistan,” said the cottar, leaning comfortably on his garden wall. “He has rights of warren in the forest, but he came there only rarely, and keeps only a local lad there as steward, and the old woman his mother to take care for the house when it’s unvisited. As it mostly is. He has better hunts elsewhere. Had! Seems someone set a snare for him, this time.”
“And made a thorough job of it,” said Cadfael soberly. “How do I best go for this place? Through the village at Beistan?”
“That’s it, and cross the old road and bear on between the hills. You’ll find this path makes a straight run of it. You’ll be in the edge of the forest there, sure enough, before ever you see the house.”
Cadfael went on briskly, emerging on to a highroad at the village of Beistan, where the path he was following crossed and moved on, dead straight, past a few scattered holdings beyond, and then into fitful stretches of rising heathland and copses between two gentle slopes. After another mile or so it became a forest path once again, closely hemmed in. Where ground-rock broke into view, it was white and chalky, and in the more open glades heathers brushed crisp and prickly against his ankles. It was a long time since he had been so far afoot, and if he had not been on so grave a quest his walk would have been pure enjoyment.