Abbot Radulfus approached her without hesitation, and drew back the linen that covered her, folding it practically over his arm. He stood for some minutes surveying the remains narrowly, from the dark, luxuriant hair to the slender, naked bones of the feet, which surely the small secret inhabitants of the headland had helped to bare. At the stark white bone of her face he looked longest, but found nothing there to single her out from all the long generations of her dead sisters.
‘Yes. Strange!’ he said, half to himself. ‘Someone surely felt tenderness towards her, and respected her rights, if he felt he dared not provide them. One man to kill, perhaps, and another to bury? A priest, do you suppose? But why cover up her death, if he had no guilt in it? Is it possible the same man both killed and buried her?’
‘Such things have been known,’ said Cadfael.
‘A lover, perhaps? Some fatal mischance, never intended? A moment of violence, instantly regretted? But no, there would be no need to conceal, if that were all.’
‘And there is no trace of violence,’ said Cadfael.
‘Then how did she die? Not from illness, or she would have been in the churchyard, shriven and hallowed. How else? By poison?’
‘That is possible. Or a stab wound that reached her heart may have left no trace now in her bones, for they are whole and straight, never deformed by blow or fracture.’
Radulfus replaced the linen cloth, smoothing it tidily over her. ‘Well, I see there is little here a man could match with a living face or a name. Yet I think even that must be tried. If she has been here, living, within the past five years, then someone has known her well, and will know when last she was seen, and have marked her absence afterwards. Come,’ said the abbot, ‘let us go back and consider carefully all the possibilities that come to mind.’
It was plain to Cadfael then that the first and most ominous possibility had already come to the abbot’s mind, and brought deep disquiet with it. Once they were all three back in the quiet of the parlour, and the door shut against the world, the name must be spoken.
‘Two questions wait to be answered,’ said Hugh, taking the initiative. ‘Who is she? And if that cannot be answered with certainty, then who may she be? And the second: Has any woman vanished from these parts during these last few years, without word or trace?’
‘Of one such,’ said the abbot heavily, ‘we certainly know. And the place itself is all too apt. Yet no one has ever questioned that she went away, and of her own choice. That was a hard case for me to accept, as the wife never accepted it. Yet Brother Ruald could no more be barred from following his soul’s bent than the sun from rising. Once I was sure of him, I had no choice. To my grief, the woman never was reconciled.’
So now the man’s name had been spoken. Perhaps no one even recalled the woman’s. Many within the walls could never have set eyes on her, or heard mention of her until her husband had his visitation and came to stand patiently at the gates and demand entry.
‘I must ask your leave,’ said Hugh,’to have him view this body. Even if she is indeed his wife, truly he may not be able to say so now with any certainty, yet it must be asked of him that he make the assay. The field was theirs, the croft there was her home after he left it.’ He was silent for a long moment, steadily eyeing the abbot’s closed and brooding face. ‘After Ruald entered here, until the time when she is said to have gone away with another man, was he ever at any time sent back there?
There were belongings he gave over to her, there could be agreements to be made, even witnessed. Is he known to have met with her, after they first parted?’
‘Yes,’ said Radulfus at once. ‘Twice in the first days of his novitiate he did visit her, but in company with Brother Paul. As master of the novices Paul was anxious for the man’s peace of mind, no less than for the woman’s, and tried his best to bring her to acknowledge and bless Ruald’s vocation. Vainly! But with Paul he went, and with Paul he returned. I know of no other occasion when he could have seen or spoken with her.’
‘Nor ever went out to field work or any other errand close to that field?’
‘It is more than a year,’ said the abbot reasonably. ‘Even Paul would be hard put to it to say where Ruald served in all that time. Commonly, during his novitiate he would always be in company with at least one other brother, probably more, whenever he was sent out from the enclave to work. But doubtless,’ he said, returning Hugh’s look no less fixedly, ‘you mean to ask the man himself.’
‘With your leave, Father, yes.’
‘And now, at once?’
‘If you permit, yes. It will not yet be common knowledge what we have found. Best he should be taken clean, with no warning, and knowing no need for deception. In his own defence,’ said Hugh emphatically,’should he later find himself in need of defence.’
‘I will send for him,’ said Radulfus. ‘Cadfael, will you find him, and perhaps, if the sheriff sees fit, bring him straight to the chapel? As you say, let him come to the proof in innocence, for his own sake. And now I remember,’ said the abbot, ‘a thing he himself said when first this exchange of land was mooted. Earth is innocent, he said. Only the use we make of it mars it.’
Brother Ruald was the perfect example of obedience, the aspect of the Rule which had always given Cadfael the most trouble. He had taken to heart the duty to obey instantly any order given by a superior as if it were a divine command, ‘without half-heartedness or grumbling’, and certainly without demanding ‘Why?’ which was Cadfael’s first instinct, tamed now but not forgotten. Bidden by Cadfael, his elder and senior in vocation, Ruald followed him unquestioning to the mortuary chapel, knowing no more of what awaited him than that abbot and sheriff together desired his attendance.
Even on the threshold of the chapel, suddenly confronted by the shape of the bier, the candles, and Hugh and Radulfus conferring quietly on the far side of the stone slab, Ruald did not hesitate, but advanced and stood awaiting what should be required of him, utterly docile and perfectly serene.
‘You sent for me, Father.’
‘You are a man of these parts,’ said the abbot, ‘and until recently well acquainted with all of your neighbours. You may be able to help us. We have here, as you see, a body found by chance, and none of us here can by any sign set a name to the dead. Try if you can do better. Come closer.’
Ruald obeyed, and stood faithfully staring upon the shrouded shape as Radulfus drew away the linen in one sharp motion, and disclosed the rigidly ordered bones and the fleshless face in its coils of dark hair. Certainly Ruald’s tranquility shook at the unexpected sight, but the waves of pity, alarm and distress that passed over his face were no more than ripples briefly stirring a calm pool, and he did not turn away his eyes, but continued earnestly viewing her from head to foot, and again back to the face, as if by long gazing he could build up afresh in his mind’s eye the flesh which had once clothed the naked bone. When at last he looked up at the abbot it was in mild wonder and resigned sadness.
‘Father, there is nothing here that any man could recognise and name.’
‘Look again,’ said Radulfus. “There is a shape, a height, colouring. This was a woman, someone must once have been near to her, perhaps a husband. There are means of recognition, sometimes, not dependent on features of a face. Is there nothing about her that stirs any memory?’