Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

intended mischief, and I never thought any harm but that he was at his games, for I knew what's said of him ..."
    "And what is said of you, Jordan?" asked Hugh mildly.
    Jordan swallowed and writhed, agonised between shame at owning where he had spent his night, and terror of holding out and risking worse. Sweating and wriggling, he blurted: "No evil, I'm a man well respected ... If I was there, it was for no wrong purpose. I ... I had business there early, charitable business there early - with the old Widow Warren who lives along there ..."
    "Or late, with her slut of a maidservant," called a voice from the safe anonymity of the crowd, and a great ripple of laughter went round, hastily suppressed under the abbot's flashing glare.
    "Was that the truth of it? And by chance under Father Ailnoth's eye?" demanded Hugh. "He would look very gravely upon such depravity, from all accounts. Did he catch you sneaking into the house, Jordan? I hear he was apt to reprove sin on the spot, and harshly. Is that how you came to kill him and leave him in the pool?"
    "I never did!" howled Jordan. "I swear I never had ado with him. If I did fall into sin with the girl, that was all I did. I never went past the house. Ask her, she'll tell you! I was there all night long ..."
    And all this time Cynric had gone on patiently and steadily filling in the grave, without haste, without apparently paying any great attention to all the tumult at his back. During this last exchange he had straightened up creakily, and stretched until his joints cracked. Now he turned to thrust his way into the centre of the circle, the iron-shod spade still dangling in his hand.
    So strange an intrusion from so solitary and withdrawn a man silenced all voices and drew all eyes.
    "Let him be, my lord," said Cynric. "Jordan had nought to do with the man's death." He turned his greying head and long, sombre, deep-eyed face from Hugh to the abbot, and back again. "There's none but I," he said simply, "knows how Ailnoth came by his end."
    Then there was utter silence, beyond what the abbot's authority had been able to invoke, a silence deep enough to drown in, as Ailnoth had drowned. The verger stood tall and dignified in his rusty black, waiting to be questioned further, without fear or regret, seeing nothing strange in what he had said, and no reason why he should have said more or said it earlier, but willing to bear with those who demanded explanations.
    "You know?" said the abbot, after long and astonished contemplation of the man before him. "And you have not spoken before?"
    "I saw no need. There was no other soul put in peril, not till now. The thing was done, best leave well alone."
    "Are you saying," demanded Radulfus doubtfully, "that you were there, that you witnessed it? ... Was it you ...?"
    "No," said Cynric with a slow shake of his long, griz zled head. "I did not touch him." His voice was patient and gentle, as it would have been to questioning children. "I was there, I witnessed it. But I did not touch him."
    "Then tell us now," said Hugh quietly. "Who killed him?"
    "No one killed him," said Cynric. "Those who do violence die by the same. It's only just."
    "Tell us," said Hugh again as softly. "Tell us how this befell. Let us all know, and be at peace again. You are saying his death was an accident?"
    "No accident," said Cynric, and his eyes burned in their deep sockets. "A judgement."
    He moistened his lips, and lifted his head to stare into the wall of the Lady Chapel, above their heads, as if he, who was illiterate, could read there the words he had to say, he who was a man of few words by nature.
    "I went out that night to the pool. I have often walked there by night, when there has been no moon, and none awake to see. Between the willow trees there, beyond the mill, where she went into the water ... Eluned, Nest's girl ... because Ailnoth refused her confession and the uses of the church, denounced her before all the parish and shut the door in her face. He could as well have stabbed her to the heart, it would have been kinder. All that brightness and beauty taken from us ... I knew her well, she came so often for comfort while Father Adam lived, and he never failed her. And when she was not fretting over her sins she was like a bird, like a flower, a joy to see. There are not so many things of beauty in the world that a man should destroy one of them, and make no amends. And when she fell into remorse she was like a child ... she was a child,