Brother Cadfael 03: Monk's Hood

when it simmered. More than once, and moved it aside from the heat, too. What use my saying I added nothing? Of course that is what I, or any other in my shoes would say, it carries no weight until there's proof, one way or the other."
    "You are very sensible and very just," said Cadfael. "And Meurig, you say, was just coming in at the door when you returned to the kitchen. So he was not alone with the dish ... even supposing he had known what it was, and for whom it was intended."
    Her dark brows rose, wonderfully arched and vivid and striking under the pale brow and light-gold hair. "The door was wide open, that I recall, and Meurig was just scraping the dirt from his shoes before coming in. But what reason could Meurig have, in any case, to wish his father dead? He was not lavish with him, but he was of more value to him alive than dead. He had no hope of inheriting anything, and knew it, but he had a modest competence to lose."
    That was simple truth. Not even the church would argue a bastard's right to inherit, while the state would deny it even where marriage of the parents, every way legal, followed the birth. And this had been a commonplace affair with one of his own maidservants. No, Meurig had no possible stake in this death. Whereas Edwin had a manor to regain, and Richildis, her adored son's future. And Aelfric?
    She had reared her head, gazing towards the gatehouse, where Aelfric had just appeared, the high-rimmed wooden tray under his arm, a bag for the loaves slung on his shoulder. She gathered her cloak and rose.
    "Tell me," said Cadfael, mild-voiced beside her, "now that Master Bonel is dead, to whom does Aelfric belong? Does he go with the manor, to the abbey or some other lord? Or was he excluded from the agreement, conceded to Master Bonel as manservant in villeinage for life?"
    She looked back sharply in the act of going to meet Aelfric. "He was excluded. Granted to be my lord's villein personally."
    "Then whatever happens to the manor now, he will go to whoever inherits the personal effects ... to widow or son, granted the son escapes a criminal charge. And Aldith, you know Mistress Bonel's mind, would you not say that she would at once give Aelfric his freedom, with a glad heart? And would the boy do any other?"
    All she gave him by way of answer was a brief, blinding flash of the black, intelligent eyes, and the sudden, veiling swoop of large lids and long dark lashes. Then she went to cross Aelfric's path, and fall in beside him on his way to the abbot's lodging. Her step was light and easy, her greeting indifferent, her manner dutiful. Aelfric trudged by her side stiff and mute, and would not let her take the bag from his shoulder. Cadfael sat looking after them for a long moment, observing and wondering, though after a while the wonder subsided into mild surprise, and by the time he set off to wash his hands before dinner in the refectory, even surprise had settled into conviction and reassessment.
    It was mid-afternoon, and Cadfael was picking over the stored trays of apples and pears in the loft of the abbot's barn, discarding the few decayed specimens before they could infect their neighbours, when Brother Mark came hallooing for him from below.
    "The sheriff's man is back," he reported, when Cadfael peered down the ladder at him and demanded what the noise was about, "and asking for you. And they've not captured their man - if it's any news I'm telling you."
    "It's no good news that I should be wanted," admitted Cadfael, descending the ladder backwards, as nimbly as a boy. "What's his will? Or his humour, at least?"
    "No menace to you, I think," said Mark, considering. "Vexed at not laying his hands on the boy, naturally, but I think his mind's on small things like the level of that rubbing oil in your store. He asked me if I could tell if any had been removed from there, but I'm a slipshod hand who notices nothing, as you'll bear witness. He thinks you'll know to the last drop."
    "Then he's the fool. It takes a mere mouthful or two of that to kill, and in a container too wide to get the fingers of both hands around, and tall as a stool, who's to know if ten times that amount has been purloined? But let's at least pick his brains of what he's about now, and how far he thinks he has his case proven."
    In the workshop the sheriff's sergeant was poking his bushy beard and hawk's beak into all Cadfael's sacks and jars and pots in somewhat wary curiosity. If he had brought an escort with him