Brother Cadfael 03: Monk's Hood

sullen and on his dignity now, but wavering and wondering. "It didn't seem to have anything to do with what happened ... and I wanted to forget it. But I'll tell you now, if it does matter. It isn't anything bad."
    "It matters very much, though you couldn't have known that when you threw it away." Better tell him the reason now, and show that by this examiner, at least, he was not doubted. "For what you sent over the parapet, my lad, is being interpreted by the sheriff's man as the bottle that held the poison, newly emptied by you before you ran out of the house, and disposed of in the river. So now, I think, you had better tell me what it really was, and I'll try to convince the law they are on the wrong scent, over that and everything else."
    The boy sat very still, not stunned by this blow, which was only one more in a beating which had already done its worst and left him still resilient. He was very quick in mind, he saw the implications, for himself and for Brother Cadfael. Slowly he said: "And you don't need first to be convinced?"
    "No. For a moment I may have been shaken, but not longer. Now tell me!"
    "I didn't know! How could I know what was going to happen?" He drew breath deeply, and some of the tension left the arm and shoulder that leaned confidingly into Cadfael's side, "No one else knew about it, I hadn't said a word to Meurig, and I never got so far as to show it even to my mother - I never had the chance. You know I'm learning to work in wood, and in fine metals, too, a little, and I had to show that I meant to be good at what I did. I made a present for my stepfather. Not because I liked him," he made haste to add, with haughty honesty, "I didn't! But my mother was unhappy about our quarrel, and it had made him hard and ill-tempered even to her - he never used to be, he was fond of her, I know. So I made a present as a peace offering ... and to show I should make a craftsman, too, and be able to earn my living without him. He had a relic he valued greatly, he bought it in Walsingham when he was on pilgrimage, a long time ago. It's supposed to be a piece of Our Lady's mantle, from the hem, but I don't believe it's true. But he believed it. It's a slip of blue cloth as long as my little finger, with a gold thread in the edge, and it's wrapped in a bit of gold. He paid a lot of money for it, I know. So I thought I would make him a little reliquary just the right size for it, a little box with a hinge. I made it from pearwood, and jointed and polished it well, and inlaid the lid with a little picture of Our Lady in nacre and silver, and blue stone for the mantle. I think it was not bad." The light ache in his voice touched Brother Cadfael's relieved heart; he had loved his work and destroyed it, he was entitled to grieve.
    "And you took it with you to give to him yesterday?" he asked gently.
    "Yes." He bit that off short. Cadfael remembered how he had been received, according to Richildis, when he made his difficult, courageous appearance at their table, his gift secreted somewhere upon him.
    "And you had it in your hand when he drove you out of the house with his malice. I see how it could happen."
    The boy burst out bitterly, shivering with resentment still: "He said I'd come to crawl to him for my manor ... he taunted me, and if I kneeled to him ... How could I offer him a gift, after that? He would have taken it as proof positive ... I couldn't bear that! It was meant to be a gift, without any asking."
    "I should have done what you did, boy, kept it clutched in my hand, and run from there without a word more."
    "But not thrown it in the river, perhaps," sighed Edwin ruefully. "Why? I don't know ... Only it had been meant for him, and I had it in my hand, and Aelfric was running after me and calling, and I couldn't go back ... It wasn't his, and it wasn't any more mine, and I threw it over to be rid of it ..."
    So that was why neither Richildis nor anyone else had mentioned Edwin's peace offering. Peace or war, for that matter? It had been meant to assert both his forgiveness and his independence, neither very pleasing to an elderly autocrat. But well-meant, for all that, an achievement, considering the lad was not yet fifteen years old. But no one had known of it. No one but the maker had ever had the chance to admire - as Richildis would have done most dotingly! - the nice dove-tailing of the joints of his little box, or the fine setting of the slips of silver and pearl and lapis which had flashed