Brother Cadfael 03: Monk's Hood

him off your hands on the graver count. Would it please you come and examine him for yourself on the matter of the horse? If you see fit, there could be charges of assault against your grooms, a serious matter even without the theft."
    Prior Robert was not immune to human curiosity, and was not adverse to taking a look at this youthful demon who had poisoned his own stepfather and led the sheriff's men a dance over half the shire. "I will come," he said. "The church must not turn its back upon the sinner, but only deplore the sin."
    In the porter's room at the gatehouse the boy sat stolidly on a bench opposite the welcome fire, hunched defensively against the world, but looking far from cowed, for all his bruises and wariness. The abbey sergeants and the sheriff's patrol circled him with brooding eyes and hectoring questions, which he answered only when he chose to do so, and then briefly. Several of them were soiled and mud-stained from the hunt, one or two had scratches and bruises of their own to show. The boy's bright eyes flickered from one to another, and it even seemed that his lips twitched with the effort to suppress a smile when he contemplated the one who had gone head over heels in the meadows near Cound. They had stripped his borrowed habit from him and restored it to the porter's care; the boy showed now slender and light-haired, smooth and fair of skin, with ingenuous-seeming hazel eyes. Prior Robert was somewhat taken aback by his youth and comeliness; truly the devil can assume fair shapes!
    "So young and marred!" he said aloud. The boy was not meant to hear that, it was uttered in the doorway as Robert entered, but at fourteen the hearing is keen. "So, boy," said the prior, drawing near, "you are the troubler of our peace. You have much upon your conscience, and I fear it is even late to pray that you may have time to amend. I shall so pray. You know, for you are old enough to know, that murder is mortal sin."
    The boy looked him in the eye, and said with emphatic composure: "I am not a murderer."
    "Oh, child, is it now of any avail to deny what is known? You might as well say that you did not steal a horse from our barn this morning, when four of our servants and many other people saw the act committed."
    "I did not steal Rufus," the boy retorted promptly and firmly. "He is mine. He was my stepfather's property, and I am my stepfather's heir, for his agreement with the abbey has never been ratified, and the will that made me his heir is sound as gold. What belongs to me how could I steal? From whom?"
    "Wretched child," protested the prior, bristling at such bold defiance, and even more at a dawning suspicion that this imp, in spite of his dire situation, was daring to enjoy himself, "think what you say! You should rather be repenting while you have time. Have you not yet realised that the murderer cannot live to inherit from his victim?"
    "I have said, and say again, I am not a murderer. I deny, on my soul, on the altar, on whatever you wish, that ever I did my stepfather harm. Therefore Rufus is mine. Or when the will is proven, and my overlord gives his consent as he promised, Rufus and Mallilie and all will be mine. I have committed no crime, and nothing you can do or say can make me admit to any. And nothing you can do," he added, his eyes suddenly flashing, "can ever make me guilty of any."
    "You waste your goodwill, Father Prior," growled the sheriff's sergeant, "he's an obdurate young wretch meant for the gallows, and his come-uppance will be short." But under Robert's august eye he refrained from clouting the impudent brat round the ears, as otherwise he might well have done. "Think no more of him, but let your servants clap him into safe hold in your cell here, and put him out of your mind as worth no more pains. The law will take care of him."
    "See that he has food," said Robert, not altogether without compassion, and remembering that this child had been in the saddle and in hiding all the day, "and let his bed be hard, but dry and warm enough. And should he relent and ask ... Boy, listen to me, and give a thought to your soul's welfare. Will you have one of the brothers come and reason and pray with you before you sleep?"
    The boy looked up with a sudden sparkle in his eye that might have been penitent hope, but looked more like mischief, and said with deceptive meekness: "Yes, and gratefully, if you could be so kind as to send for Brother Cadfael." It was time, after all, to take