Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

your father?'
    'He'll do well enough,' she said practically. 'He was very mellow, it did him good service, he fell soft as a cushion. Go along and see him, when she's done with you.' She gave him her wry smile, and slipped away silently down the stairs.
    If Dame Juliana's attack had affected her speech at all on this occasion, she had made a remarkable recovery. Flat on her pillows she might be, and indeed had better remain for a day or so, but her tongue wagged remorselessly all the time Cadfael was feeling her forehead and the beat of her heart, and drawing back an eyelid from a fierce grey eye to look closely at the pupil. He let her run on without response or encouragement, though he missed nothing of what she had to say.
    'And I expected better of the lord abbot,' she said, curling thin, bluish lips, 'than to take the part of a vagabond footpad, murderer and thief as he is, against honest craftsmen who pay their dues and their devotions like Christians. It's great shame to you all to shelter such a rogue.'
    'Your son, I'm told,' said Cadfael mildly, rummaging in his scrip for the little flask of powder dried from oak mistletoe, 'is not dead, nor like to be yet, though the pack of your guests went baying off through the night yelling murder.'
    'He well might have been a corpse,' she snapped. 'And dead or no, either way this is a hanging matter, as well you know. And how if I had died, eh? Whose fault would that have been? There could have been two of us to bury, and the family left ruined into the bargain. Mischief enough for one wretched little minstrel to wreak in one night. But he'll pay for it! Forty days or no, we shall be waiting for him, he won't escape us.'
    'If he ran from here loaded with your goods,' said Cadfael, shaking out a little powder into his palm, 'he certainly brought none of them into the church with him. If he has your one miserly penny on him, that's all.' He turned to the young woman who stood anxiously beside the head of the bed. 'Have you wine there, or milk? Either does. Stir this into a cup of it.'
    She was a small, round, homely girl, this Margery, perhaps twenty years old, with fresh, rosy colouring and a great untidy mass of yellow hair. Her eyes were round and wary. No wonder if she felt lost in this unfamiliar and disrupted household, but she moved quietly and sensibly, and her hands were steady on pitcher and cup.
    'He had time to hide his plunder somewhere,' the old woman insisted grimly. 'Walter was gone above half an hour before Susanna began to wonder, and went to look for him. The wretch could have been over the bridge and into the bushes by then.'
    She accepted the drink that was presented to her lips, and swallowed it down readily. Whatever her dissatisfaction with abbot and abbey, she trusted Cadfael's remedies. The two of them were unlikely to agree on any subject under the sun, but for all that they respected each other. Even this avaricious, formidable old woman, tyrant of her family and terror of her servants, had certain virtues of courage, spirit and honesty that were not to be despised.
    'He swears he never touched your son or your gold,' said Cadfael. 'As I grant he may be lying, so you had better grant that you and yours may be mistaken.'
    She was contemptuous. She pushed away from under her wrinkled neck the skimpy braid of brittle grey hair that irritated her skin. 'Who else could it have been? The only stranger, and with a grudge because I docked him the value of what he broke ...'
    'Of what he says some boisterous young fellow hustled him and caused him to break.'
    'He must take a company as he finds it, wherever he hires himself out. And now I recall,' she said, 'we put him out without those painted toys of his, wooden rings and balls. I want nothing of his, and what he's taken of mine I'll have back before the end. Susanna will give you the playthings for him, and welcome. He shall not be able to say we've matched his thievery.'
    She would give him, scrupulously, what was his, but she would see his neck wrung without a qualm.
    'Be content, you've already broken his head for him. One more blow like that, and you might have had the law crying murder on you. And you'd best listen to me soberly now! One more rage like that, and you'll be your own death. Learn to take life gently and keep your temper, or there'll be a third and worse seizure, and it may well be the last.'
    She looked, for once, seriously thoughtful. Perhaps she had been saying as much to