Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

his dutiful shadow at his heels. Of the interruptions to his ordered, well-tuned life within here, it seemed, there was to be no end. He had caught an unpleasant murmur of 'Murder!' as he approached, and demanded in dismay and displeasure what had happened to bring this inflamed mob into the great court. A dozen voices volunteered to tell him, disregarding how little they themselves knew about it.
    'Father Prior, we saw our fellow-townsman carried in here, dead ...'
    'No one had seen him since yesterday ...'
    'My neighbour and tenant, the locksmith,' cried Daniel. 'Father robbed and assaulted, and now Master Peche fetched in dead!'
    The prior held up a silencing hand, frowning them down. 'Let one speak. Brother Cadfael, do you know what this is all about?'
    Cadfael saw fit to tell the bare facts, without mention of any speculations that might be going on in his own mind. He took care to be audible to them all, though he doubted if they would be setting any limits to their own speculations, however careful he might be. 'Madog here has found the man's boat overturned, down-river past the castle,' he concluded. 'And we have sent to notify the deputy-sheriff, the matter will be in his hands now. He should be here very soon.'
    That was for the more excitable ears. There were some wild youngsters among them, the kind who are always at leisure to follow up every sensation, who might well lose their heads if they sighted their scapegoat. For the implication was already there, present in the very air. Walter robbed and battered, now his tenant dead, and all evil must light upon the same head.
    'If the unfortunate man drowned in the river, having fallen from his boat,' said Robert firmly, 'there can be no possibility of murder. That is a foolish and wicked saying.'
    They began to bay from several directions. 'Father Prior, Master Peche was not a foolhardy man ...'
    'He knew the Severn from his childhood ...'
    'So do many,' said Robert crisply, 'who fall victim to it in the end, men no more foolhardy than he. You must not attribute evil to what is natural misfortune.'
    'And why should natural misfortune crowd so on one house?' demanded an excited voice from the rear. 'Baldwin was a guest the night Walter was struck down and his coffer emptied.'
    'And next-door neighbour, and liked to nose out whatever was hidden. And who's to say he didn't stumble on some proof that would be very bad news to the villain that did the deed, and lurks here swearing to his innocence?'
    It was out, they took it up on all sides. 'That's how it was! Baldwin found out something the wretch wouldn't have been able to deny!'
    'And he's killed the poor man to stop his mouth ...'
    'A knock on the head and souse into the river ...'
    'No trick to turn his boat loose for the river to take down after him ...'
    Cadfael was relieved to see Hugh Beringar riding briskly in at the gatehouse then with a couple of officers behind him. This was getting all too predictable. When men have elected a villain, and one from comfortably outside their own ranks, without roots or kin, they need feel nothing for him, he is hardly a man, has no blood to be shed or heart to be broken, and whatever else needs a scapegoat will be laid on him heartily and in the conviction of righteousness. Nor will reason have much say in the matter. But he raised his voice powerfully to shout them down: 'The man you accuse is absolutely clear of this, even if it were murder. He is in sanctuary here, dare not leave the precinct, and has not left it. The king's officers wait for him outside, as you all know. Be ashamed to make such senseless charges!'
    He said afterwards, rather resignedly than bitterly, that it was a precise measure of Liliwin's luck that he should appear innocently from the cloister at that moment, bewildered and shocked by the incursion of a dead body into the pale, and coming anxiously to enquire about it, but utterly ignorant of any connection it might be thought to have with him. He came hastening out of the west walk, solitary, apart, marked at once by two or three of the crowd. A howl went up, hideously triumphant. Liliwin took it like a great blast of cold wind in his face, shrank and faltered, and his countenance, healing into smooth comeliness these last two days, collapsed suddenly into the disintegration of terror.
    The wildest of the young bloods moved fast, hallooing, but Hugh Beringar moved faster. The raw-boned grey horse, his favourite familiar, clattered nimbly