Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

altars - We couldn't bear it ... We lay together as lovers do!'
    He had said it, it was out, the very worst of it. He sat humbly waiting for condemnation, resigned to whatever might come, even relieved at having shifted the burden to other shoulders. There was no exclamation of horror, but this brother was not so given to prodigal admonishment as that sour one who had frowned on Rannilt.
    'You love this girl?' asked Cadfael after some thought, and very placidly.
    'Yes, I do love her! With all my heart I want her for my wife. But what is there for her if I am brought out of here to trial and the matter goes blackly for me? As they mean it should! Don't let it be known that she has been with me. Her hopes of marriage are wretched enough, a poor servant-girl without folk of her own. I don't want to damage them further. She may still get a decent man, if I ...' He let that die away unfinished. It was no comforting thought.
    'I think,' said Cadfael, 'she would rather have the man she has already chosen. Where mutual love is, I find it hard to consider any place too holy to house it. Our Lady, according to the miracles they tell of her, has been known to protect even the guilty who sinned out of love. You might try a few prayers to her, that will do no harm. Don't trouble too much for what was done under such strong compulsion and pure of any evil intent. And how long, then,' enquired Cadfael, eyeing his penitent tolerantly, 'did you remain hidden there? Brother Anselm was worried about you.'
    'We fell asleep, both of us.' Liliwin shook again at the memory. 'When we roused, it was late and dark, they were singing Compline. And she had to go back all that way into the town in the night!'
    'And you let her go alone?' demanded Cadfael with deceitful indignation.
    'I did not! What do you take me for?' Liliwin had flared and fallen into the snare before he stopped to think, and it was too late to take it back. He sat back with a deflated sigh, stooping his face into deeper shadow.
    'What do I take you for?' Cadfael's smile was hidden by the dusk. 'A bit of a rogue, perhaps, but no worse than the most of us. A bit of a liar when the need's great enough, but who isn't? So you did slip out of here to take the child home. Well, I think the better of you for it, it must have cost you some terrors.' And provided a salutary stiffening of self-respect, he thought but did not say.
    In a small and perversely resentful voice Liliwin asked: 'How did you know?'
    'By the effort it cost you to get the denial out. For you will never make a really good liar, lad, and the more you hate doing it, the worse you'll manage, and it seems to me you've taken strongly against lying these last few days. How did you contrive to get out and in again?'
    Liliwin took heart and told him, how the new clothes had got him past the guards on the heels of the worshippers, and how he had taken Rannilt to her very doorway, and made his way back under cover of the returning lay servants. What had passed between himself and Rannilt on the way he kept to himself, and it did not enter his mind to say any word of what else he had noticed, until Cadfael took him up alertly on that very subject.
    'So you were there, outside the shop, about an hour after Compline?' Night is the favoured time for ridding oneself of enemies, and this was the one night that had passed since Baldwin Peche was last seen alive.
    'Yes, I watched her safe into the courtyard. Only I fret,' said Liliwin, 'over what sort of welcome she may have found. Though her lady did say she might stay the day out. I hope no one was angry with her.'
    'Well, since you were there, did you see ought of anything or anyone stirring about the place?'
    'I did see one man who was out and about,' said Liliwin, remembering. 'It was after Rannilt had gone in. I was standing opposite, in a dark doorway, and Daniel Aurifaber came out through the passage, and went away to the left along the lane. He can't have gone far without turning aside, for when I went back to the Cross and down the Wyle he was gone already, I never saw sign of him after.'
    'Daniel? You're sure it was he?' That young man had been very prompt and present this afternoon, as soon as the usual idlers saw a body being lifted ashore under the bridge. Very prompt and very forward to lead the accusers who made haste to fling this, like the other offences, on the stranger's head, reason or no reason, sanctuary or no sanctuary.
    'Oh, yes, there's no mistaking him.'