Brother Cadfael 08: The Devil's Novice

my writ. Aspley is a patron of the abbey, let the lord abbot be his judge. The man I want is the murderer. You, I know, want to hammer it into that old tyrant's head that he knows his younger son so poorly that mere acquaintances of a few weeks have more faith in the lad, and more understanding of him, than his sire has. And I wish you success. As for me, Cadfael, I'll tell you what troubles me most. I cannot for my life see what cause anyone in these parts, Aspley or Linde or Foriet or who you will, had to wish Peter Clemence out of the world. Shoot him down for being too bold and too ingratiating with the girl? Foolery! The man was leaving, none of them had seen much of him before, none need ever see him again, and the bridegroom's only concern, it seems, was to make his peace with his bride after too sharp reproaches. Kill for such a cause? Not unless a man ran utterly mad. You tell me the girl will flutter her lashes at every admirer, but none has ever died for it. No, there is, there must be, another cause, but for my life I cannot see what it can be.'
    It had troubled Cadfael, too. Minor brawls of one evening over a girl, and over too assiduous compliments to her, not affronts, a mere bubble in one family's hitherto placid life - no, men do not kill for such trivial causes. And no one had ever yet suggested a deeper quarrel with Peter Clemence. His distant kinsmen knew him but slightly, their neighbours not at all. If you find a new acquaintance irritating, but know he remains for only one night, you bear with him tolerantly, and wave him away from your doorsill with a smile, and breathe the more easily thereafter. But you do not skulk in woods where he must pass, and shoot him down.
    But if it was not the man himself, what else could there be to bring him to his death? His errand? He had not said what it was, at least while Isouda was by to hear. And even if he had, what was there in that to make it necessary to halt him? A civil diplomatic mission to two northern lords, to secure their allegiance to Bishop Henry's efforts for peace. A mission Canon Eluard had since pursued successfully, to such happy effect that he had now conducted his king thither to seal the accord, and by this time was accompanying him south again to keep his Christmas in high content. There could be nothing amiss there. Great men have their private plans, and may welcome at one time a visit they repel at another, but here was the proof of the approach, and a reasonably secure Christmas looming.
    Back to the man, and the man was harmless, a passing kinsman expanding and preening himself under a family roof, then passing on.
    No personal grudge, then. So what was left but the common hazard of travel, the sneak-thief and killer loose in the wild places, ready to pull a man from his horse and bludgeon his head to pulp for the clothes he wore, let alone a splendid horse and a handful of jewellery? And that was ruled out, because Peter Clemence had not been robbed, not of a silver buckle, not of a jewelled cross. No one had benefited in goods or gear from his death, even the horse had been turned loose in the mosses with his harness untouched.
    'I have wondered about the horse,' said Hugh, as though he had been following Cadfael's thoughts.
    'I, too. The night after you brought the beast back to the abbey, Meriet called him in his sleep. Did they ever tell you that? Barbary, Barbary - and he whistled after him. His devil whistled back to him, the novices said. I wonder if he came, there in the woods, or if Leoric had to send out men after him later? I think he would come to Meriet. When he found the man dead, his next thought would be for the beast, he went calling him.'
    'The hounds may well have picked up his voice,' said Hugh ruefully, 'before ever they got his scent. And brought his father down on him.'
    'Hugh, I have been thinking. The lad answered you very valiantly when you fetched him up hard against that error in time. But I do not believe it had dawned on him at all what it meant. See, if Meriet had simply blundered upon a lone body dead in the forest, with no sign to turn his suspicions towards any man, all he would then have known was that Clemence had ridden but a short way before he was shot. Then how could the boy know or even guess by whom? But if he chanced upon some other soul trapped as he was, stooped over the dead, or trying to drag him into hiding - someone close and dear to him - then he has not realised, even now, that