Brother Cadfael 08: The Devil's Novice

Meriet has a great store of love to give,' said Brother Cadfael gravely, 'and you would not allow him to give much of it to you. He has given it elsewhere, where it was not repelled, however it may have been undervalued. Have I to say to you again, that you have two sons?'
    'No!' cried Leoric in a muted howl of protest and outrage, towering taller in his anger, head and shoulders above Cad-fael's square, solid form. 'That I will not hear! You presume! It is impossible!'
    'Impossible for your heir and darling, yet instantly believable in his brother? In this world all men are fallible, and all things are possible.'
    'But I tell you I saw him hiding his dead man, and sweating over it. If he had happened on him innocently by chance he would not have had cause to conceal the death, he would have come crying it aloud.'
    'Not if he happened innocently on someone dear to him as brother or friend stooped over the same horrid task. You believe what you saw, why should not Meriet also believe what he saw? You put your own soul in peril to cover up what you believed he had done, why should not he do as much for another? You promised silence and concealment at a price - and that protection offered to him was just as surely protection for another - only the price was still to be exacted from Meriet. And Meriet did not grudge it. Of his own will he paid it - that was no mere consent to your terms, he wished it and tried to be glad of it, because it bought free someone he loved. Do you know of any other creature breathing that he loves as he loves his brother?'
    'This is madness!' said Leoric, breathing hard like a man who has run himself half to death. 'Nigel was the whole day with the Lindes, Roswitha will tell you, Janyn will tell you. He had a falling-out to make up with the girl, he was off to her early in the morning, and came home only late in the evening. He knew nothing of that day's business, he was aghast when he heard of it.'
    'From Linde's manor to that place in the forest is no long journey for a mounted man,' said Cadfael relentlessly. 'How if Meriet found him busy and bloodied over Clemence's body, and said to him: Go, get clean away from here, leave him to me - go and be seen elsewhere all this day. I will do what must be done. What then?'
    'Are you truly saying,' demanded Leoric in a hoarse whisper, 'that Nigel killed the man? Such a crime against hospitality, against kinship, against his nature?'
    'No,' said Cadfael. 'But I am saying that it may be true that Meriet did so find him, just as you found Meriet. Why should what was such plain proof to you be any less convincing to Meriet? Had he not overwhelming reason to believe his brother guilty, to fear him guilty, or no less terrible, to dread that he might be convicted in innocence? For bear this ever in mind, if you could be mistaken in giving such instant credence to what you saw, so could Meriet. For those lost six hours still stick in my craw, and how to account for them I don't yet know.'
    'Is it possible?' whispered Leoric, shaken and wondering. 'Have I so wronged him? And my own part - must I not go straight to Hugh Beringar and let him judge? In God's name, what are we to do, to set right what can be righted?'
    'You must go, rather, to Abbot Radulfus's dinner,' said Cadfael, 'and be such a convivial guest as he expects, and tomorrow you must marry your son as you have planned. We are still groping in the dark, and have no choice but to wait for enlightenment. Think of what I have said, but say no word of it to any other. Not yet. Let them have their wedding day in peace.' But for all that he was certain then, in his own mind, that it would not be in peace.
    Isouda came to find him in his workshop in the herbarium. He took one look at her, forgot his broodings, and smiled. She came in the austere but fine array she had thought suitable for dining with abbots, and catching the smile and the lighting of Cadfael's eyes, she relaxed into her impish grin and opened her cloak wide, putting off the hood to let him admire her.
    'You think it will do?' Her hair, too short to braid, was bound about her brow by an embroidered ribbon fillet, just such a one as Meriet had hidden in his bed in the dortoir, and below the confinement it clustered in a thick mane of curls on her neck. Her dress was an over-tunic of deep blue, fitting closely to the hip and there flowing out in gentle folds, over a long-sleeved and high-necked cotte of a pale rose-coloured wool;