Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

and exhausted with travelling,' said Hugh wretchedly. 'No blame to you, my lord, if he had sunk too far to climb back again.'
    'Nevertheless, I had a mission,' said Einon. 'My charge was to bring you one man, and take another back from you in exchange. This matter is void, and cannot be completed.'
    'So you did bring him, living, and living you delivered him over. It is in our hands his death came. There is no bar but you should take your man and go, according to the agreement. Your part was done, and done well.'
    'Not well enough. The man is dead. My prince does not countenance the exchange of a dead man for one living,' said Einon haughtily. 'I split no hairs, and will have none split in my favour. Nor will Owain Gwynedd. We have brought you, however innocently, a dead man. I will not take a live one for him. This exchange cannot go forward. It is null and void.'
    Brother Cadfael, though with one ear pricked and aware of these meticulous exchanges, which were no more than he had foreseen, had taken up the small lamp, shielding it from draughts with his free hand, and held it close over the dead face. No very arduous or harsh departure. The man had been deeply asleep and very much enfeebled, to slip over a threshold would be all too easy. Not, however, unless the threshold were greased or had too shaky a doorstone. This mute and motionless face, growing greyer as he gazed, was a face familiar to him for some years, fallen and aged though it might be. He searched it closely, moving the lamp to illumine every plane and every cavernous hollow. The pitted places had their bluish shadows, but the full lips, drawn back a little, should not have shown the same livid tint, nor the pattern of the large, strong teeth within, and the staring nostrils should not have gaped so wide and shown the same faint bruising.
    'You will do what seems to you right,' said Hugh at his back, 'but I, for my part, make plain that you are free to depart in company as you came, and take both your young men with you. Send back mine, and I consider the terms will have been faithfully observed. Or if Owain Gwynedd still wants a meeting, so much the better, I will go to him on the border, wherever he may appoint, and take my hostage from him there.'
    'Owain will speak his own mind,' said Einon, 'when I have told him what has happened. But without his word I must leave Elis ap Cynan unredeemed, and take Eliud back with me. The price due for Elis has not been paid, not to my satisfaction. He stays here.'
    'I am afraid,' said Cadfael, turning abruptly from the bed, 'Elis will not be the only one constrained to remain here.' And as they fixed him with two blank and questioning stares: 'There is more here than you know. Hugh said well, there was no mortal harm to him, all he needed was time, rest and peace of mind, and he would have come back to himself. An older self before his time, perhaps, but he would have come. This man did not simply drown in his own weakness and weariness. There was a hand that held him under.'
    'You are saying,' said Hugh, after a bleak silence of dismay and doubt, 'that this was murder?'
    'I am saying so. There are the signs on him clear.'
    'Show us,' said Hugh.
    He showed them, one intent face stooped on either side to follow the tracing of his finger. 'It would not take much pressure, there would not be anything to be called a struggle. But see what signs there are. These marks round nose and mouth, faint though they are, are bruises he had not when we bedded him. His lips are plainly bruised, and if you look closely you will see the shaping of his teeth in the marks on the upper lip. A hand was clamped over his face to cut off breath. I doubt if he awoke, in his deep sleep and low state it would not take long.'
    Einon looked at the furnishings of the bed, and asked, low, voiced: 'What was used to muffle nose and mouth, then? These covers?'
    'There's no knowing yet. I need better light and time enough. But as sure as God sees us, the man was murdered.' Neither of them raised a word to question further. Einon had experience of many kinds of dying, and Hugh had implicit trust by now in Brother Cadfael's judgement. They looked wordlessly at each other for a long, thinking while.
    'The brother here is right,' said Einon then. 'I cannot take away any of my men who may by the very furthest cast have any part in this killing. Not until truth is shown openly can they return home.'
    'Of all your party,' said Hugh, 'you, my lord, and