Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

threatened, for he has surely killed my father.'
    Elis got his breath, coming out of his stunned wretchedness with a heave that almost lifted him out of his boots. 'I did not! I swear to you I never laid hand on him, never spoke word to him. I would not for any gain have hurt your father, even though he barred you from me. I would have reached you somehow, there would have been a way... You do me terrible wrong!'
    'But you did go to the room where he lay?' Hugh reminded him equably. 'Why?'
    'To make myself known to him, to plead my cause with him, what else? It was the only present hope I had, I could not let it slip through my fingers. I wanted to tell him that I love Melicent, that I am a man of lands and honour, and desire nothing better than to serve her with all my goods and gear. He might have listened! I knew, she had told me, that he was sworn enemy to the Welsh, I knew it was a poor hope, but it was all the hope I had. But I never got the chance to speak. He was deep asleep, and before I ventured to disturb him the good brother came and banished me. This is the truth, and I will swear to it on the altar.'
    'It is truth!' Eliud spoke up vehemently for his friend. He stood close, since Elis had refused a seat, his shoulder against Elis's shoulder for comfort and assurance. He was as pale as if the accusation had been made against him, and his voice was husky and low. 'He was with me in the cloister, he told me of his love, and said he would go to the lord Gilbert and speak to him man to man. I thought it unwise, but he would go. It was not many minutes before I saw him come forth, and Brother Infirmarer making sure he departed. And there was no manner of stealth in his dealings,' insisted Ehud stoutly, 'for he crossed the court straight and fast, not caring who might see him go in.'
    'That may well be true,' agreed Hugh thoughtfully, 'but for all that, even if he went in with no ill intent, and no great hope, once he stood there by the bedside it might come into his mind how easy, and how final, to remove the obstacle, a man sleeping and already very low.'
    'He never would!' cried Eliud. 'His is no such mind.'
    'I did not,' said Elis, and looked helplessly at Melicent, who stared back at him stonily and gave him no aid. 'For God's sake, believe me! I think I could not have touched or roused him, even if there had been no one to send me away. To see a fine, strong man so, quite defenceless...'
    'Yet no one entered there but you,' she said mercilessly.
    'That cannot be proved!' flashed Eliud. 'Brother Infirmarer has said that the way was open, anyone might have gone in.'
    'Nor can it be proved that anyone did,' she said with aching bitterness.
    'But I think it can,' said Brother Cadfael.
    He had all eyes on him in an instant. All this time some morsel of his memory had been worrying at the flaw he could not quite identify. He had picked up the folded sheepskin cloak from the chest, where he had watched Edmund lay it, and there had been something different about it, though he could not think what it could be. And then the encounter with death had driven the matter to the back of his mind, but it had lodged there ever since, like chaff in the throat after eating porridge. And suddenly he had it. The cloak was gone now, gone with Einon ab Ithel back to Wales, but Edmund was there to confirm what he had to say. And so was Eliud, who would know his lord's belongings.
    'When we disrobed and bedded Gilbert Prestcote,' he said, 'the cloak that wrapped him, which belonged to Einon ab Ithel, was folded and laid by, Brother Edmund will remember it, in such case as to leave plain to be seen in the collar a great gold pin that fastened it. When Eliud, here, came to ask me to show him the room and hand out his lord's cloak to him and I did so, the cloak was folded as before, but the pin was gone. Small wonder if we forgot the matter, seeing what else we found. But I knew there was something I should have noted, and now I have recalled what it was.'
    'It is truth!' cried Eliud, his face brightening eagerly. 'I never thought! And I have let my lord go without it, never a word said. I fastened the collar of the cloak with it myself, when we laid him in the litter, for the wind blew cold. But with this upset, I never thought to look for it again. Here is Elis and has never been out of men's sight since he came from the infirmary, ask all here! If he took it, he has it on him still. And if he has it not, then someone else has been