Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

in there before him and taken it. My foster brother is no thief and no murderer, but if you doubt, you have your remedy.'
    'What Cadfael says is truth,' said Edmund. 'The pin was there plain to be seen. If it is gone, then someone went in and took it.'
    Elis had caught the fierce glow of hope, in spite of the unchanging bitterness and grief of Melicent's face. 'Strip me!' he demanded, glittering. 'Search my body! I won't endure to be thought thief and murderer both.'
    In justice to him, rather than having any real doubts in the matter, Hugh took him at his word, but allowed only Cadfael and Edmund to be witnesses with him in the borrowed cell where Elis, with sweeping, arrogant, hurt gestures, tore off his clothes and let them fall about him, until he stood naked with braced feet astride and arms outspread, and dragged disdainful fingers painfully through his thick thatch of curls and shook his head violently to show there was nothing made away there. Now that he was safe from the broken, embittered stare of Melicent's eyes the tears he had defied came treacherously into his own, and he blinked and shook them proudly away.
    Hugh let him cool gradually and in considerate silence.
    'Are you content?' the boy demanded stiffly, when he had his voice well in rein.
    'Are you?' said Hugh, and smiled.
    There was a brief, almost consoling silence. Then Hugh said mildly: 'Cover yourself, then. Take your time.' And while Elis was dressing, with hands that shook now in reaction: 'You do understand that I must hold you in close guard, you and your foster, brother and the others alike. As at this moment, you are no more in suspicion than many who belong here within the pale, and will not be let out of it until I know to the last moment where they spent this morn and noon. This is no more than a beginning, and you but one of many.'
    'I do understand,' said Elis and wavered, hesitant to ask a favour. 'Need I be separated from Eliud?'
    'You shall have Eliud,' said Hugh.
    When they went out again to those who still waited in the anteroom the two women were on their feet, and plainly longing to withdraw. Sybilla had but half her mind here in support of her stepdaughter, the better half was with her son; and if she had been a faithful and dutiful wife to her older husband and mourned him truly now after her fashion, love was much too large a word for what she had felt for him and barely large enough for what she felt for the boy he had given her. Sybilla's thoughts were with the future, not the past.
    'My lord,' she said, 'you know where we may be found for the days to come. Let me take my daughter away now, we have things which must be done.'
    'At your pleasure, madam,' said Hugh. 'You shall not be troubled more than is needful.' And he added only: 'But you should know that the matter of this missing pin remains. There has been more than one intruder into your husband's privacy. Bear it in mind.'
    'Very gladly I leave it all in your hands,' said Sybilla fervently. And forth she went, her hand imperative at Melicent's elbow. They passed close by Elis in the doorway, and his starving stare fastened on the girl's face. She passed him by without a glance, she even drew aside her skirts for fear they should brush him in departing. He was too young, too open, too simple to understand that more than half the hatred and revulsion she felt for him belonged rather to herself, and her dread that she had gone far towards desiring the death she now so desperately repented.
    Chapter Seven.
    In the death chamber, with the door closed fast, Hugh Beringar and Brother Cadfael stood beside Gilbert Prestcote's body and turned back the brychan and sheet to the sunken breast. They had brought in lamps to set close where they would burn steadily and cast a strong light on the dead face. Cadfael took the small saucer lamp in his hand and moved it slowly across the bruised mouth and nostrils and the grizzled beard, to catch every angle of vision and pick out every mote of dust or thread.
    'No matter how feeble, no matter how deep asleep, a man will fight as best as he can for his breath, and whatever is clamped over his face, unless so hard and smooth it lacks any surface pile, he will inhale. And so did this one.' The dilated nostrils had fine hairs within, a trap for tiny particles of thread. 'Do you see colour there?' In an almost imperceptible current of air a gossamer wisp quivered, taking the light.
    'Blue,' said Hugh, peering close, and his breath