Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

There are those who come brand, new into the new day and have to rediscover their griefs. Eliud was no such person. He nursed his griefs, unsleeping, into the small hours, with the chief of them fathoms deep under his protecting arm.
    Chapter Eight.
    Anion the cattleman, for want of calf or lamb to keep his hand in within the abbey enclave, had taken to spending much of his time in the stables, where at least there was horseflesh to be tended and enjoyed. Very soon now he would be fit to be sent back to the grange where he served, but he could not go until Brother Edmund discharged him. He had a gifted hand with animals, and the grooms were on familiar and friendly terms with him.
    Brother Cadfael approached him somewhat sidelong, unwilling to startle or dismay him too soon. It was not difficult. Horses and mules had their sicknesses and injuries, as surely as men, and called frequently for remedies from Cadfael's store. One of the ponies the lay servants used as packhorses had fallen lame and was in need of Cadfael's rubbing oils to treat the strain, and he brought the flask himself to the stable, yard, as good as certain he would find Anion there. It was easy enough to entice the practised stockman into taking over the massage, and to linger to watch and admire as he worked his thick but agile fingers into the painful muscles. The pony stood like a statue for him, utterly trusting. That in itself had something eloquent to say.
    'You spend less and less time in the infirmary now,' said Cadfael, studying the dour, dark profile under the fall of straight black hair. 'Very soon we shall be losing you at this rate. You're as fast on a crutch as many of us are with two sturdy legs that never suffered a break. I fancy you could throw the prop away anytime you pleased.'
    'I'm told to wait,' said Anion shortly. 'Here I do what I'm told. It's some men's fate in life, brother, to take orders.'
    'Then you'll be glad to be back with your cattle again, where they do obedience to you for a change.'
    'I tend and care for them and mean them well,' said Anion, 'and they know it.'
    'So does Edmund to you, and you know it.' Cadfael sat down on a saddle beside the stooping man, to come down to his level and view him on equal terms. Anion made no demur, it might even have been the faint shadow of a smile that touched his firmly, closed mouth. Not at all an ill-looking man, and surely no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. 'You know the thing that happened there in the infirmary,' said Cadfael. 'You may well have been the most active man in there that dinnertime. Though I doubt if you stayed long after you'd eaten. You're over-young to be shut in there with the ailing old. I've asked them all, did they hear or see any man go in there, by stealth or any other way, but they slept after they'd eaten. That's for the aged, not for you. You'd be up and about while they drowsed.'
    'I left them snoring,' said Anion, turning the full stare of his deep, set eyes on Cadfael. He reached for a rag to wipe his hands, and rose nimbly enough, the still troublesome leg drawn up after him.
    'Before we were all out of the refectory? And the Welsh lads led in to their repast?'
    'While it was all quiet. I reckon you brothers were in the middle of your meal. Why?' demanded Anion pointblank.
    'Because you might be a good witness, what else? Do you know of anyone who made his way into the infirmary about that time that you left it? Did you see or hear aught to give you pause? Any man lurking who should not have been there? The sheriff had his enemies,' said Cadfael firmly, 'like the rest of us mortals, and one of them deadly. Whatever he owed is paid now, or shortly to pay. God send none of us may take with him a worse account.'
    'Amen!' said Anion. 'When I came forth from the infirmary, brother, I met no man, I saw no man, friend or enemy, anywhere near that door.'
    'Where were you bound? Down here to view the Welsh horses? If so,' explained Cadfael easily, warding off the sharp glance Anion gave him, 'you'd be a witness if any of those lads went off and left his fellows about that time.'
    Anion shrugged that off disdainfully. 'I never came near the stables, not then. I went through the garden and down to the brook. With a west wind it smells of the hills down there,' said Anion. 'I grow sick of the shut-in smell of tired old men, and their talk that goes round and round.'
    'Like mine!' said Cadfael tolerantly, and rose from the saddle. His eye