Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

might not kill, given the driving need? A proper, upstanding, impudent, open hearted lad, though,' said Sister Magdalen, who had never repented anything she did, 'one that I might have fancied, when my fancying days were.'
    Cadfael went to supper in the refectory, and then to Collations in the chapter-house, which he often missed if he had vulnerable preparations brewing in his workshop. In thinking over such slight gains as he had made in his quest for the truth, he had got nowhere, and it was good to put all that aside and listen with good heart to the lives of saints who had shrugged off the cares of the world to let in the promises of a world beyond, and viewed earthly justice as no more than a futile shadow, play obscuring the absolute justice of heaven, for which no man need wait longer than the life, span of mortality.
    They were past St Gregory and approaching St Edward the Confessor and St Benedict himself, the middle days of March, and the blessed works of spring beginning, with everything hopeful and striving ahead. A good time. Cadfael had spent the hours before Sister Magdalen came digging and clearing the fresh half of his mint bed, to give it space to proliferate new and young and green, rid of the old and debilitated. He emerged from the chapter-house feeling renewed, and it came at first as no more than a mild surprise when Brother Edmund came seeking him before Compline, looking almost episcopal as he brandished in one hand what at first sight might have been a crozier, but when lowered to the ground reached no higher than his armpit, and was manifestly a crutch.
    'I found it lying in a corner of the stable, yard. Anion's! Cadfael, he did not come for his supper tonight and he is nowhere in the infirmary, neither in the common room, nor in his bed, nor in the chapel. Have you seen him anywhere this day?'
    'Not since morning,' said Cadfael, thinking back with something of an effort from the peace of the chapter, house. 'He came to dinner at midday?'
    'So he did, but I find no man who has seen him since. I've looked for him everywhere, asked every man, and found nothing more of him than this, discarded. Anion is gone! Oh, Cadfael, I doubt he has fled his mortal guilt. Why else should he run from us?'
    It was well past Compline when Hugh Beringar entered his own hall, empty, handed and discontented from his enquiries among the Welshmen, and found Brother Cadfael sitting by the fireside with Aline, waiting for him with a clouded brow.
    'What brings you here so late?' wondered Hugh. 'Out without leave again?' It had been known to happen, and the recollection of one such expedition, before the austere days of Abbot Radulfus, was an old and private joke between them.
    'That I am not,' said Cadfael firmly. 'There's a piece of unexpected news even Prior Robert thought had better come to your ears as soon as possible. We had in our infirmary, with a broken leg mending and all but ready to leave us, a fellow named Anion. I doubt if the name means much to you, it was not you had to do with his brother. But do you remember a brawl in the town, two years ago now, when a gatekeeper on the bridge was knifed? Prestcote hanged the Welshman that did it, well, whether he did it or not, and naturally he'd say he didn't, but he was blind drunk at the time and probably never knew the truth of it himself. However it was, he was hanged for it. A young fellow who used to trade in fleeces to the town market from somewhere in Mechain. Well, this Anion is his brother born the wrong side of the brychan, when the father was doing the trading, and there was no bad blood between the two. They got to know each other and there was a fondness.'
    'If ever I knew of this,' said Hugh, drawing up to the fire with him, 'I had forgot it.'
    'So had not Anion. He's said little, but it's known he's nursed his grudge, and there's enough Welsh in him to make him look upon revenge as a duty, if ever the chance came his way.'
    'And what of him now?' Hugh was studying his friend's face intently, foreseeing what was to come. 'Are you telling me this fellow was within the pale now, when the sheriff was brought there helpless?'
    'He was, and only a door ajar between him and his enemy, if so he held him, as rumour says he did. Not the only one with a grudge, either, so that's no proof of anything more than this, that the opportunity was there. But tonight there's another mark against him. The man's gone. He did not come for his supper, he's not in his