Brother Cadfael 11: An Excellent Mystery

downpour continues - for why should you drown a second time when we have our quarry already in safe hold? But as soon as it stops, you and I will go and confront Master Heriet with this pretty thing, and see if we cannot prise more out of him this time than a child's tale of gaping at the wonders of Winchester.'
    Ever since dinner Brother Cadfael had been dividing his time between the mill and the gatehouse, forewarned of possible trouble by the massing of the clouds long before the rain began. When the storm broke he took refuge in the mill, from which vantage-point he could keep an eye on both the pond and its outlet to the brook, and the road from the town, in case Madog should have found it advisable to land his charges for shelter in Frankwell, rather than completing the long circuit of the town, in which case he would come afoot to report as much.
    The mill's busy season was over, it was quiet and dim within, no sound but the monotonous dull drumming of the rain. It was there that Madog found him, a drowned rat of a Madog, alone. He had come by the path outside the abbey enclave, by which the town customers approached with their grain to be milled, rather than enter at the gatehouse. He loomed shadowy against the open doorway, and stood mute, dangling long, helpless arms. No man's strength could fight off the powers of weather and storm and thunder. Even his long endurance had its limits.
    'Well?' said Cadfael, chilled with foreboding.
    'Not well, but very ill.' Madog came slowly within, and what light there was showed the dour set of his face. 'Anything to astonish me, you said! I have had my fill of astonishment, and I bring it straight to you, as you wished. God knows,' he said, wringing out beard and hair, and shaking rivulets of rain from his shoulders, 'I'm at a loss to know what to do about it. If you had foreknowledge, you may be able to see a way forward - I'm blind!' He drew deep breath, and told it all in words blunt and brief. 'The rain alone would not have troubled us. The lightning struck a tree, heaved it at us as we passed, and split us asunder. The boat's gone piecemeal down the river, where the shreds will fetch up there's no guessing. And those two brothers of yours…'
    'Drowned?' said Cadfael in a stunned whisper.
    'The older one, Marescot, yes…Dead, at any rate. I got him out, the young one helping, though him I had to loose, I could not grapple with both. But I could get no breath back into Marescot. There was barely time for him to drown, the shock more likely stopped his heart, frail as he was - the cold, even the noise of the thunder. However it was, he's dead. There's an end. As for the other - what is there I could tell you of the other, that you do not know?'
    He was searching Cadfael's face with close and wondering attention. 'No, there's no astonishment in it for you, is there? You knew it all before. Now what do we do?'
    Cadfael stirred out of his stillness, gnawed a cautious lip, and stared out into the rain. The worst had passed, the sky was growing lighter. Far along the river valley the diminishing rolls of thunder followed the foul brown flood-water downstream.
    'Where have you left them?'
    'On the far side of Frankwell, not a mile from the bridge, there's a hut on the bank, the fishermen use it. We fetched up close by, and I got them into cover there. We'll need a litter to bring Marescot home, but what of the other?'
    'Nothing of the other! The other's gone, drowned, the Severn has taken him. And no alarm, no litter, not yet. Bear with me, Madog, for this is a desperate business, but if we tread carefully now we may come through it unscathed. Go back to them, and wait for me there. I'm coming with you as far as the town, then you go on to the hut, and I'll come to you there as soon as I can. And never a word of this, never to any, for the sake of us all.'
    The rain had stopped by the time Cadfael turned in at the gate of Hugh's house. Every roof glistened, every gutter streamed, as the grey remnants of cloud cleared from a sun now bright and benevolent, all its coppery malignancy gone down-river with the storm.
    'Hugh is still at the castle,' said Aline, surprised and pleased as she rose to meet him. 'He has a visitor with him there - Nicholas Harnage is come back, he says with grim news, but he did not stay to confide it to me.'
    'He? He's back?' Cadfael was momentarily distracted, even alarmed. 'What can he have found, I wonder? And how wide will he have spread it