Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

drawn back unless someone had made entry from without?
    Cadfael set his hand to the closed but unbarred door, eased it open by a hand's breadth, and stiffened to listen with an ear to the chink. Nothing but silence from within. He opened it a little wider, slid quietly through, and eased the door back again behind him. The warm scents of flour and grain tickled his nostrils. He had a nose sharp as fox or hound, and trusted to it in the dark, and there was another scent here, very faint, utterly familiar. In his own workshop he was unaware of it from long and constant acquaintance, but in any other place it pricked his consciousness with a particular insistence, as of a stolen possession of his own, and a valued one, that had no business to stray. A man cannot be in and out of a workshop saturated with years of harvesting herbs, and not carry the scent of them about in his garments. Cadfael froze with his back against the closed door, and waited.
    The faintest stir reached his ears, as of a foot carefully placed in dust and husk that could not choose but rustle, however cautiously trodden. Somewhere above him, on the upper floor. So the hatch was open, and someone was leaning there, carefully shifting his stance to drop through. Cadfael moved obligingly in that direction, to give him encouragement. Next moment a body dropped neatly behind him, and an arm clamped about his neck, bracing him back against his assailant, while its fellow embraced him about chest and arms, pinning him close. He stood slack within the double grip, and continued to breathe easily, and with wind to spare.
    "Not badly done," he said with mild approval. "But you have no nose, son. What are four senses, without the fifth?"
    "Have I not?" breathed Ninian's voice in his ear, shaken by a quaver of suppressed laughter. "You came in at the door so like a waft of wind through your eaves, I was back there with that oil I had to abandon. I hope it took no harm." Hard and vehement young arms hugged Cadfael close, let him loose gently, and turned him about at arm's length, as though to view him, where there was no light to see more than a shape, a shadow. "I owed you a fright. You had the wits scared out of me when you eased the door ajar," said Ninian reproachfully.
    "I was none too easy in my own mind," said Cadfael, "when I found the bar out of its socket. Lad, you take far too many chances. For God's sake and Sanan's, what are you doing here?"
    "I could as well ask you that," said Ninian. "And might get the same answer, too. I ventured here to see if there was anything more to be found, though after so many days, heaven knows why there should be. But how can any of us be easy until we know? I know I never laid hands on the man, but what comfort is that when everyone else lays it at my door? I should be loath to leave here until it's shown I'm no murderer, even if there were nothing more in it than that, but there is. There's Diota! Wanting the chance to get at me, how long before they begin to turn on her, if not for murder, then for treason in helping me to escape the hunt in the south, and cover my guilt here?"
    "If you think Hugh Beringar has any ill intent against Mistress Hammet, or will suffer anyone else to make her a victim," said Cadfael firmly, "you may put that out of your mind at once. Well, now, since we're both here, and the time and place as good as any, we may as well sit down somewhere in the warmest corner we can find, and put together whatever we have to share. Two heads may make more of it than my one has been able to do. There should be plenty of sacks here somewhere - better than nothing ..."
    Evidently Ninian had been here long enough to know his way about, for he took Cadfael by the arm, and drew him confidently into a corner where a pile of clean, coarse bags was folded and stacked against the timber wall. They settled themselves close there, flank by flank for warmth, and Ninian drew round them both a thick cloak which had certainly never been in Benet's possession.
    "Now," said Cadfael briskly, "I should first tell you that this very morning I've spoken with Sanan, and I know what you and she are planning. Probably she's told you as much. I'm half in and half out of your confidence and hers, and if I'm to be of any help to you in putting an end to this vexatious business that holds you here, you had better let me in fully. I do not believe you guilty of the priest's death, and I have no reason in the world to stand in your