Brother Cadfael 13: The Rose Rent

thoughtful silence for a long moment. Then he again covered the dead face, and turned to Cadfael.
    "Brother Rhun has told me where he was found, and how, but he does not know who the man is. Do you?"
    "Yes, Father. His name is Bertred, he is Mistress Perle's foreman weaver. I saw him yesterday out with the sheriff's men, helping in the hunt for the lady."
    "Who has not been found," said Radulfus.
    "No. This is the third day of searching for her, but she has not been found."
    "And her man is found dead." There was no need to point out to him implications which were already plain. "Are you satisfied that he drowned?"
    "Father, I need to consider that. I think he did, but also he has suffered a blow to the head. I would like to examine his body further."
    "So, I suppose, would the lord sheriff," said the abbot briskly. "I'll send to him at once, and keep the body here for the present. Do you know if he could swim?"
    "No, Father, but there are few born here who can't. His kin or his master will tell us."
    "Yes, we must also send to them. But perhaps later, after Hugh has seen him, and made what you and he between you can of the matter." And to the bearers of the litter, who had laid it down meanwhile and stood waiting silently, a little apart, he said: "Take him to the mortuary chapel. You had best strip him and lay him decently. Light candles for him. However and for whatever cause he died, he is our mortal brother. I'll send a groom to look for Hugh Beringar. Wait with me, Cadfael, until he comes. I want to know everything you have gathered concerning this poor girl who is lost."
    In the mortuary chapel they had laid Bertred's naked body on the stone bier, and covered him with a linen cloth. His sodden clothes lay loosely folded aside, with the boots they had drawn from his feet. The light being dim in there, they had also provided candles on tall holders, so that they could be placed wherever they gave the best light. They stood close about the slab, Abbot Radulfus, Brother Cadfael and Hugh Beringar. It was the abbot who drew down the linen and uncovered the dead, who lay with his hands duly crossed on his breast, drawn out very straight and dignified. Someone had reverently closed the eyes Cadfael remembered as half-open, like someone just waking, too late ever to complete the awakening.
    A youthful body and a handsome, perhaps slightly over-muscled for perfection. Not much past twenty, surely, and blessed with features regular and shapely, again perhaps a shade over-abundant in flesh or under-provided with bone. The Welsh are accustomed to seeing in the faces of neighbours the strong solidity and permanence of bone, are sensitive to loss where they see it pared down over-cushioned in others. Nevertheless, a very comely young man. Face and neck and shoulders, and from elbow to fingertips, he was tanned by outdoor sun and wind, though the brown was dulled and sad now.
    "Not a mark on him," said Hugh, looking him over from head to feet, "barring that knock on his forehead. And that surely caused him nothing worse than a headache."
    High near the hairline the skin was certainly broken, but it seemed no more than a glancing blow. Cadfael took up the head, with its thick thatch of brown hair plastered to the broad forehead, between his hands, and felt about the skull with probing fingers. "He has another dint, here, on the side, here in his hair, above the ear. Something with a long, sharp edge - through all this thickness of hair it made a scalp wound. That could have knocked the wits out of him for some time, perhaps, but not killed. No, he certainly drowned."
    "What could the man have been doing?" asked the abbot, pondering. "At that spot on that shore, in the night? There's nothing there, no path that leads anywhere, no house to he visited. Hard to see what business a man could possibly have there in the dark."
    "The business he'd been on all yesterday," said Hugh, "is the hunt for his mistress. He was in Mistress Perle's service, of her household, he offered his help, and so far as I saw he gave it, unsparingly, and in good earnest. How if he was still bent on continuing the search?"
    "By night? And there? There is nothing there but open meadow and a few groves of trees," said Radulfus, "not one cottage for some distance, once past our border, nowhere that a stolen woman could be hidden. Even if he had been found on the opposite bank it would have been more believable, at least that gives access to the town and the