Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

surely dead for many hours. Nor could he be left lying here while help was sought to move him, or the river might snatch him back again. Cadfael took him under the arms and drew him along through the shallows to a spot where the bank sloped gently down, and there pulled him up into the grassy shelf above. Then he set off at speed, back along the riverside path to the bridge. There he hesitated for a moment which way to take, up into the town to carry the news to Hugh Beringar, or back to the abbey to inform abbot and prior, but it was towards the town he turned. Canon Gerbert could wait for the news that the accuser would never again testify against Elave, in the matter of heresy or any other offence. Not that this death would end the case! On the contrary, it was at the back of Cadfael's mind that an even more sinister shadow was closing over that troublesome young man in a penitent's cell at the abbey. He had no time to contemplate the implications then, but they were there in his consciousness as he hurried across the bridge and in at the town gate, and he liked them not at all. Better, far better, to go first to Hugh, and let him consider the meaning of this death, before other and less reasonable beings got their teeth into it.
    "How long," asked Hugh, looking down at the dead man with bleak attention, "do you suppose he's been in the water?"
    He was asking, not Cadfael, but Madog of the Dead-Boat, summoned hastily from his hut and his coracles by the western bridge. There was very little about the ways of the Severn that Madog did not know; it was his life, as it had been the death of many of his generation in its treacherous flood-times. Given a hint as to where an unfortunate had gone into the stream, Madog would know where to expect the river to give him back, and it was to him everyone turned to find what was lost. He scratched thoughtfully at his bushy beard, and viewed the corpse without haste from head to foot. Already a little bloated, grey of flesh, and oozing water and weed into the grass, Aldwin peered back into the bright sky from imperfectly closed eyes.
    "All last night, certainly. Ten hours it might be, but more likely less, for it would still have been daylight then. Somewhere, I fancy," said Madog, "he was laid up dead until dark, and then cast into the river. And not far from here. Most of the night he's lain here where Cadfael found him. How else would there still be blood to be seen on him? If he had not washed up within a short distance, facedown as you say he was, the river would have bleached him clean."
    "Between here and the bridge?" Hugh suggested, eyeing the little dark, hairy Welshman with respectful attention. Sheriff and waterman, they had worked together before this, and knew each other well.
    "With the level as it is, if he'd gone in above the bridge I doubt if he'd ever have passed it."
    Hugh looked back along the open green plain of the Gaye, lush and sunny, through the fringe of bushes and trees. "Between here and the bridge nothing could happen in open day. This is the first cover to be found beside the water. And though this fellow may be a lightweight, no one would want to carry or drag him very far to reach the river. And if he'd been cast in here, whoever wanted to be quit of him would have made sure he went far enough out for the current to take him down the next reach and beyond. What do you say, Madog?"
    Madog confirmed it with a jerk of his shaggy head.
    "There's been no rain and no dew," said Cadfael thoughtfully. "Grass and ground are dry. If he was hidden until nightfall, it would be close where he was killed. A man needs privacy and cover both to kill and hide his dead. Somewhere there may be traces of blood in the grass, or wherever the murderer bestowed him."
    "We can but look," agreed Hugh, with no great expectation of finding anything. "There's the old mill offers one place where murder could be done without a witness. I'll have them search there. We'll comb this belt of trees, too, though I doubt there'll be anything here to find. And what should this fellow be doing at the mill, or here, for that matter? You've told me how he spent the morning. What he did afterward we may find out from the household up there in the town. They know nothing of this yet. They may well be wondering and enquiring about him by this time, if it's dawned on them yet that he's been out all night. Or perhaps he often was, and no one wondered. I know little enough about him, but I