Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

know he lived there with his master's family. But beyond the mill, upstream - no, the whole stretch of the Gaye lies open. There's nothing from here on could give shelter to a killing. Nothing until the bridge. But surely, if the man was killed by daylight, and left in the bushes there even a couple of hours until dark, he might be found before he could be put into the river."
    "Would that matter?" wondered Cadfael. "A little more risky, perhaps, but still there'd be nothing to show who slipped the dagger into his back. Sending him downriver does but confuse place and time. And perhaps that was important to whoever did it."
    "Well, I'll take the news up to the wool merchants myself, and see what they can tell me." Hugh looked round to where his sergeant and four men of the castle garrison stood a little apart, waiting for his orders in attentive silence. "Will can see the body brought up after us. The fellow has no other home, to my knowledge. They'll need to take care of his burying. Come back with me, Cadfael. We'll at least take a look among the trees by the bridge, and under the arch."
    They set off side by side, out of the fringe of trees into the abbey wheatfields and past the abandoned mill. They had reached the waterside path that hemmed the kitchen gardens when Hugh asked, slanting a brief, oblique, and burdened smile along his shoulder: "How long did you say that heretical pilgrim of yours was out at liberty yesterday? While Canon Gerbert's grooms went puffing busily up and down looking for him to no purpose?"
    It was asked quite lightly and currently, but Cadfael understood its significance, and knew that Hugh had already grasped it equally well. "From about an hour before Nones until Vespers," he said, and clearly heard the unacknowledged but unmistakable reserve and concern in his own voice.
    "And then he walked into the enclave in all conscious innocence. And has not accounted for where he spent those hours?"
    "No one has yet asked him," said Cadfael simply.
    "Good! Then do my work for me there, will you? Tell no one in the abbey yet about this death, and let no one question Elave until I do it myself. I'll be with you before the morning's out, and we'll talk privately with the abbot before anyone else shall know what's happened. I want to see this lad for myself, and hear what he has to say for himself before any other gets at him. For you know, don't you," said Hugh with detached sympathy, "what his inquisitors are going to say?"
    Cadfael left them to their search of the grove of trees and the bushes that cloaked the path down to the riverside, and made his way back to the abbey, though with some reluctance at abandoning the hunt even for a few hours. He was well aware of the immediate implications of Aldwin's death, and uneasily conscious that he did not know Elave well enough to discount them out of hand. Instinctive liking is not enough to guarantee any man's integrity, let alone his innocence of murder, where he had been basely wronged, and was by chance presented with the opportunity to avenge his injury. A high and hasty temper, which undoubtedly he had, might do the rest almost before he could think at all, let alone think better of it.
    But in the back!
    No, that Cadfael could not imagine. Had there been such an encounter it would have been face-to-face. And what of the dagger? Did Elave even possess such a weapon? A knife for all general purposes he must possess; no sensible traveller would go far without one. But he would not be carrying it on him in the abbey, and he certainly had not taken the time to go and collect it from his belongings in the guest hall, before hurrying out at the gate after Fortunata. The porter could testify to that. He had come rushing straight up from the chapter house without so much as a glance aside. And if by unlikely chance he had had it on him at that hearing, then it must be with him now in his locked cell. Or if he had discarded it, Hugh's sergeants would do their best to find it. Of one thing Cadfael was certain: he did not want Elave to be a murderer.
    Just as Cadfael was approaching the gatehouse, someone emerged from it and turned towards the town. A tall, lean, dark man, frowning down abstractedly at the dust of the Foregate as he strode, and shaking his head at some puzzling frustration of his own, probably of no great moment but still puzzling. He jerked momentarily out of his preoccupation when Cadfael gave him good-day, and returned the greeting