Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

seen him if he'd passed. Maybe he took fright when he saw them beating all the coverts and baying after me along the Foregate, and thought better of repenting." It was said without bitterness, even with a resigned grin. "It's easier and safer to set the hounds on than to call them off."
    "A true word!" said Hugh. "They have been known to bite the huntsman, if he came between them and the quarry once their blood was up. So you never saw and had speech with him, and have no notion where he went or what happened to him?"
    "None in the world. Why?" asked Elave simply. "Have you lost him?"
    "No," said Hugh, "we have found him. Brother Cadfael found him early this morning lodged under the bank of Severn beyond the Gaye. Dead, stabbed in the back."
    "Did he know or did he not?" wondered Hugh, when they were out in the great court, and the cell door closed and locked on the prisoner. "You saw him, do you know what to make of him? Fix him as watchfully as you will, any man can lie if he must. I would rather rely on things solid and provable. He did come back. Would a man who had killed do so? He has a good, serviceable knife, well able to kill, but it's in his bundle in the guest hall still, not on him, and we know he no sooner showed his face in the gateway than he was set on, and attended every moment after, until that door closed on him. If he had another knife, and had it on him, he must have discarded it. Father Abbot, do you believe this lad? Is he telling truth? When he offered his word, you accepted it. Do you still do so?"
    "I neither believe nor disbelieve," said Radulfus heavily. "How dare I? But I hope!"
    Chapter Eight
    William Warden, who was the longest-serving and most experienced of hugh's sergeants, came looking for the sheriff just as Hugh and Cadfael were crossing to the gatehouse; a big, bearded, burly man of middle age, grizzled and weatherbeaten, and with a solid conceit of himself that sometimes tended to undervalue others. He had taken Hugh for a lightweight when first the young man succeeded to the sheriff's office, but time had considerably tempered that opinion, and brought them into a relationship of healthy mutual respect. The sergeant's beard was bristling with satisfaction now. Clearly he had made progress, and was pleased with himself accordingly. "My lord, we've found it - the place where he was laid up till dark. Or at least, where he or some other bled long enough to leave his traces clear enough. While we were beating the bushes Madog thought to search through the grass under the arch of the bridge. Some fisherman had drawn up his light boat there, and turned it up to do some caulking on the boards. He wouldn't be working on it yesterday, a feast day. When we hoisted it, there was the grass flattened the length of it, and a small patch of it blackened with blood. What with the dry weather that ground has been uncovered a month or more, it's bleached pale as straw. There's no missing that stain, meagre though it is. A dead man could lie snug enough under there, with a boat upturned over him and nothing to show."
    "So that was the place!" said Hugh on a long, thoughtful breath. "And no great risk, slipping a body into the water there in the dark, from under the arch. No sound, no splash, nothing to see. With an oar, or a pole, you could thrust him well out into the current."
    "We were right, it seems," said Cadfael. "You have to deal only with that length of the water, from the bridge to where he fetched up. You did not find the knife?"
    The sergeant shook his head. "If he killed his man there, under the arch or in the bushes, he'd clean the knife in the edge of the water and take it away with him. Why waste a good knife? And why leave it lying about for some neighbour to find, and say: I know that, it belongs to John Weaver, or whoever it might be, and how comes it to have blood on it? No, we shan't find the knife."
    "True," said Hugh, "a man would have to be scared out of his wits to throw it away to be found, and I fancy this man was in sharp command of his. Never mind, you've done well, we know now where the thing was done, there or close by."
    "There's more yet to tell you, my lord," said Will, gratified, "and stranger, if he was in such a hurry as they told us, when he ran off to recant his charges. We asked the porter on the town gate if he'd seen him pass out and cross the bridge, and he said yes, he had, and spoke to him, but barely got an answer. But he hadn't come straight from