Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

innocent, whether it's Elave or Conan? But if it comes down to the simple matter of heresy, then I'll throw all the weight I have into the balance to bring him off safely. You shall have him, he shall have the place poor Aldwin grudged to him, and I'll be guarantor for his good behaviour. But murder - no! Am I God, to see guilt or innocence in a man's face?"
    Chapter Nine
    Father Elias, having visited all his fellow-priests within the town, came down to the abbey next morning, and appealed at chapter as to whether any of the brothers who were also priests had by any chance taken confession from the clerk Aldwin before the services of Saint Winifred's translation. The eve of a festival day must have found plenty of work for the confessors, since it was natural for any worshippers who had neglected their spiritual condition for some time to find their consciences pricking them into the confessional, to come purged and refreshed to the celebrations of the day, and rest content in their renewed virtue and peace of mind. If any cleric here had been approached by Aldwin, he would be able to declare it. But no one had. It ended with Father Elias scurrying out of the chapter house disappointed and distrait, shaking his shaggy grey head and trailing the wide, frayed sleeves of his gown like a small, dishevelled bird.
    Brother Cadfael went out from chapter to his work in the garden with the rear view of that shabby little figure still before his mind's eye. A stickler was Father Elias; he would not easily give up. Somewhere, somehow, he must find a reason to convince himself that Aldwin had died in a state of grace, and see to it that his soul had all the consolation and assistance the rites of the Church could provide. But it seemed he had already tried every cleric in the town and the Foregate, and so far fruitlessly. And he was not a man who could simply shut his eyes and pretend that all was well. His conscience had a flinty streak, and would pay him out with a vengeance if he lowered his standards without due grounds for clemency. Cadfael felt a dual sympathy for perfectionist priest and backsliding parishioner. At this moment their case seemed to him to take precedence even over Elave's plight. Elave was safe enough now until Bishop Roger de Clinton declared his will towards him. If he could not get out, neither could any zealot get in, to break his head again. His wounds were healing and his bruises fading, and Brother Anselm, precentor and librarian, had given him the first volume of Saint Augustine's Confessions to pass the time away. So that he might discover, said Anselm, that Augustine did write on other themes besides predestination, reprobation, and sin.
    Anselm was ten years younger than Cadfael, a lean, active, gifted soul with a grain of irrepressible mischief still alive if usually dormant within him. Cadfael had suggested that he should rather give Elave Augustine's Against Fortunatus to read. There he might find, written some years before the saint's more orthodox outpourings, in one of his periods of sharply changing belief: "There is no sin unless through a man's own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own will." Let Elave commit that to memory, and he could quote it in his own defence. More than likely Anselm would take him at his word, and feed the suspect all manner of quotations supportive to his cause. It was a game any well-read student of the early fathers could play, and Anselm better than most.
    So for some days at least, until Serlo could reach his bishop in Coventry and return with his response, Elave was safe enough, and could do with the time to get over his rough handling. But Aldwin, dead and in need of burial, could not wait.
    Cadfael could not but wonder how things were going with Hugh's enquiries within the town. He had seen nothing of him since the morning of the previous day, and the revelation of murder had removed the centre of the action from the abbey into the wide and populated field of the secular world. Even if the original root of the case was within these walls, in the cloudy issue of heresy, and the obvious suspect here in close keeping, there outside the walls the last hours of Aldwin's life remained to be filled in, and there were hundreds of men in town and Foregate who had known him, who might have old grudges or new complaints against him, nothing whatever to do with the charges against Elave. And there were frailties in the case against Elave