Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

being so sudden and so dire. All was quiet enough until Elave came home. But the only thing but himself he brought into that house was Fortunata's box. And even at first sight it was no ordinary box. So when Fortunata brought it to the abbey, thinking to use the money in it to procure Elave's release, I asked if we could examine it more closely. And this, Hugh, this is what we found."
    He told it scrupulously, in every detail of the gold and purple, the change in its weight, the possible and disturbing change in its contents. Hugh listened without comment to the end. Then he said slowly: "Such a thing, if indeed it did enter that house, might well be enough to tempt any man."
    "Any who understood its value," said Cadfael. "Either in money, or for its own rare sake."
    "And before all, it would have to be a man who had opened the box, and seen what was there. Before it was made known to them all. Do we know whether it was opened at once, when the boy delivered it? Or how soon after?"
    "That," said Cadfael, "I do not know. But you have one in hold who may know. One who may even know where it was laid by, who went near it, what was said about it, through those few days, as Elave could not know all, not being there. Why do we not question Conan once more, before you set him free?"
    "Bearing in mind," Hugh warned, "that this, too, may blow away in the wind. It may all along have been coins within there, but better packed."
    "English coin, and in such quantity," said Cadfael, catching at a thread he had not considered, but finding it frail, "at the end of such a journey, and committed to her from France? But if he sent her money at all, it must needs be English money. He could have been holding it in reserve for such a purpose, once he began to be a sick man. No, there's nothing certain, everything slips through the fingers."
    Hugh rose decisively. "Come, let's go and see what can be wrung out of Master Conan, before I let him slip through mine."
    Conan sat in his stone cell, and eyed them doubtfully and slyly from the moment they entered. He had a slit window on the air, a hard but tolerable bed, ample food and no work, and was just getting used to the fact, at first surprising, that no one was interested in using him roughly, but for all that he was uneasy and anxious whenever Hugh appeared. He had told so many lies in his efforts to distance himself from suspicion of murder that he had difficulty in remembering now exactly what he had said, and was wary of trapping himself in still more tangled coils.
    "Conan, my lad," said Hugh, walking in upon him breezily, "there's still a little matter in which you can be of help to me. You know most of what goes on in Girard of Lythwood's house. You know the box that was brought for Fortunata from France. Answer me some questions about it, and let's have no more lies this time. Tell me about that box. Who was there when it first came into the house?"
    Uneasy at this or any diversion he could not understand, Conan answered warily: "There was Jevan, Dame Margaret, Aldwin, and me. And Elave! Fortunata wasn't there, she came in later."
    "Was the box opened then?"
    "No, the mistress said it should wait until Master Girard came home." Chary of words until he understood the drift, Conan added nothing more.
    "So she put it away, did she? And you saw where, did you not? Tell us!"
    He was growing ever more uneasy. "She put it away in the press, on a high shelf. We all saw it!"
    "And the key, Conan? The key was with it? And were you not curious about it? Did you not want to see what was in it? Didn't your fingers begin to itch before nightfall?"
    "I never meddled with it!" cried Conan, alarmed and defensive. "It wasn't me who pried into it. I never went near it."
    So easy it was! Hugh and Cadfael exchanged a brief glance of astonished gratification. Ask the right question, and the road ahead opens before you. They closed in almost fondly on the sweating Conan.
    "Then who was it?" Hugh demanded.
    "Aldwin! He pried into everything. He never took things," said Conan feverishly, desperate to point the bolts of suspicion away from himself at all costs, "but he couldn't bear not knowing. He was always afraid there was something brewing against him. I never touched it, but he did."
    "And how do you know this, Conan?" asked Cadfael.
    "He told me, afterward. But I heard them, down in the hall."
    "And when was it you heard them - down in the hall?"
    "That same night." Conan drew breath, beginning to be