Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

whole range of fields. Once the tenant was out of the place it was solitary enough for any furtive purpose, and before ever she was installed by the canons... What was the exact day when Generys walked away and left the cottage door wide and the ashes on the hearth?'

    

'The exact day, within three,' said Hugh, halting at the open wicket in the gate, 'no one knows. A cowman from Longner passed along the river bank on the twenty-seventh day of June, and saw her in the garden. On the last day of June a neighbour from over the north side of the ridge - the nearest neighbours they had, and those best part of a mile away - came round on her way to the ferry. None too direct a way, for that matter, but I fancy she had a nose for gossip, and was after the latest news on a tasty scandal. She found the door open and the place empty and the hearth cold. After that no one saw Ruald's wife again in these parts.'

    

'And the charter that gave the field to Haughmond was drawn up and witnessed early in October. Which day? You were a witness.'

    

'The seventh,' said Hugh. 'And the old smith's widow moved in to take care of the place three days later. There was work to be done before it was fit, there'd been a bit of looting done by then. A cooking pot or so, and a brychan from the bed, and the doorlatch broken to let the thieves in. Oh, yes, there had been visitors in and out of there, but no great damage up to then. It was later they scoured the place clean of everything worth removing.'

    

'So from the thirtieth of June to the tenth of October,' Cadfael reckoned, pondering, 'murder could well have been done up there, and the dead buried, and no one any the wiser. And when was it the old woman went away to her daughter in the town?'

    

'It was the winter drove her away,' said Hugh. 'About Christmas, in the frost, she had a fall. Lucky for her, she has a good fellow married to her girl, and when the hard weather began he kept a close eye on how she did, and when she was laid up helpless he fetched her away to the town to live with them. From that time the croft was left empty.'

    

'So from the beginning of this year it is also true that things mortal could have been done up there, and no witness. And yet,' said Cadfael, 'I think, truly I think, she had been in the ground a year and more, and put there when the soil was workable quickly and easily, not in the frosts. From spring of this year? No, it is too short a time. Look further back, Hugh. Some time between the end of June and the tenth of October of last year, I think, this thing was done. Long enough ago for the soil to have settled, and the root growth to have thickened and matted through the seasons. And if there were vagabonds making use of the cottage in passing, who was to go probing under the headland among the broom bushes? I have been thinking that whoever put her there foresaw that some day that ground might be broken for tillage, and laid her where her sleep should not be disturbed. A pace or two more cautious in the turn, and we should never have found her.'

    

'I am tempted,' admitted Hugh wryly, 'to wish you never had. But yes, you found her. She lived, and she is dead, and there's no escaping her, whoever she may be. And why it should be of so great import to restore her her name, and demand an account from whoever put her there in your field, I scarcely know, but there'll be small rest for you or me until it's done.'

    

It was a well-known fact that all the gossip from the countryside around, in contrast to that which seethed merrily within the town itself, came first into the hospital of Saint Giles, the better half of a mile away along the Foregate, at the eastern rim of the suburb. Those who habitually frequented that benevolent shelter were the rootless population of the roads: beggars, wandering labourers hoping for work, pickpockets and petty thieves and tricksters determined, on the contrary, to avoid work, cripples and sick men dependent on charity, lepers in need of treatment. The single crop they gathered on their travels was news, and they used it as currency to enlist interest. Brother Oswin, in charge of the hospice under the nominal direction of an appointed layman who rarely came to visit from his own house in the Foregate, had grown used to the common traffic in and out, and could distinguish between the genuine poor and unfortunate and the small, pathetic rogues. The occasional able-bodied fake feigning