Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

'and my brother has an honoured name, like our father before us, a wife, and a child to come next year, and has done no wrong to any man, and knows of none. For God's sake leave them in peace, let them keep their name and reputation as clean as ever it was. Let them be told that I have repented of my recantation, and returned to the Order, and am sent away from here to seek out Abbot Walter, wherever he may be, submit myself to his discipline and earn my return to the Order. He would not refuse me, they will be able to believe it. The Rule allows the stray to return and be accepted even to the third time. Do this for me, and I will give you my confession to murder.'

    

'So in return for your confession,' said Hugh, begging silence of the abbot with a warning gesture of his hand, 'I am to let you go free, but back into the cloister?'

    

'I did not say that. I said let them believe that. No, do this for me,' said Sulien in heavy earnest, and paler than his shirt, 'and I will take my death however you may require it, and you may shovel me into the ground and forget me.'

    

'Without benefit of a trial?'

    

'What should I want with a trial? I want them to be left in peace, to know nothing. A life is fair pay for a life, what difference can a form of words make?'

    

It was outrageous, and only a very desperate shiner would have dared advance it to a man like Hugh, whose grip on his office was as firm and scrupulous as it was sometimes unorthodox. But still Hugh sat quiet, fending off the abbot with a sidelong flash of his black eyes, and tapping the fingertips of one long hand upon the desk, as if seriously considering. Cadfael had an inkling of what he was about, but could not guess how he would set about it. The one thing certain was that no such abominable bargain could ever be accepted. To wipe a man out, murderer or no, in cold blood and in secret was unthinkable. Only an inexperienced boy, driven to the end of his tether, could ever have proposed it, or cherished the least hope that it could be taken seriously. This was what he had meant by saying that he had made provision. These children, Cadfael thought in a sudden blaze of enlightened indignation, how dare they, with such misguided devotion, do their progenitors such insult and offence? And themselves such grievous injury!

    

'You interest me, Sulien,' said Hugh at length, holding him eye to eye across the desk. 'But I need to know somewhat more about this death before I can answer you. There are details that may temper the evil. You may as well have the benefit of them, for your own peace of mind and mine, whatever happens after.'

    

'I cannot see the need,' said Sulien wearily but resignedly.

    

'Much depends on how this thing happened,' Hugh persisted. 'Was it a quarrel? When she rejected and shamed you? Even a mere unhappy chance, a struggle and a fall? For we do know by the manner of her burial, there under the bushes by Ruald's garden..." He broke off there, for Sulien had stiffened sharply and turned his head to stare. 'What is it?'

    

'You are confused, or trying to confuse me,' said Sulien, again withdrawing into the apathy of exhaustion. 'It was not there, you must know it. It was under the clump of broom bushes in the headland.'

    

'Yes, true, I had forgotten. Much has happened since then, and I was not present when the ploughing began. We do know, I was about to say, that you laid her in the ground with some evidence of respect, regret, even remorse. You buried a cross with her. Plain silver,' said Hugh, 'we could not trace it back to you or anyone, but it was there.'

    

Sulien eyed him steadily and made no demur.

    

'It leads me to ask,' Hugh pursued delicately, 'whether this was not simply mischance, a disaster never meant to happen. For it may take no more than a struggle, perhaps flight, an angry blow, a fall, to break a woman's skull as hers was broken. She had no other broken bones, only that. So tell us, Sulien, how this whole thing befell, for it may go some way to excuse you.'

    

Sulien had blanched into a marble pallor, fending him off with a bleak and wary face. He said between his teeth: 'I have told you all you need to know. I will not say a word more.'

    

'Well,' said Hugh, rising abruptly, as though he had lost patience, 'I daresay it may be enough. Father, I have two archers with horses outside. I propose to keep the prisoner under guard in the castle for the