Free Monk's Hood by Ellis Peters Page A

“Master Gervase Bonel, his stepfather, who promised him he should
succeed to the manor of Mallilie and then changed his mind, is lying dead at
this moment, murdered. It is on suspicion of his murder that I want this young
man Edwin. Is that enough for you?”
    It
was more than enough for the eldest son of this hitherto happy household, whose
ears were stretched from the inner room to catch this awful and inexplicable
news. The law nose-down on Edwin’s trail, and Edwin should have been back long
ago if everything had gone even reasonably well! Edwy had been uneasy for some
time, and was alert for disaster where his elders took it for granted all must
be well. He let himself out in haste by the back window on to the yard, before
the officers could make their way into the house, clambered up the stacked
timber and over the wall like a squirrel, and was away at a light, silent run
towards the slope that dived riverwards, and one of the tight little posterns
through the town wall, open now in time of peace, that gave on to the steep
bank, not far from the abbot’s vineyard. Several of the businesses in town that
needed bulky storeshad fenced premises here for their stock,
and among them was Martin Bellecote’s wood-yard where he seasoned his timber.
It was an old refuge when either or both of the boys happened to be in trouble,
and it was the place Edwin would make for if… oh, no, not if he had killed;
because that was ridiculous!… but if he had been rejected, affronted, made
miserably unhappy and madly angry. Angry almost to murder, but never, never
quite! It was not in him.
    Edwy
ran, confident of not being followed, and fell breathless through the wicket of
his father’s enclosure, and headlong over the splayed feet of a sullen,
furious, tear-stained and utterly vulnerable Edwin.
    Edwin,
perhaps because of the tear-stains, immediately clouted Edwy as soon as he had
regained his feet, and was clouted in his turn just as indignantly. The first
thing they did, at all times of stress, was to fight. It meant nothing, except
that both were armed and on guard, and whoever meddled with them in the matter
afterwards had better be very careful, for their practice on each other would
be perfected on him. Within minutes Edwy was pounding his message home into
bewildered, unreceptive, and finally convinced and dismayed ears. They sat down
cheek by jowl to do some frantic planning.
    Aelfric
appeared in the herb-gardens an hour before Vespers. Cadfael had been back in
his solitude no more than half an hour then, after seeing the body cleansed,
made seemly, and borne away into the mortuary chapel, the bereaved house
restored to order, the distracted members of the household at least set free to
wander and wonder and grieve as was best for them. Meurig was gone, back to the
shop in the town, to tell the carpenter and his family word for word what had
befallen, for what comfort or warning that might give them. By this time, for
all Cadfael knew, the sheriff’s men had seized young Edwin… Dear God, he had
even forgotten the name of the man Richildis had married, and Bellecote was
only her son-in-law.
    “Mistress
Bonel asks,” said Aelfric earnestly, “that you’llcome and
speak with her privately. She entreats you for old friendship, to stand her
friend now.”
    It
came as no surprise. Cadfael was aware that he stood on somewhat perilous
ground, even after forty years. He would have been happier if the lamentable
death of her husband had turned out to be no mystery, her son in no danger, and
her future none of his business, but there was no help for it. His youth, a
sturdy part of the recollections that made him the man he was, stood in her
debt, and now that she was in need he had no choice but to make generous
repayment.
    “I’ll
come,” he said. “You go on before, and I’ll be with her within a quarter of an
hour.”
    When
he knocked at the door of the house by the