Authors: Ellis Peters
Brother
Edmund rose from beside the bed, wide and dismayed of eye. He had got the
invalid as near rest as he could, wrapped up here on top of the covers, but
there was little more he could do. Cadfael drew near, and looked down at
Gervase Bonel. A big, fleshy man, thickly capped in greying brown hair, with a
short beard now beaded with saliva that ran from both corners of a rigid,
half-open mouth. His face was leaden blue, the pupils of his eyes dilated and
staring. Fine, strong features were congealed now into a livid mask. The pulse
for which Cadfael reached was faint, slow and uneven, the man’s breathing
shallow, long and laboured. The lines of jaw and throat stood fixed as stone.
“Bring
a bowl,” said Cadfael, kneeling, “and beat a couple of egg-whites into some
milk. We’ll try to get it out of
him, but I doubt it’s late, it
may do as much damage coming up as going down.” He did not turn his head to see
who ran to do his bidding, though certainly someone did; he was hardly aware,
as yet, that there were three other people present in the house, in addition to
Brother Edmund and Mistress Bonel and the sick man. Aelfric and the maid, no
doubt, but he recognised the third only when someone stopped to slide a wooden
bowl close to the patient’s face, and tilt the livid head to lean over it.
Cadfael glanced up briefly, the silent and swift movement pleasing him, and
looked into the intent and horrified face of the young Welshman, Meurig,
Brother Rhys’s great-nephew.
“Good!
Lift his head on your hand, Edmund, and hold his brow steady.” It was easy
enough to trickle the emetic mixture of mustard into the half-open mouth, but
the stiff throat laboured frightfully at swallowing, and much of the liquid ran
out again into his beard and the bowl. Brother Edmund’s hands quivered,
supporting the tormented head. Meurig held the bowl, himself shivering. The
following sickness convulsed the big body, weakened the feeble pulse yet
further, and produced only a painfully inadequate result. It was indeed late
for Gervase Bonel. Cadfael gave up, and let the paroxysms subside, for fear of
killing him out of hand.
“Give
me the milk and eggs.” This he fed very slowly into the open mouth, letting it
slide of itself down the stiff throat, in such small quantities that it could
not threaten the patient with choking. Too late to prevent whatever the poison
had done to the flesh of Bonel’s gullet, it might still be possible to lay a
soothing film over the damaged parts, and ease their condition. He spooned
patient drop after drop, and dead silence hung all round him, the watchers
hardly breathing.
The
big body seemed to have shrunk and subsided into the bed, the pulse fluttered
ever more feebly, the stare of the eyes filmed over. He lay collapsed. The
muscles of his throat no longer made any effort at swallowing, but stood corded
and rigid. The end came abruptly, with no more turmoil than the cessation of
breathing and pulse.
“We
can do no more for him,” said Brother Cadfael. “He’s gone.”
They
all stirred briefly, as though a sudden wind had shaken them. The widow’s tears
spilled over and ran down her motionless face, as though she were still too
bemused to understand what caused them. Brother Edmund touched her arm, and
said gently: “You will need helpers. I am very sorry, so are we all. You shall
be relieved of such duties as we can lift from you. He shall lie in our chapel
until all can be arranged. I will order it…”
“No,”
said Cadfael, clambering stiffly to his feet, “that can’t be done yet, Edmund.
This is no ordinary death. He is dead of poison, taken with the food he has
recently eaten. It’s a matter for the sheriff, and we must disturb nothing here
and remove nothing until his officers have examined all.”
After
a blank silence Aelfric spoke up hoarsely: “But how can that be? It can’t be
so! We have all eaten the same, every one of us here. If there was anything
amiss with the food, it would have struck at us all.”
“That
is truth!” said the widow shakily, and sobbed aloud.
“All
but the little dish,” the maid pointed out, in a small, frightened but
determined voice, and flushed at having drawn attention to herself, but went on
firmly: “The one the prior sent to him.”
“But
that was part of the prior’s own dinner,” said Aelfric, aghast. “Brother Petrus
told me he had orders to take a
portion from it and send it to
my master with his compliments, to tempt his appetite.”
Brother
Edmund shot a terrified look at Brother Cadfael, and saw his own appalling
thought reflected back to him. Hastily he said: “I’ll go to the prior. Pray
heaven no harm has come to him! I’ll send also to the sheriff, or, please God!
Prior Robert shall do as much on his own account. Brother, do you stay here
until I return, and see that nothing is touched.”
“That,”
said Cadfael grimly, “I will certainly do.”
As
soon as the agitated slapping of Brother Edmund’s sandals had dwindled along
the road, Cadfael shooed his stunned companions into the outer room, away from
the horrid air of the bedchamber, tainted with the foul odours of sickness,
sweat and death. Yes, and of something else, faint but persistent even against
that powerful combination of odours; something he felt he could place, if he
could give it a moment’s undisturbed thought.
“No
help for this,” he said sympathetically. “We may do nothing now without
authority, there’s a death to account for. But no need to stand here and add to
the distress. Come away and sit down quietly. If there’s wine or ale in that
pitcher, child, get your mistress a drink, and do as much for yourself, and sit
down and take what comfort you can. The abbey has taken you in, and will stand
by you now, to the best it may.”
In
dazed silence they did as he bade. Only Aelfric looked helplessly round at the
debris of broken dishes and the littered table, and mindful of his usual menial
role, perhaps, asked quaveringly: “Should I not clear this disorder away?”
“No,
touch nothing yet. Sit down and be as easy as you can, lad. The sheriffs
officer must see what’s to be seen, before we remedy any part of it.”
He
left them for a moment, and went back into the bed-chamber, closing the door
between. The curious, aromatic smell was almost imperceptible now, overborne by
the enclosed stench of vomit, but he leaned down to the dead man’s drawn-back
lips, and caught the hint of it again, and more strongly. Cadfael’s nose might
be blunt, battered and brown
to view, but it was sharp and
accurate in performance as a hart’s.
There
was nothing more in this death-chamber to tell him anything. He went back to
his forlorn company in the next room. The widow was sitting with hands wrung
tightly together in her lap, shaking her head still in disbelief, and murmuring
to herself over and over. “But how could it happen? How could it happen?” The
girl, tearless throughout, and now jealously protective, sat with an arm about
her mistress’s shoulders; clearly there was more than a servant’s affection
there. The two young men shifted glumly and uneasily from place to place,
unable to keep still. Cadfael stood back from them in the shadows, and ran a
shrewd eye over the laden table. Three places laid, three beakers, one of them,
in the master’s place where a chair replaced the backless benches, overturned
in a pool of ale, probably when Bonel suffered the first throes and blundered
up from his seat. The large dish that had held the main meal was there in the
centre, the congealing remains still in it. The food on one trencher was hardly
touched, on the others it had been finished decently. Five people—no,
apparently six—had eaten of that dish, and all but one were whole and unharmed.
There was also the small bowl which he recognised as one of Abbot Heribert’s,
the same he had seen on Aelfric’s tray as he passed through the court. Only the
smallest traces of sauce remained in it; Prior Robert’s gift to the invalid had
clearly been much appreciated.
“None
of you but Master Bonel took any of this dish?” asked Cadfael, bending to sniff
at the rim carefully and long.
“No,”
said the widow tremulously. “It was sent as a special favour to my husband—a
kind attention.”
And
he had eaten it all. With dire results.
“And
you three—Meurig, Aelfric—and you, child, I don’t yet know your name…”
“It’s
Aldith,” said the girl.
“Aldith!
And you three ate in the kitchen?”
“Yes.
I had to keep the extra dish hot there until the other was eaten, and to see to
the serving. And Aelfric always eats
there. And Meurig, when he
visits…” She paused for only a second, a faint flush mantling in her cheeks: “…
he keeps me company.”
So
that was the way the wind blew. Well, no wonder, she was indeed a very pretty
creature.
Cadfael
went into the kitchen. She had her pots and pans in neat order and well
polished, she was handy and able as well as pretty. The brazier had an iron
frame built high on two sides, to support an iron hob above the heat, and
there, no doubt, the little bowl had rested until Bonel was ready for it. Two
benches were ranged against the wall, out of the way, but close to the warmth.
Three wooden platters, all used, lay on the shelf under the open window.
In
the room at his back the silence was oppressive and fearful, heavy with
foreboding. Cadfael went out at the open kitchen door, and looked along the
road.
Thank
God there was to be no second and even more dismaying death to cope with: Prior
Robert, far too dignified to run, but furnished with such long legs that
Brother Edmund had to trot to keep up with his rapid strides, was advancing
along the highroad in august consternation and displeasure, his habit billowing
behind him.
“I
have sent a lay brother into Shrewsbury,” said the prior, addressing the
assembled household, “to inform the sheriff of what has happened, as I am told
this death—madam, I grieve for your loss!—is from no natural cause, but brought
about by poison. This terrible thing, though clearly reflecting upon our house,
has taken place outside the walls, and outside the jurisdiction of our abbey
court.” He was grateful for that, at least, and well he might be! “Only the
secular authorities can deal with this. But we must give them whatever help we
can, it is our duty.”
His
manner throughout, however gracefully he inclined towards the widow, and
however well chosen his words of commiseration and promises of help and support
in the sad obligations of burial, had been one of outrage. How dared such a
thing happen in his cure, in his newly acquired abbacy
and
through the instrument of his gift? His hope was to soothe the bereaved with a
sufficiently ceremonious funeral, perhaps a very obscure place in the actual
church precincts if one could be found, bundle the legal responsibility into
the sheriff’s arms, where it belonged, and hush the whole affair into
forgetfulness as quickly as possible. He had baulked in revulsion and disgust
in the doorway of the bedchamber, giving the dead man only a brief and appalled
reverence and a hasty murmur of prayer, and quickly shut the door upon him
again. In a sense he blamed every person, there for imposing this ordeal and
inconvenience upon him; but most of all he resented Cadfael’s blunt assertion
that this was a case of poison. That committed the abbey to examine the
circumstances, at least. Moreover, there was the problem of the as yet unsealed
agreement, and the alarming vision of Mallilie possibly slipping out of his
hands. With Bonel dead before the charter was fully legal, to whom did that fat
property now belong? And could it still be secured by a rapid approach to the
hypothetical heir, before he had time to consider fully what he was signing
away?
“Brother,”
said Robert, looking down his long, fastidious nose at Cadfael, who was a head
shorter, “you have asserted that poison has been used here. Before so horrid a
suggestion is put to the sheriff’s officers, rather than the possibility of
accidental use, or indeed, a sudden fatal illness—for such can happen even to
men apparently in good health!—I should like to hear your reasons for making so
positive a statement. How do you know? By what signs?”
“By
the nature of his illness,” said Cadfael. “He suffered with prickling and
tingling of lips, mouth and throat, and afterwards with rigidity in those
parts, so that he could not swallow, or breathe freely, followed by stiffness
of his whole body, and great weakness of his heart-beat. His eyes were greatly
dilated. All this I have seen once before, and then I knew what the man had
swallowed, for he had the bottle in his hand. You may remember it, some years
ago. A drunken carter during the fair, who broke into my store and thought he
had found strong liquor. In that case I was able to recover
him,
since he had but newly drunk the poison. But I recognise all the signs, and I
know the poison that was used. I can detect it by smell on his lips, and on the
remains of the dish he ate, the dish you sent him.”