One Corpse Too Many (23 page)

“I love him,” said Aline in a soft, deliberate whisper, releasing her bitten hand for a moment. “I did not know until now, but I do love him!”

“So do I, girl,” said Cadfael, “so do I!”

They had been two full hours in the arena, with never a break for breath, and the sun was high and hot, and they suffered, but both went with relentless care, conserving their strength, and now, when their eyes met at close quarters over the braced swords, there was no personal grudge between them, only an inflexible purpose, on the one side to prove truth, on the other to disprove it, and on either side by the only means left, by killing. They had found out by then, if they had been in doubt, that for all the obvious advantages on one side, in this contest they were very evenly matched, equal in skill, almost equal in speed, the weight of truth holding a balance true between them. Both bled from minor wounds. There was blood here and there in the grass.

It was almost noon when Beringar, pressing hard, drove his opponent back with a sudden lunge, and saw his foot slip in blood-stained turf, thinned by the hot, dry summer. Courcelle, parrying, felt himself falling, and threw up his arm, and Hugh’s following stroke took the sword almost out of his hand, shivered edge to edge, leaving him sprawled on one hip, and clutching only a bladeless hilt. The steel fell far aside, and lay useless.

Beringar at once drew back, leaving his foe to rise unthreatened. He rested his point against the ground, and looked towards Prestcote, who in turn was looking for guidance to the king’s chair.

“Fight on!” said the king flatly. His displeasure had not abated.

Beringar leaned his point into the turf and gazed, wiping sweat from brow and lip. Courcelle raised himself slowly, looked at the useless hilt in his hand, and heaved desperate breath before hurling the thing from him in fury. Beringar looked from him to the king, frowning, and drew off two or three more paces while he considered. The king made no further move, apart from gesturing dourly that they should continue. Beringar took three rapid strides to the rim of the square, tossed his sword beneath the levelled lances, and set hand slowly to draw the dagger at his belt.

Courcelle was slow to understand, but blazed into renewed confidence when he realised the gift that was offered to him.

“Well, well!” said King Stephen under his breath. “Who knows but I may have been mistaken in the best man, after all?”

With nothing but daggers now, they must come to grips. Length of reach is valuable, even with daggers, and the poniard that Courcelle drew from its sheath at his hip was longer than the decorative toy Hugh Beringar held. King Stephen revived into active interest, and shed his natural irritation at being forced into this encounter.

“He is mad!” moaned Aline at Cadfael’s shoulder, leaning against him with lips drawn back and nostrils flaring, like any of her fighting forebears. “He had licence to kill at leisure. Oh, he is stark mad. And I love him!”

The fearful dance continued, and the sun at its zenith shortened the shadows of the two duelists until they advanced, retreated, side-stepped on a black disc cast by their own bodies, while the full heat beat pitilessly on their heads, and within their leather harness they ran with sweat. Beringar was on the defensive now, his weapon being the shorter and lighter, and Courcelle was pressing hard, aware that he held the advantage. Only Beringar’s quickness of hand and eye saved him from repeated slashes that might well have killed, and his speed and agility still enabled him at every assault to spring back out of range. But he was tiring at last; his judgment was less precise and confident, his movement less alert and steady. And Courcelle, whether he had got his second wind or simply gathered all his powers in one desperate effort, to make an end, seemed to have recovered his earlier force and fire. Blood ran on Hugh’s right hand, fouled his hilt and made it slippery in his palm. The tatters of Courcelle’s left sleeve fluttered at the edge of his vision, a distraction that troubled his concentration. He had tried several darting attacks, and drawn blood in his turn, but length of blade and length of arm told terribly against him. Doggedly he set himself to husband his own strength, by constant retreat if necessary, until Courcelle’s frenzied attacks began to flag, as they must as last.

“Oh, God!” moaned Aline almost inaudibly. “He was too generous, he has given his life away… The man is playing with him!”

“No man,” said Cadfael firmly, “plays with Hugh Beringar with impunity. He is still the fresher of the two. This is a wild spurt to end it, he cannot maintain it long.”

Step by step Hugh gave back, but at each attack only so far as to elude the blade, and step by step, in a series of vehement rushes, Courcelle pursued and drove him. It seemed that he was trying to pen him into a corner of the square, where he would have to make a stand, but at the last moment the attacker’s judgment flagged or Hugh’s agility swung him clear of the trap, for the renewed pursuit continued along the line of lancers, Beringar unable to break out again into the centre of the arena, Courcelle unable to get through the sustained defence, or prevent this lame progress that seemed likely to end in another corner.

The Flemings stood like rocks, and let battle, like a slow tide, flow painfully along their immovable ranks. And halfway along the side of the square Courcelle suddenly drew back one long, rapid step instead of pursuing, and tossing his poniard from him in the grass, stooped with a hoarse cry of triumph, and reached beneath the levelled lances, to rise again brandishing the sword Hugh Beringar had discarded as a grace to him, more than an hour previously.

Hugh had not even realised that they had come to that very place, much less that he had been deliberately driven here for this purpose. Somewhere in the crowd he heard a woman shriek. Courcelle was in the act of straightening up, the sword in his hand, his eyes, under the broad, streaming brow half-mad with exultation. But he was still somewhat off-balance when Hugh launched himself upon him in a tigerish leap. A second later would have been too late. As the sword swung upward, he flung his whole weight against Courcelle’s breast, locked his right arm, dagger and all, about his enemy’s body, and caught the threatening sword-arm by the wrist in his left hand. For a moment they heaved and strained, then they went down together heavily in the turf, and rolled and wrenched in a deadlocked struggle at the feet of the indifferent guards.

Aline clenched her teeth hard against a second cry, and covered her eyes, but the next moment as resolutely uncovered them. “No, I will see all, I must… I will bear it! He shall not be ashamed of me! Oh, Cadfael… oh, Cadfael… What is happening? I can’t see…

“Courcelle snatched the sword, but he had no time to strike. Wait, one of them is rising…”

Two had fallen together, only one arose, and he stood half-stunned and wondering. For his enemy had fallen limp and still under him, and relaxed straining arms nervelessly into the grass; and there he lay now, open-eyed to the glare of the sun, and a slow stream of red was flowing sluggishly from under him, and forming a dark pool about him on the trampled ground.

Hugh Beringar looked from the gathering blood to the dagger he still gripped in his right hand, and shook his head in bewilderment, for he was very tired, and weak now with this abrupt and inexplicable ending, and there was barely a drop of fresh blood on his blade, and the sword lay loosely clasped still in Courcelle’s right hand, innocent of his death. And yet he had his death; his life was ebbing out fast into the thick grass. So what manner of ominous miracle was this, that killed and left both weapons unstained?

Hugh stooped, and raised the inert body by the left shoulder, turning it to see where the blood issued; and there, driven deep through the leather jerkin, was the dead man’s own poniard, which he had flung away to grasp at the sword. By the look of it the hilt had lodged downwards in thick grass against the solidly braced boot of one of the Flemings. Hugh’s onslaught had flung the owner headlong upon his discarded blade, and their rolling, heaving struggle had driven it home.

I did not kill him, after all, though Beringar. His own cunning killed him. And whether he was glad or sorry he was too drained to know. Cadfael would be satisfied, at least; Nicholas Faintree was avenged, he had justice in full. His murderer had been accused publicly, and publicly the charge had been justified by heaven. And his murderer was dead; that failing breath was already spent.

Beringar reached down and picked up his sword, which rose unresisting out of the convicted hand. He turned slowly, and raised it in salute to the king, and walked, limping now and dropping a few trickles of blood from stiffening cuts in hand and forearm, out of the square of lances, which opened silently to let him go free.

Two or three paces he took across the sward towards the king’s chair, and Aline flew into his arms, and clasped him with a possessive fervour that shook him fully alive again. Her gold hair streamed about his shoulders and breast, she lifted to him a rapt, exultant and exhausted face, the image of his own, she called him by his name: “Hugh… Hugh…” and fingered with aching tenderness the oozing wounds that showed in his cheek and hand and wrist.

“Why did you not tell me? Why? Why? Oh, you have made me die so many times! Now we are both alive again… Kiss me!”

He kissed her, and she remained real, passionate and unquestionably his. She continued to caress, and fret, and fawn.

“Hush, love,” he said, eased and restored, “or go on scolding, for if you turn tender to me now I’m a lost man. I can’t afford to droop yet, the king’s waiting. Now, if you’re my true lady, lend me your arm to lean on, and come and stand by me and prop me up, like a good wife, or I may fall flat at his feet.”

“Am I your true lady?” demanded Aline, like all women wanting guarantees before witnesses.

“Surely! Too late to think better of it now, my heart!”

She was beside him, clasped firmly in his arm, when he came before the king. “Your Grace,” said Hugh, condescending out of some exalted private place scarcely flawed by weariness and wounds, “I trust I have proven my case against a murderer, and have your Grace’s countenance and approval.”

“Your opponent,” said Stephen, “proved your case for you, all too well.” He eyed them thoughtfully, disarmed and diverted by this unexpected apparition of entwined lovers. “But what you have proved may also be your gain. You have robbed me, young man, of an able deputy sheriff of this shire, whatever else he may have been, and however foul a fighter. I may well take reprisal by drafting you into the vacancy you’ve created. Without prejudice to your own castles and your rights of garrison on our behalf. What do you say?”

“With your Grace’s leave,” said Beringar, straight-faced, “I must first take counsel with my bride.”

“Whatever is pleasing to my lord,” said Aline, equally demurely, “is also pleasing to me.”

Well, well, though Brother Cadfael, looking on with interest, I doubt if troth was ever plighted more publicly. They had better invite the whole of Shrewsbury to the wedding.

Brother Cadfael walked across to the guest hall before Compline, and took with him not only a pot of his goose-grass salve for Hugh Beringar’s numerous minor grazes, but also Giles Siward’s dagger, with its topaz finial carefully restored.

“Brother Oswald is a skilled silversmith, this is his gift and mine to your lady. Give it to her yourself. But ask her—as I know she will—to deal generously by the boy who fished it out of the river. So much you will have to tell her. For the rest, for her brother’s part, yes, silence, now and always. For her he was only one of the many who chose the unlucky side, and died for it.”

Beringar took the repaired dagger in his hand, and booked at it long and somberly. “Yet this is not justice,” he said slowly. “You and I between us have forced into the light the truth of one man’s sins, and covered up the truth of another’s.” This night, for all his gains, he was very grave and a little sad, and not only because all his wounds were stiffening, and all his misused muscles groaning at every movement. The recoil from triumph had him fixing honest eyes on the countenance of failure, the fate he had escaped. “Is justice due only to the blameless? If he had not been so visited and tempted, he might never have found himself mired to the neck in so much infamy.”

“We deal with what is,” said Cadfael. “Leave what might have been to eyes that can see it plain. You take what’s lawfully and honourably won, and value and enjoy it. You have that right. Here are you, deputy sheriff of Salop, in royal favour, affianced to as fine a girl as heart could wish, and, the one you set your mind on from the moment you saw her. Be sure I noticed! And if you’re stiff and sore in every bone tomorrow—and, lad, you will be!—what’s a little disciplinary pain to a young man in your high feather?”

“I wonder,” said Hugh, brightening, “where the other two are by now.”

“Within reach of the Welsh coast, waiting for a ship to carry them coastwise round to France. They’ll do well enough.” As between Stephen and Maud, Cadfael felt no allegiance; but these young creatures, though two of them held for Maud and two for Stephen, surely belonged to a future and an England delivered from the wounds of civil war, beyond this present anarchy.

“As for justice,” said Brother Cadfael thoughtfully, “it is but half the tale.” He would say a prayer at Compline for the repose of Nicholas Faintree, a clean young man of mind and life, surely now assuaged and at rest. But he would also say a prayer for the soul of Adam Courcelle, dead in his guilt; for every untimely death, every man cut down in his vigour and strength without time for repentance and reparation, is one corpse too many. “No need,” said Cadfael, “for you ever to look over your shoulder, or feel any compunction. You did the work that fell to you, and did it well. God disposes all. From the highest to the lowest extreme of a man’s scope, wherever justice and retribution can reach him, so can grace.”

About the Author

ELLIS PETERS is the nom-de-crime of English novelist Edith Pargeter, author of scores of books under her own name. She is the recipient of the Silver Dagger Award, conferred by the Crime Writers Association in Britain, as well as the coveted Edgar, awarded by the Mystery Writers of America. Miss Pargeter is also well known as a translator of poetry and prose from the Czech and has been awarded the Gold Medal and Ribbon of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations for her services to Czech literature. She passed away in 1995, at the age of 82, at home in her beloved Shropshire.