Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters Page A

promised fee. He said it was hard on a poor man to be so blamed and docked of his money, and pleaded with me to make it good as promised.'
    'And did you?' asked Hugh.
    'I tell you honestly, my lord, I could not say he had been hardly used, considering the worth of the pitcher, but I did think him a poor, sad creature who had to live, whatever the rights or wrongs of it. And I gave him another penny - good silver, minted in this town. But not a word of this to Dame Juliana, if you'll be so good. She'll have to know, now it's all come back to me, that he dared creep in and ask, but no need for her to know I gave him anything. She would be affronted, seeing she had denied him.'
    'Your thought for her does you credit,' said Hugh gravely. 'What then? He took your bounty and slunk out?'
    'He did. But I wager he has not told you anything of this begging visit. A poor return I got for the favour!' Walter was sourly vengeful still.
    'You mistake, for he has. He has told us this very same tale that you now tell. And confided to the abbey's keeping, while he remains there, the two silver pence which is all he has on him. Tell me, had you closed the lid of the coffer as soon as you found yourself observed?'
    'I did!' said Walter fervently. 'And quickly! But he had seen. I never gave him another thought at the time but - see here, my lord, how it follows! As soon as he was gone, or I thought he was gone, I opened the coffer again, and was bending over it laying Margery's dowry away, when I was clouted hard from behind, and that's the last I knew till I opened an eye in my own bed, hours later. If it was two minutes after that fellow crept out of the door, when someone laid me flat, it was not a moment more. So who else could it be?'
    'But you did not actually see who struck you?' Hugh pressed. 'Not so much as a glimpse? No shadow cast, to give him a shape or size? No sense of a bulk heaving up behind you?'
    'Never a chance.' Walter might be vindictive, but he was honest. 'See, I was stooping over the coffer when it seemed the wall fell on me, and I pitched asprawl, head-down into the box, clean out of the world. I heard nothing and saw nothing, not even a shadow, no - the last thing I recall was the candle flickering, but what is there in that? No, depend on it, that rogue had seen what I had in my store before I clapped down the lid. Was he going tamely away with his penny, with all that money there to take? Not he! Nor hide nor hair of any other did I see in here that night. You may be certain of it, the jongleur is your man.'
    'And it may still be so,' admitted Hugh, parting from Cadfael on the bridge some twenty minutes later. 'Enough to tempt any poor wretch with but two coins to rub together. Whether he had any such thought in his head before the candle shone on our friend's hoard or no. Equally, I grant the lad may not even have realized what lay beneath his hand, or seen anything but his own need and the thin chance of getting a kinder reception from the goldsmith than from that ferocious mother of his. He may have crept away thanking God for his penny and never a thought of wrong. Or he may have picked up a stone or a stave and turned back.'
    At about that same time, in the street outside Saint Mary's church, which was the common ground for exchanging civilities and observing fashions on a fine Sunday morning after Mass, Daniel and Margery Aurifaber in their ceremonial progression, intercepted by alternate well-wishers and commiserators - wedding and robbery being equally relished subjects of comment and speculation in Shrewsbury - came face to face with Master Ailwin Corde, the wool-merchant, and his wife, Cecily, and halted by general consent to pass the time of day as befitted friends and neighbours.
    This Mistress Cecily looked more like a daughter to the merchant, or even a granddaughter, than a wife. She was twenty-three years old to his sixty, and though small and slender of stature, was so opulent in colouring, curvature