The Raven in the Foregate by Ellis Peters Page A

master—Father Ailnoth—has he been
all night in the church with you?”
    “I have not seen him,” said Robert, startled, and put
out a hand in haste to help her keep her feet, for the rounded stones were
wickedly treacherous. He held on to the arm he had grasped, and peered
concernedly into her face. “What is amiss? Surely he has his own Mass to take
care of soon. By this time he should be robing. I should not interrupt him now,
unless for some very grave reason. What is your need?”
    “He is not there,” she said abruptly. “I have been up
to see. Cynric is there waiting, ready, but my master has not come.”
    Prior Robert had begun to frown, certain that this
silly woman was troubling him for no good reason, and yet made uneasy by her
agitation. “When did you see him last? You must know when he left his house.”
    “Last evening, before Compline,” she said bleakly.
    “What? And has not been back since then?”
    “No, Father. He never came home all night. I thought
he might have come to take part in your night offices, but no one has seen him
even here. And as you say, by now he should be robing for his own Mass. But he
is not there!”
    Halted at the foot of the day stairs, Cadfael could
not choose but overhear, and having overheard, inevitably recalled the ominous
black-winged bird swooping along the Foregate towards the bridge at very much
the same hour, according to Diota, when Ailnoth had left his own house. On what
punitive errand, Cadfael wondered? And where could those raven wings have
carried him, to cause him to fail of his duty on such a festal day?
    “Father,” he said, coming forward with unwary haste,
slithering on the frosty cobbles, “I met the priest last night as I was coming
back from the town to be in time for Compline. Not fifty paces from the
gatehouse here, going towards the bridge, and in a hurry.”
    Prior Robert looked round, frowning, at this
unsolicited witness, and gnawed a lip in doubt how to proceed. “He did not
speak to you? You don’t know where he was bound in such haste?”
    “No. I spoke to him,” said Cadfael drily, “but he was
too intent to mark me. No, I have no notion where he was bound. But it was he.
I saw him pass the light of the torches under the gate. No mistaking him.”
    The woman was staring at him now with bruised, hollow
eyes and still face, and the hood had slipped back from her forehead unnoticed,
and showed a great leaden bruise on her left temple, broken at the centre by a
wavering line of dried blood.
    “You’re hurt!” said Cadfael, asking no leave, and put
back the folds of cloth from her head and turned her face to the dawning light.
“This is a bad blow you’ve suffered, it needs tending. How did you come by it?”
    She shrank a little from his touch, and then submitted
with a resigned sigh. “I came out in the night, anxious about him, to see if
there was anyone stirring, or any sign of him. The doorstone was frozen, I fell
and struck my head. I’ve washed it well, it’s nothing.”
    Cadfael took her hand and turned up to view a palm
rasped raw in three or four grazes, took up its fellow and found it marked
almost as brutally. “Well, perhaps you saved yourself worse by putting out
these hands. But you must let me dress them for you, and your brow, too.”
    Prior Robert stood gazing beyond them, pondering what
it was best to do. “Truly I wonder… If Father Ailnoth went out at that hour,
and in such haste, may not he also have fallen, somewhere, and so injured
himself that he’s lying helpless? The frost was already setting in…”
    “It was,” said Cadfael, remembering the glassy sheen
on the steep slope of the Wyle, and the icy ring of his own steps on the
bridge. “And sharply! And I would not say he was minding his steps when I saw
him.”
    “Some charitable errand…” murmured Robert anxiously.
“He would not spare himself…”
    No, neither himself nor any other soul! But