thrust of the tail-race had pushed it aside and tidied it out of the way,
and almost out of sight. Twin pallors swayed gently, articulated like strange
fish Cadfael had once seen drawn in a traveller’s book. Open and empty, Father
Ailnoth’s hands appealed to a clearing sky, while a fold of his cloak half-covered
his face.
Cadfael rose to his feet, and turned a sombre face
upon his companions, who were standing by the plank bridge, gazing across the
open water to where the other party was just appearing below the gardens of the
townward cottages.
“He is here,” said Cadfael. “We have found him.”
It was no small labour to get him out, even when
Brother Ambrose and his fellows, hailed from their own fruitless hunt by the
miller’s bull’s bellow and excited waving, came hurrying round from the road to
lend a hand in the work. The high, undercut bank, with deep water beneath it,
made it impossible to reach down and get a hold on his clothing even when the
lankiest of them lay flat on his face and stretched long arms down, to grope
still short of the surface. The miller brought a boat hook from among his store
of tools, and with care they guided the obdurate body along to the edge of the
tail-race, where they could descend to water level and grasp the folds of his
garments.
The black, ominous bird had become an improbable fish.
He lay in the grass, when they had carried him up to level ground, streaming
pond-water from wiry black hair and sodden black garments, his uncovered face
turned up to the chill winter light marbled blue and grey, with lips parted and
eyes half-open, the muscles of cheeks and jaw and neck drawn tight with a
painful suggestion of struggle and terror. A cold, cold, lonely death in the
dark, and mysteriously his corpse bore the marks of it even when the combat was
over. They looked down at him in awe, and no one had anything to say. What they
did they did practically, without fuss, in blank silence.
They took a door from its hinges in the mill, and laid
him on it, and carried him away through the wicket in the wall into the great
court, and thence to the mortuary chapel. They dispersed then about their
various businesses, as soon as Abbot Radulfus and Prior Robert had been
apprised of their return, and what they brought with them. They were glad to
go, to be off to the living, and to the festival the living were still keeping,
glad to have the sanction of the season to feel happiness and have a great
thing to celebrate.
The word went round the Foregate almost furtively,
whispered from ear to ear, without exclaim, without many words, taking its time
to reach the outer fringes of the parish, but by nightfall it was known to all.
The thanksgiving made no noise, no one acknowledged it or mentioned it, no one
visibly exulted. Nevertheless, the parishioners of the Foregate kept Christmas
with the heartfelt fervour of a people from whom an oppressive shadow had been
lifted overnight. In the mortuary chapel, where even at this end of the year no
warmth could be employed, those gathered about the bier shivered and blew into
their bunched fingers wringing the rough, fingerless mittens to set the chill
blood flowing and work off the numbness. Father Ailnoth, colder than them all,
nevertheless lay indifferent to the gathering frost even in his nakedness, and
on his bed of stone.
“We must, then, conclude,” said Abbot Radulfus
heavily,”that he fell into the pool and drowned. But why was he there at such
an hour, and on the eve of the Nativity?”
There was no one prepared to answer that. To reach the
place where he had been found he must have passed by every near habitation
without word or sign, to end in a barren, unpeopled solitude.
“He drowned, certainly,” said Cadfael.
“Is it known,” wondered Prior Robert, “whether he
could swim?”
Cadfael shook his head. “I’ve no knowledge of that, I
doubt if anyone here knows. But it might not
and almost out of sight. Twin pallors swayed gently, articulated like strange
fish Cadfael had once seen drawn in a traveller’s book. Open and empty, Father
Ailnoth’s hands appealed to a clearing sky, while a fold of his cloak half-covered
his face.
Cadfael rose to his feet, and turned a sombre face
upon his companions, who were standing by the plank bridge, gazing across the
open water to where the other party was just appearing below the gardens of the
townward cottages.
“He is here,” said Cadfael. “We have found him.”
It was no small labour to get him out, even when
Brother Ambrose and his fellows, hailed from their own fruitless hunt by the
miller’s bull’s bellow and excited waving, came hurrying round from the road to
lend a hand in the work. The high, undercut bank, with deep water beneath it,
made it impossible to reach down and get a hold on his clothing even when the
lankiest of them lay flat on his face and stretched long arms down, to grope
still short of the surface. The miller brought a boat hook from among his store
of tools, and with care they guided the obdurate body along to the edge of the
tail-race, where they could descend to water level and grasp the folds of his
garments.
The black, ominous bird had become an improbable fish.
He lay in the grass, when they had carried him up to level ground, streaming
pond-water from wiry black hair and sodden black garments, his uncovered face
turned up to the chill winter light marbled blue and grey, with lips parted and
eyes half-open, the muscles of cheeks and jaw and neck drawn tight with a
painful suggestion of struggle and terror. A cold, cold, lonely death in the
dark, and mysteriously his corpse bore the marks of it even when the combat was
over. They looked down at him in awe, and no one had anything to say. What they
did they did practically, without fuss, in blank silence.
They took a door from its hinges in the mill, and laid
him on it, and carried him away through the wicket in the wall into the great
court, and thence to the mortuary chapel. They dispersed then about their
various businesses, as soon as Abbot Radulfus and Prior Robert had been
apprised of their return, and what they brought with them. They were glad to
go, to be off to the living, and to the festival the living were still keeping,
glad to have the sanction of the season to feel happiness and have a great
thing to celebrate.
The word went round the Foregate almost furtively,
whispered from ear to ear, without exclaim, without many words, taking its time
to reach the outer fringes of the parish, but by nightfall it was known to all.
The thanksgiving made no noise, no one acknowledged it or mentioned it, no one
visibly exulted. Nevertheless, the parishioners of the Foregate kept Christmas
with the heartfelt fervour of a people from whom an oppressive shadow had been
lifted overnight. In the mortuary chapel, where even at this end of the year no
warmth could be employed, those gathered about the bier shivered and blew into
their bunched fingers wringing the rough, fingerless mittens to set the chill
blood flowing and work off the numbness. Father Ailnoth, colder than them all,
nevertheless lay indifferent to the gathering frost even in his nakedness, and
on his bed of stone.
“We must, then, conclude,” said Abbot Radulfus
heavily,”that he fell into the pool and drowned. But why was he there at such
an hour, and on the eve of the Nativity?”
There was no one prepared to answer that. To reach the
place where he had been found he must have passed by every near habitation
without word or sign, to end in a barren, unpeopled solitude.
“He drowned, certainly,” said Cadfael.
“Is it known,” wondered Prior Robert, “whether he
could swim?”
Cadfael shook his head. “I’ve no knowledge of that, I
doubt if anyone here knows. But it might not
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