Monk's Hood by Ellis Peters Read Free Book Online Page B

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 aportion 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 brownto 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,