Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

The Sanctuary Sparrow

Ellis Peters

The Seventh Chronicle of Brother Cadfael

v1.0 released in #bookz October 7, 2002

v1.5 EBook Design Group December 06, 2002

v2.0 December 31,2002

Contents

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Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

^

Friday midnight to Saturday morning

It began,as the greatest of storms do begin, as a mere tremor in the air, a thread ofsound so distant and faint, yet so ominous, that the ear that was sharp enoughto catch it instantly pricked and shut out present sounds to strain after itagain, and interpret the warning. Brother Cadfael had a hares hearing, readilyalerted and sharply focused. He caught the quiver and bay, at this point surelystill on the far side of the bridge that crossed Severn from the town, andstiffened into responsive stillness, braced to listen.

It could have been an innocent sound enough, or if not innocent of murderousintent, at any rate natural, the distant voices of hunting owls, and thepredatory bark of a dog-fox prowling his nocturnal barony. Certainly theferocious note of the hunt sounded clearly in it to Cadfaels ear. And evenBrother Anselm the precentor, wholly absorbed into his chanting of the office,wavered and slipped off-key for an instant, and took up the cadence jealously,composing his mind sternly to duty.

For there could not be anything in it to trouble the midnight rite ofMatins, here in this kindly spring, barely four weeks past Easter of the yearof Our Lord 1140, with Shrewsbury and all this region secure within the kingspeace, whatever contentions raged farther south between king and empress,cousins at odds for the throne. The winter had been hard indeed, but wasblessedly over, the sun had shone on Easter Day, and continued shining eversince, with only light, scattered showers to confirm the blessing. Onlywestward in Wales had there been heavy spring rains, swelling the river level.The season promised well, the town enjoyed fair rule under a dour but justsheriff, and defended stoutly by a sensible provost and council. In a time ofcivil war, Shrewsbury and its shire had good cause to thank God and KingStephen for relative order. Not here, surely, should the conventual peace ofMatins fear any disruption. And yet Brother Anselm, for one instant, hadfaltered.

In the dim space of the choir, partially shut off from the nave of thechurch by the parish altar and lit only by the constant lamp and the candles onthe high altar, the brothers in their stalls showed like carven copies, in thistwilight without age or youth, comeliness or homeliness, so many matchedshadows. The height of the vault, the solid stone of the pillars and walls,took up the sound of Brother Anselms voice, and made of it a disembodiedmagic, high in air. Beyond where the candlelight reached and shadows ended,there was darkness, the night within, the night without. A benign night, mild,still and silent.

Not quite silent. The tremor on the air became a faint, persistent murmur.In the dimness under the rood loft, to the right of the entrance to the choir,Abbot Radulfus stirred in his stall. To the left, Prior Roberts habit rustledbriefly, with an effect of displeasure and reproof rather than uneasiness. Themerest ripple of disquiet shivered along the ranks of the brothers, and againsubsided.

But the sound was drawing nearer. Even before it grew so loud as to compelnotice there was no mistaking the anger in it, the menace and the dangerousexcitement, all the marks of the hunt. It sounded as if the pursuit had reachedthe point where the van chasseours had run the quarry to exhaustion, and theparfytours were closing in for the kill. Even at this distance it was clearthat some creatures life was in peril.

The sound drew nearer now very rapidly, hard to ignore, though the precentorcontinued valiantly leading his flock in the office, and raised his voice andquickened his tempo to ride over the challenge. The younger brothers andnovices were shifting uneasily, even whispering, half stimulated, halfaffrighted. The murmur had become a ferocious, muted howl, as if gigantic beeswere in swarm after an intruder. Even abbot and prior had leaned forward readyto rise from their stalls, and were exchanging questioning looks in thedimness.

With obstinate devotion Brother Anselm lifted the first phrase of Lauds. Hegot no farther. At the west end of the church the unlatched leaf of the greatparish door was suddenly hurled open to crash against the wall, and somethingunseen came hurtling and scrabbling and gasping down the length of the nave,reeling and fumbling and fending itself off from wall and pillar, heaving atbreath as though run to death already.

They were on their feet, every man. The younger ones broke out in frightenedexclamation and wonder, nudging and wavering in doubt what to do. AbbotRadulfus in his own domain was hampered by no such hesitation. He moved withspeed and force, plucked a candle from the nearest sconce, and went stridingout round the parish altar in great, loping strides that sent his gown billowingout behind him. After him went Prior Robert, more tender of his dignity, andtherefore slower to reach the scene of need, and after Robert all the brothersin jostling agitation. Before they reached the nave they were met by a great,exultant bellow of triumph, and a rushing and scrambling of dozens of frenziedbodies, as the hunt burst in at the west door after its prey.

Brother Cadfael, once well accustomed to night alarms by land and by sea,had surged out of his stall as soon as the abbot moved, but took time to graspa double candelabrum to light his way. Prior Robert in full sail was alreadyblocking the right-hand way round the parish altar, too patrician to makeenough haste to ruffle his silvery beauty. Cadfael doubled round to the left andemerged into the nave before him, with his light thrust out ahead, as muchweapon as illumination.

The hounds were streaming in by then, a quarter of the town, and not thebest quarter, though not necessarily the worst either; decent craftsmen,merchants, traders, jostled with the riff-raff always ready for any brawl, andall of them beyond themselves either with drink or excitement or both together,howling for blood. And blood there was, slippery on the tiles of the floor. Onthe three steps to the parish altar lay sprawled some poor wretch flattenedbeneath a surge of trampling, battering foes, all hacking away with fist andboot, happily in such a tangle that comparatively few of their kicks and blowsgot home. All Cadfael could see of the quarry was a thin arm and a fist hardlybigger than a childs, that reached out of the chaos to grip the edge of thealtar-cloth with life-and-death desperation.

Abbot Radulfus, all the long, lean, muscular length of him, with his gaunt,authoritative lantern head blazing atop, sailed round the altar, smoky candlein hand, slashed the skirts of his habit like a whip across the stoopingbeast-faces of the foremost attackers, and with a long bony leg bestrode thefallen creature that clawed at the fringes of the altar.

Rabble, stand off! Blasphemers, quit this holy place, and be ashamed. Back,before I blast your souls eternally!

He had no need to raise his voice to a shout, he had only to unsheathe itlike a knife, and it sliced through the babble as through cheese. They recoiledas though his nearness seared, but they did not go far, only out of range ofthe burning. They hopped and hovered and clamoured, indignant, aggrieved, butwary of tempting Heaven. They drew off from a miserable fragment of a man, flaton his face up the altar steps, soiled and crumpled and bloodied, and no biggerthan a boy fifteen years old. In the brief, daunted silence before theyscreamed their charge against him, every soul present could hear how his breathheaved and laboured and clapped in his ribs, toiling for dear life, threateningto break his meagre frame apart. Flaxen hair dabbled with dust and bloodspilled against the fringes of the altar-cloth he gripped so frantically.Skinny arms and legs hugged the stone as if his life depended upon the contact.If he could speak, or lift his head, he had too much sense left in him toventure the attempt.