Holy Thief (15 page)

When
they left their stalls at the end of Lauds, and approached the night stairs to
return to their beds, a slight, habited figure arose from its knees to confront
them, stepping into what light there was very gingerly, but with resigned
resolution, like one expecting a bleak welcome, but braced to endure and
survive it. Tutilo’s habit shimmered about the shoulders with the soft and
soundless rain of spring, which had begun to fall in mid-evening, his curls
were damp and ruffled, and the hand he passed across his forehead to brush them
back left a dark smear behind. His eyes were wide and peering from within a
blank shell of shock and his face, where his hand had not soiled it, was very
pale.

At
sight of him Herluin started forward from Prior Robert’s side with a sharp
explosive sound of exasperation, anger and bewilderment, but before he could
recover his breath and pour out the fiery reproaches he undoubtedly intended to
vent, Tutilo had found words, few and trenchant, to forestall all other
utterance.

“Father, I
grieve to come so late, but I had no choice. It was vital I should go first
into the town, to the castle, where such news first belongs, and so I did.
Father, on my way back, on the path from the ferry and through the wood, I
found a dead man. Murdered... Father,” he said, showing the hand that had
soiled his brow, “I speak what I know, what was plain even in the pitch dark. I
touched him... his head is pulp!”

Chapter Six

WHEN
HE SAW HIS HANDS IN THE LIGHT he flinched, and held them away from him, to
avoid letting them touch any other part of his person or habit, for the right
was engrained with drying blood across the palm and between the fingers, and
the fingers of the left were dabbled at the tips, as if they had felt at
stained clothing. He would not or could not elaborate on his news until he had
washed, twisting hand within hand as though he would scrub off his own defiled
skin along with the blood. When at last he was private in the abbot’s parlour
with Radulfus, Prior Robert, Herluin, and Brother Cadfael, whose presence
Tutilo himself had requested, he launched upon his story baldly enough.

“I
was coming back by the path from the ferry, through the woodland, and where the
trees are thickest I stumbled over him. He was lying with his legs across the
path, and I fell on my knees beside him. It was pitch dark, but a man could
follow the path by the pale line of sky between the branches. But on the ground
nothing but blackness. But I felt down beside me, and I knew the round of a
knee, and cloth. I thought he was drunk, but he never made sound or move. I
felt up from thigh to hip, and leaned close where I judged his face to be, but
never a breath or a sign of life. God help me, I put my hand on the ruin of his
head, and then I knew he was dead. And not by any accident! I felt the
splintered bone.”

“Could
you by any means guess who this man must be?” asked the abbot, his voice level
and gentle.

“No,
Father. It was too dark by far. There was no way of knowing, without torch or
lantern. And I was knocked clean out of my right wits at first. But then I
thought how this was the sheriffs business, and how the Church is held innocent
and apart from all dealings in cases of blood. So I went on into the town, and
told them at the castle, and the lord Beringar has set a guard on the place now
until daylight. What I could tell I have told, and the rest must wait for the
light. And, Father, he asked, the lord sheriff asked, that I should beg you to
have Brother Cadfael informed also, and when the morning comes, if you permit,
I am to lead him to the place, to meet the sheriff there. It is why I asked
that he might attend here. And I will willingly show the place tomorrow, and if
he has any question to ask me now, I will answer as well as I may. For he said,
Hugh Beringar said, that Brother Cadfael understands wounds, having been many
years a man-at-arms.” He had run himself out of breath and almost out of effort
by then, but heaved a great sigh at having got the load from his shoulders.

“If
the place is guarded,” said Cadfael, meeting the abbot’s questioning eye,
“whatever it has to tell us can safely be left until daylight. I think perhaps
we should not speculate beforehand. It might be all too easy to take a wrong
path. I would ask only, Tutilo, at what hour did you leave Longner?”

Tutilo
started and shook himself, and took an unexpectedly long moment to think before
he answered: “It was late, past time for Compline when I started.”

“And
you met no one on the walk back?”

“Not
this side the ferry.”

“I
think,” said Radulfus, “we should wait, and let be until you have viewed the
place by daylight, and the unfortunate soul is known. Enough now! Go to your
bed, Tutilo, and God grant you sleep. When we rise for Prime, then will be the
time to see and consider, before we try to interpret.”

But
for all that, thought Cadfael, back in his own bed but with no will to sleep,
how many of the five of us, one who spoke and four who listened, will close an
eye again tonight? And of the three of us who knew there was to be a young man
on his way down to us by that path during the evening, how many have already
made the leap forward to give this nameless victim a name, and begin to see
certain reasons why it might be expedient for some if he never reached us?
Radulfus? He would not miss so plain a possibility, but he could and would
refrain from entertaining and proceeding on it until more is known. Prior
Robert? Well, give him his due, Prior Robert hardly said a word tonight, he
will wait to have cause before he accuses any man, but he is intelligent enough
to put all these small nothings together and make of them something. And I? It
must have been for myself as much as any other that I issued that warning: It
might be all too easy to take a wrong path! And heavens knows, once launched
it’s all too hard to turn back and look again for the missed trace.

So
let us see what we have: Aldhelm, may he be home, forgetful and fast asleep at
this moment!, was to come and pick out his man yesterday evening. The brothers
had not been told, only Radulfus, Prior Robert, Hugh and I knew of it, leaving
out of consideration Cynric’s boy, who runs errands faithfully, but barely
understands what he delivers, and forgets his embassage as soon as done and
rewarded. Herluin was not told, and I am sure did not know. Neither, to the
best of my knowledge, did Tutilo. Yet it is strange that the same evening
Tutilo should be sent for to Longner. Was he so sent for? That can be confirmed
or confuted, there’s no problem there. Say he somehow got to know of Aldhelm’s
coming, even so by avoiding he could only delay recognition, not prevent it, he
would have to reappear in the end. Yes, but say he reappeared, and Aldhelm
never came. Not just that evening, but never.

Detail
by detail built up into a formidable possibility, in which, nevertheless, he
did not believe. Best to put off even thought until he had seen for himself the
place where murder had been done, and the victim who had suffered it.

The
early morning light, filtering grudgingly between the almost naked trees and
the tangle of underbrush, reached the narrow thread of the path only dimly, a
moist brown streak of rotted leaves and occasional outcrops of stone, striped
with shadows like the rungs of a ladder where old coppicing had left the trunks
spaced and slender. The sun was not yet clear of the eastward banks of cloud,
and the light was colourless and amorphous from the evening’s soft rain, but
clear enough to show what had brought Tutilo to his knees in the darkness, and
yet remained unseen.

The
body lay diagonally across the path, as he had said, not quite flat on its face
and breast, rather on the right shoulder, but with the right arm flung clear
behind, and the left groping wide beside him, clear of the folds of the coarse
hooded cloak he wore. The hood had slipped back from his head when he fell, by
the way it lay bunched in his neck. He had fallen and lain with his right cheek
pressed into the wet leaves. The exposed left side of his head was a dark,
misshapen blot of dried blood, a crusted darkness, the ruin on which Tutilo had
laid his hand in the night, and sickened with horror.

He
looked composed enough now, standing a little apart in the fringe of bushes,
staring steadily at what the night had hidden from him, with lids half-lowered
over the dulled gold of his eyes, and his mouth shut too tightly, the only
betrayal of the effort by which he maintained his stillness and calm. He had
risen very early, from a bed probably sleepless, and led the way to this spot
among the thickest of the woodland without a word beyond the whispered morning
greeting, and obedient acknowledgement of any remarks directed at him. Small
wonder, if his own account was truth, smaller still if today he was being
forced back to a scene about which he had lied; lied to the law, lied to his
superiors in the Order he had chosen of his own will and desire.

Down
there, pressed into the earth, the face, or most of it, was intact. Cadfael
kneeled close by the shattered head, and slid a hand gently under the right
cheek, to turn the face a little upward to be seen.

“Can
you name him?” asked Hugh, standing beside him. The question was directed at
Tutilo, and could not be evaded; but there was no attempt at evasion. Tutilo
said at once, in a still and careful voice: “I do not know his name.”

Surprising,
but almost certainly true; those few moments at the end of a chaotic evening
had never called for names. He had been as anonymous to Aldhelm as Aldhelm had
been to him.

“But
you do know the man?”

“I
have seen him,” said Tutilo. “He helped us when the church was flooded.”

“His
name is Aldhelm,” said Cadfael flatly, and rose from his knees, letting the
soiled face sink back gently into the leafmould. “He was on his way to us last
night, but he never reached us.” If the boy had not known that before, let it
be said now. He listened and gave no sign. He had shut himself within, and was
not easily going to be drawn out again.

“Well,
let us see what there is to be noted,” said Hugh shortly, and turned his back
upon the slight, submissive figure standing so warily aside from the event he
had himself reported. “He was coming down this path from the ferry, and here he
was struck down as he passed by. See how he fell! Back a yard or more, here
where the covert is thick, someone struck him down from behind and to his left,
here on the left side of the path, from ambush.”

“So
it seems,” said Cadfael, and eyed the bushes that encroached halfway across the
path. “There would be rustling enough from his own passage to cover another
man’s sudden movement among the branches here. He fell just as he lies now. Do
you see any sign, Hugh, that he ever moved again?” For the ground about him,
with its padding of last year’s thick leaf-fall sodden and trodden into soft
pulp, showed no disturbance, but lay moist, dark and flat, unmarked by any
convulsions of his feet or arms, or any trampling of an assailant round him.

“While
he lay stunned,” said Hugh, “the work was finished. No struggle, no defence.”

In
a small, muted voice Tutilo ventured, out of the shadowy covert of his cowl:
“It was raining.”

“So
it was,” said Cadfael. “I had not forgotten. His hood would be up to cover his
head. This, was done afterwards, as he lay.”

The
boy stood motionless still, looking down at the body. Only the subtle curve of
a cheekbone and the lowered eyelids and a lunette of brow showed within the
shadows of the cowl. There were tears hanging on the long, girlish lashes.

“Brother,
may I cover his face?”

“Not
yet,” said Cadfael. “I need to look more closely before we carry him back with
us.” There were two of Hugh’s sergeants waiting impassively along the path,
with a litter on which to lay him for passage to castle or abbey, according as
Hugh should direct. From their judicious distance they watched in silence, with
detached interest. They had seen violent death before.

“Do
whatever you need,” said Hugh. “Whatever club or staff was used on him is
surely gone with the man who used it, but if the poor wretch’s corpse can tell
us anything, let us discover it before we move him.”

Cadfael
kneeled behind the dead man’s shoulders, and looked closely at the indented
wound, in which white points of bone showed in the centre of the encrusted
blood. The skull was broken just above and behind the left temple, with what
looked like a single blow, though of that he could not be sure. A staff with a
heavy rounded handle might have done such damage, but the crater it had made
was large indeed, and jagged, not regular. Cadfael took up carefully the edge
of the hood, and rounded it out on his fist. It was seamed at the back, and
running his fingertips the length of the seam he encountered a small patch
halfway down that was sticky and stiffening, and withdrew them smeared with
drying blood. Very little blood, surely from the first blow that felled its
victim through hood and all. And this was at the back of the head, only the
central seam contaminated, and that only meagrely. He straightened the folds,
and ran his fingers through the dead youth’s thick thatch of reddish-brown
hair, up from the nape to the rounding at the back of the head, where that seam
had rested, and surely helped to break the force of the blow. He found a graze
that had oozed a small crust of blood into the thick hair, almost dry now.
There was no break there in the skull beneath the skin.