Holy Thief (20 page)

The
simplest and most temperate words are the best to express complex and
intemperate feelings. She had said more than she knew.

“And
he?” said Cadfael with careful detachment.

But
she was not so simple. Women never are, and she was a woman who had experienced
more of life than her years would contain. “He hardly knows what he feels,” she
said, “for me or for anything. The wind blows him. He sees a splendid dream,
and runs headlong. He even persuades himself of the splendour. The monastic
dream is fading now. I know it has splendour, but not for him. And he is not
the man to go with it for the peace and the quiet bliss.”

Tell
me, then,” said Cadfael mildly, “what happened that night, after he asked and got
leave to go to Longner.”

“I
would have told it at once,” she said ruefully, “but that it would not have
helped him. For past all doubt he was on that path, he did find the poor soul
dead, he did run to the castle, like an honest man, and tell the sheriff what
he had found. What I can tell does not change that. But if you can find a grain
of good wheat in it, for God’s sake pick it out and show it to me, for I have
overlooked it.”

Tell
me,” said Cadfael.

“We
made it up between us,” she said, “and it was the first time ever we two met
outside these walls. He went out and took the path that leads up over the ridge
to the ferry. I slipped out through the double gates of the burial ground to
the Horse Fair, and we crept into the loft over the stable there. The wicket in
the main doors was still unlocked then, after they brought the horses back
after the flood. It was more than a week before the stableyard here had dried
out. And that is where we stayed together, until we heard the Compline bell. By
that time, we thought, he must have been and gone again. So late, and the night
dark.”

“And
raining,” Cadfael reminded her.

That,
too. Not a night to linger on the road. We thought he would be off home, and
none too keen to make another wasted journey.”

“And
what did you do all that time?” asked Cadfael.

She
smiled ruefully. “We talked. We sat together in the hay to keep warm, and
talked. Of his vocation freely entered into, and my being born into slavery
with no choice at all, and how the two came to be much alike in the end,” she
said hardly. “I was born into the trap, he walked into it in avoiding another
kind of servitude, with his eyes open, but not looking where he was going. And
now with his own hands and feet tied he has great notions of delivering me.”

“As
you offered him his freedom tonight. Well, and then? You heard the Compline
bell, and thought it safe to return. Then how came he alone on the path from
the ferry?”

“We
dared not come back together. He might be seen returning, and it was needful he
should come by the way he would have taken to Longner. I slipped in by the
cemetery gate, as I left, and he went up through the trees to the path by which
he had made his way to join me. It would not have done to come together. He has
forsworn women,” she said with a bitter smile, “and I must have no dealings
with men.”

“He
has not yet taken final vows,” said Cadfael. “A pity he went alone, however. If
two together had happened upon a dead man, they could have spoken for each
other.”

“Us
two?” she said, staring, and laughed briefly. They would not have believed
us... a bondwoman and a novice near his final vows out in the night and fresh
from a romp in the hay? They would have said we compounded together to kill the
man. And now, I suppose,” she said, cooling from bitterness into a composed
sadness, “I have told you everything, and told you nothing. But it is the whole
truth. A good liar and a bold thief he may be, but on most counts Tutilo is as
innocent as a babe. We even said the night prayers together when the bell rang.
Who’s to believe that?”

Cadfael
believed it, but could imagine Herluin’s face if ever the claim had been made
to him. “You have told me, at least,” he said, musing, “that there were more
people knew Aldhelm would be coming down that path than just the few of us, as
it began. If Bénezet heard Jerome baying his knowledge abroad, how many more, I
wonder, learned of it before night? Prior Robert can be discreet, but
Jerome?... I doubt it. And might not Bénezet have passed on all his gleanings
to Rémy, as he did to you? Whatever the bodyservant picks up may be grist to
his master’s mill. And what Rémy hears may very well be talked of with the
patron he’s courting. Oh, no, I would not say this hour had been altogether
wasted. It means I have much thinking to do. Go to your bed now, child, and
leave troubling for this while.”

“And
if Tutilo never comes back from Longner?” she asked, wavering between hope and
dread.

“Never
give a thought to that,” said Cadfael. “He will come back.”

They
brought Tutilo back well before Prime, in the pearly light of a clear, still
dawn. March had come in more lamb than lion, there were windflowers in the
woods, and the first primroses, unburned by frost, undashed and unmired by
further rain, were just opening. The two Longner men who rode one on either
side their borrowed minstrel brought him as far as the gatehouse, waiting in
silence as he dismounted. The farewells they made to him, as they took his
pony’s rein and made to turn back for home, were quiet and constrained, but
clearly friendly. The elder of the two leaned down from the saddle to clap him
amiably on the shoulder, and said a word or two in his ear, before they trotted
away along the Foregate towards the Horse Fair.

Cadfael
had been awake and afield more than an hour by then, for want of a quiet mind,
and had filled in the time by ranging along the bushy edges of his pease-fields
and the shore of the mill-pond to gather the white blossoms of the blackthorn,
just out of the bud and at their best for infusing, to make a gentle purge for
the old men in the infirmary, who could no longer take the strenuous exercise
that had formerly kept their bodies in good trim. A very fine plant, the
blackthorn, good for almost anything that ailed a man’s insides, providing bud
and flower and bitter black fruit were all taken at their best. Good in the
hedges, too, for keeping cattle and sheep out of planted places.

From
time to time he broke off his labours to return to the great court to look out
for Tutilo returning. He had a full scrip of the small white flowers when he
made the journey for the seventh time, and saw the three riders pace in at the
gatehouse, and stood unobserved to watch Tutilo dismount, part amicably from
his guards, and come wearily towards the gatehouse door, as if he would himself
take the key and deliver himself dutifully back to his captivity.

He
walked a little unsteadily, and with his fair crest drooping over something he
cradled in his arms. Once he stumbled on the cobbles. The light, clearing and
brightening to the pure pale gold of primroses where its slanting rays could
reach, still left the gatehouse and the court within the gates in shadow, and
Tutilo kept his eyes on the cobbles and trod carefully, as though he could not
see his way clearly. Cadfael went to meet him, and the porter, who had heard
the stir of arrival and come out into the doorway of his lodge, halted on the
threshold, and left it to Cadfael as an elder of the house to take charge of
the returned prisoner.

Tutilo
did not look up until they were very close, and then blinked and peered as
though he had difficulty in recognizing even a wellknown face. His eyes were
red-rimmed, their gilded brightness dulled from a sleepless night, and perhaps
also from weeping. The burden he carried with such curious tenderness was a
drawstring bag of soft leather, with some rigid shape within it, that filled
his arms and was held jealously to his heart, the anchoring strings around one
wrist for safety, as though he went in dread of loss. He stared over his
treasure at Cadfael, and small, wary sparks kindled in his eyes, and flared
into anxiety and pain in an instant. In a flat, chill voice he said: “She is
dead. Never a quiver or a moan. I thought I had sung her to sleep. I went on...
silence might have disturbed her rest...”

“You
did well,” said Cadfael. “She has waited a long time for rest. Now nothing can
disturb it.”

“I
started back as soon afterwards as seemed right. I did not want to leave her
without saying goodbye fairly. She was kind to me.” He did not mean as mistress
to servant or patroness to protege. There had been another manner of kindness
between them, beneficent to both. “I was afraid you might think I was not
coming back. But the priest said she could not live till morning, so I could
not leave her.”

“There
was no haste,” said Cadfael. “I knew you would come. Are you hungry? Come
within the lodge, and sit a while, and we’ll find you food and drink.”

“No...
They have fed me. They would have found me a bed, but it was not in the bargain
that I should linger after I was no longer needed. I kept to terms.” He was
racked by a sudden jaw-splitting bout of yawning that brought water to his
eyes. “I need my bed now,” he owned, shivering.

The
only bed he could claim at this point was in his penitential cell, but he went
to it eagerly, glad to have a locked door between himself and the world.
Cadfael took the key from the porter, who hovered with slightly anxious
sympathy, and was relieved to see a delinquent for whom he might be held
responsible returning docilely to his prison. Cadfael shepherded his charge
within, and watched him subside gratefully on to the narrow cot, and sit there
mute for a moment, laying his burden down beside him with a kind of caressing gentleness.

“Stay
a little while,” said the boy at length. “You knew her well. I came late. How
was it she had heart even to look at me, as tormented as she was?” He wanted no
answer, and in any case there could be none. But why should not one dying too
soon for her years and too late by far for her comfort take pleasure in the
sudden visitation of youth and freshness and beauty, however flawed, and all
the more for its vulnerability and helplessness in a world none too kind to the
weak.

“You
gave her intense pleasure. What she has known most intimately these last years
has been intense pain. I think she saw you very clearly, better than some who
live side by side with you and might as well be blind. Better, perhaps, than
you see yourself.”

“My
sight is as sharp as it need be,” said Tutilo. “I know what I am. No one need
be an angel to sing like one. There’s no virtue in it. They had brought the
harp into her bedchamber for me, all freshly strung. I thought it might be loud
for her, there between close walls, but it was her wish. Did you know her,
Cadfael, when she was younger, and hale, and beautiful? I played for a while,
and then I stole up to look at her, because she was so still I thought she had
fallen asleep, but her eyes were wide open, and there was colour, all rosy,
high on her cheeks. She did not look so gaunt and old, and her lips were red
and full, and curved, like a smile but not quite a smile. I knew she knew me,
though she never spoke word, never, night-long. I sang to her, some of the
hymns to the Virgin, and then, I don’t know why, but there was no one to tell
me do, or don’t, and it was the way I felt her taking me, all still as she was,
and growing younger because there was no pain left... I sang love songs. And
she was glad. I had only to look at her, and I knew she was glad. And sometimes
the young lord’s wife stole in and sat to listen, and brought me to drink, and
sometimes the lady the younger brother is to marry. Their priest had already
shriven her clean. In the small hours, around three o’clock, she must have
died, but I didn’t know... I thought she had truly fallen asleep, until the
young one stole up and told me.”

“Truly
she had fallen asleep,” said Cadfael. “And if your singing went with her
through the dark, she had a good passage. There’s nothing here for grieving.
She has waited patiently for this ending.”

“It
was not that broke me,” said Tutilo simply. “But see what followed. See what I
brought away with me.”

He
drew open the neck of the leather bag that lay beside him, and reached inside
to withdraw with loving care that same psaltery he had once played in Donata’s
bedchamber, polished sounding-board and stretched strings shining like new. A
broken key had been replaced by one newly cut, and it was triple-strung with
new gut strings. He laid it beside him, and stroked across the strings,
conjuring forth a shimmer of silvery sound.

“She
gave it to me. After she was dead, after we had said the prayers for her, her
son, the young one, brought it to me, all newly furbished like this, and said
it was her wish that I should have it, for a musician without an instrument is
a warrior without weapon or armour. He told me all that she had to say when she
left it in trust for me. She said a troubadour needs only three things, an
instrument, a horse, and a lady love, and the first she desired to give me, and
the other two I must find for myself. She had even had new quills cut for me,
and some to spare.”

His
voice had grown hushed and childish with wonder and his eyes filled, looking
back to record this playful divination which might yet predict a future far
removed from the cloister, which in any case was already losing its visionary
charm for him. She might well be right. She had warmed to him not as a
spiritual being, but as vigorous young flesh and blood, full of untested
potentialities. And dying men, and perhaps even more, dying women, had been
formidable oracles at times.