Holy Thief (21 page)
Distantly
from the dortoir, across the court, the bell sounded for Prime. Cadfael picked
up the psaltery with due respect, and laid it safely aside on the little
prayer-desk.
“I
must go. And you, if you’ll take advice, will sleep, and put everything else
clean out of mind, while we go try the sortes Biblicae. You’ve done well by the
lady, and she has done well by you. With her grace, and a few prayers the rest
of us may find for you, you can hardly go unblessed.”
“Oh,
yes,” said Tutilo, his tired eyes dilating. “That is today, is it not? I had
forgotten.” The momentary shadow touched but could not intimidate him; he had
gone somewhat beyond fear for himself.
“And
now you can forget it again,” said Cadfael firmly. “You of all people should
have faith in the saint you set such store by. Lie down and sleep through all,
and believe in Saint Winifred. Do you not think she must be up in arms by this
time, at being treated like a bone between three dogs? And if she could tell
you her mind privately some while ago, do you suppose she cannot make it very
plain to us in public today? Sleep the morning through, and let her dispose of
all of us.”
In
the halfhour between chapter and High Mass, when Cadfael was busy sorting his
harvest of blackthorn blossoms in his workshop, discarding occasional spines
and fragments of wiry dark twigs, Hugh came in to share the gleanings of his
own labours. They were meagre enough, but at least the ferryman had been able
to supply one scrap of information that might yet be useful.
“He
never went near Longner that night. He never crossed the river. You know that,
I think? No, but the other poor wretch did, and the ferryman remembers when. It
seems the parish priest at Upton has a servant who visits his brother’s family
in Preston once a week, and that night this fellow walked the road from Upton
to Preston along with Aldhelm, who works at the demesne, and lives in the
neighbouring village. A shepherd can never be sure at what hour he’ll be done
for the day, but the priest’s man leaves Upton as soon as Vespers is over, and
so he did this time. He says it must have been a little before the sixth hour
when Aldhelm parted from him at Preston to go on to the ferry. From there, the
crossing and the distance he had covered on that path, to the place where he
was found, would take him no more than half an hour, less, if he was a brisk
walker, and it was raining, he’d be no longer than he need out in it. It seems
to me that he was waylaid and killed round about a quarter or half of the hour
past six. Hardly later. Now if your lad could tell us just where he was, while
he was supposed to be at Longner, and better still, bring us a witness to
confirm it, that would go far to get him out of the mire.”
Cadfael
turned to give him a long, thoughtful look, and a few white petals that had
floated and lodged in the rough cloth of his sleeve caught the stirring of air
from the door, and floated free again, riding the draught into the pale, bright
sunlight. “Hugh, if what you say is true, then I hope something good may come
of it. For though I doubt if he’s ready to own to it yet, I know of another who
can and will testify that the two of them were together until the bell sounded
for Compline, which would be the better part of an hour later than you have in
mind, and a quarter of an hour’s walk from the place, into the bargain. But
since it suits ill with his vocation, and perhaps bodes no good to the other
one, neither of them may be anxious to say it openly for all to hear. In your
ear, with a little persuasion, they might both whisper it.”
“Where
is the boy now?” asked Hugh, considering. “Fast in his penitentiary?”
“And
fast asleep, I trust. You were not at Longner last night, Hugh? No, or he would
have said so. Then probably you have not heard that he was sent for last night
just before Compline, to go to Donata, at her express wish. And Radulfus gave
him leave, under escort. She died, Hugh. God and the saints remembered her at
last.”
“No,”
said Hugh, “that I did not know.” He sat silent for a long moment, recollecting
how the past few years had dealt with Donata Blount and her family. Nothing
there for grieving, no, rather for gratitude and thanksgiving. “No doubt the
news will be waiting for me around the garrison by now,” he said. “And she
asked for Tutilo?”
“You
find that strange?” Cadfael asked mildly.
“It
disappoints me when human creatures fail to provide something strange. No, all
that’s strange about this is that those two ever came to touch hands at any
point. A man would have said that two such were never likely in this world to
come within sight, let alone touch, of each other. Once met, yes, all things
were possible. And she is dead. In his presence?”
“He
thought he had sung her to sleep,” said Cadfael. “So he had. He had grown fond,
and so had she. Where there’s nothing at stake there’s no barrier, either.
Nothing to join, so nothing to divide them. And he has come home this morning
worn out with experience, all grief and all wonder, because she gave him the
psaltery on which he played to her, and sent him a message straight out of the
jongleurs’ romances. He went back to his cell gladly, and I hope he’ll sleep
until all this business we have in hand after Mass is finished and done. And
God and Saint Winifred send us a good ending!”
“Ah,
that!” said Hugh, and smiled somewhat cryptically. “Is not this sortes a rather
dangerous way of deciding an issue? It seems to me it would not be at all
difficult to cheat. There was a time, by your own account, when you cheated, in
a good cause, of course!”
“I
cheated to prevent a theft, not to achieve one,” said Cadfael. “I never cheated
Saint Winifred, nor will she suffer cheating now. She won’t charge me with more
than my due, nor will she let that lad pay for a death I’m sure he does not
owe. She knows what we need and what we deserve. She’ll see wrongs righted and
quarrels reconciled, in her own good time.”
“And
without any aid from me,” Hugh concluded, and rose, laughing. “I’ll be off and
leave you to it, I’d as lief be elsewhere while your monastics fight it out.
But afterwards, when he wakes, poor rogue, I wouldn’t disturb him!, we must
have words with your songbird.”
Cadfael
went into the church before High Mass, uneasy for all his declarations of
faith, and guiltily penitent over his uneasiness, a double contortion of the
mind. In any case there was no time left to make his infusion before the assay:
he left his blackthorn blossoms, cleansed of all thorns and husks, waiting in a
clean vessel for his return, and covered from any floating particles of dust by
a linen cloth. A few petals still clung about his sleeves, caught in the rough
weave. He had others in his grizzled russet tonsure, dropped from the higher
branches as the wind stirred them. Distantly this springtime snow stirred his
memory of other springs, and later blossom, like but unlike this, when the hawthorns
came into heady, drunken sweetness, drowning the senses. Four or five weeks
more, and that greater snow would blanch the hedgerows. The smell of growth and
greenness was already in the air, elusive but constant, like the secret
rippling of water, the whispering water of February, now almost hushed into
silence.
By
instinct rather than design he found himself at Saint Winifred’s altar, and
kneeled to approach her, his creaky knees settling gingerly on the lowest step
of her elevated place. He offered no words, though he thought words within, in
the Welsh tongue, which had been native to her as it was to him. Where she
belonged and wished to be, she would direct. What he asked was guidance in the
matter of a young man’s death, a clean young man who handled lambs with
gentleness and care, as lambs of God, and never deserved to be done to death
suddenly before his time, however the love of God might have set a secure hand
under him as he fell, and lifted him into light. And another young man suspect
of a thing far out of his scope, who must not die a similarly unjust death.
What
he never doubted was that she was listening. She would not turn her back on an
appellant. But in what mood she would be listening was not so certain,
considering everything that had happened. Cadfael hoped and thought his prayers
towards her in resigned humility, but always in good north Welsh, the Welsh of
Gwynedd. She might be indignant; she would still be just.
When
he rose from his knees, helping himself up by the rim of her altar, newly
draped in celebration of her return, and expectation of her continued
residence, he did not at once leave her. The quiet here was at once grateful
and ominous, like the hush before battle. And the Gospels, not the great
illuminated book, but a smaller and stouter one, calculated to resist too
crafty fingers by its less use and lighter pages, already lay on the
silver-chased reliquary, centrally placed with accurate and reverent precision.
He let his hand rest on it, and summed up all his prayers for guidance and
enlightenment into the touch of his fingers, and suddenly he was resolved to
open it. Girl, now show me my way, for I have a child to care for. A liar and a
thief and a rogue, but what this world has made him, and sweet as he can be false.
And not a murderer, whatever else you may know him to be. I doubt he ever
harmed a soul in his twenty or so years. Say me a word, one enlightening word,
to let him out of this cage.
The
book of the fates was already there before him. Almost without conscious
thought he laid both hands upon it, raised it, and opened it. He closed his
eyes as he set it down on its place, flattening it open under his left hand,
and laid the index finger of his right hand upon the exposed page.
Aware
abruptly of what he had done, he held very still, not shifting a finger, above
all not that index finger, as he opened his eyes, and looked where it pointed.
He
was in the Apostle Matthew, Chapter 10, and the fervent finger, pressing so
hard it dimpled the leaf, rested on Verse 21..
Cadfael
had learned his Latin late, but this was simple enough: “... and the brother
shall deliver up the brother to death.”
He
stood gazing at the words, and at first they made no sense to him, apart from
the ominous mention of death, and death of intent, not the quiet closing of a
life like Donata’s passing. The brother shall deliver up the brother to
death... It was a part of the prophecy of disintegration and chaos to be
expected in the latter days; within that context it was but one detail in a large
picture, but here it was all, it was an answer. To one long years a member of a
brotherhood the wording was significant. Not a stranger, not an enemy, but a
brother betraying a brother.
And
suddenly he was visited by a brief vision of a young man hurrying down a narrow
woodland path on a dark night, in drizzling rain, a dun-coloured cloak on him,
its hood drawn close over his head. The shape passed by, and was no more than a
shape, dimly descried under the faint tempering of the darkness the thread of sky
made between the trees: but the shape was familiar, a hooded man shrouded in
voluminous cloth. Or a cowled man in a black habit? In such conditions, where
would the difference be?
It
was as if a door had opened before him into a dim but positive light. A brother
delivered to death... How if that were true, how if another victim had been
intended, not Aldhelm? No one but Tutilo had had known cause to fear Aldhelm’s
witness, and Tutilo, though abroad from the enclave that night, firmly denied
any attack upon the young man, and small points were emerging to bear out his
testimony. And Tutilo was indeed a Brother, and at large that night, and
expected to be upon that path. And in build, and in age, yes, striding along to
get out of the rain the sooner, he might well be close enough to the shape
Aldhelm would present, to an assassin waiting.
A
Brother delivered up to death indeed, if another man had not taken that road
before him. But what of the other, that one who had planned the death? If the
meaning of this oracle was as it seemed, the word “brother” had surely a double
monastic significance. A Brother of this house, or at least of the Benedictine
Order. Cadfael knew of none besides Tutilo who had been out of the enclave that
night, but a man intending such a deed would hardly publish his intent or let
anyone know of his absence. Someone within the Order who hated Tutilo enough to
attempt his murder? Prior Robert might not have been very greatly grieved if
Tutilo had been made to pay for his outrageous offence with his skin, but Prior
Robert had been at dinner with the abbot and several other witnesses that
night, and in any case could hardly be imagined as lurking in wet woods to
strike down the delinquent with his own elegant hands. Herluin might hold it
against the boy that he had disgraced Ramsey not so much by attempting theft,
but by making a botch of it, but Herluin had also been of the abbot’s party.
And yet the oracle had lodged in Cadfael’s mind like a thorn from the
blackthorn bushes, and would not be dislodged.
He
went to his stall with the words echoing and reechoing in his inward ear: “and
the brother shall deliver up the brother to death”. It took all his willpower
and concentration to banish the sound of it, and fix heart and soul on the
celebration of the Mass.
