Holy Thief (30 page)

“He
made the excuse of being called to Longner,” said Hugh readily, “in order to be
able to slip away and hide until the danger should be past and the witness
departed, at least for that night. I doubt he looked beyond, it was the
immediate threat he studied to avoid. Where he hid I know. It was in the loft
of the abbey stable on the Horse Fair, and there is reasonable evidence he did
not leave it until he heard the Compline bell. By which time Aldhelm was dead.”

“And
is there any other voice to bear out this timing?”

“There
is,” said Hugh, and offered nothing further.

“Well,”
said Radulfus, sitting back with a sigh, “he is not in my hands but by chance,
and I cannot, if I would, pass over his offence or lighten his penalty.
Sub-Prior Herluin will take him back to Ramsey, to his own abbot, and while he
is within my walls, I must respect Ramsey’s right, and hold him fast and
securely until he leaves my gates.”

“He
was not curious, he did not probe,” Hugh reported to Cadfael in the herb
garden; his voice was appreciative and amused. “He accepted my assurance that I
was satisfied Tutilo had done no murder and broken no law of the land, at
least, none outside the Church’s pale, and that was enough for him. After all,
he’ll be rid of the whole tangle by tomorrow, he has his own delinquent to
worry about. Jerome is going to take a deal of absolving. But the abbot won’t
do the one thing I suppose, as superior here, he could do, let our
excommunicate come back into the services for this last night. He’s right, of
course. Once they leave your gates, he’s no longer a responsibility of
Shrewsbury’s, but until then Radulfus is forced to act for Ramsey as well as
for his own household. Brother must behave correctly to brother, even if he
detests him. I’m half sorry myself, but Tutilo remains in his cell. Officially,
at any rate,” he added with a considering grin. “Even your backslidings,
provided they offend only Church law, would be no affair of mine.”

“On
occasions they have been,” said Cadfael, and let his mind stray fondly after
certain memories that brought a nostalgic gleam to his eye. “It’s a long time
since we rode together by night.”

“Just
as well for your old bones,” said Hugh, and made an urchin’s face at him. “Be
content, sleep in your bed, and let clever little bandits like your Tutilo
sweat for their sins, and wait their time to be forgiven. For all we know the
abbot of Ramsey is a good, humane soul with as soft a spot for minor sinners as
you. And a sound ear for music, perhaps. That would serve just as well. If you
turned him loose into the night now, how would he fare, without clothes, without
food, without money?”

And
it was true enough, Cadfael acknowledged. He would manage, no doubt, but at
some risk. A shirt and chausses filched from some woman’s drying-ground, an egg
or so from under a hen, a few pence wheedled out of travellers on the road with
a song, a few more begged at a market, But no stone walls shutting him in, and
no locked door, no uncharitable elder preaching him endless sermons on his
unpardoned sins, no banishment into the stony solitude of excommunication,
barred from the communal meal and from the oratory, having no communication
with his fellows, and if any should be so bold and so kind as to offer him a
comfortable word, bringing down upon him the same cold fate.

“All
the same,” said Hugh, reflecting, “there’s justification in the Rule for
leaving all doors open. After everything else has been visited on the
incorrigible, what does the Rule say? ‘If the faithless brother leaves you, let
him go.’”

Cadfael
walked with him to the gatehouse when the long afternoon was stilling and
chilling into the relaxed calm of the pre-Vesper hour, with the day’s manual
work done. He had said no word of Bénezet’s bridle, and his visit to the Horse
Fair stable, in presenting the mute witness of Tutilo’s breviary. Where there
was no certainty, and nothing of substance to offer, he hesitated to advance a
mere unsupported suspicion against any man. And yet he was loth to let pass any
possibility of further discovery. To be left in permanent doubt is worse than
unwelcome knowledge.

“You’ll
be coming down tomorrow,” he said at the gate, “to see the earl’s party on
their way? At what hour his lordship proposes to muster I’ve heard no word, but
they’ll want to make good use of the light.”

“He’ll
hear the first Mass before he goes,” said Hugh. “So I’m instructed. I’ll be
here to see him leave.”

“Hugh...
bring three or four with you. Enough to keep the gate if there should be any
move to break out. Not enough for comment or alarm.”

Hugh
had halted sharply, and was studying him shrewdly along his shoulder. “That’s
not for the little brother,” he said with certainty. “You have some other
quarry in mind?”

“Hugh,
I swear to you I know nothing fit to offer you, and if anyone is to venture a
mistaken move and make a great fool of himself, let it be me. But be here! A
feather fluttering in the wind is more substantial than what I have, as at this
moment. I may yet find out more. But make no move until tomorrow. In Robert
Bossu’s presence we have a formidable authority to back us. If I venture, and
fall on my nose pointing a foolish finger at an innocent man, well, a bloody
nose is no great matter. But I do not want to call a man a murderer without
very hard proof. Leave me handle it my way, and let everyone else sleep easy.”

Hugh
was in two minds then about pressing him for every detail of what he had it in
mind to do, and whatever flutter of a plume in the wind was troubling his mind;
but he thought better of it. Himself and three or four good men gathered to see
the distinguished guest depart, and two stout young squires besides their
formidable lord, with such a guard, what could happen? And Cadfael was an old
and practised hand, even without a cohort at his back.

“As
you think best,” said Hugh, but thoughtfully and warily. “We’ll be here, and
ready to read your signs. I should be lettered and fluent in them by now.”

His
rawboned dapple-grey favourite was tethered at the gate. He mounted, and was
off along the highway towards the bridge into the town. The air was very still,
and there was enough lambent light to gleam dully like pewter across the
surface of the mill pond. Cadfael watched his friend until the distant hooves
rang hollow on the first stage of the bridge, and then turned back into the
great court as the bell for Vespers chimed.

The
young brother entrusted on this occasion with feeding the prisoners was just
coming back from their cells to restore the keys to their place in the
gatehouse, before repairing, side by side with Brother Porter, to the church
for Vespers. Cadfael followed without haste, and with ears pricked, for there
was undoubtedly someone standing close in shadow in the angle of the
gate-pillar, flattened against the wall. She was wise, she did not call a
goodnight to him, though she was aware of him. Indeed she had been there, close
and still, watching him part from Hugh in the gateway. It could not be said
that he had actually seen her, or heard any sound or movement; he had taken
good care not to.

He
spared a brief prayer at Vespers for poor, wretched Brother Jerome, seethed in
his own venom, and shaken to a heart not totally shrivelled into a husk. Jerome
would be taken back into the oratory in due course, subdued and humbled,
prostrating himself at the threshold of the choir until the abbot should
consider satisfaction had been made for his offence. He might even emerge
affrighted clean out of his old self. It was a lot to ask, but miracles do
sometimes happen.

Tutilo
was sitting on the edge of his cot, listening to the ceaseless and hysterical
prayers of Brother Jerome in the cell next to his. They came to him muffled
through the stone, not as distinct words but as a keening lamentation so
grievous that Tutilo felt sorry for the very man who had tried, if not to kill,
at least to injure him. For the insistence of this threnody in his ears Tutilo
was deaf to the sound the key made, grating softly in the lock, and the door
was opened with such aching care, for fear of creaks, that he never turned his
head until a muted voice behind him said: “Tutilo!”

Daalny
was standing framed in the doorway. The night behind her was still luminous
with the last stored light from pale walls opposite, and from a sky powdered
with stars as yet barely visible, in a soft blue scarcely darker than their pinpoint
silver. She came in, hasty but silent, until she had closed the door behind
her, for within the cell the small lamp was lit, and a betraying bar of light
falling through the doorway might bring discovery down upon them at once. She
looked at him and frowned, for he seemed to her a little grey and discouraged,
and that was not how she thought of him or how she wanted him.

“Speak
low,” she said. “If we can hear him, he might hear us. Quickly, you must go.
This time you must go. It is the last chance. Tomorrow we leave, all of us.
Herluin will take you back to Ramsey into worse slavery than mine, if it rests
with him.”

Tutilo
came to his feet slowly, staring at her. It had taken him a long, bemused
moment to draw himself back from the unhappy world of Brother Jerome’s frenzied
prayers, and realize that the door really had opened and let her in, that she
was actually standing there before him, urgent, tangible, her black hair shaken
loose round her shoulders, and her eyes like blue-hot steady flames in the
translucent oval of her face.

“Go,
now, quickly,” she said. “I’ll show you. Through the wicket to the mill. Go
westward, into Wales.”

“Go?”
repeated Tutilo like a man in a dream, feeling his way in an unfamiliar and
improbable world. And suddenly he burned bright, as though he had taken fire
from her brightness. “No,” he said, “I will go nowhere without you.”

“Fool!”
she said impatiently. “You’ve no choice. If you don’t stir yourself you’ll go
to Ramsey, and as like as not in bonds once they get you past Leicester and out
of Robert Bossu’s hands. Do you want to go back to be flayed and starved and
tormented into an early grave? You never should have flown into that refuge,
for you it’s a cage. Better go naked into Wales, and take your voice and your
psaltery with you, and they’ll know a gift from God, and take you in. Quickly,
come, don’t waste what I’ve done.”

She
had picked up the psaltery, which lay in its leather bag on the prayer-desk,
and thrust it into his arms, and at the touch of it he quivered and clasped it
to his heart, staring at her over it with brilliant golden eyes. He opened his
lips, she thought to protest again, and to prevent it she shut one palm over
his mouth, and with the other hand drew him desperately towards the door. “No,
say nothing, just go. Better alone! What could you do with a runaway slave
tangling your feet, crippling you? He won’t leave go of me, the law won’t leave
go. I’m property, you’re free. Tutilo, I entreat you! Go!”

Suddenly
the springy steel had come back into his spine, and the dazzling audacity into
his face, and he went with her, no longer holding back, setting the pace out at
the door, and along the shadowy passage, the key again turned in the lock, the
night air cool and scented with young leafage about them. There were no words
at parting, far better silence. She thrust him through the wicket in the wall,
out of the abbey pale, and closed the door between. And he had the sullen
pewter shield of the mill pond before him, and the path out to the Foregate,
and to the left, just before the bridge into the town, was the narrow road
bearing westward towards Wales.

Without
a glance behind, Daalny set off back towards the great court. She had a thing
to do next morning of which he knew nothing, a thing that would, if it prospered,
call off all pursuit, and leave him free. Secular law can move at liberty about
even a realm divided. Canon law has not the same mobility. And half-proof pales
beside irrefutable proof of guilt and innocence.

She
heard the voices still chanting in the choir, so she took time to let herself
into his cell again, to put out the little lamp. Better and safer if it should
be thought he had gone to his bed, and would sleep through the night.

Chapter Thirteen

THE
MORNING OF DEPARTURE DAWNED moist and still, the sun veiled, and every green
thing looked at its greenest in the soft, amorphous light. Later the veil would
thin and vanish, and the sun come forth in its elusive spring brightness. A
good day to be riding home. Daalny came out into the great court from a sleepless
bed, making her way to Prime, for she needed all her strength for the thing she
had to do, and prayer and quietness within the huge solitude of the nave might
stiffen her will to the act. For it seemed to her that no one else knew or even
suspected what she suspected, so there was no one else to take action.

And
still she might be wrong. The chink of coin, the weight of some solid bundle
shifting against the pressure of her foot with that soft, metallic sound, what
was that to prove anything? Even when she added to it the strange circumstances
Brother Cadfael had recounted, the lie about Rémy’s harness being forgotten in
the outer stable. Yet he had lied, and what business, therefore, had he in that
place, unless he had gone to recover something secret of his own, or, of
course, of someone else’s, or why keep it secret?