Holy Thief (23 page)

Prior
Robert was still so blind that he almost stumbled on the steps, but recovered
himself with aristocratic dignity and by the time he reached the tiles of the
floor was his complacent official self again. Whether the experience of
religious dread had left any permanent effect would have to be left to the test
of time. Cadfael thought, probably not. It had left at any rate a forcible
temporary effect upon his own more cautious but equally human complacency. For
a while he would be treading very softly, for awe of this little Welsh saint’s
indignation and forbearance.

“Father,”
said Prior Robert, his voice again all measured and mellifluous resonance, “I
have delivered faithfully the lot committed to me. Now these fates can be
interpreted.”

Oh,
yes, he was himself again, he would be trailing this glory after him for as
long as it still shed lustre. But at least for those few moments he had shown
as human, like other men. No one who had seen would quite forget it.

“Father
Abbot,” said the earl handsomely, “I withdraw all claim. I surrender even the
question as to how I can be standing here in her virgin company, and still be
told that where she is I may never come. Though I confess there is probably a
story there that I should very much like to hear.” Yes, he was very quick, as
Cadfael had realized, paradox was pleasure to him. “The field is yours, out and
out,” said Robert Bossu heartily. “Clearly this blessed lady has brought
herself home again without aid from me or anyone. I give you joy of her! And I
would not for the world meddle with her plans, though I am proud that she has
consented on the way to visit me for a while. With your leave, I will make an
offering by way of acknowledgement.”

“I
think,” said Radulfus, “that Saint Winifred might be pleased if you think fit
to make your offering, in her honour, to the abbey of Ramsey. We are all
brothers of one Order. And even if she has been put out by human errors and
offences, I am sure she will not hold that against a brother-house in
distress.”

They
were both of them talking in these high and ceremonious terms, Cadfael
suspected, in order to smooth away the first sore moments, and give Sub-Prior
Herluin time to master his chagrin, and achieve a graceful retreat. He had
swallowed the worst of his gall, although with a gulp that almost choked him.
He was capable of acknowledging defeat with decent civility. But nothing,
nothing would soften his mind now against that hapless youngster held safely
under lock and key to await his penance.

“I
feel shame,” said Herluin tightly, “for myself and for my abbey, that we have
nourished and sheltered and trusted in a very false aspirant to brotherhood. My
abbey I dare excuse. Myself I cannot. Surely I should have been better armed
against the deceits of the devil. Blind and foolish I confess myself, but I
never willed evil against this house, and I abase myself in acknowledgement of
the wrong done, and ask forgiveness. His lordship of Leicester has spoken also
for me. The field is yours, Father Abbot. Receive all its honour and all its
spoils.”

There
are ways of abasing oneself, though Prior Robert would perhaps have managed
them with better grace had things gone otherwise!, as a means of exalting
oneself. Those two were well matched, though Robert, being somewhat more nobly
born, had the more complete mastery, and perhaps rather less burning malice
when bested.

“If
all are content,” said Radulfus, finding these exchanges growing not merely
burdensome, but longwinded, “I would desire to close this assembly with prayer,
and so disperse.”

They
were still on their knees after the last Amen, when a sudden gust of wind arose,
blowing past the nave altar and into the choir, as though from the south door,
though there had been no sound of the latch lifting or the door creaking.
Everyone felt it, and the air being still pregnant with prophecy and
contention, everyone started and pricked attentive ears, and several opened
their eyes to look round towards the source of this abrupt wind from the outer
world. Brother Rhun, Saint Winifred’s devoted cavalier, turned his beautiful
head instantly to look towards her altar, his first jealous care being always
for her service and worship. High and clear through the silence he cried aloud:
“Father, look to the altar! The pages of the Gospels are turning!”

Prior
Robert, descending from his high place still blinded, with his triumph swirling
about him in clouds of glory, had left the Gospels open where his victory had
been written, Saint John, the last of the evangelists, far on in the volume.
All eyes opened now to stare, and indeed the pages of the book were turning
back, slowly, hesitantly, lingering erect only to slide onward, sometimes a
single leaf, sometimes a stronger breath riffling several over together, almost
as though fingers lifted and guided them, even fluttered them past in haste.
The Gospels were turning back, out of John into Luke, out of Luke into Mark...
and beyond... They were all watching in fascination, hardly noticing, hardly
understanding, that the abrupt wind from the south door had fallen into total
stillness, and still, leaf by leaf now and slowly and deliberately, the leaves
kept turning. They rose, they hung almost still, and gradually they declined
and were flattened into the bulk of the later books of the Evangel.

For
by now they must be in Matthew. And now the pace slowed, leaf by leaf rose,
quivered erect, and slowly descended. The last to turn settled lightly, not
quite flat to its fellows, but then lay still, not a breath left of the wind
that had fluttered the pages.

For
some moments no one stirred. Then Abbot Radulfus rose and went to the altar.
What spontaneous air had written must be of more than natural significance. He
did not touch, but stood looking down at the page.

“Come,
some of you. Let there be witnesses more than myself.”

Prior
Robert was at the foot of the steps in a moment, tall enough to see and read
without mounting. Cadfael came close on the other side. Herluin held off, too
deeply sunk in his own turmoil of mind to be much concerned about further
wonders, but the earl drew close in candid curiosity, craning to see the spread
pages. On the left side the leaf rose a little, gently swaying from its own
tensions, for there was now no breath of wind. The righthand page lay still,
and in the spine a few white petals lay, and a single hard bud of blackthorn,
the white blossom just breaking out of the dark husk.

“I
have not touched,” said Radulfus, “for this is no asking of mine or any here. I
take the omen as grace. And I accept this bud as the finger of truth thus
manifested. It points me to the verse numbered twenty-one, and the line is:
‘And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death.’ “

There
was a long, awed silence. Prior Robert put out a reverent hand to touch the
tiny drift of loose petals, and the one bursting bud that had lodged in the
spine.

“Father
Abbot, you were not with us in Gwytherin, or you would recognize this wonder.
When the blessed saint visited us in the church there, as before in vision, she
came with showers of may-blossom. The season is not yet ripe for the hawthorn
flowers, but these... these she sends in their place, again the whiteness of
her purity. It is a direct sign from Saint Winifred. What she confides to us we
are bound by our office to heed.”

A
stir and a murmur passed round the watching brothers, and softly they drew in
more closely about the wonder. Somewhere among them someone drew breath sharp
and painful as a sob, hurriedly suppressed.

“It
is a matter of interpretation,” said Radulfus gravely. “How are we to
understand such an oracle?”

“It
speaks of death,” said the earl practically. “And there has been a death. The
threat of it, as I understand, hangs over a young man of your Order. The shadow
over all. This oracle speaks of a brother as the instrument of death, which
fits with the case as it is yet known. But it speaks also of a brother as the
victim. The victim was not a brother. How is this to be understood?”

“If
she has indeed pointed the way,” said the abbot firmly, “we cannot but follow
it. ‘Brother’ she says, and if we believe her word, a brother it was whose
death was planned by a brother. The meaning that word has within these walls
the saint knows as well as we. If any man among you has a thought to share upon
this most urgent matter, speak now.”

Into
the uneasy silence, while brother looked most earnestly at brother, and
wondered, and sought or evaded the eyes of his neighbours, Brother Cadfael
said: “Brother Abbot, I have thoughts to share that never visited me until this
morning, but are become very relevant now. The night of this murder was dark, not
only as to the hour, but also the weather, for cloud was low, and there was a
drizzling rain. The place where Aldhelm’s body was found is within close
woodland, untended, on a narrow path, where the only light would come from the
open sky above the track. Enough to show a shape, an outline, to a man waiting,
and with eyes accustomed to the dark. And the shape Aldhelm would present was
that of a man young by his step and pace, in a dun-coloured cloak wrapped about
him against the rain, and with the pointed hood drawn up over his head. Father,
how is that to be distinguished, in such conditions, from a Benedictine brother
in dark habit and cowl, if he be young and stepping out briskly to get out of
the rain?”

“If
I read you rightly,” said Radulfus, having searched Cadfael’s face, and found
it in very grave earnest, “you are saying that the young man was attacked in
mistake for a Benedictine brother.”

“It
accords with what is written here in the fates,” said Cadfael.

“And
with the night’s obscurity, I grant you. Are you further suggesting that the
intended quarry was Brother Tutilo? That he was not the hunter, but the
hunted?”

“Father,
that thought is in my mind. In build and years the two matched well enough. And
as all men know, he was out of the enclave that night, with leave, though leave
he got by deceit. It was known on what path he would be returning, or at least,
according to what he had led us all to believe. And, Father, be it admitted, he
had done much to raise up enemies to himself in this house.”

“Brother
turning upon brother...” said the abbot heavily. “Well, we are fallible men
like the rest of mankind, and hatred and evil are not out of our scope. But,
then, how to account for this second and deadly brother? There was no other out
of the enclave upon any errand that night.”

“None
that we know of. But it is not difficult,” said Cadfael,”to become unnoticed
for a while. There are ways in and out for any who are determined to pass.”

The
abbot met his eyes without a smile; he was always in command of his
countenance. For all that, there was not much that went on in this household
that Radulfus did not know. There had been times when Cadfael had both departed
and returned by night, without passing the gatehouse, on urgent matters in
which he found justification for absence. Of the instruments of good works
listed in the Rule of Saint Benedict, second only to the love of God came the
love of humankind, and Cadfael reverenced the Rule above the detailed and
meticulous rules.

“No
doubt you speak out of long experience,” said the abbot. “Certainly that is
true. However, we know of no such defector on that night. Unless you have
knowledge that I have not?”

“No,
Father, I have none.”

“If
I may venture,” said Earl Robert deprecatingly, “why should not the oracle that
has spoken of two brothers be asked to send us a further sign? We are surely
required to follow this trail as best we can. A name might be too much to ask,
but there are other ways, as this blessed lady has shown us, of making all
things plain.”

Gradually,
almost stealthily, all the brothers had crept out of their stalls, and gathered
in a circle about this altar and the group debating at its foot. They did not
draw too close, but hovered within earshot of all that was said. And somewhere
among them, not readily to be located, there was a centre of desperate but
controlled unease, a disquiet that caused the air within the choir to quake,
with a rapid vibration of disquiet and dread, like a heartbeat driven into the
fluttering panic of a bird’s wings. Cadfael felt it, but thought it no more
than the tension of the sortes. And that was enough. He himself was beginning
to ache as though stretched on the rack, with the worst still to come. It was
high time to end this, and release all these overcharged souls into the moist,
chilly, healing air of early March.

“If
in some sort the brothers all stand accused by this present word,” said Earl
Robert helpfully, “it is they, the humbler children of the household, who have
the best right to ask for a name. If you see fit, Father Abbot, let one of them
appeal for a judgement. How else can all the rest be vindicated? Justice is
surely due to the innocent, by even stronger right than retribution to the
guilty.”

If
he was still amusing himself, thought Cadfael, he was doing it with the
eloquent dignity of archbishops and all the king’s judges. In jest or earnest,
such a man would not wish to leave this human and more than human mystery
unresolved. He would thrust and persuade it as far as he could towards an
ending. And he had a willing listener in Prior Robert, his namesake. Now that
the prior was assured of retaining his saint, together with all the lustre
accruing to him as her discoverer and translator, he wanted everything tidied
up and ended, and these troublesome visitors from Ramsey off his premises,
before they contrived some further mischief.