Holy Thief (24 page)

“Father,”
he said insinuatingly,”that is fair and just. May we do so?”

“Very
well,” said Radulfus. “In your hands!”

The
prior turned to cast a sweeping glance over the silent array of monks, watching
him wide-eyed in anticipation and awe. The name he called was the inevitable
name. He even frowned at having to look for his acolyte.

“Brother
Jerome, I bid you undertake this testing on behalf of all. Come forth and make
this assay.”

And
indeed, where was Brother Jerome, and why had no word been heard from him and
nothing seen of him all this time? When, until now, had he ever been far from
the skirts of Prior Robert’s habit, attendant with ready flattery and
obsequious assent to every word that fell from his patron’s lips. Now that
Cadfael came to think of it, less than usual had been seen and heard of Jerome
for the past few days, ever since the evening when he had been discovered on
his bed, quaking and sick with belly-aches and headaches, and been soothed to
sleep by Cadfael’s stomachics and syrups.

A
furtive swirl of movement troubled the rear ranks of the assembled household,
and cast up Brother Jerome from his unaccustomed retirement, emerging through
the ranks without eagerness, almost reluctantly. He shuffled forward with bent
head and arms folded tightly about his body as if he felt a mortal chill
enclosing him. His face was greyish and pinched, his eyes, when he raised them,
inflamed. He looked ill and wizened. I should have made a point of following up
his sickness, thought Cadfael, touched, but I thought he, of all people, would
make good sure he got all the treatment he needed.

That
was all that he had in mind, as Prior Robert, bewildered and displeased by what
seemed to him very grudging acceptance of a duty that should have conveyed
honour upon the recipient, waved Jerome imperiously to the altar.

“Come,
we are waiting. Open prayerfully.”

The
abbot had gently brushed the petals of blackthorn from the spine, and closed
the Gospels. He stood aside to make way for Jerome to mount.

Jerome
crept to the foot of the steps, and there halted, baulked, rather, like a
startled horse, drew hard breath and assayed to mount, and then suddenly threw
up his arms to cover his face, fell on his knees with a lamentable, choking
cry, and bowed himself against the stone of the steps. From under the hunched
shoulders and clutching arms a broken voice emerged in a stammering howl a
stray dog might have launched into the night after company in its loneliness.

“I
dare not... I dare not... She would strike me dead if I dared... No need, I
submit myself, I own my terrible sin! I went out after the thief, I waited for
him to return, and God pity me, I killed that innocent man!”

Chapter Ten

IN
THE HORRIFIED HUSH THAT FOLLOWED, Prior Robert, guiding hand still uplifted and
stricken motionless, was momentarily turned to stone, his face a mask of utter
incredulity. That a creature of his should fall into mortal sin, and that of a
violent kind, was astonishment enough, but that this pliable mortal should ever
undertake personal action of any kind came as an even greater shock. And so it
did to Brother Cadfael, though for him it was equally a shock of enlightenment.
This poor soul, pallid and puffy on his bed after desperate vomiting, sick and
quiet and unregarded ever since, spent and ulcered mind and spirit by what he
had so mistakenly undertaken, Jerome was for the first time wholly pitiful.

Brother
Rhun, youngest and freshest and the flower of the flock, went after his nature,
asking no leave, and kneeled beside Jerome, circling his quaking shoulders with
an embracing arm, and lifting the hapless penitent closer into his hold before
he looked up confidently into the abbot’s face.

“Father,
whatever else, he is ill. Suffer me to stay!”

“Do
after your kind,” said Radulfus, looking down at the pair with a face almost as
blanched as the prior’s, “and so must I. Jerome,” he said, with absolute and
steely authority, “look up and face me.”

Too
late now to withdraw this confession into privacy, even had that been the
abbot’s inclination, for it had been spoken out before all the brothers, and as
members of a body they had the right to share in the cure of all that here was
curable. They stood their ground, mute and attentive, though they came no
nearer. The half-circle had spread almost into a circle.

Jerome
had listened, and was a little calmed by the tone. The voice of command roused
him to make an effort. He had shed the first and worst load, and as soon as he
lifted his head and made to rise on his knees, Rhun’s arm lifted and sustained
him. A distorted face appeared, and gradually congealed into human lineaments.
“Father, I obey,” said Jerome. “I want confession. I want penance. I have
sinned most grievously.”

“Penance
in confession,” said the abbot, “is the beginning of wisdom. Whatever grace can
do, it cannot follow denial. Tell us what it is you did, and how it befell.”

The
lame recital went on for some time, while Jerome, piteously small and shrunken
and wretched, kneeled in Rhun’s supple, generous arm, with that radiant, silent
face beside him, to point searing differences. The scope of humanity is
terrifyingly wide.

“Father,
when it became known that Saint Winifred’s relics had been loaded with the
timber for Ramsey, when there was no longer any doubt of how it came there, for
we knew, every man of us, that there was none, for who else could it have
been?, then I was burning with anger against the thief who had dared such
sacrilege against her, and such a gross offence against our house. And when I
heard that he had asked and been given leave to go forth to Longner that night,
I feared he meant to escape us, either by absence, or even by flight, having
seen justice might overtake him yet. I could not bear it that he should go
free. I confess it, I hated him! But, Father, I never meant to kill, when I
slipped out alone, and went to wait for him on the path by which I knew he must
return. I never intended violence. I hardly know what I meant to do, confront
him, accuse him, bring it home to him that hellfire awaited him at the
reckoning if he did not confess his sin and pay the price of it now.”

He
paused to draw painful breath, and the abbot asked: “You went empty-handed?” A
pertinent question, though Jerome in his throes failed to understand it.

“Surely,
Father! What should I want to take with me?”

“No
matter! Go on.”

“Father,
what more can there be? I thought, when I heard him coming down through the
bushes, it could be no one but Tutilo. I never knew by what road the other man
would come; for all I knew he had already been, and gone again, and all in
vain, as the thief intended. And this one, So jauntily he came, striding along
in the dark, whistling profane songs. Offence piled upon offence, so lightly to
take everything mortal... I could not endure it. I picked up a fallen branch,
and as he passed I struck him on the head. I struck him down,” moaned Jerome,
“and he fell across the path, and the cowl fell back from his head. He never
moved hand again! I went close, I kneeled, and I saw his face then. Even in the
dark I saw enough. This was not my enemy, not the saint’s enemy, not the thief!
And I had killed him! I fled him then... Sick and shaking, I fled him and hid
myself, but every moment since he has pursued me. I confess my grievous sin, I
repent it bitterly, I lament the day and the hour ever I raised hand against an
innocent man. But I am his murderer!”

He
bowed himself forward into his arms and hid his face. Muted sounds emerged
between his tearing sobs, but no more articulate words. And Cadfael, who had
opened his mouth to continue the story where this miserable avenger had left
it, as quickly closed his lips again upon silence. Jerome had surely told all
he knew, and if the burden he was carrying was even more than his due, yet he
could be left to carry it a while longer. ‘Brother shall deliver up brother to
death’ could be said to be true of Jerome, for if he had not killed he had
indeed delivered Aldhelm to his death. But if what had followed was also the
work of a brother, then the murderer might be present here. Let well alone! Let
him go away content, satisfied that this solution offered in terrible good
faith by Jerome had been accepted without question by all, and that he himself
was quite secure. Men who believe themselves out of all danger may grow
careless, and make some foolish move that can betray them. In private, yes, for
the abbot’s ear alone, truth must be told. Jerome had done foully, but not so
foully as he himself and all here believed. Let him pay his dues in full, but
not for someone else’s colder, viler crime.

“This
is a very sombre and terrible avowal,” said Abbot Radulfus, slowly and heavily,
“not easily to be understood or assessed, impossible, alas, to remedy. I
require, and surely so do all here, time for much prayer and most earnest
thought, before I can begin to do right or justice as due. Moreover, this is a
matter outside my writ, for it is murder, and the king’s justice has the right
to knowledge, if not immediately to possession, of the person of a confessed
murderer.”

Jerome
was past all resistance, whatever might have been urged or practised against
him. Emptied and drained, he submitted to all. The disquiet and consternation
he had set up among the brothers would go on echoing and reechoing for some
time, while he who had caused it had recoiled into numbness and exhaustion.

“Father,”
he said meekly, “I welcome whatever penance may be laid upon me. I want no
light absolution. My will is to pay in full for all my sins.”

Of
his extreme misery at this moment there could be no doubt. When Rhun in his
kindness lent an arm to raise him from his knees, he hung heavily still,
clinging to his desperate humility.

“Father,
let me go from here. Let me be desolate and hidden from men’s eyes...”

“Solitude
you shall have,” said the abbot, “but I forbid despair. It is too soon for
counsel or judgement, but never too soon or too late for prayer, if penitence
is truly felt.” And to the prior he said, without taking his eyes from the
broken creature on the tiles of the floor, like a crushed and crumpled bird:
“Take him in charge. See him lodged. And now go, all of you, take comfort and
pursue your duties. At all times, in all circumstances, our vows are still
binding.”

Prior
Robert, still stonily silent and shocked out of his normal studied dignity, led
away his shattered clerk to the second of the two penitentiary cells; and it
was the first time, as far as Cadfael could recall, that the two had ever been
occupied at the same time. Sub-Prior Richard, decent, comfortable, placid man,
marshalled the other ranks out to their ordinary labours, and to the refectory
shortly afterwards for dinner, and by his own mildly stupid calm had calmed his
flock into a perfectly normal appetite by the time they went to wash their hands
before the meal.

Herluin
had sensibly refrained from playing any part in the affair, once it turned
towards the partial restoration of Ramsey’s credit and the grievous
embarrassment of Shrewsbury. He would welcome the earl’s promised offering
gladly, and withdraw in good order to his own monastery, though what he would
visit on Tutilo when he got him safely back there might be dreadful to think
of. He was not a man to forget and forgive.

As
for the withdrawal from the battlefield of Robert Bossu, that restless,
conscientious, subtle and efficient man, it was a model of consideration and
tact, as always, with a quiet word to Abbot Radulfus, and a sharp glance at his
two squires, who understood him at the lift of an eyebrow or the flash of a
smile. He knew when to make use of his status, and when and how to temper its
brilliance and make himself unobtrusive among a multitude.

Brother
Cadfael waited his opportunity to draw close to the abbot’s shoulder as he left
the choir.

“Father,
a word! There is more to be added to this story, though not publicly, perhaps,
not yet.”

“He
has not lied, as well as murdered?” said the abbot, without turning his head.
His voice was grim, but pitched no further than Cadfael’s ear.

“Neither
the one nor the other, Father, if what I believe is true. He has told all he
knows, and all he thinks he knows, and I am sure he has kept nothing back. But
there are things he does not know, and the knowledge will somewhat better a
case which even so is still black enough. Give me audience alone, and then
judge what should be done.”

Radulfus
had halted in mid-stride, though still not looking round. He watched the last
of the brothers slip away still awed and silent through the cloister, and
followed with a glance the swirl of Robert Bossu’s crimson skirts as he crossed
the court with his two attendants at his heels.

“You
say we have as yet only heard the half, and the worse half of all that is to be
told? The young man is coffined decently, his own priest takes him hence today
to Upton, for burial among his people. I would not wish to delay his
departure.”

There
is no need,” said Cadfael. “He has told me all he had to tell. I would not for
the world keep him from his rest. But what I have to add, though I had the
proofs of it from his body, and from the place where he was found, I have but
now understood clearly. All that I saw was seen also by Hugh Beringar, but
after what has come to light this morning these details fall into place.”