Holy Thief (28 page)
“I
hope,” said Cadfael, “no great harm.”
“In
long captivity,” she said, “he will stop singing. And then he will die. And the
day after tomorrow we ride with the earl for Leicester. I have my orders from
Rémy, tomorrow I must begin packing the instruments for safe carriage, and the
next morning we ride. Bénezet will be seeing to all the horses, and exercising
Rémy’s to make sure his injury’s healed well. And we go. And he remains. At
whose mercy?”
“God’s,”
said Cadfael firmly, “and with the intercession of the saints. One saint, at
any rate, for she has just nudged me with the seed of an idea. So go to your
bed, and keep your heart up, for nothing is ended yet.”
“And
what gain is there for me?” she said. “We might prove ten times over that he
did no murder, but still he will be dragged back to Ramsey, and they will have
their revenge on him, not so much for being a thief as for making a botch of
his thievery. In the earl’s party half the way, and far too strong an escort
for him to break loose.” She lowered her burning eyes to the broad brown hand
in which Cadfael held the key, and suddenly she smiled. “I know the right key
now,” she said.
“It
might be changed over to the wrong nail,” said Cadfael mildly.
“I
should know it, even so. There are but two alike in size and design, and I
remember well the pattern of the wards on the wrong one. I shall not make that
mistake again.”
He
was about to urge her to let well alone and trust heaven to do justice, but
then he had a sudden vision of heaven’s justice as the Church sometimes applied
it, in good but dreadful faith, with all the virtuous narrowness and
pitilessness of minds blind and deaf to the infinite variety of humankind, its
failings, and aspirations, and needs, and forgetful of all the Gospel reminders
concerning publicans and sinners. And he thought of songbirds caged, drooping
without air to play on the cords of their throats, without heart to sing, and
knew that they might very well die. Half humanity was here in this lean dark
girl beside him, and that half of humanity had its right to reason, determine
and meddle, no less than the male half. After all, they were equally
responsible for humankind continuing. There was not an archbishop or an abbot
in the world who had not had a flesh and blood mother, and come of a passionate
coupling.
She
would do as she thought fit, and so would he. He was not charged with the
keeping of the keys, once he had restored this one to its place.
“Well,
well!” said Cadfael with a sigh. “Let him be for tonight. Let all things be.
Who knows how much clearer the skies will be by tomorrow?”
He
left her then, and went on up the court to the gatehouse, to return the key to
Brother Porter. Behind him Daalny said softly: “Goodnight!” Her tone was level,
courteous, and withdrawn, promising nothing, confiding nothing, a neutral
salute out of the dark.
And
what had he to show for that last instinctive return to question the boy yet
again, to hope for some sudden blinding recollection that would unveil truth
like flinging open the shutters on a summer morning? One small thing only:
Tutilo had lost his breviary, somewhere, at some time, on the death-day. With
half a mile of woodland and two or three hundred yards of Foregate back-alleys,
and the hasty rush into the town and back again, to parcel out in search of it,
if it was valued enough. A breviary can be recopied. And yet, if that was all,
why was it that he felt Saint Winifred shaking him impatiently by the shoulder
and urging in his ear that he knew very well where to begin looking, and that
he had better be about it in the morning, for time was running out?
CADFAEL
AROSE WELL BEFORE PRIME, opening his eyes upon a morning twilight with the
pearl-grey promise of clear skies and a windless calm, and upon the
consciousness of a task already decided upon and waiting for completion. As
well make the enterprise serve two purposes. He went first to his workshop, to
select the medicines that might be running short at the hospital of Saint
Giles, at the end of the Foregate; ointments and lotions for skin eruptions chiefly,
for the strays who came to refuge there were liable to arrive suffering the
attendant ills of starvation living and uncleanliness, often through no fault
of their own. Those of cold no less, especially among the old, whose breath
rattled and rasped in their lungs like dried leaves from wandering the roads.
With his scrip already stocked, he looked about him for the jobs most needing
attention, and marked down duties enough to keep Brother Winfrid busy through
the working hours of the morning.
After
Prime he left Winfrid cheerfully digging over a patch for planting out cabbages
later, and went to borrow a key from the porter. Round the eastern corner of
the precinct wall, at the far end of the Horse Fair and halfway to Saint Giles,
was the large barn and stable, and loft over, to which the horses had been
transferred from the stable-yard within the abbey court during the flood. On
this stretch of road the Longner cart had stood waiting, while the carters
laboured to salvage the treasures of the church, and here Tutilo had emerged
from the double rear-doors of the cemetery to haul back Aldhelm by the sleeve,
and make him an unwitting partner in his sacrilegious theft. And here, on the
night of Aldhelm’s death, according to Daalny, she and Tutilo had taken refuge
in the hay in the loft, to evade having to face the witness and admit to the
sin, and had not dared return until they heard the bell for Compline. By which
time their danger was indeed past, for the innocent young man was dead.
Cadfael
opened the main doors, and set one leaf wide. In the straw-scented dimness
within the great lower room there were stalls for horses, though none of them
was occupied. At seasonal stock sales there would be plenty of country breeders
housing their beasts here, but at this season the place was little used. Almost
in the middle of the long room a wooden ladder led up through a trapdoor to a
loft above. Cadfael climbed it, thrusting up the trap and sliding it aside, to
step into an upper room lit by a couple of narrow, unshuttered windows. A few
casks ranged along the end wall, an array of tools in the near corner, and
ample stores of hay still, for there had been good grass crops two years
running.
They
had left their imprint in the piled hay. No question but two people had been
here recently, the two snug, hollowed nests were there plain to be seen. But
two they were, and that in itself caused Cadfael to stand for some moments in
interested contemplation. Close enough for comfort and warmth, but nevertheless
clearly separate, and so neatly preserved that they might have been shaped
deliberately. There had been no rumbustious rustic coupling here, only two
anxious minor sinners crouching in sanctuary from the buffetings of fate for
this one night, even if the blow must fall next day. They must have sat very
still, to avoid even the rustling of the straw round their feet.
Cadfael
looked about him for the small alien thing he had come to find, with no
assurance that it would be here to be found, only an inward conviction that some
benevolent finger had pointed him to this place. He had all but put his hand on
it when he hoisted the trap, for the corner of the solid wooden square had
pushed it some inches aside, and half hidden it from view. A narrow book, bound
in coarse leather, the edges rubbed pale from carrying and handling, and the
friction of rough sacking scrips. The boy must have laid it down here as they
were leaving, to have his hands free to help Daalny down the ladder, and had
then been so intent on fitting the trap into place again that he had forgotten
to reach through for his book.
Cadfael
took it up in his hands and held it gratefully. There was a stem of clean
yellow straw keeping a page in it, and the place it marked was the office of
Compline. In the dark here they could not read it, but Tutilo would know it by
heart in any case, and this gesture was simply by way of a small celebration to
prove that they had observed the hours faithfully. It would be easy, thought
Cadfael, to fall into a perilous affection for this gifted rogue, sometimes
amused, often exasperated, but affection all the same. Apart, of course, from
that angelic voice so generously bestowed on one who was certainly no angel.
He
was standing quite still, a pace or two away from the open trapdoor, when he
heard a small sound from below. The door had been left open, anyone could have
come in, but he had heard no footsteps. What had caught his ear was the slight
rasp of rough ceramic against rough ceramic, crude baked clay, a heavy lid
being lifted from a large storage jar. The friction of a slight movement in
lifting made a brief, grating sound that carried strangely, and set the teeth
on edge. Someone had raised the lid from the cornjar. It had been filled when
the horses were moved, and would not have been emptied again, in case of
further need, since the rivers were still running somewhat high, and the season
was not yet quite safe. And once again, the slightly different but still
rasping clap of the lid being replaced. It came very softly, a minute touch,
but he heard it.
He
shifted quietly, to be able to look down through the trap, and someone below,
hearing him, hallooed cheerfully up to him: “You there, Brother? All’s well!
Something I forgot here when we moved the horses.” Feet stirred the straw on
the flooring, audible now, and Rémy’s man Bénezet came into view, grinning
amiably up into the loft, and flourishing a bridle that showed glints of gilt
decoration on headstall and rein. “My lord Rémy’s! I’d been walking his beast
out for the first time after he went lame, and brought him in harnessed, and
this I left behind here. We’ll be needing it tomorrow. We’re packing.”
“So
I hear,” said Cadfael. “And setting off with a safe escort.” He tucked the
breviary into the breast of his habit, having left his scrip below, and stepped
cautiously through the trap and began to descend the ladder. Bénezet waited for
him, dangling the bridle. “I recalled in time where I’d left it,” he said,
smoothing a thumb along the embossed decorations on the brow and the rein. “I
asked at the porter’s, and he told me Brother Cadfael had taken the key and
would be here, so I came to collect this while the place was open. If you’re
done, Brother, we can walk back together.”
“I
have still to go on to Saint Giles,” said Cadfael, and turned to pick up his
scrip. “I’ll lock up, if you’ve no further wants here, and get on to the
hospital.”
“No,
I’m done,” said Bénezet. “This was all. Lucky I remembered, or Rémy’s best
harness would have been left dangling on that hayrack, and I should have had it
docked out of my pay or out of my skin.”
He
said a brisk farewell, and was off towards the corner, and round it into the
straight stretch of the Foregate, without a glance behind. Never once had he
cast a glance towards the cornbin in its shadowy niche. But the bridle, it
seemed, he had reclaimed from the last hayrack. So, at least, he had made
unnecessarily plain.
Cadfael
went to the corn jar and lifted the lid. There were grains spilled on the rim
within, and on the floor round it. No great quantity, but they were there to be
seen. He plunged both arms into the slithering grain, and felt around deeply
till his fingers touched the base, and the grain slid coldly about his hands
and yielded nothing alien. Not hiding something, but recovering it; and
whatever it was had a nature and shape calculated to hoist out a few grains
with it in emerging. The bridle would have let them all slide back into the
amphora. Something with folds that would trap the grains? Cloth?
Or
had he simply been curious as to how much was left within? A mere idle thought?
People do odd, inconsequent things by the way, digressing without reason from
what is currently occupying them. But bear it in mind. Odd, inconsequent things
are sometimes highly significant. Cadfael shook himself, closed and locked the
heavy door, and went on towards Saint Giles.
In
the great court, when he returned with his empty scrip, there was a purposeful
but unhurried activity, a brisk wind blowing before a departure. No haste, they
had all this day to make ready. Robert Bossu’s two squires came and went about
the guesthall, assembling such clothing and equipment as their lord would not
require on the journey. He travelled light, but liked meticulous service, and
got it, as a rule, without having to labour the point. The steward Nicol and
his younger companion, the one who had been left to make his way back from
Worcester to Shrewsbury on foot, and had sensibly taken his time on the way,
had very little to do by way of preparation, for this time their collected alms
for their house would be carried by Earl Robert’s baggage carriage, the same
which had brought Saint Winifred’s reliquary home, and was now to be baggage wagon
for them all, while the earl’s packhorse could provide dignified transport for
Sub-Prior Herluin. Robert Bossu was generous in small attentions to Herluin,
very soothing to his dignity.
And
the third of the three parties now assembled for the journey into one, had
perhaps the most demanding arrangements to make. Daalny came carefully down the
steps of the guesthall with a handsome portative organ in her arms, craning her
slender neck to peer round her burden to find the edge of every step, for
Rémy’s instruments were precious almost beyond the value he put on his singer.
The organ had its own specially made case for safekeeping, but it was somewhat
bulky, and since space within was limited, the case had been banished to the
stable. Daalny crossed the court, nursing the instrument like a child on her
arm and clasping it caressingly with her free hand, for it was an object of
love to her no less than to her lord. She looked up at Cadfael, when he fell in
beside her, and offered him a wary smile, as if she selected and suppressed,
within her mind, such topics as might arise with this companion, but had better
be denied discussion.