Holy Thief (32 page)

One
of the young squires had returned to the guesthall to report that all was
ready, and to carry cloak and gloves, or whatever was still left to be carried
for his lord and his lord’s new retainer, who ranked, no doubt, somewhere among
the lesser gentlefolk, well above the servants, but not reverenced like the
harpers of Wales. And now they appeared in the doorway, and Abbot Radulfus,
punctual with every courtesy, emerged from the garden of his lodging, between
the still ragged and leggy rosebushes, at the same moment, with the prior at
his back, and came to salute his departing guests.

The
earl was plain and elegant as ever in his sombre colourings and fine fabrics,
crimson cotte cut reasonably short for riding, and deep grey-blue surcoat
slashed to the thigh fore and aft. He seldom covered his head unless against
wind, rain or snow, but the capuchon swung and draped his higher shoulder,
concealing the hump; though it was hard to believe that he ever gave any thought
to such a device, for the flaw neither embarrassed him nor hampered the fluency
of his movements. At his elbow came Rémy of Pertuis in full exultant spate,
breathing spirited court converse into his patron’s ear. They descended the
steps together, the squire following with his lord’s cloak over his arm. Below,
the assembly was complete, for abbot and prior were waiting beside the horses.

“My
lord,” said the earl, “I take my leave, now the time is come, with much regret.
Your hospitality has been generous, and I fear very little deserved, since I
came with pretensions to your saint. But I am glad that among many who covet
her the lady knows how to choose the fittest and the best. I hope I take your
blessing with me on the road?”

“With
all my heart,” said Radulfus. “I have had much pleasure and profit in your
company, my lord, and trust to enjoy it again when time favours us.”

The
group, which had for a moment the formal look of immediate parting, began to
dissolve into the general civility of visitors at the last moment reluctant to
go, and lingering with many last things still to be said. There was Prior
Robert at his most Norman and patrician, and even his most benign, since events
had finally turned out well; certainly he was unlikely to let go of a Norman
earl without exercising to the last moment his eloquence and charm. There was
Herluin, in no very expansive mood but not to be left out of the courtesies,
and Rémy, delighted with his change of fortune, shedding his beams impartially
on all. Cadfael, with long experience of such departures, was aware that it
would go on for as much as a quarter of an hour before anyone actually set foot
in the stirrup and made to mount.

Daalny,
with no such assurance, expected haste. She could not afford to wait, and find
she had waited too long. She had steeled herself to the act, and dreaded she
might not have time to make good what she had to say. She approached as close
to abbot and earl as was seemly, and in the first pause between them she
stepped forward and said loudly and clearly: “Father Abbot, my lord Robert, may
I speak a word? Before we leave this place, I have something that must be said,
for it bears on theft, and may even bear on murder. I beg you hear me, and do
right, for it is too much for me, and I dare not let it pass and be put aside.”

Everyone
heard, and all eyes turned upon her. There fell a silence, of curiosity, of
astonishment, of disapproval that the least of all these gathered here should
dare to ask for a hearing now, out of a clear sky, and publicly. Yet strangely,
no one waved her away or frowned her to silence and humility. She saw both
abbot and earl regarding her with sharply arrested interest, and she made a
deep reverence for them to share between them. Thus far she had said nothing to
make any man afraid or uneasy for himself, not even Bénezet, who stood lounging
with an arm over his horse’s neck, the saddlebag hard against his side.
Whatever lance she held she had not yet aimed, but Cadfael saw her purpose and
was dismayed.

“Father,
may I speak?”

This
was the abbot’s domain. The earl left it to him to respond.

“I
think,” said Radulfus, “that you must. You have said two words that have been
heavy on our minds these past days, theft and murder. If there is anything you
have to tell concerning these, we must listen.”

Cadfael,
standing aside with an anxious eye on the gate, and praying that Hugh might
ride in now, at once, with three or four sound men at his back, cast an uneasy
glance at Bénezet. The man had not moved, but though his face remained merely a
mask of interested but impersonal curiosity, much like all the others, the eyes
fixed intently upon Daalny’s face were levelled like the points of two daggers,
and his very immobility seemed now deliberate and braced, a hound pointing.

If
only, Cadfael thought, if only I had warned her! I might have known she could
do terrible things for cause enough. Was it what I told her of the bridle that
set her foot on this trail? She never gave sign, but I should have known. And
now she has struck her blow too soon. Let her be logical, let her be slow to
reach the heart of it, let her recall all that has gone before, and come to
this only gradually now she has won her point. But time was not on their side.
Even the Mass had ended early. Hugh would keep to his time, and still come too
late.

“Father,
you know of Tutilo’s theft, on the night when the flood water came into the
church, and how, afterwards, when Aldhelm said that he could point out the
thief, and was killed on his way here to do what he had promised, reason could
find none but Tutilo who had anything guilty to hide, and any cause to fear his
coming, and prevent it by murder.”

She
waited for him to agree thus far, and the abbot said neutrally: “So we thought,
and so we said. It seemed clear. Certainly we knew of no other.”

“But,
Father, I have cause to believe that there was another.”

She
still had not named him, but he knew. No question now but he was looking round
towards the gate, and shifting softly, careful not to draw attention to himself,
but in a furtive effort to draw gradually clear of the ring of men and horses
that surrounded him. But Robert Bossu’s two squires were close, hemming him in,
and he could not extricate himself.

“I
believe,” she said,”there is one here among us who has hidden in his saddlebag
property which is not his. I believe it was stolen that same night of the
flood, when all was in chaos in the church. I do not know if Aldhelm could have
told of it, but even if he might have seen, was not that enough? If I am wronging
an innocent man, as I may be,” said Daalny with sharp ferocity, “I will make
amends by whatever means is asked of me. But search and put it to the test,
Father.” And then she did turn and look at Bénezet, her face so blanched it was
like a white hot flame; she turned and pointed. And he was penned into the
circle so closely that only by violence could he break out; and violence would
at once betray him, and he was not yet at the end of his tether.

“In
the saddlebag against his side, he has something he has been hiding ever since
the flood came. If it was honestly come by, or already his, he would not need
to hide it. My lord, Father Abbot, do me this justice, and if I am wrong,
justice also to him. Search, and see!”

It
seemed that for one instant Bénezet contemplated laughing at the accusation,
shrugging her off, saying contemptuously that she lied. Then he gathered
himself convulsively, pricked into response by all the eyes levelled upon him.
It was fatally late to cry out in the anger of innocence. He, too, had missed
his time, and with it whatever chance was still left to him.

“Are
you mad? It’s a black lie, I have nothing here but what is mine. Master, speak
for me! Have you ever had cause to think ill of me? Why should she turn on me
with such a charge?”

“I
have always found Bénezet trustworthy,” said Rémy, stoutly enough and speaking
up for his own, but not quite at ease. “I cannot believe he would steal. And
what has been missed? Nothing, to my knowledge. Who knows of anything lost since
the flood? I’ve heard no such word.”

“No
complaint has been made,” agreed the abbot frowning and hesitant.

“There
is a simple means,” said Daalny implacably, “to prove or disprove. Open his
saddlebag! If he has nothing to hide, let him prove it and shame me. If I am
not afraid, why should he be?”

“Afraid?”
blazed Bénezet. “Of such calumny? What is in my baggage is mine, and there’s no
anwer due from me to any false charge of yours. No, I will not display my poor
belongings to satisfy your malice. Why you should utter such lies against me I
cannot guess. What did I ever do to you? But you waste your lies, my master
knows me better.”

“You
would be wise to open, and let your virtue be seen by all,” Earl Robert said
with dispassionate authority, “since not all here have such secure knowledge of
you. If she lies, uncover her lie.” He had glanced for one instant at his two
young men, and raised a commanding eyebrow. They drew a pace nearer to Bénezet,
their faces impassive, but their eyes alert.

“There
is something owed here to a dead man,” said Abbot Radulfus, “since this girl
has recalled to us one most precious thing stolen. If this is indeed a matter
that can shed light on that crime, and lift even the shadow of doubt from all
but the guilty, I think we have a duty to pursue it. Give here your saddlebag.”

“No!”
He clutched it to his side with a protective arm. “This is unworthy,
humiliation... I have done no wrong, why should I submit to such indignity?”

“Take
it,” said Robert Bossu.

Bénezet
cast one wild, flashing glance round him as the two squires closed in and laid
competent hands, not on him, but on bridle and saddlebag. There was no hope of
leaping into the saddle and breaking out of the closed circle, but the young
men had loosed their own bridles to pen him in, and one of the horses thus
released was some yards nearer to the gate, standing docilely clear of the
agitated group in the centre of the court. Bénezet plucked his hands from his
gains with a sob of fury, dealt his startled mount a great blow under the belly
that sent him rearing and plunging with an indignant scream, and burst out of
the hampering ring. The company scattered, evading the clashing hooves, and
Bénezet clutched at the bridle of the waiting horse, and without benefit of
stirrups leaped and scrambled into the saddle.

No
one was near enough to grasp at rein or stirrup leather. He was up and away
before anyone else could mount, turning his back upon the tangle of stamping
horses and shouting men. He drove, not directly at the gate, but aside in a
flying curve, where Daalny had started backwards out of one danger to lay
herself in the path of another. He had his short dagger out of its sheath and
bared in his hand.

She
saw his intent only at the last instant as he was on her. He made no sound at
all, but Cadfael, running frantically to pluck her from under the flying
hooves, saw the rider’s face clearly, and so did she, the once impassive
countenance convulsed into a mask of hatred and rage, with drawn-back lips like
a wolf at bay. He could not spare the time to ride her down, it would have
slowed him too much. He leaned sidewise from the saddle in full flight, and the
dagger slashed down her sleeve from the shoulder and drew a long graze down her
arm. She sprang backwards and fell heavily on the cobbles, and Bénezet was
gone, out at the gate already in a driven gallop, and turning towards the town.

Hugh
Beringar, his deputy and three of his sergeants were just riding down from the
crest of the bridge. Bénezet saw them, checked violently, and swung his mount
aside into the narrow road that turned left between the mill pond and the
river, southwestward into the fringes of the Long Forest, into deep cover on
the quickest way into Wales.

The
riders from the town were slow to understand the inferences, but a horseman
hurtling out of the abbey court towards the bridge, baulking at sight of them
and wheeling into a side-road at the same headlong speed, was a phenomenon to
be pondered, if not pursued, and Hugh had bellowed: “Follow him!” even before
the youngest squire had come running out from the gates into the Foregate,
crying: “Stop him! He’s suspect as a thief!”

“Bring
him back!” ordered Hugh, and his officers swung willingly into the byroad, and
spurred into a gallop after the fugitive.

Daalny
had picked herself up before Cadfael could reach her, and turned and ran
blindly from the turmoil in the court, from the sick terror that had leaned to
her murderously from the saddle, and from the shattering reaction after crisis,
which had set her shivering now the worst was over. For this was certainty. Why
else should he run for his life before ever his saddlebag was opened? Still she
did not even know what he had hidden there, but she knew it must be deadly. She
fled into the church like a homing bird. Let them do the rest, her part was
over. She did not doubt now that it would be enough. She sat down on the steps
of Saint Winifred’s alter, where everything began and everything ended, and
leaned her head back to rest against the stone.

Cadfael
had followed her in, but halted at sight of her sitting there open-eyed and
still, her head reared erect as though she was listening to a voice, or a
memory. After chaos, this calm and quietness was awesome. She had felt it on
entering, Cadfael felt it on beholding her thus entranced.