Holy Thief (9 page)

Hugh
was looking at him, across the glow of the brazier, with a twitch of the lips
and an oblique tilt to the brow that Cadfael remembered from of old, from the
time of their first precarious acquaintance, when neither of them had been
quite sure whether the other was friend or foe, and yet each had been drawn to
the other in a half-grave, half-impish contest to find out.

“Do
you know,” said Hugh softly, “that you are speaking of that lost reliquary,
some years now you have been speaking of it so, as if it truly contained the
Welsh lady’s bones. “She”, you say, never “it”, or even more truly, “him”. And
you know, none so well, that you left her to her rest there in Gwytherin. Can
she be in two places at once?”

“Some
essence of her certainly can,” said Cadfael, “for she has done miracles here
among us. She lay in that coffin three days, why should she not have conferred
the power of her grace upon it? Is she to be limited by time and place? I tell
you, Hugh, sometimes I wonder what would be found within there, if ever that
lid was lifted. Though I own,” he added ruefully, “I shall be praying devoutly
that it never comes to the proof.”

“You
had better,” Hugh agreed. “Imagine the uproar, if someone somewhere breaks
those seals you repaired so neatly, and prizes off the lid, to find the body of
a young man about twenty-four, instead of the bones of a virgin saint. And
mother-naked, at that! Your goose would be finely cooked!” He rose, laughing,
but even so a little wryly, for the possibility certainly existed, and might
yet erupt into disaster. “I must go and make ready. Prior Robert means to set
out as soon as he has dined.” He embraced Cadfael briskly about the shoulders
in passing, by way of encouragement, and shook him bracingly. “Never fear, you
are a favourite with her, and she’ll look after her own, let alone that you’ve
managed very well so far at looking after yourself.”

“The
strange thing is, Hugh,” Cadfael said suddenly, as Hugh reached the door, “that
I’m concerned almost as anxiously for poor Columbanus.”

“Poor
Columbanus?” Hugh echoed, turning to stare back at him in astonished amusement.
“Cadfael, you never cease to surprise me. Poor Columbanus, indeed! A murderer
by stealth, and all for his own glory, not for Shrewsbury’s, and certainly not
for Winifred’s.”

“I
know! But he ended the loser. And dead! And now, flooded out of what rest was
allowed him on a quiet altar here at home, taken away to some strange place
where he knows no one, friend or enemy. And perhaps,” said Cadfael, shaking his
head over the strayed sinner, “having miracles expected of him, when he can do
none. It would not be so hard to feel a little sorry for him.”

Cadfael
went up to Longner as soon as the midday meal was over, and found the young
lord of the manor in his smithy within the stockade, himself supervising the
forging of a new iron tip for a ploughshare. Eudo Blount was a husbandman born,
a big, candid, fair fellow, to all appearances better built for service in arms
than his younger brother, but a man for whom soil, and crops and wellkept
livestock would always be fulfilment enough. He would raise sons in his own
image, and the earth would be glad of them. Younger sons must carve out their
own fortunes. “Lost Saint Winifred?” said Eudo, gaping, when he heard the
purport of Cadfael’s errand. “How the devil could you lose her? Not a thing to
be palmed and slipped in a pouch when no one’s looking. And you want speech
with Gregory and Lambert? Surely you don’t suppose they’d have any use for her,
even if they did have a cart on the Horse Fair! There’s no complaint of my men
down there, is there?”

“None
in the world!” said Cadfael heartily. “But just by chance, they may have seen
something the rest of us were blind enough to miss. They lent a hand when there
was need of it, and we were heartily thankful. But no use looking further
afield until we’ve looked close at home, and made sure no over-zealous idiot
has put the lady away somewhere safely and mislaid her. We’ve asked of every
soul within the walls, better consult these last two, or we might stop short of
the simple answer.”

“Ask
whatever you will,” said Eudo simply. “You’ll find them both across in the stable
or the carthouse. And I wish you might get your easy answer, but I doubt it.
They hauled the wood down there, and loaded it, and came home, and I recall
Gregory did tell me what was going on in the church, and how high the water was
come in the nave. But nothing besides. But try him!”

Secure
among his own people, Eudo felt no need to watch or listen what might come to
light, but went back practically to the bellows, and the ring of the smith’s
hammer resumed, and followed Cadfael across the yard to the wide-open door of
the carthouse.

They
were both within, wheeling the light cart by its shafts back into a corner, the
warmth of the horse they had just unharnessed still hanging in the air about
them. Square-built, muscular men both, and weatherbeaten from outdoor living in
all seasons, with a good twenty years between them, so that they might have
been father and son. Most men of these local villages, tied to the soil by
villeinage but also by inclination, and likely to marry within a very few
miles’ radius, tended to have a close clan resemblance and a strong clan
loyalty. The Welsh strain kept them short, wiry and durable, and of independent
mind.

They
greeted him civilly, without surprise; in the past year or two he had been an
occasional visitor, and grown into a welcome one. But when he had unfolded what
was required from them, they shook their heads doubtfully, and sat down without
haste on the shafts of the cart to consider.

“We
brought the cart down before it darkened,” said the elder then, narrowing his
eyes to look back through the week of labour and leisure between, “but it was a
black bitch of a day even at noon. We’d started shifting the load over to the
abbey wagon, when the sub-prior comes out between the graves to the gate, and
says, lads, lend us a hand to put the valuables inside high and dry, for it’s
rising fast.”

“Sub-Prior
Richard?” said Cadfael. “You’re sure it was he?”

“Sure
as can be, him I do know, and it was not so dark then. Lambert here will tell
you the same. So in we went, and set to, bundling up the hangings and lifting
out the chests as he told us, and putting them where we were directed, up in
the loft over the barn there, and some over the porch in Cynric’s place. It was
dim inside there, and the brothers all darting about carrying coffers and
candlesticks and crosses, and half the lamps ran out of oil, or got blown out
with the doors open. As soon as the nave seemed to be clear we got out, and
went back to loading the wood.”

“Aldhelm
went back in,” said the young man Lambert, who had done no more than nod his
head in endorsement until now.

“Aldhelm?”
questioned Cadfael.

“He
came down to help us out,” explained Gregory. “He has a half yardland by
Preston, and works with the sheep at the manor of Upton.”

So
there was one more yet before the job could be considered finished. And not
today, thought Cadfael, calculating the hours left to him.

“This
Aldhelm was in and out of the church like you? And went back in at the last
moment?”

“One
of the brothers caught him by the sleeve and haled him back to help move some
last thing,” said Gregory indifferently. “We were off to the cart and shifting
logs by then, all I know is someone called him, and he turned back. It was not
much more than a moment or two. When we got the next load between us to the
abbey wagon and slung it aboard, he was there by the wheel to help us hoist it
in and settle it. And the monk was off to the church again. He called back
goodnight to us.”

“But
he had come out to the road with your man?” persisted Cadfael.

“We
were all breathing easier then, everything that mattered was high enough to lie
snug and dry till the river went down. A civil soul, he came out to say thanks
and leave us a blessing... why not?”

Why
not, indeed, when honest men turned to for no reward besides? “You did not,”
asked Cadfael delicately, “see whether between them they brought out anything
to load into the wagon? Before he left you with his blessing?”

They
looked at each other sombrely, and shook their heads. “We were shifting logs to
the back, to be easy to lift down. We heard them come. We had our arms full,
hefting wood. When we got it to the wagon Aldhelm was reaching out to help us
hoist it on, and the brother was away into the graveyard again. No, they never
brought out anything that I saw.”

“Nor
I,” said Lambert.

“And
could you, either of you, put a name to this monk who called him back?”

“No,”
said they both with one voice; and Gregory added kindly: “Brother, by then it
was well dark. And I know names for only a few, the ones every man knows.”

True,
monks are brothers by name only to those within; willing to be brothers to all
men, outside the pale they are nameless. In some ways, surely, a pity.

“So
dark,” said Cadfael, reaching his last question, “that you would not be able to
recognize him, if you saw him again? Not by his face, or shape, or gait, or
bearing? Nothing to mark him?”

“Brother,”
said Gregory patiently, “he was close-cowled against the rain, and black
disappearing into darkness. And his face we never saw at all.”

Cadfael
sighed and thanked them, and was gathering himself up to trudge back by the
sodden fields when Lambert said, breaking his habitual and impervious silence:
“But Aldhelm may have seen it.”

The
day was too far gone, if he was to get back for Vespers. The tiny hamlet of
Preston was barely a mile out of his way, but if this Aldhelm worked with the
sheep at Upton, at this hour he might be there, and not in his own cot on his
own half-yardland of earth. Probing his memory would have to wait. Cadfael threaded
the Longner woodlands and traversed the long slope of meadows above the
subsiding river, making for home. The ford would be passable again by now, but
abominably muddy and foul, the ferry was pleasanter and also quicker. The
ferryman, a taciturn soul, put him ashore on the home bank with a little time
in hand, so that he slackened his pace a little, to draw breath. There was a
belt of close woodland on this side, too, before he could approach the first
alleys and cots of the Foregate; open, heathy woodland over the ridge, then the
trees drew in darkly, and the path narrowed. There would have to be some
lopping done here, to clear it for horsemen. Even at this hour, not yet dusk
but under heavy cloud, a man had all his work cut out to see his way clear and
evade overgrown branches. A good place for ambush and secret violence, and all
manner of skulduggery. It was the heavy cloud cover and the cheerless stillness
of the day that gave him such thoughts, and even while they lingered with him
he did not believe in them. Yet there was mischief abroad, for Saint Winifred
was gone, or the token she had left with him and blessed for him was gone, and
there was no longer any equilibrium in his world. Strange, since he knew where
she was, and should have been able to send messages to her there, surely with
greater assurance than to the coffin that did not contain her. But it was from
that same coffin that he had always received his answers, and now the wind that
should have brought him her voice from Gwytherin was mute.

Cadfael
emerged into the Foregate at the Horse Fair somewhat angry with himself for
allowing himself to be decoyed into imaginative glooms against his nature, and
trudged doggedly along to the gatehouse in irritated haste to get back to a
real world where he had solid work to do. Certainly he must hunt out Aldhelm of
Preston, but between him and that task, and just as important, loomed a few
sick old men, a number of confused and troubled young ones, and his plain duty
of keeping the Rule he had chosen.

There
were not many people abroad in the Foregate. The weather was still cold and the
gloom of the day had sent people hurrying home, wasting no time once the day’s
work was done. Some yards ahead of him two figures walked together, one of them
limping heavily. Cadfael had a vague notion that he had seen those broad
shoulders and that shaggy head before, and not so long ago, but the lame gait
did not fit. The other was built more lightly, and younger. They went with
heads thrust forward and shoulders down, like men tired after a long trudge and
in dogged haste to reach their destination and be done with it. It was no great
surprise when they turned in purposefully at the abbey gatehouse, tramping
through thankfully into the great court with a recovered spring to their steps.
Two more for the common guesthall, thought Cadfael, himself approaching the
gate, and a place near the fire and a meal and a drink will come very welcome
to them.

They
were at the door of the porter’s lodge when Cadfael entered the court, and the
porter had just come out to them. The light was not yet so far gone that
Cadfael failed to see, and marvel, how the porter’s face, ready with its
customary placid welcome and courteous enquiry, suddenly fell into a gaping
stare of wonder and concern, and the words ready on his lips turned into a
muted cry.

“Master
James! How’s this, you here? I thought, Man,” he said, dismayed, “what’s come
to you on the road?”