The Holy Thief Part 7

"I wonder, now," said Cadfael, studying her thin, bright, resolute face, "whether you would be wanting that young man for yourself, or is this pure disinterested kindness?" She looked at him, and slowly smiled. "Well, I'll come," he said. "I need a second wit, too. If it's cold within, you may use the bellows on my brazier. I have turfs enough there to damp it down again before we leave it."

In the close, timber-scented air of the hut, with the herbs rustling overhead in the rising warmth from the brazier, she sat leaning forward to the glow, the light gilding her high cheekbones and the broad sweep of brow beneath the curling black hair.

"You know now," she said, "that he was not sent for to Longner that night. It was a tale that could be believed, but what he wanted was to have a reason to be somewhere else, not to be here when the shepherd came. That would not have been the end of it, but it would have put off the worst, and Tutilo seldom looks beyond the day. If he could have evaded meeting the poor man for even a few days, this squabble over the saint's bones would have been settled, one way or another, and Herluin would have been off on his travels, and taken Tutilo with him. Not that that promises him much of a life," she added, jutting a doubtful lip, "now he's getting over his saintliness. If the biblical fates go against him, Herluin will take all the vexation and shame out on Tutilo, with usury. You know it as well as I do. These monastics, they are what they are born, only with a vengeance. If they come into the world hard and cold, they end harder and colder, if they come generous and sweet, they grow ever sweeter and more generous. All one or all the other. And just when Tutilo is beginning to wake up to where he belongs, and what he has it in him to be," she said vehemently. "Well, so it was. He lied about Longner to be out of here all the evening long. Now he owes her a debt, and goes to pay it."

"There is more than a debt in it," said Cadfael. "That lady tamed him the first time he set eyes on her. He would have gone to her no matter what lure you could have put in the other scale. And what you are telling me is that he knew very well Aldhelm was to come here that night. How did he know? It never was made known to the brothers. Only the abbot and I knew, though he may have felt that he must tell Prior Robert."

"He knew," she said simply, "because I told him."

"And how did you know?"

She looked up sharply, stung into alert attention. "Yes, it's true, few people knew. It was quite by chance. Benezet overheard Prior Robert and Brother Jerome talking about it, and he came and told me. He knew I should warn Tutilo, I think he meant me to. He knew," said Daalny, "that I liked Tutilo."

The simplest and most temperate words are the best to express complex and intemperate feelings. She had said more than she knew.

"And he?" said Cadfael with careful detachment.

But she was not so simple. Women never are, and she was a woman who had experienced more of life than her years would contain. "He hardly knows what he feels," she said, "for me or for anything. The wind blows him. He sees a splendid dream, and runs headlong. He even persuades himself of the splendour. The monastic dream is fading now. I know it has splendour, but not for him. And he is not the man to go with it for the peace and the quiet bliss."

Tell me, then," said Cadfael mildly, "what happened that night, after he asked and got leave to go to Longner."

"I would have told it at once," she said ruefully, "but that it would not have helped him. For past all doubt he was on that path, he did find the poor soul dead, he did run to the castle, like an honest man, and tell the sheriff what he had found. What I can tell does not change that. But if you can find a grain of good wheat in it, for G.o.d's sake pick it out and show it to me, for I have overlooked it."

Tell me," said Cadfael.

"We made it up between us," she said, "and it was the first time ever we two met outside these walls. He went out and took the path that leads up over the ridge to the ferry. I slipped out through the double gates of the burial ground to the Horse Fair, and we crept into the loft over the stable there. The wicket in the main doors was still unlocked then, after they brought the horses back after the flood. It was more than a week before the stableyard here had dried out. And that is where we stayed together, until we heard the Compline bell. By that time, we thought, he must have been and gone again. So late, and the night dark."

"And raining," Cadfael reminded her.

That, too. Not a night to linger on the road. We thought he would be off home, and none too keen to make another wasted journey."

"And what did you do all that time?" asked Cadfael.

She smiled ruefully. "We talked. We sat together in the hay to keep warm, and talked. Of his vocation freely entered into, and my being born into slavery with no choice at all, and how the two came to be much alike in the end," she said hardly. "I was born into the trap, he walked into it in avoiding another kind of servitude, with his eyes open, but not looking where he was going. And now with his own hands and feet tied he has great notions of delivering me."

"As you offered him his freedom tonight. Well, and then? You heard the Compline bell, and thought it safe to return. Then how came he alone on the path from the ferry?"

"We dared not come back together. He might be seen returning, and it was needful he should come by the way he would have taken to Longner. I slipped in by the cemetery gate, as I left, and he went up through the trees to the path by which he had made his way to join me. It would not have done to come together. He has forsworn women," she said with a bitter smile, "and I must have no dealings with men."

"He has not yet taken final vows," said Cadfael. "A pity he went alone, however. If two together had happened upon a dead man, they could have spoken for each other."

"Us two?" she said, staring, and laughed briefly. They would not have believed us... a bondwoman and a novice near his final vows out in the night and fresh from a romp in the hay? They would have said we compounded together to kill the man. And now, I suppose," she said, cooling from bitterness into a composed sadness, "I have told you everything, and told you nothing. But it is the whole truth. A good liar and a bold thief he may be, but on most counts Tutilo is as innocent as a babe. We even said the night prayers together when the bell rang. Who's to believe that?"

Cadfael believed it, but could imagine Herluin's face if ever the claim had been made to him. "You have told me, at least," he said, musing, "that there were more people knew Aldhelm would be coming down that path than just the few of us, as it began. If Benezet heard Jerome baying his knowledge abroad, how many more, I wonder, learned of it before night? Prior Robert can be discreet, but Jerome?... I doubt it. And might not Benezet have pa.s.sed on all his gleanings to Remy, as he did to you? Whatever the bodyservant picks up may be grist to his master's mill. And what Remy hears may very well be talked of with the patron he's courting. Oh, no, I would not say this hour had been altogether wasted. It means I have much thinking to do. Go to your bed now, child, and leave troubling for this while."

"And if Tutilo never comes back from Longner?" she asked, wavering between hope and dread.

"Never give a thought to that," said Cadfael. "He will come back."

They brought Tutilo back well before Prime, in the pearly light of a clear, still dawn. March had come in more lamb than lion, there were windflowers in the woods, and the first primroses, unburned by frost, undashed and unmired by further rain, were just opening. The two Longner men who rode one on either side their borrowed minstrel brought him as far as the gatehouse, waiting in silence as he dismounted. The farewells they made to him, as they took his pony's rein and made to turn back for home, were quiet and constrained, but clearly friendly. The elder of the two leaned down from the saddle to clap him amiably on the shoulder, and said a word or two in his ear, before they trotted away along the Foregate towards the Horse Fair.

Cadfael had been awake and afield more than an hour by then, for want of a quiet mind, and had filled in the time by ranging along the bushy edges of his pease-fields and the sh.o.r.e of the mill-pond to gather the white blossoms of the blackthorn, just out of the bud and at their best for infusing, to make a gentle purge for the old men in the infirmary, who could no longer take the strenuous exercise that had formerly kept their bodies in good trim. A very fine plant, the blackthorn, good for almost anything that ailed a man's insides, providing bud and flower and bitter black fruit were all taken at their best. Good in the hedges, too, for keeping cattle and sheep out of planted places.

From time to time he broke off his labours to return to the great court to look out for Tutilo returning. He had a full scrip of the small white flowers when he made the journey for the seventh time, and saw the three riders pace in at the gatehouse, and stood un.o.bserved to watch Tutilo dismount, part amicably from his guards, and come wearily towards the gatehouse door, as if he would himself take the key and deliver himself dutifully back to his captivity.

He walked a little unsteadily, and with his fair crest drooping over something he cradled in his arms. Once he stumbled on the cobbles. The light, clearing and brightening to the pure pale gold of primroses where its slanting rays could reach, still left the gatehouse and the court within the gates in shadow, and Tutilo kept his eyes on the cobbles and trod carefully, as though he could not see his way clearly. Cadfael went to meet him, and the porter, who had heard the stir of arrival and come out into the doorway of his lodge, halted on the threshold, and left it to Cadfael as an elder of the house to take charge of the returned prisoner.

Tutilo did not look up until they were very close, and then blinked and peered as though he had difficulty in recognizing even a wellknown face. His eyes were red-rimmed, their gilded brightness dulled from a sleepless night, and perhaps also from weeping. The burden he carried with such curious tenderness was a drawstring bag of soft leather, with some rigid shape within it, that filled his arms and was held jealously to his heart, the anchoring strings around one wrist for safety, as though he went in dread of loss. He stared over his treasure at Cadfael, and small, wary sparks kindled in his eyes, and flared into anxiety and pain in an instant. In a flat, chill voice he said: "She is dead. Never a quiver or a moan. I thought I had sung her to sleep. I went on... silence might have disturbed her rest..."

"You did well," said Cadfael. "She has waited a long time for rest. Now nothing can disturb it."

"I started back as soon afterwards as seemed right. I did not want to leave her without saying goodbye fairly. She was kind to me." He did not mean as mistress to servant or patroness to protege. There had been another manner of kindness between them, beneficent to both. "I was afraid you might think I was not coming back. But the priest said she could not live till morning, so I could not leave her."

"There was no haste," said Cadfael. "I knew you would come. Are you hungry? Come within the lodge, and sit a while, and we'll find you food and drink."

"No... They have fed me. They would have found me a bed, but it was not in the bargain that I should linger after I was no longer needed. I kept to terms." He was racked by a sudden jaw-splitting bout of yawning that brought water to his eyes. "I need my bed now," he owned, s.h.i.+vering.

The only bed he could claim at this point was in his penitential cell, but he went to it eagerly, glad to have a locked door between himself and the world. Cadfael took the key from the porter, who hovered with slightly anxious sympathy, and was relieved to see a delinquent for whom he might be held responsible returning docilely to his prison. Cadfael shepherded his charge within, and watched him subside gratefully on to the narrow cot, and sit there mute for a moment, laying his burden down beside him with a kind of caressing gentleness.

"Stay a little while," said the boy at length. "You knew her well. I came late. How was it she had heart even to look at me, as tormented as she was?" He wanted no answer, and in any case there could be none. But why should not one dying too soon for her years and too late by far for her comfort take pleasure in the sudden visitation of youth and freshness and beauty, however flawed, and all the more for its vulnerability and helplessness in a world none too kind to the weak.

"You gave her intense pleasure. What she has known most intimately these last years has been intense pain. I think she saw you very clearly, better than some who live side by side with you and might as well be blind. Better, perhaps, than you see yourself."

"My sight is as sharp as it need be," said Tutilo. "I know what I am. No one need be an angel to sing like one. There's no virtue in it. They had brought the harp into her bedchamber for me, all freshly strung. I thought it might be loud for her, there between close walls, but it was her wish. Did you know her, Cadfael, when she was younger, and hale, and beautiful? I played for a while, and then I stole up to look at her, because she was so still I thought she had fallen asleep, but her eyes were wide open, and there was colour, all rosy, high on her cheeks. She did not look so gaunt and old, and her lips were red and full, and curved, like a smile but not quite a smile. I knew she knew me, though she never spoke word, never, night-long. I sang to her, some of the hymns to the Virgin, and then, I don't know why, but there was no one to tell me do, or don't, and it was the way I felt her taking me, all still as she was, and growing younger because there was no pain left... I sang love songs. And she was glad. I had only to look at her, and I knew she was glad. And sometimes the young lord's wife stole in and sat to listen, and brought me to drink, and sometimes the lady the younger brother is to marry. Their priest had already shriven her clean. In the small hours, around three o'clock, she must have died, but I didn't know... I thought she had truly fallen asleep, until the young one stole up and told me."

"Truly she had fallen asleep," said Cadfael. "And if your singing went with her through the dark, she had a good pa.s.sage. There's nothing here for grieving. She has waited patiently for this ending."

"It was not that broke me," said Tutilo simply. "But see what followed. See what I brought away with me."

He drew open the neck of the leather bag that lay beside him, and reached inside to withdraw with loving care that same psaltery he had once played in Donata's bedchamber, polished sounding-board and stretched strings s.h.i.+ning like new. A broken key had been replaced by one newly cut, and it was triple-strung with new gut strings. He laid it beside him, and stroked across the strings, conjuring forth a s.h.i.+mmer of silvery sound.

"She gave it to me. After she was dead, after we had said the prayers for her, her son, the young one, brought it to me, all newly furbished like this, and said it was her wish that I should have it, for a musician without an instrument is a warrior without weapon or armour. He told me all that she had to say when she left it in trust for me. She said a troubadour needs only three things, an instrument, a horse, and a lady love, and the first she desired to give me, and the other two I must find for myself. She had even had new quills cut for me, and some to spare."

His voice had grown hushed and childish with wonder and his eyes filled, looking back to record this playful divination which might yet predict a future far removed from the cloister, which in any case was already losing its visionary charm for him. She might well be right. She had warmed to him not as a spiritual being, but as vigorous young flesh and blood, full of untested potentialities. And dying men, and perhaps even more, dying women, had been formidable oracles at times.

Distantly from the dortoir, across the court, the bell sounded for Prime. Cadfael picked up the psaltery with due respect, and laid it safely aside on the little prayer-desk.

"I must go. And you, if you'll take advice, will sleep, and put everything else clean out of mind, while we go try the sortes Biblicae. You've done well by the lady, and she has done well by you. With her grace, and a few prayers the rest of us may find for you, you can hardly go unblessed."

"Oh, yes," said Tutilo, his tired eyes dilating. "That is today, is it not? I had forgotten." The momentary shadow touched but could not intimidate him; he had gone somewhat beyond fear for himself.

"And now you can forget it again," said Cadfael firmly. "You of all people should have faith in the saint you set such store by. Lie down and sleep through all, and believe in Saint Winifred. Do you not think she must be up in arms by this time, at being treated like a bone between three dogs? And if she could tell you her mind privately some while ago, do you suppose she cannot make it very plain to us in public today? Sleep the morning through, and let her dispose of all of us."

In the halfhour between chapter and High Ma.s.s, when Cadfael was busy sorting his harvest of blackthorn blossoms in his workshop, discarding occasional spines and fragments of wiry dark twigs, Hugh came in to share the gleanings of his own labours. They were meagre enough, but at least the ferryman had been able to supply one sc.r.a.p of information that might yet be useful.

"He never went near Longner that night. He never crossed the river. You know that, I think? No, but the other poor wretch did, and the ferryman remembers when. It seems the parish priest at Upton has a servant who visits his brother's family in Preston once a week, and that night this fellow walked the road from Upton to Preston along with Aldhelm, who works at the demesne, and lives in the neighbouring village. A shepherd can never be sure at what hour he'll be done for the day, but the priest's man leaves Upton as soon as Vespers is over, and so he did this time. He says it must have been a little before the sixth hour when Aldhelm parted from him at Preston to go on to the ferry. From there, the crossing and the distance he had covered on that path, to the place where he was found, would take him no more than half an hour, less, if he was a brisk walker, and it was raining, he'd be no longer than he need out in it. It seems to me that he was waylaid and killed round about a quarter or half of the hour past six. Hardly later. Now if your lad could tell us just where he was, while he was supposed to be at Longner, and better still, bring us a witness to confirm it, that would go far to get him out of the mire."

Cadfael turned to give him a long, thoughtful look, and a few white petals that had floated and lodged in the rough cloth of his sleeve caught the stirring of air from the door, and floated free again, riding the draught into the pale, bright sunlight. "Hugh, if what you say is true, then I hope something good may come of it. For though I doubt if he's ready to own to it yet, I know of another who can and will testify that the two of them were together until the bell sounded for Compline, which would be the better part of an hour later than you have in mind, and a quarter of an hour's walk from the place, into the bargain. But since it suits ill with his vocation, and perhaps bodes no good to the other one, neither of them may be anxious to say it openly for all to hear. In your ear, with a little persuasion, they might both whisper it."

"Where is the boy now?" asked Hugh, considering. "Fast in his penitentiary?"

"And fast asleep, I trust. You were not at Longner last night, Hugh? No, or he would have said so. Then probably you have not heard that he was sent for last night just before Compline, to go to Donata, at her express wish. And Radulfus gave him leave, under escort. She died, Hugh. G.o.d and the saints remembered her at last."

"No," said Hugh, "that I did not know." He sat silent for a long moment, recollecting how the past few years had dealt with Donata Blount and her family. Nothing there for grieving, no, rather for grat.i.tude and thanksgiving. "No doubt the news will be waiting for me around the garrison by now," he said. "And she asked for Tutilo?"

"You find that strange?" Cadfael asked mildly.

"It disappoints me when human creatures fail to provide something strange. No, all that's strange about this is that those two ever came to touch hands at any point. A man would have said that two such were never likely in this world to come within sight, let alone touch, of each other. Once met, yes, all things were possible. And she is dead. In his presence?"

"He thought he had sung her to sleep," said Cadfael. "So he had. He had grown fond, and so had she. Where there's nothing at stake there's no barrier, either. Nothing to join, so nothing to divide them. And he has come home this morning worn out with experience, all grief and all wonder, because she gave him the psaltery on which he played to her, and sent him a message straight out of the jongleurs' romances. He went back to his cell gladly, and I hope he'll sleep until all this business we have in hand after Ma.s.s is finished and done. And G.o.d and Saint Winifred send us a good ending!"

"Ah, that!" said Hugh, and smiled somewhat cryptically. "Is not this sortes a rather dangerous way of deciding an issue? It seems to me it would not be at all difficult to cheat. There was a time, by your own account, when you cheated, in a good cause, of course!"

"I cheated to prevent a theft, not to achieve one," said Cadfael. "I never cheated Saint Winifred, nor will she suffer cheating now. She won't charge me with more than my due, nor will she let that lad pay for a death I'm sure he does not owe. She knows what we need and what we deserve. She'll see wrongs righted and quarrels reconciled, in her own good time."

"And without any aid from me," Hugh concluded, and rose, laughing. "I'll be off and leave you to it, I'd as lief be elsewhere while your monastics fight it out. But afterwards, when he wakes, poor rogue, I wouldn't disturb him!, we must have words with your songbird."

Cadfael went into the church before High Ma.s.s, uneasy for all his declarations of faith, and guiltily penitent over his uneasiness, a double contortion of the mind. In any case there was no time left to make his infusion before the a.s.say: he left his blackthorn blossoms, cleansed of all thorns and husks, waiting in a clean vessel for his return, and covered from any floating particles of dust by a linen cloth. A few petals still clung about his sleeves, caught in the rough weave. He had others in his grizzled russet tonsure, dropped from the higher branches as the wind stirred them. Distantly this springtime snow stirred his memory of other springs, and later blossom, like but unlike this, when the hawthorns came into heady, drunken sweetness, drowning the senses. Four or five weeks more, and that greater snow would blanch the hedgerows. The smell of growth and greenness was already in the air, elusive but constant, like the secret rippling of water, the whispering water of February, now almost hushed into silence.

By instinct rather than design he found himself at Saint Winifred's altar, and kneeled to approach her, his creaky knees settling gingerly on the lowest step of her elevated place. He offered no words, though he thought words within, in the Welsh tongue, which had been native to her as it was to him. Where she belonged and wished to be, she would direct. What he asked was guidance in the matter of a young man's death, a clean young man who handled lambs with gentleness and care, as lambs of G.o.d, and never deserved to be done to death suddenly before his time, however the love of G.o.d might have set a secure hand under him as he fell, and lifted him into light. And another young man suspect of a thing far out of his scope, who must not die a similarly unjust death.

What he never doubted was that she was listening. She would not turn her back on an appellant. But in what mood she would be listening was not so certain, considering everything that had happened. Cadfael hoped and thought his prayers towards her in resigned humility, but always in good north Welsh, the Welsh of Gwynedd. She might be indignant; she would still be just.

When he rose from his knees, helping himself up by the rim of her altar, newly draped in celebration of her return, and expectation of her continued residence, he did not at once leave her. The quiet here was at once grateful and ominous, like the hush before battle. And the Gospels, not the great illuminated book, but a smaller and stouter one, calculated to resist too crafty fingers by its less use and lighter pages, already lay on the silver-chased reliquary, centrally placed with accurate and reverent precision. He let his hand rest on it, and summed up all his prayers for guidance and enlightenment into the touch of his fingers, and suddenly he was resolved to open it. Girl, now show me my way, for I have a child to care for. A liar and a thief and a rogue, but what this world has made him, and sweet as he can be false. And not a murderer, whatever else you may know him to be. I doubt he ever harmed a soul in his twenty or so years. Say me a word, one enlightening word, to let him out of this cage.

The book of the fates was already there before him. Almost without conscious thought he laid both hands upon it, raised it, and opened it. He closed his eyes as he set it down on its place, flattening it open under his left hand, and laid the index finger of his right hand upon the exposed page.

Aware abruptly of what he had done, he held very still, not s.h.i.+fting a finger, above all not that index finger, as he opened his eyes, and looked where it pointed.

He was in the Apostle Matthew, Chapter 10, and the fervent finger, pressing so hard it dimpled the leaf, rested on Verse 21..

Cadfael had learned his Latin late, but this was simple enough: "... and the brother shall deliver up the brother to death."

He stood gazing at the words, and at first they made no sense to him, apart from the ominous mention of death, and death of intent, not the quiet closing of a life like Donata's pa.s.sing. The brother shall deliver up the brother to death... It was a part of the prophecy of disintegration and chaos to be expected in the latter days; within that context it was but one detail in a large picture, but here it was all, it was an answer. To one long years a member of a brotherhood the wording was significant. Not a stranger, not an enemy, but a brother betraying a brother.

And suddenly he was visited by a brief vision of a young man hurrying down a narrow woodland path on a dark night, in drizzling rain, a dun-coloured cloak on him, its hood drawn close over his head. The shape pa.s.sed by, and was no more than a shape, dimly descried under the faint tempering of the darkness the thread of sky made between the trees: but the shape was familiar, a hooded man shrouded in voluminous cloth. Or a cowled man in a black habit? In such conditions, where would the difference be?

It was as if a door had opened before him into a dim but positive light. A brother delivered to death... How if that were true, how if another victim had been intended, not Aldhelm? No one but Tutilo had had known cause to fear Aldhelm's witness, and Tutilo, though abroad from the enclave that night, firmly denied any attack upon the young man, and small points were emerging to bear out his testimony. And Tutilo was indeed a Brother, and at large that night, and expected to be upon that path. And in build, and in age, yes, striding along to get out of the rain the sooner, he might well be close enough to the shape Aldhelm would present, to an a.s.sa.s.sin waiting.

A Brother delivered up to death indeed, if another man had not taken that road before him. But what of the other, that one who had planned the death? If the meaning of this oracle was as it seemed, the word "brother" had surely a double monastic significance. A Brother of this house, or at least of the Benedictine Order. Cadfael knew of none besides Tutilo who had been out of the enclave that night, but a man intending such a deed would hardly publish his intent or let anyone know of his absence. Someone within the Order who hated Tutilo enough to attempt his murder? Prior Robert might not have been very greatly grieved if Tutilo had been made to pay for his outrageous offence with his skin, but Prior Robert had been at dinner with the abbot and several other witnesses that night, and in any case could hardly be imagined as lurking in wet woods to strike down the delinquent with his own elegant hands. Herluin might hold it against the boy that he had disgraced Ramsey not so much by attempting theft, but by making a botch of it, but Herluin had also been of the abbot's party. And yet the oracle had lodged in Cadfael's mind like a thorn from the blackthorn bushes, and would not be dislodged.

He went to his stall with the words echoing and reechoing in his inward ear: "and the brother shall deliver up the brother to death". It took all his willpower and concentration to banish the sound of it, and fix heart and soul on the celebration of the Ma.s.s.

Chapter Nine.

AT THE END OF Ma.s.s, when the children had been dismissed to their schooling with Brother Paul, and only the choir monks were left as awed witnesses, Abbot Radulfus offered a brief and practical prayer for divine guidance, and approached Saint Winifred's altar.

"With respect," said Earl Robert, standing courteously aloof, and in the mildest and most reasonable of voices, "how should we determine who should be first to try the fates? Is there some rule we ought to follow?"

"We are here to ask," said the abbot simply. "Let us ask from beginning to end, from contention to resolution, and advance no plea or reservation of our own. We agreed. Keep to that. Of the order of procedure I will ask, and beyond that I leave Shrewsbury's cause to Prior Robert, who made the journey to Wales to find Saint Winifred, and brought her relics here. If any one of you has anything to object, name whom you will. Father Boniface would not refuse to do us this service, if you require it."

No one had any observation to make, until Robert Bossu took it upon himself, very amiably, to give voice to a consent otherwise expressed in silence. "Father Abbot, do you proceed, and we are all content."

Radulfus mounted the three shallow steps, and with both hands opened the Gospels, his eyes fixed above, upon the cross, so that he might not calculate where, on the exposed page, his finger should rest.

"Come close," he said, "and confirm for yourselves that there is no deceit. See the words, that what I read aloud to you is what the sortes have sent me."

Herluin without hesitation came hungrily to peer. Earl Robert stood tranquilly where he was, and bowed away the necessity for any such confirmation.

Abbot Radulfus looked down to where his index finger rested, and reported without emotion: "I am in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the twentieth chapter. And the line reads: "The last shall be first, and the first last."".

No arguing with that, thought Cadfael, looking on with some anxiety from his retired place. If anything, it was rather suspicious that the first a.s.say should produce an answer so apt; the prognostics of bishops were often known to be ambiguous in the extreme. Had this been anyone but Radulfus testing the waters, Radulfus in his inflexible uprightness, a man might almost have suspected... But that was to limit or doubt the range of the saint's power. She who could call a lame youth to her and support him with her invisible grace while he laid down his crutches on the steps of her altar, why doubt that she could turn the leaves of a Gospel, and guide a faithful finger to the words her will required?

"It would seem," said Earl Robert, after a moment of courteous silence in deference to any other who might wish to speak,"that as the last comer, this verdict sends me first into the lists. Is that your reading, Father?"

"The meaning seems plain enough," said Radulfus; carefully he closed the Gospels, aligned the book scrupulously central upon the reliquary, and descended the steps to stand well aside. "Proceed, my lord."

"G.o.d and Saint Winifred dispose!" said the earl, and mounted without haste, to stand for a moment motionless, before turning the book, with slow, hieratic gestures that could be clearly seen by all, upon its spine between his long, muscular hands, thumbs meeting to part the pages. Opening it fully, he flattened both palms for a moment upon the chosen pages, and then let his finger hover a moment again before touching. He had neither glanced down nor pa.s.sed a fingertip over the edges of the leaves, to determine how far advanced in the book his page might be. There are ways of trying to manipulate even the sortes Biblicae, but he had meticulously and demonstratively avoided them. He never was in earnest, Cadfael reflected with certainty, and it would spoil his sport to use contrivance. His interest is in p.r.i.c.king Prior Robert and Sub-Prior Herluin into bristling at each other with wattles glowing scarlet and throats gobbling rage.

The earl read aloud, translating into the vernacular as fluently as any cleric: " 'Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me; and where I am, thither ye cannot come.' " He looked up, musing. "It is John, the seventh chapter and the fifty-fourth verse. Father Abbot, here is a strange saying, for she came to me when I was not seeking her at all, when I knew nothing of her. It was she found me. And here surely is a hard riddle to read, that where she is I cannot come, for here indeed she is, and here am I beside her. How do you decipher this?"

Cadfael could have told him, but kept his mouth very firmly closed, though it would have been interesting to answer the query, and hear how this subtle man would respond. It was even tempting, for here was a man who would have appreciated every irony. Robert Bossu had pursued the dispute here to Shrewsbury in search of diversion in a time of frustration and inaction, a pity he must be denied the best of the joke that was so much more than merely a joke. That would still have to be shared only with Hugh, who knew the best and the worst of his friend Cadfael. No, there was one more who knew everything. Surely Saint Winifred sometimes remembered and smiled, in her tranquil sleep in Gwytherin, even laughed when she roused to extend the sunrays of her grace to lift up a lame boy here in Shrewsbury.

And in a way this answer, like the first, was astonis.h.i.+ngly appropriate, brandis.h.i.+ng a secret truth and a paradox before a man who would have appreciated it to the full, but could not be let into the secret. If his will was to tantalize and bewilder, why should not she take her own gentle revenge?

"I am in the same case as you," said the abbot, and smiled. "I listen and labour to understand. It may be that we must wait until all has been answered before hoping for enlightenment. Shall we proceed, and wait for revelation?"

"Willingly!" said the earl, and turned to descend the three steps, the skirts of his crimson surcoat swirling around him. From this angle, stepping down with the altar candles behind him, his high shoulder and the bulge behind it scarcely broke the symmetry of a body beautifully compact and admirably handled. He withdrew at once to a gracious distance, not to disturb in any way the privacy and composure of the next contender, and his two young squires, well-trained to be equally un.o.btrusive in attendance, drew in silently at either shoulder.

If he plays games to while away the tedious time, thought Cadfael, he plays them by n.o.ble rules, even those he makes up as he goes. Hugh liked him from the first; and so do I like him, I like him very well. And it entered his mind uninvited to wonder about the strangeness of human relations.h.i.+ps. What has such a man as this, he marvelled, to do with our loud, headlong, candid Stephen, who charges at events like a stamping bull? For that matter, now that I see them for this moment so clearly, what has Hugh to do with the king, either? Must not all such thinking souls be growing hideously weary with this long contention that makes no progress, that wastes men and harvests and the very wellbeing of the land? Weary not only with Stephen, but also, perhaps even more, with this lady who sinks her teeth into empire and will not let go. Somewhere there must be an inheritor of more promise, a hint before sunrise of a sun fit to disperse doubts like morning mists, and dazzle out of our vision both king and empress, with all the confusion, chaos and waste they have visited upon this land.

"Father Herluin," said Radulfus, "will you a.s.say?" Herluin advanced upon the altar very slowly, as though these few paces, and the climbing of the three steps, must be utilized to the full for prayer, and pa.s.sionate concentration on this single effort which would make or break for him a dear ambition. In his long, pale lantern face his eyes burned darkly, like half-consumed embers. For all his eagerness, when he came to the testing time he hesitated to touch, and two or three times poised his hands over the book, only to withdraw them again from contact. An interesting study, this of the varying techniques with which different men approached the moment of truth. Robert Bossu had stood the book briskly on edge between his flattened palms, parted the leaves with both thumbs, opened them fully, and poised a finger wherever chance guided it. Herluin, when finally he did touch, touched as if the vellum might burn him, timidly and convulsively, and even when he had the book open, for better or worse, agonized a few moments over where to choose on the page, s.h.i.+fting from recto to verso and back again before settling. Once committed, he drew breath hard, and stooped nearsightedly to see what fate had granted him. And swallowed, and was silent.

"Read!" Radulfus prompted him delicately.

There was no help for it. His voice grated, but he spoke out clearly, perhaps even a little louder than was natural because it cost him such an effort to get it out at all. "It is the thirteenth chapter of Luke, the twenty-seventh verse. " 'I tell you, I know you not, whence you came. Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity...' " He lifted his head, his face grey with outrage, and firmly closed the book before he looked round at all the carefully respectful countenances ringing him round like the pales of a fence, a barrier through which he found the only dignified way, at someone else's expense. "I have been shamefully beguiled and deceived. She shows me my fault, that ever I trusted a liar and thief. It was not with her will, not at her command, that Brother Tutilo, dare I even call him Brother still?, stole her away, and worse, in the blackness of his offence brought another innocent soul into sin, if not to his death. His crime is blasphemy no less than theft, for from the beginning he lied impiously, saying he had his revelation from the saint, and he has covered his offence ever since with lie after lie. Now she has clearly given me to know his villainy, and shown that all this wandering since her abduction she has indeed herself devised, to return to this place from which she was taken. Father Abbot, I withdraw with grief and humility. Such pity as she well may have felt for Ramsey in its distress, he has traduced and despoiled, and here we have no rights. I acknowledge it with tears, and pray her pardon!"

For himself! Certainly not for that hapless lad sleeping in a narrow stone cell at this moment. Small pardon there would be for him if Herluin had his way. Every pang of this humiliation would be visited upon Tutilo, as every particle of guilt was being visited upon him now, the more successfully to extricate Herluin, innocent and devout, only wickedly deceived, with nothing to repent but his too profound faith.

"Wait!" said Abbot Radulfus. "Make no judgements yet. It is possible to deceive oneself, no less than others. In the first anger no man should be condemned. And the saint has not yet spoken to us of Shrewsbury."

Only too true, reflected Cadfael, for she may well have some strictures to level at us, no less than at Ramsey. How if she chooses this moment and this audience to make it known that she visits us only out of pure charity, that what lies in her handsome reliquary is in reality the body of the young man who committed murder to secure her for Shrewsbury, and himself died by accident, in circ.u.mstances that made it vital he should vanish? A worse offence than Tutilo committed in a similar cause, to win her for Ramsey. In laying her reverently back in the grave from which he had taken her, and sealing the murderer in her abandoned coffin, Cadfael had been and still was convinced that he did her will, and restored her to the resting-place she desired. But was it not possible that Tutilo had believed just as sincerely?