The Holy Thief Part 10

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 pa.s.sionate 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 Her tone was level, courteous, and withdrawn, promising nothing, confiding nothing, a neutral salute out of the dark.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?

Chapter Twelve.

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 gra.s.s 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 a.s.surance 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 coa.r.s.e 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 Remy's man Benezet 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 Remy'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. Benezet 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 Benezet. "This was all. Lucky I remembered, or Remy'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 quant.i.ty, 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, a.s.sembling 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 a.s.sembled 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 Remy'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 s.p.a.ce 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.

"You have the heaviest load," said Cadfael. "Let me take it from you."

She smiled more warmly, but shook her head. "I am responsible, I will carry it or let it fall myself. But it is not so heavy, only bulky. The case is within there. Leather, soft, padded. You can help me put it in, if you will. It takes two, one to hold the bag wide open."

He went with her into the stableyard, and obediently held the fitted lid of the case braced back on his arm to allow her to slide the little organ within. She closed the lid upon it, and buckled the straps that held it firm. About them the earl's young men went about their efficient business with the smooth and pleasurable grace of youth, and at the far end of the yard Benezet was cleaning saddles and harness, and draping his work over a wooden frame, where the saddlecloths were spread out in the pale sunlight that was already acquiring a surprising degree of warmth. Remy's ornate bridle hung on a hook beside him.

"Your lord likes his gear handsome," said Cadfael, indicating it. She followed his glance impa.s.sively.

"Oh, that! That isn't Remy's, it's Benezet's. Where he got it there's no asking. I've often thought he stole it somewhere, but he's close-mouthed, best not question."

Cadfael digested that without comment. Why so needless a lie? It served no detectable purpose that he could see, and that in itself was cause for further consideration.

Perhaps Benezet thought it wise to attribute the ownership of so fine a possession to his master, to avoid any curiosity as to how he had acquired it. Daalny had just suggested as much. He took the matter a stage further, in a very casual tone.

"He takes no great care of it. He had left it in the barn at the Horse Fair all this time since the flood. He fetched it back only this morning."

This time she turned a face suddenly intent, and her hands halted on the last buckle. "He told you that? He spent half an hour cleaning and polishing that bridle early this morning. It never left here, I've seen it a dozen times since."

Her eyes were large, bright and sharp with speculation. Cadfael had no wish to start her wondering too much; she was already more deeply involved than he would have liked, and rash enough to surge into unwise action at this extreme, when she was about to be swept away to Leicester, with nothing resolved and nothing gained. Better by far keep her out of it, if that was any way possible. But she was very quick; she had her teeth into this discrepancy already. Cadfael shrugged, and said indifferently: "I must have misunderstood him. He was along there in mid-morning, carrying it. I thought he'd been to reclaim it, he was in the stable there. I took it for granted it was Remy's."

"Well you might," she agreed. "I've wondered, myself, how he came by it. Somewhere in Provence, most likely. But honestly? I doubt it." The brilliance of her eyes narrowed upon Cadfael's face. She did not turn to glance at Benezet, not yet. "What was he doing at the Horse Fair?" Her tone was still casually curious, as if neither question nor answer mattered very much, but the glitter in her eyes denied it.

"Do I know?" said Cadfael. "I was up in the loft when he came in. Maybe he was just curious why the door was open."

That was a diversion she could not resist. Her eyes rounded eagerly, a little afraid to hope for too much. "And what were you doing in the loft?"

"I was looking for proof of what you told me," said Cadfael. "And I found it. Did you know that Tutilo forgot his breviary there after Compline?"

She said: "No!" Almost soundlessly, on a soft, hopeful breath.

"He borrowed mine, last night. He had no notion where he had lost his own, but I thought of one place at least where it would be worthwhile looking for it. And yes, it was there, and the place marked at Compline. It is hardly an eyewitness, Daalny, but it is good evidence. And I am waiting to put it into Hugh Beringar's hands."

"Will it free him?" she asked in the same rapt whisper.

"So far as Hugh is concerned, it well may. But Tutilo's superior here is Herluin, and he cannot be pa.s.sed by."

"Need he ever know?" she asked fiercely.

"Not the whole truth, if Hugh sees with my eyes. That there's very fair proof the boy never did murder, yes, that he'll be told, but he need not know where you were or what you did, the pair of you, that night."

"We did no wrong," she said, exultant and scornful of a world where needs must think evil, and where she knew of evil enough, but despised most of it and had no interest in any of it. "Cannot the abbot overrule Herluin? This is his domain, not Ramsey's."

"The abbot will keep the Rule. He can no more detain the boy here and deprive Ramsey than he could abandon one of his own. Only wait! Let's see whether even Herluin can be persuaded to open the door on the lad." He did not go on to speculate on what would happen then, though it did seem to him that Tutilo's pa.s.sionate vocation had cooled to the point where it might slip out of sight and out of mind by comparison with the charm of delivering Partholan's queen from slavery. Ah, well! Better take your hands from the ploughshare early and put them to other decent use, than persist, and take to ploughing narrower and narrower furrows until everything secular is anathema, and everything human doomed to reprobation.

"Bring me word," said Daalny, very gravely, her eyes royally commanding.

Only when Cadfael had left her, to keep a watch on the gatehouse for Hugh's coming, did she turn her gaze upon Benezet. Why should he bother to tell needless lies? He might, true, prefer to let people think an improbably fine bridle belonged to his master rather than himself, if he had cause to be wary of flattering but inconvenient curiosity. But why offer any explanation at all? Why should a close-mouthed man who was sparing of words at all times go wasting words on quite unnecessary lies? And more interesting still, he certainly had not made the journey to the Horse Fair to retrieve that bridle, his own or Remy's. It was the excuse, not the reason. So why had he made it? To retrieve something else? Something by no means forgotten, but deliberately left there? Tomorrow they were to ride for Leicester. If he had something put away there for safekeeping, something he could not risk showing, he had to reclaim it today.

Moreover, if that was true, whatever it was had lain in hiding ever since the night of the flood, when chaos entered the church with the river water, when everything vulnerable within was being moved, when Tutilo's ingenious theft was committed, oh, that she acknowledged, and the slow-rooting but certain seed of murder was sown. Murder of which Tutilo was not guilty. Murder, of which someone else was. Someone else who had cause to fear what Aldhelm might have to tell about that night, once his memory was stirred? What other reason could anyone have had to kill a harmless young man, a shepherd from a manor some miles away?

Daalny went on with her work without haste, since she had no intention of quitting the stableyard while Benezet was there. She had to go back to the guesthall for the smaller instruments, but she lost as little time over that as possible, and settled down again within view of Benezet while she cased and bestowed them with care. The earl's younger squire, interested, came to examine the Saracen ud that had come back with Remy's father from the Crusade, and his presence provided welcome cover for the watch she was keeping on her fellow-servant, and delayed her packing, which would otherwise have been complete within an hour or so, and left her with no excuse for remaining. The flutes and panpipes were easily carried; rebec and mandora had their own padded bags for protection, though the bow of the rebec had to be packed with care.

It was drawing near to noon. Earl Robert's young men piled all their baggage neatly together ready for loading next day, and took themselves off to see to their lord's comfort withindoors, and serve his dinner. Daalny closed the last strap, and stacked the saddleroll that held the flutes beside the heavier saddlebags. "These are ready. Have you finished with the harness?"

He had brought out one of his own bags, and had it already half-filled, folding an armful of clothes within it.

What was beneath, she thought, he must have stowed away when she went back to the guesthall for the rebec and the mandora. When his back was turned she nudged the soft bulge of leather with her foot, and something within uttered the thinnest and clearest of sounds, the c.h.i.n.k of coin against coin, very brief, as though for the thoroughness of the packing movement was barely possible. But there is nothing else that sounds quite the same. He turned his head sharply, but she met his eyes with a wide, clear stare, held her position as if she had heard nothing, and said with flat composure: "Come to dinner. He's at table with Robert Bossu by now, you're not needed to wait on him this time."

Hugh listened to Cadfael's story, and turned the little breviary in his hands meantime with a small, wry smile, between amus.e.m.e.nt and exasperation.

"I can and will answer for my shire, but within here I have no powers, as well you know. I accept that the boy never did murder, indeed I never seriously thought he had. This is proof enough for me on that count, but if I were you I would keep the circ.u.mstances even from Radulfus, let alone Herluin. You had better not appear in this. You might feel you must open the last detail to the abbot, but I doubt if even he could extricate the poor wretch in this case. Meeting a girl in a hayloft would be excellent grist to Herluin's mill, if ever he got to hear of it. A worse charge than the sacrilegious theft, worse, at any rate, than that would have been if it had succeeded. I'll see him clear of murder, even without being able to prove it home on someone else, but more than that I can't promise."

"I leave it all to you," said Cadfael resignedly. "Do as you see fit. Time's short, G.o.d knows. Tomorrow they'll all be gone."

"Well, at least," said Hugh, rising, "Robert Bossu, with all the Beaumont heritage in Normandy and England on his mind, will hardly be greatly interested in riding gaoler on a wretched little clerk with a clerical h.e.l.l waiting for him at the end of the road. I wouldn't be greatly astonished if he left a door unlocked somewhere along the way, and turned a blind eye, or even set the hunt off in the opposite direction. There's a deal of England between here and Ramsey." He held out the breviary; the yellow straw still marked the place where Tutilo had recited the Office and shared the night prayers with Daalny. "Give this back to him. He'll need it."

And he went away to his audience with Radulfus, while Cadfael sat somewhat morosely thinking, and holding the worn book in his hands. He was not quite sure why he should so concern himself with a clever little fool who had tried to steal Shrewsbury's saint, and in the process started a vexatious series of events that had cost several decent men hurts, troubles and hardships, and one his life. None of which, of course, had Tutilo actually committed or intended, but trouble he was, and trouble he would continue as long as he remained where he did not belong. Even his over-ardent but genuine piety was not of the kind to fit into the discipline of a monastic brotherhood. Well, at least Hugh would make it plain that the boy was no murderer, whatever else might be charged against him, and his highly enterprising theft was not such as to come within the province of the king's sheriff. For the rest, if the worst came to the worst, the boy must do what many a recalcitrant square peg in a round hole had had to do before him, survive his penance, resign himself to his fate, and settle down to live tamed and deformed, but safe. A singing bird caged. Though of course there was still Daalny. Bring me word, she had said. And yes, he would bring her word. Of both worst and best.

In the abbot's parlour Hugh delivered his judgement with few words. If all was not to be told, the fewer the better. "I came to tell you, Father Abbot, that I have no charge to make against the novice Tutilo. I have evidence enough now to be certain that he did no murder. The law of which I am custodian has no further interest in him. Unless, "he added mildly," the common interest of wishing him well."

"You have found the murderer elsewhere?" asked Radulfus.

"No, that I can't say. But I am certain now that it is not Tutilo. What he did that night, in coming at once to give word of the slaying, was well done, and what he could do further the next day he did ungrudgingly. My law makes no complaint of him."

"But mine must," said Radulfus. "It is no light offence to steal, but it is worse to have involved another in the theft, and brought him into peril of his life. To his better credit he confessed it, and has shown true remorse that ever he brought this unfortunate young man into his plans. He has gifts he may yet use to the glory of G.o.d. But there is a debt to pay." He considered Hugh in attentive silence for a while, and then he said: "Am I to know what further witness has come to your hand? Since you have not fathomed out the guilty, there must be cause why you are sure of this one's innocence."

"He made the excuse of being called to Longner," said Hugh readily, "in order to be able to slip away and hide until the danger should be past and the witness departed, at least for that night. I doubt he looked beyond, it was the immediate threat he studied to avoid. Where he hid I know. It was in the loft of the abbey stable on the Horse Fair, and there is reasonable evidence he did not leave it until he heard the Compline bell. By which time Aldhelm was dead."

"And is there any other voice to bear out this timing?"

"There is," said Hugh, and offered nothing further.

"Well," said Radulfus, sitting back with a sigh, "he is not in my hands but by chance, and I cannot, if I would, pa.s.s over his offence or lighten his penalty. Sub-Prior Herluin will take him back to Ramsey, to his own abbot, and while he is within my walls, I must respect Ramsey's right, and hold him fast and securely until he leaves my gates."

"He was not curious, he did not probe," Hugh reported to Cadfael in the herb garden; his voice was appreciative and amused. "He accepted my a.s.surance that I was satisfied Tutilo had done no murder and broken no law of the land, at least, none outside the Church's pale, and that was enough for him. After all, he'll be rid of the whole tangle by tomorrow, he has his own delinquent to worry about. Jerome is going to take a deal of absolving. But the abbot won't do the one thing I suppose, as superior here, he could do, let our excommunicate come back into the services for this last night. He's right, of course. Once they leave your gates, he's no longer a responsibility of Shrewsbury's, but until then Radulfus is forced to act for Ramsey as well as for his own household. Brother must behave correctly to brother, even if he detests him. I'm half sorry myself, but Tutilo remains in his cell. Officially, at any rate," he added with a considering grin. "Even your backslidings, provided they offend only Church law, would be no affair of mine."

"On occasions they have been," said Cadfael, and let his mind stray fondly after certain memories that brought a nostalgic gleam to his eye. "It's a long time since we rode together by night."

"Just as well for your old bones," said Hugh, and made an urchin's face at him. "Be content, sleep in your bed, and let clever little bandits like your Tutilo sweat for their sins, and wait their time to be forgiven. For all we know the abbot of Ramsey is a good, humane soul with as soft a spot for minor sinners as you. And a sound ear for music, perhaps. That would serve just as well. If you turned him loose into the night now, how would he fare, without clothes, without food, without money?"

And it was true enough, Cadfael acknowledged. He would manage, no doubt, but at some risk. A shirt and chausses filched from some woman's drying-ground, an egg or so from under a hen, a few pence wheedled out of travellers on the road with a song, a few more begged at a market, But no stone walls shutting him in, and no locked door, no uncharitable elder preaching him endless sermons on his unpardoned sins, no banishment into the stony solitude of excommunication, barred from the communal meal and from the oratory, having no communication with his fellows, and if any should be so bold and so kind as to offer him a comfortable word, bringing down upon him the same cold fate.

"All the same," said Hugh, reflecting, "there's justification in the Rule for leaving all doors open. After everything else has been visited on the incorrigible, what does the Rule say? 'If the faithless brother leaves you, let him go.'"

Cadfael walked with him to the gatehouse when the long afternoon was stilling and chilling into the relaxed calm of the pre-Vesper hour, with the day's manual work done. He had said no word of Benezet's bridle, and his visit to the Horse Fair stable, in presenting the mute witness of Tutilo's breviary. Where there was no certainty, and nothing of substance to offer, he hesitated to advance a mere unsupported suspicion against any man. And yet he was loth to let pa.s.s any possibility of further discovery. To be left in permanent doubt is worse than unwelcome knowledge.

"You'll be coming down tomorrow," he said at the gate, "to see the earl's party on their way? At what hour his lordship proposes to muster I've heard no word, but they'll want to make good use of the light."

"He'll hear the first Ma.s.s before he goes," said Hugh. "So I'm instructed. I'll be here to see him leave."

"Hugh... bring three or four with you. Enough to keep the gate if there should be any move to break out. Not enough for comment or alarm."

Hugh had halted sharply, and was studying him shrewdly along his shoulder. "That's not for the little brother," he said with certainty. "You have some other quarry in mind?"

"Hugh, I swear to you I know nothing fit to offer you, and if anyone is to venture a mistaken move and make a great fool of himself, let it be me. But be here! A feather fluttering in the wind is more substantial than what I have, as at this moment. I may yet find out more. But make no move until tomorrow. In Robert Bossu's presence we have a formidable authority to back us. If I venture, and fall on my nose pointing a foolish finger at an innocent man, well, a b.l.o.o.d.y nose is no great matter. But I do not want to call a man a murderer without very hard proof. Leave me handle it my way, and let everyone else sleep easy."

Hugh was in two minds then about pressing him for every detail of what he had it in mind to do, and whatever flutter of a plume in the wind was troubling his mind; but he thought better of it. Himself and three or four good men gathered to see the distinguished guest depart, and two stout young squires besides their formidable lord, with such a guard, what could happen? And Cadfael was an old and practised hand, even without a cohort at his back.

"As you think best," said Hugh, but thoughtfully and warily. "We'll be here, and ready to read your signs. I should be lettered and fluent in them by now."

His rawboned dapple-grey favourite was tethered at the gate. He mounted, and was off along the highway towards the bridge into the town. The air was very still, and there was enough lambent light to gleam dully like pewter across the surface of the mill pond. Cadfael watched his friend until the distant hooves rang hollow on the first stage of the bridge, and then turned back into the great court as the bell for Vespers chimed.

The young brother entrusted on this occasion with feeding the prisoners was just coming back from their cells to restore the keys to their place in the gatehouse, before repairing, side by side with Brother Porter, to the church for Vespers. Cadfael followed without haste, and with ears p.r.i.c.ked, for there was undoubtedly someone standing close in shadow in the angle of the gate-pillar, flattened against the wall. She was wise, she did not call a goodnight to him, though she was aware of him. Indeed she had been there, close and still, watching him part from Hugh in the gateway. It could not be said that he had actually seen her, or heard any sound or movement; he had taken good care not to.

He spared a brief prayer at Vespers for poor, wretched Brother Jerome, seethed in his own venom, and shaken to a heart not totally shrivelled into a husk. Jerome would be taken back into the oratory in due course, subdued and humbled, prostrating himself at the threshold of the choir until the abbot should consider satisfaction had been made for his offence. He might even emerge affrighted clean out of his old self. It was a lot to ask, but miracles do sometimes happen.

Tutilo was sitting on the edge of his cot, listening to the ceaseless and hysterical prayers of Brother Jerome in the cell next to his. They came to him m.u.f.fled through the stone, not as distinct words but as a keening lamentation so grievous that Tutilo felt sorry for the very man who had tried, if not to kill, at least to injure him. For the insistence of this threnody in his ears Tutilo was deaf to the sound the key made, grating softly in the lock, and the door was opened with such aching care, for fear of creaks, that he never turned his head until a muted voice behind him said: "Tutilo!"

Daalny was standing framed in the doorway. The night behind her was still luminous with the last stored light from pale walls opposite, and from a sky powdered with stars as yet barely visible, in a soft blue scarcely darker than their pinpoint silver. She came in, hasty but silent, until she had closed the door behind her, for within the cell the small lamp was lit, and a betraying bar of light falling through the doorway might bring discovery down upon them at once. She looked at him and frowned, for he seemed to her a little grey and discouraged, and that was not how she thought of him or how she wanted him.

"Speak low," she said. "If we can hear him, he might hear us. Quickly, you must go. This time you must go. It is the last chance. Tomorrow we leave, all of us. Herluin will take you back to Ramsey into worse slavery than mine, if it rests with him."

Tutilo came to his feet slowly, staring at her. It had taken him a long, bemused moment to draw himself back from the unhappy world of Brother Jerome's frenzied prayers, and realize that the door really had opened and let her in, that she was actually standing there before him, urgent, tangible, her black hair shaken loose round her shoulders, and her eyes like blue-hot steady flames in the translucent oval of her face.

"Go, now, quickly," she said. "I'll show you. Through the wicket to the mill. Go westward, into Wales."

"Go?" repeated Tutilo like a man in a dream, feeling his way in an unfamiliar and improbable world. And suddenly he burned bright, as though he had taken fire from her brightness. "No," he said, "I will go nowhere without you."

"Fool!" she said impatiently. "You've no choice. If you don't stir yourself you'll go to Ramsey, and as like as not in bonds once they get you past Leicester and out of Robert Bossu's hands. Do you want to go back to be flayed and starved and tormented into an early grave? You never should have flown into that refuge, for you it's a cage. Better go naked into Wales, and take your voice and your psaltery with you, and they'll know a gift from G.o.d, and take you in. Quickly, come, don't waste what I've done."

She had picked up the psaltery, which lay in its leather bag on the prayer-desk, and thrust it into his arms, and at the touch of it he quivered and clasped it to his heart, staring at her over it with brilliant golden eyes. He opened his lips, she thought to protest again, and to prevent it she shut one palm over his mouth, and with the other hand drew him desperately towards the door. "No, say nothing, just go. Better alone! What could you do with a runaway slave tangling your feet, crippling you? He won't leave go of me, the law won't leave go. I'm property, you're free. Tutilo, I entreat you! Go!"

Suddenly the springy steel had come back into his spine, and the dazzling audacity into his face, and he went with her, no longer holding back, setting the pace out at the door, and along the shadowy pa.s.sage, the key again turned in the lock, the night air cool and scented with young leaf.a.ge about them. There were no words at parting, far better silence. She thrust him through the wicket in the wall, out of the abbey pale, and closed the door between. And he had the sullen pewter shield of the mill pond before him, and the path out to the Foregate, and to the left, just before the bridge into the town, was the narrow road bearing westward towards Wales.

Without a glance behind, Daalny set off back towards the great court. She had a thing to do next morning of which he knew nothing, a thing that would, if it prospered, call off all pursuit, and leave him free. Secular law can move at liberty about even a realm divided. Canon law has not the same mobility. And half-proof pales beside irrefutable proof of guilt and innocence.

She heard the voices still chanting in the choir, so she took time to let herself into his cell again, to put out the little lamp. Better and safer if it should be thought he had gone to his bed, and would sleep through the night.

Chapter Thirteen.

THE MORNING OF DEPARTURE DAWNED moist and still, the sun veiled, and every green thing looked at its greenest in the soft, amorphous light. Later the veil would thin and vanish, and the sun come forth in its elusive spring brightness. A good day to be riding home. Daalny came out into the great court from a sleepless bed, making her way to Prime, for she needed all her strength for the thing she had to do, and prayer and quietness within the huge solitude of the nave might stiffen her will to the act. For it seemed to her that no one else knew or even suspected what she suspected, so there was no one else to take action.

And still she might be wrong. The c.h.i.n.k of coin, the weight of some solid bundle shifting against the pressure of her foot with that soft, metallic sound, what was that to prove anything? Even when she added to it the strange circ.u.mstances Brother Cadfael had recounted, the lie about Remy's harness being forgotten in the outer stable. Yet he had lied, and what business, therefore, had he in that place, unless he had gone to recover something secret of his own, or, of course, of someone else's, or why keep it secret?