The Holy Thief Part 5

Herluin's mind was rather on his forthcoming dinner, and the marshalling of his arguments in the matter of Saint Winifred. Not a word had been said to him of any untoward suspicions, or of the threat of an eyewitness coming to judgement this very night. Tutilo got his permission with almost dismissive ease. He left by the gatehouse, openly, and took the road along the Foregate, in case anyone happened to notice and check that he set off in the appropriate direction. He was not going far, by no means as far as Longner, but far enough to be absent when the immediate danger threatened. He was not so simple as to believe that the danger would be over when Aldhelm went home frustrated, but what followed he would have to encounter and parry when it came. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof, and he had considerable confidence in his own ingenuity.

The news worked its way round by devious stages to the ears of Brother Jerome, that the bird he desired with all his narrow might to ensnare had taken flight to a safe distance. He was sick and sour with rage. Clearly there was no justice to be had, even from heaven. The devil was all too efficiently looking after his own.

He must have sickened on his own gall, for he disappeared for the rest of the evening. It cannot be said that he was missed. Prior Robert was conscious of his shadow only when he had an errand for him to run, or need of his obsequious presence to restore a balance when someone had managed to scar the priorial dignity. Most of the brothers were all too well aware of him, but in his absence relaxed, gave thanks and forgot him; and the novices and schoolboys evaded being in his proximity at all, so far as was possible. It was not until Compline that his non-appearance provoked wonder, comment and finally uneasiness, for he was unrelenting in observance, whatever else might be said of him. Sub-Prior Richard, a kindly soul even to those for whom he had no particular liking, grew anxious, and went to look for the stray, and found him on his bed in the dortoir, pallid and shivering, pleading sickness and looking pinched, grey and cold.

Since he was inclined to be dyspeptic at the best of times, no one was greatly surprised, unless perhaps at the severity of this attack. Brother Cadfael brought him a warming drink, and a draught to settle his stomach, and they left him to sleep it off.

That was the last mild sensation of the evening, for the final one, still to come, certainly could not be described as mild, and occurred somewhat after midnight. The halfhour after Compline seemed to be declining into total anticlimax. For the young man from the Upton manor, the anxiously awaited witness who was to uncover truth at last, did not come.

The abbot's guests had dispersed decorously, Remy and Earl Robert in amicable company to the guesthall, where Benezet was already returned from his evening in the town, in good time to attend his lord, as the earl's two squires stood ready and waiting for theirs. Daalny was shaking out and combing her long black hair in the women's rooms, and listening to the chatter of a merchant's widow from Wem, who had availed herself of a night's lodging here on her way to Wenlock for her daughter's lying-in. Everything within the walls was preparing for sleep.

But Aldhelm did not come. And neither did Tutilo return from his visit to the lady of Longner.

The order of the day's observances being immutable, whoever fell ill and whoever defaulted, the bell for Matins sounded in the dortoir as it did every midnight, and the brothers arose and went sleepily down the night stairs into the church. Cadfael, who could sleep or wake virtually at will, always felt the particular solemnity of the night offices, and the charged vastness of the darkened vault above, where the candle-light ebbed out and died into lofty distances that might or might not stretch into infinity. The silence, also, had an added dimension of cosmic silence in the midnight hours, and every smallest sound that disrupted the ordained sounds of worship seemed to jar the foundations of the earth. Such, he thought, in the pause for meditation and prayer between Matins and Lauds, as the faint, brief creak of the hinges of the south door from the cloister. His hearing was sharper than most, and as yet unmarred by the years; probably few of the others heard it. Yet someone had come in by that door, very softly, and was now motionless just within it, hesitating to advance into the choir and interrupt the second office of the day. And in a few moments a voice from that quarter, low and breathy, joined very softly in the responses.

When they left their stalls at the end of Lauds, and approached the night stairs to return to their beds, a slight, habited figure arose from its knees to confront them, stepping into what light there was very gingerly, but with resigned resolution, like one expecting a bleak welcome, but braced to endure and survive it. Tutilo's habit shimmered about the shoulders with the soft and soundless rain of spring, which had begun to fall in mid-evening, his curls were damp and ruffled, and the hand he pa.s.sed across his forehead to brush them back left a dark smear behind. His eyes were wide and peering from within a blank sh.e.l.l of shock and his face, where his hand had not soiled it, was very pale.

At sight of him Herluin started forward from Prior Robert's side with a sharp explosive sound of exasperation, anger and bewilderment, but before he could recover his breath and pour out the fiery reproaches he undoubtedly intended to vent, Tutilo had found words, few and trenchant, to forestall all other utterance.

"Father, I grieve to come so late, but I had no choice. It was vital I should go first into the town, to the castle, where such news first belongs, and so I did. Father, on my way back, on the path from the ferry and through the wood, I found a dead man. Murdered... Father," he said, showing the hand that had soiled his brow, "I speak what I know, what was plain even in the pitch dark. I touched him... his head is pulp!"

Chapter Six.

WHEN HE SAW HIS HANDS IN THE LIGHT he flinched, and held them away from him, to avoid letting them touch any other part of his person or habit, for the right was engrained with drying blood across the palm and between the fingers, and the fingers of the left were dabbled at the tips, as if they had felt at stained clothing. He would not or could not elaborate on his news until he had washed, twisting hand within hand as though he would scrub off his own defiled skin along with the blood. When at last he was private in the abbot's parlour with Radulfus, Prior Robert, Herluin, and Brother Cadfael, whose presence Tutilo himself had requested, he launched upon his story baldly enough.

"I was coming back by the path from the ferry, through the woodland, and where the trees are thickest I stumbled over him. He was lying with his legs across the path, and I fell on my knees beside him. It was pitch dark, but a man could follow the path by the pale line of sky between the branches. But on the ground nothing but blackness. But I felt down beside me, and I knew the round of a knee, and cloth. I thought he was drunk, but he never made sound or move. I felt up from thigh to hip, and leaned close where I judged his face to be, but never a breath or a sign of life. G.o.d help me, I put my hand on the ruin of his head, and then I knew he was dead. And not by any accident! I felt the splintered bone."

"Could you by any means guess who this man must be?" asked the abbot, his voice level and gentle.

"No, Father. It was too dark by far. There was no way of knowing, without torch or lantern. And I was knocked clean out of my right wits at first. But then I thought how this was the sheriffs business, and how the Church is held innocent and apart from all dealings in cases of blood. So I went on into the town, and told them at the castle, and the lord Beringar has set a guard on the place now until daylight. What I could tell I have told, and the rest must wait for the light. And, Father, he asked, the lord sheriff asked, that I should beg you to have Brother Cadfael informed also, and when the morning comes, if you permit, I am to lead him to the place, to meet the sheriff there. It is why I asked that he might attend here. And I will willingly show the place tomorrow, and if he has any question to ask me now, I will answer as well as I may. For he said, Hugh Beringar said, that Brother Cadfael understands wounds, having been many years a man-at-arms." He had run himself out of breath and almost out of effort by then, but heaved a great sigh at having got the load from his shoulders.

"If the place is guarded," said Cadfael, meeting the abbot's questioning eye, "whatever it has to tell us can safely be left until daylight. I think perhaps we should not speculate beforehand. It might be all too easy to take a wrong path. I would ask only, Tutilo, at what hour did you leave Longner?"

Tutilo started and shook himself, and took an unexpectedly long moment to think before he answered: "It was late, past time for Compline when I started."

"And you met no one on the walk back?"

"Not this side the ferry."

"I think," said Radulfus, "we should wait, and let be until you have viewed the place by daylight, and the unfortunate soul is known. Enough now! Go to your bed, Tutilo, and G.o.d grant you sleep. When we rise for Prime, then will be the time to see and consider, before we try to interpret."

But for all that, thought Cadfael, back in his own bed but with no will to sleep, how many of the five of us, one who spoke and four who listened, will close an eye again tonight? And of the three of us who knew there was to be a young man on his way down to us by that path during the evening, how many have already made the leap forward to give this nameless victim a name, and begin to see certain reasons why it might be expedient for some if he never reached us? Radulfus? He would not miss so plain a possibility, but he could and would refrain from entertaining and proceeding on it until more is known. Prior Robert? Well, give him his due, Prior Robert hardly said a word tonight, he will wait to have cause before he accuses any man, but he is intelligent enough to put all these small nothings together and make of them something. And I? It must have been for myself as much as any other that I issued that warning: It might be all too easy to take a wrong path! And heavens knows, once launched it's all too hard to turn back and look again for the missed trace.

So let us see what we have: Aldhelm, may he be home, forgetful and fast asleep at this moment!, was to come and pick out his man yesterday evening. The brothers had not been told, only Radulfus, Prior Robert, Hugh and I knew of it, leaving out of consideration Cynric's boy, who runs errands faithfully, but barely understands what he delivers, and forgets his emba.s.sage as soon as done and rewarded. Herluin was not told, and I am sure did not know. Neither, to the best of my knowledge, did Tutilo. Yet it is strange that the same evening Tutilo should be sent for to Longner. Was he so sent for? That can be confirmed or confuted, there's no problem there. Say he somehow got to know of Aldhelm's coming, even so by avoiding he could only delay recognition, not prevent it, he would have to reappear in the end. Yes, but say he reappeared, and Aldhelm never came. Not just that evening, but never.

Detail by detail built up into a formidable possibility, in which, nevertheless, he did not believe. Best to put off even thought until he had seen for himself the place where murder had been done, and the victim who had suffered it.

The early morning light, filtering grudgingly between the almost naked trees and the tangle of underbrush, reached the narrow thread of the path only dimly, a moist brown streak of rotted leaves and occasional outcrops of stone, striped with shadows like the rungs of a ladder where old coppicing had left the trunks s.p.a.ced and slender. The sun was not yet clear of the eastward banks of cloud, and the light was colourless and amorphous from the evening's soft rain, but clear enough to show what had brought Tutilo to his knees in the darkness, and yet remained unseen.

The body lay diagonally across the path, as he had said, not quite flat on its face and breast, rather on the right shoulder, but with the right arm flung clear behind, and the left groping wide beside him, clear of the folds of the coa.r.s.e hooded cloak he wore. The hood had slipped back from his head when he fell, by the way it lay bunched in his neck. He had fallen and lain with his right cheek pressed into the wet leaves. The exposed left side of his head was a dark, misshapen blot of dried blood, a crusted darkness, the ruin on which Tutilo had laid his hand in the night, and sickened with horror.

He looked composed enough now, standing a little apart in the fringe of bushes, staring steadily at what the night had hidden from him, with lids half-lowered over the dulled gold of his eyes, and his mouth shut too tightly, the only betrayal of the effort by which he maintained his stillness and calm. He had risen very early, from a bed probably sleepless, and led the way to this spot among the thickest of the woodland without a word beyond the whispered morning greeting, and obedient acknowledgement of any remarks directed at him. Small wonder, if his own account was truth, smaller still if today he was being forced back to a scene about which he had lied; lied to the law, lied to his superiors in the Order he had chosen of his own will and desire.

Down there, pressed into the earth, the face, or most of it, was intact. Cadfael kneeled close by the shattered head, and slid a hand gently under the right cheek, to turn the face a little upward to be seen.

"Can you name him?" asked Hugh, standing beside him. The question was directed at Tutilo, and could not be evaded; but there was no attempt at evasion. Tutilo said at once, in a still and careful voice: "I do not know his name."

Surprising, but almost certainly true; those few moments at the end of a chaotic evening had never called for names. He had been as anonymous to Aldhelm as Aldhelm had been to him.

"But you do know the man?"

"I have seen him," said Tutilo. "He helped us when the church was flooded."

"His name is Aldhelm," said Cadfael flatly, and rose from his knees, letting the soiled face sink back gently into the leafmould. "He was on his way to us last night, but he never reached us." If the boy had not known that before, let it be said now. He listened and gave no sign. He had shut himself within, and was not easily going to be drawn out again.

"Well, let us see what there is to be noted," said Hugh shortly, and turned his back upon the slight, submissive figure standing so warily aside from the event he had himself reported. "He was coming down this path from the ferry, and here he was struck down as he pa.s.sed by. See how he fell! Back a yard or more, here where the covert is thick, someone struck him down from behind and to his left, here on the left side of the path, from ambush."

"So it seems," said Cadfael, and eyed the bushes that encroached halfway across the path. "There would be rustling enough from his own pa.s.sage to cover another man's sudden movement among the branches here. He fell just as he lies now. Do you see any sign, Hugh, that he ever moved again?" For the ground about him, with its padding of last year's thick leaf-fall sodden and trodden into soft pulp, showed no disturbance, but lay moist, dark and flat, unmarked by any convulsions of his feet or arms, or any trampling of an a.s.sailant round him.

"While he lay stunned," said Hugh, "the work was finished. No struggle, no defence."

In a small, muted voice Tutilo ventured, out of the shadowy covert of his cowl: "It was raining."

"So it was," said Cadfael. "I had not forgotten. His hood would be up to cover his head. This, was done afterwards, as he lay."

The boy stood motionless still, looking down at the body. Only the subtle curve of a cheekbone and the lowered eyelids and a lunette of brow showed within the shadows of the cowl. There were tears hanging on the long, girlish lashes.

"Brother, may I cover his face?"

"Not yet," said Cadfael. "I need to look more closely before we carry him back with us." There were two of Hugh's sergeants waiting impa.s.sively along the path, with a litter on which to lay him for pa.s.sage to castle or abbey, according as Hugh should direct. From their judicious distance they watched in silence, with detached interest. They had seen violent death before.

"Do whatever you need," said Hugh. "Whatever club or staff was used on him is surely gone with the man who used it, but if the poor wretch's corpse can tell us anything, let us discover it before we move him."

Cadfael kneeled behind the dead man's shoulders, and looked closely at the indented wound, in which white points of bone showed in the centre of the encrusted blood. The skull was broken just above and behind the left temple, with what looked like a single blow, though of that he could not be sure. A staff with a heavy rounded handle might have done such damage, but the crater it had made was large indeed, and jagged, not regular. Cadfael took up carefully the edge of the hood, and rounded it out on his fist. It was seamed at the back, and running his fingertips the length of the seam he encountered a small patch halfway down that was sticky and stiffening, and withdrew them smeared with drying blood. Very little blood, surely from the first blow that felled its victim through hood and all. And this was at the back of the head, only the central seam contaminated, and that only meagrely. He straightened the folds, and ran his fingers through the dead youth's thick thatch of reddish-brown hair, up from the nape to the rounding at the back of the head, where that seam had rested, and surely helped to break the force of the blow. He found a graze that had oozed a small crust of blood into the thick hair, almost dry now. There was no break there in the skull beneath the skin.

"It was no very fearful blow that felled him," said Cadfael. "It cannot have knocked him out of his wits for very long, had that been all. What was done after, was done quickly, before he could come to himself. He would never have died of this. And yet what followed was cold, deliberate and final. A drunken man in a squabble could have done this."

"It did what was required of it," said Hugh grimly. "Laid him at his enemy's mercy. No haste! Time to judge and finish at leisure."

Cadfael straightened out the coa.r.s.e folds of the hood, and shook out a few pale feathery fragments from among them. He rubbed them in his palm, slivers of tindery, rotted wood. Plenty of that, no doubt, in this overgrown, untended woodland, even after it had been combed for firing by the urchins of the Foregate. But why here in Aldhehn's hood? He ran his hands over the shoulders of the cloak, and found no more such minute splinters. He lifted the edge of the hood, and laid it gently over the shattered head, hiding the face. Behind him he felt, rather than heard, Tutilo's deep intake of breath, and sensed the quiver that pa.s.sed through him.

"Wait a few moments yet. Let's see if the murderer left any trace behind, if he stood here any length of time waiting for his man." For here was certainly the closest cover on all that path from the ferry down into the Foregate. The track had, he recalled, two branches, separating as it dropped from the heathy ridge that looked down upon the river. One branch went down directly to the Horse Fair, the other, this one, cut through to emerge halfway along the Foregate, almost within sight of the abbey gatehouse. By this one Tutilo must have set out for Longner, and by this one he had returned, only to happen upon this grievous discovery along the way. If, of course, he had ever been nearer to Longner, that night, than this disastrous place.

Cadfael stepped back to measure again the angle at which the body lay, and the few paces back along the path where the a.s.sailant must have been hidden. Thick cover, bristling with dryish branches and twigs, dead wood among them; he looked for broken ends, and found them. "Here!" He thrust through the screen of growth sidelong, into cramped s.p.a.ce between trees, where a thin gra.s.s grew, mottled with dead leaf.a.ge and glistening from the night's rain. Soft ground, trodden flat by uneasy, shifting feet not so many hours ago. Nothing else, except a thick dead branch lying tossed under the bushes, and just aside from it, the bleached shape in the gra.s.s where it had formerly lain. Cadfael stooped and picked it up, and the thicker end, broken and dangling, shed a fluttering debris of tindery flakes as he swung it in his hand. Thick enough and heavy enough, but brittle.

"Here he waited. Some time, by the way he's pounded the mould. And this, this was what he found to his hand. With this he struck the first blow, and broke it in striking."

Hugh eyed the branch, and gnawed a thoughtful lip. "But not the second blow, surely. Not with this! It would have shattered in flinders long before it did that damage."

"No, this he threw back into the bushes when it snapped and turned in his hand. And looked quickly for something more deadly? For clearly, if ever he trusted to this in the first place, he had come without any weapon." Perhaps even, thought Cadfael, prompted a step further, he came without even the intent to kill, since he did not come prepared. "Wait! Let's see what offered."

For he could not have had to look far for whatever it might be, there had been no time for that. A few minutes, and Aldhelm would have been stirring and hauling himself to his feet. Cadfael began to prowl uphill along the edge of the path, probing into the bushes, and then downhill again on the opposite side. Here and there the limestone that cropped out among the heather and rough gra.s.s on the ridge above broke through the gra.s.s and mould in stony patches, fretted away occasionally into small scattered boulders, bedded into the turf and moss. Cadfael turned downhll some yards. The a.s.sailant had hidden on the left of the track, he probed first on that side. A few paces below where the body lay, and a yard or so into the bushes, there was a patch of free stones, loosely overgrown with gra.s.s and lichen, and to all appearance undisturbed for a year or more; until something about the clear outlining of the upper stone made him look closer. It was not bonded to those below it by the neat filling of soil and small growth that bound all the rest, though it lay aligned precisely to fill the place it had surely filled for a year or more. Cadfael stooped and took it in both hands, and lifted it, and it parted from its setting without trailing a blade of gra.s.s or a torn edge of moss. Once already in the night it had been uprooted and replaced.

"No," said Cadfael, low to himself, "this I never expected. That we should find a mind of such devious ways."

"This?" said Hugh, staring closely upon the stone. It was large and heavy, a weighty double handful, smoothed above by exposure, beneath its dappling of lichen and moss; but when Cadfael turned it over it showed rough and pale, with some jagged edges that were tipped with a dark crust, not yet dried out. That is blood," said Hugh with certainty.

"That is blood," said Cadfael. "When the thing was done, there was no longer any haste. He had time to think, and reason. All cold, cold and deliberate. He put back the stone as he found it, carefully aligned. The small, severed roots that had held it he could not repair, but who was to notice them? Now we have done all we can do here, Hugh. What remains is to put all together and consider what manner of man this could be."

"We may move the poor wretch?" said Hugh.

"May I have him home to the abbey? I would like to look yet again, and more carefully. I think he lived alone, without family. We shall confer with his own priest at Upton. And this stone..." It was heavy for him, he was glad to set it down for a while. "Bring this with him."

And all this time the boy had stood close by, wordless himself, but listening to every word spoken around him. The brief dew on his lashes, that had caught the thin early rays of the risen sun, was dry enough now, his mouth was set in a rigid line. When Hugh's men had lifted Aldhelm's body on to the litter, and set off down the path with it towards the Foregate, Tutilo fell in behind the sorry little procession like a mourner, and went silently step for step with them, his eyes still upon the shrouded body.

"He'll not be leaving?" said Hugh in Cadfael's ear, as they followed.

"He'll not be leaving. I will see to that. He has a hard master to satisfy, and nowhere else to go."

"And what do you make of him?"

"I would not presume to a.s.say," said Cadfael. "He slips through my fingers. But time was when I would have said the same of you," he added wryly, and took heart at hearing Hugh laugh, if only briefly and softly. "I know! That was mutual. But see how it turned out in the end."

"He came straight to me with the tale," said Hugh, reckoning up in a low voice for Cadfael's ear alone. "He showed very shaken and shocked, but clear of head. He had wasted no time, the body was almost warm as life, only no breath in him, so we let all alone until morning. This lad behaved every way as a man would who had happened unawares on murder. Only, perhaps, better than most would have managed."

"Which may be the measure of his quality," said Cadfael firmly, "or of his cunning. As well the one as the other. And who's to tell?"

"It is not often," said Hugh with a rueful smile,"that I must listen to you as the devil's advocate, where a youngster in trouble is concerned. Well, keep him in your custody, and we'll take time over either condemning or absolving."

In the mortuary chapel Aldhelm's body lay on its bier, limbs straightened, body composed, eyes closed, enshrined and indifferent, having told all Cadfael could induce it to tell. Not all the specks of pallor in the shattered brow had proved to be splinters of bone. There were enough fragments of limestone and specklings of dust to prove over again the use to which the stone had been put. A linen cloth was draped over the young man's face. Across his breast Cadfael and Tutilo confronted each other.

The boy was very pale, and drawn and grey with exhaustion. Cadfael had kept him with him of design, when Hugh departed to report to Abbot Radulfus what had been found and what had been done. Mutely Tutilo had fetched and carried, brought water and cloths, fetched candles and lit them, willingly sustaining the presence of death. Now there was no more to be done, and he was still.

"You do understand," said Cadfael, meeting the tired eyes, dulled gold even in the candle-light, "why this man was on his way here? You do know what he might, what he said he would, be able to tell, when he saw all the brothers of the Order, here in this house?"

Tutilo's lips moved, saying almost soundlessly: "Yes, I do know."

"You know in what manner Saint Winifred's reliquary was taken away from here. That is known now to all men. You know there was a brother of the Order who so contrived her departure and asked Aldhelm to help him. And that she was meant to reach Ramsey, not to be lost on the way. Do you think justice will look among the brothers of Shrewsbury, from whom she was stolen? Or rather at two from the house that stood to gain? And one in particular?"

Tutilo fronted him with unwavering eyes, but said nothing. "And here lies Aldhelm, who could have given that brother a face and a name, beyond any question. Except that he no longer has a voice with which to speak. And you were away, along the same road, the road to the ferry, to Preston from which he would be coming, to Longner, where you were bound, when he died."

Tutilo neither affirmed nor denied.

"Son," said Cadfael, "you know, do you not, what will be said?"

"Yes," said Tutilo, unlocking his lips at last, "I do know."

"It will be said and believed that you lay in wait for Aldhelm and killed him, so that he could never point the finger at you."

Tutilo made no protest that he had been the one to cry murder, to invoke the law, to unloose the hunt after the murderer. He averted his eyes for a moment to Aldhelm's covered face, and raised them again to meet Cadfael's eyes squarely. "Except," he said at last," that it shall not be said. They shall not be able to say it. For I will go to the lord abbot and Father Herluin, and myself tell what I have done. There shall not need anyone but myself to point the finger at me. For what I have done I will answer, but not for murder which I have not done."

"Child," said Cadfael, after a long and thoughtful silence, "do not deceive yourself that even that would still every tongue. There will not be wanting those who will say that you have weighed the odds, knowing yourself already suspect, and of two evils chosen the lesser. Who would not rather own to theft and deception within the Church's writ, rather than put his neck into the sheriff's noose for murder? Speak or keep silence, there will be no easy course for you."

"No matter!" said Tutilo. "If I deserve penance, let it fall on me. Whether I pay or go free, whatever the cost, I will not let it be said I killed a decent man to keep him from accusing me. And if they twist things still to my disgrace in both counts, what more is there I can do? Brother Cadfael, help me to the lord abbot's presence! If you ask audience for me, he will hear me. Ask if Father Herluin may be present also, now, while the sheriff is there. It cannot wait until chapter tomorrow.".

He had made up his mind, and all at once was on fire to have it done: and for all Cadfael could see, it was his best course. The truth, if truth could be antic.i.p.ated from this subtle creature, even in circ.u.mstances of desperation, might shed light in more than one direction.

"If that is truly what you want," he said. "But beware of defending yourself before you are accused. Tell what you have to tell, with no exclaiming, and Abbot Radulfus will listen, that I can promise you."

He wished he could heartily have said as much for Sub-Prior Herluin. So, perhaps, Tutilo was wishing, too, for suddenly in the midst of his most solemn determination his set mouth twisted into a wry and apprehensive smile, gone in an instant. "Come with me now," he said.

In the abbot's parlour Tutilo had a larger audience than Cadfael had bargained for, but welcomed it, or so it seemed, perhaps as leavening further the bleak reception he could expect from Herluin. Hugh was still there, and it was natural enough that Earl Robert should be called into conference as a matter of courtesy where the law of the land and King Stephen's writ were concerned. Herluin was there at Tutilo's own request, since there was ultimately no help for it, and Prior Robert was not to be left out where Herluin was admitted. Better far to confront them all, and let them make of it what they would.

"Father Abbot... Father Herluin... my lords..." He took his stand st.u.r.dily, folded his hands, and looked round them all in turn, as at a panel of his judges. "I have that to tell you that I should have told before this, since it has to do with the issue that is now in dispute among all here. It is known that the reliquary of Saint Winifred was taken away on the wagon that was loaded with timber for Ramsey, but no one has shown how this came about. This thing was my doing. I avow it. I moved the reliquary from its altar, after it had been swathed well for safety in moving it to a higher place. I put a trimmed log in its place, to be taken up by the stair. And at night I asked one of the young men who was helping us, one who had come with the carters, to help me load the saint on to the wagon, to go to Ramsey to the aid and succour of our misused house. This is all the truth. There was none had any part in it but I. Enquire no further, for I stand here to declare what I have done, and to defend it."

Herluin had opened his mouth and drawn breath to ride over his presumptuous novice with a torrent of indignant words, but then held his breath even before the abbot had cautioned him with a peremptory hand. For to revile this troublesome boy at this moment was to damage whatever claim Ramsey had to the stake for which the bold wretch had made so perilous a bid. What could not a miracle-working saint achieve for the future glory of Ramsey? And the issue was still very much alive, for here beside him, listening alertly and with a dry little smile, was the earl of Leicester, who, whether in earnest or in mischief, was urging a plea of his own for the same prize. No, say nothing yet, not until things become clearer. Leave the options open. Bow gracefully to Abbot Radulfus's gesture of restraint, and keep your mouth shut.

"You do right, at least, in confession," said Radulfus mildly. "As you yourself informed us last night, and the lord sheriff has since confirmed, to our endless regret, and surely to yours, the young man you so beguiled is now dead, here within our walls, and shall be at our charge for the rites due to him. It would have been better, would it not, if you had spoken earlier, and spared him the journey that was his death?"

Such colour as there was in Tutilo's weary face slowly drained away to leave him grey and mute. When he could wring the tight cords of his throat into speech he said in a throttled whisper: "Father, it is my shame. But I could not know! Even now I do not understand!"

Cadfael considered, when he came to think it out afterwards, that that was the moment when he became certain that Tutilo had not killed, had not ever imagined that his deceit was putting another soul in danger of death.

"What is done, is done," said the abbot neutrally. "You speak of defending it. If you think it defensible, go on. We will hear you out."

Tutilo swallowed, and rallied, straightening his shapely shoulders. "Father, what I cannot sufficiently justify I can at least explain. I came here with Father Herluin, grieving for Ramsey's wrongs, and longing to do something great to benefit the restoration of our house. I heard of the miracles of Saint Winifred, and the many pilgrims and rich gifts she has brought to Shrewsbury, and I dreamed of finding such a patroness to give new life to Ramsey. I prayed that she would intercede for us, and show us her grace, and it came to me that she heard me, and that she willed to do us good. It seemed to me, Father, that she inclined to us, and willed to visit us. And I began to feel it heavy upon me, that I must do her will."

Colour had come back into his cheeks, burning on the notable bones, a little hectic, a little fevered. Cadfael watched him and was in doubt. Had he convinced himself, or could he produce at will this rapture to convince others? Or, like any fallible human sinner, was he desperately constructing an armour of simplicity about his devious shiftings? Sin detected can contrive all manner of veils to cover its nakedness.

"I planned and did what I have already told you," said Tutilo, suddenly brief and dry. "I felt that I was doing no wrong. I believed I was instructed, and faithfully I obeyed. But bitterly I regret that I needed another man's hands to help me, and he in ignorance."

"In innocence," said the abbot, "to his peril."

"I acknowledge it," said Tutilo, erect and wide-eyed. "I regret it. G.o.d forgive me for it!"

"In due time," said Radulfus with unremitting detachment, "so he may. That is not for us to meddle with. As for us, we have your story, we have a saint who has made her way back to us by strange ways, and we have those who have been friends to her on that journey, and may well believe, as you believe, that the lady has been in control of her own destiny, and choosing her own friends and her own dependants. But before ever we come to that issue, we have here a murdered man. Neither G.o.d nor his saints will tolerate murder. This young man Aldhelm cries to us for justice. If there is anything you can tell us that may shed light on his death, speak now."

"Father," said Tutilo, burning into startling whiteness, "I pledge you my faith I never did nor never would have done him any harm, nor do I know of any who might need to wish him ill. It is true he could have told you of me what now I have told you. It never was matter for such fear to me that I must have tried to silence him. He helped me! He helped her! I would have said yes to him when he pointed at me. Granted I was a little afraid, I tried to be secret. But there are no secrets now."

"Yet you are the only man," insisted the abbot mercilessly, but without pressing the suggestion to an accusation, "who is known to have had reason to fear his coming here with what he could tell. What you yourself have now chosen to tell us can neither undo that truth, nor absolve you from it. Until more is known concerning his death, I judge that you must be held in confinement within my custody. The only charge that can be made against you at this moment is of theft from our house, however that may be read hereafter. That leaves you within my writ. I think the lord sheriff may have somewhat to say to that disposition."

"I have nothing to object to it," said Hugh promptly. "I trust him to your charge, Father Abbot."