The Holy Thief Part 8

The one venture the saint had just condemned. Now to put the other to the test! Lucky for Prior Robert that this moment at least he approached in absolute innocence. But I, thought Cadfael, on thorns, may be about to pay in full for all my sins.

Well, it was fair!

Prior Robert may have had some qualms concerning his own worthiness, though that was a weakness to which he seldom succ.u.mbed. He ascended the steps of the altar very solemnly, and joined his hands before his face for a final convulsive moment of prayer, his eyes closed. Indeed, he kept them closed as he opened the Gospels, and planted his long index finger blindly upon the page. By the length of the pause that followed, before he opened his eyes and looked dazedly down to see what fate had granted him, he went in some devout fear of his deserving. Who would ever have expected the pillar of the house to shake?

The balance was instantly restored. Robert erected his impressive silvery head, and a wave of triumphant colour swept up from his long throat and flushed his cheeks. In a voice hesitant between exultation and awe he read out: "Saint John, the fifteenth chapter and the sixteenth verse: 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.' "

All round the a.s.sembly of brothers waiting and watching with held breath, the great shudder and sigh pa.s.sed like a gust of wind, or the surging of a wave up the sh.o.r.e, and then, like the shattering of the wave in spray, disintegrated into a whispering, stirring murmur as they shifted, nudged one another, shook with relief and a suggestion of hysterical emotion between laughter and tears. Abbot Radulfus stiffened instantly into rigid authority, and lifted a sobering hand to still the incipient storm.

"Silence! Respect this holy place, and abide all fates with composure, as mankind should. Father Prior, come down to us now. All that was needful has been done."

Prior Robert was still so blind that he almost stumbled on the steps, but recovered himself with aristocratic dignity and by the time he reached the tiles of the floor was his complacent official self again. Whether the experience of religious dread had left any permanent effect would have to be left to the test of time. Cadfael thought, probably not. It had left at any rate a forcible temporary effect upon his own more cautious but equally human complacency. For a while he would be treading very softly, for awe of this little Welsh saint's indignation and forbearance.

"Father," said Prior Robert, his voice again all measured and mellifluous resonance, "I have delivered faithfully the lot committed to me. Now these fates can be interpreted."

Oh, yes, he was himself again, he would be trailing this glory after him for as long as it still shed l.u.s.tre. But at least for those few moments he had shown as human, like other men. No one who had seen would quite forget it.

"Father Abbot," said the earl handsomely, "I withdraw all claim. I surrender even the question as to how I can be standing here in her virgin company, and still be told that where she is I may never come. Though I confess there is probably a story there that I should very much like to hear." Yes, he was very quick, as Cadfael had realized, paradox was pleasure to him. "The field is yours, out and out," said Robert Bossu heartily. "Clearly this blessed lady has brought herself home again without aid from me or anyone. I give you joy of her! And I would not for the world meddle with her plans, though I am proud that she has consented on the way to visit me for a while. With your leave, I will make an offering by way of acknowledgement."

"I think," said Radulfus, "that Saint Winifred might be pleased if you think fit to make your offering, in her honour, to the abbey of Ramsey. We are all brothers of one Order. And even if she has been put out by human errors and offences, I am sure she will not hold that against a brother-house in distress."

They were both of them talking in these high and ceremonious terms, Cadfael suspected, in order to smooth away the first sore moments, and give Sub-Prior Herluin time to master his chagrin, and achieve a graceful retreat. He had swallowed the worst of his gall, although with a gulp that almost choked him. He was capable of acknowledging defeat with decent civility. But nothing, nothing would soften his mind now against that hapless youngster held safely under lock and key to await his penance.

"I feel shame," said Herluin tightly, "for myself and for my abbey, that we have nourished and sheltered and trusted in a very false aspirant to brotherhood. My abbey I dare excuse. Myself I cannot. Surely I should have been better armed against the deceits of the devil. Blind and foolish I confess myself, but I never willed evil against this house, and I abase myself in acknowledgement of the wrong done, and ask forgiveness. His lordship of Leicester has spoken also for me. The field is yours, Father Abbot. Receive all its honour and all its spoils."

There are ways of abasing oneself, though Prior Robert would perhaps have managed them with better grace had things gone otherwise!, as a means of exalting oneself. Those two were well matched, though Robert, being somewhat more n.o.bly born, had the more complete mastery, and perhaps rather less burning malice when bested.

"If all are content," said Radulfus, finding these exchanges growing not merely burdensome, but longwinded, "I would desire to close this a.s.sembly with prayer, and so disperse."

They were still on their knees after the last Amen, when a sudden gust of wind arose, blowing past the nave altar and into the choir, as though from the south door, though there had been no sound of the latch lifting or the door creaking. Everyone felt it, and the air being still pregnant with prophecy and contention, everyone started and p.r.i.c.ked attentive ears, and several opened their eyes to look round towards the source of this abrupt wind from the outer world. Brother Rhun, Saint Winifred's devoted cavalier, turned his beautiful head instantly to look towards her altar, his first jealous care being always for her service and worship. High and clear through the silence he cried aloud: "Father, look to the altar! The pages of the Gospels are turning!"

Prior Robert, descending from his high place still blinded, with his triumph swirling about him in clouds of glory, had left the Gospels open where his victory had been written, Saint John, the last of the evangelists, far on in the volume. All eyes opened now to stare, and indeed the pages of the book were turning back, slowly, hesitantly, lingering erect only to slide onward, sometimes a single leaf, sometimes a stronger breath riffling several over together, almost as though fingers lifted and guided them, even fluttered them past in haste. The Gospels were turning back, out of John into Luke, out of Luke into Mark... and beyond... They were all watching in fascination, hardly noticing, hardly understanding, that the abrupt wind from the south door had fallen into total stillness, and still, leaf by leaf now and slowly and deliberately, the leaves kept turning. They rose, they hung almost still, and gradually they declined and were flattened into the bulk of the later books of the Evangel.

For by now they must be in Matthew. And now the pace slowed, leaf by leaf rose, quivered erect, and slowly descended. The last to turn settled lightly, not quite flat to its fellows, but then lay still, not a breath left of the wind that had fluttered the pages.

For some moments no one stirred. Then Abbot Radulfus rose and went to the altar. What spontaneous air had written must be of more than natural significance. He did not touch, but stood looking down at the page.

"Come, some of you. Let there be witnesses more than myself."

Prior Robert was at the foot of the steps in a moment, tall enough to see and read without mounting. Cadfael came close on the other side. Herluin held off, too deeply sunk in his own turmoil of mind to be much concerned about further wonders, but the earl drew close in candid curiosity, craning to see the spread pages. On the left side the leaf rose a little, gently swaying from its own tensions, for there was now no breath of wind. The righthand page lay still, and in the spine a few white petals lay, and a single hard bud of blackthorn, the white blossom just breaking out of the dark husk.

"I have not touched," said Radulfus, "for this is no asking of mine or any here. I take the omen as grace. And I accept this bud as the finger of truth thus manifested. It points me to the verse numbered twenty-one, and the line is: 'And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death.' "

There was a long, awed silence. Prior Robert put out a reverent hand to touch the tiny drift of loose petals, and the one bursting bud that had lodged in the spine.

"Father Abbot, you were not with us in Gwytherin, or you would recognize this wonder. When the blessed saint visited us in the church there, as before in vision, she came with showers of may-blossom. The season is not yet ripe for the hawthorn flowers, but these... these she sends in their place, again the whiteness of her purity. It is a direct sign from Saint Winifred. What she confides to us we are bound by our office to heed."

A stir and a murmur pa.s.sed round the watching brothers, and softly they drew in more closely about the wonder. Somewhere among them someone drew breath sharp and painful as a sob, hurriedly suppressed.

"It is a matter of interpretation," said Radulfus gravely. "How are we to understand such an oracle?"

"It speaks of death," said the earl practically. "And there has been a death. The threat of it, as I understand, hangs over a young man of your Order. The shadow over all. This oracle speaks of a brother as the instrument of death, which fits with the case as it is yet known. But it speaks also of a brother as the victim. The victim was not a brother. How is this to be understood?"

"If she has indeed pointed the way," said the abbot firmly, "we cannot but follow it. 'Brother' she says, and if we believe her word, a brother it was whose death was planned by a brother. The meaning that word has within these walls the saint knows as well as we. If any man among you has a thought to share upon this most urgent matter, speak now."

Into the uneasy silence, while brother looked most earnestly at brother, and wondered, and sought or evaded the eyes of his neighbours, Brother Cadfael said: "Brother Abbot, I have thoughts to share that never visited me until this morning, but are become very relevant now. The night of this murder was dark, not only as to the hour, but also the weather, for cloud was low, and there was a drizzling rain. The place where Aldhelm's body was found is within close woodland, untended, on a narrow path, where the only light would come from the open sky above the track. Enough to show a shape, an outline, to a man waiting, and with eyes accustomed to the dark. And the shape Aldhelm would present was that of a man young by his step and pace, in a dun-coloured cloak wrapped about him against the rain, and with the pointed hood drawn up over his head. Father, how is that to be distinguished, in such conditions, from a Benedictine brother in dark habit and cowl, if he be young and stepping out briskly to get out of the rain?"

"If I read you rightly," said Radulfus, having searched Cadfael's face, and found it in very grave earnest, "you are saying that the young man was attacked in mistake for a Benedictine brother."

"It accords with what is written here in the fates," said Cadfael.

"And with the night's obscurity, I grant you. Are you further suggesting that the intended quarry was Brother Tutilo? That he was not the hunter, but the hunted?"

"Father, that thought is in my mind. In build and years the two matched well enough. And as all men know, he was out of the enclave that night, with leave, though leave he got by deceit. It was known on what path he would be returning, or at least, according to what he had led us all to believe. And, Father, be it admitted, he had done much to raise up enemies to himself in this house."

"Brother turning upon brother..." said the abbot heavily. "Well, we are fallible men like the rest of mankind, and hatred and evil are not out of our scope. But, then, how to account for this second and deadly brother? There was no other out of the enclave upon any errand that night."

"None that we know of. But it is not difficult," said Cadfael,"to become unnoticed for a while. There are ways in and out for any who are determined to pa.s.s."

The abbot met his eyes without a smile; he was always in command of his countenance. For all that, there was not much that went on in this household that Radulfus did not know. There had been times when Cadfael had both departed and returned by night, without pa.s.sing the gatehouse, on urgent matters in which he found justification for absence. Of the instruments of good works listed in the Rule of Saint Benedict, second only to the love of G.o.d came the love of humankind, and Cadfael reverenced the Rule above the detailed and meticulous rules.

"No doubt you speak out of long experience," said the abbot. "Certainly that is true. However, we know of no such defector on that night. Unless you have knowledge that I have not?"

"No, Father, I have none."

"If I may venture," said Earl Robert deprecatingly, "why should not the oracle that has spoken of two brothers be asked to send us a further sign? We are surely required to follow this trail as best we can. A name might be too much to ask, but there are other ways, as this blessed lady has shown us, of making all things plain."

Gradually, almost stealthily, all the brothers had crept out of their stalls, and gathered in a circle about this altar and the group debating at its foot. They did not draw too close, but hovered within earshot of all that was said. And somewhere among them, not readily to be located, there was a centre of desperate but controlled unease, a disquiet that caused the air within the choir to quake, with a rapid vibration of disquiet and dread, like a heartbeat driven into the fluttering panic of a bird's wings. Cadfael felt it, but thought it no more than the tension of the sortes. And that was enough. He himself was beginning to ache as though stretched on the rack, with the worst still to come. It was high time to end this, and release all these overcharged souls into the moist, chilly, healing air of early March.

"If in some sort the brothers all stand accused by this present word," said Earl Robert helpfully, "it is they, the humbler children of the household, who have the best right to ask for a name. If you see fit, Father Abbot, let one of them appeal for a judgement. How else can all the rest be vindicated? Justice is surely due to the innocent, by even stronger right than retribution to the guilty."

If he was still amusing himself, thought Cadfael, he was doing it with the eloquent dignity of archbishops and all the king's judges. In jest or earnest, such a man would not wish to leave this human and more than human mystery unresolved. He would thrust and persuade it as far as he could towards an ending. And he had a willing listener in Prior Robert, his namesake. Now that the prior was a.s.sured of retaining his saint, together with all the l.u.s.tre accruing to him as her discoverer and translator, he wanted everything tidied up and ended, and these troublesome visitors from Ramsey off his premises, before they contrived some further mischief.

"Father," he said insinuatingly,"that is fair and just. May we do so?"

"Very well," said Radulfus. "In your hands!"

The prior turned to cast a sweeping glance over the silent array of monks, watching him wide-eyed in antic.i.p.ation and awe. The name he called was the inevitable name. He even frowned at having to look for his acolyte.

"Brother Jerome, I bid you undertake this testing on behalf of all. Come forth and make this a.s.say."

And indeed, where was Brother Jerome, and why had no word been heard from him and nothing seen of him all this time? When, until now, had he ever been far from the skirts of Prior Robert's habit, attendant with ready flattery and obsequious a.s.sent to every word that fell from his patron's lips. Now that Cadfael came to think of it, less than usual had been seen and heard of Jerome for the past few days, ever since the evening when he had been discovered on his bed, quaking and sick with belly-aches and headaches, and been soothed to sleep by Cadfael's stomachics and syrups.

A furtive swirl of movement troubled the rear ranks of the a.s.sembled household, and cast up Brother Jerome from his unaccustomed retirement, emerging through the ranks without eagerness, almost reluctantly. He shuffled forward with bent head and arms folded tightly about his body as if he felt a mortal chill enclosing him. His face was greyish and pinched, his eyes, when he raised them, inflamed. He looked ill and wizened. I should have made a point of following up his sickness, thought Cadfael, touched, but I thought he, of all people, would make good sure he got all the treatment he needed.

That was all that he had in mind, as Prior Robert, bewildered and displeased by what seemed to him very grudging acceptance of a duty that should have conveyed honour upon the recipient, waved Jerome imperiously to the altar.

"Come, we are waiting. Open prayerfully."

The abbot had gently brushed the petals of blackthorn from the spine, and closed the Gospels. He stood aside to make way for Jerome to mount.

Jerome crept to the foot of the steps, and there halted, baulked, rather, like a startled horse, drew hard breath and a.s.sayed to mount, and then suddenly threw up his arms to cover his face, fell on his knees with a lamentable, choking cry, and bowed himself against the stone of the steps. From under the hunched shoulders and clutching arms a broken voice emerged in a stammering howl a stray dog might have launched into the night after company in its loneliness.

"I dare not... I dare not... She would strike me dead if I dared... No need, I submit myself, I own my terrible sin! I went out after the thief, I waited for him to return, and G.o.d pity me, I killed that innocent man!"

Chapter Ten.

IN THE HORRIFIED HUSH THAT FOLLOWED, Prior Robert, guiding hand still uplifted and stricken motionless, was momentarily turned to stone, his face a mask of utter incredulity. That a creature of his should fall into mortal sin, and that of a violent kind, was astonishment enough, but that this pliable mortal should ever undertake personal action of any kind came as an even greater shock. And so it did to Brother Cadfael, though for him it was equally a shock of enlightenment. This poor soul, pallid and puffy on his bed after desperate vomiting, sick and quiet and unregarded ever since, spent and ulcered mind and spirit by what he had so mistakenly undertaken, Jerome was for the first time wholly pitiful.

Brother Rhun, youngest and freshest and the flower of the flock, went after his nature, asking no leave, and kneeled beside Jerome, circling his quaking shoulders with an embracing arm, and lifting the hapless penitent closer into his hold before he looked up confidently into the abbot's face.

"Father, whatever else, he is ill. Suffer me to stay!"

"Do after your kind," said Radulfus, looking down at the pair with a face almost as blanched as the prior's, "and so must I. Jerome," he said, with absolute and steely authority, "look up and face me."

Too late now to withdraw this confession into privacy, even had that been the abbot's inclination, for it had been spoken out before all the brothers, and as members of a body they had the right to share in the cure of all that here was curable. They stood their ground, mute and attentive, though they came no nearer. The half-circle had spread almost into a circle.

Jerome had listened, and was a little calmed by the tone. The voice of command roused him to make an effort. He had shed the first and worst load, and as soon as he lifted his head and made to rise on his knees, Rhun's arm lifted and sustained him. A distorted face appeared, and gradually congealed into human lineaments. "Father, I obey," said Jerome. "I want confession. I want penance. I have sinned most grievously."

"Penance in confession," said the abbot, "is the beginning of wisdom. Whatever grace can do, it cannot follow denial. Tell us what it is you did, and how it befell."

The lame recital went on for some time, while Jerome, piteously small and shrunken and wretched, kneeled in Rhun's supple, generous arm, with that radiant, silent face beside him, to point searing differences. The scope of humanity is terrifyingly wide.

"Father, when it became known that Saint Winifred's relics had been loaded with the timber for Ramsey, when there was no longer any doubt of how it came there, for we knew, every man of us, that there was none, for who else could it have been?, then I was burning with anger against the thief who had dared such sacrilege against her, and such a gross offence against our house. And when I heard that he had asked and been given leave to go forth to Longner that night, I feared he meant to escape us, either by absence, or even by flight, having seen justice might overtake him yet. I could not bear it that he should go free. I confess it, I hated him! But, Father, I never meant to kill, when I slipped out alone, and went to wait for him on the path by which I knew he must return. I never intended violence. I hardly know what I meant to do, confront him, accuse him, bring it home to him that h.e.l.lfire awaited him at the reckoning if he did not confess his sin and pay the price of it now."

He paused to draw painful breath, and the abbot asked: "You went empty-handed?" A pertinent question, though Jerome in his throes failed to understand it.

"Surely, Father! What should I want to take with me?"

"No matter! Go on."

"Father, what more can there be? I thought, when I heard him coming down through the bushes, it could be no one but Tutilo. I never knew by what road the other man would come; for all I knew he had already been, and gone again, and all in vain, as the thief intended. And this one, So jauntily he came, striding along in the dark, whistling profane songs. Offence piled upon offence, so lightly to take everything mortal... I could not endure it. I picked up a fallen branch, and as he pa.s.sed I struck him on the head. I struck him down," moaned Jerome, "and he fell across the path, and the cowl fell back from his head. He never moved hand again! I went close, I kneeled, and I saw his face then. Even in the dark I saw enough. This was not my enemy, not the saint's enemy, not the thief! And I had killed him! I fled him then... Sick and shaking, I fled him and hid myself, but every moment since he has pursued me. I confess my grievous sin, I repent it bitterly, I lament the day and the hour ever I raised hand against an innocent man. But I am his murderer!"

He bowed himself forward into his arms and hid his face. Muted sounds emerged between his tearing sobs, but no more articulate words. And Cadfael, who had opened his mouth to continue the story where this miserable avenger had left it, as quickly closed his lips again upon silence. Jerome had surely told all he knew, and if the burden he was carrying was even more than his due, yet he could be left to carry it a while longer. 'Brother shall deliver up brother to death' could be said to be true of Jerome, for if he had not killed he had indeed delivered Aldhelm to his death. But if what had followed was also the work of a brother, then the murderer might be present here. Let well alone! Let him go away content, satisfied that this solution offered in terrible good faith by Jerome had been accepted without question by all, and that he himself was quite secure. Men who believe themselves out of all danger may grow careless, and make some foolish move that can betray them. In private, yes, for the abbot's ear alone, truth must be told. Jerome had done foully, but not so foully as he himself and all here believed. Let him pay his dues in full, but not for someone else's colder, viler crime.

"This is a very sombre and terrible avowal," said Abbot Radulfus, slowly and heavily, "not easily to be understood or a.s.sessed, impossible, alas, to remedy. I require, and surely so do all here, time for much prayer and most earnest thought, before I can begin to do right or justice as due. Moreover, this is a matter outside my writ, for it is murder, and the king's justice has the right to knowledge, if not immediately to possession, of the person of a confessed murderer."

Jerome was past all resistance, whatever might have been urged or practised against him. Emptied and drained, he submitted to all. The disquiet and consternation he had set up among the brothers would go on echoing and reechoing for some time, while he who had caused it had recoiled into numbness and exhaustion.

"Father," he said meekly, "I welcome whatever penance may be laid upon me. I want no light absolution. My will is to pay in full for all my sins."

Of his extreme misery at this moment there could be no doubt. When Rhun in his kindness lent an arm to raise him from his knees, he hung heavily still, clinging to his desperate humility.

"Father, let me go from here. Let me be desolate and hidden from men's eyes..."

"Solitude you shall have," said the abbot, "but I forbid despair. It is too soon for counsel or judgement, but never too soon or too late for prayer, if penitence is truly felt." And to the prior he said, without taking his eyes from the broken creature on the tiles of the floor, like a crushed and crumpled bird: "Take him in charge. See him lodged. And now go, all of you, take comfort and pursue your duties. At all times, in all circ.u.mstances, our vows are still binding."

Prior Robert, still stonily silent and shocked out of his normal studied dignity, led away his shattered clerk to the second of the two penitentiary cells; and it was the first time, as far as Cadfael could recall, that the two had ever been occupied at the same time. Sub-Prior Richard, decent, comfortable, placid man, marshalled the other ranks out to their ordinary labours, and to the refectory shortly afterwards for dinner, and by his own mildly stupid calm had calmed his flock into a perfectly normal appet.i.te by the time they went to wash their hands before the meal.

Herluin had sensibly refrained from playing any part in the affair, once it turned towards the partial restoration of Ramsey's credit and the grievous embarra.s.sment of Shrewsbury. He would welcome the earl's promised offering gladly, and withdraw in good order to his own monastery, though what he would visit on Tutilo when he got him safely back there might be dreadful to think of. He was not a man to forget and forgive.

As for the withdrawal from the battlefield of Robert Bossu, that restless, conscientious, subtle and efficient man, it was a model of consideration and tact, as always, with a quiet word to Abbot Radulfus, and a sharp glance at his two squires, who understood him at the lift of an eyebrow or the flash of a smile. He knew when to make use of his status, and when and how to temper its brilliance and make himself un.o.btrusive among a mult.i.tude.

Brother Cadfael waited his opportunity to draw close to the abbot's shoulder as he left the choir.

"Father, a word! There is more to be added to this story, though not publicly, perhaps, not yet."

"He has not lied, as well as murdered?" said the abbot, without turning his head. His voice was grim, but pitched no further than Cadfael's ear.

"Neither the one nor the other, Father, if what I believe is true. He has told all he knows, and all he thinks he knows, and I am sure he has kept nothing back. But there are things he does not know, and the knowledge will somewhat better a case which even so is still black enough. Give me audience alone, and then judge what should be done."

Radulfus had halted in mid-stride, though still not looking round. He watched the last of the brothers slip away still awed and silent through the cloister, and followed with a glance the swirl of Robert Bossu's crimson skirts as he crossed the court with his two attendants at his heels.

"You say we have as yet only heard the half, and the worse half of all that is to be told? The young man is coffined decently, his own priest takes him hence today to Upton, for burial among his people. I would not wish to delay his departure."

There is no need," said Cadfael. "He has told me all he had to tell. I would not for the world keep him from his rest. But what I have to add, though I had the proofs of it from his body, and from the place where he was found, I have but now understood clearly. All that I saw was seen also by Hugh Beringar, but after what has come to light this morning these details fall into place."

"In that case," said Radulfus, after some thought, "before we go further, I think Hugh should join us. I need his counsel, as he may need yours and mine both. The thing happened beyond our walls, and is not within my jurisdiction, though the offender may be. Church and State must respect and a.s.sist each other, even in these fractured and sorry times. For if we are two, justice should be one. Cadfael, will you go into the town, and ask Hugh to come into conference here this afternoon? Then we will hear all that you may have to tell."

"Very willingly I will go," said Cadfael.

"And how," demanded Hugh over his midday table, "are we to take this chapter of wonders you've been unfolding this morning? Am I to believe in it, that every response should come so neatly, as if you had been through the Gospels and marked all the places to trap each enquirer? Are you sure you did not?"

Cadfael shook his head decisively. "I do not meddle with my saint. I played fair, and so, I swear, did they all, for there was no mark, no leaf notched for a guide, when I handled the book before any other came near. I opened it, and I got my answer, and it set me thinking afresh and seeing clearly where I had formerly been blind. And how to account for it I do not know, unless indeed it was she who spoke."

"And all the oracles that followed? Ramsey not only rejected but denounced... That came a little hard on Herluin, surely! And with Earl Robert the saint condescended to tease him with a paradox! Well, I won't say but that was fair enough, a pity he has not the key he needs to read it, it would give him pleasure. And then, to Shrewsbury, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.' I take that as a warning rather than an acknowledgement. She chose you, and she can as well abandon you if she chooses, and you had better be on your guard in future, for she won't put up with another such turmoil upsetting her established rule. Meant especially for Prior Robert, I should hazard, who indeed thinks he chose her and ranks as her proprietor. I hope he took the allusion?"

"I doubt it," said Cadfael. "He wore it like a halo."

"And then finally, Cadfael, for the leaves to turn of themselves, and open again at that same place. Too many miracles for one morning!"

"Miracles," said Cadfael somewhat sententiously, "may be simply divine manipulation of ordinary circ.u.mstances. Why not? For as to the last oracle, the Gospels had been left open, and there was a wind blew through from the south doorway and ruffled the pages over, turning back from John to Matthew. It's true that no one came in, but I think someone must have lifted the latch and set the door ajar, and then after all drawn back and closed it again, hearing the voices within and not wanting to interrupt. No mistake about the wind, everyone felt it. And then, you see, it halted where it did because there were some petals and fragments from the blackthorn I had been handling fallen into the spine there, shaken out of my sleeve or my hair when I closed the book. Such a slight obstruction was not enough to affect the taking of the sortes, when they were opening the book with ceremony, both hands parting the leaves and a finger pointing the line. But when the wind turned the leaves, the blackthorn flowers were enough to arrest the movement at that place. Yet even so, dare we call that chance? And now that I come to think back," said Cadfael, shaking his head between doubt and conviction, "that wind that blew in was gone before ever the page settled. I watched the last one turn, slowly, halting before it was smoothed down. The air above the altar was quite still. The candles were stark erect, never a tremor."

Aline had sat throughout this colloquy listening attentively to every word, but contributing none of her own. There was about her something distant and mysterious, Cadfael thought, as if a part of her being was charmed away into some private and pleasant place, even while her blue eyes dwelt upon her husband and his friend with sharp intelligence, following the argument back and forth with a kind of indulgent and amused affection, appropriate to a matriarch, watching her children.

"My lady," said Hugh, catching her eye and breaking into a resigned grin, "my lady, as usual, is making fun of both of us."

"No," said Aline, suddenly serious, "it is only that the step from perfectly ordinary things into the miraculous seems to me so small, almost accidental, that I wonder why it astonishes you at all, or why you trouble to reason about it. If it were reasonable it could not be miraculous, could it?"

In the abbot's parlour they found not only Radulfus, but Robert of Leicester waiting for them. As soon as the civil greetings were over the earl with his nicely-judged courtesy made to withdraw.

"You have business here which is out of my writ and competence, and I would not wish to complicate the affair for you. The lord abbot here has been good enough to admit me to his confidence so far as is appropriate, since I was a witness of what happened this morning, but now you have cause to enquire further, as I understand. I have lost my small claim to the saint," said Robert Bossu, with a flashing smile and a shrug of his high shoulder, "and should be about taking my leave here."