Holy Thief (25 page)

“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 assist 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
circumstances. 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.”

“My
lord,” said Hugh heartily, “the king’s peace, such as it is and as we manage to
maintain it, is very much your business, and your experience in it is longer
than mine. If the lord abbot agrees, I hope you will stay and give us the
benefit of your judgement. There’s matter to assess concerning murder. Every
man’s business, having a life to keep or lose.”

“Stay
with us!” said Radulfus. “Hugh is right, we need all the good counsel we can
get.”

“And
I have as much human curiosity in me as the next man,” owned the earl, and
willingly sat down again. The abbot tells me there is more to add to what we
witnessed here this morning. I take it, sir, you have been informed, as far as
the tale yet carries us?”

“Cadfael
has told me,” said Hugh, “how the sortes went, and of Brother Jerome’s
confession. He assures me we both, from what he and I saw on the spot, can go
beyond what Jerome himself knows.”

Cadfael
settled himself beside Hugh on the cushioned bench against the abbot’s dark
panelling. Outside the window the light was still full and clear, for the days
were drawing out. Spring was not far away when the spiny mounds of blackthorn
along the headlands of the fields turned from black to white, like drifts of
snow.

“Brother
Jerome has told truth, the whole truth as he knows it, but it is not the whole.
You saw him, he was in no case and no mind to hold anything back, nor has he
done so. Recall, Father, what he said, how he stood and waited. So he did, we
found the place, just withdrawn into the bushes by the path, where he had
trampled uneasily and flattened the grass. How he snatched up a fallen branch,
when the young man came down the path, and struck him with it, and he fell
senseless, and the hood fell back from his head. All true, we found, Hugh will
bear me out, the branch lying where he had cast it aside. It was partly rotten,
and had broken when he struck with it, but it was sound enough and heavy enough
to stun. And the body lay as Jerome described, across the path, the hood fallen
from his head and face. And Jerome says that on realizing what he had done, and
believing that what he had done was murder, he fled, back here into hiding. So
he did, and sick indeed he was, for Brother Richard found him grey and shaking
on his bed, when he failed to attend at Compline. But he never said word but
that he was ill, as plainly he was, and I gave him medicine. In confession now
he has spoken of but one blow, and I am convinced he struck but once.”

“Certainly,”
said Radulfus, thoughtfully frowning, “he said no word of any further assault.
I do not think he was holding anything back.”

“No,
Father, neither do I. He has gone creeping about us like a very sick man since
that night, in horror of his own act. Now that one blow is borne out by the
examination I made of Aldhelm’s head. At the back it was stained with a little
blood, and in the rough texture of the wool I found fragments of tinder from
the broken branch. The blow to the back of his head might lay him senseless a
short while, but certainly had not broken his skull, and could not have killed
him. Hugh, what do you say?”

“I
say his head would have ached fiercely after it,” said Hugh at once, “but
nothing worse. More, it would not have left him out of his wits above a quarter
of an hour at the longest. The worst Jerome could do, perhaps, but not enough
to do his quarry much harm.”

“So
I say also. And he says he struck, looked close and knew his error, and fled
the place. And I believe him.”

“I
doubt he had the hardihood left to lie,” said the earl. “No very bold villain
at the best of times, I should judge, and greatly in awe of the Gospel verdict
today. Yet he was sure he had killed.”

“He
fled in that terror,” said Cadfael, “and the next he heard was that Tutilo had
found the man dead, and so reported him. What else should Jerome think?”

“And
in spite of doubts,” the abbot reminded them wryly, “should not we still be
thinking the same? He who had begun so terrible an undertaking, how can we be
sure he did not, after all, stay and finish it?”

“We
cannot be sure. Not absolutely sure. Not until we are sure of everything, and
every detail is in the open. But I think he has told us truly, so far as he
knows truth. For what followed was very different. Hugh will remember, and bear
out all I have to tell.”

“I
remember all too well,” said Hugh.

“A
few paces lower down the path we found a pile of stones, long grown in there
with mosses and lichens. There is limestone cropping out on the ridge above,
and in places it breaks through the thin ground cover even among the trees
below. In this heap the upper stone, though it was fitted carefully back into
its bed, showed the sealing growths of moss disturbed and broken. Heavy, a
double handful when I raised it. On the rough underside there was blood. Quite
hidden when the stone was in place, but present. We brought the stone back with
us to examine more closely. It was certainly the instrument of death. As
Aldhelm’s blood was blackening on the stone, so fragments of lichen and
stone-dust were embedded in Aldhelm’s wounds. His head was crushed, and the stone
coldly fitted back into its mound. Unless a man looked close, it appeared
undisturbed. In a week or so weather and growth would have sealed up again all
the raw edges that betrayed its use. I ask myself, is this something of which
Jerome could be capable? To wrench up a heavy stone, batter in the head of a
man lying senseless, and then fit the stone coolly back into its former place?
I marvel he ever steeled himself to hit hard enough to stun, and to break the
branch in the blow, even though it was partly rotted. Remember that he says he
then, in his fright at what he had done, went to peer at his victim, and found
that he had struck down the wrong man. With Aldhelm he had no quarrel. And
recollect, too, that no one had seen him, no one then knew he had ever left the
enclave. He did what any timorous man in a panic would do, ran away and hid
himself within the community, where he was known and respected, and no one
would ever guess he had attempted such a deed.”

“So
you are saying plainly,” said Earl Robert, attentive and still, “that there
were two murderers, at least in intent, and this wretched brother, once he knew
he had struck down the wrong man, had no reason in the world to wish him
further harm.”

That
is what I believe,” said Cadfael.

“And
you, my lord sheriff?”

“By
all I know of Jerome,” said Hugh, “that is how I read it.”

“Then,
by the same token,” said the earl, “you are saying that the man who finished
the work was one who did have cause to want Aldhelm removed from the world,
before he ever reached the abbey gatehouse. Not Tutilo, but Aldhelm. This one
did know his man, and made sure he should never arrive. For the shepherd’s hood
fell back when he fell. This time there was no mistake made, he was known, and
killed not for another, but for himself.”

There
was a brief, deep silence, while they looked at one another and weighed
possibilities. Then Abbot Radulfus said slowly: “It is logical. The face was
then exposed to view, though Jerome had to kneel and look closely, for the
night was dark. But if he could distinguish and recognize, so could the other.”

“There
is another point,” said Hugh. “I doubt if Aldhelm would have lain helpless for
more than a quarter of an hour from that blow on the head. Whoever killed him,
killed him within that time, for he had not stirred. There was no sign of
movement. If his body jerked when he was struck again, and fatally, it was no
more than an instant’s convulsion. The murderer must have been close. Perhaps
he witnessed the first assault. Certainly he was on the spot within a very
short time.” And he asked sharply: “Father, have you released Tutilo?”

“Not
yet,” said Radulfus, unsurprised. Hugh’s meaning was plain enough. “Perhaps
there should be no haste. You are right to remind us. Tutilo came down that
same path and found the dead man. Unless, unless at that time he was still
living. Yes, it could still have been Tutilo who finished what Jerome had
begun.”