Holy Thief (27 page)

“And
now,” said Cadfael, “I think I shall be forgiven if I tell you the rest of what
he did that night, the part he was not willing to tell.”

Hugh
leaned back against the timber wall and said equably: “I might have known you
would have right of entry where no one else was let in. What is it he has not
told me?”

“He
has not told me, either. It was from someone else I got it, and with no licence
to pass it on, even to you, but I think she’ll hold me justified. The girl
Daalny, you’ll have seen her about, but she keeps discreetly apart within these
walls...”

“Rémy’s
singing girl,” said Hugh, “the little thing from Provence.”

“From
Ireland, properly speaking. But yes, that’s the one. Her mother was put up for
sale in Bristol, a prize from oversea. This one was born into servitude. The
trade still goes on, and Bishop Wulstan’s sermons haven’t made it illegal, only
frowned upon. I fancy our holy thief is between enthusiasms just now, unsure
whether he wants to be a saint or a knight errant. He has dreams now of
delivering the only slave he’s likely to encounter in these parts, though I
doubt if he’s fully realized yet that she’s a girl, and a fine one, and has
already taken his measure.”

“Are
you telling me,” demanded Hugh, beginning to sparkle with amusement, “that he
was with her that night?”

“He
was, and won’t say so because her master sets a high value on her voice, and
goes in fear that she may slip through his fingers somehow. What happened was
that the manservant who travels with them overheard somewhere about Aldhelm
being on his way here to identify the brother who cozened him, and told Daalny,
knowing very well that she had an eye to the lad herself. She warned him, he
made up the tale that he was summoned to Longner, and got his permission from
Herluin, who knew nothing about Aldhelm being expected here. Tutilo went out by
the gate, like an honest fellow, and took the path from the Foregate towards
the ferry, but turned aside to the Horse Fair and hid in the loft over our
stable, just as he says. And she slid out by the broad gate from the cemetery,
and joined him there. They waited there until they heard the bell for Compline,
and then parted to return by the same ways they had come. So she says, and so
he won’t say, in case it rebounds on her.”

“So
all that evening they were cosily employed in the hayloft, like many a lad and
lass before them,” said Hugh, and laughed.

“So
they were, in a manner of speaking, but not like every such pair. Not quite.
For she says they talked. Nothing more. And those two had much to talk about,
and little chance until then. The first time they ever were together outside
these walls. Even then I doubt if they got to the real meat of what they should
have been saying. For believe me, Hugh, she has already set her mark on him,
and he, though he may not know it yet, is in thrall to her fathoms deep. They
said the evening prayers together, she says, when they heard the Compline
bell.”

“And
you believe her?”

“Why
say it, else?” said Cadfael simply. “She had nothing to prove to me. She told
me of her own will, and had no need to add one word.”

“Well,
if true,” said Hugh seriously, “it speaks for him. It fits with the time he
came to us at the castle, and puts him an hour behind Aldhelm on that path. But
you realize as well as I that the word of the girl will hardly be taken more
gravely for proof than his own, if things are thus between them. However
innocent that assignation may have been.”

“Have
you considered,” Cadfael asked sombrely, “that Herluin will surely want to set
out for home now he’s lost his bid? And he is Tutilo’s superior, and will
certainly want to take him back with him. And so far as I can see, as the case
stands at this moment he has every right to do so. If you had kept him in the
castle on suspicion things would have been different, possession is still the
better part of the law. But he’s here in the Church’s prison, and you know how
hard the Church holds on to its own. Between a secular charge of murder and a
clerical one of theft and deception, on the face of it the lad might well
prefer the latter. But as between your custody and Herluin’s, frankly, I’d wish
him in your charge. But Herluin will never willingly let go of him. The fool
child raised his prior’s hopes of gaining a miracle-working saint, and then
failed to make a success of it, and brought the whole down to a reproach and a
humiliation. He’ll be made to pay for that tenfold, once Herluin gets him home.
I don’t know but I’d rather see him charged on a count of which he’s innocent,
and hoisted away into your hold, than dragged off to do endless penance for the
count on which he himself owns he’s guilty.”

Hugh
was smiling, a shade wryly, and eyeing Cadfael along his shoulder with rueful
affection. “Better get to work in the day or so remaining, and find me the man
who really did murder, since you’re certain this boy did not. They will surely
all leave together, for Rémy and his party are joining Robert Bossu’s household,
and Herluin’s way home takes the same road as far as Leicester, it’s why the
wagon fell victim there in the first place, and started all this to-do, so he’d
be mad not to avail himself of a safe escort and ask to travel with the earl,
if indeed the earl does not invite him before he can ask. I may contrive to
delay Robert a couple of days, but no longer.”

He
rose and stretched. It had been an eventful day, with many mysteries propounded
and none of them solved. He had earned an hour or two of Aline’s company, and
an amiable tumble with the five-year-old tyrant Giles, before the boy was swept
away to bed by Constance, his devoted slave. Let lesser considerations, and for
that matter greater ones, too, hang in abeyance until tomorrow.

“And
what particular responsibilities did he want to talk over with you in private
this afternoon?” asked Cadfael as his friend turned towards the door.

The
need,” said Hugh, looking back and weighing words with care, “for all thinking
men in this deadlocked contention to set about finding a means of doing away
with factions, since neither faction has any hope of winning. The thing is
becoming very simple: how to clamber out of a morass before the muck reaches
our chins. You can be giving your mind to that, Cadfael, while you say a word
in God’s ear at Compline.”

Cadfael
could never be quite sure what it was that prompted him to borrow the key yet
again after Compline, and go in to pay a late visit to Tutilo. It might have
been the sound of the light, pure voice from within the cell, heard eerily
across the court when he came from the last Office of the evening. A faint
gleam of light showed through the high, barred window; the prisoner had not yet
put out his little lamp. The singing was very soft, not meant to reach anyone outside,
but the tone was so piercingly true, in the centre of the note like an arrow in
the gold of a target, that it carried on the twilit stillness to the most
remote corners of the court, and caused Cadfael to freeze in midstride,
stricken to the heart with its beauty. The boy’s timing was a little out: he
was still singing the close of the Office. Nothing so wonderful had been heard
in the choir of the church. Anselm was an excellent precentor, and long ago in
his youth might have sounded like this: but Anselm with all his skills was old,
and this was an ageless voice that might have belonged to a child or an angel.
Blessed be the human condition, thought Cadfael, which allows us marred and
fallible creatures who are neither angels nor children to make sounds like
these, that belong in another world. Unlooked for mercies, undeserved grace!

Well,
that could be meant as a sign. Or again, what sent him to the gatehouse for the
key might have been simply a feeling that he must make one more effort to get
something useful out of the boy before sleeping, something that might point the
way forward, perhaps something Tutilo did not even realize that he knew. Or,
Cadfael thought afterwards, it might have been a sharp nudge in the ribs from
Saint Winifred, stretching out the grace of a thought all the way from her
grave in Gwytherin, having forgiven the graceless youth who had had the
excellent taste to covet her, as she had forgiven the graceless old man who had
presumed to suppose he was interpreting her will, just as impudently, all those
years ago. Whatever it was, to the gatehouse he went, the entrancing and
agonizing beauty of Tutilo’s singing following him all the way. Brother Porter
let him take the key without question; in his solitude Tutilo had shown every sign
of resignation and content, as if he welcomed the peace and quiet to consider
his present state and his future prospects. Whatever complex motives had
combined to drive Tutilo into the cloister, there was nothing spurious about
his faith; if he had done no evil, he was assured no evil would come to him. Or
else, of course, being the lad he was, he was lulling everyone into believing
in his docility, until they ceased to pay him any careful attention, and let
him slide out of the trap like an eel. With Tutilo you would never be quite
sure. Daalny was right. You would have to know him very well, to know when he
was lying and when he was telling the truth.

Tutilo
was still on his knees in front of the plain, small cross on the cell wall, and
did not immediately look round when the key grated in the lock, and the door
opened at his back. He had stopped singing, and was gazing musingly before him,
eyes wide open, and face placid and absent. He turned, rising when the door
swung heavily to again, and beholding Cadfael, smiled rather wanly, and sat
down on his cot. He looked mildly surprised, but said nothing, waiting
submissively to hear what was now required of him, and in no apprehension about
it, because it was Cadfael who came.

“No,
nothing,” said Cadfael with a sigh, answering the look. “Just a gnawing hope
that talking to us earlier might have started a hare, after all. Some small
thing recalled that might be useful.”

Tutilo
shook his head slowly, willing but blank. “No, I can think of nothing I haven’t
told you. And everything I have told you is truth.”

“Oh,
I don’t doubt you,” said Cadfael resignedly. “Still, bear it in mind. The
merest detail, something you think negligible, might be the very grain that
makes the weight. Never mind, leave your wits fallow and something may come
back to you.” He looked round the narrow, bare white cell. “Are you warm enough
here?”

“Once
in the brychans, snug enough,” said Tutilo. “I’ve slept harder and colder many
a time.”

“And
there’s nothing wanting? Any small thing I can do for you?”

“According
to the Rule, you should not so much as offer,” said Tutilo, with a sudden
sparkling grin. “But yes, maybe there is one lawful thing I could ask, even to
my credit. I have kept the hours, alone here, but there are bits I forget sometimes.
And besides, I miss reading in it to pass the time. Even Father Herluin would
approve. Could you bring me a breviary?”

“What
happened to your own?” Cadfael asked, surprised. “I know you had one, a little
narrow one.” The vellum had been folded many times to make its cramped pages.
“Good eyes you’d need for that minuscule, but then, your eyes are young enough
to be sharp.”

“I’ve
lost it,” said Tutilo. “I had it at Mass, the day before I was locked in here,
but where I’ve left it or dropped it I don’t know. I miss it, but I can’t think
what I’ve done with it.”

“You
had it the day Aldhelm was to come here? The day, the night, rather, you found
him?”

“That
was the last I can be clear about, and I may have shaken it out of my scrip or
dropped it somewhere among the trees in the dark, that’s what I’m afraid of. I
was hardly noticing much that night,” he said ruefully, “after I found him.
What with bolting down the track and across the river into the town, I could
have shed it anywhere. It may be down the Severn by now. I like to have it,” he
said earnestly, “and I rise for Matins and Lauds in the night. I do!”

“I’ll
leave you mine,” said Cadfael. “Well, best get your sleep, if you’re going to
rise with the rest of us at midnight. Keep your lamp burning till then, if you
like, there’s enough oil here.” He had checked it in the little pottery vessel
with a fingertip. “Goodnight, son!”

“Don’t
forget to lock the door,” said Tutilo after him, and laughed without a trace of
bitterness.

She
was standing in the darkest of the dark, slender and still and erect, pressed
against the stones of the cell wall when Cadfael rounded the corner. The faint
gleam of Tutilo’s lamp through the grill high out of her reach fell from above
over her face as no more than a glowworm’s eerie spark, conjuring out of deep
darkness a spectral mask of a face, oval, elusive, with austere carven
features, but the remaining light from the west window of the church, hardly
less dim, found the large, smouldering lustre of her eyes, and a few jewelled
points of brightness that were embroidered silver threads along the side hems
of her bliaut. She was in her finery, she had been singing for Robert Bossu. A
lean, motionless, intent presence in the stillness of the night. Daalny,
Partholan’s queen, a demi-goddess from the western paradise.

“I
heard your voices,” she said, her own voice pitched just above a whisper;
whispers carry more audibly than soft utterances above the breath. “I could not
call to him, someone might have heard. Cadfael, what is to happen to him?”