Holy Thief (3 page)

The
Lady Donata, confined to her bed at last, lay propped on pillows in her small
bedchamber, her window unshuttered, a little brazier burning in one corner on
the bare stone of the floor. She was nothing but fine bones and translucent
skin, the hands quiet on her coverlet like fallen petals of lilies in their
transparent emaciation. Her face was honed into a fragile mask of silver bones,
and the deep pits of her eyes were filled with ice-blue shadow round the
startling, imperishable beauty of the eyes themselves, still clear and intelligent,
and the darkest and most luminous of blues. The spirit encased in this frail
shell was still alert, indomitable, and sharply interested in the world about
her, without any fear of leaving it, or any reluctance to depart.

She
looked up at her visitors, and greeted Cadfael in a low voice that had lost
none of its quality. “Brother Cadfael, this is a pleasure! I’ve hardly seen you
through the winter. I should not have liked to leave without your valediction,”

“You
could have sent for me,” he said, and went to set a stool by her bedside. “I am
biddable. And Radulfus would not refuse you.”

“He
came himself,” said Donata, “to take my confession at Christmas. I am an
adopted ewe of his flock. He does not forget me.”

“And
how do your affairs stand?” he asked, studying the serenity of her face. There
was never need to go roundabout with Donata, she understood him as he meant,
and preferred it so.

“In
the matter of life and death,” she said, “excellently well. In the matter of
pain... I have gone beyond pain, there is not enough of me to feel it, or
regard it if it could make itself felt. I take that as the sign I’ve looked
for.” She spoke without apprehension or regret, or even impatience now,
perfectly content to wait the short while longer. And she lifted her dark eyes
to the young man standing apart.

“And
who is this you have brought to see me? A new acolyte of yours in the
herb-garden?”

Tutilo
came nearer, rightly interpreting this as an invitation. His eyes were large
and round, beholding her condition, youth and abundant life confronted with
death, but he did not seem at all dismayed, nor pitying. Donata did not invite
pity. The boy was very quick and accurate of apprehension.

“Not
mine,” said Cadfael, measuring the slight figure consideringly, and warily
approving a bright pupil he certainly would not have refused. “No, this young
brother is come with his sub-prior from the abbey of Ramsey. Abbot Walter is
back in his monastery, and calling home all the brothers to the work of
rebuilding, for Geoffrey de Mandeville and his brigands have left an empty
shell. And to let you know the whole of it, Sub-Prior Herluin is in the solar
this moment, trying what he can do with Sulien.”

“That
is one he will never reclaim,” said Donata with certainty. “My sorrow that ever
he was driven to mistake himself so grossly, and if Geoffrey de Mandeville did
nothing of good besides, among his much evil, at least his onslaught drove
Sulien back to his proper self. My younger son,” she said, meeting Tutilo’s
wide golden eyes with a thoughtful and appreciative smile, “was never cut out
to be a monk.”

“So
an emperor said, I believe,” remarked Cadfael, recalling what Anselm had said
of the saint of Saint Gall, “about the first Tutilo, after whom this young
brother is named. For this is Brother Tutilo, a novice of Ramsey, and close to
the end of his novitiate, as I hear from his superior. And if he takes after
his namesake he should be painter, carver, singer and musician. Great pity,
said King Charles, Charles the Fat, they called him, that ever such a genius
should be made a monk. He called down a malediction on the man that did it. So
Anselm tells me, at least.”

“Some
day,” said Donata, looking this very comely and graceful young man over from
head to foot, and recording with detached admiration what she saw, “some king
may say as much of this one. Or some woman, of course! Are you such a paragon,
Tutilo?”

“It
is why they gave me the name,” said the boy honestly, and a faint rosy blush
surged out of the coils of his cowl and climbed his sturdy throat into the
suave cheeks, but apparently without causing him the slightest discomfort. He
did not lower his eyes, which dwelt with fascination upon her face. In its
final tranquillity something of its long-departed beauty had returned, to render
Donata even more formidable and admirable. “I have some skill,” he said, “in
music.” It was stated with the certainty of one capable of detached judgement,
without either boasting or deprecating his powers. Small flames of interest and
liking kindled in Donata’s hollow eyes.

“Good!
So you should lay claim to what you know you do well,” she said approvingly.
“Music has been my easiest way to sleep, many a night. My consolation, too,
when the devils were too active. Now they spend their time sleeping, and I lie
awake.” She moved a frail hand upon the coverlet, indicating a chest that sat
remote in a corner of the room. “There is a psaltery in there, though it has
not been touched for a long time. If you care to try it? No doubt it would be
grateful to be given a voice again. There is a harp in the hall, but no one now
to play it.”

Tutilo
went readily to lift the heavy lid and peer down at the stored valuables
within. He lifted out the instrument, not a large one, meant to be played on
the knees, and shaped like the broad snout of a pig. The manner in which he
handled it was eloquent of interest and affection, and if he frowned, it was at
the sight of a broken course among the strings. He peered deeper into the chest
for quills to play it, but found none, and frowned again.

Time
was,” said Donata, “when I cut quills new every week or so. I am sorry we have
neglected our duty.”

That
brought her a brief, preoccupied smile, but his attention went back at once to
the psaltery. “I can use my nails,” he said, and brought the instrument with
him to the bedside, and without ceremony or hesitation sat down on the edge of
the bed, straightened the psaltery on his knees, and passed a stroking hand
over the strings, raising a soft, quivering murmur.

“Your
nails are too short,” said Donata. “You will flay your finger-ends.”

Her
voice could still evoke colours and tones that made the simplest utterance
eloquent. What Cadfael heard was a mother, between indulgence and impatience,
warning youth of venturing an undertaking possibly painful. No, perhaps not a
mother, nor even an elder sister; something more distant than a blood relative
with rights, and yet closer. For those contacts free of all duty and
responsibility are also free of all restraints, and may approach as rapidly and
as close as they will. And she had very little time left, to submit to
limitations now. What the boy heard there was no knowing, but he flashed up at
her a bright, naked glance, not so much surprised as alerted, and his hands
were abruptly still for an instant, and he smiled.

“My
finger-ends are leather, see!” He spread his palms, and flexed his long
fingers. “I was harper to my father’s lord at the manor of Berton for a year
and more before I entered Ramsey. Hush, now, let me try! But it lacks one course,
you must hold me excused for the flaws.” There was something of indulgence in
his voice, too, a soft amusement, as if to a needlessly solicitous elder who
must be reassured of his competence.

He
had found the tuning key lying in the chest with the instrument, and he began
to test the gut strings and tighten busily at the pegs that anchored them. The
singing murmur rose like a chorus of insects in a summer meadow, and Tutilo’s
tonsured head stooped over his work in total absorption, while Donata from her
pillows watched him from under half-closed eyelids, the more intently because
he was now paying no heed to her. Yet some intense intimacy bound them, for as
he softened into a passionate private smile over his work, so did she over his
concentration and pleasure.

“Wait,
one of the strings in this broken course is long enough to serve. Better one
than none, though you’ll notice when the tone thins.”

His
fingers, if toughened by the harp, were very nimble and neat as he attached the
single string and tightened it gingerly. “There! Now!” He passed a light hand
over the strings, and produced a shimmering rill of soft notes. “Wire strings
would be louder and brighter than gut, but this will do very well.”

And
he bent his head over the instrument, and plunged like a hawk stooping, and
began to play, flexed fingers dancing. The old soundboard seemed to swell and
throb with the tension of notes, too full to find adequate release through the
fretted rose in the centre.

Cadfael
withdrew his stool a little from the bedside, to have them both in plain view,
for they made an interesting study. The boy was undoubtedly hugely gifted.
There was something almost alarming in the passion of the assault. It was as if
a bird had been muted for a long time, and suddenly found his muffled throat
regain its eloquence.

In
a little while his first hunger was slaked, and he could soften into
moderation, and savour all the more gratefully the sweetness of this
indulgence. The sparkling, whirling dance measure, light as thistledown for all
its passion, eased into a gentle air, better adapted to an instrument so soft.
Even a little melancholy, some kind of virelai, rhythmic and rueful. Where had
he learned that? Certainly not at Ramsey; Cadfael doubted if it would have been
welcome there.

And
the Lady Donata, world-weary and closely acquainted with the ironies of life
and death, lay still in her pillows, never taking her eyes from the boy who had
forgotten her existence. She was not the audience to which he played, but she
was the profound intelligence that heard him. She drew him in with her great
bruised eyes, and his music she drank, and it was wine to her thirst. Crossing
the half of Europe overland, long ago, Cadfael had seen gentians in the grass
of the mountain meadows, bluer than blue, of the same profound beyond-blue of
her eyes. The set of her lips, wryly smiling, told a slightly different story.
Tutilo was already crystal to her, she knew more of him than he himself knew.

The
affectionate, sceptical twist of her mouth vanished when he began to sing. The
tune was at once simple and subtle, playing with no more than half a dozen
notes, and his voice, pitched higher than in speech, and very soft and suave,
had the same qualities, innocent as childhood, piercing as a wholly adult grief.
And he was singing not in English, not even in Norman-French as England knew
it, but in the langue d’oc Cadfael remembered imperfectly from long ago. Where
had this cloister novice heard the melodies of the Provencal troubadours, and
learned their songs? In the lord’s hall where he had been a harper? Donata knew
no southern French, Cadfael had long forgotten it, but they knew a love song
when they heard it. Rueful, unfulfilled, eternally hopeful, an amour de loin,
never to come face to face.

The
cadence changed in an instant, the secret words passed magically into: “Ave
mater salvatoris...” and they were back with the liturgy of Saint Martial
before they realized, as Tutilo had realized with the wild perceptions of a
fox, that the door of the room had opened. He was taking no chances. The door
had actually opened on the harmless person of Sulien Blount, but Sub-Prior
Herluin was there at his shoulder, looming like a cloud.

Donata
lay smiling, approving the lightning wit that could change course so smoothly,
without a break, without a blush. True, Herluin drew his austere brows into a
displeased frown at the sight of his novice seated upon the edge of a woman’s
bed and plainly singing for her pleasure; but a glance at the woman herself, in
her wasted and daunting dignity, disarmed him at once. She came as a shock, all
the more because she was not old, but withered in her prime.

Tutilo
arose modestly, clasping the psaltery to his breast, and withdrew himself
dutifully into a corner of the room, his eyes lowered. When he was not looking
at her, Cadfael suspected, he was seeing her all the more clearly.

“Mother,”
said Sulien, grave and a little stiff from his small battlefield, “here is
Sub-Prior Herluin, sometime my instructor in Ramsey, willing you well and
promising you his prayers. In my brother’s name, as I do, make him welcome.”

In
the absence of son and daughter-in-law she spoke authoritatively for both.
“Father, use our house as your own. Your visit does us honour. It was welcome
news to every soul among us that Ramsey is again delivered to the service of
God.”

“God
has indeed regarded us,” said Herluin, a little cautiously and with less than
his usual assurance, for the sight of her had shaken him. “But there is much to
be done to restore our dwelling, and we have need of every hand that can be
brought to our aid. I had hoped to take your son back with me, but it seems I
may no longer call him brother. Nevertheless, be sure both he and you will be
in my prayers.”

“I
will remember Ramsey,” said Donata, “in mine. But if the house of Blount has
denied you a brother, we may still be of help in other ways.”

“We
are seeking the charity of all good men,” agreed Herluin fervently, “in
whatever form. Our house is destitute, they left us nothing but the fabric of
the walls, and that defaced, and stripped of all that could be carted away.”