Holy Thief (4 page)

“I
have promised,” said Sulien, “to return to Ramsey and work there with my hands
for one month, when the time is right.” He had never rid himself completely of
a feeling of guilt for abandoning a vocation he had been foolish and mistaken
ever to undertake. He would be glad to pay his ransom with hard labour, and
free his conscience before he took a bride. And Pernel Otmere would approve
him, and give him leave to go.

Herluin
thanked him for the offer, but with no very great enthusiasm, perhaps doubtful
how much work Ramsey was likely to get out of this recusant youth.

“I
will also speak to my brother,” Sulien pursued earnestly, “and see what more we
may be able to do. They are cutting coppice-wood, there will be older stands
well seasoned. And they are taking out some wellgrown trees from the woodland.
I will ask him for a load of timber for your rebuilding, and I think he will
let me have it. I am asking no other portion before I go into the king’s
service at Shrewsbury. If the abbey can supply a cart to transport it, or one
can be hired? Eudo’s carts cannot be spared for so long.”

This
practical offer Herluin received with more warmth. He was still resentful,
Cadfael thought, of his failure to overwhelm all argument and take the
backslider home with him, not for the promised month, but for life. Not that
Sulien himself was of such great value, but Herluin was not accustomed to being
so stoutly resisted. All barricades should have fallen like the walls of
Jericho at the blast of his trumpet.

Still,
he had extracted all he could, and prepared to take his leave. Tutilo, all
attentive ears and modestly lowered eyes in his corner, opened the chest
quietly, and laid away the psaltery he had been clasping to his heart. The very
gentleness with which he laid it within and slowly closed the lid over it
brought a small, thoughtful twist to Donata’s ashen mouth.

“I
have a favour to ask,” she said, “if you will hear it. Your songbird here has
given me delight and ease. If I am sometimes sleepless and in pain, will you
lend me that consolation for an hour, while you remain in Shrewsbury? I will
not send unless I need him. Will you let him come?”

If
Herluin was taken aback at such a request, he was nevertheless shrewdly aware
that she had him at a disadvantage, though in all probability, thought Cadfael,
interested, he was hoping that she was less aware of it. In which hope he was
certainly deluded. She knew very well he could hardly refuse her. To send a
susceptible novice to provide music for a woman, and a woman in her bed, at
that, was unthinkable, even scandalous. Except that this woman was now so
closely acquainted with death that the subtle creaking of the opening door was
present in her voice, and the transparent pallor of the bodyless soul in her
face. She was no longer responsive to the proprieties of this world, nor afraid
of the dread uncertainties of the next.

“Music
medicines me to peace,” she said, and waited patiently for his submission. And
the boy in the corner stood mute and passive, but beneath the long, lowered
lashes the amber-gold eyes glowed, pleased, serious and wary.

“If you send for
him in extreme need,” said Herluin at last, choosing his words with care, “how
can our Order reject such a prayer? If you call, Brother Tutilo shall come.”

Chapter Two

NO
QUESTION NOW how he got his name,” said Cadfael, lingering in Brother Anselm’s
workshop in the cloister after High Mass next morning. “Sweet as a lark.” They
had just heard the lark in full song, and had paused in the precentor’s corner
carrel to watch the worshippers disperse, the lay visitors from the guesthall among
them. For those who sought lodging here it was politic and graceful, if not
obligatory, to attend at least the main Mass of the day. February was not a
busy month for Brother Denis the hospitaller, but there were always a few
travellers in need of shelter.

“The
lad’s immensely talented,” agreed Anselm. “A true ear and an instinct for
harmony.” And he added, after a moment’s consideration: “Not a voice for choral
work, however. Too outstanding. There’s no hiding that grain among a bushel.”

No
need to stress the point, the justice of that verdict was already proved.
Listening to that pure, piercingly sweet thread, delivered so softly, falling
on the ear with such astonishment, no one could doubt it. There was no way of
subduing that voice into anonymity among the balanced polyphony of a choir.
Cadfael wondered if it might not be equally shortsighted to try and groom its
owner into a conforming soul in a disciplined brotherhood.

“Brother
Denis’s Provencal guest pricked up his ears,” remarked Anselm, “when he heard
the lad. Last night he asked Herluin to let the boy join him at practice in the
hall. There they go now. I have his rebec in for restringing. I will say for
him, he cares for his instruments.”

The
trio crossing the cloister from the south door of the church was a cause of
considerable curiosity and speculation among the novices. It was not often the
convent housed a troubador from the south of France, obviously of some wealth
and repute, for he travelled with two servants and lavish baggage. He and his
entourage had been here three days, delayed in their journey north to Chester
by a horse falling lame. Rémy of Pertuis was a man of fifty or so, of striking
appearance, a gentleman who valued himself on his looks and presentation.
Cadfael watched him cross towards the guesthall; he had not so far had occasion
to pay him much attention, but if Anselm respected him and approved his musical
conscience he might be worth studying. A fine, burnished head of russet hair
and a clipped beard. Good carriage and a body very handsomely appointed, fur
lining his cloak, gold at his belt. And two attendants following close behind
him, a tall fellow somewhere in his mid-thirties, all muted brown from head to
foot, his good but plain clothing placing him discreetly between squire and
groom, and a woman, cloaked and hooded, but by her slender figure and light
step young.

“What’s
his need for the girl?” Cadfael wondered.

“Ah,
that he has explained to Brother Denis,” said Anselm, and smiled.
“Meticulously! Not his kin...”

“I
never thought it,” said Cadfael.

“But
you may have thought, as I certainly did when first they rode in here, that he
had a very particular use for her, as indeed he has, though not as I imagined
it.” Brother Anselm, for all he had come early to the cloister, had fathomed
most of the byways that were current outside the walls, and had long ago ceased
to be either surprised or shocked by them. “It’s the girl who performs most of
his songs. She has a lovely voice, and he values her for it, and highly, but for
nothing else, so far as I can see. She’s an important part of his stock in
trade.”

“But
what,” wondered Cadfael, “is a minstrel from the heart of Provence doing here
in the heart of England? And plainly no mere jongleur, but a genuine
troubadour. He’s wandered far from home, surely?”

And
yet, he thought, why not? The patrons on whom such artists depend are becoming
now as much English as French, or Norman, or Breton, or Angevin. They have
estates both here and oversea, as well seek them here as there. And the very
nature of the troubadour, after all, is to wander and venture, as the Galician
word trobar, from which they take their name, though it has come to signify to
create poetry and music, literally means to find. Those who find, seek and find
out the poetry and the music both, these are the troubadours. And if their art
is universal, why should they not be found everywhere?

“He’s
heading for Chester,” said Anselm. “So his man says, Bénezet, he’s called. It
may be he hopes to get a place in the earl’s household. But he’s in no haste,
and plainly in no want of money. Three good riding horses and two servants in
his following is pretty comfortable travelling.”

“Now
I wonder,” said Cadfael, musing darkly, “why he left his last service? Made
himself too agreeable to his lord’s lady, perhaps? Something serious, to make
it necessary to cross the sea.”

“I
am more interested,” said Anselm, undisturbed by such a cynical view of
troubadours in general, “in where he got the girl. For she is not French, not
Breton, not from Provence. She speaks the English of these borders, and some
Welsh. It would seem she is one property he got this side the ocean. The groom,
Bénezet, he’s a southerner like his master.”

The
trio had vanished into the guesthall by then, their entangled lives still as
mysterious as when they had first entered the enclave. And in some few days, if
the roads stayed passable and the lame horse mended, they would depart just as
enigmatically, like so many who took refuge under that hospitable roof a day, a
week, and then passed, leaving nothing of themselves behind. Cadfael shook
himself free of vain wondering about souls that passed by as strangers, and
sighed, and went back into the church to say a brief word into Saint Winifred’s
ear before going to his work in the garden.

Someone
was before him in needing Saint Winifred’s attention, it seemed. Tutilo had
something to ask of the saint, for he was kneeling on the lowest step of her
altar, sharply outlined against the candle-light. He was so intent upon his
prayer that he did not hear Cadfael’s steps on the tiles. His face was lifted
to the light, eager and vehement, and his lips were moving rapidly and silently
in voluble appeal, and by his wide-open eyes and flushed cheeks with every
confidence of being heard and having his plea granted. What Tutilo did, he did
with his might. For him a simple request to heaven, through the intercession of
a kindly disposed saint, was equal to wrestling with angels, and out-arguing
doctors of divinity. And when he rose from his knees it was with an exultant
spring in his step and tilt to his chin, as though he knew he had carried his
point.

When
he did sense another presence, and turn to face the newcomer, it was with the
most demure and modest front, abating his brightness and exuberance as smoothly
as he had diverted his love song into liturgical piety for Herluin’s benefit in
Donata’s bedchamber. True, when he recognized Cadfael his devout gravity
mellowed a little, and a subdued gleam came back cautiously into his amber
eyes.

“I
was praying her aid for our mission,” he said. “Today Father Herluin preaches
at the High Cross in the town. If Saint Winifred lends us aid we cannot fail.”

His
eyes turned again to the reliquary on the altar, and lingered lovingly, wide
with wonder.

“She
has done miraculous things. Brother Rhun told me how she healed him and took
him to be her true servant. And other such marvels... many... When the day of
her translation comes round, every year, there are hundreds of pilgrims,
Brother Jerome says so. I have been asking him about all the treasury of relics
your house has gathered here. But she is the chief, and incomparable.”

Brother
Cadfael certainly had nothing to object to that. Indeed there were some among
the treasury of relics amassed by obedientiaries here over the years about
which he felt somewhat dubious. Stones from Calvary and the Mount of Olives,
well, stones are stones, every hill has a scattering of them, there is only the
word of the purveyor as to the origin of any particular specimen. Fragments of
bones from saints and martyrs, a drop of the Virgin’s milk, a shred of her
robe, a little flask of the sweat of Saint John the Baptist, a tress from the
red hair of Saint Mary Magdalen... all easily portable, and no doubt some of
the returning pilgrims from the Holy Land were genuine, and believed in the
genuineness of what they offered, but in some cases Cadfael wondered whether
they had ever been nearer Acre than Eastcheap. But Saint Winifred he knew well,
he had lifted her out of the Welsh earth with his own hands, and with his own
hands laid her reverently back into it, and drawn the sweet soil of Gwytherin
over her rest. What she had bequeathed to Shrewsbury and to him in absence was
the sheltering shadow of her right hand, and a half-guilty, half-sacred memory
of an affection and kindness almost personal. When he appealed, she listened.
He tried to present her with only reasonable requests. But no doubt she would
listen as attentively to this persuasive and enthusiastic youth, and grant him,
perhaps not all he demanded, but whatever was good for him.

“If
only,” breathed Tutilo, burning up into his brightest and most irresistible
radiance, “if only Ramsey had such a patroness, our future glory would be
assured. All our misfortunes would be over. Pilgrims would come by the
thousand, their offerings would enrich our house. Why should we not be another
Compostela?”

“It
may be your duty,” Cadfael reminded him drily,”to work for the enrichment of
your monastery, but that is not the first duty of the saints.”

“No,
but that is what happens,” said Tutilo, unabashed. “And surely Ramsey needs and
deserves a particular grace, after all her sufferings. It cannot be wrong to
plead for her enrichment. I want nothing for myself.” That he corrected in
haste the next moment. “Yes, I want to excel. I want to be profitable to my
brothers and my Order. That I do want.”

“And
that,” Cadfael said comfortably, “she will certainly look upon with favour. And
so you are profitable. With gifts like yours you should count yourself blessed.
You go and do your best for Ramsey in the town, and give as good when you get
to Worcester, or Pershore, or Evesham, and what more can possibly be required
of you?”