The Holy Thief

by Ellis Peters

  He walked a little unsteadily, and with his fair crest drooping over something he cradled in his arms. Once he stumbled on the cobbles. The light, clearing and brightening to the pure pale gold of primroses where its slanting rays could reach, still left the gatehouse and the court within the gates in shadow, and Tutilo kept his eyes on the cobbles and trod carefully, as though he could not see his way clearly. Cadfael went to meet him, and the porter, who had heard the stir of arrival and come out into the doorway of his lodge, halted on the threshold, and left it to Cadfael as an elder of the house to take charge of the returned prisoner.

  Tutilo did not look up until they were very close, and then blinked and peered as though he had difficulty in recognizing even a well-known face. His eyes were red-rimmed, their gilded brightness dulled from a sleepless night, and perhaps also from weeping. The burden he carried with such curious tenderness was a drawstring bag of soft leather, with some rigid shape within it, that filled his arms and was held jealously to his heart, the anchoring strings around one wrist for safety, as though he went in dread of loss. He stared over his treasure at Cadfael, and small, wary sparks kindled in his eyes, and flared into anxiety and pain in an instant. In a flat, chill voice he said: “She is dead. Never a quiver or a moan. I thought I had sung her to sleep. I went on… silence might have disturbed her rest…”

  “You did well,” said Cadfael. “She has waited a long time for rest. Now nothing can disturb it.”

  “I started back as soon afterwards as seemed right. I did not want to leave her without saying goodbye fairly. She was kind to me.” He did not mean as mistress to servant or patroness to protege. There had been another manner of kindness between them, beneficent to both. “I was afraid you might think I was not coming back. But the priest said she could not live till morning, so I could not leave her.”

  “There was no haste,” said Cadfael. “I knew you would come. Are you hungry? Come within the lodge, and sit a while, and we’ll find you food and drink.”

  “No… They have fed me. They would have found me a bed, but it was not in the bargain that I should linger after I was no longer needed. I kept to terms.” He was racked by a sudden jaw-splitting bout of yawning that brought water to his eyes. “I need my bed now,” he owned, shivering.

  The only bed he could claim at this point was in his penitential cell, but he went to it eagerly, glad to have a locked door between himself and the world. Cadfael took the key from the porter, who hovered with slightly anxious sympathy, and was relieved to see a delinquent for whom he might be held responsible returning docilely to his prison. Cadfael shepherded his charge within, and watched him subside gratefully on to the narrow cot, and sit there mute for a moment, laying his burden down beside him with a kind of caressing gentleness.

  “Stay a little while,” said the boy at length. “You knew her well. I came late. How was it she had heart even to look at me, as tormented as she was?” He wanted no answer, and in any case there could be none. But why should not one dying too soon for her years and too late by far for her comfort take pleasure in the sudden visitation of youth and freshness and beauty, however flawed, and all the more for its vulnerability and helplessness in a world none too kind to the weak.

  “You gave her intense pleasure. What she has known most intimately these last years has been intense pain. I think she saw you very clearly, better than some who live side by side with you and might as well be blind. Better, perhaps, than you see yourself.”

  “My sight is as sharp as it need be,” said Tutilo. “I know what I am. No one need be an angel to sing like one. There’s no virtue in it. They had brought the harp into her bedchamber for me, all freshly strung. I thought it might be loud for her, there between close walls, but it was her wish. Did you know her, Cadfael, when she was younger, and hale, and beautiful? I played for a while, and then I stole up to look at her, because she was so still I thought she had fallen asleep, but her eyes were wide open, and there was color, all rosy, high on her cheeks. She did not look so gaunt and old, and her lips were red and full, and curved, like a smile but not quite a smile. I knew she knew me, though she never spoke word, never, night-long. I sang to her, some of the hymns to the Virgin, and then, I don’t know why, but there was no one to tell me do, or don’t, and it was the way I felt her taking me, all still as she was, and growing younger because there was no pain left… I sang love songs. And she was glad. I had only to look at her, and I knew she was glad. And sometimes the young lord’s wife stole in and sat to listen, and brought me to drink, and sometimes the lady the younger brother is to marry. Their priest had already shriven her clean. In the small hours, around three o’clock, she must have died, but I didn’t know… I thought she had truly fallen asleep, until the young one stole up and told me.”

  “Truly she had fallen asleep,” said Cadfael. “And if your singing went with her through the dark, she had a good passage. There’s nothing here for grieving. She has waited patiently for this ending.”

  “It was not that broke me,” said Tutilo simply. “But see what followed. See what I brought away with me.”

  He drew open the neck of the leather bag that lay beside him, and reached inside to withdraw with loving care that same psaltery he had once played in Donata’s bedchamber, polished sounding-board and stretched strings shining like new. A broken key had been replaced by one newly cut, and it was triple-strung with new gut strings. He laid it beside him, and stroked across the strings, conjuring forth a shimmer of silvery sound.

  “She gave it to me. After she was dead, after we had said the prayers for her, her son, the young one, brought it to me, all newly furbished like this, and said it was her wish that I should have it, for a musician without an instrument is a warrior without weapon or armor. He told me all that she had to say when she left it in trust for me. She said a troubadour needs only three things, an instrument, a horse, and a lady love, and the first she desired to give me, and the other two I must find for myself. She had even had new quills cut for me, and some to spare.”

  His voice had grown hushed and childish with wonder and his eyes filled, looking back to record this playful divination which might yet predict a future far removed from the cloister, which in any case was already losing its visionary charm for him. She might well be right. She had warmed to him not as a spiritual being, but as vigorous young flesh and blood, full of untested potentialities. And dying men, and perhaps even more, dying women, had been formidable oracles at times.

  Distantly from the dortoir, across the court, the bell sounded for Prime. Cadfael picked up the psaltery with due respect, and laid it safely aside on the little prayer-desk.

  “I must go. And you, if you’ll take advice, will sleep, and put everything else clean out of mind, while we go try the sortes Biblicae. You’ve done well by the lady, and she has done well by you. With her grace, and a few prayers the rest of us may find for you, you can hardly go unblessed.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Tutilo, his tired eyes dilating. “That is today, is it not? I had forgotten.” The momentary shadow touched but could not intimidate him; he had gone somewhat beyond fear for himself.

  “And now you can forget it again,” said Cadfael firmly. “You of all people should have faith in the saint you set such store by. Lie down and sleep through all, and believe in Saint Winifred. Do you not think she must be up in arms by this time, at being treated like a bone between three dogs? And if she could tell you her mind privately some while ago, do you suppose she cannot make it very plain to us in public today? Sleep the morning through, and let her dispose of all of us.”

  In the half hour between chapter and High Mass, when Cadfael was busy sorting his harvest of blackthorn blossoms in his workshop, discarding occasional spines and fragments of wiry dark twigs, Hugh came in to share the gleanings of his own labors. They were meager enough, but at least the ferryman had been able to supply one scrap of information that might yet be useful.

  “He never went near Longner that nigh
t. He never crossed the river. You know that, I think? No, but the other poor wretch did, and the ferryman remembers when. It seems the parish priest at Upton has a servant who visits his brother’s family in Preston once a week, and that night this fellow walked the road from Upton to Preston along with Aldhelm, who works at the demesne, and lives in the neighboring village. A shepherd can never be sure at what hour he’ll be done for the day, but the priest’s man leaves Upton as soon as Vespers is over, and so he did this time. He says it must have been a little before the sixth hour when Aldhelm parted from him at Preston to go on to the ferry. From there, the crossing and the distance he had covered on that path, to the place where he was found, would take him no more than half an hour—less, if he was a brisk walker, and it was raining, he’d be no longer than he need out in it. It seems to me that he was waylaid and killed round about a quarter or half of the hour past six. Hardly later. Now if your lad could tell us just where he was, while he was supposed to be at Longner, and better still, bring us a witness to confirm it, that would go far to get him out of the mire.”

  Cadfael turned to give him a long, thoughtful look, and a few white petals that had floated and lodged in the rough cloth of his sleeve caught the stirring of air from the door, and floated free again, riding the draught into the pale, bright sunlight. “Hugh, if what you say is true, then I hope something good may come of it. For though I doubt if he’s ready to own to it yet, I know of another who can and will testify that the two of them were together until the bell sounded for Compline, which would be the better part of an hour later than you have in mind, and a quarter of an hour’s walk from the place, into the bargain. But since it suits ill with his vocation, and perhaps bodes no good to—the other one—neither of them may be anxious to say it openly for all to hear. In your ear, with a little persuasion, they might both whisper it.”

  “Where is the boy now?” asked Hugh, considering. “Fast in his penitentiary?”

  “And fast asleep, I trust. You were not at Longner last night, Hugh? No, or he would have said so. Then probably you have not heard that he was sent for last night just before Compline, to go to Donata, at her express wish. And Radulfus gave him leave, under escort. She died, Hugh. God and the saints remembered her at last.”

  “No,” said Hugh, “that I did not know.” He sat silent for a long moment, recollecting how the past few years had dealt with Donata Blount and her family. Nothing there for grieving, no, rather for gratitude and thanksgiving. “No doubt the news will be waiting for me around the garrison by now,” he said. “And she asked for Tutilo?”

  “You find that strange?” Cadfael asked mildly.

  “It disappoints me when human creatures fail to provide something strange. No, all that’s strange about this is that those two ever came to touch hands at any point. A man would have said that two such were never likely in this world to come within sight, let alone touch, of each other. Once met, yes, all things were possible. And she is dead. In his presence?”

  “He thought he had sung her to sleep,” said Cadfael. “So he had. He had grown fond, and so had she. Where there’s nothing at stake there’s no barrier, either. Nothing to join, so nothing to divide them. And he has come home this morning worn out with experience, all grief and all wonder, because she gave him the psaltery on which he played to her, and sent him a message straight out of the jongleurs’ romances. He went back to his cell gladly, and I hope he’ll sleep until all this business we have in hand after Mass is finished and done. And God and Saint Winifred send us a good ending!”

  “Ah, that!” said Hugh, and smiled somewhat cryptically. “Is not this sortes a rather dangerous way of deciding an issue? It seems to me it would not be at all difficult to cheat. There was a time, by your own account, when you cheated—in a good cause, of course!”

  “I cheated to prevent a theft, not to achieve one,” said Cadfael. “I never cheated Saint Winifred, nor will she suffer cheating now. She won’t charge me with more than my due, nor will she let that lad pay for a death I’m sure he does not owe. She knows what we need and what we deserve. She’ll see wrongs righted and quarrels reconciled, in her own good time.”

  “And without any aid from me,” Hugh concluded, and rose, laughing. “I’ll be off and leave you to it, I’d as lief be elsewhere while your monastics fight it out. But afterwards, when he wakes—poor rogue, I wouldn’t disturb him!—we must have words with your songbird.”

  Cadfael went into the church before High Mass, uneasy for all his declarations of faith, and guiltily penitent over his uneasiness, a double contortion of the mind. In any case there was no time left to make his infusion before the assay: he left his blackthorn blossoms, cleansed of all thorns and husks, waiting in a clean vessel for his return, and covered from any floating particles of dust by a linen cloth. A few petals still clung about his sleeves, caught in the rough weave. He had others in his grizzled russet tonsure, dropped from the higher branches as the wind stirred them. Distantly this springtime snow stirred his memory of other springs, and later blossom, like but unlike this, when the hawthorns came into heady, drunken sweetness, drowning the senses. Four or five weeks more, and that greater snow would blanch the hedgerows. The smell of growth and greenness was already in the air, elusive but constant, like the secret rippling of water, the whispering water of February, now almost hushed into silence.

  By instinct rather than design he found himself at Saint Winifred’s altar, and kneeled to approach her, his creaky knees settling gingerly on the lowest step of her elevated place. He offered no words, though he thought words within, in the Welsh tongue, which had been native to her as it was to him. Where she belonged and wished to be, she would direct. What he asked was guidance in the matter of a young man’s death, a clean young man who handled lambs with gentleness and care, as lambs of God, and never deserved to be done to death suddenly before his time, however the love of God might have set a secure hand under him as he fell, and lifted him into light. And another young man suspect of a thing far out of his scope, who must not die a similarly unjust death.

  What he never doubted was that she was listening. She would not turn her back on an appellant. But in what mood she would be listening was not so certain, considering everything that had happened. Cadfael hoped and thought his prayers towards her in resigned humility, but always in good north Welsh, the Welsh of Gwynedd. She might be indignant; she would still be just.

  When he rose from his knees, helping himself up by the rim of her altar, newly draped in celebration of her return, and expectation of her continued residence, he did not at once leave her. The quiet here was at once grateful and ominous, like the hush before battle. And the Gospels, not the great illuminated book, but a smaller and stouter one, calculated to resist too crafty fingers by its less use and lighter pages, already lay on the silver-chased reliquary, centrally placed with accurate and reverent precision. He let his hand rest on it, and summed up all his prayers for guidance and enlightenment into the touch of his fingers, and suddenly he was resolved to open it. Girl, now show me my way, for I have a child to care for. A liar and a thief and a rogue, but what this world has made him, and sweet as he can be false. And not a murderer, whatever else you may know him to be. I doubt he ever harmed a soul in his twenty or so years. Say me a word, one enlightening word, to let him out of this cage.

  The book of the fates was already there before him. Almost without conscious thought he laid both hands upon it, raised it, and opened it. He closed his eyes as he set it down on its place, flattening it open under his left hand, and laid the index finger of his right hand upon the exposed page.

  Aware abruptly of what he had done, he held very still, not shifting a finger, above all not that index finger, as he opened his eyes, and looked where it pointed.

  He was in the Apostle Matthew, Chapter 10, and the fervent finger, pressing so hard it dimpled the leaf, rested on Verse 21.

  Cadfael had learned his Latin late, but this was simple enough:


  “… and the brother shall deliver up the brother to death.”

  He stood gazing at the words, and at first they made no sense to him, apart from the ominous mention of death, and death of intent, not the quiet closing of a life like Donata’s passing. The brother shall deliver up the brother to death… It was a part of the prophecy of disintegration and chaos to be expected in the latter days; within that context it was but one detail in a large picture, but here it was all, it was an answer. To one long years a member of a brotherhood the wording was significant. Not a stranger, not an enemy, but a brother betraying a brother.

  And suddenly he was visited by a brief vision of a young man hurrying down a narrow woodland path on a dark night, in drizzling rain, a dun-colored cloak on him, its hood drawn close over his head. The shape passed by, and was no more than a shape, dimly descried under the faint tempering of the darkness the thread of sky made between the trees: but the shape was familiar, a hooded man shrouded in voluminous cloth. Or a cowled man in a black habit? In such conditions, where would the difference be?

  It was as if a door had opened before him into a dim but positive light. A brother delivered to death… How if that were true, how if another victim had been intended, not Aldhelm? No one but Tutilo had had known cause to fear Aldhelm’s witness, and Tutilo, though abroad from the enclave that night, firmly denied any attack upon the young man, and small points were emerging to bear out his testimony. And Tutilo was indeed a Brother, and at large that night, and expected to be upon that path. And in build, and in age, yes, striding along to get out of the rain the sooner, he might well be close enough to the shape Aldhelm would present, to an assassin waiting.