Holy Thief (16 page)

“It
was no very fearful blow that felled him,” said Cadfael. “It cannot have
knocked him out of his wits for very long, had that been all. What was done
after, was done quickly, before he could come to himself. He would never have
died of this. And yet what followed was cold, deliberate and final. A drunken
man in a squabble could have done this.”

“It
did what was required of it,” said Hugh grimly. “Laid him at his enemy’s mercy.
No haste! Time to judge and finish at leisure.”

Cadfael
straightened out the coarse folds of the hood, and shook out a few pale
feathery fragments from among them. He rubbed them in his palm, slivers of
tindery, rotted wood. Plenty of that, no doubt, in this overgrown, untended
woodland, even after it had been combed for firing by the urchins of the
Foregate. But why here in Aldhehn’s hood? He ran his hands over the shoulders
of the cloak, and found no more such minute splinters. He lifted the edge of
the hood, and laid it gently over the shattered head, hiding the face. Behind
him he felt, rather than heard, Tutilo’s deep intake of breath, and sensed the
quiver that passed through him.

“Wait
a few moments yet. Let’s see if the murderer left any trace behind, if he stood
here any length of time waiting for his man.” For here was certainly the
closest cover on all that path from the ferry down into the Foregate. The track
had, he recalled, two branches, separating as it dropped from the heathy ridge
that looked down upon the river. One branch went down directly to the Horse Fair,
the other, this one, cut through to emerge halfway along the Foregate, almost
within sight of the abbey gatehouse. By this one Tutilo must have set out for
Longner, and by this one he had returned, only to happen upon this grievous
discovery along the way. If, of course, he had ever been nearer to Longner,
that night, than this disastrous place.

Cadfael
stepped back to measure again the angle at which the body lay, and the few
paces back along the path where the assailant must have been hidden. Thick cover,
bristling with dryish branches and twigs, dead wood among them; he looked for
broken ends, and found them. “Here!” He thrust through the screen of growth
sidelong, into cramped space between trees, where a thin grass grew, mottled
with dead leafage and glistening from the night’s rain. Soft ground, trodden
flat by uneasy, shifting feet not so many hours ago. Nothing else, except a
thick dead branch lying tossed under the bushes, and just aside from it, the
bleached shape in the grass where it had formerly lain. Cadfael stooped and
picked it up, and the thicker end, broken and dangling, shed a fluttering
debris of tindery flakes as he swung it in his hand. Thick enough and heavy
enough, but brittle.

“Here
he waited. Some time, by the way he’s pounded the mould. And this, this was
what he found to his hand. With this he struck the first blow, and broke it in
striking.”

Hugh
eyed the branch, and gnawed a thoughtful lip. “But not the second blow, surely.
Not with this! It would have shattered in flinders long before it did that
damage.”

“No,
this he threw back into the bushes when it snapped and turned in his hand. And
looked quickly for something more deadly? For clearly, if ever he trusted to
this in the first place, he had come without any weapon.” Perhaps even, thought
Cadfael, prompted a step further, he came without even the intent to kill,
since he did not come prepared. “Wait! Let’s see what offered.”

For
he could not have had to look far for whatever it might be, there had been no
time for that. A few minutes, and Aldhelm would have been stirring and hauling
himself to his feet. Cadfael began to prowl uphill along the edge of the path,
probing into the bushes, and then downhill again on the opposite side. Here and
there the limestone that cropped out among the heather and rough grass on the
ridge above broke through the grass and mould in stony patches, fretted away
occasionally into small scattered boulders, bedded into the turf and moss.
Cadfael turned downhll some yards. The assailant had hidden on the left of the
track, he probed first on that side. A few paces below where the body lay, and
a yard or so into the bushes, there was a patch of free stones, loosely
overgrown with grass and lichen, and to all appearance undisturbed for a year
or more; until something about the clear outlining of the upper stone made him
look closer. It was not bonded to those below it by the neat filling of soil
and small growth that bound all the rest, though it lay aligned precisely to
fill the place it had surely filled for a year or more. Cadfael stooped and
took it in both hands, and lifted it, and it parted from its setting without
trailing a blade of grass or a torn edge of moss. Once already in the night it
had been uprooted and replaced.

“No,”
said Cadfael, low to himself, “this I never expected. That we should find a
mind of such devious ways.”

“This?”
said Hugh, staring closely upon the stone. It was large and heavy, a weighty
double handful, smoothed above by exposure, beneath its dappling of lichen and
moss; but when Cadfael turned it over it showed rough and pale, with some
jagged edges that were tipped with a dark crust, not yet dried out. That is
blood,” said Hugh with certainty.

“That
is blood,” said Cadfael. “When the thing was done, there was no longer any
haste. He had time to think, and reason. All cold, cold and deliberate. He put
back the stone as he found it, carefully aligned. The small, severed roots that
had held it he could not repair, but who was to notice them? Now we have done
all we can do here, Hugh. What remains is to put all together and consider what
manner of man this could be.”

“We
may move the poor wretch?” said Hugh.

“May
I have him home to the abbey? I would like to look yet again, and more
carefully. I think he lived alone, without family. We shall confer with his own
priest at Upton. And this stone...” It was heavy for him, he was glad to set it
down for a while. “Bring this with him.”

And
all this time the boy had stood close by, wordless himself, but listening to
every word spoken around him. The brief dew on his lashes, that had caught the
thin early rays of the risen sun, was dry enough now, his mouth was set in a
rigid line. When Hugh’s men had lifted Aldhelm’s body on to the litter, and set
off down the path with it towards the Foregate, Tutilo fell in behind the sorry
little procession like a mourner, and went silently step for step with them,
his eyes still upon the shrouded body.

“He’ll
not be leaving?” said Hugh in Cadfael’s ear, as they followed.

“He’ll
not be leaving. I will see to that. He has a hard master to satisfy, and
nowhere else to go.”

“And
what do you make of him?”

“I
would not presume to assay,” said Cadfael. “He slips through my fingers. But
time was when I would have said the same of you,” he added wryly, and took
heart at hearing Hugh laugh, if only briefly and softly. “I know! That was
mutual. But see how it turned out in the end.”

“He
came straight to me with the tale,” said Hugh, reckoning up in a low voice for
Cadfael’s ear alone. “He showed very shaken and shocked, but clear of head. He
had wasted no time, the body was almost warm as life, only no breath in him, so
we let all alone until morning. This lad behaved every way as a man would who
had happened unawares on murder. Only, perhaps, better than most would have
managed.”

“Which
may be the measure of his quality,” said Cadfael firmly, “or of his cunning. As
well the one as the other. And who’s to tell?”

“It
is not often,” said Hugh with a rueful smile,”that I must listen to you as the
devil’s advocate, where a youngster in trouble is concerned. Well, keep him in
your custody, and we’ll take time over either condemning or absolving.”

In
the mortuary chapel Aldhelm’s body lay on its bier, limbs straightened, body
composed, eyes closed, enshrined and indifferent, having told all Cadfael could
induce it to tell. Not all the specks of pallor in the shattered brow had
proved to be splinters of bone. There were enough fragments of limestone and
specklings of dust to prove over again the use to which the stone had been put.
A linen cloth was draped over the young man’s face. Across his breast Cadfael
and Tutilo confronted each other.

The
boy was very pale, and drawn and grey with exhaustion. Cadfael had kept him
with him of design, when Hugh departed to report to Abbot Radulfus what had
been found and what had been done. Mutely Tutilo had fetched and carried,
brought water and cloths, fetched candles and lit them, willingly sustaining
the presence of death. Now there was no more to be done, and he was still.

“You
do understand,” said Cadfael, meeting the tired eyes, dulled gold even in the
candle-light, “why this man was on his way here? You do know what he might,
what he said he would, be able to tell, when he saw all the brothers of the
Order, here in this house?”

Tutilo’s
lips moved, saying almost soundlessly: “Yes, I do know.”

“You
know in what manner Saint Winifred’s reliquary was taken away from here. That
is known now to all men. You know there was a brother of the Order who so
contrived her departure and asked Aldhelm to help him. And that she was meant
to reach Ramsey, not to be lost on the way. Do you think justice will look
among the brothers of Shrewsbury, from whom she was stolen? Or rather at two
from the house that stood to gain? And one in particular?”

Tutilo
fronted him with unwavering eyes, but said nothing. “And here lies Aldhelm, who
could have given that brother a face and a name, beyond any question. Except
that he no longer has a voice with which to speak. And you were away, along the
same road, the road to the ferry, to Preston from which he would be coming, to
Longner, where you were bound, when he died.”

Tutilo
neither affirmed nor denied.

“Son,”
said Cadfael, “you know, do you not, what will be said?”

“Yes,”
said Tutilo, unlocking his lips at last, “I do know.”

“It
will be said and believed that you lay in wait for Aldhelm and killed him, so
that he could never point the finger at you.”

Tutilo
made no protest that he had been the one to cry murder, to invoke the law, to
unloose the hunt after the murderer. He averted his eyes for a moment to
Aldhelm’s covered face, and raised them again to meet Cadfael’s eyes squarely.
“Except,” he said at last,” that it shall not be said. They shall not be able
to say it. For I will go to the lord abbot and Father Herluin, and myself tell
what I have done. There shall not need anyone but myself to point the finger at
me. For what I have done I will answer, but not for murder which I have not
done.”

“Child,”
said Cadfael, after a long and thoughtful silence, “do not deceive yourself
that even that would still every tongue. There will not be wanting those who
will say that you have weighed the odds, knowing yourself already suspect, and
of two evils chosen the lesser. Who would not rather own to theft and deception
within the Church’s writ, rather than put his neck into the sheriff’s noose for
murder? Speak or keep silence, there will be no easy course for you.”

“No
matter!” said Tutilo. “If I deserve penance, let it fall on me. Whether I pay
or go free, whatever the cost, I will not let it be said I killed a decent man
to keep him from accusing me. And if they twist things still to my disgrace in
both counts, what more is there I can do? Brother Cadfael, help me to the lord
abbot’s presence! If you ask audience for me, he will hear me. Ask if Father
Herluin may be present also, now, while the sheriff is there. It cannot wait
until chapter tomorrow.”.

He
had made up his mind, and all at once was on fire to have it done: and for all
Cadfael could see, it was his best course. The truth, if truth could be
anticipated from this subtle creature, even in circumstances of desperation,
might shed light in more than one direction.

“If
that is truly what you want,” he said. “But beware of defending yourself before
you are accused. Tell what you have to tell, with no exclaiming, and Abbot
Radulfus will listen, that I can promise you.”

He
wished he could heartily have said as much for Sub-Prior Herluin. So, perhaps,
Tutilo was wishing, too, for suddenly in the midst of his most solemn
determination his set mouth twisted into a wry and apprehensive smile, gone in
an instant. “Come with me now,” he said.

In
the abbot’s parlour Tutilo had a larger audience than Cadfael had bargained
for, but welcomed it, or so it seemed, perhaps as leavening further the bleak
reception he could expect from Herluin. Hugh was still there, and it was
natural enough that Earl Robert should be called into conference as a matter of
courtesy where the law of the land and King Stephen’s writ were concerned.
Herluin was there at Tutilo’s own request, since there was ultimately no help
for it, and Prior Robert was not to be left out where Herluin was admitted.
Better far to confront them all, and let them make of it what they would.

“Father
Abbot... Father Herluin... my lords...” He took his stand sturdily, folded his
hands, and looked round them all in turn, as at a panel of his judges. “I have
that to tell you that I should have told before this, since it has to do with
the issue that is now in dispute among all here. It is known that the reliquary
of Saint Winifred was taken away on the wagon that was loaded with timber for
Ramsey, but no one has shown how this came about. This thing was my doing. I
avow it. I moved the reliquary from its altar, after it had been swathed well
for safety in moving it to a higher place. I put a trimmed log in its place, to
be taken up by the stair. And at night I asked one of the young men who was
helping us, one who had come with the carters, to help me load the saint on to
the wagon, to go to Ramsey to the aid and succour of our misused house. This is
all the truth. There was none had any part in it but I. Enquire no further, for
I stand here to declare what I have done, and to defend it.”