Holy Thief (5 page)

“What
I can, I’ll do,” agreed Tutilo, with a great deal of resolution, but decidedly
less genuine enthusiasm, and his eyes still dwelling fondly on Winifred’s
chased reliquary, points of silver shining in the candlelight. “But such a
patroness... what could she not do to restore our fortunes! Brother Cadfael,
can you not tell us where to find such another?”

He
took his leave almost reluctantly, looking back from the doorway, before he
shook his shoulders firmly, and went off to submit himself to Herluin’s orders,
and undertake, one way or another, to unloose the purse-strings of the burghers
of Shrewsbury.

Cadfael
watched the slender, springy figure stride away, and found something slightly
equivocal even in the back view of the overlong curls, and the tender, youthful
shaping of the nape of the neck. Ah, well! Few people are exactly what they
seem on first acquaintance, and he hardly knew the boy at all.

They
sallied forth in solemn procession to the town, Prior Robert lending his
dignified presence to add to the gravity of the occasion. The sheriff had
notified the provost and Guild Merchant of the town, and left it to them to
make sure that the whole of Shrewsbury recognized its duty, and would be
present. Alms to so eminent a religious house in its persecution and need
provided an infallible means of acquiring merit, and there must be many in so
large a town willing to pay a modest price to buy off reprobation for minor
backslidings.

Herluin
returned from his foray so clearly content with himself, and Tutilo bearing so
heavy a satchel, that it was plain they had reaped a very satisfactory harvest.
The following Sunday’s sermon from the parish pulpit added to the spoils. The
coffer Radulfus had donated to receive offerings grew heavier still. Moreover,
three good craftsmen, master-carpenter and two journeyman masons, proposed to
go back with the Ramsey men and seek work in the rebuilding of the gutted barns
and storehouses. The mission was proceeding very successfully. Even Rémy of
Pertuis had given good silver coin, as became a musician who had composed
liturgical works in his time for two churches in Provence.

They
were scarcely out of church after the Mass when a groom came riding in from
Longner, with a spare pony on a leading rein, to prefer a request from the Lady
Donata. Would Sub-Prior Herluin, she entreated, permit Brother Tutilo to visit
her? The day being somewhat advanced, she had sent a mount for his journey, and
promised a return in time for Compline. Tutilo submitted himself to his
superior’s will with the utmost humility, but with shining eyes. To return
unsupervised to Donata’s psaltery, or the neglected harp in the hall at
Longner, would be appropriate reward for piping to Herluin’s tune with such
devotion during the day.

Cadfael
saw him ride out from the gatehouse, the childish delight showing through
plainly by then; delight at being remembered and needed, delight at riding out
when he had expected only a routine evening within the walls. Cadfael could
appreciate and excuse that. The indulgent smile was still on his face as he
went to tend certain remedies he had working in his herbarium. And there was
another creature just as shiningly young, though perhaps not as innocent,
hovering at the door of his hut, waiting for him.

“Brother
Cadfael?” questioned Rémy of Pertuis’ girl singer, surveying him with bold blue
eyes just on a level with his own.

Not
tall, but above average for a woman, slender almost to leanness, and straight
as a lance. “Brother Edmund sent me to you. My master has a cold, and is croaking
like a frog. Brother Edmund says you can help him.”

“God
willing!” said Cadfael, returning her scrutiny just as candidly. He had never
seen her so close before, nor expected to, for she kept herself apart, taking
no risks, perhaps, with an exacting master. Her head was uncovered now, her
face, oval, thin and bright, shone lily-pale between wings of black, curling
hair.

“Come
within,” he said, “and tell me more of his case. His voice is certainly of
importance. A workman who loses his tools has lost his living. What manner of
cold is it he’s taken? Has he rheumy eyes? A thick head? A stuffed nose?”

She
followed him into the workshop, which was already shadowy within, lit only by
the glow of the damped-down brazier, until Cadfael lit a sulphur spill and kindled
his small lamp. She looked about her with interest at the laden shelves and the
herbs dangling from the beams, stirring and rustling faintly in the draught
from the door. “His throat,” she said indifferently. “Nothing else worries him.
He’s hoarse and dry. Brother Edmund says you have lozenges and draughts. He’s
not ill,” she said with tolerant disdain. “Not hot or fevered. Anything that
touches his voice sends him into a sweat. Or mine, for that matter. Another of
his tools he can’t afford to lose, little as he cares about the rest of me.
Brother Cadfael, do you make all these pastes and potions?” She was ranging the
shelves of bottles and jars with eyes respectfully rounded.

“I
do the brewing and pounding,” said Cadfael, “the earth supplies the means. I’ll
send your lord some pastilles for his throat, and a linctus to take every three
hours. But that I must mix. A few minutes only. Sit by the brazier, it grows
cold here in the evening.”

She
thanked him, but did not sit. The array of mysterious containers fascinated
her. She continued to prowl and gaze, restless but silent, a feline presence at
his back as he selected from among his flasks cinquefoil and horehound, mint
and a trace of poppy, and measured them into a green glass bottle. Her hand, slender
and long-fingered, stroked along the jars with their Latin inscriptions.

“You
need nothing for yourself?” he asked. “To ward off his infection?”

“I
never take cold,” she said, with scorn for the weaknesses of Rémy of Pertuis
and all his kind.

“Is
he a good master?” Cadfael asked directly.

“He
feeds and clothes me,” she said promptly, proof against surprise.

“No
more than that? He would owe that to his groom or his scullion. You, I hear,
are the prop of his reputation.”

She
turned to face him as he filled his bottle to the neck with a honeyed syrup,
and stoppered it. Thus eye to eye she showed as experienced and illusionless,
not bruised but wary of bruises, and prepared to evade or return them at need;
and yet even younger than he had taken her to be, surely no more than eighteen.

“He
is a very good poet and minstrel, never think other wise. What I know, he
taught me. What I had from God, yes, that is mine; but he showed me its use. If
there ever was a debt, that and food and clothing would still have paid it, but
there is none. He owes me nothing. The price for me he paid when he bought me.”

He
turned to stare her in the face, and judge how literally she meant the words
she had chosen; and she smiled at him. “Bought, not hired. I am Rémy’s slave,
and better his by far than tied to the one he bought me from. Did you not know
it still goes on?”

“Bishop
Wulstan preached against it years back,” said Cadfael, “and did his best to
shame it out of England, if not out of the world. But though he drove the
dealers into cover, yes, I know it still goes on. They trade out of Bristol.
Very quietly, but yes, it’s known. But that’s mainly a matter of shipping Welsh
slaves into Ireland, money seldom passes for humankind here.”

“My
mother,” said the girl, “goes to prove the traffic is both ways. In a bad
season, with food short, her father sold her, one daughter too many to feed, to
a Bristol trader, who sold her again to the lord of a half-waste manor near
Gloucester. He used her as his bedmate till she died, but it was not in his bed
I was got. She knew how to keep the one by a man she liked, and how to be rid
of her master’s brood,” said the girl with ruthless simplicity. “But I was born
a slave. There’s no appeal.”

“There
could be escape,” said Cadfael, though admitting difficulties.

“Escape
to what? Another worse bondage? With Rémy at least I am not mauled, I am valued
after a fashion, I can sing, and play, if it’s another who calls the tune. I
own nothing, not even what I wear on my body. Where should I go? What should I
do? In whom should I trust? No, I am not a fool. Go I would, if I could see a
place for me anywhere, as I am. But risk being brought back, once having fled
him? That would be quite another servitude, harder by far than now. He would
want me chained. No, I can wait. Things can change,” she said, and shrugged
thin, straight shoulders, a litle wide and bony for a girl. “Rémy is not a bad
man, as men go. I have known worse. I can wait.”

There
was good sense in that, considering her present circumstances. Her Provençal
master, apparently, made no demands on her body, and the use he made of her
voice provided her considerable pleasure. It is essentially pleasure to
exercise the gifts of God. He clothed, warmed and fed her. If she had no love
for him, she had no hate, either, she even conceded, very fairly, that his
teaching had given her a means to independent life, if ever she could discover
a place of safety in which to practise it. And at her age she could afford a
few years of waiting. Rémy himself was in search of a powerful patron. In the
court of some susbtantial honour she might make a very comfortable place for
herself.

But
still, Cadfael reflected ruefully at the end of these practical musings, still
as a slave.

“I
expected you to tell me now,” said the girl, eyeing him curiously, “that there
is one place where I could take refuge and not be pursued. Rémy would never
dare follow me into a nunnery.”

“God
forbid!” prayed Cadfael with blunt fervour. “You would turn any convent
indoors-outdoors within a month. No, you’ll never hear me give you that advice.
It is not for you.”

“It
was for you,” she pointed out, with mischief in her voice and her eyes. “And
for that lad Tutilo from Ramsey. Or would you have ruled him out, too? His case
is much like mine. It irks me to be in bondage, it irked him to be a menial in
the same house as a loathsome old satyr who liked him far too well. A third son
to a poor man, he had to look out for himself.”

“I
trust,” said Cadfael, giving the linctus bottle an experimental shake to ensure
the contents should be well mixed, “I trust that was not his only reason for
entering Ramsey.”

“Oh,
but I think it was, though he doesn’t know it. He thinks he was called to a
vocation, out of all the evils of the world.” She herself, Cadfael guessed, had
known many of those evils on familiar terms, and yet emerged thus far rather
contemptuous of them than either soiled or afraid. “That is why he works so
hard at being holy,” she said seriously. “Whatever he takes it into his head to
do he’ll do with all his might. But if he was convinced, he’d be easier about
it.”

Cadfael
stood staring at her in mild astonishment. “You seem to know more than I do
about this young brother of mine,” he said. “And yet I’ve never seen you so
much as notice his existence. You move about the enclave, when you’re seen at
all, like a modest shadow, eyes on the ground. How did you ever come to
exchange good-day with him, let alone read the poor lad’s mind?”

“Rémy
borrowed him to make a third voice in triple organa. But we had no chance to
talk then. Of course no one ever sees us look at each other or speak to each
other. It would be ill for both of us. He is to be a monk, and should never be
private with a woman, and I am a bondwoman, and if I talk with a young man it
will be thought I have notions only fit for a free woman, and may try to slip
out of my chains. I am accustomed to dissembling, and he is learning. You need
not fear any harm. He has his eyes all on sainthood, on service to his
monastery. Me, I am a voice. We talk of music, that is the only thing we
share.”

True,
yet not quite the whole truth, or she could not have learned so much of the boy
in one or two brief meetings. She was quite sure of her own judgement.

“Is
it ready?” she asked, returning abruptly to her errand. “He’ll be fretting.”

Cadfael
surrendered the bottle, and counted out pastilles into a small wooden box. “A
spoonful, smaller than your kitchen kind, night and morning, sipped down
slowly, and during the day if he feels the need, but always at least three
hours between. And these pastilles he can suck when he will, they’ll ease his
throat.” And he asked, as she took them from him: “Does any other know that you
have been meeting with Tutilo? For you have observed no caution with me.”

Her
shoulders lifted in an untroubled shrug; she was smiling. “I take as I find.
But Tutilo has talked of you. We do no wrong, and you will charge us with none.
Where it’s needful we take good care.” And she thanked him cheerfully, and was
turning to the door when he asked: “May I know your name?”

She
turned back to him in the doorway. “My name is Daalny. That is how my mother
said it, I never saw it written. I cannot read or write. My mother told me that
the first hero of her people came into Ireland out of the western seas, from
the land of the happy dead, which they call the land of the living. His name
was Partholan,” she said, and her voice had taken on for a moment the rhythmic,
singing tone of the storyteller. “And Daalny was his queen. There was a race of
monsters then in the land, but Partholan drove them northward into the seas and
beyond. But in the end there was a great pestilence, and all the race of
Partholan gathered together on the great plain, and died, and the land was left
empty for the next people to come out of the western sea. Always from the west.
They come from there, and when they die they go back there.”