The Holy Thief

by Ellis Peters

  “We are speaking of murder,” said Radulfus austerely. “In all honesty, though I should be loth to say of any man that he is capable of killing, I dare not say of any man that he is wholly incapable of it. The boy was present on that path, by his own statement and actions, he had, however he might regret the act afterwards, cause to be rid of a man who could accuse him. That is as far as there is witness against him. For him it must be said that he went at once to report the death to authority, and then came back to us and again told the same story. Does it not seem to you that had the guilt been his, he could have come straight home and said never a word, and left it to some other to find the dead and sound the alarm?”

  “We might well have wondered,” said Prior Robert flatly, “at his state. The sheriff has said he was in great agitation. It is not easy to show calm and unshaken before others, after such a deed.”

  “Or after the discovery of such a deed,” said Hugh fairly.

  “Whatever the truth of it,” said the earl with assurance, “you have him safe in hold, you need only wait, and if he has indeed more and worse to tell, you may get it from the lad himself. I doubt if he is a hard enough case to brazen it out for long in confinement. If he adds nothing, after a few weeks, you may take it he has nothing to add.”

  That might very well be wisdom, Cadfael thought, listening respectfully. What could be more debilitating to the young, what harder to bear with constancy, than being shut into a narrow stone cell, under lock and key, with only a narrow cot, a tiny reading desk and a crucifix on the wall for company, and the length of half a dozen stone flags for exercise? Though Tutilo had entered it, only half an hour ago, with evident relief and pleasure, and even heard the key turned in the lock without a tremor. The bed was gift enough. Narrow and hard it might be, but it was large enough for him, and blissfully welcome. But leave him there alone and snared for as long as ten days, and yes, if he had by then any secrets left, he would confide them all in exchange for the air of the great court, and the music of the Office.

  “I have no time to spend here in waiting,” said Herluin. “My mission is to take back to Ramsey such alms as I have been able to gain, at least by the goodwill of Worcester and Evesham. And unless some secular charge is made against Tutilo, I must take him back with me. If he has offended against Church law or the Rule of the Order, it is for Ramsey to discipline him. His own abbot must take that charge upon him. But by the leave of all here, I challenge your view, Father Abbot, that he has committed any offence touching the removal of Saint Winifred’s reliquary. I repeat, this was a holy theft, undertaken in duty and reverence. The saint herself instructed him. If it were not so, she would never have allowed it to succeed.”

  “I tremble at crossing swords with you,” said Robert Bossu in the sweetest and most reasonable of voices, his high shoulder leaned at ease against the panelled wall at his back, “but I must observe that she did not allow it to succeed. The wagon that carried her was waylaid and stolen by vagabonds in the forests of my domain, and in my lands she came to rest.”

  “That intervention was by the malice of evil men,” said Herluin, roused and fiery of eye.

  “But you have acknowledged that the power of such a saint can and will frustrate the malice of evil men. If she did not see fit to prevent their actions, it must be because they served her purposes. She let pass her abduction from Shrewsbury, she let pass the onslaught of outlaws. In my woodland she came to rest, and to my house she was carried into sanctuary. By your own reasoning, Father, all this, if any, must have been achieved by her will.”

  “I would remind you both,” said the abbot gently, “that if she has been all this while consulting her own wishes, and imposing them upon us mortals, Saint Winifred is again on her own altar in our church. This, then, must be the end at which all this diversion was aiming. And she is where she desires to be.”

  The earl smiled, a smile of extraordinary subtlety and charm. “No, Father Abbot, for this last move was different. She is here again because I, with a claim of my own to advance, and having regard to yet another claim, with strict fairness, brought her back to Shrewsbury, from which she began her controversial odyssey, so that she herself might choose where she wished to rest. Never did she show any disposition to leave my chapel, where her repose was respected. Voluntarily I brought her with me. I do not therefore surrender my claim. She came to me. I welcomed her. If she so please, I will take her home with me, and provide her an altar as rich as yours.”

  “My lord,” pronounced Prior Robert, stiff with resistance and outrage, “your argument will not stand. As saints may make use even of creatures of ill will for their own purposes, so surely can they with more grace employ goodwill where they find it. That you brought her here, back to her chosen home, does not give you a better claim than ours, though it does you infinite credit. Saint Winifred has been happy here seven years and more, and to this house she has returned. She shall not leave it now.”

  “Yet she made it known to Brother Tutilo,” retorted Herluin, burning up in his turn, “that she has felt compassion towards afflicted Ramsey, and wishes to benefit us in our distress. You cannot ignore it, she wished to set out and she did set out to come to our aid.”

  “We are all three resolved,” said the earl, with aggravating serenity and consideration. “Should we not submit the decision to some neutral assessor and abide by his judgment?”

  There was a sharp and charged silence. Then Radulfus said with composed authority: “We already have an assessor. Let Saint Winifred herself declare her will openly. She was a lady of great scholarship in her later life. She expounded the Scriptures to her nuns, she will expound them now to her disciples. At the consecration of every bishop the prognosis for his ministry is taken by laying the Gospels upon his shoulders, and opening it to read the line decreed. We will take the sortes Biblicae upon the reliquary of the saint, and never doubt but she will make her judgment plain. Why delegate to any other the choice which is by right hers?”

  Out of the longer silence while they all digested this fiat and readjusted to a suggestion so unexpected, the earl said with evident satisfaction—indeed, to Cadfael’s ears bordering on glee: “Agreed! There could be no fairer process. Father Abbot, grant us today and tomorrow to set our minds in order, examine our claims and take thought to pray only for what is due to us. And the third day let these sortes be taken. We will present our pleas to the lady herself, and accept whatever verdict she offers us.”

  “Instruct me,” said Hugh an hour later, in Cadfael’s workshop in the herb garden. “I am not in the counsels of bishops and archbishops. Just how is the ordinance of heaven to be interpreted in these sortes Biblicae Radulfus has in mind? Oh, certainly I know the common practice of reading the future by opening the Evangel blindly, and laying a finger on the page, but what is this official use of it in consecrating a new bishop? Too late then, surely, to change him for a better if the word goes against him.”

  Cadfael removed a simmering pot from the grid on the side of his brazier, set it aside on the earth floor to cool, and added a couple of turfs to damp down the glow, before straightening his back with some caution, and sitting down beside his friend.

  “I have never been in attendance at such a consecration myself,” he said. “The bishops keep it within the circle. I marvel how the results ever leak out, but they do. Or someone makes them up, of course. Too sharp to be true, I sometimes feel. But yes, they are taken just as Abbot Radulfus said, and very solemnly, so I’m told. The book of the Gospels is laid on the shoulders of the newly chosen bishop, and opened at random, and a finger laid on the page—”

  “By whom?” demanded Hugh, laying his own finger on the fatal flaw.

  “Now that I never thought to ask. Surely the archbishop or bishop who is officiating. Though, granted, he could be friend or enemy to the new man. I trust they play fair, but who knows? Bad or good, that line is the prognostic for the bishop’s future ministry. Apt enough, sometimes. The good Bishop Wulstan
of Worcester got: ‘Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.’ Some were not so lucky. Do you know, Hugh, what the sortes sent to Roger of Salisbury, who fell into Stephen’s displeasure not so many years ago and died disgraced? ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into outer darknesss.’”

  “Hard to believe!” said Hugh, hoisting a sceptical eyebrow. “Did not someone think of pinning that on him after his fall? I wonder what was heaven’s response to Henry of Winchester when he achieved the bishopric? Even I can think of some lines that would come too near the knuckle for his liking.”

  “I believe,” said Cadfael, “it was something from Matthew, concerning the latter days when false prophets would multiply among us. Something to the effect that if any man should claim: Here is Christ! do not believe him. But much can be done with the interpretation.”

  “That will be the sticking point this time,” Hugh said shrewdly, “unless the Gospels speak all too plainly, and can’t be misread. Why do you suppose the abbot ever suggested it? Doubtless it could be arranged to give the right answers. But not, I suspect, with Radulfus in charge. Is he so sure of heaven’s justice?”

  Cadfael had already been considering the same question, and could only conclude that the abbot had indeed total faith that the Gospels would justify Shrewsbury in possession of its saint. He never ceased to wonder at the irony of expecting miracles from a reliquary in which her bones had once lain for only three days and nights, before being returned reverently to her native Welsh earth; and even more to be wondered at, the infinite mercy that had transmitted grace through all those miles between, forgiven the presence of a sorry human sinner in the coffin she had quitted, and let the radiance of miracle remain invisibly about her altar, unpredictable, accessible, a shade wanton in where it gave and where it denied, as the stuff of miracles is liable to be, at least to the human view. She was not here, had never been here, never in what remained of her fragile flesh; yet she had certainly consented to let her essence be brought here, and manifested her presence with startling mercies.

  “Yes,” said Cadfael, “I think he trusts Winifred to see right done. I think he knows that she never really left us, and never will.”

  Cadfael came back to his workshop after supper, to make his final round for the night, damp down his brazier to burn slowly until morning, and make sure all his jars were covered and all his bottles and flasks stoppered securely. He was expecting no visitors at this hour, and swung about in surprise when the door behind him was opened softly, almost stealthily, and the girl Daalny came in. The yellow glow from his little oil lamp showed her in unusual array, her black hair braided in a red ribbon, with curls artfully breaking free around her temples, her gown deepest and brightest blue like her eyes, and a girdle of gold braid round her hips. She was very quick; she caught the glance that swept over her from head to foot, and laughed.

  “My finery for when he entertains. I have been singing for his lordship of Leicester. Now they are talking intimate possibilities, so I slipped away. I shall not be missed now. I think Rémy will be riding back to Leicester with Robert Bossu, if he plays his cards cleverly. And I told you, he is a good musician. Leicester would not be cheated.”

  “Is he in need of my medicines again?” asked Cadfael practically.

  “No. Nor am I.” She was restless, moving uneasily about the hut as once before, curious but preoccupied, and slow to come to what had brought her on this errand. “Bénezet is saying that Tutilo is taken for murder. He says Tutilo killed the man he tricked into helping him to steal away your saint. That cannot be true,” she said with assured authority. “There is no harm and no violence in Tutilo. He dreams. He does not do.”

  “He did more than dream when he purloined our saint,” Cadfael pointed out reasonably.

  “He dreamed that before he did it. Oh, yes, he might thieve, that’s a different matter. He longed to give his monastery a wonderful gift, to fulfill his visions and be valued and praised. I doubt if he would steal for himself, but for Ramsey, yes, surely he would. He was even beginning to dream of freeing me from my slavery,” she said tolerantly, and smiled with the resigned amusement of one experienced beyond young Tutilo’s innocent understanding. “But now you have him somewhere under lock and key, and with nothing good to look forward to, whatever follows. If your saint is to remain here now, then even if Tutilo escapes the sheriff’s law, if Herluin takes him back to Ramsey they’ll make him pay through his skin for what he attempted and failed to bring to success. They’ll starve and flay him. And if it goes the other way, and he’s called guilty of murder, then, worse, he’ll hang.” She had arrived, finally, at what she really wanted to know: “Where have you put him? I know he’s a prisoner.”

  “He is in the first penitentiary cell, close to the passage to the infirmary,” said Cadfael. There are but two, we have few offenders in the general way of things. At least the locked door designed to keep him in also keeps his enemies out, if he can be said to have any enemies. I looked in on him not half an hour ago, and he is fast asleep, and by the look of him he’ll sleep until past Prime tomorrow.”

  “Because he has nothing on his conscience,” Daalny snapped triumphantly, “just as I said.”

  “I would not say he has always told us all the truth,” said Cadfael mildly, “if that’s a matter for his conscience. But I don’t grudge him his rest, poor imp, he needs it.”

  She shrugged that off lightly, pouting long lips. “Of course he is a very good liar, that’s part of his fantasies. You would have to be very sure of him and of yourself to know when he’s lying, and when he’s telling the truth. One knows another!” she agreed defiantly, meeting Cadfael’s quizzical look. “I’ve had to be a good liar myself to keep my head above water all this time. So has he. But do murder? No, that’s far out of his scope.”

  And still she did not go, but hovered, touching with long fingers along his shelves of vessels, reaching up to rustle the hanging bunches of herbs overhead, keeping only her profile towards him. There was more she wanted to know, but hesitated how to ask, or better, how to find out what she needed without asking.

  “They will feed him, will they not? You cannot starve a man. Who will look after him? Is it you?”

  “No,” said Cadfael patiently. The porters will take him his food. But I can visit him. Can, and will. Girl, if you wish him well, leave him where he is.”

  “Small choice I have!” said Daalny bitterly. Not, however, quite bitterly enough, Cadfael thought. Rather to present the appearance of resignation than to accept it. She was beginning to have dreams of her own and hers would proceed to action. She had only to watch the porter’s moves next day to learn the times when he visited his charge, and espy where the two keys of the penal cells hung side by side in the gatehouse. And Wales was not far, and in any princely llys in that country, great or small, such a voice as Tutilo’s, such a deft hand on strings, would easily find shelter. But to go with the slur of murder still upon him, and always the threat of pursuit and capture? No, better far sit it out here and shame the devil. For Cadfael was certain that Tutilo had never done violence to any man, and must not be marked with that obloquy for life.

  Still Daalny lingered, as if minded to say or ask something more, her thin oval face sharply alert and her eyes half-veiled but very bright within the long dark lashes. Then she turned and departed very quietly. From the threshold she said: “Goodnight, Brother!” without turning her head, and closed the door behind her.

  He gave little thought to it then, reasoning that she was not in such grave earnest that she would actually attempt to turn her indignant dream into action. But he did reconsider next day, when he saw her watching the passage of the porter from the refectory before noon, and following him with her eyes as he turned in between infirmary and schoolroom, where the two small stony cells were built into the angle of the wall, close to the wicket that led through to the mill and the pond. When he was out of sight she crossed the great court to the gatehouse, passed by the o
pen door apparently without a glance, and stood for some minutes in the gateway, looking along the Foregate, before turning back towards the guesthouse. The board that held the keys in the porter’s charge hung just within the doorway, and she had sharp enough eyes to pick out the nail that was empty, and the fellow to the absent key close beside it. Alike in size and general appearance, but not in the guards that operated them.

  And even this unobtrusive surveillance might be only a part of her fantasy. She might never try to turn it into reality. All the same, Cadfael had a word with the porter before evening. She would not move until dusk or even darkness; no need to observe the passage of Tutilo’s supper, she knew now which key she needed. All that was necessary was for the porter to replace it on the wrong nail before going to Compline, and leave her its ineffective twin.

  He did not keep a watch on her; there was no necessity, and in his own mind he was almost convinced that nothing would happen. Her own position was so vulnerable that she would not venture. So the day passed normally, with the usual ritual of work and reading, study and prayer punctuated by the regular round of the hours. Cadfael went about his work all the more assiduously because a part of his mind was elsewhere, and he felt its absence as guilt, even though his concern was with a serious matter of justice, guilt and innocence. Tutilo must somehow be extricated from such opprobrium as he had not earned, no matter what penalties he might deserve for his real offences. Here in the enclave, imprisonment was also safety from any secular threat; the Church would look after its own, even its delinquents. Once outside, unless cleared of all suspicion, he would be a fugitive, liable to all the rigors of the law, and the very act of flight would be evidence against him. No, here he must remain until he could come forth vindicated.