The Holy Thief

by Ellis Peters

  Abbot Radulfus gave him a sharp glance, not altogether approving; and Robert Bossu gleamed into that brief, private, unnerving smile of his, that was gone before any target it might be aimed at could take offence.

  “I am responsible to my abbot,” said Herluin, doggedly diverting the argument into a different channel, “for the novice committed to my charge, I must at least make enquiry after him as best I may.”

  “I fear,” said Robert Bossu with relentless sweetness, “that time is too short even for that. If you decide to remain and pursue this quest, I fear you must resume your journey in less favorable circumstances. As soon as the early Mass is over we muster and leave. You would be wise, all the more as you are now one man short, to take advantage of our numbers and travel with us.”

  “If your lordship could delay only a couple of days…” began Herluin, writhing.

  “I regret, no. I have malefactors of my own needing my presence,” said the earl, gallingly gentle and considerate. “Especially if a few rogues and vagabonds like those who attacked your wagon are still making their way out of the Fens into safer fastnesses through my lands. It is high time I went back. I have lost my wager for Saint Winifred, but I don’t grudge it, for after all, it was I who brought her back here, so even if she eludes me, I must have been doing her will to the last scruple, and there will surely be a minor blessing in it for my pains. But now I’m needed nearer home. When Mass is over,” said Earl Robert firmly, and made to rise, for it was nearly time. “I would advise you join us, Father Herluin, and do as Saint Benedict bids you, let the faithless brother go.”

  The valedictory Mass began early and was briskly conducted, for the earl, once roused for departure, somehow conveyed the ardor of his mood to all those about him. When they came out into the early sunlight the bustle of loading and saddling began at once. Out they came to the muster, Nicol the steward and his fellow from Ramsey, attendant on a morose and taciturn Herluin, still very loth to abandon his stray, but even more reluctant to linger, and miss this opportunity of a safe and comfortable passage half the way home, at least, and probably a mount for the rest of the way, since Robert Bossu could be generous to churchmen, even to one he cordially disliked.

  The grooms came up from the stables with the narrow carriage that had conveyed Saint Winifred’s reliquary back to its home. Stripped now of the embroidered draperies which had graced it when it carried the saint, it would now serve as baggage wagon for all the party. Loaded with the earl’s belongings, and those of his squires, the alms collected by Herluin at Worcester and Evesham, and the greater part of Rémy’s instruments and possessions, which were compact enough, it could still accommodate Nicol and his companion, and not be too heavy a load for the horse. The packhorse which had carried the earl’s baggage on the outward journey was freed now to carry Herluin.

  The two young squires led the saddled horses up from the stableyard, and Bénezet followed with Rémy’s mount and his own, with a young novice leading Daalny’s stolid cob bringing up the rear. The gate already stood wide for their passage. All done with competent speed. Cadfael, looking on from the corner of the cloister, had an eye anxiously on the open gate, for things had moved a little too briskly. It was early yet to expect Hugh and his officers, but no doubt the ceremonious farewells would take some time, and as yet the principals had not appeared. In all probability the earl would not think of setting out without taking his leave of Hugh.

  The brothers had dispersed dutifully about their labors, but at every approach to the great court tended to linger rather longer than was strictly necessary, to contemplate the assembly of grooms and horses shifting restively about the cobbles, ready and eager to be on their way. The schoolboys were shooed away to their morning lesson, but Brother Paul would probably loose them again at the moment of departure.

  Daalny, cloaked and bareheaded, came out from the guesthall and descended the steps to join the gathering below. She marked the balanced hang of Bénezet’s saddlebags, and knew the one that held his secrets by the rubbed graze she had noted on its front below the buckles. She watched it steadily, as Cadfael was watching her. Her face was pale; so it was always, she had skin white as magnolia, but now it had the drawn ice-pallor of stress over her slight, immaculate bones. Her eyes were half-hooded, but glitteringly fixed under the long dark lashes. Cadfael observed the signs of her tension and pain, and they grieved him, but he did not quite know how to interpret them. She had done what she set out to do, sent Tutilo out into a world better suited to him than the cloister. To come to terms with her inevitable daily world without him, after this brief fantasy, must cost her dear, there was no help for it. Having made his own plans, he failed to realize that she might still have plans of her own for a final cast, the one thing she still had left to do.

  One of the young squires had returned to the guesthall to report that all was ready, and to carry cloak and gloves, or whatever was still left to be carried for his lord and his lord’s new retainer, who ranked, no doubt, somewhere among the lesser gentlefolk, well above the servants, but not reverenced like the harpers of Wales. And now they appeared in the doorway, and Abbot Radulfus, punctual with every courtesy, emerged from the garden of his lodging, between the still ragged and leggy rosebushes, at the same moment, with the prior at his back, and came to salute his departing guests.

  The earl was plain and elegant as ever in his somber colorings and fine fabrics, crimson cotte cut reasonably short for riding, and deep grey-blue surcoat slashed to the thigh fore and aft. He seldom covered his head unless against wind, rain or snow, but the capuchon swung and draped his higher shoulder, concealing the hump; though it was hard to believe that he ever gave any thought to such a device, for the flaw neither embarrassed him nor hampered the fluency of his movements. At his elbow came Rémy of Pertuis in full exultant spate, breathing spirited court converse into his patron’s ear. They descended the steps together, the squire following with his lord’s cloak over his arm. Below, the assembly was complete, for abbot and prior were waiting beside the horses.

  “My lord,” said the earl, “I take my leave, now the time is come, with much regret. Your hospitality has been generous, and I fear very little deserved, since I came with pretensions to your saint. But I am glad that among many who covet her the lady knows how to choose the fittest and the best. I hope I take your blessing with me on the road?”

  “With all my heart,” said Radulfus. “I have had much pleasure and profit in your company, my lord, and trust to enjoy it again when time favors us.”

  The group, which had for a moment the formal look of immediate parting, began to dissolve into the general civility of visitors at the last moment reluctant to go, and lingering with many last things still to be said. There was Prior Robert at his most Norman and patrician, and even his most benign, since events had finally turned out well; certainly he was unlikely to let go of a Norman earl without exercising to the last moment his eloquence and charm. There was Herluin, in no very expansive mood but not to be left out of the courtesies, and Rémy, delighted with his change of fortune, shedding his beams impartially on all. Cadfael, with long experience of such departures, was aware that it would go on for as much as a quarter of an hour before anyone actually set foot in the stirrup and made to mount.

  Daalny, with no such assurance, expected haste. She could not afford to wait, and find she had waited too long. She had steeled herself to the act, and dreaded she might not have time to make good what she had to say. She approached as close to abbot and earl as was seemly, and in the first pause between them she stepped forward and said loudly and clearly:

  “Father Abbot—my lord Robert, may I speak a word? Before we leave this place, I have something that must be said, for it bears on theft, and may even bear on murder. I beg you hear me, and do right, for it is too much for me, and I dare not let it pass and be put aside.”

  Everyone heard, and all eyes turned upon her. There fell a silence, of curiosity, of astonishment, of disapproval t
hat the least of all these gathered here should dare to ask for a hearing now, out of a clear sky, and publicly. Yet strangely, no one waved her away or frowned her to silence and humility. She saw both abbot and earl regarding her with sharply arrested interest, and she made a deep reverence for them to share between them. Thus far she had said nothing to make any man afraid or uneasy for himself, not even Bénezet, who stood lounging with an arm over his horse’s neck, the saddlebag hard against his side. Whatever lance she held she had not yet aimed, but Cadfael saw her purpose and was dismayed.

  “Father, may I speak?”

  This was the abbot’s domain. The earl left it to him to respond.

  “I think,” said Radulfus, “that you must. You have said two words that have been heavy on our minds these past days, theft and murder. If there is anything you have to tell concerning these, we must listen.”

  Cadfael, standing aside with an anxious eye on the gate, and praying that Hugh might ride in now, at once, with three or four sound men at his back, cast an uneasy glance at Bénezet. The man had not moved, but though his face remained merely a mask of interested but impersonal curiosity, much like all the others, the eyes fixed intently upon Daalny’s face were leveled like the points of two daggers, and his very immobility seemed now deliberate and braced, a hound pointing.

  If only, Cadfael thought, if only I had warned her! I might have known she could do terrible things for cause enough. Was it what I told her of the bridle that set her foot on this trail? She never gave sign, but I should have known. And now she has struck her blow too soon. Let her be logical, let her be slow to reach the heart of it, let her recall all that has gone before, and come to this only gradually now she has won her point. But time was not on their side. Even the Mass had ended early. Hugh would keep to his time, and still come too late.

  “Father, you know of Tutilo’s theft, on the night when the flood water came into the church, and how, afterwards, when Aldhelm said that he could point out the thief, and was killed on his way here to do what he had promised, reason could find none but Tutilo who had anything guilty to hide, and any cause to fear his coming, and prevent it by murder.”

  She waited for him to agree thus far, and the abbot said neutrally: “So we thought, and so we said. It seemed clear. Certainly we knew of no other.”

  “But, Father, I have cause to believe that there was another.”

  She still had not named him, but he knew. No question now but he was looking round towards the gate, and shifting softly, careful not to draw attention to himself, but in a furtive effort to draw gradually clear of the ring of men and horses that surrounded him. But Robert Bossu’s two squires were close, hemming him in, and he could not extricate himself.

  “I believe,” she said, “there is one here among us who has hidden in his saddlebag property which is not his. I believe it was stolen that same night of the flood, when all was in chaos in the church. I do not know if Aldhelm could have told of it, but even if he might have seen, was not that enough? If I am wronging an innocent man, as I may be,” said Daalny with sharp ferocity, “I will make amends by whatever means is asked of me. But search and put it to the test, Father.” And then she did turn and look at Bénezet, her face so blanched it was like a white hot flame; she turned and pointed. And he was penned into the circle so closely that only by violence could he break out; and violence would at once betray him, and he was not yet at the end of his tether.

  “In the saddlebag against his side, he has something he has been hiding ever since the flood came. If it was honestly come by, or already his, he would not need to hide it. My lord, Father Abbot, do me this justice, and if I am wrong, justice also to him. Search, and see!”

  It seemed that for one instant Bénezet contemplated laughing at the accusation, shrugging her off, saying contemptuously that she lied. Then he gathered himself convulsively, pricked into response by all the eyes leveled upon him. It was fatally late to cry out in the anger of innocence. He, too, had missed his time, and with it whatever chance was still left to him.

  “Are you mad? It’s a black lie, I have nothing here but what is mine. Master, speak for me! Have you ever had cause to think ill of me? Why should she turn on me with such a charge?”

  “I have always found Bénezet trustworthy,” said Rémy, stoutly enough and speaking up for his own, but not quite at ease. “I cannot believe he would steal. And what has been missed? Nothing, to my knowledge. Who knows of anything lost since the flood? I’ve heard no such word.”

  “No complaint has been made,” agreed the abbot frowning and hesitant.

  “There is a simple means,” said Daalny implacably, “to prove or disprove. Open his saddlebag! If he has nothing to hide, let him prove it and shame me. If I am not afraid, why should he be?”

  “Afraid?” blazed Bénezet. “Of such calumny? What is in my baggage is mine, and there’s no anwer due from me to any false charge” of yours. No, I will not display my poor belongings to satisfy your malice. Why you should utter such lies against me I cannot guess. What did I ever do to you? But you waste your lies, my master knows me better.”

  “You would be wise to open, and let your virtue be seen by all,” Earl Robert said with dispassionate authority, “since not all here have such secure knowledge of you. If she lies, uncover her lie.” He had glanced for one instant at his two young men, and raised a commanding eyebrow. They drew a pace nearer to Bénezet, their faces impassive, but their eyes alert.

  “There is something owed here to a dead man,” said Abbot Radulfus, “since this girl has recalled to us one most precious thing stolen. If this is indeed a matter that can shed light on that crime, and lift even the shadow of doubt from all but the guilty, I think we have a duty to pursue it. Give here your saddlebag.”

  “No!” He clutched it to his side with a protective arm. “This is unworthy, humiliation… I have done no wrong, why should I submit to such indignity?”

  “Take it,” said Robert Bossu.

  Bénezet cast one wild, flashing glance round him as the two squires closed in and laid competent hands, not on him, but on bridle and saddlebag. There was no hope of leaping into the saddle and breaking out of the closed circle, but the young men had loosed their own bridles to pen him in, and one of the horses thus released was some yards nearer to the gate, standing docilely clear of the agitated group in the centre of the court. Bénezet plucked his hands from his gains with a sob of fury, dealt his startled mount a great blow under the belly that sent him rearing and plunging with an indignant scream, and burst out of the hampering ring. The company scattered, evading the clashing hooves, and Bénezet clutched at the bridle of the waiting horse, and without benefit of stirrups leaped and scrambled into the saddle.

  No one was near enough to grasp at rein or stirrup leather. He was up and away before anyone else could mount, turning his back upon the tangle of stamping horses and shouting men. He drove, not directly at the gate, but aside in a flying curve, where Daalny had started backwards out of one danger to lay herself in the path of another. He had his short dagger out of its sheath and bared in his hand.

  She saw his intent only at the last instant as he was on her. He made no sound at all, but Cadfael, running frantically to pluck her from under the flying hooves, saw the rider’s face clearly, and so did she, the once impassive countenance convulsed into a mask of hatred and rage, with drawn-back lips like a wolf at bay. He could not spare the time to ride her down, it would have slowed him too much. He leaned sidewise from the saddle in full flight, and the dagger slashed down her sleeve from the shoulder and drew a long graze down her arm. She sprang backwards and fell heavily on the cobbles, and Bénezet was gone, out at the gate already in a driven gallop, and turning towards the town.

  Hugh Beringar, his deputy and three of his sergeants were just riding down from the crest of the bridge. Bénezet saw them, checked violently, and swung his mount aside into the narrow road that turned left between the mill pond and the river, southwestward in
to the fringes of the Long Forest, into deep cover on the quickest way into Wales.

  The riders from the town were slow to understand the inferences, but a horseman hurtling out of the abbey court towards the bridge, baulking at sight of them and wheeling into a side-road at the same headlong speed, was a phenomenon to be pondered, if not pursued, and Hugh had bellowed: “Follow him!” even before the youngest squire had come running out from the gates into the Foregate, crying: “Stop him! He’s suspect as a thief!”

  “Bring him back!” ordered Hugh, and his officers swung willingly into the byroad, and spurred into a gallop after the fugitive.

  Daalny had picked herself up before Cadfael could reach her, and turned and ran blindly from the turmoil in the court, from the sick terror that had leaned to her murderously from the saddle, and from the shattering reaction after crisis, which had set her shivering now the worst was over. For this was certainty. Why else should he run for his life before ever his saddlebag was opened? Still she did not even know what he had hidden there, but she knew it must be deadly. She fled into the church like a homing bird. Let them do the rest, her part was over. She did not doubt now that it would be enough. She sat down on the steps of Saint Winifred’s alter, where everything began and everything ended, and leaned her head back to rest against the stone.

  Cadfael had followed her in, but halted at sight of her sitting there open-eyed and still, her head reared erect as though she was listening to a voice, or a memory. After chaos, this calm and quietness was awesome. She had felt it on entering, Cadfael felt it on beholding her thus entranced.

  He approached her softly, and spoke as softly, and for a moment was not sure she would hear him, for she was tuned to something more distant.

  “He grazed you. Better let me see.”