The Holy Thief Read online

“Brother Sulien,” remarked Cadfael, crossing the court afterwards with Brother Anselm the precentor and librarian, “has not been called by that title for some while, and is hardly likely to take kindly to it again now. And so Radulfus could have told him, for he knows the whole story of that young man as well as I do. But if he had said as much, this Herluin would not have listened, I suppose. ‘Brother’ means his own brother Eudo now to Sulien. He’s in training for arms, and will be one of Hugh’s young men of the garrison up there in the castle as soon as his mother dies, and they tell me that’s very close now. And a married man, very likely, even before that happens. There’ll be no going back to Ramsey.”

  “If his abbot sent the boy home to come to his own decision,” said Anselm reasonably, “the sub-prior can hardly be empowered to bring too severe pressure on him to return. Argue and exhort as he may, he’s helpless, and must know it, if the young man stands fast. It may well be,” he added drily, “that what he hopes for from that quarter is a conscience fee in silver.”

  “Likely enough. And he may very well get it, too. There’s more than one conscience in that house,” agreed Cadfael, “feels a debt towards Ramsey. And what,” he asked, “do you make of the other?”

  “The young one? An enthusiast, with grace and fervor shining out of his creamy cheeks. Chosen to go with Herluin to temper the chill, would you say?”

  “And where did he get that outlandish name of his?”

  Tutilo! Yes,” said Anselm, musing. “Not at his baptism! There must be a reason why they chose that for him. Tutilo you’ll find among the March saints, though we don’t pay him much attention here. He was a monk of Saint Gall, two hundred years and more ago since he died, and by all accounts he was a master of all the arts, painter, poet, musician and all. Perhaps we have a gifted lad among us. I must get him to try his hand on rebec or organetto, and see what he can do. We had the roving singer here once, do you remember? The little tumbler who got himself a wife out of the goldsmith’s scullery before he left us. I mended his rebec for him. If this one can do better, maybe he has some small claim to the name they’ve given him. Sound him out, Cadfael, if you’re to be their guide out to Longner this afternoon. Herluin will be hot on the heels of his strayed novice. Try your hand with Tutilo.”

  The path to the manor of Longner set off northeastward from the lanes of the Foregate, threaded a short, dense patch of woodland, and climbed over a low crest of heath and meadow to look down upon the winding course of the Severn, downstream from the town. The river was running high and turgid, rolling fallen branches and clumps of turf from the banks down in its currents. There had been ample snows in the winter, without any great gales or frosts. The thaw still filled the valleys everywhere with the soft rippling of water, even the meadows by the river and the brook whispered constantly and shimmered with lingering silver among the grass. The ford a short way upstream was already impassable, the island that helped foot traffic across at normal times was under water. But the ferryman poled his passengers across sturdily, so familiar and at ease with his troubled waters that storm, flood and calm were all one to him.

  On the further side of the Severn the path threaded wet water-meadows, the river lipping the bleached winter grass a yard inland already. If heavy Spring rains came on the hills of Wales, to follow the thaw-water, there would be flooding under the walls of Shrewsbury, and the Meole Brook and the mill pond would back up strongly and threaten even the nave of the abbey church. It had happened twice since Cadfael entered the Order. And westward the sky hung ponderous and grey, leaning upon the distant mountains.

  They skirted the encroaching waters, below the dark ploughland of the Potter’s Field, climbed thankfully inland up the gentle slope beyond, into the well kept woodlands of the manor of Longner, and came to the clearing where the house backed snugly into the hillside, sheltered from the prevailing winds, and surrounded by its high stockade and the encrustation of demesne buildings within.

  As they entered at the gate Sulien Blount came out from the stables to cross to the house. He wore leather jerkin and the working cotte and hose becoming a younger brother doing his share on his elder’s estate until he could find occasion to carve out his own holding, as surely he would. At the sight of the trio entering he halted, stiffly at gaze, instantly recognizing his former spiritual superior, and startled to see him here so far from home. But at once he came to meet them, with reverent and perhaps slightly apprehensive courtesy. The stresses of the past year had removed him so far from the cloister and the tonsure that the reappearance so close to home of what was past and done seemed for a moment to offer a threat to his new and hard-earned composure, and the future he had chosen. Only for a moment. Sulien was in no doubt now of where he was going.

  “Father Herluin, welcome to my home! I rejoice to see you well, and to know that Ramsey is restored to the Order. Will you not come within, and let us know in what particular we of Longner can serve you?”

  “You cannot but understand,” said Herluin, addressing himself warily to possible battle ahead, “in what state we have regained our abbey. For a year it has been the den of a rogue army, pillaged and stripped of everything burnable, even the walls defiled, where they did not shatter them before they departed. We have need of every son of the house, and every friend to the Order, to make good before God what has been desecrated. It is to you I come, and with you I wish to speak.”

  “A friend to the Order,” said Sulien, “I hope I am. A son of Ramsey and a brother of its brothers I no longer am. Abbot Walter sent me back here, very fairly, to consider my vocation, which he knew to be dubious, and committed my probation to Abbot Radulfus, who has absolved me. But come within, and we can confer as friends. I will listen reverently, Father, and respect all you may have to say.”

  And so he would, for he was a young man brought up to observe all the duties of youth towards his elders; all the more as a younger son with no inheritance and his own way to make, and therefore all the greater need to please those who had power and authority, and could advance his career. He would listen and defer, but he would not be shifted. Nor did he need any friendly witness to support his side of the case, and why should Herluin’s side of it be weighted even by a devout and silent young acolyte, imposing on an ex-brother by his very presence a duty he no longer owed, and had undertaken mistakenly and for the wrong reasons in the first place?

  “You will wish to confer strictly in private,” said Cadfael, following the sub-prior up the stone steps to the hall door. “With your leave, Sulien, this young brother and I will look in upon your mother. If, of course, she is well enough and willing to receive visits.”

  “Yours, always!’ said Sulien, with a brief, flashing smile over his shoulder. “And a new face will refresh her. You know how she views life and the world now, very peacefully.”

  It had not always been so. Donata Blount had suffered years of some consuming and incurable disease that devoured her substance slowly and with intense pain. Only with the last stages of her bodily weakness had she almost outlived pain itself, and grown reconciled to the world she was leaving as she drew nearer to the door opening upon another.

  “It will be very soon,” said Sulien simply. He halted in the high dim hall. “Father Herluin, be pleased to enter the solar with me, and I will send for some refreshment for you. My brother is at the farm. I am sorry he is not here to greet you, but we had no prior word. You will excuse him. If your errand is to me, it may be better so.” And to Cadfael: “Go in to my mother’s chamber. I know she is awake, and never doubt but you are always welcome to her.”

  The Lady Donata, confined to her bed at last, lay propped on pillows in her small bedchamber, her window unshuttered, a little brazier burning in one corner on the bare stone of the floor. She was nothing but fine bones and translucent skin, the hands quiet on her coverlet like fallen petals of lilies in their transparent emaciation. Her face was honed into a fragile mask of silver bones, and the deep pits of her eyes were filled with ice
-blue shadow round the startling, imperishable beauty of the eyes themselves, still clear and intelligent, and the darkest and most luminous of blues. The spirit encased in this frail shell was still alert, indomitable, and sharply interested in the world about her, without any fear of leaving it, or any reluctance to depart.

  She looked up at her visitors, and greeted Cadfael in a low voice that had lost none of its quality. “Brother Cadfael, this is a pleasure! I’ve hardly seen you through the winter. I should not have liked to leave without your valediction,”

  “You could have sent for me,” he said, and went to set a stool by her bedside. “I am biddable. And Radulfus would not refuse you.”

  “He came himself,” said Donata, “to take my confession at Christmas. I am an adopted ewe of his flock. He does not forget me.”

  “And how do your affairs stand?” he asked, studying the serenity of her face. There was never need to go round-about with Donata, she understood him as he meant, and preferred it so.

  “In the matter of life and death,” she said, “excellently well. In the matter of pain… I have gone beyond pain, there is not enough of me to feel it, or regard it if it could make itself felt. I take that as the sign I’ve looked for.” She spoke without apprehension or regret, or even impatience now, perfectly content to wait the short while longer. And she lifted her dark eyes to the young man standing apart.

  “And who is this you have brought to see me? A new acolyte of yours in the herb-garden?”

  Tutilo came nearer, rightly interpreting this as an invitation. His eyes were large and round, beholding her condition, youth and abundant life confronted with death, but he did not seem at all dismayed, nor pitying. Donata did not invite pity. The boy was very quick and accurate of apprehension.

  “Not mine,” said Cadfael, measuring the slight figure consideringly, and warily approving a bright pupil he certainly would not have refused. “No, this young brother is come with his sub-prior from the abbey of Ramsey. Abbot Walter is back in his monastery, and calling home all the brothers to the work of rebuilding, for Geoffrey de Mandeville and his brigands have left an empty shell. And to let you know the whole of it, Sub-Prior Herluin is in the solar this moment, trying what he can do with Sulien.”

  “That is one he will never reclaim,” said Donata with certainty. “My sorrow that ever he was driven to mistake himself so grossly, and if Geoffrey de Mandeville did nothing of good besides, among his much evil, at least his onslaught drove Sulien back to his proper self. My younger son,” she said, meeting Tutilo’s wide golden eyes with a thoughtful and appreciative smile, “was never cut out to be a monk.”

  “So an emperor said, I believe,” remarked Cadfael, recalling what Anselm had said of the saint of Saint Gall, “about the first Tutilo, after whom this young brother is named. For this is Brother Tutilo, a novice of Ramsey, and close to the end of his novitiate, as I hear from his superior. And if he takes after his namesake he should be painter, carver, singer and musician. Great pity, said King Charles—Charles the Fat, they called him—that ever such a genius should be made a monk. He called down a malediction on the man that did it. So Anselm tells me, at least.”

  “Some day,” said Donata, looking this very comely and graceful young man over from head to foot, and recording with detached admiration what she saw, “some king may say as much of this one. Or some woman, of course! Are you such a paragon, Tutilo?”

  “It is why they gave me the name,” said the boy honestly, and a faint rosy blush surged out of the coils of his cowl and climbed his sturdy throat into the suave cheeks, but apparently without causing him the slightest discomfort. He did not lower his eyes, which dwelt with fascination upon her face. In its final tranquility something of its long-departed beauty had returned, to render Donata even more formidable and admirable. “I have some skill,” he said, “in music.” It was stated with the certainty of one capable of detached judgment, without either boasting or deprecating his powers. Small flames of interest and liking kindled in Donata’s hollow eyes.

  “Good! So you should lay claim to what you know you do well,” she said approvingly. “Music has been my easiest way to sleep, many a night. My consolation, too, when the devils were too active. Now they spend their time sleeping, and I lie awake.” She moved a frail hand upon the coverlet, indicating a chest that sat remote in a corner of the room. “There is a psaltery in there, though it has not been touched for a long time. If you care to try it? No doubt it would be grateful to be given a voice again. There is a harp in the hall, but no one now to play it.”

  Tutilo went readily to lift the heavy lid and peer down at the stored valuables within. He lifted out the instrument, not a large one, meant to be played on the knees, and shaped like the broad snout of a pig. The manner in which he handled it was eloquent of interest and affection, and if he frowned, it was at the sight of a broken course among the strings. He peered deeper into the chest for quills to play it, but found none, and frowned again.

  Time was,” said Donata, “when I cut quills new every week or so. I am sorry we have neglected our duty.”

  That brought her a brief, preoccupied smile, but his attention went back at once to the psaltery. “I can use my nails,” he said, and brought the instrument with him to the bedside, and without ceremony or hesitation sat down on the edge of the bed, straightened the psaltery on his knees, and passed a stroking hand over the strings, raising a soft, quivering murmur.

  “Your nails are too short,” said Donata. “You will flay your finger-ends.”

  Her voice could still evoke colors and tones that made the simplest utterance eloquent. What Cadfael heard was a mother, between indulgence and impatience, warning youth of venturing an undertaking possibly painful. No, perhaps not a mother, nor even an elder sister; something more distant than a blood relative with rights, and yet closer. For those contacts free of all duty and responsibility are also free of all restraints, and may approach as rapidly and as close as they will. And she had very little time left, to submit to limitations now. What the boy heard there was no knowing, but he flashed up at her a bright, naked glance, not so much surprised as alerted, and his hands were abruptly still for an instant, and he smiled.

  “My finger-ends are leather—see!” He spread his palms, and flexed his long fingers. “I was harper to my father’s lord at the manor of Berton for a year and more before I entered Ramsey. Hush, now, let me try! But it lacks one course, you must hold me excused for the flaws.” There was something of indulgence in his voice, too, a soft amusement, as if to a needlessly solicitous elder who must be reassured of his competence.

  He had found the tuning key lying in the chest with the instrument, and he began to test the gut strings and tighten busily at the pegs that anchored them. The singing murmur rose like a chorus of insects in a summer meadow, and Tutilo’s tonsured head stooped over his work in total absorption, while Donata from her pillows watched him from under half-closed eyelids, the more intently because he was now paying no heed to her. Yet some intense intimacy bound them, for as he softened into a passionate private smile over his work, so did she over his concentration and pleasure.

  “Wait, one of the strings in this broken course is long enough to serve. Better one than none, though you’ll notice when the tone thins.”

  His fingers, if toughened by the harp, were very nimble and neat as he attached the single string and tightened it gingerly. “There! Now!” He passed a light hand over the strings, and produced a shimmering rill of soft notes. “Wire strings would be louder and brighter than gut, but this will do very well.”

  And he bent his head over the instrument, and plunged like a hawk stooping, and began to play, flexed fingers dancing. The old soundboard seemed to swell and throb with the tension of notes, too full to find adequate release through the fretted rose in the centre.

  Cadfael withdrew his stool a little from the bedside, to have them both in plain view, for they made an interesting study. The boy was undoubtedly hugely gi
fted. There was something almost alarming in the passion of the assault. It was as if a bird had been muted for a long time, and suddenly found his muffled throat regain its eloquence.

  In a little while his first hunger was slaked, and he could soften into moderation, and savor all the more gratefully the sweetness of this indulgence. The sparkling, whirling dance measure, light as thistledown for all its passion, eased into a gentle air, better adapted to an instrument so soft. Even a little melancholy, some kind of virelai, rhythmic and rueful. Where had he learned that? Certainly not at Ramsey; Cadfael doubted if it would have been welcome there.

  And the Lady Donata, world-weary and closely acquainted with the ironies of life and death, lay still in her pillows, never taking her eyes from the boy who had forgotten her existence. She was not the audience to which he played, but she was the profound intelligence that heard him. She drew him in with her great bruised eyes, and his music she drank, and it was wine to her thirst. Crossing the half of Europe overland, long ago, Cadfael had seen gentians in the grass of the mountain meadows, bluer than blue, of the same profound beyond-blue of her eyes. The set of her lips, wryly smiling, told a slightly different story. Tutilo was already crystal to her, she knew more of him than he himself knew.

  The affectionate, skeptical twist of her mouth vanished when he began to sing. The tune was at once simple and subtle, playing with no more than half a dozen notes, and his voice, pitched higher than in speech, and very soft and suave, had the same qualities, innocent as childhood, piercing as a wholly adult grief. And he was singing not in English, not even in Norman-French as England knew it, but in the langue d’oc Cadfael remembered imperfectly from long ago. Where had this cloister novice heard the melodies of the Provencal troubadours, and learned their songs? In the lord’s hall where he had been a harper? Donata knew no southern French, Cadfael had long forgotten it, but they knew a love song when they heard it. Rueful, unfulfilled, eternally hopeful, an amour de loin, never to come face to face.