The Holy Thief Read online

  “Brother Cadfael?” questioned Rémy of Pertuis’s 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 practice 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 substantial honor 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 fervor. “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 wo
man, 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 judgment.

  “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.”

  She was away into the gathering twilight, lissome and straight, leaving the door open behind her. Cadfael watched her until she rounded the box hedge and vanished from his sight. Queen Daalny in slavery, almost a myth like her namesake, and every bit as perilous.

  At the end of the hour she had allowed herself, Donata turned the hourglass on the bench beside her bed, and opened her eyes. They had been closed while Tutilo played, to absent herself in some degree from him, to relieve him of the burden of a withered old woman’s regard, and leave him free to enjoy his own talent without the need to defer to his audience. Though she might well take pleasure in contemplating his youth and freshness, there could hardly be much joy for him in confronting her emaciation and ruin. She had had the harp moved from the hall into her bedchamber to give him the pleasure of tuning and playing it, and been glad to see that while he stroked and tightened and adjusted, bending his curly head over the work, he had forgotten her very presence. That was as it should be. For her the exquisite anguish of his music was none the less, and his happiness was all the more.

  But an hour was all she could ask. She had promised he should return by the hour of Compline. She turned the hourglass, and on the instant he broke off, the strings vibrating at the slight start he made.

  “Did I play falsely?” he asked, dismayed.

  “No, but you ask falsely,” she said drily. “You know there was no fault there. But time passes, and you must go back to your duty. You have been kind, and I am grateful, but your sub-prior will want you back as I promised, in time for Compline. If I hope to be able to ask again, I must keep to terms.”

  “I could play you to sleep,” he said, “before I go.”

  “I shall sleep. Never fret for me. No, you must go, and there is something I want you to take with you. Open the chest there—beside the psaltery you will find a small leather bag. Bring it to me.”

  He set the harp aside, and went to do her bidding. She loosened the cord that drew the neck of the little, worn satchel together, and emptied out upon her coverlet a handful of trinkets, a gold neckchain, twin bracelets, a heavy torque of gold set with roughly cut gemstones, and two rings, one a man’s massive seal, the other a broad gold band, deeply engraved. Her own finger showed the shrunken, pallid mark below the swollen knuckle, from which she had removed it. Last came a large and intricate ring brooch, the fastening of a cloak, reddish gold, Saxon work.

  “Take these, and add them to whatever you have amassed for Ramsey. My son promises a good load of wood, part coppice wood, part seasoned timber, indeed Eudo will be sending the carts down tomorrow by the evening. But these are my offering. They are my younger son’s ransom.” She swept the gold back into the bag, and drew the neck closed. Take them!”

  Tutilo stood hesitant, eyeing her doubtfully. “Lady, there needs no ransom. He had not taken final vows. He had the right to choose his own way. He owes nothing.”

  “Not Sulien, but I,” she said, and smiled. “You need not scruple to take them. They are mine to give, not from my husband’s family, but my father’s.”

  “But your son’s wife,” he urged, “and the lady who is to marry your Sulien—have not they some claim? These are of great value, and women like such things.”

  “My daughters are in my councils. We are all of one mind. Ramsey may pray for my soul,” she said serenely, “and that will settle all accounts.”

  He gave in then, still in some wonder and doubt, accepted the bag from her, and kissed the hand that bestowed it.

  “Go now,” said Donata, stretching back into her pillows with a sigh. “Edred will ride with you to see you over the ferry, and bring back the pony. You should not go on foot tonight.”

  He made his farewells to her, still a little anxious, unsure whether he did right to accept what seemed to him so rich a gift. He turned again in the doorway to look back, and she shook her head at him, and motioned him away with an authority that drove him out in haste, as though he had been scolded.

  In the courtyard the groom was waiting with the ponies. It was already night, but clear and moonlit, with scudding clouds high overhead. At the ferry the river was running higher than when they had come, though there had been no rain. Somewhere upstream there was flood water on its way.

  He delivered his treasures proudly to Sub-Prior Herluin at the end of Compline. The entire household, and most of the guests, were there to witness the arrival of the worn leather bag, and glimpsed its contents as Tutilo joyfully displayed them. Donata’s gifts were bestowed with the alms of the burgesses of Shrewsbury in the wooden coffer that was to carry them back to Ramsey, with the cartload of timber from Longner, while Herluin and Tutilo went on to visit Worcester, and possibly Evesham and Pershore as well, to appeal for further aid.

  Herluin turned the key on the treasury, and bestowed the coffer on the altar of Saint Mary until the time should come to commit it to the care of Nicol, his most trusted servant, for the journey home. Two days more, and they would be setting out. The abbey had loaned a large wagon for transport, and the town provided the loan of a team to draw it. Horses from the abbey stable would carry Herluin and Tutilo on their further journey. Shrewsbury had done very well by its sister-house, and Donata’s gold was the crown of the effort. Many eyes followed the turning of the key, and the installation of the coffer on the altar, where awe of heaven would keep it from violation. God has a powerful attraction.

  Leaving the church, Cadfael halted for a moment to snuff the air and survey the sky, which by this hour hung heavy with dropsical clouds, through which the moon occasionally glared for an instant, and was as quickly obscured again. When he went to close up his workshop for the night he observed that the waters of the brook had laid claim to another yard or so of the lower rim of his peasefields.

  All night long from the Matins bell it rained heavily.

  In the morning, about Prime, Hugh Beringar, King Stephen’s sheriff of Shropshire, came down in haste out of the town to carry the first warning of trouble ahead, sendi
ng his officers to cry the news along the Foregate, while he brought it in person to Abbot Radulfus.

  “Word from Pool last evening, Severn’s well out below the town, and still raining heavily in Wales. Upriver beyond Montford the meadows are under water, and the main bulk still on its way down, and fast. I’d advise moving what’s valuable—stores can’t be risked, with transport threatened.” In time of flood the town, all but the encrustation of fishermen’s and small craft dwellings along the riverside, and the gardens under the wall, would be safe enough, but the Foregate could soon be under water, and parts of the abbey enclave were the lowest ground, threatened on every side by the river itself, the Meole Brook driven backwards by the weight of water, and the mill pond swelled by the pressure from both. I’d lend you some men, but we’ll need to get some of the waterside dwellers up into the town.”

  “We have hands enough, we can shift for ourselves,” said the abbot. “My thanks for the warning. You think it will be a serious flood?”

  “No knowing yet, but you’ll have time to prepare. If you mean to load that timber from Longner this evening, better have your wagon round by the Horse Fair. The level there is safe enough, and you can go in and out to your stable and loft by the cemetery gates.”

  “Just as well,” said Radulfus, “if Herluin’s men can get their load away tomorrow, and be on their way home.” He rose to go and rally his household to the labor pending, and Hugh, for once, made for the gatehouse without looking up Brother Cadfael on the way. But it happened that Cadfael was rounding the hedge from the garden in considerable haste, just in time to cross his friend’s path. The Meole Brook was boiling back upstream, and the mill pool rising.