The Holy Thief Read online

  “Ah!” said Cadfael, pulling up sharply. “You’ve been before me, have you? The abbot’s warned?”

  “He is, and you can pause and draw breath,” said Hugh, checking in his own flight to fling an arm about Cadfael’s shoulders. “Not that we know what we can expect, not yet. It may be less than we fear, but better be armed. The lowest of the town’s awash. Bring me to the gate, I’ve scarcely seen you this side Christmas.”

  “It won’t last long,” Cadfael assured him breathlessly. “Soon up, soon down. Two or three days wading, longer to clean up after it, but we’ve done it all before.”

  “Better make sure of what medicines may be wanted, and get them above-stairs in the infirmary. Too much wading, and you’ll be in a sickbed yourself.”

  “I’ve been putting them together already,” Cadfael assured him. “I’m off to have a word with Edmund now. Thanks be, Aline and Giles are high and dry, up there by Saint Mary’s. All’s well with them?”

  “Very well, but that it’s too long since you came to see your godson.” Hugh’s horse was hitched by the gatehouse; he reached to the bridle. “Make it soon, once Severn’s back in its bed.”

  “I will so. Greet her for me, and make my peace with the lad.”

  And Hugh was in the saddle, and away along the highroad to hunt out and confer with the provost of the Fore-gate; and Cadfael tucked up his habit and made for the infirmary. There would be heavier valuables to move to higher ground later, but his first duty was to make sure he had whatever medicaments might be needed in some readily accessible place, clear of the waters which were slowly creeping up from the thwarted Meole Brook one way, and the congested millpond another.

  High Mass was observed as always, reverently and with out haste, that morning, but chapter was a matter of minutes, devoted mainly to allotting all the necessary tasks to appropriate groups of brothers, and ensuring an orderly and decorous move. First to wrap all those valuables that might have to be carried up staircases or lifted into lofts, and for the moment leave them, already protected, where they were. No need to move them before the rising waters made it essential. There were things to be lifted from the lowest points of the enclave long before the flood could lip at the church itself.

  The stable-yard lying at a low point of the court, they moved the horses out to the abbey barn and loft by the Horse Fair ground, where there was fodder enough in store without having to cart any from the lofts within the enclave, where stocks were safe enough. Even the Severn in spring flood after heavy snows and torrential rain had never reached the upper storey, and never would; there was more than enough lower ground along its course into which to overflow. In places it would be a mile or more wide, in acres of drowned meadow, before ever it invaded the choir. The nave had been known to float a raft now and again over the years, once even a light boat. That was the most they need fear. So they swathed all the chests and coffers that housed the vestments, the plate, the crosses and candlesticks and furnishings of the altars, and the precious minor relics of the treasury. And Saint Winifred’s silver-chased reliquary they wrapped carefully in old, worn hangings and a large brychan, but left her on her altar until it should become clear that she must be carried to a higher refuge. If that became necessary, this would be the worst flood within Cadfael’s recollection by at least a foot; and if ever during this day the worst threatened, she would have to be removed, something which had never happened since she was brought here.

  Cadfael forbore from eating that noon, and while the rest of the household, guests and all, were taking hasty refreshment, he went in and kneeled before her altar, as sometimes he did in silence, too full of remembering to pray, though there seemed, nevertheless, to be a dialogue in progress. If any kindly soul among the saints knew him through and through, it was Winifred, his young Welsh girl, who was not here at all, but safe and content away in her own Welsh earth at Gwytherin. No one knew it but the lady, her servant and devotee Cadfael, who had contrived her repose there, and Hugh Beringar, who had been let into the secret late. Here in England, no one else; but in her own Wales, her own Gwytherin, it was no secret, but a central tenet of Welsh faith never needing mention. She was with them still; all was well.

  So it was not her rest, not hers, that was threatened now, only the uneasy repose of an ambitious, unstable young man who had done murder in pursuit of his own misguided dreams, greed for the abbey of Shrewsbury, greed for his own advancement. His death had afforded Winifred peace to remain where her heart clove to the beloved soil. That, at least, might almost be counted alleviation against his sins. For she had not withdrawn her blessing, because a sinner lay in the coffin prepared for her, and was entreated in her name. Where he was, and she was not, she had done miracles of grace.

  “Geneth… Cariad!” said Cadfael silently. “Girl, dear, has he been in purgatory long enough? Can you lift even him out of his mire?”

  During the afternoon the gradual rise of the brook and the river seemed to slow and hold constant, though there was certainly no decline. They began to think that the peril would pass. Then in the late evening the main body of the upland water from Wales came swirling down in a riot of muddy foam, torn branches, and not a few carcases of sheep caught and drowned on mounds too low to preserve them. Rolled and tumbled in the flood, trees lodged under the bridge and piled the turgid water even higher. Every soul in the enclave turned to in earnest, and helped to remove the precious furnishings to higher refuge, as brook and river and pond together advanced greedily into all the lower reaches of the court and cemetery, and gnawed at the steps of the west and south doors, turning the cloister garth into a shallow and muddy lake.

  The vestments, furnishings, plate, crosses, all the treasury was carried up into the two rooms over the north porch, where Cynric the verger lived and Father Boniface robed. The reliquaries which held the smaller relics went out by the cemetery doors to the loft over the Horse Fair barn. A day which had never been fully light declined early into gloomy twilight, and there was a persistent, depressing drizzle that clung clammily to eyelids and lashes and lips, adding to the discomfort.

  Two carters from Longner had brought down the promised load of wood for rebuilding, and begun to transfer it to the larger abbey wagon for the journey back to Ramsey. The coffer containing Shrewsbury’s gifts for the cause still stood on the altar of the Lady Chapel, key in lock, ready to be handed over to the steward Nicol for safe transport on the morrow. That altar stood high enough to survive all but a flood of Biblical proportions. The Longner carters had brought with them a third willing helper, a shepherd from the neighboring hamlet of Preston. But the three had barely begun transferring their load when they were haled away agitatedly by Brother Richard to help carry out from the church, or set at a safe height within, some of the abbey’s threatened treasures. Brothers and guests were at the same somewhat confused task in near darkness.

  Within an hour most of the necessary salvage had been done, and the guests began to withdraw to higher and dryer pastures, before the rising water should reach their knees. It grew quiet within the nave, only the light slapping of disturbed water against pillars as some stalwart splashed back thankfully to the upstairs comfort of the guesthall. Rémy’s man Bénezet was the last to go, booted to the knee, and well cloaked against the drizzle.

  The Longner carters and their helper went back to stacking their timber; but a small brother, cowled and agitated, reached a hand to detain the last of them, the shepherd from Preston. “Friend, there’s one thing more here to go with the cart to Ramsey. Give me a hand with it.”

  All but the altar lights had burned out by then. The shepherd let himself be led by the hand, and felt his way to one end of a long, slender burden well swathed in brychans. They lifted it between them, a weight easy for two. The single altar lamp cast yellowish light within the Benedictine cowl as they straightened up, stroked briefly over an earnest, smooth face, and guttered in the draught from the sacristy door. Together they carried their burden out between the g
raves of the abbots to where the abbey wagon stood drawn up outside the heavy double gates. The two men from Longner were up on their own cart, shifting logs along to the rear, to be the more easily lifted down between them for transfer to the larger wagon, and the dusk lay over all, thick with the beginning of a moist and clammy mist. The swathed burden was hoisted aboard, and aligned neatly alongside the cordwood already loaded. By the time the young brother had straightened his back, dusted his hands, and withdrawn briskly towards the open gate, the two carters had hefted another load of timber aboard, and were off to their cart again for the next. The last fold of the outer wrapping, a momentary glitter of gilt embroidery now frayed and threadbare, vanished under the gleanings of the Longner coppices.

  Somewhere within the graveyard, and retreating into the darkness of the church, a light voice called thanks and blessings to them, and a hearty goodnight.

  Chapter Three

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  In the morning, immediately after High Mass, the borrowed wagon set out for Ramsey. The coffer from the altar was confided to Nicol for safekeeping, and though one of his companions from Ramsey was to travel on with Herluin to Worcester, the addition to the party for home of three craftsmen seeking work offered a reassuringly stout guard for the valuables aboard. The timber was well secured, the team of four horses had spent the night comfortably in the stable at the Horse Fair, above the flood level, and was ready for the road.

  Their way lay eastward, out by Saint Giles, and once clear of the watermeadows and over the bridge by Atcham they would be moving away from the river’s coils, and out upon good roads, open and well used. Nearer to their destination, considering how Geoffrey de Mandeville’s cutthroats must be scattering for cover now, they might have occasion to be glad of three tough Shropshire lads, all good men of their hands.

  The cart rattled away along the Foregate. They would be some days on the road, but at least in regions further removed from the mountains of Wales, which had launched such a weight of thaw-water down into the lowlands after the heavy winter snows.

  An hour or so later Sub-Prior Herluin also set forth, attended by Tutilo and the third lay servant, to turn southeastward at Saint Giles. Possibly it had not yet dawned on Herluin that the floods he was thankfully leaving behind here might keep pace with him downstream and overtake him triumphantly at Worcester. The speed at which the flood-water traveled could be erratic in some winters; it might even be ahead of him when he reached the level meadows below the city.

  Rémy of Pertuis made no move to depart. Even the lower living floor of the guesthall remained dry and snug enough, being raised upon a deep undercroft and approached by a flight of stone steps, so he was left to nurse his sore throat in comparative warmth and comfort. His best horse, his own riding horse, was still lame, according to his man Bénezet, who had the charge of the horses, and daily plashed impassively through the shallows of the court to tend them in the stable at the Horse Fair. The stable-yard within the enclave lay almost knee-deep in water, and might remain so for several days yet. Bénezet recommended a longer wait here, and his master, it seemed, thinking of possible inconveniences on the way north to Chester, what with the upstream Severn and the incalculable Dee to cope with, had no objection to make. He was dry and fed and safe where he was. And the rain seemed to be moving away. Westward the cloud was clearing, only a desultory shower or two punctuated the featureless calm of the day’s routine.

  The horarium proceeded stubbornly in spite of difficulties. The choir remained just above the level of the waters, and could be reached dryshod by the night stairs from the dortoir, and the floor of the chapterhouse was barely covered on the first and second day, and on the third was seen to be retaining only the dark, moist lines between the flags. That was the first sign that the river had reasserted its powers, and was again carrying away its great weight of waters. Two more days passed before the change was perceptible by the fast flow of the brook, and the withdrawal of the overflow into its bed, sinking gradually through the saturated grass and leaving a rim of debris to mark the decline. The mill pond sank slowly, clawing turf and leaves down from the lower reaches of the gardens it had invaded. Even along Severnside under the town walls the level sank day by day, relinquishing the fringe of little houses and fishermen’s huts and boat-sheds stained by mud and littered with the jetsam of branches and bushes.

  Within the week brook and river and pond were back in their confines, full but still gradually subsiding. The tide-mark left in the nave had after all reached no higher than the top of the second step of Saint Winifred’s altar.

  “We need never have moved her,” said Prior Robert, viewing the proof of it and shaking his head. “We should have had more faith. Surely she is well able to take care of herself and her flock. She had but to command, and the waters would have abated.”

  Nevertheless, an abode damp, clammy and cold, and filthy with mud and rubbish, was no fit place to bring a saint. They fell to work without complaint, sweeping and polishing and mopping up the puddles left in every irregularity in the floor tiles. They brought the cresset stones, all three, into the nave, filled all their cups with oil, and lit them to dry out the lingering dampness and warm the air. Floral essences added to the oil fought valiantly against the stink of the river. Undercrofts, storehouses, barns and stables would also need attention, but the church was the first priority. When it was again fit to receive and house them, all the treasures could be restored to their places here within the fold.

  Abbot Radulfus marked the purification of the holy place with a celebratory Mass. Then they began to carry back from their higher sanctuaries the furnishings of the altars, the chests of vestments and plate, the candlesticks, newly polished, the frontals and hangings, the minor reliquaries. It was accepted without question that all must be restored and immaculate before the chief grace and adornment of the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul was brought back with all due ceremony to her rightful place, newly swept and garnished to receive her.

  “Now,” said Prior Robert, straightening joyfully to his full majestic height, “let us bring back Saint Winifred to her altar. She was carried, as all here know, into the upper room over the north porch.” The little outer door there at the corner of the porch, and the spiral staircase within, very difficult for the transport of even a small coffin, had remained accessible until the highest point of the flood, and she had been well padded against any damage in transit. “Let us go,” declaimed Robert, “in devotion and joy, and bring her back to her mission and benediction among us.”

  He had always, thought Cadfael, resignedly following through the narrow, retired door and up the tricky stair, this conviction that he owns the girl, because he believes—no, God be good to him, poor soul, he mistakenly but surely knows!—that he brought her here. God forbid he should ever find out the truth, that she is far away in her own chosen place, and her connivance with his pride in her is only a kindhearted girl’s mercy to an idiot child.

  Cynric, Father Boniface’s parish verger, had surrendered his small dwelling above the porch to the housing of the church treasures while the flood lasted. He would be back in possession soon; a tall, gaunt, quiet man, lantern-faced, a figure of awe to ordinary mortals, but totally accepted by the innocents, for the children of the Foregate, and their inseparable camp-followers, the dogs, came confidently to his hand, and sat and meditated contentedly on the steps with him in summer weather. His narrow room was bare now of all but the last and most precious resident. The swathed and roped coffin was taken up with all reverence, and carefully manipulated down the tight confines of the spiral stair.

  In the nave they had set up trestles on which to lay her, while they unwound the sheath of brychans they had used to keep her reliquary from injury. The wrappings unrolled one after another and were laid aside, and it seemed to Cadfael, watching, that with the removal of each one the swaddled shape, dwindling, assumed a form too rigid and rectangular to match with what he carried devoutly in his mind. But the fin
al padding was thick enough to shroud the delicacies of fashioning he knew so well. Prior Robert reached a hand with ceremonious reverence to take hold of the last fold, and drew it back to uncover what lay within.

  He uttered a muted shriek that emerged with startling effect from so august a throat, though it was not loud. He fell back a long, unsteady pace in shock, and then as abruptly started forward again and dragged the rug away, to expose to general view the inexplicable and offensive reality they had manipulated so carefully down from its place of safety. Not the silver-chased reliquary of Saint Winifred, but a log of wood, smaller and shorter than the coffin it had been used to represent, light enough, probably, for one man to handle; and not new, for it had dried and weathered to seasoned ripeness.

  All that care and reverence had been wasted. Wherever Saint Winifred was, she was certainly not here.

  After the stunned and idiot silence, babble and turmoil broke out on all sides, drawing to the spot others who had heard the strangled cry of dismay, and left their own tasks to come and stare and wonder. Prior Robert stood frozen into an outraged statue, the rug clutched in both hands, glaring at the offending log, and for once stricken dumb. It was his obsequious shadow who lifted the burden of protest for him.

  This is some terrible error,” blurted Brother Jerome, wringing his hands. “In the confusion… and it grew dark before we were done… Someone mistook, someone moved her elsewhere. We shall find her, safe in one of the lofts

  “And this?” demanded Prior Robert witheringly, pointing a damning finger at the offence before them. “Thus shrouded, as carefully as ever we did for her? No error! No mistake made in innocence! Someone did this deliberately to deceive! This was laid in her place, to be handled and cherished in her stead. And where now… where is she?”

  Some disturbance in the air, some wind of alarm, had caught the scent by then, and carried it through the great court, and minute by minute more openmouthed onlookers were gathering, stray brothers summoned from scattered cleansing duties in the grange court and the stables, sharp-eared guests from their lodgings, a couple of round-eyed, inquisitive schoolboys who were chased away less indulgently than usual by Brother Paul.