TheHoly Thief.

by Ellis Peters.

Prologue.

IN THE HEIGHT OF A HOT SUMMER, in late August of 1144, Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Ess.e.x, deferred to the heat of the sun, and made the final, fatal mistake of his long and opportunist career. He was engaged, at the time, in planning the destruction by siege of one of the circle of improvized but effective fortresses King Stephen had thrown up to contain and compress the depredations of Geoffrey's host of outlaws, rebels and predators in the Fen country. For more than a year, from his elusive bases in the Fens, Geoffrey had so devastated the countryside as to ensure that not a field should be safely planted or reaped, not a manor properly tended, not a man with anything of value to lose should be left in possession of it, and not one who refused to surrender it should be left with even a life to lose. As the king had wrested from him all his own relatively legitimate castles and lands and t.i.tles, none too legally if the truth be told, so Geoffrey had set to work in defiance to do as much to every man, poor or rich, who got in his way. For a year, from the borders of Huntingdon to Mildenhall in Suffolk and over much of Cambridgeshire, the Fens had become an enclosed robber kingdom in spite of King Stephen's head, and though his hasty ring of castles had done something to prevent its further enlargement, it had not hampered the earl's movements greatly, or brought him to the battle he was expert at avoiding.

But this strong-point of Burwell, north-east of Cambridge, irritated him because it was beginning to interfere with his supply lines, almost the only thing vulnerable about him. And on one of the hottest days of August he was riding round the offending castle to view the best possibilities for attack. Because of the heat he had discarded his helmet and the curtain of fine chain mail that guarded his neck. An ordinary bowman on the wall loosed a shot at him, and struck him in the head.

Geoffrey laughed at it, the wound seemed so slight; he withdrew to allow a few days for healing. And in a few days he was burning with a fevered infection that pared the flesh from his bones and brought him to his bed. They carried him as far as Mildenhall in Suffolk, and there awoke to the knowledge that he was dying. The sun had done what all King Stephen's armies could not do.

What was impossible was that he should die in peace. He was an unabsolved excommunicate; not even a priest could help him, for in the mid-Lent council called the previous year by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, the king's brother and at that time papal legate, it had been decreed that no man who did violence to a cleric could be absolved by anyone but the Pope himself, and that not by any distant decree, but in the Pope's veritable presence. A long way from Mildenhall to Rome for a dying man in terror of h.e.l.lfire. For Geoffrey's excommunication had been earned by his seizure by violence of the abbey of Ramsey, and his expulsion of the monks and their abbot, to turn the convent into the capital of his kingdom of thieves, torturers and murderers. For him there was no possible absolution, no hope of burial. The earth would not have him.

There were those who did their best for him, frantic in defence of his soul, if they could not help his body. When he grew so weak that he ceased to rave and sank into stupor, his officials and men of law began feverishly issuing charters in his name, restoring to the Church various properties he had seized from her, including the abbey of Ramsey. Whether with his goodwill or not, no one stopped to ask, and no one ever knew. The orders were carried out, and respected, but they did not avail him. His body was refused Christian burial, his earldom was abolished, his lands and offices remained forfeit, and his family disinherited. His eldest son was excommunicate with him, and partner in his rebellion. A younger, and his namesake, was already with the Empress Maud, and recognized by her as earl of Ess.e.x, for what such an acknowledgement was worth without lands or status.

On the sixteenth day of September Geoffrey de Mandeville died, still excommunicate, still unabsolved. The only remaining mercy was shown to him by certain Knights Templar who were in Mildenhall at the time, and took his coffined body back with them to London, where for want of any Christian relenting they were forced to let him lie in a pit outside the churchyard of the Temple, in unhallowed ground, and even so a step beyond what was permitted by canon law, for by the strict letter he should not have been laid in the earth at all.

In the ranks of his motley army there was no one strong enough to take his place. The only thing that held them together was mutual self-interest and greed, and without him their dubious alliance began to fall apart, as the encouraged forces of the king moved in upon them with renewed resolution. Parties of outlaws withdrew discreetly in all directions to look for less frequented pastures and more impenetrable solitudes, where they could hope to continue their lives as beasts of prey. The more reputable, or those of more regarded birth and with more to proffer, went roundabout to make their peace and retire into safer alliances.

To everyone else the news of Geoffrey's death gave universal satisfaction. It reached the king quickly, relieved him of the most dangerous and implacable of his enemies, and instantly eased him of the necessity of immobilizing the greater part of his forces in one region. It was carried from village to village through the Fen country as the raggle-taggle marauders withdrew, and people who had lived in terror emerged cautiously to retrieve what they could of a plundered harvest, rebuild their burned homes and rea.s.semble their families and kinships. Also, for death had been more than usually busy in those parts, to bury their dead decently. It would take more than a year for life to get back into any kind of normality, but at least now it could take the first wary steps.

And before the year's end it reached Abbot Walter of Ramsey, with the deathbed charter that gave his monastery back to him, and he gave due thanks to G.o.d, and set about sending the word on to his prior and sub-prior and all his scattered brothers, who had been forced out penniless and homeless to find shelter where they could, some with their kin, some in other hospitable Benedictine houses. The first and nearest hurried to answer the summons home, and entered a total desolation. The monastic buildings were a mere sh.e.l.l, the lands untilled, the manors the house had formerly possessed handed out to thieves and vagabonds, all its treasures stripped away. The walls, they said, bled for very grief. Nevertheless, Abbot Walter and his brothers set to work to restore their house and their church, and sent out the news of their return to all those monks and novices who had had to go long distances to find a shelter during their exile. Being members of a wider brotherhood, having all the Benedictine Order as kin, they also sent out an urgent appeal for help in alms, material and labour to speed the work of rebuilding and refurnishing the sacred place.

In due time the news, the invitation and the need arrived at the gatehouse of the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury.

Chapter One.

THE MESSENGERS ARRIVED during the halfhour of chapter, and would not eat, drink or rest, or wash the mud of the roads from their feet, until they had made their way in to the a.s.sembly in the chapterhouse, and delivered their charge. If the suppliants failed in zeal, so would the givers.

They stood with every eye upon them, refusing to sit until the message was proclaimed. Sub-Prior Herluin, long in experience and authority, a man of impressive presence, stood fronting the lord abbot, his lean hands folded at his girdle. The young novice who had walked with him all the way from Ramsey stood modestly a pace or two behind, devoutly copying his superior's pose and stillness. Three lay servants of their house, escort on the journey, they had left with the porter at the gatehouse.

"Father Abbot, you know, as all men know, our lamentable history. It is now two months since our house and estates were restored to us. Abbot Walter is now calling back to their vocation all those brothers who were forced to disperse and find shelter wherever they could, when the rebels and outlaws took everything from us, and drove us out at sword-point. Those of us who remained close returned with our abbot as soon as we were permitted. To an utter desolation. By right we were possessed of many manors, but after the dispossession all were handed out to such lawless villains as would support de Mandeville, and to declare them restored to us avails us nothing, since we have no force to recover them from the robber lords except by law, and the law will take years to justify us. Also, such as we do recover will have been plundered and stripped of everything of value, half-ruined, possibly burned. And within the pale..."

He had a clear, confident voice which had proceeded thus far with considered force, but without pa.s.sion, but throbbing indignation robbed him of utterance for a moment when he reached the day of the return.

"I was there. I saw what they had made of the holy place. An abomination! A midden! The church defiled, the cloisters an uncleansed stable, dortoir and frater stripped of woodwork to feed fires, all provisions taken away, all those valuables we had no time or warning to remove, stolen. Lead stripped from roofs, rooms left open to the weather, to rain and frost. Not so much as a pot for cooking, or a service book or a slip of vellum. Ruinous walls, an emptiness, a barren void. All this we have undertaken to rebuild and make more glorious than before, but we cannot do it alone. Abbot Walter has even given up much of his own wealth to buy food for the people of our villages, for harvest there has been none. Who could till the fields with death for ever at his heels? Even from the poorest of the poor those malefactors extorted the last wretched possession, and if there was nothing left to steal, they killed."

"We have heard, all too truly, of the terror let loose on all your countryside," said Abbot Radulfus. "With grief we have heard it, and prayed an end to it. Now that that end is come, there is no house of our Order that can refuse all possible help to restore what was despoiled. Ask of us what can best serve Ramsey's needs. For I think you are sent as a brother to brothers, and within this family of ours injury to one is injury to all."

"I am sent to ask help from this house and from any among the laity who may be moved to do a deed of grace, in alms, in skills, if there are any in Shrewsbury experienced in building and willing to work for some weeks far from home, in materials, in whatever aids may avail for our restoration and the benefit of the souls of the generous. For every penny and every prayer Ramsey will be grateful. To that end, I ask leave to preach once here in your church, and once, with the permission of sheriff and clergy, at the High Cross in Shrewsbury, so that every goodman of the town may search his heart and give what he is moved to give."

"We will confer with Father Boniface," said Radulfus, "and he will surely agree to have you speak at a parish service. Of the sympathy of this house you may already be a.s.sured."

"On brotherly love," said Herluin graciously, "I knew we could rely. Others, like Brother Tutilo here and myself, have gone forth to pray the aid of other Benedictine houses in other shires. We are charged, also, with carrying the news to all those brothers who were forced to scatter to save their lives when our troubles began, to call them home again, where they are sorely needed. For some of them cannot yet even know that Abbot Walter is back within the enclave, and has need of every son's labour and faith to bring about the great work of restoration. There is one of our number, I believe," he said, earnestly watching the abbot's face, "came here to Shrewsbury, to the home of his family. I must see him, and exhort him to return with me."

"That is true," Radulfus allowed. "Sulien Blount, of the manor of Longner. He came here to us, with Abbot Walter's countenance. The young man had not taken his final vows. He was approaching the end of his novitiate, and was in some doubt of his vocation. He came here upon terms, with his abbot's full leave, to consider on his future. It was his own decision to leave this house, and return to his family, and I absolved him accordingly. In my view he had entered the Order mistakenly. Nevertheless, he must and will answer for himself. I will have one of the brothers show you the way to his elder brother's manor."

"I shall do my best to recall him to his better self," Herluin stated, with a distinct implication in his tone that he would enjoy hounding back to the fold a reluctant but out-argued penitent.

Brother Cadfael, studying this formidable personage from his retired corner, and his long years of secular and monastic experience of all sorts and conditions of men, reflected that the sub-prior would probably make a very good preacher at the High Cross, and exact donations from a great many guilty consciences; for he was voluble enough, even capable of pa.s.sion in the service of Ramsey. But over his chances of shifting young Sulien Blount's mind, as against the fine girl he was shortly to marry, Cadfael shook his head. If he could do it, he was a miracle-worker, and on his way to sainthood. There were uncomfortable saints in Cadfael's hagiology, whom he personally would have consigned to a less reverend status, but whose aggravating rect.i.tude he could not deny. On the whole, he could even feel a little sorry for Sub-Prior Herluin, who was about to blunt all his weapons against the impregnable shield of love. Try and get Sulien Blount away from Pernel Otmere now! He had learned to know the pair of them too well to be in doubt.

He found that he was not, so far, greatly attracted to Sub-Prior Herluin, though he could respect the man's toughness on this long journey afoot, and his determination to replenish Ramsey's plundered coffers and rebuild its ruined halls. They were a pair very oddly a.s.sorted, these itinerant brothers from the Fens. The sub-prior was a big man, long-boned, wide-shouldered, carrying flesh once ample, perhaps even excessive, but shrunken and a little flabby now. Certainly no reproach to him; he had shared, it seemed, the short commons on which the unfortunate fen-dwellers had had to survive during this harvestless year of oppression. His uncovered head showed a pale tonsure encircled with grizzled, springy hair more brown than grey, and a long, lantern face, austere of feature, deep-set and stern of eye, with a long straight stroke of a mouth, almost lipless in repose, as though totally stranger to smiling. Such lines as his countenance had acquired, during a lifetime Cadfael judged at about fifty years, all bore heavily downward, repressed and forbidding.

Not a very amiable companion on a long journey, unless his looks belied him. Brother Tutilo, who stood modestly a little behind his superior, following with rapt attention every word Herluin said, looked about twenty years old, perhaps even less; a lightly-built lad, notably lissome and graceful in movement, a model of disciplined composure in stillness. His crown only just topped Herluin's shoulder, and was ringed with a profusion of light brown curls, the crop grown during a lengthy journey. No doubt they would be clipped austerely close when Herluin got him back to Ramsey, but now they would have done credit to a painted seraph in a missal, though the face beneath this aureole was scarcely seraphic, in spite of its air of radiant devotion. At first glance a lovely innocent, as open as his wide eyes, and with the silken pink and whiteness of a girl, but a more penetrating study revealed that this childlike colouring was imposed upon an oval face of cla.s.sic symmetry and sharp and incisive moulding. The colouring of roses on those pure marble lines had almost the air of a disguise, behind which an engaging but slightly perilous creature lurked in possibly mischievous ambush.

Tutilo, a strange name for an English youth; for there was nothing of the Norman or the Celtic about this young man. Perhaps the name chosen for him when he entered his novitiate. He must ask Brother Anselm what it signified, and where the authorities in Ramsey could have found it. Cadfael turned his attention once again to what was being discussed between host and guests.

"While you are in these parts," said the abbot, "I take it you may wish to visit other Benedictine houses. We will provide horses, if you so please. The season is not the most favourable for travelling. The rivers are running high, some of the fords will be impa.s.sable, you will be better mounted. We will hasten whatever arrangements you may choose to make, confer with Father Boniface about the use of the church, for he has the cure of souls in the parish of Holy Cross, and with Hugh Beringar as sheriff and the provost and Guild Merchant of the town concerning your gathering at the High Cross in Shrewsbury. If there is anything more we can do to be of service, you need but state it."

"We shall be grateful indeed to go mounted a while," agreed Herluin, coming as near to smiling as his features would permit, "for we intend to go on at least to our brothers at Worcester, perhaps also to Evesham and Persh.o.r.e, and it would be simple to return by Shrewsbury and bring back your horses. Ours were taken, every one, by the outlaws before they departed. But first, even this day if possible, we would wish to go and speak with Brother Sulien."

"As you think best," said Radulfus simply. "Brother Cadfael, I think, is best acquainted with the way, there is a ferry to be crossed, and also with the household of the lord of Longner. It may be well if he accompanies you."

"Brother Sulien," remarked Cadfael, crossing the court afterwards with Brother Anselm the precentor and librarian, "has not been called by that t.i.tle 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 fervour 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 gra.s.s. The ford a short way upstream was already impa.s.sable, the island that helped foot traffic across at normal times was under water. But the ferryman poled his pa.s.sengers across st.u.r.dily, 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 gra.s.s 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 wellkept 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 G.o.d 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 sh.e.l.l 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 roundabout 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 st.u.r.dy 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 tranquillity 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 judgement, 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 pa.s.sed 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 colours 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, as if to a needlessly solicitous elder who must be rea.s.sured 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sed 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 gifted. There was something almost alarming in the pa.s.sion of the a.s.sault. It was as if a bird had been muted for a long time, and suddenly found his m.u.f.fled throat regain its eloquence.

In a little while his first hunger was slaked, and he could soften into moderation, and savour all the more gratefully the sweetness of this indulgence. The sparkling, whirling dance measure, light as thistledown for all its pa.s.sion, 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 gra.s.s 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, sceptical 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.

The cadence changed in an instant, the secret words pa.s.sed magically into: "Ave mater salvatoris..." and they were back with the liturgy of Saint Martial before they realized, as Tutilo had realized with the wild perceptions of a fox, that the door of the room had opened. He was taking no chances. The door had actually opened on the harmless person of Sulien Blount, but Sub-Prior Herluin was there at his shoulder, looming like a cloud.

Donata lay smiling, approving the lightning wit that could change course so smoothly, without a break, without a blush. True, Herluin drew his austere brows into a displeased frown at the sight of his novice seated upon the edge of a woman's bed and plainly singing for her pleasure; but a glance at the woman herself, in her wasted and daunting dignity, disarmed him at once. She came as a shock, all the more because she was not old, but withered in her prime.

Tutilo arose modestly, clasping the psaltery to his breast, and withdrew himself dutifully into a corner of the room, his eyes lowered. When he was not looking at her, Cadfael suspected, he was seeing her all the more clearly.

"Mother," said Sulien, grave and a little stiff from his small battlefield, "here is Sub-Prior Herluin, sometime my instructor in Ramsey, willing you well and promising you his prayers. In my brother's name, as I do, make him welcome."

In the absence of son and daughter-in-law she spoke authoritatively for both. "Father, use our house as your own. Your visit does us honour. It was welcome news to every soul among us that Ramsey is again delivered to the service of G.o.d."

"G.o.d has indeed regarded us," said Herluin, a little cautiously and with less than his usual a.s.surance, for the sight of her had shaken him. "But there is much to be done to restore our dwelling, and we have need of every hand that can be brought to our aid. I had hoped to take your son back with me, but it seems I may no longer call him brother. Nevertheless, be sure both he and you will be in my prayers."

"I will remember Ramsey," said Donata, "in mine. But if the house of Blount has denied you a brother, we may still be of help in other ways."

"We are seeking the charity of all good men," agreed Herluin fervently, "in whatever form. Our house is dest.i.tute, they left us nothing but the fabric of the walls, and that defaced, and stripped of all that could be carted away."

"I have promised," said Sulien, "to return to Ramsey and work there with my hands for one month, when the time is right." He had never rid himself completely of a feeling of guilt for abandoning a vocation he had been foolish and mistaken ever to undertake. He would be glad to pay his ransom with hard labour, and free his conscience before he took a bride. And Pernel Otmere would approve him, and give him leave to go.

Herluin thanked him for the offer, but with no very great enthusiasm, perhaps doubtful how much work Ramsey was likely to get out of this recusant youth.

"I will also speak to my brother," Sulien pursued earnestly, "and see what more we may be able to do. They are cutting coppice-wood, there will be older stands well seasoned. And they are taking out some wellgrown trees from the woodland. I will ask him for a load of timber for your rebuilding, and I think he will let me have it. I am asking no other portion before I go into the king's service at Shrewsbury. If the abbey can supply a cart to transport it, or one can be hired? Eudo's carts cannot be spared for so long."

This practical offer Herluin received with more warmth. He was still resentful, Cadfael thought, of his failure to overwhelm all argument and take the backslider home with him, not for the promised month, but for life. Not that Sulien himself was of such great value, but Herluin was not accustomed to being so stoutly resisted. All barricades should have fallen like the walls of Jericho at the blast of his trumpet.

Still, he had extracted all he could, and prepared to take his leave. Tutilo, all attentive ears and modestly lowered eyes in his corner, opened the chest quietly, and laid away the psaltery he had been clasping to his heart. The very gentleness with which he laid it within and slowly closed the lid over it brought a small, thoughtful twist to Donata's ashen mouth.

"I have a favour to ask," she said, "if you will hear it. Your songbird here has given me delight and ease. If I am sometimes sleepless and in pain, will you lend me that consolation for an hour, while you remain in Shrewsbury? I will not send unless I need him. Will you let him come?"

If Herluin was taken aback at such a request, he was nevertheless shrewdly aware that she had him at a disadvantage, though in all probability, thought Cadfael, interested, he was hoping that she was less aware of it. In which hope he was certainly deluded. She knew very well he could hardly refuse her. To send a susceptible novice to provide music for a woman, and a woman in her bed, at that, was unthinkable, even scandalous. Except that this woman was now so closely acquainted with death that the subtle creaking of the opening door was present in her voice, and the transparent pallor of the bodyless soul in her face. She was no longer responsive to the proprieties of this world, nor afraid of the dread uncertainties of the next.

"Music medicines me to peace," she said, and waited patiently for his submission. And the boy in the corner stood mute and pa.s.sive, but beneath the long, lowered lashes the amber-gold eyes glowed, pleased, serious and wary.