The Holy Thief

Chapter Ten

IN THE HORRIFIED HUSH THAT FOLLOWED, Prior Robert, guiding hand still uplifted and stricken motionless, was momentarily turned to stone, his face a mask of utter incredulity. That a creature of his should fall into mortal sin, and that of a violent kind, was astonishment enough, but that this pliable mortal should ever undertake personal action of any kind came as an even greater shock. And so it did to Brother Cadfael, though for him it was equally a shock of enlightenment. This poor soul, pallid and puffy on his bed after desperate vomiting, sick and quiet and unregarded ever since, spent and ulcered mind and spirit by what he had so mistakenly undertaken, Jerome was for the first time wholly pitiful.

Brother Rhun, youngest and freshest and the flower of the flock, went after his nature, asking no leave, and kneeled beside Jerome, circling his quaking shoulders with an embracing arm, and lifting the hapless penitent closer into his hold before he looked up confidently into the abbot’s face.

“Father, whatever else, he is ill. Suffer me to stay!”

“Do after your kind,” said Radulfus, looking down at the pair with a face almost as blanched as the prior’s, “and so must I. Jerome,” he said, with absolute and steely authority, “look up and face me.”

Too late now to withdraw this confession into privacy, even had that been the abbot’s inclination, for it had been spoken out before all the brothers, and as members of a body they had the right to share in the cure of all that here was curable. They stood their ground, mute and attentive, though they came no nearer. The half-circle had spread almost into a circle.

Jerome had listened, and was a little calmed by the tone. The voice of command roused him to make an effort. He had shed the first and worst load, and as soon as he lifted his head and made to rise on his knees, Rhun’s arm lifted and sustained him. A distorted face appeared, and gradually congealed into human lineaments. “Father, I obey,” said Jerome. “I want confession. I want penance. I have sinned most grievously.”

“Penance in confession,” said the abbot, “is the beginning of wisdom. Whatever grace can do, it cannot follow denial. Tell us what it is you did, and how it befell.”

The lame recital went on for some time, while Jerome, piteously small and shrunken and wretched, kneeled in Rhun’s supple, generous arm, with that radiant, silent face beside him, to point searing differences. The scope of humanity is terrifyingly wide.

“Father, when it became known that Saint Winifred’s relics had been loaded with the timber for Ramsey, when there was no longer any doubt of how it came there, for we knew, every man of us, that there was none, for who else could it have been?, then I was burning with anger against the thief who had dared such sacrilege against her, and such a gross offence against our house. And when I heard that he had asked and been given leave to go forth to Longner that night, I feared he meant to escape us, either by absence, or even by flight, having seen justice might overtake him yet. I could not bear it that he should go free. I confess it, I hated him! But, Father, I never meant to kill, when I slipped out alone, and went to wait for him on the path by which I knew he must return. I never intended violence. I hardly know what I meant to do, confront him, accuse him, bring it home to him that hellfire awaited him at the reckoning if he did not confess his sin and pay the price of it now.”

He paused to draw painful breath, and the abbot asked: “You went empty-handed?” A pertinent question, though Jerome in his throes failed to understand it.

“Surely, Father! What should I want to take with me?”

“No matter! Go on.”

“Father, what more can there be? I thought, when I heard him coming down through the bushes, it could be no one but Tutilo. I never knew by what road the other man would come; for all I knew he had already been, and gone again, and all in vain, as the thief intended. And this one, So jauntily he came, striding along in the dark, whistling profane songs. Offence piled upon offence, so lightly to take everything mortal... I could not endure it. I picked up a fallen branch, and as he passed I struck him on the head. I struck him down,” moaned Jerome, “and he fell across the path, and the cowl fell back from his head. He never moved hand again! I went close, I kneeled, and I saw his face then. Even in the dark I saw enough. This was not my enemy, not the saint’s enemy, not the thief! And I had killed him! I fled him then... Sick and shaking, I fled him and hid myself, but every moment since he has pursued me. I confess my grievous sin, I repent it bitterly, I lament the day and the hour ever I raised hand against an innocent man. But I am his murderer!”

He bowed himself forward into his arms and hid his face. Muted sounds emerged between his tearing sobs, but no more articulate words. And Cadfael, who had opened his mouth to continue the story where this miserable avenger had left it, as quickly closed his lips again upon silence. Jerome had surely told all he knew, and if the burden he was carrying was even more than his due, yet he could be left to carry it a while longer. ‘Brother shall deliver up brother to death’ could be said to be true of Jerome, for if he had not killed he had indeed delivered Aldhelm to his death. But if what had followed was also the work of a brother, then the murderer might be present here. Let well alone! Let him go away content, satisfied that this solution offered in terrible good faith by Jerome had been accepted without question by all, and that he himself was quite secure. Men who believe themselves out of all danger may grow careless, and make some foolish move that can betray them. In private, yes, for the abbot’s ear alone, truth must be told. Jerome had done foully, but not so foully as he himself and all here believed. Let him pay his dues in full, but not for someone else’s colder, viler crime.

“This is a very sombre and terrible avowal,” said Abbot Radulfus, slowly and heavily, “not easily to be understood or assessed, impossible, alas, to remedy. I require, and surely so do all here, time for much prayer and most earnest thought, before I can begin to do right or justice as due. Moreover, this is a matter outside my writ, for it is murder, and the king’s justice has the right to knowledge, if not immediately to possession, of the person of a confessed murderer.”

Jerome was past all resistance, whatever might have been urged or practised against him. Emptied and drained, he submitted to all. The disquiet and consternation he had set up among the brothers would go on echoing and reechoing for some time, while he who had caused it had recoiled into numbness and exhaustion.

“Father,” he said meekly, “I welcome whatever penance may be laid upon me. I want no light absolution. My will is to pay in full for all my sins.”

Of his extreme misery at this moment there could be no doubt. When Rhun in his kindness lent an arm to raise him from his knees, he hung heavily still, clinging to his desperate humility.

“Father, let me go from here. Let me be desolate and hidden from men’s eyes...”

“Solitude you shall have,” said the abbot, “but I forbid despair. It is too soon for counsel or judgement, but never too soon or too late for prayer, if penitence is truly felt.” And to the prior he said, without taking his eyes from the broken creature on the tiles of the floor, like a crushed and crumpled bird: “Take him in charge. See him lodged. And now go, all of you, take comfort and pursue your duties. At all times, in all circumstances, our vows are still binding.”

Prior Robert, still stonily silent and shocked out of his normal studied dignity, led away his shattered clerk to the second of the two penitentiary cells; and it was the first time, as far as Cadfael could recall, that the two had ever been occupied at the same time. Sub-Prior Richard, decent, comfortable, placid man, marshalled the other ranks out to their ordinary labours, and to the refectory shortly afterwards for dinner, and by his own mildly stupid calm had calmed his flock into a perfectly normal appetite by the time they went to wash their hands before the meal.

Herluin had sensibly refrained from playing any part in the affair, once it turned towards the partial restoration of Ramsey’s credit and the grievous embarrassment of Shrewsbury. He would welcome the earl’s promised offering gladly, and withdraw in good order to his own monastery, though what he would visit on Tutilo when he got him safely back there might be dreadful to think of. He was not a man to forget and forgive.

As for the withdrawal from the battlefield of Robert Bossu, that restless, conscientious, subtle and efficient man, it was a model of consideration and tact, as always, with a quiet word to Abbot Radulfus, and a sharp glance at his two squires, who understood him at the lift of an eyebrow or the flash of a smile. He knew when to make use of his status, and when and how to temper its brilliance and make himself unobtrusive among a multitude.

Brother Cadfael waited his opportunity to draw close to the abbot’s shoulder as he left the choir.

“Father, a word! There is more to be added to this story, though not publicly, perhaps, not yet.”

“He has not lied, as well as murdered?” said the abbot, without turning his head. His voice was grim, but pitched no further than Cadfael’s ear.

“Neither the one nor the other, Father, if what I believe is true. He has told all he knows, and all he thinks he knows, and I am sure he has kept nothing back. But there are things he does not know, and the knowledge will somewhat better a case which even so is still black enough. Give me audience alone, and then judge what should be done.”

Radulfus had halted in mid-stride, though still not looking round. He watched the last of the brothers slip away still awed and silent through the cloister, and followed with a glance the swirl of Robert Bossu’s crimson skirts as he crossed the court with his two attendants at his heels.

“You say we have as yet only heard the half, and the worse half of all that is to be told? The young man is coffined decently, his own priest takes him hence today to Upton, for burial among his people. I would not wish to delay his departure.”

There is no need,” said Cadfael. “He has told me all he had to tell. I would not for the world keep him from his rest. But what I have to add, though I had the proofs of it from his body, and from the place where he was found, I have but now understood clearly. All that I saw was seen also by Hugh Beringar, but after what has come to light this morning these details fall into place.”

“In that case,” said Radulfus, after some thought, “before we go further, I think Hugh should join us. I need his counsel, as he may need yours and mine both. The thing happened beyond our walls, and is not within my jurisdiction, though the offender may be. Church and State must respect and assist each other, even in these fractured and sorry times. For if we are two, justice should be one. Cadfael, will you go into the town, and ask Hugh to come into conference here this afternoon? Then we will hear all that you may have to tell.”

“Very willingly I will go,” said Cadfael.

“And how,” demanded Hugh over his midday table, “are we to take this chapter of wonders you’ve been unfolding this morning? Am I to believe in it, that every response should come so neatly, as if you had been through the Gospels and marked all the places to trap each enquirer? Are you sure you did not?”

Cadfael shook his head decisively. “I do not meddle with my saint. I played fair, and so, I swear, did they all, for there was no mark, no leaf notched for a guide, when I handled the book before any other came near. I opened it, and I got my answer, and it set me thinking afresh and seeing clearly where I had formerly been blind. And how to account for it I do not know, unless indeed it was she who spoke.”

“And all the oracles that followed? Ramsey not only rejected but denounced... That came a little hard on Herluin, surely! And with Earl Robert the saint condescended to tease him with a paradox! Well, I won’t say but that was fair enough, a pity he has not the key he needs to read it, it would give him pleasure. And then, to Shrewsbury, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.’ I take that as a warning rather than an acknowledgement. She chose you, and she can as well abandon you if she chooses, and you had better be on your guard in future, for she won’t put up with another such turmoil upsetting her established rule. Meant especially for Prior Robert, I should hazard, who indeed thinks he chose her and ranks as her proprietor. I hope he took the allusion?”

“I doubt it,” said Cadfael. “He wore it like a halo.”

“And then finally, Cadfael, for the leaves to turn of themselves, and open again at that same place. Too many miracles for one morning!”

“Miracles,” said Cadfael somewhat sententiously, “may be simply divine manipulation of ordinary circumstances. Why not? For as to the last oracle, the Gospels had been left open, and there was a wind blew through from the south doorway and ruffled the pages over, turning back from John to Matthew. It’s true that no one came in, but I think someone must have lifted the latch and set the door ajar, and then after all drawn back and closed it again, hearing the voices within and not wanting to interrupt. No mistake about the wind, everyone felt it. And then, you see, it halted where it did because there were some petals and fragments from the blackthorn I had been handling fallen into the spine there, shaken out of my sleeve or my hair when I closed the book. Such a slight obstruction was not enough to affect the taking of the sortes, when they were opening the book with ceremony, both hands parting the leaves and a finger pointing the line. But when the wind turned the leaves, the blackthorn flowers were enough to arrest the movement at that place. Yet even so, dare we call that chance? And now that I come to think back,” said Cadfael, shaking his head between doubt and conviction, “that wind that blew in was gone before ever the page settled. I watched the last one turn, slowly, halting before it was smoothed down. The air above the altar was quite still. The candles were stark erect, never a tremor.”

Aline had sat throughout this colloquy listening attentively to every word, but contributing none of her own. There was about her something distant and mysterious, Cadfael thought, as if a part of her being was charmed away into some private and pleasant place, even while her blue eyes dwelt upon her husband and his friend with sharp intelligence, following the argument back and forth with a kind of indulgent and amused affection, appropriate to a matriarch, watching her children.

“My lady,” said Hugh, catching her eye and breaking into a resigned grin, “my lady, as usual, is making fun of both of us.”

“No,” said Aline, suddenly serious, “it is only that the step from perfectly ordinary things into the miraculous seems to me so small, almost accidental, that I wonder why it astonishes you at all, or why you trouble to reason about it. If it were reasonable it could not be miraculous, could it?”

In the abbot’s parlour they found not only Radulfus, but Robert of Leicester waiting for them. As soon as the civil greetings were over the earl with his nicely-judged courtesy made to withdraw.

“You have business here which is out of my writ and competence, and I would not wish to complicate the affair for you. The lord abbot here has been good enough to admit me to his confidence so far as is appropriate, since I was a witness of what happened this morning, but now you have cause to enquire further, as I understand. I have lost my small claim to the saint,” said Robert Bossu, with a flashing smile and a shrug of his high shoulder, “and should be about taking my leave here.”

“My lord,” said Hugh heartily, “the king’s peace, such as it is and as we manage to maintain it, is very much your business, and your experience in it is longer than mine. If the lord abbot agrees, I hope you will stay and give us the benefit of your judgement. There’s matter to assess concerning murder. Every man’s business, having a life to keep or lose.”

“Stay with us!” said Radulfus. “Hugh is right, we need all the good counsel we can get.”

“And I have as much human curiosity in me as the next man,” owned the earl, and willingly sat down again. The abbot tells me there is more to add to what we witnessed here this morning. I take it, sir, you have been informed, as far as the tale yet carries us?”

“Cadfael has told me,” said Hugh, “how the sortes went, and of Brother Jerome’s confession. He assures me we both, from what he and I saw on the spot, can go beyond what Jerome himself knows.”

Cadfael settled himself beside Hugh on the cushioned bench against the abbot’s dark panelling. Outside the window the light was still full and clear, for the days were drawing out. Spring was not far away when the spiny mounds of blackthorn along the headlands of the fields turned from black to white, like drifts of snow.

“Brother Jerome has told truth, the whole truth as he knows it, but it is not the whole. You saw him, he was in no case and no mind to hold anything back, nor has he done so. Recall, Father, what he said, how he stood and waited. So he did, we found the place, just withdrawn into the bushes by the path, where he had trampled uneasily and flattened the grass. How he snatched up a fallen branch, when the young man came down the path, and struck him with it, and he fell senseless, and the hood fell back from his head. All true, we found, Hugh will bear me out, the branch lying where he had cast it aside. It was partly rotten, and had broken when he struck with it, but it was sound enough and heavy enough to stun. And the body lay as Jerome described, across the path, the hood fallen from his head and face. And Jerome says that on realizing what he had done, and believing that what he had done was murder, he fled, back here into hiding. So he did, and sick indeed he was, for Brother Richard found him grey and shaking on his bed, when he failed to attend at Compline. But he never said word but that he was ill, as plainly he was, and I gave him medicine. In confession now he has spoken of but one blow, and I am convinced he struck but once.”

“Certainly,” said Radulfus, thoughtfully frowning, “he said no word of any further assault. I do not think he was holding anything back.”

“No, Father, neither do I. He has gone creeping about us like a very sick man since that night, in horror of his own act. Now that one blow is borne out by the examination I made of Aldhelm’s head. At the back it was stained with a little blood, and in the rough texture of the wool I found fragments of tinder from the broken branch. The blow to the back of his head might lay him senseless a short while, but certainly had not broken his skull, and could not have killed him. Hugh, what do you say?”

“I say his head would have ached fiercely after it,” said Hugh at once, “but nothing worse. More, it would not have left him out of his wits above a quarter of an hour at the longest. The worst Jerome could do, perhaps, but not enough to do his quarry much harm.”

“So I say also. And he says he struck, looked close and knew his error, and fled the place. And I believe him.”

“I doubt he had the hardihood left to lie,” said the earl. “No very bold villain at the best of times, I should judge, and greatly in awe of the Gospel verdict today. Yet he was sure he had killed.”

“He fled in that terror,” said Cadfael, “and the next he heard was that Tutilo had found the man dead, and so reported him. What else should Jerome think?”

“And in spite of doubts,” the abbot reminded them wryly, “should not we still be thinking the same? He who had begun so terrible an undertaking, how can we be sure he did not, after all, stay and finish it?”

“We cannot be sure. Not absolutely sure. Not until we are sure of everything, and every detail is in the open. But I think he has told us truly, so far as he knows truth. For what followed was very different. Hugh will remember, and bear out all I have to tell.”

“I remember all too well,” said Hugh.

“A few paces lower down the path we found a pile of stones, long grown in there with mosses and lichens. There is limestone cropping out on the ridge above, and in places it breaks through the thin ground cover even among the trees below. In this heap the upper stone, though it was fitted carefully back into its bed, showed the sealing growths of moss disturbed and broken. Heavy, a double handful when I raised it. On the rough underside there was blood. Quite hidden when the stone was in place, but present. We brought the stone back with us to examine more closely. It was certainly the instrument of death. As Aldhelm’s blood was blackening on the stone, so fragments of lichen and stone-dust were embedded in Aldhelm’s wounds. His head was crushed, and the stone coldly fitted back into its mound. Unless a man looked close, it appeared undisturbed. In a week or so weather and growth would have sealed up again all the raw edges that betrayed its use. I ask myself, is this something of which Jerome could be capable? To wrench up a heavy stone, batter in the head of a man lying senseless, and then fit the stone coolly back into its former place? I marvel he ever steeled himself to hit hard enough to stun, and to break the branch in the blow, even though it was partly rotted. Remember that he says he then, in his fright at what he had done, went to peer at his victim, and found that he had struck down the wrong man. With Aldhelm he had no quarrel. And recollect, too, that no one had seen him, no one then knew he had ever left the enclave. He did what any timorous man in a panic would do, ran away and hid himself within the community, where he was known and respected, and no one would ever guess he had attempted such a deed.”

“So you are saying plainly,” said Earl Robert, attentive and still, “that there were two murderers, at least in intent, and this wretched brother, once he knew he had struck down the wrong man, had no reason in the world to wish him further harm.”

“That is what I believe,” said Cadfael.

“And you, my lord sheriff?”

“By all I know of Jerome,” said Hugh, “that is how I read it.”

“Then, by the same token,” said the earl, “you are saying that the man who finished the work was one who did have cause to want Aldhelm removed from the world, before he ever reached the abbey gatehouse. Not Tutilo, but Aldhelm. This one did know his man, and made sure he should never arrive. For the shepherd’s hood fell back when he fell. This time there was no mistake made, he was known, and killed not for another, but for himself.”

There was a brief, deep silence, while they looked at one another and weighed possibilities. Then Abbot Radulfus said slowly: “It is logical. The face was then exposed to view, though Jerome had to kneel and look closely, for the night was dark. But if he could distinguish and recognize, so could the other.”

“There is another point,” said Hugh. “I doubt if Aldhelm would have lain helpless for more than a quarter of an hour from that blow on the head. Whoever killed him, killed him within that time, for he had not stirred. There was no sign of movement. If his body jerked when he was struck again, and fatally, it was no more than an instant’s convulsion. The murderer must have been close. Perhaps he witnessed the first assault. Certainly he was on the spot within a very short time.” And he asked sharply: “Father, have you released Tutilo?”

“Not yet,” said Radulfus, unsurprised. Hugh’s meaning was plain enough. “Perhaps there should be no haste. You are right to remind us. Tutilo came down that same path and found the dead man. Unless, unless at that time he was still living. Yes, it could still have been Tutilo who finished what Jerome had begun.”

“He told me,” said Hugh, “as I think he told you, that he did not know in the darkness who the dead man might be. If the murderer had been before him, that would be truth. Even by daylight we could not tell who he was until Cadfael turned up the whole side of his face to the light. He told you, Father Abbot, how he put his hand upon the shattered left side of the dead man’s head. All that, everything about him, his bearing, his voice, the cold of horror that was on him, for he shook as he spoke of it, all rang true to me. And yet it may still be true that he came within minutes of Jerome’s flight, found the man only stunned, stooped close and knew him, for then knowing was possible, and killed him and only then took thought how to escape suspicion, and came running into the town, to me.”

“Neither of the pair of them looks a likely case,” said the earl consideringly,” to crush another man’s head with a stone, though there’s no saying what any man may do in extremes. But then to have the wit and the cold blood to fit the stone back and cover the traces, that could be out of reach of most of us. Well, you have them both under guard, there’s no haste.”

“There is a matter of timing,” said Cadfael. “You told me, Hugh, what the priest’s man of Upton said, how he parted from Aldhelm at Preston, while Aldhelm went on to the ferry.”

“At about six they separated,” Hugh confirmed positively. “From there, ferry and all, to the place where he was ambushed, would take him at the most half an hour. The ferryman speaks to the same effect. By half past six at the latest he reached the place where he died. If you can show me plainly where Tutilo was until past that hour, we may strike him from the roll and forget him.”