The Holy Thief

Chapter Two

“NO QUESTION NOW how he got his name,” said Cadfael, lingering in Brother Anselm’s workshop in the cloister after High Mass next morning. “Sweet as a lark.” They had just heard the lark in full song, and had paused in the precentor’s corner carrel to watch the worshippers disperse, the lay visitors from the guesthall among them. For those who sought lodging here it was politic and graceful, if not obligatory, to attend at least the main Mass of the day. February was not a busy month for Brother Denis the hospitaller, but there were always a few travellers in need of shelter.

“The lad’s immensely talented,” agreed Anselm. “A true ear and an instinct for harmony.” And he added, after a moment’s consideration: “Not a voice for choral work, however. Too outstanding. There’s no hiding that grain among a bushel.”

No need to stress the point, the justice of that verdict was already proved. Listening to that pure, piercingly sweet thread, delivered so softly, falling on the ear with such astonishment, no one could doubt it. There was no way of subduing that voice into anonymity among the balanced polyphony of a choir. Cadfael wondered if it might not be equally shortsighted to try and groom its owner into a conforming soul in a disciplined brotherhood.

“Brother Denis’s Provencal guest pricked up his ears,” remarked Anselm, “when he heard the lad. Last night he asked Herluin to let the boy join him at practice in the hall. There they go now. I have his rebec in for restringing. I will say for him, he cares for his instruments.”

The trio crossing the cloister from the south door of the church was a cause of considerable curiosity and speculation among the novices. It was not often the convent housed a troubador from the south of France, obviously of some wealth and repute, for he travelled with two servants and lavish baggage. He and his entourage had been here three days, delayed in their journey north to Chester by a horse falling lame. Rémy of Pertuis was a man of fifty or so, of striking appearance, a gentleman who valued himself on his looks and presentation. Cadfael watched him cross towards the guesthall; he had not so far had occasion to pay him much attention, but if Anselm respected him and approved his musical conscience he might be worth studying. A fine, burnished head of russet hair and a clipped beard. Good carriage and a body very handsomely appointed, fur lining his cloak, gold at his belt. And two attendants following close behind him, a tall fellow somewhere in his mid-thirties, all muted brown from head to foot, his good but plain clothing placing him discreetly between squire and groom, and a woman, cloaked and hooded, but by her slender figure and light step young.

“What’s his need for the girl?” Cadfael wondered.

“Ah, that he has explained to Brother Denis,” said Anselm, and smiled. “Meticulously! Not his kin...”

“I never thought it,” said Cadfael.

“But you may have thought, as I certainly did when first they rode in here, that he had a very particular use for her, as indeed he has, though not as I imagined it.” Brother Anselm, for all he had come early to the cloister, had fathomed most of the byways that were current outside the walls, and had long ago ceased to be either surprised or shocked by them. “It’s the girl who performs most of his songs. She has a lovely voice, and he values her for it, and highly, but for nothing else, so far as I can see. She’s an important part of his stock in trade.”

“But what,” wondered Cadfael, “is a minstrel from the heart of Provence doing here in the heart of England? And plainly no mere jongleur, but a genuine troubadour. He’s wandered far from home, surely?”

And yet, he thought, why not? The patrons on whom such artists depend are becoming now as much English as French, or Norman, or Breton, or Angevin. They have estates both here and oversea, as well seek them here as there. And the very nature of the troubadour, after all, is to wander and venture, as the Galician word trobar, from which they take their name, though it has come to signify to create poetry and music, literally means to find. Those who find, seek and find out the poetry and the music both, these are the troubadours. And if their art is universal, why should they not be found everywhere?

“He’s heading for Chester,” said Anselm. “So his man says, Bénezet, he’s called. It may be he hopes to get a place in the earl’s household. But he’s in no haste, and plainly in no want of money. Three good riding horses and two servants in his following is pretty comfortable travelling.”

“Now I wonder,” said Cadfael, musing darkly, “why he left his last service? Made himself too agreeable to his lord’s lady, perhaps? Something serious, to make it necessary to cross the sea.”

“I am more interested,” said Anselm, undisturbed by such a cynical view of troubadours in general, “in where he got the girl. For she is not French, not Breton, not from Provence. She speaks the English of these borders, and some Welsh. It would seem she is one property he got this side the ocean. The groom, Bénezet, he’s a southerner like his master.”

The trio had vanished into the guesthall by then, their entangled lives still as mysterious as when they had first entered the enclave. And in some few days, if the roads stayed passable and the lame horse mended, they would depart just as enigmatically, like so many who took refuge under that hospitable roof a day, a week, and then passed, leaving nothing of themselves behind. Cadfael shook himself free of vain wondering about souls that passed by as strangers, and sighed, and went back into the church to say a brief word into Saint Winifred’s ear before going to his work in the garden.

Someone was before him in needing Saint Winifred’s attention, it seemed. Tutilo had something to ask of the saint, for he was kneeling on the lowest step of her altar, sharply outlined against the candle-light. He was so intent upon his prayer that he did not hear Cadfael’s steps on the tiles. His face was lifted to the light, eager and vehement, and his lips were moving rapidly and silently in voluble appeal, and by his wide-open eyes and flushed cheeks with every confidence of being heard and having his plea granted. What Tutilo did, he did with his might. For him a simple request to heaven, through the intercession of a kindly disposed saint, was equal to wrestling with angels, and out-arguing doctors of divinity. And when he rose from his knees it was with an exultant spring in his step and tilt to his chin, as though he knew he had carried his point.

When he did sense another presence, and turn to face the newcomer, it was with the most demure and modest front, abating his brightness and exuberance as smoothly as he had diverted his love song into liturgical piety for Herluin’s benefit in Donata’s bedchamber. True, when he recognized Cadfael his devout gravity mellowed a little, and a subdued gleam came back cautiously into his amber eyes.

“I was praying her aid for our mission,” he said. “Today Father Herluin preaches at the High Cross in the town. If Saint Winifred lends us aid we cannot fail.”

His eyes turned again to the reliquary on the altar, and lingered lovingly, wide with wonder.

“She has done miraculous things. Brother Rhun told me how she healed him and took him to be her true servant. And other such marvels... many... When the day of her translation comes round, every year, there are hundreds of pilgrims, Brother Jerome says so. I have been asking him about all the treasury of relics your house has gathered here. But she is the chief, and incomparable.”

Brother Cadfael certainly had nothing to object to that. Indeed there were some among the treasury of relics amassed by obedientiaries here over the years about which he felt somewhat dubious. Stones from Calvary and the Mount of Olives, well, stones are stones, every hill has a scattering of them, there is only the word of the purveyor as to the origin of any particular specimen. Fragments of bones from saints and martyrs, a drop of the Virgin’s milk, a shred of her robe, a little flask of the sweat of Saint John the Baptist, a tress from the red hair of Saint Mary Magdalen... all easily portable, and no doubt some of the returning pilgrims from the Holy Land were genuine, and believed in the genuineness of what they offered, but in some cases Cadfael wondered whether they had ever been nearer Acre than Eastcheap. But Saint Winifred he knew well, he had lifted her out of the Welsh earth with his own hands, and with his own hands laid her reverently back into it, and drawn the sweet soil of Gwytherin over her rest. What she had bequeathed to Shrewsbury and to him in absence was the sheltering shadow of her right hand, and a half-guilty, half-sacred memory of an affection and kindness almost personal. When he appealed, she listened. He tried to present her with only reasonable requests. But no doubt she would listen as attentively to this persuasive and enthusiastic youth, and grant him, perhaps not all he demanded, but whatever was good for him.

“If only,” breathed Tutilo, burning up into his brightest and most irresistible radiance, “if only Ramsey had such a patroness, our future glory would be assured. All our misfortunes would be over. Pilgrims would come by the thousand, their offerings would enrich our house. Why should we not be another Compostela?”

“It may be your duty,” Cadfael reminded him drily,”to work for the enrichment of your monastery, but that is not the first duty of the saints.”

“No, but that is what happens,” said Tutilo, unabashed. “And surely Ramsey needs and deserves a particular grace, after all her sufferings. It cannot be wrong to plead for her enrichment. I want nothing for myself.” That he corrected in haste the next moment. “Yes, I want to excel. I want to be profitable to my brothers and my Order. That I do want.”

“And that,” Cadfael said comfortably, “she will certainly look upon with favour. And so you are profitable. With gifts like yours you should count yourself blessed. You go and do your best for Ramsey in the town, and give as good when you get to Worcester, or Pershore, or Evesham, and what more can possibly be required of you?”

“What I can, I’ll do,” agreed Tutilo, with a great deal of resolution, but decidedly less genuine enthusiasm, and his eyes still dwelling fondly on Winifred’s chased reliquary, points of silver shining in the candlelight. “But such a patroness... what could she not do to restore our fortunes! Brother Cadfael, can you not tell us where to find such another?”

He took his leave almost reluctantly, looking back from the doorway, before he shook his shoulders firmly, and went off to submit himself to Herluin’s orders, and undertake, one way or another, to unloose the purse-strings of the burghers of Shrewsbury.

Cadfael watched the slender, springy figure stride away, and found something slightly equivocal even in the back view of the overlong curls, and the tender, youthful shaping of the nape of the neck. Ah, well! Few people are exactly what they seem on first acquaintance, and he hardly knew the boy at all.

They sallied forth in solemn procession to the town, Prior Robert lending his dignified presence to add to the gravity of the occasion. The sheriff had notified the provost and Guild Merchant of the town, and left it to them to make sure that the whole of Shrewsbury recognized its duty, and would be present. Alms to so eminent a religious house in its persecution and need provided an infallible means of acquiring merit, and there must be many in so large a town willing to pay a modest price to buy off reprobation for minor backslidings.

Herluin returned from his foray so clearly content with himself, and Tutilo bearing so heavy a satchel, that it was plain they had reaped a very satisfactory harvest. The following Sunday’s sermon from the parish pulpit added to the spoils. The coffer Radulfus had donated to receive offerings grew heavier still. Moreover, three good craftsmen, master-carpenter and two journeyman masons, proposed to go back with the Ramsey men and seek work in the rebuilding of the gutted barns and storehouses. The mission was proceeding very successfully. Even Rémy of Pertuis had given good silver coin, as became a musician who had composed liturgical works in his time for two churches in Provence.

They were scarcely out of church after the Mass when a groom came riding in from Longner, with a spare pony on a leading rein, to prefer a request from the Lady Donata. Would Sub-Prior Herluin, she entreated, permit Brother Tutilo to visit her? The day being somewhat advanced, she had sent a mount for his journey, and promised a return in time for Compline. Tutilo submitted himself to his superior’s will with the utmost humility, but with shining eyes. To return unsupervised to Donata’s psaltery, or the neglected harp in the hall at Longner, would be appropriate reward for piping to Herluin’s tune with such devotion during the day.

Cadfael saw him ride out from the gatehouse, the childish delight showing through plainly by then; delight at being remembered and needed, delight at riding out when he had expected only a routine evening within the walls. Cadfael could appreciate and excuse that. The indulgent smile was still on his face as he went to tend certain remedies he had working in his herbarium. And there was another creature just as shiningly young, though perhaps not as innocent, hovering at the door of his hut, waiting for him.

“Brother Cadfael?” questioned Rémy of Pertuis’ 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 practise 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 susbtantial honour 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 fervour. “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 woman, 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 judgement.

“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, sending 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 labour 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.

“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 Foregate; 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 neighbouring 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 graves 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.