Out of the longer silence while they all digested this fiat and readjusted to a suggestion so unexpected, the earl said with evident satisfaction, indeed, to Cadfael’s ears bordering on glee: “Agreed! There could be no fairer process. Father Abbot, grant us today and tomorrow to set our minds in order, examine our claims and take thought to pray only for what is due to us. And the third day let these sortes be taken. We will present our pleas to the lady herself, and accept whatever verdict she offers us.”
“Instruct me,” said Hugh an hour later, in Cadfael’s workshop in the herb garden. “I am not in the counsels of bishops and archbishops. Just how is the ordinance of heaven to be interpreted in these sortes Biblicae Radulfus has in mind? Oh, certainly I know the common practice of reading the future by opening the Evangel blindly, and laying a finger on the page, but what is this official use of it in consecrating a new bishop? Too late then, surely, to change him for a better if the word goes against him.”
Cadfael removed a simmering pot from the grid on the side of his brazier, set it aside on the earth floor to cool, and added a couple of turfs to damp down the glow, before straightening his back with some caution, and sitting down beside his friend.
“I have never been in attendance at such a consecration myself,” he said. “The bishops keep it within the circle. I marvel how the results ever leak out, but they do. Or someone makes them up, of course. Too sharp to be true, I sometimes feel. But yes, they are taken just as Abbot Radulfus said, and very solemnly, so I’m told. The book of the Gospels is laid on the shoulders of the newly chosen bishop, and opened at random, and a finger laid on the page, “
“By whom?” demanded Hugh, laying his own finger on the fatal flaw.
“Now that I never thought to ask. Surely the archbishop or bishop who is officiating. Though, granted, he could be friend or enemy to the new man. I trust they play fair, but who knows? Bad or good, that line is the prognostic for the bishop’s future ministry. Apt enough, sometimes. The good Bishop Wulstan of Worcester got: ‘Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.’ Some were not so lucky. Do you know, Hugh, what the sortes sent to Roger of Salisbury, who fell into Stephen’s displeasure not so many years ago and died disgraced? ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into outer darknesss.’”
“Hard to believe!” said Hugh, hoisting a sceptical eyebrow. “Did not someone think of pinning that on him after his fall? I wonder what was heaven’s response to Henry of Winchester when he achieved the bishopric? Even I can think of some lines that would come too near the knuckle for his liking.”
“I believe,” said Cadfael, “it was something from Matthew, concerning the latter days when false prophets would multiply among us. Something to the effect that if any man should claim: Here is Christ! do not believe him. But much can be done with the interpretation.”
“That will be the sticking point this time,” Hugh said shrewdly, “unless the Gospels speak all too plainly, and can’t be misread. Why do you suppose the abbot ever suggested it? Doubtless it could be arranged to give the right answers. But not, I suspect, with Radulfus in charge. Is he so sure of heaven’s justice?”
Cadfael had already been considering the same question, and could only conclude that the abbot had indeed total faith that the Gospels would justify Shrewsbury in possession of its saint. He never ceased to wonder at the irony of expecting miracles from a reliquary in which her bones had once lain for only three days and nights, before being returned reverently to her native Welsh earth; and even more to be wondered at, the infinite mercy that had transmitted grace through all those miles between, forgiven the presence of a sorry human sinner in the coffin she had quitted, and let the radiance of miracle remain invisibly about her altar, unpredictable, accessible, a shade wanton in where it gave and where it denied, as the stuff of miracles is liable to be, at least to the human view. She was not here, had never been here, never in what remained of her fragile flesh; yet she had certainly consented to let her essence be brought here, and manifested her presence with startling mercies.
“Yes,” said Cadfael, “I think he trusts Winifred to see right done. I think he knows that she never really left us, and never will.”
Cadfael came back to his workshop after supper, to make his final round for the night, damp down his brazier to burn slowly until morning, and make sure all his jars were covered and all his bottles and flasks stoppered securely. He was expecting no visitors at this hour, and swung about in surprise when the door behind him was opened softly, almost stealthily, and the girl Daalny came in. The yellow glow from his little oil lamp showed her in unusual array, her black hair braided in a red ribbon, with curls artfully breaking free around her temples, her gown deepest and brightest blue like her eyes, and a girdle of gold braid round her hips. She was very quick; she caught the glance that swept over her from head to foot, and laughed.
“My finery for when he entertains. I have been singing for his lordship of Leicester. Now they are talking intimate possibilities, so I slipped away. I shall not be missed now. I think Rémy will be riding back to Leicester with Robert Bossu, if he plays his cards cleverly. And I told you, he is a good musician. Leicester would not be cheated.”
“Is he in need of my medicines again?” asked Cadfael practically.
“No. Nor am I.” She was restless, moving uneasily about the hut as once before, curious but preoccupied, and slow to come to what had brought her on this errand. “Bénezet is saying that Tutilo is taken for murder. He says Tutilo killed the man he tricked into helping him to steal away your saint. That cannot be true,” she said with assured authority. “There is no harm and no violence in Tutilo. He dreams. He does not do.”
“He did more than dream when he purloined our saint,” Cadfael pointed out reasonably.
“He dreamed that before he did it. Oh, yes, he might thieve, that’s a different matter. He longed to give his monastery a wonderful gift, to fulfil his visions and be valued and praised. I doubt if he would steal for himself, but for Ramsey, yes, surely he would. He was even beginning to dream of freeing me from my slavery,” she said tolerantly, and smiled with the resigned amusement of one experienced beyond young Tutilo’s innocent understanding. “But now you have him somewhere under lock and key, and with nothing good to look forward to, whatever follows. If your saint is to remain here now, then even if Tutilo escapes the sheriffs law, if Herluin takes him back to Ramsey they’ll make him pay through his skin for what he attempted and failed to bring to success. They’ll starve and flay him. And if it goes the other way, and he’s called guilty of murder, then, worse, he’ll hang.” She had arrived, finally, at what she really wanted to know: “Where have you put him? I know he’s a prisoner.”
“He is in the first penitentiary cell, close to the passage to the infirmary,” said Cadfael. There are but two, we have few offenders in the general way of things. At least the locked door designed to keep him in also keeps his enemies out, if he can be said to have any enemies. I looked in on him not half an hour ago, and he is fast asleep, and by the look of him he’ll sleep until past Prime tomorrow.”
“Because he has nothing on his conscience,” Daalny snapped triumphantly, “just as I said.”
“I would not say he has always told us all the truth,” said Cadfael mildly, “if that’s a matter for his conscience. But I don’t grudge him his rest, poor imp, he needs it.”
She shrugged that off lightly, pouting long lips. “Of course he is a very good liar, that’s part of his fantasies. You would have to be very sure of him and of yourself to know when he’s lying, and when he’s telling the truth. One knows another!” she agreed defiantly, meeting Cadfael’s quizzical look. “I’ve had to be a good liar myself to keep my head above water all this time. So has he. But do murder? No, that’s far out of his scope.”