Cadfael could have told him, but kept his mouth very firmly closed, though it would have been interesting to answer the query, and hear how this subtle man would respond. It was even tempting, for here was a man who would have appreciated every irony. Robert Bossu had pursued the dispute here to Shrewsbury in search of diversion in a time of frustration and inaction, a pity he must be denied the best of the joke that was so much more than merely a joke. That would still have to be shared only with Hugh, who knew the best and the worst of his friend Cadfael. No, there was one more who knew everything. Surely Saint Winifred sometimes remembered and smiled, in her tranquil sleep in Gwytherin, even laughed when she roused to extend the sunrays of her grace to lift up a lame boy here in Shrewsbury.
And in a way this answer, like the first, was astonishingly appropriate, brandishing a secret truth and a paradox before a man who would have appreciated it to the full, but could not be let into the secret. If his will was to tantalize and bewilder, why should not she take her own gentle revenge?
“I am in the same case as you,” said the abbot, and smiled. “I listen and labour to understand. It may be that we must wait until all has been answered before hoping for enlightenment. Shall we proceed, and wait for revelation?”
“Willingly!” said the earl, and turned to descend the three steps, the skirts of his crimson surcoat swirling around him. From this angle, stepping down with the altar candles behind him, his high shoulder and the bulge behind it scarcely broke the symmetry of a body beautifully compact and admirably handled. He withdrew at once to a gracious distance, not to disturb in any way the privacy and composure of the next contender, and his two young squires, well-trained to be equally unobtrusive in attendance, drew in silently at either shoulder.
If he plays games to while away the tedious time, thought Cadfael, he plays them by noble rules, even those he makes up as he goes. Hugh liked him from the first; and so do I like him, I like him very well. And it entered his mind uninvited to wonder about the strangeness of human relationships. What has such a man as this, he marvelled, to do with our loud, headlong, candid Stephen, who charges at events like a stamping bull? For that matter, now that I see them for this moment so clearly, what has Hugh to do with the king, either? Must not all such thinking souls be growing hideously weary with this long contention that makes no progress, that wastes men and harvests and the very wellbeing of the land? Weary not only with Stephen, but also, perhaps even more, with this lady who sinks her teeth into empire and will not let go. Somewhere there must be an inheritor of more promise, a hint before sunrise of a sun fit to disperse doubts like morning mists, and dazzle out of our vision both king and empress, with all the confusion, chaos and waste they have visited upon this land.
“Father Herluin,” said Radulfus, “will you assay?” Herluin advanced upon the altar very slowly, as though these few paces, and the climbing of the three steps, must be utilized to the full for prayer, and passionate concentration on this single effort which would make or break for him a dear ambition. In his long, pale lantern face his eyes burned darkly, like half-consumed embers. For all his eagerness, when he came to the testing time he hesitated to touch, and two or three times poised his hands over the book, only to withdraw them again from contact. An interesting study, this of the varying techniques with which different men approached the moment of truth. Robert Bossu had stood the book briskly on edge between his flattened palms, parted the leaves with both thumbs, opened them fully, and poised a finger wherever chance guided it. Herluin, when finally he did touch, touched as if the vellum might burn him, timidly and convulsively, and even when he had the book open, for better or worse, agonized a few moments over where to choose on the page, shifting from recto to verso and back again before settling. Once committed, he drew breath hard, and stooped nearsightedly to see what fate had granted him. And swallowed, and was silent.
“Read!” Radulfus prompted him delicately.
There was no help for it. His voice grated, but he spoke out clearly, perhaps even a little louder than was natural because it cost him such an effort to get it out at all. “It is the thirteenth chapter of Luke, the twenty-seventh verse. “ ‘I tell you, I know you not, whence you came. Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity...’ “ He lifted his head, his face grey with outrage, and firmly closed the book before he looked round at all the carefully respectful countenances ringing him round like the pales of a fence, a barrier through which he found the only dignified way, at someone else’s expense. “I have been shamefully beguiled and deceived. She shows me my fault, that ever I trusted a liar and thief. It was not with her will, not at her command, that Brother Tutilo, dare I even call him Brother still?, stole her away, and worse, in the blackness of his offence brought another innocent soul into sin, if not to his death. His crime is blasphemy no less than theft, for from the beginning he lied impiously, saying he had his revelation from the saint, and he has covered his offence ever since with lie after lie. Now she has clearly given me to know his villainy, and shown that all this wandering since her abduction she has indeed herself devised, to return to this place from which she was taken. Father Abbot, I withdraw with grief and humility. Such pity as she well may have felt for Ramsey in its distress, he has traduced and despoiled, and here we have no rights. I acknowledge it with tears, and pray her pardon!”
For himself! Certainly not for that hapless lad sleeping in a narrow stone cell at this moment. Small pardon there would be for him if Herluin had his way. Every pang of this humiliation would be visited upon Tutilo, as every particle of guilt was being visited upon him now, the more successfully to extricate Herluin, innocent and devout, only wickedly deceived, with nothing to repent but his too profound faith.
“Wait!” said Abbot Radulfus. “Make no judgements yet. It is possible to deceive oneself, no less than others. In the first anger no man should be condemned. And the saint has not yet spoken to us of Shrewsbury.”
Only too true, reflected Cadfael, for she may well have some strictures to level at us, no less than at Ramsey. How if she chooses this moment and this audience to make it known that she visits us only out of pure charity, that what lies in her handsome reliquary is in reality the body of the young man who committed murder to secure her for Shrewsbury, and himself died by accident, in circumstances that made it vital he should vanish? A worse offence than Tutilo committed in a similar cause, to win her for Ramsey. In laying her reverently back in the grave from which he had taken her, and sealing the murderer in her abandoned coffin, Cadfael had been and still was convinced that he did her will, and restored her to the resting-place she desired. But was it not possible that Tutilo had believed just as sincerely?
The one venture the saint had just condemned. Now to put the other to the test! Lucky for Prior Robert that this moment at least he approached in absolute innocence. But I, thought Cadfael, on thorns, may be about to pay in full for all my sins.
Well, it was fair!
Prior Robert may have had some qualms concerning his own worthiness, though that was a weakness to which he seldom succumbed. He ascended the steps of the altar very solemnly, and joined his hands before his face for a final convulsive moment of prayer, his eyes closed. Indeed, he kept them closed as he opened the Gospels, and planted his long index finger blindly upon the page. By the length of the pause that followed, before he opened his eyes and looked dazedly down to see what fate had granted him, he went in some devout fear of his deserving. Who would ever have expected the pillar of the house to shake?