“Father Abbot, you were not with us in Gwytherin, or you would recognize this wonder. When the blessed saint visited us in the church there, as before in vision, she came with showers of may-blossom. The season is not yet ripe for the hawthorn flowers, but these... these she sends in their place, again the whiteness of her purity. It is a direct sign from Saint Winifred. What she confides to us we are bound by our office to heed.”
A stir and a murmur passed round the watching brothers, and softly they drew in more closely about the wonder. Somewhere among them someone drew breath sharp and painful as a sob, hurriedly suppressed.
“It is a matter of interpretation,” said Radulfus gravely. “How are we to understand such an oracle?”
“It speaks of death,” said the earl practically. “And there has been a death. The threat of it, as I understand, hangs over a young man of your Order. The shadow over all. This oracle speaks of a brother as the instrument of death, which fits with the case as it is yet known. But it speaks also of a brother as the victim. The victim was not a brother. How is this to be understood?”
“If she has indeed pointed the way,” said the abbot firmly, “we cannot but follow it. ‘Brother’ she says, and if we believe her word, a brother it was whose death was planned by a brother. The meaning that word has within these walls the saint knows as well as we. If any man among you has a thought to share upon this most urgent matter, speak now.”
Into the uneasy silence, while brother looked most earnestly at brother, and wondered, and sought or evaded the eyes of his neighbours, Brother Cadfael said: “Brother Abbot, I have thoughts to share that never visited me until this morning, but are become very relevant now. The night of this murder was dark, not only as to the hour, but also the weather, for cloud was low, and there was a drizzling rain. The place where Aldhelm’s body was found is within close woodland, untended, on a narrow path, where the only light would come from the open sky above the track. Enough to show a shape, an outline, to a man waiting, and with eyes accustomed to the dark. And the shape Aldhelm would present was that of a man young by his step and pace, in a dun-coloured cloak wrapped about him against the rain, and with the pointed hood drawn up over his head. Father, how is that to be distinguished, in such conditions, from a Benedictine brother in dark habit and cowl, if he be young and stepping out briskly to get out of the rain?”
“If I read you rightly,” said Radulfus, having searched Cadfael’s face, and found it in very grave earnest, “you are saying that the young man was attacked in mistake for a Benedictine brother.”
“It accords with what is written here in the fates,” said Cadfael.
“And with the night’s obscurity, I grant you. Are you further suggesting that the intended quarry was Brother Tutilo? That he was not the hunter, but the hunted?”
“Father, that thought is in my mind. In build and years the two matched well enough. And as all men know, he was out of the enclave that night, with leave, though leave he got by deceit. It was known on what path he would be returning, or at least, according to what he had led us all to believe. And, Father, be it admitted, he had done much to raise up enemies to himself in this house.”
“Brother turning upon brother...” said the abbot heavily. “Well, we are fallible men like the rest of mankind, and hatred and evil are not out of our scope. But, then, how to account for this second and deadly brother? There was no other out of the enclave upon any errand that night.”
“None that we know of. But it is not difficult,” said Cadfael,”to become unnoticed for a while. There are ways in and out for any who are determined to pass.”
The abbot met his eyes without a smile; he was always in command of his countenance. For all that, there was not much that went on in this household that Radulfus did not know. There had been times when Cadfael had both departed and returned by night, without passing the gatehouse, on urgent matters in which he found justification for absence. Of the instruments of good works listed in the Rule of Saint Benedict, second only to the love of God came the love of humankind, and Cadfael reverenced the Rule above the detailed and meticulous rules.
“No doubt you speak out of long experience,” said the abbot. “Certainly that is true. However, we know of no such defector on that night. Unless you have knowledge that I have not?”
“No, Father, I have none.”
“If I may venture,” said Earl Robert deprecatingly, “why should not the oracle that has spoken of two brothers be asked to send us a further sign? We are surely required to follow this trail as best we can. A name might be too much to ask, but there are other ways, as this blessed lady has shown us, of making all things plain.”
Gradually, almost stealthily, all the brothers had crept out of their stalls, and gathered in a circle about this altar and the group debating at its foot. They did not draw too close, but hovered within earshot of all that was said. And somewhere among them, not readily to be located, there was a centre of desperate but controlled unease, a disquiet that caused the air within the choir to quake, with a rapid vibration of disquiet and dread, like a heartbeat driven into the fluttering panic of a bird’s wings. Cadfael felt it, but thought it no more than the tension of the sortes. And that was enough. He himself was beginning to ache as though stretched on the rack, with the worst still to come. It was high time to end this, and release all these overcharged souls into the moist, chilly, healing air of early March.
“If in some sort the brothers all stand accused by this present word,” said Earl Robert helpfully, “it is they, the humbler children of the household, who have the best right to ask for a name. If you see fit, Father Abbot, let one of them appeal for a judgement. How else can all the rest be vindicated? Justice is surely due to the innocent, by even stronger right than retribution to the guilty.”
If he was still amusing himself, thought Cadfael, he was doing it with the eloquent dignity of archbishops and all the king’s judges. In jest or earnest, such a man would not wish to leave this human and more than human mystery unresolved. He would thrust and persuade it as far as he could towards an ending. And he had a willing listener in Prior Robert, his namesake. Now that the prior was assured of retaining his saint, together with all the lustre accruing to him as her discoverer and translator, he wanted everything tidied up and ended, and these troublesome visitors from Ramsey off his premises, before they contrived some further mischief.
“Father,” he said insinuatingly,”that is fair and just. May we do so?”
“Very well,” said Radulfus. “In your hands!”
The prior turned to cast a sweeping glance over the silent array of monks, watching him wide-eyed in anticipation and awe. The name he called was the inevitable name. He even frowned at having to look for his acolyte.
“Brother Jerome, I bid you undertake this testing on behalf of all. Come forth and make this assay.”
And indeed, where was Brother Jerome, and why had no word been heard from him and nothing seen of him all this time? When, until now, had he ever been far from the skirts of Prior Robert’s habit, attendant with ready flattery and obsequious assent to every word that fell from his patron’s lips. Now that Cadfael came to think of it, less than usual had been seen and heard of Jerome for the past few days, ever since the evening when he had been discovered on his bed, quaking and sick with belly-aches and headaches, and been soothed to sleep by Cadfael’s stomachics and syrups.
A furtive swirl of movement troubled the rear ranks of the assembled household, and cast up Brother Jerome from his unaccustomed retirement, emerging through the ranks without eagerness, almost reluctantly. He shuffled forward with bent head and arms folded tightly about his body as if he felt a mortal chill enclosing him. His face was greyish and pinched, his eyes, when he raised them, inflamed. He looked ill and wizened. I should have made a point of following up his sickness, thought Cadfael, touched, but I thought he, of all people, would make good sure he got all the treatment he needed.