That was all that he had in mind, as Prior Robert, bewildered and displeased by what seemed to him very grudging acceptance of a duty that should have conveyed honour upon the recipient, waved Jerome imperiously to the altar.
“Come, we are waiting. Open prayerfully.”
The abbot had gently brushed the petals of blackthorn from the spine, and closed the Gospels. He stood aside to make way for Jerome to mount.
Jerome crept to the foot of the steps, and there halted, baulked, rather, like a startled horse, drew hard breath and assayed to mount, and then suddenly threw up his arms to cover his face, fell on his knees with a lamentable, choking cry, and bowed himself against the stone of the steps. From under the hunched shoulders and clutching arms a broken voice emerged in a stammering howl a stray dog might have launched into the night after company in its loneliness.
“I dare not... I dare not... She would strike me dead if I dared... No need, I submit myself, I own my terrible sin! I went out after the thief, I waited for him to return, and God pity me, I killed that innocent man!”
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.