“He made the excuse of being called to Longner,” said Hugh readily, “in order to be able to slip away and hide until the danger should be past and the witness departed, at least for that night. I doubt he looked beyond, it was the immediate threat he studied to avoid. Where he hid I know. It was in the loft of the abbey stable on the Horse Fair, and there is reasonable evidence he did not leave it until he heard the Compline bell. By which time Aldhelm was dead.”
“And is there any other voice to bear out this timing?”
“There is,” said Hugh, and offered nothing further.
“Well,” said Radulfus, sitting back with a sigh, “he is not in my hands but by chance, and I cannot, if I would, pass over his offence or lighten his penalty. Sub-Prior Herluin will take him back to Ramsey, to his own abbot, and while he is within my walls, I must respect Ramsey’s right, and hold him fast and securely until he leaves my gates.”
“He was not curious, he did not probe,” Hugh reported to Cadfael in the herb garden; his voice was appreciative and amused. “He accepted my assurance that I was satisfied Tutilo had done no murder and broken no law of the land, at least, none outside the Church’s pale, and that was enough for him. After all, he’ll be rid of the whole tangle by tomorrow, he has his own delinquent to worry about. Jerome is going to take a deal of absolving. But the abbot won’t do the one thing I suppose, as superior here, he could do, let our excommunicate come back into the services for this last night. He’s right, of course. Once they leave your gates, he’s no longer a responsibility of Shrewsbury’s, but until then Radulfus is forced to act for Ramsey as well as for his own household. Brother must behave correctly to brother, even if he detests him. I’m half sorry myself, but Tutilo remains in his cell. Officially, at any rate,” he added with a considering grin. “Even your backslidings, provided they offend only Church law, would be no affair of mine.”
“On occasions they have been,” said Cadfael, and let his mind stray fondly after certain memories that brought a nostalgic gleam to his eye. “It’s a long time since we rode together by night.”
“Just as well for your old bones,” said Hugh, and made an urchin’s face at him. “Be content, sleep in your bed, and let clever little bandits like your Tutilo sweat for their sins, and wait their time to be forgiven. For all we know the abbot of Ramsey is a good, humane soul with as soft a spot for minor sinners as you. And a sound ear for music, perhaps. That would serve just as well. If you turned him loose into the night now, how would he fare, without clothes, without food, without money?”
And it was true enough, Cadfael acknowledged. He would manage, no doubt, but at some risk. A shirt and chausses filched from some woman’s drying-ground, an egg or so from under a hen, a few pence wheedled out of travellers on the road with a song, a few more begged at a market, But no stone walls shutting him in, and no locked door, no uncharitable elder preaching him endless sermons on his unpardoned sins, no banishment into the stony solitude of excommunication, barred from the communal meal and from the oratory, having no communication with his fellows, and if any should be so bold and so kind as to offer him a comfortable word, bringing down upon him the same cold fate.
“All the same,” said Hugh, reflecting, “there’s justification in the Rule for leaving all doors open. After everything else has been visited on the incorrigible, what does the Rule say? ‘If the faithless brother leaves you, let him go.’”
Cadfael walked with him to the gatehouse when the long afternoon was stilling and chilling into the relaxed calm of the pre-Vesper hour, with the day’s manual work done. He had said no word of Bénezet’s bridle, and his visit to the Horse Fair stable, in presenting the mute witness of Tutilo’s breviary. Where there was no certainty, and nothing of substance to offer, he hesitated to advance a mere unsupported suspicion against any man. And yet he was loth to let pass any possibility of further discovery. To be left in permanent doubt is worse than unwelcome knowledge.
“You’ll be coming down tomorrow,” he said at the gate, “to see the earl’s party on their way? At what hour his lordship proposes to muster I’ve heard no word, but they’ll want to make good use of the light.”
“He’ll hear the first Mass before he goes,” said Hugh. “So I’m instructed. I’ll be here to see him leave.”
“Hugh... bring three or four with you. Enough to keep the gate if there should be any move to break out. Not enough for comment or alarm.”
Hugh had halted sharply, and was studying him shrewdly along his shoulder. “That’s not for the little brother,” he said with certainty. “You have some other quarry in mind?”
“Hugh, I swear to you I know nothing fit to offer you, and if anyone is to venture a mistaken move and make a great fool of himself, let it be me. But be here! A feather fluttering in the wind is more substantial than what I have, as at this moment. I may yet find out more. But make no move until tomorrow. In Robert Bossu’s presence we have a formidable authority to back us. If I venture, and fall on my nose pointing a foolish finger at an innocent man, well, a bloody nose is no great matter. But I do not want to call a man a murderer without very hard proof. Leave me handle it my way, and let everyone else sleep easy.”
Hugh was in two minds then about pressing him for every detail of what he had it in mind to do, and whatever flutter of a plume in the wind was troubling his mind; but he thought better of it. Himself and three or four good men gathered to see the distinguished guest depart, and two stout young squires besides their formidable lord, with such a guard, what could happen? And Cadfael was an old and practised hand, even without a cohort at his back.
“As you think best,” said Hugh, but thoughtfully and warily. “We’ll be here, and ready to read your signs. I should be lettered and fluent in them by now.”
His rawboned dapple-grey favourite was tethered at the gate. He mounted, and was off along the highway towards the bridge into the town. The air was very still, and there was enough lambent light to gleam dully like pewter across the surface of the mill pond. Cadfael watched his friend until the distant hooves rang hollow on the first stage of the bridge, and then turned back into the great court as the bell for Vespers chimed.
The young brother entrusted on this occasion with feeding the prisoners was just coming back from their cells to restore the keys to their place in the gatehouse, before repairing, side by side with Brother Porter, to the church for Vespers. Cadfael followed without haste, and with ears pricked, for there was undoubtedly someone standing close in shadow in the angle of the gate-pillar, flattened against the wall. She was wise, she did not call a goodnight to him, though she was aware of him. Indeed she had been there, close and still, watching him part from Hugh in the gateway. It could not be said that he had actually seen her, or heard any sound or movement; he had taken good care not to.
He spared a brief prayer at Vespers for poor, wretched Brother Jerome, seethed in his own venom, and shaken to a heart not totally shrivelled into a husk. Jerome would be taken back into the oratory in due course, subdued and humbled, prostrating himself at the threshold of the choir until the abbot should consider satisfaction had been made for his offence. He might even emerge affrighted clean out of his old self. It was a lot to ask, but miracles do sometimes happen.
Tutilo was sitting on the edge of his cot, listening to the ceaseless and hysterical prayers of Brother Jerome in the cell next to his. They came to him muffled through the stone, not as distinct words but as a keening lamentation so grievous that Tutilo felt sorry for the very man who had tried, if not to kill, at least to injure him. For the insistence of this threnody in his ears Tutilo was deaf to the sound the key made, grating softly in the lock, and the door was opened with such aching care, for fear of creaks, that he never turned his head until a muted voice behind him said: “Tutilo!”