Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

side of his head was a dark, misshapen blot of dried blood, a crusted darkness, the ruin on which Tutilo had laid his hand in the night, and sickened with horror.
    He looked composed enough now, standing a little apart in the fringe of bushes, staring steadily at what the night had hidden from him, with lids half-lowered over the dulled gold of his eyes, and his mouth shut too tightly, the only betrayal of the effort by which he maintained his stillness and calm. He had risen very early, from a bed probably sleepless, and led the way to this spot among the thickest of the woodland without a word beyond the whispered morning greeting, and obedient acknowledgement of any remarks directed at him. Small wonder, if his own account was truth, smaller still if today he was being forced back to a scene about which he had lied; lied to the law, lied to his superiors in the Order he had chosen of his own will and desire.
    Down there, pressed into the earth, the face, or most of it, was intact. Cadfael kneeled close by the shattered head, and slid a hand gently under the right cheek, to turn the face a little upward to be seen.
    "Can you name him?" asked Hugh, standing beside him. The question was directed at Tutilo, and could not be evaded; but there was no attempt at evasion. Tutilo said at once, in a still and careful voice: "I do not know his name."
    Surprising, but almost certainly true; those few moments at the end of a chaotic evening had never called for names. He had been as anonymous to Aldhelm as Aldhelm had been to him.
    "But you do know the man?"
    "I have seen him," said Tutilo. "He helped us when the church was flooded."
    "His name is Aldhelm," said Cadfael flatly, and rose from his knees, letting the soiled face sink back gently into the leafmould. "He was on his way to us last night, but he never reached us." If the boy had not known that before, let it be said now. He listened and gave no sign. He had shut himself within, and was not easily going to be drawn out again.
    "Well, let us see what there is to be noted," said Hugh shortly, and turned his back upon the slight, submissive figure standing so warily aside from the event he had himself reported. "He was coming down this path from the ferry, and here he was struck down as he passed by. See how he fell! Back a yard or more, here where the covert is thick, someone struck him down from behind and to his left, here on the left side of the path, from ambush."
    "So it seems," said Cadfael, and eyed the bushes that encroached halfway across the path. "There would be rustling enough from his own passage to cover another man's sudden movement among the branches here. He fell just as he lies now. Do you see any sign, Hugh, that he ever moved again?" For the ground about him, with its padding of last year's thick leaf-fall sodden and trodden into soft pulp, showed no disturbance, but lay moist, dark and flat, unmarked by any convulsions of his feet or arms, or any trampling of an assailant round him.
    "While he lay stunned," said Hugh, "the work was finished. No struggle, no defence."
    In a small, muted voice Tutilo ventured, out of the shadowy covert of his cowl: "It was raining."
    "So it was," said Cadfael. "I had not forgotten. His hood would be up to cover his head. This, was done afterwards, as he lay."
    The boy stood motionless still, looking down at the body. Only the subtle curve of a cheekbone and the lowered eyelids and a lunette of brow showed within the shadows of the cowl. There were tears hanging on the long, girlish lashes.
    "Brother, may I cover his face?"
    "Not yet," said Cadfael. "I need to look more closely before we carry him back with us." There were two of Hugh's sergeants waiting impassively along the path, with a litter on which to lay him for passage to castle or abbey, according as Hugh should direct. From their judicious distance they watched in silence, with detached interest. They had seen violent death before.
    "Do whatever you need," said Hugh. "Whatever club or staff was used on him is surely gone with the man who used it, but if the poor wretch's corpse can tell us anything, let us discover it before we move him."
    Cadfael kneeled behind the dead man's shoulders, and looked closely at the indented wound, in which white points of bone showed in the centre of the encrusted blood. The skull was broken just above and behind the left temple, with what looked like a single blow, though of that he could not be sure. A staff with a heavy