Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

will come to his mother, now, at once, for the Lady Donata is dying, and is asking to see you again, and hear you, before she dies."
    Tutilo stiffened into marble stillness. The yellow flames darkened and softened into the pure glow of a steady fire. His lips moved, saying her name silently: "Donata?"
    "Go, now!" Daalny ordered, past anger now that the contest was joined and could not be evaded. "I have dared this for you, how dare you now cast it in my face? Go, while there's time. He is one and we are two. He cannot prevent!"
    "I would not prevent," said Cadfael. "The choice is his to make."
    "Dying?" said Tutilo, finding a voice clear, quiet and grieving. "Truly, she is dying?"
    "And asking for you," said Cadfael. "As you said she did two nights ago. But tonight it is true, and tonight will be the last time."
    "You have heard," said Daalny, smouldering but still. "The door is open. He says he will not prevent. Choose, then! I have done."
    Tutilo did not seem to hear her. "I used her!" he said, lamentably shaken. And to Cadfael he said doubtfully: "And Herluin lets me go?"
    "Not Herluin, but the abbot lets you go. On your honour to return, and under escort."
    Tutilo took Daalny suddenly between his hands, with grieving gentleness, and moved her aside from the doorway. He raised a hand with abrupt, convulsive passion and stroked her cheek, long fingers smoothing eloquently from temple to chin in a gesture of helpless apology.
    "She wants me," he said softly. "I must go to her."
    Chapter Eight.
    Daalny had discarded at once her anger and her pleading as soon as the choice was made, and made in such a fashion that she knew it could not be changed. She followed to the corner of the schoolroom, and there stood watching in silence as Tutilo mounted, and the little cavalcade filed out at the gate and turned along the Foregate. The broader track from the Horse Fair was better for riding; he would not have to pass by on the narrow path where he had stumbled over Aldhelm's body.
    The bell for Compline rang, the time she had set herself for hounding him out at the wicket, into a world he was, perhaps, already beginning to regret surrendering, but which he might have found none too hospitable to a runaway Benedictine novice. Better, at all costs, however, or so she had reasoned, to put twenty miles and a border between him and a hanging. Now she stood thoughtful, with the chime of the bell in her ears, and wondered. And when Cadfael came slowly back to her across the empty court, she stood in his way great-eyed, fronting him gravely as if she would penetrate into the most remote recesses of his mind.
    "You do not believe it of him, either," she said with certainty. "You know he never harmed this poor shepherd lad. Would you really have stood by and let him go free?"
    "If he had so chosen," said Cadfael, "yes. But I knew he would not. The choice was his. He made it. And now I am going to Compline."
    "I'll wait in your workshop," said Daalny. "I must talk to you. Now that I'm sure, now I will tell you everything I know. Even if none of it is proof of anything, yet you may see something there that I have not seen. He has need of more wits than mine, and two who will stand by him is better than one."
    "I wonder, now," said Cadfael, studying her thin, bright, resolute face, "whether you would be wanting that young man for yourself, or is this pure disinterested kindness?" She looked at him, and slowly smiled. "Well, I'll come," he said. "I need a second wit, too. If it's cold within, you may use the bellows on my brazier. I have turfs enough there to damp it down again before we leave it."
    In the close, timber-scented air of the hut, with the herbs rustling overhead in the rising warmth from the brazier, she sat leaning forward to the glow, the light gilding her high cheekbones and the broad sweep of brow beneath the curling black hair.
    "You know now," she said, "that he was not sent for to Longner that night. It was a tale that could be believed, but what he wanted was to have a reason to be somewhere else, not to be here when the shepherd came. That would not have been the end of it, but it would have put off the worst, and Tutilo seldom looks beyond the day. If he could have evaded meeting the poor man for even a few days, this squabble over the saint's bones would have been settled, one way or another, and Herluin would have been off on his travels, and taken Tutilo with him. Not that that promises him much of a life," she