Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

face. His eyes were red-rimmed, their gilded brightness dulled from a sleepless night, and perhaps also from weeping. The burden he carried with such curious tenderness was a drawstring bag of soft leather, with some rigid shape within it, that filled his arms and was held jealously to his heart, the anchoring strings around one wrist for safety, as though he went in dread of loss. He stared over his treasure at Cadfael, and small, wary sparks kindled in his eyes, and flared into anxiety and pain in an instant. In a flat, chill voice he said: "She is dead. Never a quiver or a moan. I thought I had sung her to sleep. I went on... silence might have disturbed her rest..."
    "You did well," said Cadfael. "She has waited a long time for rest. Now nothing can disturb it."
    "I started back as soon afterwards as seemed right. I did not want to leave her without saying goodbye fairly. She was kind to me." He did not mean as mistress to servant or patroness to protege. There had been another manner of kindness between them, beneficent to both. "I was afraid you might think I was not coming back. But the priest said she could not live till morning, so I could not leave her."
    "There was no haste," said Cadfael. "I knew you would come. Are you hungry? Come within the lodge, and sit a while, and we'll find you food and drink."
    "No... They have fed me. They would have found me a bed, but it was not in the bargain that I should linger after I was no longer needed. I kept to terms." He was racked by a sudden jaw-splitting bout of yawning that brought water to his eyes. "I need my bed now," he owned, shivering.
    The only bed he could claim at this point was in his penitential cell, but he went to it eagerly, glad to have a locked door between himself and the world. Cadfael took the key from the porter, who hovered with slightly anxious sympathy, and was relieved to see a delinquent for whom he might be held responsible returning docilely to his prison. Cadfael shepherded his charge within, and watched him subside gratefully on to the narrow cot, and sit there mute for a moment, laying his burden down beside him with a kind of caressing gentleness.
    "Stay a little while," said the boy at length. "You knew her well. I came late. How was it she had heart even to look at me, as tormented as she was?" He wanted no answer, and in any case there could be none. But why should not one dying too soon for her years and too late by far for her comfort take pleasure in the sudden visitation of youth and freshness and beauty, however flawed, and all the more for its vulnerability and helplessness in a world none too kind to the weak.
    "You gave her intense pleasure. What she has known most intimately these last years has been intense pain. I think she saw you very clearly, better than some who live side by side with you and might as well be blind. Better, perhaps, than you see yourself."
    "My sight is as sharp as it need be," said Tutilo. "I know what I am. No one need be an angel to sing like one. There's no virtue in it. They had brought the harp into her bedchamber for me, all freshly strung. I thought it might be loud for her, there between close walls, but it was her wish. Did you know her, Cadfael, when she was younger, and hale, and beautiful? I played for a while, and then I stole up to look at her, because she was so still I thought she had fallen asleep, but her eyes were wide open, and there was colour, all rosy, high on her cheeks. She did not look so gaunt and old, and her lips were red and full, and curved, like a smile but not quite a smile. I knew she knew me, though she never spoke word, never, night-long. I sang to her, some of the hymns to the Virgin, and then, I don't know why, but there was no one to tell me do, or don't, and it was the way I felt her taking me, all still as she was, and growing younger because there was no pain left... I sang love songs. And she was glad. I had only to look at her, and I knew she was glad. And sometimes the young lord's wife stole in and sat to listen, and brought me to drink, and sometimes the lady the younger brother is to marry. Their priest had already shriven her clean. In the small hours, around three o'clock, she must have died, but I didn't know... I thought she had truly fallen asleep, until the young one stole up and told me."
    "Truly she had fallen asleep," said Cadfael. "And if your singing went with her through the dark, she had a good passage. There's nothing here for grieving.