Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

and lodged in the rough cloth of his sleeve caught the stirring of air from the door, and floated free again, riding the draught into the pale, bright sunlight. "Hugh, if what you say is true, then I hope something good may come of it. For though I doubt if he's ready to own to it yet, I know of another who can and will testify that the two of them were together until the bell sounded for Compline, which would be the better part of an hour later than you have in mind, and a quarter of an hour's walk from the place, into the bargain. But since it suits ill with his vocation, and perhaps bodes no good to the other one, neither of them may be anxious to say it openly for all to hear. In your ear, with a little persuasion, they might both whisper it."
    "Where is the boy now?" asked Hugh, considering. "Fast in his penitentiary?"
    "And fast asleep, I trust. You were not at Longner last night, Hugh? No, or he would have said so. Then probably you have not heard that he was sent for last night just before Compline, to go to Donata, at her express wish. And Radulfus gave him leave, under escort. She died, Hugh. God and the saints remembered her at last."
    "No," said Hugh, "that I did not know." He sat silent for a long moment, recollecting how the past few years had dealt with Donata Blount and her family. Nothing there for grieving, no, rather for gratitude and thanksgiving. "No doubt the news will be waiting for me around the garrison by now," he said. "And she asked for Tutilo?"
    "You find that strange?" Cadfael asked mildly.
    "It disappoints me when human creatures fail to provide something strange. No, all that's strange about this is that those two ever came to touch hands at any point. A man would have said that two such were never likely in this world to come within sight, let alone touch, of each other. Once met, yes, all things were possible. And she is dead. In his presence?"
    "He thought he had sung her to sleep," said Cadfael. "So he had. He had grown fond, and so had she. Where there's nothing at stake there's no barrier, either. Nothing to join, so nothing to divide them. And he has come home this morning worn out with experience, all grief and all wonder, because she gave him the psaltery on which he played to her, and sent him a message straight out of the jongleurs' romances. He went back to his cell gladly, and I hope he'll sleep until all this business we have in hand after Mass is finished and done. And God and Saint Winifred send us a good ending!"
    "Ah, that!" said Hugh, and smiled somewhat cryptically. "Is not this sortes a rather dangerous way of deciding an issue? It seems to me it would not be at all difficult to cheat. There was a time, by your own account, when you cheated, in a good cause, of course!"
    "I cheated to prevent a theft, not to achieve one," said Cadfael. "I never cheated Saint Winifred, nor will she suffer cheating now. She won't charge me with more than my due, nor will she let that lad pay for a death I'm sure he does not owe. She knows what we need and what we deserve. She'll see wrongs righted and quarrels reconciled, in her own good time."
    "And without any aid from me," Hugh concluded, and rose, laughing. "I'll be off and leave you to it, I'd as lief be elsewhere while your monastics fight it out. But afterwards, when he wakes, poor rogue, I wouldn't disturb him!, we must have words with your songbird."
    Cadfael went into the church before High Mass, uneasy for all his declarations of faith, and guiltily penitent over his uneasiness, a double contortion of the mind. In any case there was no time left to make his infusion before the assay: he left his blackthorn blossoms, cleansed of all thorns and husks, waiting in a clean vessel for his return, and covered from any floating particles of dust by a linen cloth. A few petals still clung about his sleeves, caught in the rough weave. He had others in his grizzled russet tonsure, dropped from the higher branches as the wind stirred them. Distantly this springtime snow stirred his memory of other springs, and later blossom, like but unlike this, when the hawthorns came into heady, drunken sweetness, drowning the senses. Four or five weeks more, and that greater snow would blanch the hedgerows. The smell of growth and greenness was already in the air, elusive but constant, like the secret rippling of water, the whispering water of February, now almost hushed into silence.
    By instinct rather than design he found himself at Saint