Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

close enough to the shape Aldhelm would present, to an assassin waiting.
    A Brother delivered up to death indeed, if another man had not taken that road before him. But what of the other, that one who had planned the death? If the meaning of this oracle was as it seemed, the word "brother" had surely a double monastic significance. A Brother of this house, or at least of the Benedictine Order. Cadfael knew of none besides Tutilo who had been out of the enclave that night, but a man intending such a deed would hardly publish his intent or let anyone know of his absence. Someone within the Order who hated Tutilo enough to attempt his murder? Prior Robert might not have been very greatly grieved if Tutilo had been made to pay for his outrageous offence with his skin, but Prior Robert had been at dinner with the abbot and several other witnesses that night, and in any case could hardly be imagined as lurking in wet woods to strike down the delinquent with his own elegant hands. Herluin might hold it against the boy that he had disgraced Ramsey not so much by attempting theft, but by making a botch of it, but Herluin had also been of the abbot's party. And yet the oracle had lodged in Cadfael's mind like a thorn from the blackthorn bushes, and would not be dislodged.
    He went to his stall with the words echoing and re-echoing in his inward ear: "and the brother shall deliver up the brother to death". It took all his willpower and concentration to banish the sound of it, and fix heart and soul on the celebration of the Mass.
    Chapter Nine.
    At the end of Mass, when the children had been dismissed to their schooling with Brother Paul, and only the choir monks were left as awed witnesses, Abbot Radulfus offered a brief and practical prayer for divine guidance, and approached Saint Winifred's altar.
    "With respect," said Earl Robert, standing courteously aloof, and in the mildest and most reasonable of voices, "how should we determine who should be first to try the fates? Is there some rule we ought to follow?"
    "We are here to ask," said the abbot simply. "Let us ask from beginning to end, from contention to resolution, and advance no plea or reservation of our own. We agreed. Keep to that. Of the order of procedure I will ask, and beyond that I leave Shrewsbury's cause to Prior Robert, who made the journey to Wales to find Saint Winifred, and brought her relics here. If any one of you has anything to object, name whom you will. Father Boniface would not refuse to do us this service, if you require it."
    No one had any observation to make, until Robert Bossu took it upon himself, very amiably, to give voice to a consent otherwise expressed in silence. "Father Abbot, do you proceed, and we are all content."
    Radulfus mounted the three shallow steps, and with both hands opened the Gospels, his eyes fixed above, upon the cross, so that he might not calculate where, on the exposed page, his finger should rest.
    "Come close," he said, "and confirm for yourselves that there is no deceit. See the words, that what I read aloud to you is what the sortes have sent me."
    Herluin without hesitation came hungrily to peer. Earl Robert stood tranquilly where he was, and bowed away the necessity for any such confirmation.
    Abbot Radulfus looked down to where his index finger rested, and reported without emotion: "I am in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the twentieth chapter. And the line reads: 'The last shall be first, and the first last.' "
    No arguing with that, thought Cadfael, looking on with some anxiety from his retired place. If anything, it was rather suspicious that the first assay should produce an answer so apt; the prognostics of bishops were often known to be ambiguous in the extreme. Had this been anyone but Radulfus testing the waters, Radulfus in his inflexible uprightness, a man might almost have suspected... But that was to limit or doubt the range of the saint's power. She who could call a lame youth to her and support him with her invisible grace while he laid down his crutches on the steps of her altar, why doubt that she could turn the leaves of a Gospel, and guide a faithful finger to the words her will required?
    "It would seem," said Earl Robert, after a moment of courteous silence in deference to any other who might wish to speak, "that as the last comer, this verdict sends me first into the lists. Is that your reading, Father?"
    "The meaning seems plain enough," said Radulfus; carefully he closed the Gospels,