Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

told him how the Gospels had decisively restored Saint Winifred to Shrewsbury, and how Brother Jerome had babbled out his astonishing confession rather than wait to be accused by heaven.
    "Me?" blurted Tutilo, incredulous. "He meant it for me? And for one instant he laughed aloud at the absurdity of the idea of Jerome as assassin, and himself as victim, and then in revulsion was stricken aghast at himself, and clapped both hands to his face as if to crush out the very lines of laughter. "And the poor soul helpless, and someone... Oh, God, how could any man..." And then, suddenly comprehending what was inferred, and instantly springing to refute it: "Oh, no, not that! Not Jerome, that's impossible." Quite certain, quite firmly stating his certainty, he who had found the wreckage of a man. "No, of course you can't and don't believe that." Not protesting, not exclaiming, but stating another certainty. He was fully awake and alive by then, his golden eyes wide and confident upon his questioners, both monastic and secular. As sound, sensible men both, they could not possibly credit that Jerome, narrow, meagre, malicious little soul though he might be, could have battered a senseless man's head to pulp with a heavy stone.
    "Since you were not at Longner," said Hugh, "where did you take yourself off that night, to be coming back by that same path?"
    "Anywhere to be out of sight and mind," said Tutilo fervently. "I lay up in the loft above the Horse Fair stable until I heard the bell for Compline, and then went up almost to the ferry, to be seen to come back by the Longner path if anyone noticed me."
    "Alone?" said Hugh.
    "Of course alone." He lied cheerfully and firmly. No use lying at all unless you can do it with conviction.
    And that was all that was to be got out of him. No, he had met no one, going or returning, who would be able to vouch for his movements. He had told all the worst of what he had done, and did not seem greatly concerned about the rest. They locked the door upon him again, restored the key to its place in the gatehouse, and withdrew to the privacy of the herbarium to blow the brazier into a comfortable glow, and shut out the encroaching darkness of the night.
    "And now," said Cadfael, "I think I shall be forgiven if I tell you the rest of what he did that night, the part he was not willing to tell."
    Hugh leaned back against the timber wall and said equably: "I might have known you would have right of entry where no one else was let in. What is it he has not told me?"
    "He has not told me, either. It was from someone else I got it, and with no licence to pass it on, even to you, but I think she'll hold me justified. The girl Daalny, you'll have seen her about, but she keeps discreetly apart within these walls..."
    "R�'s singing girl," said Hugh, "the little thing from Provence."
    "From Ireland, properly speaking. But yes, that's the one. Her mother was put up for sale in Bristol, a prize from oversea. This one was born into servitude. The trade still goes on, and Bishop Wulstan's sermons haven't made it illegal, only frowned upon. I fancy our holy thief is between enthusiasms just now, unsure whether he wants to be a saint or a knight errant. He has dreams now of delivering the only slave he's likely to encounter in these parts, though I doubt if he's fully realized yet that she's a girl, and a fine one, and has already taken his measure."
    "Are you telling me," demanded Hugh, beginning to sparkle with amusement, "that he was with her that night?"
    "He was, and won't say so because her master sets a high value on her voice, and goes in fear that she may slip through his fingers somehow. What happened was that the manservant who travels with them overheard somewhere about Aldhelm being on his way here to identify the brother who cozened him, and told Daalny, knowing very well that she had an eye to the lad herself. She warned him, he made up the tale that he was summoned to Longner, and got his permission from Herluin, who knew nothing about Aldhelm being expected here. Tutilo went out by the gate, like an honest fellow, and took the path from the Foregate towards the ferry, but turned aside to the Horse Fair and hid in the loft over our stable, just as he says. And she slid out by the broad gate from the cemetery, and joined him there. They waited there until they heard the bell for Compline, and then parted to return by the same ways they had come. So she says, and so he won't say, in case it