Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

rebounds on her."
    "So all that evening they were cosily employed in the hayloft, like many a lad and lass before them," said Hugh, and laughed.
    "So they were, in a manner of speaking, but not like every such pair. Not quite. For she says they talked. Nothing more. And those two had much to talk about, and little chance until then. The first time they ever were together outside these walls. Even then I doubt if they got to the real meat of what they should have been saying. For believe me, Hugh, she has already set her mark on him, and he, though he may not know it yet, is in thrall to her fathoms deep. They said the evening prayers together, she says, when they heard the Compline bell."
    "And you believe her?"
    "Why say it, else?" said Cadfael simply. "She had nothing to prove to me. She told me of her own will, and had no need to add one word."
    "Well, if true," said Hugh seriously, "it speaks for him. It fits with the time he came to us at the castle, and puts him an hour behind Aldhelm on that path. But you realize as well as I that the word of the girl will hardly be taken more gravely for proof than his own, if things are thus between them. However innocent that assignation may have been."
    "Have you considered," Cadfael asked sombrely, "that Herluin will surely want to set out for home now he's lost his bid? And he is Tutilo's superior, and will certainly want to take him back with him. And so far as I can see, as the case stands at this moment he has every right to do so. If you had kept him in the castle on suspicion things would have been different, possession is still the better part of the law. But he's here in the Church's prison, and you know how hard the Church holds on to its own. Between a secular charge of murder and a clerical one of theft and deception, on the face of it the lad might well prefer the latter. But as between your custody and Herluin's, frankly, I'd wish him in your charge. But Herluin will never willingly let go of him. The fool child raised his prior's hopes of gaining a miracle-working saint, and then failed to make a success of it, and brought the whole down to a reproach and a humiliation. He'll be made to pay for that tenfold, once Herluin gets him home. I don't know but I'd rather see him charged on a count of which he's innocent, and hoisted away into your hold, than dragged off to do endless penance for the count on which he himself owns he's guilty."
    Hugh was smiling, a shade wryly, and eyeing Cadfael along his shoulder with rueful affection. "Better get to work in the day or so remaining, and find me the man who really did murder, since you're certain this boy did not. They will surely all leave together, for R� and his party are joining Robert Bossu's household, and Herluin's way home takes the same road as far as Leicester, it's why the wagon fell victim there in the first place, and started all this to-do, so he'd be mad not to avail himself of a safe escort and ask to travel with the earl, if indeed the earl does not invite him before he can ask. I may contrive to delay Robert a couple of days, but no longer."
    He rose and stretched. It had been an eventful day, with many mysteries propounded and none of them solved. He had earned an hour or two of Aline's company, and an amiable tumble with the five-year-old tyrant Giles, before the boy was swept away to bed by Constance, his devoted slave. Let lesser considerations, and for that matter greater ones, too, hang in abeyance until tomorrow.
    "And what particular responsibilities did he want to talk over with you in private this afternoon?" asked Cadfael as his friend turned towards the door.
    The need," said Hugh, looking back and weighing words with care, "for all thinking men in this deadlocked contention to set about finding a means of doing away with factions, since neither faction has any hope of winning. The thing is becoming very simple: how to clamber out of a morass before the muck reaches our chins. You can be giving your mind to that, Cadfael, while you say a word in God's ear at Compline."
    Cadfael could never be quite sure what it was that prompted him to borrow the key yet again after Compline, and go in to pay a late visit to Tutilo. It might have been the sound of the light, pure voice from within the cell, heard eerily across the court when he came from the last Office of the evening. A faint gleam of light showed through the high, barred window; the prisoner had not yet put out his little lamp. The