Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

suggested as much. He took the matter a stage further, in a very casual tone.
    "He takes no great care of it. He had left it in the barn at the Horse Fair all this time since the flood. He fetched it back only this morning."
    This time she turned a face suddenly intent, and her hands halted on the last buckle. "He told you that? He spent half an hour cleaning and polishing that bridle early this morning. It never left here, I've seen it a dozen times since."
    Her eyes were large, bright and sharp with speculation. Cadfael had no wish to start her wondering too much; she was already more deeply involved than he would have liked, and rash enough to surge into unwise action at this extreme, when she was about to be swept away to Leicester, with nothing resolved and nothing gained. Better by far keep her out of it, if that was any way possible. But she was very quick; she had her teeth into this discrepancy already. Cadfael shrugged, and said indifferently: "I must have misunderstood him. He was along there in mid-morning, carrying it. I thought he'd been to reclaim it, he was in the stable there. I took it for granted it was R�'s."
    "Well you might," she agreed. "I've wondered, myself, how he came by it. Somewhere in Provence, most likely. But honestly? I doubt it." The brilliance of her eyes narrowed upon Cadfael's face. She did not turn to glance at B�zet, not yet. "What was he doing at the Horse Fair?" Her tone was still casually curious, as if neither question nor answer mattered very much, but the glitter in her eyes denied it.
    "Do I know?" said Cadfael. "I was up in the loft when he came in. Maybe he was just curious why the door was open."
    That was a diversion she could not resist. Her eyes rounded eagerly, a little afraid to hope for too much. "And what were you doing in the loft?"
    "I was looking for proof of what you told me," said Cadfael. "And I found it. Did you know that Tutilo forgot his breviary there after Compline?"
    She said: "No!" Almost soundlessly, on a soft, hopeful breath.
    "He borrowed mine, last night. He had no notion where he had lost his own, but I thought of one place at least where it would be worthwhile looking for it. And yes, it was there, and the place marked at Compline. It is hardly an eyewitness, Daalny, but it is good evidence. And I am waiting to put it into Hugh Beringar's hands."
    "Will it free him?" she asked in the same rapt whisper.
    "So far as Hugh is concerned, it well may. But Tutilo's superior here is Herluin, and he cannot be passed by."
    "Need he ever know?" she asked fiercely.
    "Not the whole truth, if Hugh sees with my eyes. That there's very fair proof the boy never did murder, yes, that he'll be told, but he need not know where you were or what you did, the pair of you, that night."
    "We did no wrong," she said, exultant and scornful of a world where needs must think evil, and where she knew of evil enough, but despised most of it and had no interest in any of it. "Cannot the abbot overrule Herluin? This is his domain, not Ramsey's."
    "The abbot will keep the Rule. He can no more detain the boy here and deprive Ramsey than he could abandon one of his own. Only wait! Let's see whether even Herluin can be persuaded to open the door on the lad." He did not go on to speculate on what would happen then, though it did seem to him that Tutilo's passionate vocation had cooled to the point where it might slip out of sight and out of mind by comparison with the charm of delivering Partholan's queen from slavery. Ah, well! Better take your hands from the ploughshare early and put them to other decent use, than persist, and take to ploughing narrower and narrower furrows until everything secular is anathema, and everything human doomed to reprobation.
    "Bring me word," said Daalny, very gravely, her eyes royally commanding.
    Only when Cadfael had left her, to keep a watch on the gatehouse for Hugh's coming, did she turn her gaze upon B�zet. Why should he bother to tell needless lies? He might, true, prefer to let people think an improbably fine bridle belonged to his master rather than himself, if he had cause to be wary of flattering but inconvenient curiosity. But why offer any explanation at all? Why should a close-mouthed man who was sparing of words at all times go wasting words on quite unnecessary lies? And more interesting still, he certainly had not made the journey to the Horse Fair to retrieve that bridle, his own or R�'s. It was the excuse, not the reason.