Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

So why had he made it? To retrieve something else? Something by no means forgotten, but deliberately left there? Tomorrow they were to ride for Leicester. If he had something put away there for safekeeping, something he could not risk showing, he had to reclaim it today.
    Moreover, if that was true, whatever it was had lain in hiding ever since the night of the flood, when chaos entered the church with the river water, when everything vulnerable within was being moved, when Tutilo's ingenious theft was committed, oh, that she acknowledged, and the slow-rooting but certain seed of murder was sown. Murder of which Tutilo was not guilty. Murder, of which someone else was. Someone else who had cause to fear what Aldhelm might have to tell about that night, once his memory was stirred? What other reason could anyone have had to kill a harmless young man, a shepherd from a manor some miles away?
    Daalny went on with her work without haste, since she had no intention of quitting the stableyard while B�zet was there. She had to go back to the guesthall for the smaller instruments, but she lost as little time over that as possible, and settled down again within view of B�zet while she cased and bestowed them with care. The earl's younger squire, interested, came to examine the Saracen ud that had come back with R�'s father from the Crusade, and his presence provided welcome cover for the watch she was keeping on her fellow-servant, and delayed her packing, which would otherwise have been complete within an hour or so, and left her with no excuse for remaining. The flutes and panpipes were easily carried; rebec and mandora had their own padded bags for protection, though the bow of the rebec had to be packed with care.
    It was drawing near to noon. Earl Robert's young men piled all their baggage neatly together ready for loading next day, and took themselves off to see to their lord's comfort withindoors, and serve his dinner. Daalny closed the last strap, and stacked the saddleroll that held the flutes beside the heavier saddlebags. "These are ready. Have you finished with the harness?"
    He had brought out one of his own bags, and had it already half-filled, folding an armful of clothes within it.
    What was beneath, she thought, he must have stowed away when she went back to the guesthall for the rebec and the mandora. When his back was turned she nudged the soft bulge of leather with her foot, and something within uttered the thinnest and clearest of sounds, the chink of coin against coin, very brief, as though for the thoroughness of the packing movement was barely possible. But there is nothing else that sounds quite the same. He turned his head sharply, but she met his eyes with a wide, clear stare, held her position as if she had heard nothing, and said with flat composure: "Come to dinner. He's at table with Robert Bossu by now, you're not needed to wait on him this time."
    Hugh listened to Cadfael's story, and turned the little breviary in his hands meantime with a small, wry smile, between amusement and exasperation.
    "I can and will answer for my shire, but within here I have no powers, as well you know. I accept that the boy never did murder, indeed I never seriously thought he had. This is proof enough for me on that count, but if I were you I would keep the circumstances even from Radulfus, let alone Herluin. You had better not appear in this. You might feel you must open the last detail to the abbot, but I doubt if even he could extricate the poor wretch in this case. Meeting a girl in a hayloft would be excellent grist to Herluin's mill, if ever he got to hear of it. A worse charge than the sacrilegious theft, worse, at any rate, than that would have been if it had succeeded. I'll see him clear of murder, even without being able to prove it home on someone else, but more than that I can't promise."
    "I leave it all to you," said Cadfael resignedly. "Do as you see fit. Time's short, God knows. Tomorrow they'll all be gone."
    "Well, at least," said Hugh, rising, "Robert Bossu, with all the Beaumont heritage in Normandy and England on his mind, will hardly be greatly interested in riding gaoler on a wretched little clerk with a clerical hell waiting for him at the end of the road. I wouldn't be greatly astonished if he left a door unlocked somewhere along the way, and turned a blind eye, or even set the hunt off in the opposite direction. There's a deal of England between here and Ramsey." He held out the