Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

the squire following with his lord's cloak over his arm. Below, the assembly was complete, for abbot and prior were waiting beside the horses.
    "My lord," said the earl, "I take my leave, now the time is come, with much regret. Your hospitality has been generous, and I fear very little deserved, since I came with pretensions to your saint. But I am glad that among many who covet her the lady knows how to choose the fittest and the best. I hope I take your blessing with me on the road?"
    "With all my heart," said Radulfus. "I have had much pleasure and profit in your company, my lord, and trust to enjoy it again when time favours us."
    The group, which had for a moment the formal look of immediate parting, began to dissolve into the general civility of visitors at the last moment reluctant to go, and lingering with many last things still to be said. There was Prior Robert at his most Norman and patrician, and even his most benign, since events had finally turned out well; certainly he was unlikely to let go of a Norman earl without exercising to the last moment his eloquence and charm. There was Herluin, in no very expansive mood but not to be left out of the courtesies, and R�, delighted with his change of fortune, shedding his beams impartially on all. Cadfael, with long experience of such departures, was aware that it would go on for as much as a quarter of an hour before anyone actually set foot in the stirrup and made to mount.
    Daalny, with no such assurance, expected haste. She could not afford to wait, and find she had waited too long. She had steeled herself to the act, and dreaded she might not have time to make good what she had to say. She approached as close to abbot and earl as was seemly, and in the first pause between them she stepped forward and said loudly and clearly: "Father Abbot, my lord Robert, may I speak a word? Before we leave this place, I have something that must be said, for it bears on theft, and may even bear on murder. I beg you hear me, and do right, for it is too much for me, and I dare not let it pass and be put aside."
    Everyone heard, and all eyes turned upon her. There fell a silence, of curiosity, of astonishment, of disapproval that the least of all these gathered here should dare to ask for a hearing now, out of a clear sky, and publicly. Yet strangely, no one waved her away or frowned her to silence and humility. She saw both abbot and earl regarding her with sharply arrested interest, and she made a deep reverence for them to share between them. Thus far she had said nothing to make any man afraid or uneasy for himself, not even B�zet, who stood lounging with an arm over his horse's neck, the saddlebag hard against his side. Whatever lance she held she had not yet aimed, but Cadfael saw her purpose and was dismayed.
    "Father, may I speak?"
    This was the abbot's domain. The earl left it to him to respond.
    "I think," said Radulfus, "that you must. You have said two words that have been heavy on our minds these past days, theft and murder. If there is anything you have to tell concerning these, we must listen."
    Cadfael, standing aside with an anxious eye on the gate, and praying that Hugh might ride in now, at once, with three or four sound men at his back, cast an uneasy glance at B�zet. The man had not moved, but though his face remained merely a mask of interested but impersonal curiosity, much like all the others, the eyes fixed intently upon Daalny's face were levelled like the points of two daggers, and his very immobility seemed now deliberate and braced, a hound pointing.
    If only, Cadfael thought, if only I had warned her! I might have known she could do terrible things for cause enough. Was it what I told her of the bridle that set her foot on this trail? She never gave sign, but I should have known. And now she has struck her blow too soon. Let her be logical, let her be slow to reach the heart of it, let her recall all that has gone before, and come to this only gradually now she has won her point. But time was not on their side. Even the Mass had ended early. Hugh would keep to his time, and still come too late.
    "Father, you know of Tutilo's theft, on the night when the flood water came into the church, and how, afterwards, when Aldhelm said that he could point out the thief, and was killed on his way here to do what he had promised, reason could find none but Tutilo who had anything guilty to hide, and any cause to fear his coming, and prevent it by