Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief by Ellis Peters Page A

Cadfael.
    "We were all breathing easier then, everything that mattered was high enough to lie snug and dry till the river went down. A civil soul, he came out to say thanks and leave us a blessing... why not?"
    Why not, indeed, when honest men turned to for no reward besides? "You did not," asked Cadfael delicately, "see whether between them they brought out anything to load into the wagon? Before he left you with his blessing?"
    They looked at each other sombrely, and shook their heads. "We were shifting logs to the back, to be easy to lift down. We heard them come. We had our arms full, hefting wood. When we got it to the wagon Aldhelm was reaching out to help us hoist it on, and the brother was away into the graveyard again. No, they never brought out anything that I saw."
    "Nor I," said Lambert.
    "And could you, either of you, put a name to this monk who called him back?"
    "No," said they both with one voice; and Gregory added kindly: "Brother, by then it was well dark. And I know names for only a few, the ones every man knows."
    True, monks are brothers by name only to those within; willing to be brothers to all men, outside the pale they are nameless. In some ways, surely, a pity.
    "So dark," said Cadfael, reaching his last question, "that you would not be able to recognize him, if you saw him again? Not by his face, or shape, or gait, or bearing? Nothing to mark him?"
    "Brother," said Gregory patiently, "he was close-cowled against the rain, and black disappearing into darkness. And his face we never saw at all."
    Cadfael sighed and thanked them, and was gathering himself up to trudge back by the sodden fields when Lambert said, breaking his habitual and impervious silence: "But Aldhelm may have seen it."
    The day was too far gone, if he was to get back for Vespers. The tiny hamlet of Preston was barely a mile out of his way, but if this Aldhelm worked with the sheep at Upton, at this hour he might be there, and not in his own cot on his own half-yardland of earth. Probing his memory would have to wait. Cadfael threaded the Longner woodlands and traversed the long slope of meadows above the subsiding river, making for home. The ford would be passable again by now, but abominably muddy and foul, the ferry was pleasanter and also quicker. The ferryman, a taciturn soul, put him ashore on the home bank with a little time in hand, so that he slackened his pace a little, to draw breath. There was a belt of close woodland on this side, too, before he could approach the first alleys and cots of the Foregate; open, heathy woodland over the ridge, then the trees drew in darkly, and the path narrowed. There would have to be some lopping done here, to clear it for horsemen. Even at this hour, not yet dusk but under heavy cloud, a man had all his work cut out to see his way clear and evade overgrown branches. A good place for ambush and secret violence, and all manner of skulduggery. It was the heavy cloud cover and the cheerless stillness of the day that gave him such thoughts, and even while they lingered with him he did not believe in them. Yet there was mischief abroad, for Saint Winifred was gone, or the token she had left with him and blessed for him was gone, and there was no longer any equilibrium in his world. Strange, since he knew where she was, and should have been able to send messages to her there, surely with greater assurance than to the coffin that did not contain her. But it was from that same coffin that he had always received his answers, and now the wind that should have brought him her voice from Gwytherin was mute.
    Cadfael emerged into the Foregate at the Horse Fair somewhat angry with himself for allowing himself to be decoyed into imaginative glooms against his nature, and trudged doggedly along to the gatehouse in irritated haste to get back to a real world where he had solid work to do. Certainly he must hunt out Aldhelm of Preston, but between him and that task, and just as important, loomed a few sick