Holy Thief by Ellis Peters Page B

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 old men, a number of confused and troubled young ones, and his plain duty
of keeping the Rule he had chosen.
    There
were not many people abroad in the Foregate. The weather was still cold and the
gloom of the day had sent people hurrying home, wasting no time once the day’s
work was done. Some yards ahead of him two figures walked together, one of them
limping heavily. Cadfael had a vague notion that he had seen those broad
shoulders and that shaggy head before, and not so long ago, but the lame gait
did not fit. The other