Ellis Peters: The Holy Thief

Tutilo, a strange name for an English youth; for there was nothing of the Norman or the Celtic about this young man. Perhaps the name chosen for him when he entered his novitiate. He must ask Brother Anselm what it signified, and where the authorities in Ramsey could have found it. Cadfael turned his attention once again to what was being discussed between host and guests.

“While you are in these parts,” said the abbot, “I take it you may wish to visit other Benedictine houses. We will provide horses, if you so please. The season is not the most favourable for travelling. The rivers are running high, some of the fords will be impassable, you will be better mounted. We will hasten whatever arrangements you may choose to make, confer with Father Boniface about the use of the church, for he has the cure of souls in the parish of Holy Cross, and with Hugh Beringar as sheriff and the provost and Guild Merchant of the town concerning your gathering at the High Cross in Shrewsbury. If there is anything more we can do to be of service, you need but state it.”

“We shall be grateful indeed to go mounted a while,” agreed Herluin, coming as near to smiling as his features would permit, “for we intend to go on at least to our brothers at Worcester, perhaps also to Evesham and Pershore, and it would be simple to return by Shrewsbury and bring back your horses. Ours were taken, every one, by the outlaws before they departed. But first, even this day if possible, we would wish to go and speak with Brother Sulien.”

“As you think best,” said Radulfus simply. “Brother Cadfael, I think, is best acquainted with the way, there is a ferry to be crossed, and also with the household of the lord of Longner. It may be well if he accompanies you.”

“Brother Sulien,” remarked Cadfael, crossing the court afterwards with Brother Anselm the precentor and librarian, “has not been called by that title for some while, and is hardly likely to take kindly to it again now. And so Radulfus could have told him, for he knows the whole story of that young man as well as I do. But if he had said as much, this Herluin would not have listened, I suppose. ‘Brother’ means his own brother Eudo now to Sulien. He’s in training for arms, and will be one of Hugh’s young men of the garrison up there in the castle as soon as his mother dies, and they tell me that’s very close now. And a married man, very likely, even before that happens. There’ll be no going back to Ramsey.”

“If his abbot sent the boy home to come to his own decision,” said Anselm reasonably,”the sub-prior can hardly be empowered to bring too severe pressure on him to return. Argue and exhort as he may, he’s helpless, and must know it, if the young man stands fast. It may well be,” he added drily, “that what he hopes for from that quarter is a conscience fee in silver.”

“Likely enough. And he may very well get it, too. There’s more than one conscience in that house,” agreed Cadfael, “feels a debt towards Ramsey. And what,” he asked, “do you make of the other?”

“The young one? An enthusiast, with grace and fervour shining out of his creamy cheeks. Chosen to go with Herluin to temper the chill, would you say?”

“And where did he get that outlandish name of his?”

“Tutilo! Yes,” said Anselm, musing. “Not at his baptism! There must be a reason why they chose that for him. Tutilo you’ll find among the March saints, though we don’t pay him much attention here. He was a monk of Saint Gall, two hundred years and more ago since he died, and by all accounts he was a master of all the arts, painter, poet, musician and all. Perhaps we have a gifted lad among us. I must get him to try his hand on rebec or organetto, and see what he can do. We had the roving singer here once, do you remember? The little tumbler who got himself a wife out of the goldsmith’s scullery before he left us. I mended his rebec for him. If this one can do better, maybe he has some small claim to the name they’ve given him. Sound him out, Cadfael, if you’re to be their guide out to Longner this afternoon. Herluin will be hot on the heels of his strayed novice. Try your hand with Tutilo.”

The path to the manor of Longner set off northeastward from the lanes of the Foregate, threaded a short, dense patch of woodland, and climbed over a low crest of heath and meadow to look down upon the winding course of the Severn, downstream from the town. The river was running high and turgid, rolling fallen branches and clumps of turf from the banks down in its currents. There had been ample snows in the winter, without any great gales or frosts. The thaw still filled the valleys everywhere with the soft rippling of water, even the meadows by the river and the brook whispered constantly and shimmered with lingering silver among the grass. The ford a short way upstream was already impassable, the island that helped foot traffic across at normal times was under water. But the ferryman poled his passengers across sturdily, so familiar and at ease with his troubled waters that storm, flood and calm were all one to him.

On the further side of the Severn the path threaded wet water-meadows, the river lipping the bleached winter grass a yard inland already. If heavy Spring rains came on the hills of Wales, to follow the thaw-water, there would be flooding under the walls of Shrewsbury, and the Meole Brook and the mill pond would back up strongly and threaten even the nave of the abbey church. It had happened twice since Cadfael entered the Order. And westward the sky hung ponderous and grey, leaning upon the distant mountains.

They skirted the encroaching waters, below the dark ploughland of the Potter’s Field, climbed thankfully inland up the gentle slope beyond, into the wellkept woodlands of the manor of Longner, and came to the clearing where the house backed snugly into the hillside, sheltered from the prevailing winds, and surrounded by its high stockade and the encrustation of demesne buildings within.

As they entered at the gate Sulien Blount came out from the stables to cross to the house. He wore leather jerkin and the working cotte and hose becoming a younger brother doing his share on his elder’s estate until he could find occasion to carve out his own holding, as surely he would. At the sight of the trio entering he halted, stiffly at gaze, instantly recognizing his former spiritual superior, and startled to see him here so far from home. But at once he came to meet them, with reverent and perhaps slightly apprehensive courtesy. The stresses of the past year had removed him so far from the cloister and the tonsure that the reappearance so close to home of what was past and done seemed for a moment to offer a threat to his new and hard-earned composure, and the future he had chosen. Only for a moment. Sulien was in no doubt now of where he was going.

“Father Herluin, welcome to my home! I rejoice to see you well, and to know that Ramsey is restored to the Order. Will you not come within, and let us know in what particular we of Longner can serve you?”

“You cannot but understand,” said Herluin, addressing himself warily to possible battle ahead, “in what state we have regained our abbey. For a year it has been the den of a rogue army, pillaged and stripped of everything burnable, even the walls defiled, where they did not shatter them before they departed. We have need of every son of the house, and every friend to the Order, to make good before God what has been desecrated. It is to you I come, and with you I wish to speak.”

“A friend to the Order,” said Sulien, “I hope I am. A son of Ramsey and a brother of its brothers I no longer am. Abbot Walter sent me back here, very fairly, to consider my vocation, which he knew to be dubious, and committed my probation to Abbot Radulfus, who has absolved me. But come within, and we can confer as friends. I will listen reverently, Father, and respect all you may have to say.”