“If the abbot went away for a little while, yes. That’s usually when the cleaning people choose to do what you describe. The abbot has not been away for over a year, so it’s probably time his quarters were cleaned.”
“Can you manage to get him away from here for a few days, having previously arranged for his quarters to be cleaned as I have suggested, but without the prior knowing about the cleaning part?”
“Cleaning is not the prior’s concern. One of the other elders takes care of that function. And yes, before you ask, the elder in question is completely trustworthy.”
“Then you and the abbot should go on a little trip of inspection of something innocuous that’s discussed publicly and loudly. Talk about a trip that will take just a few days. And no one should tell the prior about the cleaning.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Something we can’t trust anyone else to do, Elder Brother. Remember, a secret can be kept between two people only when one of them is dead, and I rather enjoy your company and that of your friend here.”
Wordswell managed a shadowy smile. The loft keeper’s face was frankly jubilant.
Two days later the librarian, the abbot, and one or two other elders set out to make an inspection of the improvements around the southern watchtower, including the arable lands and irrigation systems being constructed there. The librarian was going because he needed to be sure the records were being kept correctly, and for the past two days this had been a matter for continuous semipublic discussion among him and the abbot and half a dozen other brothers and sisters, often within the prior’s hearing. The trip would, in fact, be longer than had been discussed, during which time still other elders would learn about still other matters. That part had not been mentioned where it could be overheard.
While the abbot was away, various cleaning, laundry, furniture-polishing, and woodwork-refinishing people—all with covered hair and gloved hands—did an unobtrusive but thorough turnout of his quarters. Drawers and cupboards were scrubbed. Dust was eradicated. Spiderwebs, never numerous, became nonexistent. No flake of skin was left unswept, no used handkerchief or slightly soiled bit of clothing—indeed, no item of clothing, used or not—was left unlaundered. Floors and furniture shone. Windows were cleaner than when first installed. A small mirror, the only one the abbot allowed himself, was polished. When all was done and inspected, the door was shut and two watchers took up inconspicuous posts where they could see it.
That evening, while the prior was having his evening meal, the abbot’s door was opened again, and a slender figure moved through his quarters, slightly disarranging the bed linen, opening a book and leaving it at the bedside, depositing a few hairs upon the pillow, a few more in the perfectly clean brush on the shelf below the mirror, a film of dust and a few fingernail clippings on the desk, together with the scissors that might have clipped them. A used washcloth was deposited beside the basin. A used handkerchief was placed in the laundry basket. In addition to the newly added material, clothing in the wardrobe was slightly disordered; a pair of new, unworn slippers was left on the floor beside the bed. It had been ascertained that the abbot did not moisten a finger to turn pages, so a few of his books were carefully shaken out the window, wiped, shaken again, and laid on the desk, the places marked by used toothpicks.
The depositer of this detritus then examined the room carefully. It was quite a neat room, with only that minor untidiness one might expect. This figure departed. The two people who had been quietly chatting in the hall outside—to be sure the third one was as uninterrupted here as she had been earlier in the prior’s quarters—hid themselves again where they could watch the door.
At dusk, Solo Winger told a messenger that a message had just arrived for the prior. The messenger delivered it. The prior, remembering the abbot was absent, felt the timing of the message was extremely opportune.
Later that same night, when everyone slept except the guards on duty, another person entered the abbot’s quarters, this one carrying a lantern and a tiny bowl. The person went from place to place, searching diligently, finding and putting into the tiny bowl almost all the bits and pieces the earlier prowler had left behind: Hair from pillow and brush, skin fragments shaken from a washcloth, fingernail clippings, even a scraping from the handkerchief, the toothpicks marking the books. No one was visible in the hall outside. The person was, so he thought, completely unobserved.
Still later that night while Solo Winger, with an empty bottle on the floor beside his bed for verisimilitude, pretended sodden slumber, the prior arrived in the bird loft. He selected a bird from the Old Dark House cage and attached a message tube containing all the material taken from the abbot’s quarters. He thrust the bird into the night. The same pigeon, not at all interested in flying around in the dark, returned almost immediately to the home cage. The home cage was crowded with birds moving about, eating, cooing, fluttering; one more coming in through the hatch was not noticeable. In any case, the prior was preoccupied with another message, this one to the court at Ghastain. Though the prior thrust this bird into the night as well, it too returned unnoticed.
Solo knew not only his own birds but also every other bird in the loft. It didn’t matter what cage they were in, he knew where each one would home to, and the birds that would fly to the Old Dark House and to Ghastain were temporarily in the cage labeled Merhaven! When the message sender had departed, Solo Winger rose, withdrew from the abbey cage the two abbey birds that had
