consciousness, Cadfael congratulated himself on having made as many people as possible happy, and drifted into a dream of a hot knife-blade slicing deftly through the thick wax of a seal without ever disturbing the device. It was a long time since he had exercised some of his more questionable skills, he was glad to be confirmed in believing that he had forgotten none of them, and that every one had a meritorious use in the end.
Chapter Twelve
It was more than two years later, and the middle of a bright June afternoon, when Brother Cadfael, crossing the great court from the fishponds, saw among the travellers arriving at the gate a certain thickset, foursquare, powerful figure that he knew. Bened, the smith of Gwytherin, a little rounder in the belly and a little greyer in the hair, had found the time ripe for realising an old ambition, and was on his way in a pilgrim’s gown to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
“If I’d put it off much longer,” he confided, when they were private together with a bottle of wine in a comer of the herb-garden, “I should have grown too old to relish the journey. And what was there to keep me now, with a good lad ready and able to take over the smithy while I’m gone? He took to it like a duck to water. Oh, yes, they’ve been man and wife eighteen months now, and as happy as larks. Annest always knew her own mind, and this time I will say she’s made no mistake.”
“And have they a child yet?” asked Brother Cadfael, imagining a bold, sturdy boy-baby with a bush of red hair, nibbed away by his pillow in an infant tonsure.
“Not yet, but there’s one on the way. By the time I get back he’ll be with us.”
“And Annest is well?”
“Blossoming like a rose.”
“And Sioned and Engelard? They had no troubles after we were gone?”
“None, bless you! Griffith ap Rhys let it be known that all was well, and should be let well alone. They’re married, and snug, and I’m to bring you their warmest greetings, and to tell you they have a fine son — three months old, I reckon he’d be now — dark and Welsh like his mother. And they’ve named him Cadfael.”
“Well, well!” said Brother Cadfael, absurdly gratified. “The best way to get the sweet out of children and escape the bitter is to have them by proxy. But I hope they’ll never find anything but sweet in their youngster. There’ll be a Bened yet, in one household or the other.”
Bened the pilgrim shook his head, but without any deep regret, and reached for the bottle. “There was a time when I’d hoped…. But it would never have done. I was an old fool ever to think of it, and it’s better this way. And Cai’s well, and sends you remembrances, and says drink down one cup for him.”
They drank many more than one before it was time for Vespers. “And you’ll see me again at chapter tomorrow,” said Bened, as they walked back to the great court, “for I’m charged with greetings from Father Huw to Prior Robert and Abbot Heribert, and I’ll need you to be my interpreter.”
“Father Huw must be the one person in Gwytherin, I suppose, who doesn’t know the truth by this time,” said Cadfael, with some compunction. “But it wouldn’t have been fair to lay such a load on his conscience. Better to let him keep his innocence.”
“His innocence is safe enough,” said Bened, “for he’s never said word to bring it in question, but for all that I wouldn’t be too sure that he doesn’t know. There’s a lot of merit in silence.”
The next morning at chapter he delivered his messages of goodwill and commendation to the monastery in general, and the members of Prior Robert’s mission in particular, from the parish of Saint Winifred’s ministry to the altar of her glorification. Abbot Heribert questioned him amiably about the chapel and the graveyard which he himself had never seen, and to which, as he said, the abbey owed its most distinguished patroness and most precious relics.
“And we trust,” he said gently, “that in our great gain you have not suffered equally great deprivation, for that was never our intent.”
“No, Father Abbot,” Bened reassured him heartily, “you need have no regrets upon that score. For I must tell you that at the place of Saint Winifred’s grave wonderful things are happening. More people come there for help than ever before. There have been marvellous cures.”
Prior Robert stiffened in his place, and his austere face turned bluish-white and pinched with incredulous resentment.
“Even now, when the saint is here on our altar, and all the devout come to pray to her here? Ah, but small things — the residue of grace….”
“No, Father Prior, great things! Women in mortal labour with cross-births have been brought there and laid on the grave from which she was taken, where we buried Rhisiart, and their children have been soothed into the world whole and perfect, with no harm to the mothers. A man blind for years came and bathes his eyes in a distillation of her may-blossoms, and threw away his stick and went home seeing. A young man whose leg-bone had been broken and knitted awry came in pain, and set his teeth and danced before her, and as he danced the pain left him, and his bones straightened. I cannot tell you half the wonders we have seen in Gwytherin these last two years.”
Prior Robert’s livid countenance was taking on a shade of green, and under his careful eyelids his eyes sparkled emerald jealousy. How dare that obscure village, bereft of its saint, outdo the small prodigies of rain that held off from falling, and superficial wounds that healed with commendable but hardly miraculous speed, and even the slightly suspicious numbers of lame who brought their crutches and left them before the altar, and walked away unsupported?
“There was a child of three who went into a fit,” pursued Bened with gusto, “stiff as a board in his mother’s arms, and stopped breathing, and she ran with him all the way from the far fields, fording the river, and carried him to Winifred’s grave, and laid him down in the grass there dead. And when he touched the chill of the earth, he breathed and cried out, and she picked him up living, and took him home joyfully, and he is live and well to this day.”
“What, even the dead raised?” croaked Prior Robert, almost speechless with envy.
“Father Prior,” said Brother Cadfael soothingly, “surely this is but another proof, the strongest possible, of the surpassing merit and potency of Saint Winifred. Even the soil that once held her bones works wonders, and every wonder must redound to the credit and glory of that place which houses the very body that blessed the earth still blesses others.”
And Abbot Heribert, oblivious of the chagrin that was consuming his prior, benignly agreed that it was so, and
