“They’ve agreed to admit her, which is as good as acknowledging her. But they’re arguing terms for her entry, as I heard it, and every delay is worth gold to me and to Stephen. If only,” said Hugh, the dancing light suddenly sharpening every line of his intent and eloquent face, “if only I could get a good man into Bristol! There are ways into castles, even into the dungeons. Two or three good, secret men might do it. A fistful of gold to a malcontent gaoler… Kings have been fetched off before now, even out of chains, and he’s not chained. She has not gone so far, not yet. Cadfael, I dream! My work is here, and I am but barely equal to it. I have no means of carrying off Bristol, too.”
“Once loosed,” said Cadfael, “your king is going to need this shire ready to his hand.”
He turned from the brazier, hoisting aside the pot and laying it to cool on a slab of stone he kept for the purpose. His back creaked a little as he straightened it. In small ways he was feeling his years, but once erect he was spry enough.
“I’m done here for this while,” he said, brushing his hands together to get rid of the hollow worn by the ladle. “Come into the daylight, and see the flowers we’re bringing on for the festival of Saint Winifred. Father Abbot will be home in good time to preside over her reception from Saint Giles. And we shall have a houseful of pilgrims to care for.”
They had brought the reliquary of the Welsh saint four years previously from Gwytherin, where she lay buried, and installed it on the altar of the church at the hospital of Saint Giles, at the very edge of Shrewsbury’s Foregate suburb, where the sick, the infected, the deformed, the lepers, who might not venture within the walls, were housed and cared for. And thence they had borne her casket in splendour to her altar in the abbey church, to be an ornament and a wonder, a means of healing and blessing to all who came reverently and in need. This year they had undertaken to repeat that last journey, to bring her from Saint Giles in procession, and open her altar to all who came with prayers and offerings. Every year she had drawn many pilgrims. This year they would be legion.
“A man might wonder,” said Hugh, standing spread-footed among the flower beds just beginning to burn from the soft, shy colours of spring into the blaze of summer, “whether you were not rather preparing for a bridal.”
Hedges of hazel and may-blossom shed silver petals and dangled pale, silver-green catkins round the enclosure where they stood, cowslips were rearing in the grass of the meadow beyond, and irises were in tight, thrusting bud. Even the roses showed a harvest of buds, erect and ready to break and display the first colour. In the walled shelter of Cadfael’s herb-garden there were fat globes of peonies, too, just cracking their green sheaths. Cadfael had medicinal uses for the seeds, and Brother Petrus, the abbot’s cook, used them as spices in the kitchen.
“A man might not be so far out, at that,” said Cadfael, viewing the fruits of his labours complacently. “A perpetual and pure bridal. This Welsh girl was virgin until the day of her death.”
“And you have married her off since?”
It was idly said, in revulsion from pondering matters of state. In such a garden a man could believe in peace, fruit-fulness and amity. But it encountered suddenly so profound and pregnant a silence that Hugh pricked up his ears, and turned his head almost stealthily to study his friend, even before the unguarded answer came. Unguarded either from absence of mind, or of design, there was no telling.
“Not wedded,” said Cadfael, “but certainly bedded. With a good man, too, and her honest champion. He deserved his reward.”
Hugh raised quizzical brows, and cast a glance over his shoulder towards the long roof of the great abbey church, where reputedly the lady in question slept in a sealed reliquary on her own altar. An elegant coffin just long enough to contain a small and holy Welshwoman, with the neat, compact bones of her race.
“Hardly room within there for two,” he said mildly.
“Not two of our gross make, no, not there. There was space enough where we put them.” He knew he was listened to, now, and heard with sharp intelligence, if not yet understood.
“Are you telling me,” wondered Hugh no less mildly, “that she is not there in that elaborate shrine of yours, where everyone else knows she is?”
“Can I tell? Many a time I’ve wished it could be possible to be in two places at once. A thing too hard for me, but for a saint, perhaps, possible? Three nights and three days she was in there, that I do know. She may well have left a morsel of her holiness within, if only by way of thanks to us who took her out again, and put her back where I still, and always shall, believe she wished to be. But for all that,” owned Cadfael, shaking his head, “there’s a trailing fringe of doubt that nags at me. How if I read her wrong?”
“Then your only resort is confession and penance,” said Hugh lightly.
“Not until Brother Mark is full-fledged a priest!” Young Mark was gone from his mother-house and from his flock at Saint Giles, gone to the household of the bishop of Lichfield, with Leoric Aspley’s endowment to see him through his studies, and the goal of all his longings shining distant and clear before him, the priesthood for which God had designed him. “I’m saving for him,” said Cadfael, “all those sins I feel, perhaps mistakenly, to be no sins. He was my right hand and a piece of my heart for three years, and knows me better than any man living. Barring, it may be, yourself?” he added, and slanted a guileless glance at his friend. “He will know the truth of me, and by his judgement and for his absolution I’ll embrace any penance. You might deliver the judgement, Hugh, but you cannot deliver the absolution.”
“Nor the penance, neither,” said Hugh, and laughed freely. “So tell it to me, and go free without penalty.”
The idea of confiding was unexpectedly pleasing and acceptable. “It’s a long story,” said Cadfeel warningly.
“Then now’s your time, for whatever I can do here is done, nothing is asked of me but watchfulness and patience, and why should I wait unentertained if there’s a good story to be heard? And you are at leisure until Vespers. You may even get merit,” said Hugh, composing his face into priestly solemnity, “by unburdening your soul to the secular arm. And I can be secret,” he said, “as any confessional.”
“Wait, then,” said Cadfael, “while I fetch a draught of that maturing wine, and come within to the bench under the north wall, where the afternoon sun falls. We may as well be at ease while I talk.”
“It was a year or so before I knew you,” said Cadfael, bracing his back comfortably against the warmed, stony roughness of the herb-garden wall. “We were without a tame saint to our house, and somewhat envious of Wenlock, where the Cluny community had discovered their Saxon foundress Milburga, and were making great play with her. And we had certain signs that sent off an ailing brother of ours into Wales, to bathe at Holywell, where this girl Winifred died her first death, and brought forth her healing spring. There was her own patron, Saint Beuno, ready and able to bring her back to life, but the spring remained, and did wonders. So it came to Prior Robert that the lady could be persuaded to leave Gwytherin, where she died her second death and was buried, and come and bring her glory to us here in Shrewsbury. I was one of the party he took with him to deal with the parish there, and
