An Excellent Mystery Read Free

brought you all the medicaments you asked for,
and some I thought might be needed, besides. We’ll find you when we’re done.”
    “And
the news of Brother Mark?” asked Simon.
    “Mark
is already deacon. I have but to save my most fearful confession a few more
years, then, if need be, I’ll depart in peace.”
    “According
to Mark’s word?” wondered Simon, revealing unsuspected depths, and smiling to
gloss them over. It was not often he spoke at such a venture.
    “Well,”
said Cadfael very thoughtfully, “I’ve always found Mark’s word good enough for
me. You may well be right.” And he turned to Oswin, who had followed this
exchange with a face dutifully attentive and bewilderedly smiling, earnest to
understand what evaded him like thistledown. “Come on, lad, let’s unload these
and be rid of the weight first, and then I’ll show you all that goes on here at
Saint Giles.”
    They
passed through the hall, which was for eating and for sleeping, except for
those too sick to be left among their healthier fellows. There was a large
locked cupboard, to which Cadfael had his own key, and its shelves within were
full of jars, flasks, bottles, wooden boxes for tablets, ointments, syrups,
lotions, all the products of Cadfael’s workshop. They unloaded their scrips and
filled the gaps along the shelves. Oswin enlarged with the importance of this
mystery into which he had been initiated, and which he was now to practise in
earnest.
    There
was a small kitchen garden behind the hospice, and an orchard, and barns for
storage. Cadfael conducted his charge round the entire enclave, and by the end
of the circuit they had three of the inmates in close and curious attendance,
the old man who tended the cabbages and showed off his produce with pride, a
lame youth herpling along nimbly enough on two crutches, and the blind child,
who had forsaken Brother Simon to attach himself to Cadfael’s girdle, knowing
the familiar voice.
    “This
is Warin,” said Cadfael, taking the boy by the hand as they made their way back
to Brother Simon’s little desk in the porch. “He sings well in chapel, and
knows the office by heart. But you’ll soon know them all by name.”
    Brother
Simon rose from his accounts at sight of them returning. “He’s shown you
everything? It’s no great household, ours, but it does a great work. You’ll
soon get used to us.”
    Oswin
beamed and blushed, and said that he would do his best. It was likely that he
was waiting impatiently for his mentor to depart, so that he could begin to
exercise his new responsibility without the uneasiness of a pupil performing
before his teacher. Cadfael clouted him cheerfully on the shoulder, bade him be
good, in the tones of one having no doubts on that score, and turned towards
the gate. They had moved out into the sunlight from the dimness of the porch.
    “You’ve
heard no fresh news from the south?” The denizens of Saint Giles, being
encountered at the very edge of the town, were usually beforehand with news.
    “Nothing
to signify. And yet a man must wonder and speculate. There was a beggar,
able-bodied but getting old, who came in three days ago, and stayed only
overnight to rest. He was from the Staceys, near Andover, a queer one, perhaps
a mite touched in his wits, who can tell? He gets notions, it seems, that move
him on into fresh pastures, and when they come to him he must go. He said he
got word in his head that he had best get away northwards while there was
time.”
    “A
man of those parts who had no property to tie him might very well get the same
notion now,” said Cadfael ruefully, “without being in want of his wits. Indeed,
it might be his wits that advised him to move on.”
    “So
it might. But this fellow said, if he did not dream it, that the day he set out
he looked back from a hilltop, and saw smoke in clouds over Winchester, and in
the night following there was a red glow all above