Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate Read Free

good reason, seeing his girl wounded and bleeding. He was stronger than he knew. The murderer's neck was broken."
    "How many knew of this?" asked Hugh, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully upon the glossy-leaved rose-bushes.
    "When it befell, only the lovers, the dead man and I. And Saint Winifred, who had been raised from her grave and laid in that casket of which you and all men know. She knew. She was there. From the moment I raised her," said Cadfael, "and by God, it was I who took her from the soil, and I who restored her-and still that makes me glad-from the moment I uncovered those slender bones, I felt in mine they wished only to be left in peace. It was so little and so wild and quiet a graveyard there, with the small church long out of use, meadow flowers growing over all, and the mounds so modest and green. And Welsh soil! The girl was Welsh, like me, her church was of the old persuasion, what did she know of this alien English shire? And I had those young things to keep. Who would have taken their word or mine against all the force of the church? They would have closed their ranks to bury the scandal, and bury the boy with it, and he guilty of nothing but defending his dear. So I took measures."
    Hugh's mobile lips twitched. "Now indeed you amaze me! And what measures were those? With a dead brother to account for, and Prior Robert to keep sweet..."
    "Ah, well, Robert is a simpler soul than he supposes, and then I had a good deal of help from the dead brother himself. He'd been busy building himself such a reputation for sanctity, delivering messages from the saint herself - it was he told us she was offering the grave she'd left to the murdered man - and going into trance-sleeps, and praying to leave this world and be taken into bliss living... So we did him that small favour. He'd been keeping a solitary night-watch in the old church, and in the morning when it ended, there were his habit and sandals fallen together at his prayer-stool, and the body of him lifted clean out of them, in sweet odours and a shower of may-blossom. That was how he claimed the saint had already visited him, why should not Robert recall it and believe? Certainly he was gone. Why look for him? Would a modest brother of our house be running through the Welsh woods mother-naked?"
    "Are you telling me," asked Hugh cautiously, "That what you have there in the reliquary is not... Then the casket had not yet been sealed?" His eyebrows were tangling with his black forelock, but his voice was soft and unsurprised.
    "Well..." Cadfael twitched his blunt brown nose bashfully between finger and thumb. "Sealed it was, but there are ways of dealing with seals that leave them unblemished. It's one of the more dubious of my remembered skills, but for all that I was glad of it then."
    "And you put the lady back in the place that was hers, along with her champion?"
    "He was a decent, good man, and had spoken up for her nobly. She would not grudge him house-room. I have always thought," confided Cadfael, "that she was not displeased with us. She has shown her power in Gwytherin since that time, by many miracles, so I cannot believe she is angry. But what a little troubles me is that she has not so far chosen to favour us with any great mark of her patronage here, to keep Robert happy, and set my mind at rest. Oh, a few little things, but nothing of unmistakable note. How if I have displeased her, after all? Well for me, who know what we have within there on the altar - and mea culpa if I did wrongly! But what of the innocents who do not know, and come in good faith, hoping for grace from her? What if I have been the means of their deprivation and loss?"
    "I see," said Hugh with sympathy, "that Brother Mark had better make haste through the degrees of ordination, and come quickly to lift the load from you. Unless," he added with a flashing sidelong smile, "Saint Winifred takes pity on you first, and sends you a sign."
    "I still do not see," mused Cadfael, "what