Brother Cadfael 01: A Morbid Taste for Bones

across until it rested against Rhisiart's right hand. Its progress over the rough boards gave out a small chinking sound. Rhisiart eyed it suspiciously, and lifted uncomprehending eyes to stare at the prior. "I don't understand you. What is this?"
    "It is yours," said Robert, "if you will persuade the parish to agree to give up the saint."
    Too late he felt the unbelieving coldness in the air, and sensed the terrible error he had made. Hastily he did his best to recover some of the ground lost. "To be used as you think best for Gwytherin - a great sum..." It was useless. Cadfael let it lie in silence.
    "Money!" said Rhisiart in the most extraordinary of tones, at once curious, derisory and revolted. He knew about money, of course, and even understood its use, but as an aberration in human relations. In the rural parts of Wales, which indeed were almost all of Wales, it was hardly used at all, and hardly needed. Provision was made in the code for all necessary exchange of goods and services, nobody was so poor as to be without the means of living, and beggars were unknown. The kinship took care of its helpless members, and every house was open as of right. The minted coins that had seeped in through the marches were a pointless eccentricity. Only after a moment of scornful wonder did it occur to Rhisiart that in this case they were also a mortal insult. He snatched away his hand from the affronting touch, and the blood surged into his face darkly red, suffusing even the whites of his eyes.
    "Money? You dare offer to buy our saint? To buy me? 1 was in two minds about you, and about what I ought to do, but now, by God, I know what to think! You had your omens. Now I have mine."
    "You mistake me!" cried the prior, stumbling after his blunder and seeing it outdistance him at every breath. "One cannot buy what is holy, I am only offering a gift to Gwytherin, in gratitude and compensation for their sacrifice -"
    "Mine, you said it was," Rhisiart reminded him, glowing copper bright with dignified rage. "Mine, if I persuaded...! Not a gift! A bribe! This foolish stuff you hoard about you more dearly far than your reputations, don't think you can use it to buy my conscience. I know now that I was right to doubt you. You have said your say, now I will say mine to those people without, as you promised me I should, without hindrance."
    "No, wait!" The prior was in such agitation that he actually reached out a hand and caught his opponent by the sleeve. "Do nothing in haste! You have mistaken my meaning indeed, and if I was wrong even to offer an alms to Gwytherin, I am sorry for it. But do not call it -"
    Rhisiart withdrew himself angrily from the detaining clasp, and cut off the protest curtly, wheeling on Cadfael. "Tell him he need not be afraid. I should be ashamed to tell my people that a prior of Shrewsbury tried to corrupt me with a bribe. I don't deal in that kind of warfare. But where I stand - that they shall know, and you, too." And he strode out from them, and Father Huw put out a warning hand to prevent any of them from attempting to impede or follow him.
    "Not now! He is hot now. Tomorrow something may be done to approach him, but not now. You must let him say what he will."
    "Then at least let's put in an appearance," said the prior, magnificently picking up what pieces he could of the ruin he had created; and he swept out into the sunlight and took his stand close to the door of the church, with all his fellow-monks dutifully following on his heels, and stood with erect head and calmly folded hands, in full view, while Rhisiart thundered his declaration to the assembled people of Gwytherin.
    "I have listened to what these men from Shrewsbury have had to say to me, and I have made my judgment accordingly, and now I deliver it to you. I say that so far from changing my views, I am confirmed a thousand times that I was right to oppose the sacrilege they desire. I say that Saint Winifred's place is here among us, where she has always belonged, and that it would be mortal sin to let her be taken away to a strange place, where not even the prayers would be in a tongue she knows, where foreigners not worthy to draw near her would be her only company. I pledge my opposition to the death, against any attempt to move her bones, and I urge upon you the same duty. And now this conference is ended."
    So he said, and so it was. There could be no possible way of prolonging it. The prior was forced to stand with marble face and