Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

little of it. And you've lost that limp that had you going sidewise. How is it with all those bruises?'
    Liliwin owned with some surprise that most of his aches and pains were all but gone, and performed a few startling contortions to prove it. He had not lost his skills. His fingers itched for the coloured rings and balls he used for his juggling, safely tucked away in their knotted cloth under his bed, but he feared they would be frowned on here. The ruin of his rebec also reposed in the corner of the porch next the cloister. He returned there after his breakfast to find Brother Anselm turning the wreck thoughtfully in his hands, and running a questing finger along the worst of the cracks.
    The precentor was past fifty, a vague, slender, shortsighted person who peered beneath an untidy brown tonsure and bristling brows to match, and smiled amiably and encouragingly at the owner of this disastrous relic.
    'This is yours? Brother Cadfael told me how it had suffered. This has been a fine instrument. You did not make it?'
    'No. I had it from an old man who taught me. He gave it to me before he died. I don't know,' said Liliwin, 'how to make them.'
    It was the first time Brother Anselm had heard him speak since the shrill terror of the first invasion. He looked up alertly, tilting his head to listen. 'You have the upper voice, very true and clear. I could use you, if you sing? But you must sing! You have not thought of taking the cowl, here among us?' He recalled with a sigh why that was hardly likely under present circumstances. 'Well, this poor thing has been villainously used, but it is not beyond help. We may try. And the bow is lost, you say.' Liliwin had said no such thing, he was mute with wonder. Evidently Brother Cadfael had given precise information to a retentive enthusiast. 'The bow, I must say, is almost harder to perfect than the fiddle, but I have had my successes. Have you skills on other instruments?'
    'I can get a tune out of most things,' said Liliwin, charmed into eagerness.
    'Come,' said Brother Anselm, taking him firmly by the arm, 'I will show you my workshop and you and I between us, after High Mass, will try what can best be done for this rebec of yours. I shall need a helper to tend my resins and gums. But this will be slow and careful work, mind, and matter for prayer, not to be hastened for any cause. Music is study for a lifetime, son - a lifetime however long.'
    He blew so like a warm gale that Liliwin went with him in a dream, forgetting how short a lifetime could also be.
    Walter Aurifaber woke up that morning with a lingering headache, but also with a protesting stiffness in his limbs and restless animation in his mind that made him want to get up and stretch, and stamp, and move about briskly until the dullness went out of him. He growled at his patient, silent daughter, enquired after his journeyman, who had had the sense to make sure of his Sunday rest by vanishing from both shop and town for the day, and sat down to eat a substantial breakfast and stare his losses in the face.
    Things were coming back to him, however foggily, including one incident he would just as soon his mother should not hear about. Money was money, of course, the old woman had the right of it there, but it's not every day a man marries off his heir, and marries him, moreover, to a most respectable further amount of money. A little flourish towards a miserable menial might surely be forgiven a man, in the circumstances. But would she think so? He regretted it bitterly himself, now, reflecting on the disastrous result of his rare impulse of generosity. No, she must not hear of it!
    Walter nursed his thick head and vain regrets, and took some small comfort in seeing his son and his new daughter-in-law off to church at Saint Mary's, in their best clothes and properly linked, Margery's hand primly on Daniel's arm. The money Margery had brought with her, and would eventually bring, mattered now more than anything else until the lost contents of his strong-box could be recovered. His head ached again fiercely when he thought of it. Whoever had done that to the house of Aurifaber should and must hang, if there was any justice in this world.
    When Hugh Beringar came, with a sergeant in attendance, to hear for himself what the aggrieved victim had to tell, Walter was ready and voluble. But he was none too pleased when Dame Juliana, awaiting Brother Cadfael's visit, and foreseeing more strictures as to her behaviour if she