Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate

looked down in astonishment and concern into the face of Ciaran, convulsed and ablaze with resentment and distress.
    "Father, I beg you, see justice done! I am helpless unless you help me!"
    He awoke, somewhat late, to the unwarranted violence of his behaviour, and fell on his knees at the abbot's feet. "Pardon, pardon! I am too loud and troublous, I hardly know what I say!"
    The press of gossiping, festive worshippers just loosed from Mass had fallen quiet all in a moment, and instead of dispersing drew in about them to listen and stare, avidly curious. The monks of the house, hindered in their orderly departure, hovered in quiet deprecation. Cadfael looked beyond the kneeling, imploring figure of Ciaran for its inseparable twin, and found Matthew just shouldering his way forward out of the crowd, open-mouthed and wide-eyed in patent bewilderment, to stand at gaze a few paces apart, and frown helplessly from the abbot to Ciaran and back again, in search of the cause of this abrupt turmoil. Was it possible that something had happened to the one that the other of the matched pair did not know?
    "Get up!" said Radulfus, erect and calm. "No need to kneel. Speak out whatever you have to say, and you shall have right."
    The pervasive silence spread, grew, filled even the most distant reaches of the great court. Those who had already scattered to the far corners turned and crept unobtrusively back again, large-eyed and prick-eared, to hang upon the fringes of the crowd already assembled.
    Ciaran clambered to his feet, voluble before he was erect. "Father, I had a ring, the copy of one the lord bishop of Winchester keeps for his occasions, bearing his device and inscription. Such copies he uses to afford safe-conduct to those he sends forth on his business or with his blessing, to open doors to them and provide protection on the road. Father, the ring is gone!"
    "This ring was given to you by Henry of Blois himself?" asked Radulfus.
    "No, Father, not in person. I was in the service of the prior of Hyde Abbey, a lay clerk, when this mortal sickness came on me, and I took this vow of mine to spend my remaining days in the canonry of Aberdaron. My prior - you know that Hyde is without an abbot, and has been for some years - my prior asked the lord bishop, of his goodness, to give me what protection he could for my journey..."
    So that had been the starting point of this barefoot journey, thought Cadfael, enlightened. Winchester itself, or as near as made no matter, for the New Minster of that city, always a jealous rival of the Old, where Bishop Henry presided, had been forced to abandon its old home in the city thirty years ago, and banished to Hyde Mead, on the north-western outskirts. There was no love lost between Henry and the community at Hyde, for it was the bishop who had been instrumental in keeping them deprived of an abbot for so long, in pursuit of his own ambition of turning them into an episcopal monastery. The struggle had been going on for some time, the bishop deploying various schemes to get the house into his own hands, and the prior using every means to resist these manipulations. It seemed Henry had still the grace to show compassion even on a servant of the hostile house, when he fell under the threat of disease and death. The traveller over whom the bishop-legate spread his protecting hand would pass unmolested wherever law retained its validity. Only those irreclaimably outlaw already would dare interfere with him.
    "Father, the ring is gone, stolen from me this very morning. See here, the slashed threads that held it!" Ciaran heaved forward the drab linen scrip that rode at his belt, and showed two dangling ends of cord, very cleanly severed. "A sharp knife - someone here has such a dagger. And my ring is gone!"
    Prior Robert was at the abbot's elbow by then, agitated out of his silvery composure. "Father, what this man says is true. He showed me the ring. Given to ensure him aid and hospitality on his journey, which is of most sad and solemn import. If now it is lost, should not the gate be closed while we enquire?"
    "Let it be so," said Radulfus, and stood silent to see Brother Jerome, ever ready and assiduous on the prior's heels, run to see the order carried out. "Now, take breath and thought, for your loss cannot be lost far. You did not wear the ring, then, but carried it knotted securely by this cord, within your scrip?"
    "Yes, Father. It was beyond words precious to me."
    "And when did you last