Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

were hidden among the mass of people gathering slowly to leave by the west door. He went out by the south door and the cloisters, and emerged into the court to find her waiting quietly there for the procession of the brothers to separate to their various duties. It did not surprise him when at sight of him her face sharpened and her eyes brightened, and she took a single step towards him, enough to arrest him.

    

'Brother, may I speak with you? I have asked leave of the lord abbot.' She sounded practical and resolute, but she had not risked the least indiscretion, it seemed. 'I made so bold as to accost him just now, when he left,' she said. 'It seems that he already knew my name and family. That can only have been from you, I think.'

    

'Father Abbot is fully informed,' said Cadfael, 'with all the matter that brought me to visit you. He is concerned for justice, as we are. To the dead and to the living. He will not stand in the way of any converse that may serve that end.'

    

'He was kind,' she said, and suddenly warmed and smiled. 'And now we have observed all the proper forms, and I can breathe again. Where may we talk?'

    

He took them to his workshop in the herb garden. It was becoming too chilly to linger and converse outdoors, his brazier was alight but damped down within, and with the timber doors wide open, Brother Winfrid returning to the remaining patch of rough pre-winter digging just outside the enclosure wall, and Gunnild standing at a discreet distance within, not even Prior Robert could have raised his brows at the propriety of this conference. Pernel had been wise in applying directly to the superior, who already knew of the role she had played, and certainly had no reason to disapprove of it. Had she not gone far to save both a body and a soul? And she had brought the one, if not visibly the other, to show to him.

    

'Now,' said Cadfael, tickling the brazier to show a gleam of red through its controlling turves, 'sit down and be easy, the both of you. And tell me what you have in mind, to bring you here to worship, when, as I know, you have a church and a priest of your own. I know, for it belongs, like Upton, to this house of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. And your priest is a rare man and a scholar, as I know from Brother Anselm, who is his friend.'

    

'So he is,' said Pernel warmly, 'and you must not think I have not talked with him, very earnestly, about this matter.' She had settled herself decorously at one end of the bench against the wall of the hut, composed and erect, her face bright against the dark timber, her hood fallen back on her shoulders. Gunnild, invited by a smile and a gesture, glided out of shadow and sat down on the other end of the bench, leaving a discreet gap between the two of them to mark the difference in their status, but not too wide, to underline the depth of her alliance with her mistress. 'It was Father Ambrosius,' said Pernel, 'who said the word that brought me here on this day of all days. Father Ambrosius studied for some years in Brittany. You know, Brother, whose day we are celebrating?'

    

'I should,' said Cadfael, relinquishing the bellows that had raised a red glow in his brazier. 'He is as Welsh as I am, and a close neighbour to this shire. What of Saint Tysilio?'

    

'But did you know that he is said to have gone over to Brittany to fly from a woman's persecution? And in Brittany they also tell of his life, like the readings you will hear today at Collations. But there they know him by another name. They call him Sulien.'

    

'Oh, no,' she said, seeing how speculatively Cadfael was eyeing her, 'I did not take it as a sign from heaven, when Father Ambrosuis told me that. It was just that the name prompted me to act, where before I was only wondering and fretting. Why not on his day? For I think, Brother, that you believe that Sulien Blount is not what he seems, not as open as he seems. I have been thinking and asking about this matter. I think things are so inclining, that he may be suspect of too much knowledge, in this matter of the poor dead woman your plough team found under the headland in the Potter's Field. Too much knowledge, perhaps even guilt. Is it true?'

    

'Too much knowledge, certainly,' said Cadfael. 'Guilt, that is mere conjecture, yet there is ground for suspicion.' He owed her honesty, and she expected it.

    

'Will you tell me,' she said, 'the whole story? For I know only what is gossiped