Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

Saint Paul was brought back with all due ceremony to her rightful place, newly swept and garnished to receive her.
    "Now," said Prior Robert, straightening joyfully to his full majestic height, "let us bring back Saint Winifred to her altar. She was carried, as all here know, into the upper room over the north porch." The little outer door there at the corner of the porch, and the spiral staircase within, very difficult for the transport of even a small coffin, had remained accessible until the highest point of the flood, and she had been well padded against any damage in transit. "Let us go," declaimed Robert, "in devotion and joy, and bring her back to her mission and benediction among us."
    He had always, thought Cadfael, resignedly following through the narrow, retired door and up the tricky stair, this conviction that he owns the girl, because he believes, no, God be good to him, poor soul, he mistakenly but surely knows, that he brought her here. God forbid he should ever find out the truth, that she is far away in her own chosen place, and her connivance with his pride in her is only a kindhearted girl's mercy to an idiot child.
    Cynric, Father Boniface's parish verger, had surrendered his small dwelling above the porch to the housing of the church treasures while the flood lasted. He would be back in possession soon; a tall, gaunt, quiet man, lantern-faced, a figure of awe to ordinary mortals, but totally accepted by the innocents, for the children of the Foregate, and their inseparable camp-followers, the dogs, came confidently to his hand, and sat and meditated contentedly on the steps with him in summer weather. His narrow room was bare now of all but the last and most precious resident. The swathed and roped coffin was taken up with all reverence, and carefully manipulated down the tight confines of the spiral stair.
    In the nave they had set up trestles on which to lay her, while they unwound the sheath of brychans they had used to keep her reliquary from injury. The wrappings unrolled one after another and were laid aside, and it seemed to Cadfael, watching, that with the removal of each one the swaddled shape, dwindling, assumed a form too rigid and rectangular to match with what he carried devoutly in his mind. But the final padding was thick enough to shroud the delicacies of fashioning he knew so well. Prior Robert reached a hand with ceremonious reverence to take hold of the last fold, and drew it back to uncover what lay within.
    He uttered a muted shriek that emerged with startling effect from so august a throat, though it was not loud. He fell back a long, unsteady pace in shock, and then as abruptly started forward again and dragged the rug away, to expose to general view the inexplicable and offensive reality they had manipulated so carefully down from its place of safety. Not the silver-chased reliquary of Saint Winifred, but a log of wood, smaller and shorter than the coffin it had been used to represent, light enough, probably, for one man to handle; and not new, for it had dried and weathered to seasoned ripeness.
    All that care and reverence had been wasted. Wherever Saint Winifred was, she was certainly not here.
    After the stunned and idiot silence, babble and turmoil broke out on all sides, drawing to the spot others who had heard the strangled cry of dismay, and left their own tasks to come and stare and wonder. Prior Robert stood frozen into an outraged statue, the rug clutched in both hands, glaring at the offending log, and for once stricken dumb. It was his obsequious shadow who lifted the burden of protest for him.
    This is some terrible error," blurted Brother Jerome, wringing his hands. "In the confusion... and it grew dark before we were done... Someone mistook, someone moved her elsewhere. We shall find her, safe in one of the lofts..."
    "And this?" demanded Prior Robert witheringly, pointing a damning finger at the offence before them. "Thus shrouded, as carefully as ever we did for her? No error! No mistake made in innocence! Someone did this deliberately to deceive! This was laid in her place, to be handled and cherished in her stead. And where now... where is she?"
    Some disturbance in the air, some wind of alarm, had caught the scent by then, and carried it through the great court, and minute by minute more openmouthed onlookers were gathering, stray brothers summoned from scattered cleansing duties in the grange court and the stables, sharp-eared guests from their