Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

as indeed both were. The one to make a clear field for the other to be removed beyond recovery. At least beyond immediate recovery," he amended firmly, "for recover her we shall."
    Hugh was looking at him, across the glow of the brazier, with a twitch of the lips and an oblique tilt to the brow that Cadfael remembered from of old, from the time of their first precarious acquaintance, when neither of them had been quite sure whether the other was friend or foe, and yet each had been drawn to the other in a half-grave, half-impish contest to find out.
    "Do you know," said Hugh softly, "that you are speaking of that lost reliquary, some years now you have been speaking of it so, as if it truly contained the Welsh lady's bones. "She", you say, never "it", or even more truly, "him". And you know, none so well, that you left her to her rest there in Gwytherin. Can she be in two places at once?"
    "Some essence of her certainly can," said Cadfael, "for she has done miracles here among us. She lay in that coffin three days, why should she not have conferred the power of her grace upon it? Is she to be limited by time and place? I tell you, Hugh, sometimes I wonder what would be found within there, if ever that lid was lifted. Though I own," he added ruefully, "I shall be praying devoutly that it never comes to the proof."
    "You had better," Hugh agreed. "Imagine the uproar, if someone somewhere breaks those seals you repaired so neatly, and prizes off the lid, to find the body of a young man about twenty-four, instead of the bones of a virgin saint. And mother-naked, at that! Your goose would be finely cooked!" He rose, laughing, but even so a little wryly, for the possibility certainly existed, and might yet erupt into disaster. "I must go and make ready. Prior Robert means to set out as soon as he has dined." He embraced Cadfael briskly about the shoulders in passing, by way of encouragement, and shook him bracingly. "Never fear, you are a favourite with her, and she'll look after her own, let alone that you've managed very well so far at looking after yourself."
    "The strange thing is, Hugh," Cadfael said suddenly, as Hugh reached the door, "that I'm concerned almost as anxiously for poor Columbanus."
    "Poor Columbanus?" Hugh echoed, turning to stare back at him in astonished amusement. "Cadfael, you never cease to surprise me. Poor Columbanus, indeed! A murderer by stealth, and all for his own glory, not for Shrewsbury's, and certainly not for Winifred's."
    "I know! But he ended the loser. And dead! And now, flooded out of what rest was allowed him on a quiet altar here at home, taken away to some strange place where he knows no one, friend or enemy. And perhaps," said Cadfael, shaking his head over the strayed sinner, "having miracles expected of him, when he can do none. It would not be so hard to feel a little sorry for him."
    Cadfael went up to Longner as soon as the midday meal was over, and found the young lord of the manor in his smithy within the stockade, himself supervising the forging of a new iron tip for a ploughshare. Eudo Blount was a husbandman born, a big, candid, fair fellow, to all appearances better built for service in arms than his younger brother, but a man for whom soil, and crops and wellkept livestock would always be fulfilment enough. He would raise sons in his own image, and the earth would be glad of them. Younger sons must carve out their own fortunes. "Lost Saint Winifred?" said Eudo, gaping, when he heard the purport of Cadfael's errand. "How the devil could you lose her? Not a thing to be palmed and slipped in a pouch when no one's looking. And you want speech with Gregory and Lambert? Surely you don't suppose they'd have any use for her, even if they did have a cart on the Horse Fair! There's no complaint of my men down there, is there?"
    "None in the world!" said Cadfael heartily. "But just by chance, they may have seen something the rest of us were blind enough to miss. They lent a hand when there was need of it, and we were heartily thankful. But no use looking further afield until we've looked close at home, and made sure no over-zealous idiot has put the lady away somewhere safely and mislaid her. We've asked of every soul within the walls, better consult these last two, or we might stop short of the simple answer."
    "Ask whatever you will," said Eudo simply. "You'll find them both across in the stable or the carthouse. And I wish you might get your easy answer, but I doubt it. They