Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

made her home with us. We have never failed in devotion. Her day has been celebrated most reverently every year, and the day of her translation has been particularly blessed. Our most dutiful and saintly brother was himself healed of his lameness by her, and has been ever since her particular squire and servant. I do not believe she would ever leave us of her own will."
    "Oh, never with any heart to deprive you," protested Herluin, "but in compassion for a monastic house brought to ruin might she not feel bound to exert herself to deliver? Trusting to your generosity to respect the need, and add to your alms already given the power and grace she could bestow? For certain it is that she did leave your enclave with my men, and with them took the road to Ramsey. Why so, if she had no wish to depart from you, and none to come and abide with us?"
    "It is not yet proven," declared Prior Robert, falling back upon the mere material facts of the case, "that men, and sinful men, for if it happened so this was sacrilegious theft!, had no part in her removal from our care. In Shrewsbury our lord abbot has given orders to seek out all those who came to help us when the river rose into the church. We do not know what has been uncovered, what testimony given. There the truth may by now be known. Here it certainly is not."
    The earl had sat well back from between the bristling champions, absolving himself from all responsibility here except to keep the peace and harmony of his hall. His countenance was bland, sympathetic to both parties, concerned that both should have justice done to them, and be satisfied.
    "Reverend Fathers," he said mildly, "as I hear, you intend in any case returning together to Shrewsbury. What hinders that you should put off all dispute until you are there, and hear all that has been discovered in your absence? Then all may be made plain. And if that fails, and there is still no hand of man apparent in the removal, then it will be time to consider a rational judgement. Not now! Not yet!"
    With guarded relief but without enthusiasm they accepted that, at least as a means of postponing hostilities.
    True!" said Prior Robert, though still rather coldly. "We cannot anticipate. They will have done all that can be done to unearth the truth. Let us wait until we know."
    "I did pray the saint's help for our plight," Herluin persisted, "while I was there with you. It is surely conceivable that she heard and had pity on us... But you are right, patience is required of us until we hear further on the matter."
    A little mischief in it, Hugh judged, content to be an onlooker and have the best view of the game, but no malice. He's amusing himself at a dull time of year, and being here without his womenfolk, but he's as adroit at calming the storm as he is at raising it. Now what more can he do to pass the evening pleasantly, and entertain his guests? One of them, at any rate, he admitted a shade guiltily, and reminded himself that he had still to get these two ambitious clerics back to Shrewsbury without bloodshed.
    "There is yet a small matter that has escaped notice," said the earl almost apologetically. "I should be loathe to create more difficulties, but I cannot help following a line of thought to its logical end. If Saint Winifred did indeed conceive and decree her departure with the wagon for Ramsey, and if a saint's plans cannot be disrupted by man, then surely she must also have willed all that happened after... the ambush by outlaws, the theft of the cart and team, the abandonment of the load, and with it, her reliquary, to be found by my tenants, and brought to me here. All accomplished, does it not seem plain?, to bring her finally where she now rests. Had she meant to go to Ramsey, there would have been no ambush, there she would have gone without hindrance. But she came here to my care. Impossible to say of the first move, it was her will, and not to extend that to what followed, or reason is gone mad."
    Both his neighbours at table were staring at him in shocked alarm, knocked clean out of words, and that in itself was an achievement. The earl looked from one to the other with a disarming smile.
    "You see my position. If the brothers in Shrewsbury have found the rogues or the fools who mislaid the saint in the first place, then there is no contention between any of us. But if they have not traced any such, then I have a logical claim. Gentlemen, I would not for the world be judge in a cause in which I am one