Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

abbot must take that charge upon him. But by the leave of all here, I challenge your view, Father Abbot, that he has committed any offence touching the removal of Saint Winifred's reliquary. I repeat, this was a holy theft, undertaken in duty and reverence. The saint herself instructed him. If it were not so, she would never have allowed it to succeed."
    "I tremble at crossing swords with you," said Robert Bossu in the sweetest and most reasonable of voices, his high shoulder leaned at ease against the panelled wall at his back, "but I must observe that she did not allow it to succeed. The wagon that carried her was waylaid and stolen by vagabonds in the forests of my domain, and in my lands she came to rest."
    "That intervention was by the malice of evil men," said Herluin, roused and fiery of eye.
    "But you have acknowledged that the power of such a saint can and will frustrate the malice of evil men. If she did not see fit to prevent their actions, it must be because they served her purposes. She let pass her abduction from Shrewsbury, she let pass the onslaught of outlaws. In my woodland she came to rest, and to my house she was carried into sanctuary. By your own reasoning, Father, all this, if any, must have been achieved by her will."
    "I would remind you both," said the abbot gently, "that if she has been all this while consulting her own wishes, and imposing them upon us mortals, Saint Winifred is again on her own altar in our church. This, then, must be the end at which all this diversion was aiming. And she is where she desires to be."
    The earl smiled, a smile of extraordinary subtlety and charm. "No, Father Abbot, for this last move was different. She is here again because I, with a claim of my own to advance, and having regard to yet another claim, with strict fairness, brought her back to Shrewsbury, from which she began her controversial odyssey, so that she herself might choose where she wished to rest. Never did she show any disposition to leave my chapel, where her repose was respected. Voluntarily I brought her with me. I do not therefore surrender my claim. She came to me. I welcomed her. If she so please, I will take her home with me, and provide her an altar as rich as yours."
    "My lord," pronounced Prior Robert, stiff with resistance and outrage, "your argument will not stand. As saints may make use even of creatures of illwill for their own purposes, so surely can they with more grace employ goodwill where they find it. That you brought her here, back to her chosen home, does not give you a better claim than ours, though it does you infinite credit. Saint Winifred has been happy here seven years and more, and to this house she has returned. She shall not leave it now."
    "Yet she made it known to Brother Tutilo," retorted Herluin, burning up in his turn, "that she has felt compassion towards afflicted Ramsey, and wishes to benefit us in our distress. You cannot ignore it, she wished to set out and she did set out to come to our aid."
    "We are all three resolved," said the earl, with aggravating serenity and consideration. "Should we not submit the decision to some neutral assessor and abide by his judgement?"
    There was a sharp and charged silence. Then Radulfus said with composed authority: "We already have an assessor. Let Saint Winifred herself declare her will openly. She was a lady of great scholarship in her later life. She expounded the Scriptures to her nuns, she will expound them now to her disciples. At the consecration of every bishop the prognosis for his ministry is taken by laying the Gospels upon his shoulders, and opening it to read the line decreed. We will take the sortes Biblicae upon the reliquary of the saint, and never doubt but she will make her judgement plain. Why delegate to any other the choice which is by right hers?"
    Out of the longer silence while they all digested this fiat and readjusted to a suggestion so unexpected, the earl said with evident satisfaction, indeed, to Cadfael's ears bordering on glee: "Agreed! There could be no fairer process. Father Abbot, grant us today and tomorrow to set our minds in order, examine our claims and take thought to pray only for what is due to us. And the third day let these sortes be taken. We will present our pleas to the lady herself, and accept whatever verdict she offers us."
    "Instruct me," said Hugh an hour later, in Cadfael's workshop in the herb garden. "I am not in the counsels of bishops and archbishops. Just how