“Money? You dare offer to buy our saint? To buy me? I was in two minds about you, and about what I ought to do, but now, by God, I know what to think! You had your omens. Now I have mine.”
“You mistake me!” cried the prior, stumbling after his blunder and seeing it outdistance him at every breath. “One cannot buy what is holy, I am only offering a gift to Gwytherin, in gratitude and compensation for their sacrifice—”
“Mine, you said it was,” Rhisiart reminded him, glowing copper bright with dignified rage. “Mine, if I persuaded…! Not a gift! A bribe! This foolish stuff you hoard about you more dearly far than your reputations, don’t think you can use it to buy my conscience. I know now that I was right to doubt you. You have said your say, now I will say mine to those people without, as you promised me I should, without hindrance.”
“No, wait!” The prior was in such agitation that he actually reached out a hand and caught his opponent by the sleeve. “Do nothing in haste! You have mistaken my meaning indeed, and if I was wrong even to offer an alms to Gwytherin, I am sorry for it. But do not call it—”
Rhisiart withdrew himself angrily from the detaining clasp, and cut off the protest curtly, wheeling on Cadfael. “Tell him he need not be afraid. I should be ashamed to tell my people that a prior of Shrewsbury tried to corrupt me with a bribe. I don’t deal in that kind of warfare. But where I stand—that they shall know, and you, too.” And he strode out from them, and Father Huw put out a warning hand to prevent any of them from attempting to impede or follow him.
“Not now! He is hot now. Tomorrow something may be done to approach him, but not now. You must let him say what he will.”
“Then at least let’s put in an appearance,” said the prior, magnificently picking up what pieces he could of the ruin he had created; and he swept out into the sunlight and took his stand close to the door of the church, with all his fellow-monks dutifully following on his heels, and stood with erect head and calmly folded hands, in full view, while Rhisiart thundered his declaration to the assembled people of Gwytherin.
“I have listened to what these men from Shrewsbury have had to say to me, and I have made my judgment accordingly, and now I deliver it to you. I say that so far from changing my views, I am confirmed a thousand times that I was right to oppose the sacrilege they desire. I say that Saint Winifred’s place is here among us, where she has always belonged, and that it would be mortal sin to let her be taken away to a strange place, where not even the prayers would be in a tongue she knows, where foreigners not worthy to draw near her would be her only company. I pledge my opposition to the death, against any attempt to move her bones, and I urge upon you the same duty. And now this conference is ended.”
So he said, and so it was. There could be no possible way of prolonging it. The prior was forced to stand with marble face and quiet hands while Rhisiart strode away towards the forest path, and all the assembly, in awed and purposeful silence, melted away mysteriously in all directions after his departure, so that within minutes all that green, trodden arena was empty.
Chapter Four
You should have told me what you intended,” said Father Huw, timidly reproachful. “I could have told you it was folly, the worst possible. What attraction do you think money has for a man like Rhisiart? Even if he was for sale, and he is not, you would have had to find other means to purchase him. I thought you had taken his measure, and were proposing to plead to him the sorry plight of English pilgrims, who have no powerful saints of their own, and are sadly in need of such a protectress. He would have listened to something that entreated of his generosity.”
“I am come with the blessing of church and sovereign,” said the prior fiercely, though the repetition was beginning to pall even on him. “I cannot be repudiated at the will of a local squire. Has my order no rights here in Wales?”
“Very few,” said Cadfael bluntly. “My people have a natural reverence, but it leans towards the hermitage, not the cloister.”
The heated conference went on until Vespers, and poisoned even Vespers with its bitterness, for there Prior Robert preached a fearful sermon detailing all the omens that Winifred desired above all things to remove to the sanctity of Shrewsbury, and issuing her prophetic denunciation against all who stood in the way of her translation. Terrible would be her wrath visited on those who dared resist her will. Thus Prior Robert approached the necessary reconciliation with Rhisiart. And though Cadfael in translating toned down the threat as much as he dared, there were some among the congregation who understood enough English to get the full drift of it. He knew by their closed, mute faces. Now they would go away to spread the word to those who had not been present, until everyone in Gwytherin knew that the prior had bidden them remember what befell Prince Cradoc, whose very flesh watered away into the ground like rain, so that he vanished utterly, as to the body expunged out of the world, as to the soul, the fearful imagination dared not guess. So also it might happen to those who dared offend against Winifred now.
Father Huw, harried and anxious, cast about him as honestly as he could for a way of pleasing everybody. It took him most of the evening to get the prior to listen, but from sheer exhaustion a calm had to set in at last.
“Rhisiart is not an impious man—”
“Not impious!” fluted Brother Jerome, appealing to heaven with uplifted eyes. “Men have been excommunicated for less!”
“Then men have been excommunicated for no evil at all,” said Huw sturdily, “and truly I think they sometimes have. No, I say he is a decent, devout man, open-handed and fair, and had a right to resent it when he was misunderstood and affronted. If he is ever to withdraw his opposition, it must be you, Father Prior, who make the first approach to him, and upon a different footing. Not in person first, I would not ask or advise it. But if I were to go to him, perhaps with Brother Cadfael here, who is known to be a good Welshman himself, and ask him to forget all that has been said and done, and come with an open mind to begin the discussion over again, I think he would not refuse. Moreover, the very act of seeking him out would disarm him, for he has a generous heart. I don’t say he would necessarily change his mind—it would depend on how he is handled this time—but I do say he would listen.”
“Far be it from me” said Prior Robert loftily “to pass over any means of saving a soul from perdition. I wish the man no ill, if he tempers his offences. It is not a humiliation to stoop to deliver a sinner.”
“O wondrous clemency!” intoned Brother Jerome. “Saintly generosity towards the ill-doer!”
Brother John flashed a narrow, glittering glance, and shifted one foot uneasily, as if restraining an impulse to kick. Father Huw, desperate to preserve his stock of goodwill with prince, bishop, prior and people alike, cast him a warning look, and resumed hurriedly: “I will go to Rhisiart tonight, and ask him to dine here at my house tomorrow Then if we can come to terms between us, another assembly can be called, so that all may know there is peace.”
“Very well!” said the prior, after consideration. In that way he need never actually admit any guilt on his part, or apologise for any act of his, nor need he enquire too closely what Huw might have to say on his behalf. “Very well, do so, and I hope you may succeed.”
“It would be a mark of your status, and the importance of this gesture,” suggested Cadfael with an earnest face, “if your messengers went mounted. It’s not yet dark, and the horses would be better for exercise.”
“True,” said the prior, mildly gratified. “It would be in keeping with our dignity and lend weight to our errand. Very well, let Brother John bring the horses.”
“Now that’s that I call a friend!” said Brother John heartily, when they were all three in the saddle, and safely away into the early dusk under the trees, Father Huw and John on the two tall horses, Brother Cadfael on the best of the mules. “Ten more minutes, and I should have earned myself a penance that would have lasted a month or more, and now here we are in the best company around, on a decent errand, and enjoying the quiet of the evening.”