Every eye was upon him, and every ear stretched to catch his least word. Not a soul left the church, rather those without crowded in closer.
“Son,” said Prior Robert, with unwontedly respectful kindness, “you are here among your brothers, engaged in the worship of God, and there is nothing to fear and nothing to regret, for the visitation granted you was surely meant to inspire and arm you to go fearless through an imperfect world, in the hope of a perfect world hereafter. You were keeping night watch with Brother Cadfael at Saint Winifred’s chapel—do you remember that? In the night something befell you that drew your spirit for a time away from us, out of the body, but left that body unharmed and at rest like a child asleep. We brought you back here still absent from us in the spirit, but now you are here with us again, and all is well. You have been greatly privileged.”
“Oh, greatly, far more than you know,” sang Columbanus, glowing like a pale lantern. “I am the messenger of such goodness, I am the instrument of reconciliation and peace. Oh, Father… Father Huw… brothers… let me speak out here before all, for what I am bidden to tell concerns all.”
Nothing, thought Cadfael, could have stopped him, so plainly did his heavenly embassage override any objection mere prior or priest might muster. And Robert was proving surprisingly compliant in accepting this transfer of authority. Either he already knew that the voice from heaven was about to say something entirely favourable to his plans and conducive to his glory, or else he was truly impressed, and inclining heart and ear to listen as devoutly as any man there present.
“Speak freely, brother,” he said, “let us share your joy.”
“Father, at the hour of midnight as I knelt before the altar I heard a sweet voice crying my name, and I arose and went forward to obey the call. What happened to my body then I do not know, you tell me it was lying as if asleep when you came. But it seemed to me that as I stepped towards the altar there was suddenly a soft, golden light all about it, and there rose up, floating in the midst of the light, a most beautiful virgin, who moved in a miraculous shower of white petals, and distilled most sweet odours from her robe and from her long hair. And this gracious being spoke to me, and told me that her name was Winifred, and that she was come to approve our enterprise, and also to forgive all those who out of mistaken loyalty and reverence had opposed it hitherto. And then, oh, marvellous goodness!—she laid her hand on Rhisiart’s breast, as his daughter has begged us to do in token of our mere personal forgiveness, but she in divine absolution, and with such perfection of grace, I cannot describe it.”
“Oh, son,” said Prior Robert in rapture, riding over the quivering murmurs that crossed the church like ripples on a pool, “you tell a greater wonder than we dared hope. Even the lost saved!”
“It is so! And, Father, there is more! When she laid her hand on him, she bade me speak out to all men in this place, both native and stranger, and make known her merciful will. And it is this ‘Where my bones shall be taken out of the earth,’ she said, ‘there will be an open grave provided. What I relinquish, I may bestow. In this grave,’ said Winifred, ‘let Rhisiart be buried, that his rest may be assured, and my power made manifest.’ ”
“What could I do,” said Sioned, “but thank him for his good offices, when he brought divine reassurance for my father’s weal? And yet it outrages me, I would rather have stood up and said that I am not and never have been in the least doubt that my father is in blessedness this moment, for he was a good man who never did a mean wrong to anyone. And certainly it’s kind of Saint Winifred to offer him the lodging she’s leaving, and graciously forgive him, but—forgiveness for what? Absolution for what? She might have praised him while she was about it, and said outright that he was justified, not forgiven.”
“Yet a very ambassadorial message,” admitted Cadfael appreciatively, “calculated to get us what we came for, assuage the people of Gwytherin, make peace all round—”
“And to placate me, and cause me to give up the pursuit of my father’s murderer,” said Sioned, “burying the deed along with the victim. Except that I will not rest until I know.”
“—and shed reflected glory upon Prior Robert, I was going to say. And I wish I knew which mind conceived the idea!”
They had met for a few hurried minutes at Bened’s smithy, where Cadfael had gone to borrow mattock and spade for the holy work now to be undertaken. Even a few of the men of Gwytherin had come forward and asked to have a share in breaking the sacred earth, for though they were still reluctant to lose their saint, if it was her will to leave them they had no wish to cross her. Prodigious things were happening, and they intended to be in receipt of her approval and blessing rather than run the risk of encountering her arrows.
“It seems to me most of the glory is falling, rather, on Brother Columbanus of late,” said Sioned shrewdly. “And the prior took it meekly, and never made any attempt to filch it back from him. That’s the one thing that makes me believe he may be honest.”
She had said something that caused Cadfael to pause and look attentively at her, scrubbing dubiously at his nose.
“You may well be right. And certainly this story is bound to go back to Shrewsbury with us, and spread through all our sister houses, when we come home with our triumph. Yes, Columbanus will certainly have made himself a great name for holiness and divine favour in the order.”
“They say an ambitious man can make a grand career in the cloister,” she said. “Maybe he’s busy laying the foundations, a great step up towards being prior himself when Robert becomes abbot. Or even abbot, when Robert supposes he’s about to become abbot! For it’s not his name they’ll be buzzing round the shires as the visionary the saints use to make their wants known.”
“That,” agreed Cadfael, “may not even have dawned on Robert yet, but when the awe of the occasion passes it will. And he’s the one who’s pledged to write a life of the saint, and complete it with the account of this pilgrimage. Columbanus may very well end up as an anonymous brother who happened to be charged with a message to the prior from his patroness. Chroniclers can edit names out as easily as visionaries can noise them abroad. But I grant you, this lad comes of a thrusting Norman family that doesn’t put even its younger sons into the Benedictine habit to spend their lives doing menial work like gardening.”
“And we’re no further forward,” said Sioned bitterly.
“No. But we have not finished yet.”
“But as I see it, this is devised to be an ending, to close this whole episode in general amity, as if everything was resolved. But everything is not resolved! Somewhere in this land there is a man who stabbed my father in the back, and we’re all being asked to draw a veil over that and lose sight of it in the great treaty of peace. But I want that man found, and Engelard vindicated, and my father avenged, and I won’t rest, or let anyone else rest, until I get what I want. And now tell me what I am to do.”
“What I’ve already told you,” said Cadfael. “Have all your household party and friends gathered at the chapel to watch the grave opened, and make sure that Peredur attends.”
“I’ve already sent Annest to beg him to come,” said Sioned. “And then? What have I to say or do to Peredur?”
“That silver cross you wear round your neck,” said Cadfael. “Are you willing to part with it in exchange for one step ahead towards what you want to know?”
“That and all the rest of the valuables I own. You know it.”
“Then this,” said Cadfael, “is what you will do…”
With prayers and psalms they carried their tools up to the tangled graveyard by the chapel, trimmed back the brambles and wild flowers and long grass from the little mound of Winifred’s grave, and reverently broke the sod. By turns they laboured, all taking a share in the work for the merit to be acquired. And most of Gwytherin gathered round the place in the course of the day, all work left at a standstill in the fields and crofts, to watch the end of this contention. For Sioned had spoken truly. She and all her household servants were there among the rest, in mourning and massed to bring out Rhisiart’s body for burial when the time came, but this funeral party had become, for the time being, no more than a side-issue, an incident in the story of Saint Winifred, and a closed incident at that.