An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters

for Brother
Urien, he would mention him in his prayers at Vespers. And so he did, and as
Urien beheld still his lost wife’s hostile visage, so did Rhun continue to see
the dark, tense, handsome face that had winced away from his gaze with burning
brow and hooded eyes, bitterly shamed where he, Rhun, had felt no blame, and no
bitterness. This was indeed a dark and secret matter.
    He
said no word to anyone about what had happened. What had happened? Nothing! But
he looked at his fellow men with changed eyes, by one dimension enlarged to
take in their distresses and open his own being to their needs.
    This
happened to Rhun two days before he was finally acknowledged as firm in his
vocation, and received the tonsure, to become the novice, Brother Rhun.
    “So
our little saint has made good his resolve,” said Hugh, encountering Cadfael as
he came from the ceremony. “And his cure shows no faltering! I tell you
honestly, I go in awe of him. Do you think Winifred had an eye to his
comeliness, when she chose to take him for her own? Welshwomen don’t baulk
their fancy when they see a beautiful youth.”
    “You
are an unregenerate heathen,” said Cadfael comfortably, “but the lady should be
used to you by now. Never think you’ll shock her, there’s nothing she has not
seen in her time. And had I been in her reliquary I would have drawn that child
to me, just as she did. She knew worth when she saw it. Why, he has almost
sweetened even Brother Jerome!”
    “That
will never last!” said Hugh, and laughed. “He’s kept his own name — the boy?”
    “It
never entered his mind to change it.”
    “They
do not all so,” said Hugh, growing serious. “This pair that came from
Hyde-Humilis and Fidelis. They made large claims, did they not? Brother Humble
we know by his former name, and he needs no other. What do we know of Brother
Faithful? And I wonder which name came first?”
    “The
boy is a younger son,” said Cadfael. “His elder has the lands, this one chose
the cowl. With his burden, who could blame him? Humilis says his own novitiate
was not yet completed when the young one came, and they drew together and
became fast friends. They may well have been admitted together, and the names…
Who knows which of them chose first?”
    They
had halted before the gatehouse to look back at the church. Rhun and Fidelis
had come forth together, two notably comely creatures with matched steps, not
touching, but close and content. Rhun was talking with animation. Fidelis bore
the traces of much watching and anxiety, but shone with a responsive glow.
Rhun’s new tonsure was bared to the sun, the fair hair round it roused like an
aureole.
    “He
frequents them,” said Cadfael, watching. “No marvel, he reaches out to every
soul who has lost a piece of his being, such as a voice.” He said nothing of
what the elder of that pair had lost. “He talks for both. A pity he has small
learning yet. There’s neither of those two can read to Humilis, the one for
want of a voice, the other for want of letters. But he studies, and he’ll
learn. Brother Paul thinks well of him.”
    The
two young men had vanished at the archway of the day stairs, plainly bound for
the dortoir cell where Brother Humilis was still confined to his bed. Who would
not be heartened by the vision of Brother Rhun just radiant from his admission
to his heart’s desire? And it was fitting, that reticent kinship between two
barren bodies, the one virgin unawakened, the other hollowed out and despoiled
in its prime. Two whose seed was not of this world.
     
    It
was that same afternoon that a young man in a soldier’s serviceable riding
gear, with rolled cloak at his saddlebow, came in towards the town by the main
London road to Saint Giles, and there asked directions to the abbey of Saint
Peter and Saint Paul. He went bare-headed in the sun, and in his shirt-sleeves,
with breast bared, and face and breast and