places it would be a mile or more wide, in acres of drowned meadow, before ever
it invaded the choir. The nave had been known to float a raft now and again
over the years, once even a light boat. That was the most they need fear. So
they swathed all the chests and coffers that housed the vestments, the plate,
the crosses and candlesticks and furnishings of the altars, and the precious
minor relics of the treasury. And Saint Winifred’s silver-chased reliquary they
wrapped carefully in old, worn hangings and a large brychan, but left her on
her altar until it should become clear that she must be carried to a higher
refuge. If that became necessary, this would be the worst flood within
Cadfael’s recollection by at least a foot; and if ever during this day the
worst threatened, she would have to be removed, something which had never
happened since she was brought here.
Cadfael
forbore from eating that noon, and while the rest of the household, guests and
all, were taking hasty refreshment, he went in and kneeled before her altar, as
sometimes he did in silence, too full of remembering to pray, though there
seemed, nevertheless, to be a dialogue in progress. If any kindly soul among
the saints knew him through and through, it was Winifred, his young Welsh girl,
who was not here at all, but safe and content away in her own Welsh earth at
Gwytherin. No one knew it but the lady, her servant and devotee Cadfael, who
had contrived her repose there, and Hugh Beringar, who had been let into the
secret late. Here in England, no one else; but in her own Wales, her own
Gwytherin, it was no secret, but a central tenet of Welsh faith never needing
mention. She was with them still; all was well.
So
it was not her rest, not hers, that was threatened now, only the uneasy repose
of an ambitious, unstable young man who had done murder in pursuit of his own
misguided dreams, greed for the abbey of Shrewsbury, greed for his own
advancement. His death had afforded Winifred peace to remain where her heart
clove to the beloved soil. That, at least, might almost be counted alleviation
against his sins. For she had not withdrawn her blessing, because a sinner lay
in the coffin prepared for her, and was entreated in her name. Where he was,
and she was not, she had done miracles of grace.
“Geneth...
Cariad!” said Cadfael silently. “Girl, dear, has he been in purgatory long
enough? Can you lift even him out of his mire?”
During
the afternoon the gradual rise of the brook and the river seemed to slow and
hold constant, though there was certainly no decline. They began to think that
the peril would pass. Then in the late evening the main body of the upland
water from Wales came swirling down in a riot of muddy foam, torn branches, and
not a few carcases of sheep caught and drowned on mounds too low to preserve
them. Rolled and tumbled in the flood, trees lodged under the bridge and piled
the turgid water even higher. Every soul in the enclave turned to in earnest,
and helped to remove the precious furnishings to higher refuge, as brook and
river and pond together advanced greedily into all the lower reaches of the
court and cemetery, and gnawed at the steps of the west and south doors,
turning the cloister garth into a shallow and muddy lake.
The
vestments, furnishings, plate, crosses, all the treasury was carried up into
the two rooms over the north porch, where Cynric the verger lived and Father
Boniface robed. The reliquaries which held the smaller relics went out by the
cemetery doors to the loft over the Horse Fair barn. A day which had never been
fully light declined early into gloomy twilight, and there was a persistent,
depressing drizzle that clung clammily to eyelids and lashes and lips, adding
to the discomfort.
Two
carters from Longner had brought down the promised load of wood for rebuilding,
and begun to transfer it to the larger abbey wagon for the journey back to
Ramsey.
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