Free Brother Cadfael 02: One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters Page A

went in at the abbey gate house, and finding the whole courtyard deserted, crossed to the ponds and the gardens in search of Brother Cadfael. She did not find him. The digging out of a grave large enough to hold sixty-six victims, and the sheer repetitious labour of laying them in it, takes longer than the opening of a stone tomb to make room for one more kinsman. The brothers were hard at work until past two o'clock, even with every man assisting.
    But if Cadfael was not there, his garden-boy was, industriously clipping off flower-heads dead in the heat, and cutting leaves and stems of blossoming savoury to hang up in bunches for drying. All the end of the hut, under the eaves, was festooned with drying herbs. The diligent boy worked barefoot and dusty from the powdery soil, and a smear of green coloured one cheek. At the sound of approaching footsteps he looked round, and came out in haste from among his plants, in a great wave of fragrance, which clung about him and distilled from the folds of his coarse tunic like the miraculous sweetness conferred upon some otherwise unimpressive-looking saint. The hurried swipe of a hand over his tangle of hair only served to smear the other cheek and half his forehead.
    'I was looking,' said Aline, almost apologetically, 'for Brother Cadfael. You must be the boy called Godric, who works for him.'
    'Yes, my lady,' said Godith gruffly. 'Brother Cadfael is still busy, they are not finished yet.' She had wanted to attend, but he would not let her; the less she was seen in full daylight, the better.
    'Oh!' said Aline, abashed. 'Of course, I should have known. Then may I leave my message with you? It is only - I've brought these, my brother's clothes. He no longer needs them, and they are still good, someone could be glad of them. Will you ask Brother Cadfael to dispose of them somewhere they can do good? However he thinks best.'
    Godith had scrubbed grubby hands down the skirts of her cotte before extending them to take the bundle. She stood suddenly very still, eyeing the other girl and clutching the dead man's clothes, so startled and shaken that she forgot for a moment to keep her voice low. 'No longer needs ... You had a brother in there, in the castle? Oh, I am sorry! Very sorry!'
    Aline looked down at her own hands, empty and rather lost now that even this last small duty was done. 'Yes. One of many,' she said. 'He made his choice. I was taught to think it the wrong one, but at least he stood by it to the end. My father might have been angry with him, but he would not have had to be ashamed.'
    'I am sorry!' Godith hugged the folded garments to her breast and could find no better words. 'I'll deliver your message to Brother Cadfael as soon as he comes. And he would want me to give you his thanks for your most feeling charity, until he can do it for himself.'
    'And give him this purse, too. It is for Masses for them all. But especially a Mass for the one who should not have been there - the one nobody knows.'
    Godith stared in bewilderment and wonder. 'Is there one like that? One who did not belong? I didn't know!' She had seen Cadfael for only a few hurried moments when he came home late and weary, and he had had no time to tell her anything. All she knew was that the remaining dead had been brought to the abbey for burial; this mysterious mention of one who had no place in the common tragedy was new to her.
    'So he said. There were ninety-five where there should have been only ninety-four, and one did not seem to have been in arms. Brother Cadfael was asking all who came, to look and see if they knew him, but I think no one has yet put a name to him.'
    'And where, then is he now?' asked Godith, marvelling.
    'That I don't know. Though they must have brought him here to the abbey. Somehow I don't think Brother Cadfael will let him be put into the earth with all the rest, and he nameless and unaccounted for. You must know his ways better than I. Have you worked with him long?'
    'No, a