Free One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters Page A

delay. At dawn Abbot Heribert would consecrate a new piece of ground at the edge of the abbey enclosure, for a mass grave. But this unknown, never condemned, never charged with any crime, whose dead body cried aloud for justice, should not be buried among the executed, nor should there be any rest until he could go to his grave under his own rightful name, and with all the individual honours due to him.
    In the house of Father Elias, priest of St. Alkmund’s church, Giles Siward was reverently stripped, washed, composed and shrouded, all by his sister’s hands, the good father assisting. Hugh Beringar stood by to fetch and carry for them, but did not enter the room where they worked. She wanted no one else, she was quite sufficient to the task laid on her, and if she was robbed of any part of it now she would feel deprivation and resentment, not gratitude. But when all was done, and her brother laid ready for rest before the altar of the church, she was suddenly weary to death, and glad enough of Beringar’s almost silent company and ready arm back to her house by the mill.
    On the following morning Giles Siward was interred with all due ceremony in the tomb of his maternal grandfather in the church of St. Alkmund, and the monks of the abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul buried with due rites all the sixty-six soldiers of the defeated garrison still remaining in their charge.

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
    ALINE BROUGHT BACK WITH HER THE COTTE and hose her brother had worn, and the cloak that had covered him, and herself carefully brushed and folded them. The shirt no one should ever wear again, she would burn it and forget; but these stout garments of good cloth must not go to waste, in a world where so many went half-naked and cold. She took the neat bundle, and 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 savory 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