Free Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters Page A

world.
    'There are men,' said Cadfael then mildly, 'who understand such arts as repairing instruments of music. I am not one of them, but Brother Anselm, our precentor, is. Why should we not ask him to look at your fiddle and see what can be done to make it sing again?'
    'This?' Liliwin turned on him passionately, holding out the pathetic wreck in both hands. 'Look at it - no better than firewood. How could anyone restore it?'
    'Do you know that? Do I? What's lost by asking the man who may? And if this is past saving, Brother Anselm can make one new.'
    Bitter disbelief stared back at him. Why should he credit that anyone would go out of his way to do a kindness to so despised and unprofitable a creature as himself? Those within here held that they owed him shelter and food, but nothing more, and even that as a duty. And no one without had ever offered him any benefit that cost more than a crust.
    'As if I could ever pay for a new one! Don't mock me!'
    'You forget, we do not buy and sell, we have no use for money. But show Brother Anselm a good instrument damaged, and he'll want to heal it. Show him a good musician lost for want of an instrument, and he'll be anxious to provide him a new voice. Are you a good musician?'
    Liliwin said: 'Yes!' with abrupt and spirited pride. In one respect, at least, he knew his worth.
    'Then show him you are, and he'll give you your due.'
    'You mean it?' wondered Liliwin, shaken between hope and doubt. 'You will truly ask him? If he would teach me, perhaps I could learn the art.' He faltered there, losing his momentary brightness with a suddenness that was all too eloquent. Whenever he took heart for the future, the bleak realization came flooding over him afresh that he might have no future. Cadfael cast about hurriedly in his mind for some crumb of distraction to ward off the recurrent despair.
    'Never suppose that you're friendless, that's black ingratitude when you have forty days of grace, a fair-minded man like Hugh Beringar enquiring into your case, and one creature at least who stands by you stoutly and won't hear a word against you.' Liliwin kindled a little at that, still doubtfully, but at least it had put the gallows and the noose out of his mind for the moment. 'You'll remember her - a girl named Rannilt.'
    Liliwin's face at once paled and brightened. It was the first smile Cadfael had yet seen from him, and even now tentative, humble, frightened to reach for anything desired, for fear it should vanish like melting snow as he clutched it.
    'You've seen her? Talked to her? And she does not believe what they all say of me?'
    'Not a word of it! She affirms - she knows - you never did violence nor theft in that house. If all the tongues in Shrewsbury cried out against you, she would still stand her ground and speak for you.'
    Liliwin sat cradling his broken rebec, as gently and shyly as if he clasped a sweetheart indeed. His faint, frightened smile shone in the dimming light within the cloister.
    'She is the first girl who ever looked kindly at me. You won't have heard her sing - such a small, sweet voice, like a reed. We ate in the kitchen together. It was the best hour of my life, I never thought ... And it's true? Rannilt believes in me?'
    Chapter Four
    Sunday
    Liliwin folded away his brychans and made himself presentable before Prime on the sabbath, determined to cause as little disruption as possible in the orderly regime within these walls. In his wandering life he had had little opportunity to become familiar with the offices of the day, and Latin was a closed book to him, but at least he could attend and pay his reverences, if that would make him more acceptable.
    After breakfast Cadfael dressed the gash in the young man's arm again, and unwound the bandage from the graze on his head. 'This is healing well,' he said approvingly. 'We'd best leave it uncovered, and let in the air to it now. Good clean flesh you have, boy, if something too little of it. And you've lost that limp