“I used to buy from Ruald,” said Aline ratherruefully. “He was a good craftsman. I still wonder—whatwas it made him leave the world for the cloister, and all sosuddenly?”

“Who can tell?” Cadfael looked back, as now heseldom did, to the turning-point of his own life, many years past.After all manner of journeying, fighting, endurance of heat andcold and hardship, after the pleasures and the pains of experience,the sudden irresistible longing to turn about and withdraw intoquietness remained a mystery. Not a retreat, certainly. Rather anemergence into light and certainty. “He never could explainit or describe it. All he could say was that he had had arevelation of God, and had turned where he was pointed, and comewhere he was called. It happens. I think Radulfus had his doubts atfirst. He kept him the full term and over in his novitiate. Hisdesire was extreme, and our abbot suspects extremes. And then, theman had been fifteen years married, and his wife was by no meansconsenting. Ruald left her everything he had to leave, and all ofit she scorned. She fought his resolve for many weeks, but he wouldnot be moved. After he was admitted among us she did not stay longin the croft, or avail herself of anything he had left behind forher. She went away, only a few weeks later, left the door open andeverything in its place, and vanished.”

“With another man, so all the neighbors said,” Hughremarked cynically.

“Well,” said Cadfael reasonably, “her own hadleft her. And very bitter she was about it, by all accounts. Shemight well take a lover by way of revenge. Did ever you see thewoman?”

“No,” said Hugh, “not that Irecall.”

“I have,” said Aline. “She helped at his boothon market days and at the fair. Not last year, of course, last yearhe was in the cloister and she was already gone. There was a lot oftalk about Ruald’s leaving her, naturally, and gossip is