The Rose Rent
Ellis Peters
The Thirteenth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael
EBook Design Group [EDG] digital edition
v2 HTML – January 20,2003
CONTENTS
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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter One
^ »
By reason of the prolonged cold, which lingeredfar into April, and had scarcely mellowed when the month of Maybegan, everything came laggard and reluctant that spring of 1142.The birds kept close about the roofs, finding warmer places toroost. The bees slept late, depleted their stores, and had to befed, but neither was there any early burst of blossom for them tomake fruitful. In the gardens there was no point in planting seedthat would rot or be eaten in soil too chilly to engender life.
The affairs of men, stricken with the same petrifying chill,seemed to have subsided into hibernation. Faction held its breath.King Stephen, after the first exhilaration of liberation from hisprison, and the Easter journey north to draw together the frayedstrings of his influence, had fallen ill in the south, so ill thatthe rumour of his death had spread throughout England, and hiscousin and rival, the Empress Maud, had cautiously moved herheadquarters to Oxford, and settled down there to wait patiently