It seemed that brother Cadfael was not the only one whose mindwas wandering when it should have been fixed. Brother Anselm theprecentor, absorbed into his singing, lifted a rapt face into thesun, his eyes closed, since he knew every note without study orthought. But beside him Brother Eluric, custodian of SaintMary’s altar in the Lady Chapel, responded only absently, hishead turned aside, towards the parish altar and the soft murmur ofresponses from beyond.

Brother Eluric was a child of the cloister, not long a fullbrother, and entrusted with his particular charge by reason of hisundoubted deserving, tempered by the reserve that was felt aboutadmitting child oblates to full office, at least until they hadbeen mature for a number of years. An unreasonable reserve, Cadfaelhad always felt, seeing that the child oblates were regarded as theperfect innocents, equivalent to the angels, while theconversi, those who came voluntarily and in maturity tothe monastic life, were the fighting saints, those who had enduredand mastered their imperfections. So Saint Anselm had classifiedthem, and ordered them never to attempt reciprocal reproaches,never to feel envy. But still the conversi were preferredfor the responsible offices, perhaps as having experience of thedeceits and complexities and temptations of the world around them.But the care of an altar, its light, its draperies, the specialprayers belonging to it, this could well be the charge of aninnocent.

Brother Eluric was past twenty now, the most learned and devoutof his contemporaries, a tall, well-made young man, black-hairedand black-eyed. He had been in the cloister since he was threeyears old, and knew nothing outside it. Unacquainted with sin, hewas all the more haunted by it, as by some unknown monster, andassiduous in confession, he picked to pieces his own infinitesimal