It was purely by chance, or a symbol of thatstrange compulsion that brings the substance hard on the heels ofthe recollection, that the sparse company of worshippers in theparish part of the church at the monastic Mass that day shouldinclude the Widow Perle. There were always a few of the laity thereon their knees beyond the parish altar, some who had missed theirparish Mass for varying reasons, some who were old and solitary andfilled up their lonely time with supererogatory worship, some whohad special pleas to make, and sought an extra opportunity ofapproaching grace. Some, even, who had other business in theForegate, and welcomed a haven meantime for thought and quietness,which was the case of the Widow Perle.

From his stall in the choir Brother Cadfael could just see thesuave line of her head, shoulder and arm, beyond the bulk of theparish altar. It was strange that so quiet and unobtrusive a womanshould nevertheless be so instantly recognisable even in thisfragmentary glimpse. It might have been the way she carried herstraight and slender shoulders, or the great mass of her brown hairweighing down the head so reverently inclined over clasped hands,hidden from his sight by the altar. She was barely twenty-fiveyears old, and had enjoyed only three years of a happy marriage,but she went about her deprived and solitary life without fuss orcomplaint, cared scrupulously for a business which gave her nopersonal pleasure, and faced the prospect of perpetual lonelinesswith a calm countenance and a surprising supply of practicalenergy. In happiness or unhappiness, living is a duty, and must bedone thoroughly.

A blessing, at any rate, thought Cadfael, that she is notutterly alone, she has her mother’s sister to keep the housefor her now she lives, as it were, over her shop, and her cousinfor a conscientious foreman and manager, to take the weight of thebusiness off her shoulders. And one rose every year for the rent ofthe house and garden in the Foregate, where her man died. The onlygesture of passion and grief and loss she ever made, to give awayvoluntarily her most valuable property, the house where she hadbeen happy, and yet ask for that one reminder, and nothingmore.