“She did! Lashed out like a fury, and swore the thing was worth more thanI’d earned, and I must pay for it. And when I complained, she threw me a penny,and told them to put me out!”

So she would, thought Cadfael ruefully, seeing her life-blood spilled if aprized possession was broken, she who hoarded every groat that was not spent onher perverse tenderness for her soul, which brought alms flowing to the abbeyaltars, and rendered Prior Robert her cautious friend.

“And they did it?” It would not have been a gentle ejection, they would allhave been inflamed and boisterous by them. “How late was that? An hour before midnight?”

“More. None of them had left, then. They tossed me out of door, and wouldn’tlet me in again.” He had long experience of his own helplessness in similarcircumstances, his voice sagged despondently. “I couldn’t even pick up my jugglingballs, I’ve lost them all.”

“And you were left chill in the night, thrown out of the burgage. Then howcame this hunt after you?” Cadfael smoothed a turn of his linen roll round thethin arm that jerked in his hands with frustrated rage. “Hold still, child,that’s right! I want this slit well closed, it will knit clean if you takeease. What did you do?”

“Crept away,” said Liliwin bitterly. “What else could I do? The watch let meout of the wicket in the town gate, and I crossed the bridge and slipped intothe bushes this side, meaning to make off from this town in the morning, andmake for Lichfield. There’s a decent grove above the path down to the river,the other side the highroad from the abbey here, I went in there and found me agood place in the grass to sleep the night out.” But with his grievance boilingand festering in him, and his helplessness over and above, if what he told wastruth. And long acquaintance with injustice and despite does not reconcile theheart.

“Then how comes it the whole pack of them should be hunting you an hour orso later, and crying murder and theft on you?”