The Summer of the Danes
Ellis Peters
The Eighteenth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael
Digital Edition v2 HTML – February 6, 2003
Copyright 1991 © by Ellis Peters
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
^
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
^ »
The extraordinary events of that summer of 1144may properly be said to have begun the previous year, in a tangleof threads both ecclesiastical and secular, a net in which anynumber of diverse people became enmeshed, clerics, from thearchbishop down to Bishop Roger de Clinton’s lowliest deacon,and the laity from the princes of North Wales down to the humblestcottager in the trefs of Arfon. And among the commonalty thusentrammelled, more to the point, an elderly Benedictine monk of theAbbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury.
Brother Cadfael had approached that April in a mood of slightlyrestless hopefulness, as was usual with him when the birds werenesting, and the meadow flowers just beginning to thrust their budsup through the new grass, and the sun to rise a little higher inthe sky every noon. True, there were troubles in the world, asthere always had been. The vexed affairs of England, torn in two bytwo cousins contending for the throne, had still no visible hope of