AMorbid Taste for Bones

Ellis Peters

Chapter One

On the fine, bright morning in early May when the whole sensational affairof the Gwytherin relics may properly be considered to have begun, Brother Cadfaelhad been up long before Prime, pricking out cabbage seedlings before the daywas aired, and his thoughts were all on birth, growth and fertility, not at allon graves and reliquaries and violent deaths, whether of saints, sinners orordinary decent, fallible men like himself. Nothing troubled his peace but thenecessity to take himself indoors for Mass, and the succeeding half-hour ofchapter, which was always liable to stray over by an extra ten minutes. Hegrudged the time from his more congenial labours out here among the vegetables,but there was no evading his duty. He had, after all, chosen this cloisteredlife with his eyes open, he could not complain even of those parts of it hefound unattractive, when the whole suited him very well, and gave him the kindof satisfaction he felt now, as he straightened his back and looked about him.

He doubted if there was a finer Benedictine garden in the whole kingdom, orone better supplied with herbs both good for spicing meats, and also invaluableas medicine. The main orchards and lands of the Shrewsbury abbey of Saint Peterand Saint Paul lay on the northern side of the road, outside the monasticenclave, but here, in the enclosed garden within the walls, close to theabbot’s fishponds and the brook that worked the abbey mill, BrotherCadfael ruled unchallenged. The herbarium in particular was his kingdom, for hehad built it up gradually through the fifteen years of labour, and added to itmany exotic plants of his own careful raising, collected in a roving youth thathad taken him as far afield as Venice, and Cyprus and the Holy Land. ForBrother Cadfael had come late to the monastic life, like a battered shipsettling at last for a quiet harbour. He was well aware that in the first yearsof his vows the novices and lay servants had been wont to point him out to oneanother with awed whisperings.