months very little else had been discussed. The prior had had it on his mind,in fact, ever since the Cluniac house of Wenlock had rediscovered, with greatpride and jubilation, the tomb of their original foundress, Saint Milburga, andinstalled her bones triumphantly on their altar. An alien priory, only a fewmiles distant, with its own miracle-working saint, and the great Benedictinehouse of Shrewsbury as empty of relics as a plundered almsbox! It was more thanPrior Robert could stomach. He had been scouring the borderlands for a sparesaint now for a year or more, looking hopefully towards Wales, where it waswell known that holy men and women had been common as mushrooms in autumn inthe past, and as little regarded.

Brother Cadfael had no wish to hear the latest of his complaints andurgings. He slept.

The heat of the sun rebounded from honed new facets of pale, baked rock,scorching his face, as the floating arid dust burned his throat. From where hecrouched with his fellows in cover he could see the long crest of the wall, andthe steel-capped heads of the guards on the turrets glittering in the fiercelight. A landscape carved out of reddish stone and fire, all deep gullies andsheer cliffs, with never a cool green leaf to temper it, and before him theobject of all his journeyings, the holy city of Jerusalem, crowned with towersand domes within its white walls. The dust of battle hung in the air, dimmingthe clarity of battlement and gate, and the hoarse shouting and clashing ofarmour filled his ears. He was waiting for the trumpet to sound the finalassault, and keeping well in cover while he waited, for he had learned torespect the range of the short, curly Saracen bow. He saw the banners surgeforward out of hiding, streaming on the burning wind. He saw the flash of theraised trumpet, and braced himself for the blare.

The sound that brought him leaping wide-awake out of his dream was loud