Brother Cadfael 04: St. Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters

castle?"
    "It's on the way," said Cadfael comfortably. "You need only tell Martin Bellecote, whatever you ask of him he'll see done properly."
    "Everyone is being very kind," she said punctiliously, like a well brought-up little girl giving due thanks. "Where is my uncle's body now? I should care for it myself, it is my duty."
    "That you cannot yet," said Cadfael. "The sheriff has him at the castle, he must needs see the body for himself, and have the physician also view it. You need be put to no distress on that account, the abbot has given orders. Your uncle will be brought with all reverence to lie in the church here, and the brothers will make him decent for burial. I think he might well wish, could he tell you so now, that you should leave all to us. His care for you would reach so far, and your obedience could not well deny him."
    Cadfael had seen the dead man, and felt strongly that she should not have the same experience. Nor was it for her sake entirely that he willed so. The man she had respected and admired in his monumental dignity, living, had the right to be preserved for her no less decorously in death.
    He had found the one argument that could deflect her absolute determination to take charge of all, and escape nothing. She thought about it seriously as they passed out at the gatehouse side by side, and he knew by her face the moment when she accepted it.
    "But he did believe that I ought to take my full part, even in his business. He wished me to travel with him, and learn the trade as he knew it. This is the third such journey I have made with him." That reminded her that it must also be the last. "At least," she said hesitantly, "I may give money to have Masses said for him, here where he died? He was a very devout man, I think he would like that."
    Well, her reserves of money might now be far longer than her reserves of peace of mind were likely to be; she could afford to buy herself a little consolation, and prayers are never wasted.
    "That you may surely do."
    "He died unshriven," she said, with sudden angry grief against the murderer who had deprived him of confession and absolution.
    "Through no fault of his own. So do many. So have saints, martyred without warning. God knows the record without needing word or gesture. It's for the soul facing death that the want of shriving is pain. The soul gone beyond knows that pain for needless vanity. Penitence is in the heart, not in the words spoken."
    They were out on the highroad then, turning left towards the reflected sparkle that was the river between its green, lush banks, and the stone bridge over it, that led through the drawbridge turret to the town gate. Emma had raised her head, and was looking at Brother Cadfael along her shoulder, with faint colour tinting her creamy cheeks, and a sparkle like a shimmer of light from the river in her eyes. He had not seen her smile until this moment, and even now it was a very wan smile, but none the less beautiful.
    "He was a good man, you know, Brother Cadfael," she said earnestly. "He was not easy upon fools, or bad workmen, or people who cheated, but he was a good man, good to me! And he kept his bargains, and he was loyal to his lord ..." She had taken fire, for all the softness of her voice and the simplicity of her plea for him; it was almost as though she had been about to say "loyal to his lord to the death!" She had that high, heroic look about her, to be taken very seriously, even on that child's face.
    "All which," said Cadfael cheerfully, "God knows, and needs not to be told. And never forget you've a life to live, and he'd want you to do him justice by doing yourself justice."
    "Oh, yes!" said Emma, glowing, and for the first time laid her hand confidingly on his sleeve. "That's what I want! That's what I have most in mind!"
    Chapter Two
    At Martin Bellecote's shop, off the curve of the rising street called the Wyle, which led to the centre of the town, she knew exactly what she wanted for her dead,