A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters Read Free Book Online Page A

like you."
    She smiled. She had an enchanting smile, sudden and radiant. "Oh, that would be Annest. But everybody in Gwytherin knows by now all about you, and what you've come for. Father Huw is right, you know," she warned seriously, "we shan't like it at all. Why do you want to take Saint Winifred away? When she's been here so long, and nobody ever paid any attention to her before? It doesn't seem neighbourly or honest to me."
    It was an excellent choice of words, he thought, and marvelled how a Welsh girl came by it, for she was using English as if she had been born to it, or come to it for love.
    "I question the propriety of it myself, to be truthful," he agreed ruefully. "When Father Huw spoke up for his parish, I confess I found myself inclining to his side of the argument." That made her look at him more sharply and carefully than before, frowning over some sudden doubt or suspicion in her own mind. Whoever had informed her had certainly witnessed all that went on in Father Huw's garden.
    She hesitated a moment, pondering, and then launched at him unexpectedly in Welsh: "You must be the one who speaks our language, the one who translated what Father Huw said." It seemed to trouble her more than was reasonable. "You do know Welsh! You understand me now."
    "Why, I'm as Welsh as you, child," he admitted mildly, "and only a Benedictine in my middle years, and I haven't forgotten my mother-tongue yet, I hope. But I marvel how you've come to speak English as well as I do myself, here in the heart of Rhos."
    "Oh, no," she said defensively, "I've only learned a very little. I tried to use it for you, because I thought you were English. How was I to know you'd be just that one?" Now why should his being bilingual cause her uneasiness? he wondered. And why was she casting so many rapid, furtive glances aside towards the river, brightly glimpsed through the trees? Where, as he saw in a glance just as swift as hers, the tall, fair youngster who was no Welshman, and was certainly the finest ox-caller in Gwynedd, had broken away from his placidly-drinking team, and was wading the river thigh-deep towards this particular tall oak, in a flurry of sparkling spray. The girl had been ensconced in this very tree, whence, no doubt, she had a very good view of the ploughing. And came down as soon as it was finished! "I'm shy of my English," she said, pleading and vulnerable. "Don't tell anyone!"
    She was wishing him away from here, and demanding his discretion at the same time. His presence, he gathered, was inconvenient.
    "I've known the same trouble myself," he said comfortably, "when first I tried getting my tongue round English. I'll never call your efforts into question. And now I'd better be on my way back to our lodgings, or I shall be late for Vespers."
    "God go with you, then, Father," she said, radiant and relieved.
    "And with you, my child."
    He withdrew by a carefully chosen route that evaded any risk of bumping into the fair young man. And she watched him go for a long moment, before she turned eagerly to meet the ox-caller as he came splashing through the shallows and climbed the bank. Cadfael thought that she was perfectly aware how much he had observed and understood, and was pleased by his reticence. Pleased and reassured. A Welsh girl of status, with embroidery along the hems of her gown, had good need to go softly if she was meeting an outlander, a man landless and rootless here in a clan society, where to be without place in a kinship was to be without the means of living. And yet a very pleasing, comely young man, good at his work and feeling for his beasts. Cadfael looked back, when he was sure the bushes covered him, and saw the two of them draw together, still and glad, not touching, almost shy of each other. He did not look back again.
    Now what I really need here, he thought as he walked back towards the church of Gwytherin, is a good, congenial acquaintance, someone who knows every man, woman and child in the