Brother Cadfael

12th-century Shrewsbury monks go to Wales to recover a 7th-century saint’s relics, and encounter opposition from the relics’ current keepers. Then the opposition leader is murdered.

A stiff-necked old man deeds his estate to Shrewsbury Abbey, then dies via poison in a meal sent over by the abbey. Among the suspects Cadfael must work through are himself for brewing the poison and being part of the abbey, a hot-headed step-son, a bastard, and a villein.

Cadfael attends to a brother beaten and left for dead, and searches for missing siblings and their nun escort. In the meantime, a band of marauders pillages the countryside.

In February of 1141, men march home from war to Shrewsbury, but the captured sheriff Gilbert Prestcote is not among them. Elis, a young Welsh prisoner, is delivered to the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul to begin a tale that will test Brother Cadfael’s sense of justice—and his heart. By good fortune, it seems, the prisoner can be exchanged as Sheriff Prestcote’s ransom. What no one expects is that good-natured Elis will be struck down by cupid’s arrow. The sheriff’s own daughter holds him in thrall, and she, too, is blind with passion. But regaining her father means losing her lover. The sheriff, ailing and frail, is brought to the abbey’s infirmary—where he is murdered. Suspicion falls on the prisoner, who has only his Welsh honor to gain Brother Cadfael’s help. And Cadfael gives it, not knowing the truth will be a trial for his own soul.

Shrewsbury hosts two refugee brothers with a history that could bedevil the Benedictines, but gives Cadfael something to do.

The Abby has been giving one rose as rent for a wealthy widow's property. This year the rose is hacked to pieces, and the rent cannot be paid. Worse yet, a man has suffered the same fate as the rose. Brother Cadfael must weave a complex garland to figure this one out.

This Cadfael mystery is more about mediaeval law and crime, and the first civil war in England, with the Empress Matilda and King Stephen as the belligerents, than about detection with the monk Cadfael''s skills. Nevertheless a craftily constructed story, and several strings to the plot, neatly disentangled at the end.

This book examines what true piety is. The main character is the apprentice of a man, now dead, who is suddenly accused of having been a heretic. In this book, Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters), through her hero Brother Cadfael, examines where heresy overlaps with true inquiry. Her characters are vindicated for pondering the mysteries of Christianity, including the trinity.