The Potter's Field Read Online Free Page A

strands of cloth, once black, or the common dark brown, now the colour of the earth, but still with enough nature left in them to tear in long, frayed rags when the iron ripped through the folds from which they came. And something more, drawn out with them, perhaps from within them, and lying along the furrow for almost the length of a man’s forearm, black and wavy and fine, a long thick tress of dark hair.

2
    Brother Cadfael returned alone to the abbey, and asked immediate audience of Abbot Radulfus.
    â€œFather, something unforeseen sends me back to you in this haste. I would not have troubled you for less, but in the Potter’s Field the plough has uncovered something which must be of concern both to this house and to the secular law. I have not yet gone further. I need your sanction to report this also to Hugh Beringar, and if he so permits, to pursue what as yet I have left as we found it. Father, the coulter has brought into daylight rags of cloth and a coil of human hair. A woman’s hair, or so it seems to me. It is long and fine, I think it has never been cut. And, Father, it is held fast under the earth.”
    â€œYou are telling me,” said Radulfus, after a long and pregnant pause, “that it is still rooted in a human head.” His voice was level and firm. There were few improbable situations he had not encountered in his more than fifty years. If this was the first of its kind, it was by no means the gravest he had ever confronted. The monastic enclave is still contained within and contingent upon a world where all things are possible. “In this unconsecrated place there is some human creature buried. Unlawfully.”
    â€œThat is what I fear,” said Cadfael. “But we have not gone on to confirm it, wanting your leave and the sheriffs attendance.”
    â€œThen what have you done? How have you left things there in the field?”
    â€œBrother Richard is keeping watch at the place. The ploughing continues, but with due care, and away from that spot. There seemed no need,” he said reasonably, “to delay it. Nor would we want to call too much attention to what is happening there. The ploughing accounts for our presence, no one need wonder at seeing us busy there. And even if it proves true, this may be old, very old, long before our time.”
    â€œTrue,” said the abbot, his eyes very shrewd upon Cadfael’s face, “though I think you do not believe in any such grace. To the best that I know from record and charter, there never at any time was church or churchyard near that place. I pray God there may be no more such discoveries to be made, one is more than enough. Well, you have my authority, do what needs to be done.”
    *
    What needed to be done, Cadfael did. The first priority was to alert Hugh, and ensure that the secular authority should be witness to whatever followed. Hugh knew his friend well enough to cast no doubts, ask no questions, and waste no time in demur, but at once had horses saddled up, taking one sergeant of the garrison with him to ride messenger should he be needed, and set off with Cadfael for the ford of Severn and the Potter’s Field.
    The plough team was still at work, lower down the slope, when they rode along the headland to the spot where Brother Richard waited by the bank of broom bushes. The long, attenuated, sinuous S-shapes of the furrows shone richly dark against the thick, matted pallor of the meadow. Only this corner under the headland had been left virgin, the plough drawn well aside after the first ominous turn. The scar the coulter had left ended abruptly, the long, dark filaments drawn along the groove. Hugh stooped to look, and to touch. The threads of cloth disintegrated under his fingers, the long strands of hair curled and clung. When he lifted them tentatively they slid through his hold, still rooted in earth. He stood back, and stared down sombrely into the deep scar.
    â€œWhatever