Dead Man's Ransom

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ON THAT DAY, which was the seventh of February of the year of Our Lord 1141, they had offered special prayers at every office, not for the victory of one party or the defeat of another in the battlefields of the north, but for better counsel, for reconciliation, for the sparing of blood-letting and the respect of life between men of the same country—all desirable consummations, as Brother Cadfael sighed to himself even as he prayed, but very unlikely to be answered in this torn and fragmented land with any but a very dusty answer. Even God needs some consideration and support from his material to make reasoning and benign creatures of men.

Shrewsbury had furnished King Stephen with a creditable force to join his muster for the north, where the earls of Chester and Lincoln, ambitious half-brothers, had flouted the king’s grace and moved to set up their own palatine, and with much in their favour, too. The parish part of the great church was fuller than usual even at the monastic offices, with anxious wives, mothers and grandsires fervent in praying for their menfolk. Not every man who had marched with Sheriff Gilbert Prestcote and his deputy, Hugh Beringar, would come home again unscathed to Shrewsbury. Rumours flew, but news was in very poor supply. Yet word had filtered through that Chester and Lincoln, long lurking in neutrality between rival claimants for the crown, having ambitious plans of their own in defiance of both, had made up their minds in short order when menaced by King Stephen’s approach, and sent hotfoot for help from the champions of his antagonist, the Empress Maud. Thus committing themselves for the future, perhaps, so deep that they might yet live to regret it.

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