The room was quiet now, and they were all agog.

“Monks must be concerned with this world as well as the next. We’re told to store up treasure in heaven, but we do so by good works here on earth. We live in a world of cruelty and ignorance and pain, but we make it better. When evil is done in front of our eyes we cannot remain silent. At least . . . I cannot.” He paused for effect.

“I have been asked to withdraw from the trial. I refuse. It is not God’s will for me. I ask you, my brothers, to respect my decision. But if you decide to expel me from this abbey, then of course I will have to leave.” He looked around the room. “For me that would be a sad day.”

They were shocked. They had not expected him to make this a resigning issue. No one wanted it to go that far—except Hildred, perhaps.

There was a long silence. What Aldred needed was for one of his friends to suggest a compromise. But he had had no chance to prearrange this, so he had to hope that one of them would work something out on his own.

In the end it was Brother Godleof, the taciturn ex-cowherd, who figured it out. “No need for expulsion,” he said with characteristic brevity. “Man shouldn’t be forced to do what he thinks wrong.”

Hildred said indignantly: “But what about your vow of obedience?”

Godleof was economical with words but he did not lack intelligence, and he could match Hildred in an argument. “There are limits,” he said simply.

Aldred saw that many of the monks agreed with that. Their obedience was not absolute. He sensed the mood moving to his side.

To Aldred’s surprise his colleague in the scriptorium, the old scribe Tatwine, raised his hand. Aldred could not remember him speaking in chapter before. “I haven’t been outside the precincts of this abbey for twenty-three years,” Tatwine said. “But Aldred went to Jumièges. That isn’t even in England! And he brought back marvelous volumes, books we’d never seen before. Marvelous. There are more ways than one to be a monk, you see.” He smiled and nodded, as if agreeing with himself. “More ways than one.”

The older monks were moved by this intervention, the more so because it was so rare. And Tatwine worked with Aldred daily: that made his opinion more weighty.

Hildred knew that he was beaten, and he did not push the matter to a vote. “If the chapter is minded to pardon Aldred’s disobedience,” he said, trying to hide his annoyance under a mask of tolerance, “then I feel sure Abbot Osmund would not want to insist otherwise.”

Most of the monks nodded assent.

“Then let us move on,” Hildred said. “I understand there has been a complaint about moldy bread . . .”

The day before the trial, Aldred and Den shared a cup of ale and reviewed their prospects. Den said: “Wynstan has done his best to undermine our oath helpers, but I don’t think he’s succeeded.”