Wynstan watched the cart pull up at the entrance to Shiring Abbey. A small crowd gathered, curious. He saw Edith join them. He said: “How could Aldred even pay for a four-wheel cart and an ox?”

Degbert knew the answer to that. “Thane Deorman of Norwood gave him three pounds.”

“More fool Deorman.”

The people crowded closely around. Aldred pulled away a covering of some kind, but Wynstan could not see what was on the cart. Then the covering was replaced, the cart entered the abbey, and the crowd dispersed.

Edith returned a minute later. “It’s a life-size effigy of Saint Adolphus!” she said excitedly. “He has a lovely face, holy and sad at the same time.”

Wynstan said contemptuously: “An idol for the ignorant to worship. I suppose it’s painted, too?”

“The face is white, and the hands and feet. The robe is gray. But the eyes are so blue you’d think they were looking at you!”

Blue was the most costly paint, being made with crushed gems of lapis lazuli. Wynstan said slowly: “I know what that sly devil is up to.”

Degbert said: “I wish you’d tell me.”

“He’s going to take the relics on a tour. He’ll stop at every church between Glastonbury and Dreng’s Ferry. He needs money, now that Hildred has stopped his subsidy, and he wants to use the saint to raise funds.”

“It will probably work,” said Degbert.

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” said Wynstan.

CHAPTER 28

May 1001

n the outskirts of the village of Trench, the monks began to sing.

All eight from the Dreng’s Ferry priory were present, including blind Cuthbert, plus Edgar to work the mechanism. They walked in solemn procession on each side of the cart, with Godleof leading the ox by the ring in its nose.

The effigy of the saint and the yew chest containing the bones were on the cart but covered by cloths that also prevented their shifting.

The villagers were working in the fields. They were busy, but it was the time for weeding, and that task was easy to abandon. As they heard the singing they unbent from the green shoots of barley and rye, stood upright rubbing their backs, saw the procession, and came across the fields to the road to find out what was going on.

Aldred had ordered the monks not to speak to anyone until afterward. They continued to sing, solemn-faced, looking straight ahead. The villagers joined the procession, following the cart, talking among themselves in excited whispers.

Aldred had planned everything carefully, but this was the first time he had tried it out. He prayed for success.

The cart passed between houses, drawing out all those who were not working in the fields: old men and women, children too young to tell the difference between crops and weeds, a shepherd with a sickly lamb in his arms, a carpenter with a hammer and chisel, a milkmaid carrying a butter churn that she continued to agitate as she fell in behind the cart. The dogs came, too, excitedly sniffing the robes of the strangers.