One Corpse Too Many (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, #2)

by Ellis Peters

life could only be sustained by refusing to let it be disrupted, by war, catastrophe or death.

presently we’ll go pray for the souls of those quitting this world. But all of us quit it at last, by whatever way, that’s not the worst of evils.

But I value devotion and fidelity, and doubt if it matters whether the object falls short. What you do and what you are is what matters.

The ugliness that man can do to man might cast a shadow between you and the certainty of the justice and mercy God can do to him hereafter. It takes half a lifetime to reach the spot where eternity is always visible, and the crude injustice of the hour shrivels out of sight.

“So, wonder! I also wonder about you,” said Cadfael mildly. “Do you know any human creatures who are not strangers, one to another?”

In such dreadful times as these no one can do more than choose his own road according to his conscience, and bear the consequences of his choice, whatever they may be.”

He blows too many ways as his advisers persuade him, but left alone he knows a man when he finds one. And he demands unbecoming services when he’s angry and vengeful, but he despises those who run too servilely to perform, and never leave him time to think better of his vindictiveness.

You value yourself too high to value a trifle of gold above your self-esteem.

They were old enemies, in so far as Brother Cadfael entertained enmities. He abhorred a sickly-pale tonsure.

So it always is, he thought, to relieve another you must burden yourself.

The trouble with me, he thought unhappily, is that I have been about the world long enough to know that God’s plans for us, however infallibly good, may not take the form that we expect and demand. And I find an immense potential for rebellion in this old heart, if God, for no matter what perfect end, choose to take Hugh Beringar out of this world and leave Adam Courcelle in it.

“No, I would not do so to him. I know better than that. All I can do is watch, and keep silence.” The fate of women in a world of fighting men, he thought wryly, but for all that, it is not so passive a part as it sounds.

“We deal with what is,” said Cadfael. “Leave what might have been to eyes that can see it plain.

As between Stephen and Maud, Cadfael felt no allegiance; but these young creatures, though two of them held for Maud and two for Stephen, surely belonged to a future and an England delivered from the wounds of civil war, beyond this present anarchy.

From the highest to the lowest extreme of a man’s scope, wherever justice and retribution can reach him, so can grace.”