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young but barely past thirty, which is not so old, and good to look at, and
well regarded. Better at least,” she said without great enthusiasm, “than being
shut up behind a grid in an English nunnery.”
    “So
it is,” agreed Cadfael heartily, “unless your own heart drives you there, and I
doubt that will ever happen to you. Better, too, surely, than living on here
and being made to feel an outcast and a burden. You are not wholly set against
marriage?”
    “No!”
she said vehemently.
    “And
you know of nothing against this man the prince has in mind?”
    “Only
that I have not chosen him,” she said, and set her red lips in a stubborn line.
    “When
you see him you may approve him. It would not be the first time,” said Cadfael
sagely, “that an intelligent matchmaker got the balance right.”
    “Well
or ill,” she said, rising with a sigh, “I have no choice but to go. My father
goes with me to see that I behave, and Canon Morgant, who is as rigid as the
bishop himself, goes with us to see that we both behave. Any further scandal
now, and goodbye to any advancement under Gilbert. I could destroy him if I so
wished,” she said, dwelling vengefully on something she knew could never be a
possibility, for all her anger and disdain. And from the evening light in the
doorway she looked back to add: “I can well live without him. Soon or late, I
should have gone to a husband. But do you know what most galls me? That he
should give me up so lightly, and be so thankful to get rid of me.”
     
    Canon
Meirion came for them as he had promised, just as the bustle in the courtyard
was settling into competent quietness, building work abandoned for the day, all
the domestic preparations for the evening’s feast completed, the small army of
servitors mustered into their places, and the household, from princes to
grooms, assembled in hall. The light was still bright, but softening into the
gilded silence before the sinking of the sun.
    Dressed
for ceremony, the canon was brushed and immaculate but plain, maintaining the
austerity of his office, perhaps, all the more meticulously to smooth away from
memory all the years when he had been married to a wife. Time had been, once,
long ago in the age of the saints, when celibacy had been demanded of all
Celtic priests, just as insistently as it was being demanded now by Bishop
Gilbert, by reason of the simple fact that the entire structure of the Celtic
Church was built on the monastic ideal, and anything less was a departure from
precedent and a decline in sanctity. But long since even the memory of that
time had grown faint to vanishing, and there would be just as indignant a
reaction to the reimposition of that ideal as there must once have been to its
gradual abandonment. For centuries now priests had lived as decent married men
and raised families like their parishioners. Even in England, in the more
remote country places, there were plenty of humble married priests, and
certainly no one thought the worse of them. In Wales it was not unknown for son
to follow sire in the cure of a parish, and worse, for the sons of bishops to
take it for granted they should succeed their mitred fathers, as though the
supreme offices of the Church had been turned into heritable fiefs. Now here
came this alien bishop, imposed from without, to denounce all such practices as
abominable sin, and clear his diocese of all but the celibate clergy.
    And
this able and impressive man who came to summon them to the support of his
master had no intention of suffering diminution simply because, though he had
buried his wife just in time, the survival of a daughter continued to accuse
him. Nothing against the girl, and he would see her provided for, but somewhere
else, out of sight and mind.
    To
do him justice, he made no bones about going straight for what he wanted, what
would work to his most advantage. He meant to exploit his two visiting