I had much loved the chronicles of Brother Cadwael, when I first read them at the time of coronavirus. There had been a volume containing the first three in the library at Lakmahal, but I had only picked it out when there was nothing to do except read and write, and that mainly at the cottage where I had neither fish nor flowers.

The stories are set in the 11th century, and are about a monk who solves murder mysteries. They were written by a lady called Edith Pargeter, under the pseudonym Ellis Peters. She also wrote history and historical fiction, and at Lakmahal we also had The Brothers of Gwynedd, a quartet about the last king of Wales.

That too was interesting reading, but it was Cadfael that gripped me, though for ages I read nothing more about him though I recall seeing a televised version of one of the stories. But then, when I was given a high value book token for my birthday this year, I looked for the chronicles though sadly there was just the one I had not read previously.

This was The Leper of St. Giles, that being a leper colony connected to the Abbey, with Cadfael’s former assistant Brother Mark looking after the lepers at the time of the story. The leper of the title is a mysterious character who keeps his hood on all the time, and seems healthy though a hand with missing fingers makes it clear that he had suffered from the disease. That causes fear so that his desire for isolation was quite understandable.

He provides refuge to a young squire suspected of theft and murder, by dragging him into the colony when he is about to be caught, and providing him with a cloak and hood. But Mark notices that the hands of this leper are not maimed, though he seems so good with a child who had attached himself to the mysterious leper that he decides not to give him away.

The squire, Joscelin Lucy, had fallen foul of his patron Huon, who was about to be married to an heiress, forced into this by her guardian uncle and aunt. Accused of stealing a collar intended for the bride, he flees, and is the obvious suspect when the prospective bridegroom is found dead on the day of his wedding.

He had been given shelter by a senior squire, Simon, Huon’s nephew, but he had gone out to see if he could prevent the marriage, and had seen Huon riding past the colony the night he was killed. That was when he had been dragged into the colony, just when the sherrif’s men thought they had seen him.

Cadfael works out that the key to the mystery must be the reason Huon went out that night, and he manages to find out that this was to see his mistress, who had been brought to a lodge he owned a short distance away. He went to see the lady, and gathered that Huon had been with her, and killed on the return journey.

The murderer then had to be someone who knew of the affair, but before Cadfael unmasks him the bride’s uncle too is killed. Though Cadfael realizes that that had been done by someone else, he says nothing when Huon’s murderer is unmasked. Later however he talks to the mysterious leper, and notes that the uncle had not been murdered, but rather killed in what seems to have been combat. The leper explains what happened and why, and then leaves the colony, content that the niece has found a worthy husband.

A gripping story, and moving too, and once again the quiet clarity of Cadfael’s investigation rouses both sympathy as well as satisfaction.

The pictures before that of the author are of the actress and actor who played the girl and Joscelyn, the latter the brother of the more famous Colin Firth.