The Potter’s Field

The Potter’s Field (1989) Ellis Peters

Set in England in 1143.

The war between King Stephen and Empress Maud continues, and raiders have attacked East Anglia, sending the residents and the local Benedictines fleeing. The novice Sulien Blount is sent back to Shrewsbury both to escape the raiders and to consider whether he truly wants to take orders.

When a plot of land comes into the Benedictines of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (through a trade with another religious house), the Benedictines decide to plow the land to prepare it for the coming spring.

A new monk–a potter who took orders against the will and wishes of his wife–formerly lived on that land, so when the body of a woman is discovered, suspicions turn to Brother Ruald.

I think Radulfus had his doubts at first. He kept him the full term and over in his novitiate. His desire was extreme, and our abbot suspects extremes. And then, the man had been fifteen years married, and his wife was by no means consenting. Ruald left her everything he had to leave, and all of it she scorned. She fought his resolve for many weeks, but he would not be moved.

…(H)e could have his freedom to go and become a monk, but his going didn’t confer freedom on her. She could not take another husband; the one she had, monk or no, was still alive.

That’s a hard thing–that a man could make such a decision and his wife could not only have no say in the matter, but would also remain bound by their marriage vows.

We also meet Donata Blount, who has been slowly dying for years (one would presume from the descriptions, of a cancer). Her struggle is one that may be familiar to many, and the worries and fears she had are little different from those we see today.

…I foresaw a time when the load would become more than even I could bear, and I wished to have some small thing about me, a little vial of deliverance, a promise of peace, perhaps never to use, only to keep as a talisman, the very touch of it consolation to me that at the worst… at the last extreme, there was left to me a way of escape. To know that was to go on enduring. Is that reproach to me, Father?”

But it’s not all dark. There are as always some lovely passages of tranquility, like this bit where Cadfael visits his godson.

He made Cadfael free of the amenities of his manor with solemn dignity, seated him ceremoniously, and himself made off to the buttery to fetch a beaker of ale, bearing it back cautiously in both still-rounded, infantile hands, overfilled and in danger of spilling, with his primrose hair erect and rumpled, and the tip of his tongue braced in the corner of his mouth.

And of course, Cadfael is Cadfael.

Cadfael had barely begun to close the door upon the pair of them, admittedly slowly and with pricked ears, when the abbot’s voice cut sharply through the boy’s breathless utterance.

As with the other books, there is a love story, and there is also a story of forgiveness and redemption.

I really love this series.
Rating: 9/10

Published by MysteriousPress

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