Ellis Peters - The Potter's Field

‘It still is,’ said Cadfael. ‘We’ve ploughed it, and brushed back the headland bushes, and you might miss the field flowers, and the moths at midsummer when the meadow grasses ripen. But there’ll be the young green starting now along the furrows, and the birds in the headlands just the same. Yes, a very fair place.’

They had turned to walk back through the wet grass towards the chapterhouse, and the dusk was a soft blue-green about them, clinging moist in the half-naked branches of the trees.

‘She would never have had a place in this blessed ground,’ said Ruald, out of the shadow of his cowl, ‘but that she was found in land belonging to the abbey, and without any other sponsor to take care of her. As Saint Illtud drove his wife out into the night for no offence, as I, for no offence in her, deserted Generys, so in the end God has brought her back into the care of the Order, and provided her an enviable grave. Father Abbot received and blessed what I misused and misprized.’

‘It may well be,’ said Cadfael,’that our justice sees as in a mirror image, left where right should be, evil reflected back as good, good as evil, your angel as her devil. But God’s justice, if it makes no haste, makes no mistakes.’