The Potter's Field (Brother Cadfael 17)

The two monasteries are quick to seal the deal once they decide to trade two plots of land at Saint Peter's Fair in August 1143. By early October, the monks of the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul are in the newly acquired Potter's Field, setting the plough with a huge team of oxen to till the long fallow land. Soon into the work, they stop, having found what they least expect: the bones and long dark hair of a woman in her unblessed and unmarked grave. She has no marks of identity besides her hair, nor wounds to her bones to tell how she died. She held a cross made from twigs, the only sign she had been laid there by someone who wished her well. The civil authority and the monks must learn who she was, and how she came to her death.

The field was a gift from the lord of Longner Manor to the Augustine Priory at Haughmond Abbey, who then traded it to the Shrewsbury Abbey, as it was closer to them. For fifteen years, until fifteen months earlier, it was the home of a potter, Ruald and his wife Generys. Ruald is now a happy man in the monastery, finding his true calling. His wife is no longer in the area, abandoned by her husband's decision, not free to marry again, and not happy about her situation. Sulien Blount, novice monk, reports to Abbot Radulfus of the devastation of Ramsey Abbey, having survived the long walk. Learning of the local mystery, he shares the news that Generys was seen within the last three weeks, having sold her wedding ring to a silversmith in Peterborough as she and her new man flee the devastation of the Fens. Sulien shows the ring, given him for his sentimental attachment. This rules her out as the unfortunate woman now buried in the Abbey's cemetery, and frees Ruald of suspicion of being a murderer.