Women tend to be nearly invisible in medieval stories. Peters wasn't so bad about this, but even she drops into it occasionally. Thus in the previous book (The Heretic's Apprentice) there's a mention in one paragraph of a maid who appears nowhere else in the book.This irregular invisibility is probably the explanation of how a woman's body can show up unexpectedly in the too-close plowing of a field, and nobody can say who she might be. Or rather, they can say who she MIGHT be, but can't be sure who she WAS, until they track down the other possibilities, to find the women still alive. The Potter's Field is just that: a field used by a potter to dig out clay for his craft. It's also good pastureland, and can be used for a plowed field, or at least part of it can.But it hasn't really been used for anything for several years. The previous tenant found a sudden calling to join the abbey, leaving behind his furious wife, who (apparently) couldn't even get an annulment, and go on with her life. But that's not what she wanted to do anyway: she wanted to keep her husband OUT of the abbey, and found that the law didn't permit her such an option. So when she disappeared, nobody could really say where she went, and when. She's from Wales, and had no kin or close friends in town, so most people assume she went back to Wales...and, rumor says, with a lover.Since then the potter's hut has been used to house an old woman from town, and then, when she got too frail to live alone, it was available for things like squatters who came to sell or perform at the annual fair (early August, remember?), and was mostly unused otherwise.Only when the abbey trades some isolated land of its own with the friars of Haughmond does the dead woman achieve her surprise resurrection.One of the things that always astonishes me about these books is how isolated all but the residents of cities are. With a low level of literacy, it's perhaps not surprising that they don't sent letters much (there's no established postal system anyway--letters are sent by couriers, or by paying somebody who happens to be going somewhere to carry the letters), But there are clerks, after all. And one of the services they provide is writing letters for the illiterate. So, for example, though Brother Haluin and Sister Benedicta may never see each other again, though they're still relatively young, and not so very far away, why shouldn't they exchange letters? But the possibility is never raised.In this case, trying to find the identity of a mystery dead woman (identified as a woman by her abundance of hair--wouldn't be very useful for those of us who have always been less hirsute) becomes a real mystery, because there just aren't that many records, and the possibilities have to be dredged up out of people's fallible memories. And without knowing who she is, how can they determine how she died? She wasn't beaten to death, it's pretty certain, because there are no broken bones. But that's not much of a clue.I should point out that the women described as 'matriarchs' in this series are nothing of the sort, mostly. They're mostly widows, with dower property, but they don't often rule estates. Thus Longner, for example, is the clear property of Eudo Blount The Younger, and his mother has very little say in the running of the estate.Another matter that's of some concern to me: the mating practices of the time are fraught with difficulties. Whether the marriages are prearranged or not, it seems that most of the time the prospective mates are either entire strangers to each other--or rather too intimately acquainted, having been raised in the same household as foster-siblings. Either one is laden with problems. We tend to assume that we will meet and get to know many people in our lifetimes, and thus will have a choice of people who are potential mates, whom we know something about, but not too much. In the time of the books, this wasn't a fair assumption. Bad roads, bad customs (highwaymen, and such), and little travel for most people, must have resulted in far too many close kin marriages, which has social as well as biological consequences. Inbreeding is a condition of the spirit, as well as the body. The habit of falling in love with the first comely stranger one meets might be a simple defense against too cloistered a mate choice.One thing that puzzled me at first about the building practices in these books becomes more clear as the Severn and its tributaries wind through the stories. Most housing is one floor up, with an undercroft for storage and some workspace. I could see some use in a stone lower floor, to protect against fire--but why would the housing floor be upstairs? And then I realized that in an area with almost dependable annual flooding, it just makes more sense to live well aboveground. But it could be hard on the disabled, even so. I have to admit I have a lot of problems with the moral judgments in these books. Though more nuanced than many people's attitudes of the time (or of this time, for that matter), it's still too often a matter of dismissing people as of no value. Too many people are described dismissively as 'scum', or as being 'born to prey on others'. People we're allowed to get to know are often seen as quite complex of motives, morals, and actions. But others are just forced offstage, with no examination. And the repeated arguments that people in these times were killed just for the clothes they wore, if they have nothing else, is bizarre. Why WOULD people kill those they rob? Why not just rob them and leave them naked? Even assuming that clothing is hard to come by, the risks involved in fighting and killing people would surely be greater than those involved with just robbing people.And one point that I have no ability at all to understand is the argument that it matters at all whether people who are killed have due process. As it says in Arsenic And Old Lace, "in the end, the fellow in Melbourne was just as dead." Taking away something that CANNOT be restored can't be done 'properly'. And I don't feel the least outrage about a proposal to prevent the destruction of a family's reputation by keeping the family's dirty laundry from being aired in public.Nor, I should add, do I see it as any kind of 'maiming' that somebody should have more than one lover at a time, especially in the difficult circumstances in the story. People are NOT property, and marriage is not (or shouldn't be) a contract of mutual enslavement. And I don't believe that it was the consensus at the time that people couldn't take lovers outside of marriage--though there was probably a considerable double standard.
A few days ago I was about to go to the summer cottage without electronic devices, and because I didn't feel like reading anything from the pile I already had, I went to the library to see if there were more Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody adventures. Apparently, the library hasn't acquired them in order (the horror!), so I have to buy the next one if I'm planning on reading it. Then I saw something interesting next to the other Peters's novels: crime novels where a monk is doing the investigating. A monk! This has to be good, I thought, and something totally different than the tediousness that is The Name of the Rose (1980).I was laying on the pier and eating strawberries, when the skeleton was found from the field. From there on I was instantly hooked. I couldn't have been more wrong in my guesses for the culprit, although the ending made complete sense, and was even a bit medieval in a way. Although I prefer only the final revelation instead of the characters constantly repeating the evidence gathered so far and who could be guilty, I still enjoyed following Cadfael in his efforts to find who did it.Things were also made more interesting by Cadfael being stuck in the monastery, since he had to ask permission for errands not related to his vocation, and because of that he had Hugh the sheriff to help him in the outside world. Not that Cadfael is a master detective. He and Hugh seemed pretty equal in their brain activity, although Cadfael is naturally the one who solves the case.Not only that the mystery is rewarding, but Peters is also a wonderful writer in general. She depicts the environment and the monastic life vividly and beautifully, and weaves thoughts about life and religion into the narrative (of which the contrast between secular and monastic life was the most interesting). Her monks are imperfect and people's behavior in general is plausible and suitable for the time period.My brain has a minor glitch what comes to the history of the Middle Ages, so the parts where Peters explains a little about the historical background went completely over my head. I have no idea who the king was, I can't remember who were fighting and why etc. That's just a small thing, however, because they're not important in understanding the plot. Although it should be noted that Peters never went to college but was self-taught, which is incredibly impressive.The series is suitable for reading out of order, which is always a plus for me. I will store Peters in my mind for those days when I don't feel like reading anything particularly challenging, but still something a bit more serious.
What do You think about The Potter's Field (1991)?
After discovering a body buried in a field recently transferred to the Abbey of St. Peter and Saint Paul, Cadfael, Abbot Radulfus and Sheriff Hugh Beringar set out to discover the identity of the woman and who murdered her. Their investigations lead them first to the woman's husband, recently taken orders at the abbey and previously a Potter, then to an itinerant peddlar and eventually to the son of the original owner of the land, a young man who had entered orders at Ramsey, an abbey quite a distance from his home.
—Sharon
This is the first Brother Cadfael mystery that I had not read before, and I thought it a very good one; Brother Cadfael is able (with a good deal of help, to be sure) to determine who did what to whom to create the inevitable dead body, who appears mysteriously, and who has been buried so long as to obscure cause of death and identity. (One would not think there were many unknown dead bodies around Shrewsbury, but apparently such could happen.) For those not wishing to read further, I loved this book unreservedly.In August of 1143, the Abbey has before it a proposition to switch fields with their neighboring Augustinian priory of Haughmond, some four miles to the east. Haughmond has a parcel of land that is actually closer to Shrewsbury than to them, and Shrewsbury has a field that is closer to the priory than they themselves are; so the transfer makes sense. The field given to Haughmond, and which is now to be the property of the Abbey at Shrewsbury, was given to Haughmond by Eudo Blount of Longner a year ago; the Earl has since died of injuries that he incurred fighting in the rearguard protecting King Stephen’s retreat from the Empress Matilda’s forces, at the Battle of Wilton, on July 1, 1143. (This battle is quite historical, by the way.) The field is that formerly known as the Potter’s Field; Ruald the potter, after a lifetime of his craft and fifteen years of marriage to a dark beautiful Welsh girl named Generys, suddenly felt the call of the spirit, and joined the Abbey at Shrewsbury as Brother Ruald. His wife did not take his change of career well; some weeks after he left her for the Abbey in the early summer of 1142, she vanished, with rumor stating that she had taken a lover and left the cottage the couple had lived in on the field.Along about the first of October, Brother Richard and Brother Cadfael went to the field with a ploughman and the Abbey’s six-oxen plough team, along with the heavy, high-wheeled plough, and the plowing of the upper field commenced. At an edge of the upper field, the plough turned up rotted clothing and a tress of long black hair. Determining who the body may be is not easy, as it has been buried at least a year; there is no positive indication that it might be the missing Generys. While the Sheriff, Hugh Beringer, and Brother Cadfael are considering all possibilities, Brother Sulien arrived from the abbey of Ramsey with word that it has been taken over by one of King Stephen’s former allies, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of Essex, who has set up a robber’s kingdom in the fenlands, with the Abbey of Ramsey as his base. (Again, de Mandeville did indeed exist, and he did indeed set up his camp as a robber and brigand at the Abbey of Ramsey.) Brother Sulien is also unsure of his vocation; until he took the robe a year ago, he was the younger son of the late Eudo Blount of Loranger.The book weaves about from one account of whom the woman found buried in the Potter’s Field might be to another; the only certainty is that the mystery involves Sulien Blount in some shape or form. Brother Cadfael manages to delve to the center of the mystery, and in the process, he clears the way for young love to bloom (again).I must say it is a great advantage to have read a book that I haven’t read before, given my memory for useless facts and trivia; and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.
—Kathryn
Ellis Peters lives up to her reputation as a mystery writer with this one. The focus shifts around to various suspects as Hugh and Cadfael deal with the flow of information that sheds progressive light on the case. The end is a bit of a surprise, which makes for a good mystery.It is a joy to read her descriptions of people, the seasons, the countryside, and the customs. As Cadfael is off early one autumn morning, this line pops up: "But the birds were up and singing, busy and loud, lords of their own tiny manors, crying their rights and privileges in defiance of intruders."
—Frode
