Richard Henders as Torold Blund, Juliette Caton as Godith Adeney, and Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael in the ITV film version of One Corpse Too Many
Any fan of whodunits (and I am one) will readily attest to the fact that, in addition to the mystery that drives the action and the complications of human motivation and capacity for deceit, there is also often other motivation at play for the sleuth and for the supporting casts. Edith Pargeter’s Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, the theologically-dense historical murder mysteries set in the English Anarchy on the Shropshire border between England and Wales (which come highly recommended from yours truly), are no exception. My hagiographical bender on the English and Welsh saints led me back to Pargeter’s mediæval murder mystery series, as she features many of these saints prominently in her books: Saint Gwenffrewi most of all, who is a silent protagonist (or perhaps not-so-silent?) in A Morbid Taste for Bones; but also by mention throughout the series Saints Beuno, Dyfrig, Deiniol, Non, Eleri, Mildburg, Illtud, Tysilio, Ceadda, Cyndeyrn, Asaph and Óswald. Cadfael even refers to himself as being ‘as Welsh as Dewi Sant’. Some Eastern saints even get a mention – in particular Saint John Chrysostom.
The novels often explore themes of politics and loyalty; religious devotion; other devotions such as duty and honour; family ties between parents and children, siblings and spouses; and, of course, the love between man and woman. Brother Cadfael is often assisted in the garden by a fellow Benedictine from the monastery. But very often his episodic helper in solving the mystery at hand is one half of a romantic pair – or, in some cases, both halves – whose lives are interrupted by crime or by the historical events unfolding around them. And often enough, Cadfael is called upon to play the part of a Friar Lawrence, a silent or not-so-silent helper to the B-plot romantic pairing.
Edith Pargeter is a master at portraying complex, subtle and occasionally-contradictory, perverse and tormented human beings in her books, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t, like all good fiction writers when starting a new work afresh, draw from a template. In her books, the romantic B-plots tend to fall into five broad (but often overlapping) categories. (I am posting a general SPOILER ALERT for the following numbered list, because some of these involve important plot twists in the books.)
- Classic Star-Crossed:
It’s fairly easy to tell that this is Edith Pargeter’s favourite kind of pairing. She loves putting young people into awkward positions where they fall in love with someone they supposedly can’t have, where they face a cultural gap or reticent parents or poverty, or where the A-plot murder mystery falls between them – usually with one of them as the too-obvious suspect pursued by the law. And of course, for these pairings, love thrives on adversity, ill circumstances and opposition. One or other of the pairing will almost always be Cadfael’s Girl Friday or Man Friday of the week, or play some sort of active role in solving the A-plot mystery.
Some of these couples are noble: Sioned and Engelard; Joscelin and Iveta; Elis and Melicent; Eliud and Cristina; Roscelin and Helicende. These star-crossed lovers will be the victims of arranged marriages or parental tyranny in some way. In a couple of cases – Sioned and Engelard; Elis and Melicent – cross-border suspicions between Welsh and English are a complicating factor. One coupling – Roscelin and Helicende in The Confession of Brother Haluin – is a narrowly-averted case of aunt-nephew incest with præfiguring shades of Poppy Hill. But, despite its occasional over-the-top excesses, the sub rosa courtship of Joscelin Lucy and Iveta de Massard in The Leper of Saint Giles is the best example. Joscelin and Iveta are both more than determined to sacrifice themselves for the sake of delivering the other, and exemplify toward each other a ‘passion’ – Joscelin’s word – that plausibly manifests itself as a mutual chivalric noblesse oblige.
Other of these pairs of young lovers – Ælfric and Aldith in Monk’s Hood; Liliwin and Rannilt in The Sanctuary Sparrow; Hyacinth and Annet in The Hermit of Eyton Forest; Tutilo and Daalny in The Holy Thief – are working-class or unfree. In these cases the man is always among the prime suspects in the murder, and it’s the job of his female better half to help Brother Cadfael figure out whodunit. Oftentimes the man in these cases cannot come forward to declare his own innocence, either because of social strictures or out of a highly-justifiable lack of faith in the law to do right by him. Even Hugh Beringar cannot escape the class obligations of his feudal setting when it comes to some of these cases, however much he might want to; thus Cadfael is often left as the confidant of the beleaguered too-obvious suspect.
Other examples bend the trope a bit: ‘Matthew’ is hotfoot on a quest for revenge when it gets complicated by a liking for Melangell in The Pilgrim of Hate. Heledd’s status as the daughter of a Welsh priest in a rapidly-‘reforming’ Roman Church makes her something of an outcast in general in The Summer of the Danes. She rebels against her father’s arrangement of a suitably-distant marriage for her, and flees it – right into the arms of a suitably-personable Hiberno-Danish captor, Turcaill. - Lovable Dork (m) x Confident Competent (f):
This is another favourite pairing of Pargeter’s in the Cadfael series. Edith Pargeter likes to point out, both subtly and explicitly, that girls mature far faster than boys do. Thus, many of her B-plot pairings involve teenage girls who are precocious, sophisticated, intelligent, capable, confident and sexually assertive. These girls end up chasing after their favoured older male suitors, who, while appropriately endearing, invariably lags one or two steps behind them. Usually, the girl is more actively involved in solving the mystery – or more wrapped up in its dangers – than the boy.
Godith and Torold from One Corpse Too Many are sort of the archetype of this trope. Godith, who rescues a wounded and half-drowned Torold from the Severn, is first possessive of him as a patient and then determined in her pursuit of him, who for the first part of their relationship seems utterly oblivious to the fact that she’s a girl, let alone one that has any romantic attachment to him. Thankfully, Torold’s fairly quick on the uptake himself.
Isouda also fits this trope to a ‘T’, the younger childhood playmate of Meriet in The Devil’s Novice who knows she wants him and knows she can convince him to want her too. Fortunata in The Heretic’s Apprentice, the determined lover of the several-years-older Elave, also plays this trope dead straight. Emma can certainly play the ingénue, and does so for the benefit of Cadfael and Hugh Beringar and her suitor Philip Corviser, but her central rôle in Saint Peter’s Fair shows her to be a far more formidable mind and spirit in general than she lets on – a match even for her uncle’s murderer. Others that more loosely fit the trope are: Sioned and Engelard in A Morbid Taste for Bones, and Sulien and Pernel in The Potter’s Field. Even though they are closer in age than the other couples in this trope, the girl is shown to be more sophisticated and mature than the boy, and takes a more active rôle in solving the mystery. - Bad Monk (m) x Second Chance (f):
You can’t have a series centred on a Benedictine monastery without getting a few wayward and regretful postulants mixed in. The wayward Benedictine will get himself tangled deep in the A-plot mystery, only to discover along the way that other pretty girls exist besides the one that drove him to his vows. He will end up deciding that perhaps the celibate life is not for him.
The archetypical bad-monk / second-chance pairing is the English ‘Brother’ John and the Welsh blacksmith Bened’s lovely niece Annest in A Morbid Taste for Bones. ‘Brother’ John aids in Engelard’s escape from the law; Bened volunteers to hold him until the cantref authorities come; and Annest manages to convince him to leave the Order for her, despite not knowing English (nor he any Welsh).
Other examples played straight in the series are ‘Brother’ Meriet and Isouda (The Devil’s Novice), ‘Brother’ Sulien and Pernel (The Potter’s Field), ‘Brother’ Tutilo and Daalny (The Holy Thief). The trope gets subverted and gender-bent with ‘Brother’ Godric – actually Godith Adeney – and Torold Blund in One Corpse Too Many; in An Excellent Mystery, the trope gets both gender-bent and love-triangled with Brother Humilis, ‘Brother’ Fidelis – actually a woman in disguise – and Nicholas Harnage. The ‘bad nun’ variant of this pairing is always averted in the Cadfael mysteries: the young female lovers who consider taking the veil, like Melicent Prestcote in Dead Man’s Ransom or Judith Perle in The Rose Rent, never actually do. - Type-A Tsun / Hurting Hero x Fixer-Upper:
For some reason toward the middle of her series, Edith Pargeter started going a bit ‘angsty’ – or at least, her B-plot young people did. One half of the pairing would be guilt-ridden or consumed with vengeance (or both), and would need counselling from Cadfael or, as often as not, Avice of Thornbury / Sister Magdalen. But the real work of doing the fix-up would fall to the other half of the pairing.
Probably the best examples of this trope are ‘Matthew’ and Melangell in The Pilgrim of Hate. ‘Matthew’ starts a romance with Melangell while they are both on pilgrimage to visit the bones of (supposedly) Saint Gwenffrewi in Shrewsbury. However, he is also in deadly pursuit of the villain who killed his lord in cold blood in the streets of Winchester. Melangell doesn’t understand this and attempts to reason with him; he treats her coldly and even strikes her in his rage. Only when he returns, getting a chance at revenge and then relinquishing it to God, is Melangell able to reach him.
In Dead Man’s Ransom Melicent Prestcote is the angsty one, in grief and rage and something like survivor’s guilt over her murdered father, and Elis ap Cynan the one who tries to win her over. The widow Judith Perle and the widower Niall Bronzesmith in The Rose Rent are another example played straight – ultimately they help work through each other’s grief over their lost spouses. The trope is semi-averted with Sulien Blount in The Potter’s Field, grieving over a dead woman he’d had an infatuation for; and his determined and optimistic sweetheart Pernel Otmere, who brings him peace by helping Cadfael solve the mystery of her death. Heledd in The Summer of the Danes inclines strongly to the Type-A tsun end of the spectrum; Turcaill certainly has nothing of the angsty about him, but he does offer her an escape from a fate that she never chose for herself. - Political Comrades:
In the Cadfael Chronicles, often the lovers will belong to the same political faction, and they will meet and fall for each other while serving or undertaking some mission or stratagem for their liege lord or lady. Given Pargeter’s healthy preference for highly-competent women, the chances are that the girl will be as badass as the boy.
Both pairings in One Corpse Too Many are examples of this. Hugh Beringar and Aline Siward are both partizans of King Stephen, while Godith Adeney and Torold Blund are partizans of the opposing Empress Maud. All four lovers are involved, by stages, in the same quest to find the murderer of one of Maud’s errand-men, Nicholas Faintree – but they have very different motives and justifications for doing so. In The Raven in the Foregate, Torold Blund’s young companion Ninian Bachiler finds love as well as camaraderie from another partizan of Maud in Shrewsbury, Sanan de Bernières.
Other examples include Olivier de Bretagne and Ermina Hugonin from The Virgin in the Ice. Ermina is the niece of Laurence d’Angers, a Crusader loyal to Empress Maud – and Olivier de Bretagne is the half-Syrian, half-Welsh Crusader’s child who joins Laurence d’Angers in the Holy Land and later rescues Ermina and her brother Yves from masterless brigands in Shropshire. Elave and Fortunata are also somewhat in line with this trope. Fortunata always liked Elave, but she became even more attached to him after Elave came under suspicion of hæresy, for questioning certain opinions of Saint Augustine in The Heretic’s Apprentice.
Very, very good!
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