When the waters recede, the saint is gone, beginning a long search with tangled motives, including a murder that challenges the monks.

In the heat of August, the one-time Earl of Essex went out without his chain mail and helmet at Burwell, northeast of Cambridge, where an archer's arrow reached its target.

Empress Maud gave the title back to the younger namesake son, but she could not grant the lands – a fairly empty gesture.

As de Mandeville is dying, his allies who hope to mend fences wrote grants returning church property to its owners, including Ramsey Abbey.

Lady Donata, Sulien's ailing mother, has the pleasure of hearing beautiful music from young Brother Tutilo.

When the flood subsides, in place of Saint Winifred's reliquary they find a wrapped piece of timber, the same size and heft, showing this to be a planned theft.

The reeve finds the reliquary in Ullesthorpe, where the brigands dumped it, and carries it to safety at Huncote, home of the Earl of Leicester.

Brother Jerome eavesdrops on Hugh and Cadfael speaking about this visit, expecting Aldhelm to confirm Tutilo as the one who put the reliquary on the wagon.

Bénezet, the groom, overhears Jerome talking with Prior Robert, and shares the word with Daalny, the singer, who tells Tutilo.

He describes his actions up to striking Aldhelm on the head with a piece of wood in the dark, then leaving upon discovering it was not Tutilo as he anticipated.

Kirkus Reviews remarks the elegant prose carrying the reader to another time: In 1144, the Benedictine Abbey at Shrewsbury, home of herbalist-humanist-sleuth Brother Cadfael (The Summer of the Danes, etc.

Handsome young Tutilo has also used his beautiful voice to soothe the dying Lady Donata and has attracted the interest of the slave girl singer who's traveling with French troubadour Rémy and his servant Bénezet.

As Tutilo's little band gets ready for the trip back to Ramsey, heavy rains put the Church's treasures in danger.

The pace sometimes slows to a near standstill; the elegant prose is sometimes excessive—but, for the patient, the reward is finely wrought transport to another time.Pub Date: March 1st, 1993 ISBN 0-89296-524-X, Page count: 256 pp, Review Posted Online: June 24th, 2010.

A sub-prior and his young novice appeal to the abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul in Shrewsbury for aid in rebuilding their own monastery at Ramsey, which had been defiled by outlaws.

The promise of spring floods makes haste imperative, and in the confusion another item is slipped aboard the cart: the casket containing the remains of St. Winifred, Shrewsbury's revered patron saint.

When the one person who could identify the sacrilegious thief is murdered, Sheriff Hugh Beringar is summoned and Cadfael's special skills are put to the test.

Twelfth-century Shropshire comes vividly alive when peopled with Peters's aristocratic ladies, sturdy lawmen, eager squires and, above all, devout—and devious—monks.

This medieval mystery series continues as Brother Cadfael identifies and pursues each clue in this unusual and entertaining story.

The story is set in Shrewsbury, located in Shropshire, England; briefly in Worcester Cathedral; and at Huncote, a manor of Robert, Earl of Leicester, not far from Ullesthorpe.

Some scenes were at Longner Manor, east and south from the Abbey, crossing the Severn at a ferry location, near modern Uffington and shown clearly on the map titled Shrewsbury and Environs in the printed book.

The start of Geoffrey de Mandeville's story was told, in this series of novels, in The Potter's Field, the 17th Chronicle of Brother Cadfael.

After King Stephen accused him of treason, revoked his title as Earl of Essex and took away his lands, Geoffrey de Mandeville responded by taking over the Ramsey Abbey in the Fens in East Anglia.

[10] Instead, de Mandeville's life was ended by a chance arrow shot from one of those castles at Burwell, on a hot August day when the one-time earl mistakenly removed his helmet and upper chain mail.

The allies of Geoffrey de Mandeville who sought some reconciliation after his death moved quickly to record writs returning the stolen properties back to the church.

By the end of 1144, he called back his prior, sub-prior and the monks, to begin a huge task of rebuilding their home, then reviving their estates for agriculture.

One lay servant is left to walk on his own from Worcester to Shrewsbury, which he did, in time to join Herluin for the return to Ramsey Abbey.

[24] The users choose important writers, in this story, the authors of the four Gospels, as the source of phrases or sentences that might hint at the future, or the resolution of a problem.

One selects a verse at random, then applies it to the present situation, as Abbot Radulfus suggests for resolving the true home for the reliquary.

[30] The Holy Thief was adapted into a television program as part of the Brother Cadfael series by Carlton Media, Central and WGBH Boston for ITV.