Cadfael - Episode Guide

Cadfael has settled down to a quiet religious life at Shrewsbury Abbey after an adventurous, and far from monastic, youth, fighting as a crusader in the Holy Land. King Stephen successfully besieges the nearby castle, and orders 94 of the occupants put to death, but Cadfael discovers there are 95 corpses to prepare for burial. He realises that he has uncovered a murder, and gains King Stephen's permission to try to solve the crime. The trail follows a cache of hidden treasure, the fleeing daughter of the castle's owner, Godith, and an up-and-coming local young man, Hugh Beringar.

When Shrewsbury's goldsmith, Walter Aurifaber, is robbed and left for dead, the locals launch a witch-hunt. Pursued by the mob, the prime suspect, a young juggler, Liliwin, who performed at the wedding of the goldsmith's son Daniel, seeks sanctuary at the Abbey. But as Cadfael investigates, he finds floating in the River Severn the dead body of Baldwin Peche. The hunt for the Aurifaber's robber and Peche's murderer leads in an unexpected direction, given hints by the dying words of the grandmother of the goldsmith's house, Juliana Aurifaber.

A great wedding is to take place at the Abbey, between a beautiful young heiress, Iveta de Massard, the grand-daughter of famed crusader Guimar de Massard, with whom Cadfael had fought at Jerusalem, and the powerful, much older Baron Huon de Domville. But it is no love match, as she is being coerced by her guardians, Godfrid & Agnes Picard. The baron disappears on the night before the wedding, only to be found lying dead in the forest. Cadfael examines the body and determines that he was murdered. Abbot Heribert authorises him to persue the case further.

After a wealthy landowner, Gervase, cuts his stepson, Edwin Gurney, out of his will, in order to leave his inheritance to the Abbey, he is poisoned at his dinner table. When Cadfael is called in to investigate, he is shocked to discover that the man's wife, Richildis, is his childhood sweetheart, whom he has not seen for forty years. Meanwhile Abbot Heribert is summoned away by the church authorities, and returns accompanied by the new abbot, Radulfus.

Cadfael's novice, Brother Oswin, is found close to death, babbling about a woman, out in the woods in mid-winter. Cadfael goes out to try to find out what happened to him and the small traveling party he had met up with, when he finds one of them, a young nun called Sister Hilaria, raped, murdered and encased in the ice of a frozen stream. Suspicion of her murder falls on Oswin, who is no state to convincingly deny it. Cadfael tracks down the two other members of the party, Ermina and Yves Hugonin, and sets out to prove Oswin's innocence.

The murder of wealthy cleric, Peter Clemence, an envoy of the king on his way to Chester, leads the finger of suspicion to point to a new monk at the Abbey, Meriet Ashby. Cadfael investigates at the behest of the abbot, on whom political pressures are being piled from the civil war raging round England. Cadfael uncovers a tangled web of family loyalty, dishonesty & unrequited love.

Following a vision by young monk Brother Columbanus, the monks of Shrewsbury go to Wales to recover the bones of St Winifred and take them to the abbey. But their attempted bribery of the Welsh puts them at odds with the local residents - and when the local landowner is found murdered, the monks are regarded as prime suspects. It takes Cadfael's intervention and mediation to smooth things over and allow them to return home.

Judith Perle, the recently-widowed wife of a rich merchant becomes the object of interest for the men of Shrewsbury. She gives her house to the abbey, in exchange for the nominal rent of one rose annually from the rose bush in its garden. But then one of Cadfael's associates, Brother Eluric, is murdered, after he is assigned the duty of picking and delivering the rose. And then one of her suitors is also murdered.

Hugh Beringar has to choose between loyalty to the king and friendship with Cadfael when Cadfael puts him to the test. At the annual St Peter's Fair in Shrewsbury, the townspeople come into conflict with the Abbey authorities over the tolls levied on the visiting merchants. When the curfew is ignored, it leads to the murder of one of the wine merchants, but was it a consequence of the scrap between the townsfolk and the merchants, or was there a more substantial motive? Cadfael thinks that something more is going on among those attending the fair.

Popular local priest, Father Adam, has died, and is replaced by the strict, even heartless, Father Ailnoth. A young girl, Eleanor, comes to Cadfael asking him to give her confession. When he says he cannot, she reluctantly goes to Father Ailnoth, who refuses, and hounds her out of the church. The next day she is found drowned in the mill-stream, an apparent suicide, but so is Father Ailnoth, but his death is definitely murder. Abbot Radulfus charges Cadfael with investigating the deaths, before they reach the attention of King Stephen, in case doubts as to the town and church's loyalty to him cause unwanted attentions from his supporters, and drags Shrewsbury into the civil war. But it may already be too late.

Prior Herluin and his apprentice, Tutilo, arrive from a distant abbey that has been sacked in the civil war, requesting the loan of the bones of St Winifred. Abbot Radulfus finds it hard to refuse him, but then a local benefactor comes to his rescue, and he decides to keep the holy casket. Then a beautiful slave girl, Daalny, and the bones of St Winifred are abducted from the Abbey, and Cadfael is commissioned by the abbot to find them both. But a man is found murdered before Cadfael can determine what has been happening.

When a potter gives up his former life to enter the monastery just as his wife dies, the other monks all suspect him of murder. But as Cadfael begins to investigate, he uncovers a bizarre web of jealousy, infidelity and suicide pacts.

When the corpse of an old man is discovered in a sack at the Abbey, Cadfael believes the man has been murdered. Among the suspects are a group of pilgrims, including two thieves. Cadfael imprisons them in a bid to draw out the killer.