Stephen Thorne does such an excellent job of the narration of this story.
It is the first book in which we meet Hugh Berengar and Brother Cadfael's character is fleshed out.

We also meet King Stephen in the flesh as he takes Shrewsbury Castle and prepares to move further into England. Ellis Peters feeds just enough historical detail into the story to bring the period to life. ( )

Brother Cadfael was working in the small kitchen garden by the abbot's fishponds when the boy was first brought to him. It was hot August noon, and if he had his proper quota of helpers they would all have been sweating in the sun; but one of his regular assistants, not yet out of his novitiate, had thought better of the monastic vocation and taken himself off to join his elder brother in arms on King Stephen's side, in the civil war for the crown of England, and the other had taken fright at the approach of the royal army because his family were of the Empress Maud's faction, and their manor in Cheshire seemed a far safer place to be than Shrewsbury under siege. Cadfael was left to do everything alone, but he had in his time laboured under far hotter suns than this, and was doggedly determined not to let his domain run wild, whether the outside world fell into chaos or no. In this summer of 1138 the fratricidal strife was already two years old, but never before had it approached Shrewsbury so closely.