Leper of Saint Giles Read online

  “Fool girl, he is not prisoner. He broke free before ever they got him over the bridge, he’s at large with his grudge…”

  “Thief he was, and now a hunted wolf in the woods, and has murdered your bridegroom! And will hang for it.”

  All the brightness, all the valor, was stricken from her face. She hung a moment quite still, and just once her lips formed a protesting “No!” that made no sound. Then her cheeks blanched whiter than snow. She put up a hand to her heart, and fell down like a shot bird, in a little crumpled heap of gold.

  *

  The maid Madlen came rushing officiously, all the women crowded in upon the small, spilled body, Picard gave a cry rather of exasperation than concern, and stooped to gather her up by the wrist and haul her to her feet. She was a reproach and an embarrassment, they wanted her hustled away out of sight and out of mind. Cadfael could not forbear from interfering, before they stifled her among their skirts, or tugged a wrist out of joint. He plunged into the midst of them and spread his arms to press them back from her.

  “Peace, let her breathe! She has swooned, don’t lift her yet.”

  Brother Edmund, versed in such collapses, seconded him valiantly on the other side, and with Abbot Radulfus looking on, the guests could hardly reject the help and authority of those who tended the sick within these walls. Even Agnes stood back, though with a chill and wary face, as Cadfael went on his knees beside the girl, and straightened her tumbled limbs to lie at ease, her head raised on his arm. “A cloak to fold under her head! And where is Brother Oswin?”

  Simon threw off his cloak and rolled it eagerly into a pillow. Oswin came running from among the staring novices.

  “Go and fetch me the little flask of mint and sorrel vinegar from the shelf by the door, and a bottle of the draught of bitter herbs. And be quick!”

  He laid her head down gently on the pillow Simon had made for it, and took her wrists into his hands and began to chafe them steadily. Her face had the pinched, bluish white of ice. Oswin came back at the same devoted gallop, and moreover, had brought the right medicines. There was hope of him yet. Brother Edmund knelt on the other side, and held the little bottle of vinegar, hot and sharp with mint and sorrel, to her nostrils, and saw them dilate and flutter. A small convulsion like a cough heaved her childish breast, and the steel-sharp lines of cheekbones and chin gradually softened. Over her oblivious head her uncle, having abandoned her to her physicians, returned to his vengeance with renewed venom.

  “Can there be any doubt? He broke loose without weapons, and with no means of getting away. Only a man deprived of other means needs to kill with his bare hands. He is a big, strong rogue, capable of such an act. No one else had any grievance against Huon. But he had a grudge, and a bitter one, and he has taken to extremes to have his revenge. Now it is mortal! Now he must be hunted down like a mad dog, shot down at sight if need be, for he’s perilous to anyone who approaches him. This is a hanging matter.”

  “My men are beating the woods and orchards for him at this moment,” said Prestcote shortly, “and have been ever since a patrol reported flushing a man out of cover into the Foregate early this morning. Though it was not yet light, and they got but the briefest glimpse of him, and for my part I doubt if it was Lucy. More likely some rogue in a small way pilfering from hen-houses and backyards by night. The hunt goes on, and will until we take him. Every man I can spare is out already.”

  “Make use of my men also,” offered Picard eagerly, “and of Huon’s. We are all of us bound now to hunt down his murderer. There’s surely no doubt in your mind that Joscelin Lucy is his murderer?”

  “It seems all too clear. This has all the marks of an act of desperate hate. We know of no other present enemy of his.”

  Cadfael worked unhurriedly upon Iveta, but listened to all that passed, the abbot’s few words and reserved silences, Picard’s vindictive urgings, the sheriff’s measured dispositions for the continued and extended hunt, all the deployment of the law closing round Joscelin Lucy. In the middle of it he noted that faint color was returning to Iveta’s face, and watched the first delicate flutterings of her eyelids, the shadow of long dark-gold lashes quivering on her cheekbones. Dazed purple eyes opened at him, and gazed in uncomprehending terror. Her lips parted. As if by chance he laid a fingertip upon them, and briefly closed his own eyes. Joscelin’s peril, far more effectively than her own, had made her wits quick. The eyelids, veined like harebells, closed again and remained closed. She lay like one still senseless, but showing signs of returning life.

  “She is beginning to stir. We may take her in now.”

  He rose from his knees and lifted her in his arms, before Picard or Simon or any other could forestall him.

  “She should lie at rest for some hours, after she comes round. It was a bad swoon.” He marvelled how little there was of her, and was convinced her finery weighed more than she did; yet this fragile creature had roused herself to heroic defiance for the sake of Joscelin, she who was so tamed and resigned for herself. Even the charge of theft and a cell in the castle had seemed comfort and joy to her when they served to ward off the infinitely worse charge of murder. Now, when she got her wits back, and remembered, she would be torn in two between terror for his life, since this killing was indeed a hanging matter, and hope for his escape, since thus far he was still at liberty. Hope offered itself and snatched itself away again from Iveta de Massard.

  “Madam, if you will show the way…”

  Agnes gathered her splendid skirts and swept before him into the guest-hall, to her own apartments. It could not be said, Cadfael reflected, that she felt no concern for her niece, since her niece was the greater part of her fortune, and for that she felt a strong defensive care. But her prevailing emotion towards the girl Iveta herself was impatience and displeasure. By this hour she should have been safely married off, a commodity profitably disposed of. However, she was still eminently salable, she still had all her father’s great honor in lands and titles, down to the sword and helmet of the paladin Guimar de Massard, chivalrously restored by the Fatimids of Egypt: the one item of her inheritance, possibly, which Picard did not covet.

  “You may lay her here.” By the narrow way she eyed him, Agnes had not forgotten that he was the brother of whose ready prevarications she had complained to the abbot; but that hardly mattered now, since Joscelin Lucy was quarry for a hunt to the death, and no threat to her peace of mind any longer. “Is there anything needs to be done for her?”

  Iveta lay on her covered bed, sighed and was still. All that gold, as though she had been minted.

  “If you would be kind enough to find me a small cup, to take a draught of this decoction of herbs when she is with us again. It’s a good, bitter restorative, and wards off further fainting. And I think there should be some warmth in the room. A small charcoal brazier would serve.”

  These recommendations she took seriously, perforce. He had given her enough to do to remove her from the room, though for perhaps five minutes at best. Her maids had waited in the hall. She swept out to set them to work.

  Iveta opened her eyes. The same brother! She had known his voice, and stolen that one glance to make certain. But when she tried to speak, tears rose to hamper her utterance. But he was listening close; he heard.

  “They never told me! They said the thief could be pressed to his death…”

  “I know,” said Cadfael, and waited.

  “They said—unless I did all perfectly, spoke the right words, made all above suspicion… Huon would have his life…”

  “Yes… Hush now, softly! Yes, I know!”

  “But if I did all well, he should go free…”

  Yes, she had been ready to sell herself, body and will and hopes and all, to see Joscelin delivered. She had her own bravery.

  “Help him!” she said, huge eyes like purple flowers overblown, and closed her small hand, fine-boned like a little bird, but with a little bird’s strong and compelling grip, on Cadfael’s hand. “He has n
ot stolen or killed… I know!”

  “If I can!” breathed Cadfael, and stooped to conceal her from Agnes in the doorway. She was very quick, she lay back in mute acceptance, eyes veiled; the hand was empty and limp as before. Not for several more minutes did she raise her lids again and look up, answer faintly and wonderingly when Agnes asked her, with genuine anxiety but little kindness, how she did, and drink the bitter, aromatic draught Cadfael presented to her lips.

  “She should be left alone in quietness,” he advised when he took his leave, minded to procure for her, if he could, the solitude she needed, deliverance from the company of people whose very presence was oppression. “She will sleep. Such seizures are as exhausting as great exertion. If Father Abbot permits, I will look in on her before Vespers, and bring her a syrup that will ensure her a peaceful night.”

  That, at least, they might allow her. They had her securely in their power, she could not escape, but at present no more could be done with her or to her. Domville was dead, there would have to be reconsideration now, the field was open to other bidders. It was not deliverance, but it was a respite. Time to give some thought to the circumstances of this violent death, and the fate of the unfortunate young man at whose door it was being laid. There were a great many questions not yet asked, let alone answered.

  *

  It was towards noon that one of the men-at-arms combing the copses and gardens behind the houses of the Foregate on the north side came to his sergeant and said brightly: “There’s but one garden left unexamined in all this array, and now I mind me there could be good sense in looking there, too. Bishop de Clinton’s house itself!” And when he was cried down with mention of the folly of hiding in the very lion’s mouth, he defended his notion earnestly.

  “Not such folly, neither! Suppose this fellow’s listening to the pack of you now, making mock of the very idea! He’d have the laugh if he’s lying low within there, and you refusing to believe it possible. The one place you put out of the question is the one place he might have wit enough to be. And don’t forget his horse is within there, and with all this running hither and thither, who’s to care whether the stable’s left open?”

  The sergeant thought the argument worth considering, and authorized the search of the bishop’s garden, byres and stables, his orchard, all the ground within his walls. In due course they arrived at the hay-store by the rear wall. They did not find Joscelin Lucy, but they did find plain evidence that someone had lain there in the hay, and left behind him the heel of a loaf and the core of an apple, besides the impress in the fodder of a long young body, clear to be seen. Joscelin Lucy knew this place, and the wicket in the wall was unbarred. No one had any doubt as to who the vanished guest had been.

  So the man-at-arms who had insisted on entry here, though he failed of getting the credit for a capture, did well enough out of his suggestion to be commended by his officer, and was not ill-content with the enterprise.

  Chapter 6

  HUON DE DOMVILLE lay naked beneath a linen cerecloth in the mortuary chapel, and round about him stood the abbot and prior, the sheriff of the county, the dead man’s nephew and squire, Sir Godfrid Picard, who should by this time have been his uncle by marriage, and Brother Cadfael.

  Simon Aguilon was still cloaked and gloved from his strenuous part in the morning’s search, and looked haggard and worried, as well he might, at the responsibility that had fallen on him as the dead man’s nearest kin here. Picard was gnawing the black, clipped fringe of his beard, and brooding on his losses and the openings now left to him. Radulfus was quietly and scrupulously intent on what Cadfael was expounding.

  The abbot was a man of the world and of the church, of wide experience, but not so wide as to include those manifestations of violence which were an open book to Brother Cadfael, who had been soldier and sailor besides. Rare among men of wide experience, Radulfus knew precisely the gaps that were left, and was willing to be instructed. The honour and integrity of his house was his prime concern, and in that criterion pure justice was implied. As for Prior Robert, his Norman loyalties were outraged, since a Norman lord had been removed by murder. In his own way he required a vengeance just as surely as did Picard.

  “The head injuries,” said Brother Cadfael, his palm under the newly laved and combed head, “would have been no danger, had they been all. But the blow stunned him and laid him open to assault. Now, see…” He drew down the linen cloth below the great barrel of a breast and the massive upper arms. “He fell asprawl on his back, head against the tree, arms and legs spread. My lord Prestcote here saw him so, and so did Brother Edmund and certain novices of our house. I could not then see what I have seen now, by reason of his clothing. Look here at the inner side of his upper arms, those round black bruisings in the muscle. See those arms spread, and consider what fell upon him, senseless as he was. His enemy kneeled here upon these arms, reached here to his throat.”

  “And that would not rouse him?” asked the abbot gravely, following Cadfael’s blunt brown finger as he traced the prints of murder.

  “There was some effort made.” Cadfael recalled the deep pits Domville’s boot-heels had scored in the turf. “But by the body only, as men jerk from wounds when they have no more power to resist them. His senses were out of him, he could not fight his assailant. And these were strong hands, and resolute. See here, where both thumbs, one over the other, were driven in. The apple of his neck is ruptured.”

  He had not had the opportunity until now to look more closely at that savage injury. Under the short beard the slash made by the rope drew a dark-red line, from which the beads of blood had been washed away. The black bruises left by the strangler’s hands showed up clearly.

  “Here is every sign of a madly vindictive attacker,” said Prestcote grimly.

  “Or a very frightened one,” Cadfael said mildly. “Desperate at his own act, an act unlike him, suddenly undertaken and monstrously overdone.”

  “You could be speaking of the same man,” said Radulfus reasonably. “Is there anything more this body can tell us about him?”

  It seemed that there was. On the left side of Domville’s neck, about where the middle fingers of the right hand must have gripped, and had left their shadowy shape, the bruise was crossed by a short, indented wound, as though a jagged stone had been pressed into the flesh there. Cadfael pondered this small, insignificant thing in silence for a while, and concluded that it might be by no means insignificant.

  “A small, sharp cut,” he mused, peering close, “and this hollow wound beside it. The man who did this wore a ring, on the middle or third finger of his right hand. A ring with a large stone in it, to thrust so into the flesh. And it must hang rather loose on his finger, for it turned partially within as he gripped. On the middle finger, surely… if it had hung loose on the third he would have shifted it to the middle one. I can think of no other way such an injury can have been made.” He looked up into the circle of attentive faces. “Did young Lucy wear such a ring?”

  Picard shrugged off all knowledge of such matters. After some thought Simon said: “I cannot recall ever noticing a ring. But neither can I say certainly that he never wore one. I might ask Guy if he knows.”

  “It shall be enquired into,” said the sheriff. “Is there more to be noticed?”

  “I can think of nothing. Unless it is worth wondering where this man had been, and on what errand, to find him on that path at such an hour.”

  “We do not know the hour,” said Prestcote.

  “No, true. It is not possible to say how long a man has been dead, not within a matter of hours. Yet the turf under him was moist. But there is another point. All the signs show—very well, let us be wary of reading too confidently, they seem to show!—that he was riding back towards his house when he was waylaid. And the trap set for him was laid and waiting before he came. Therefore whoever set it, and thereafter killed him, knew where he had gone, and by what road he must return.”

  “Or must have followed him in
the night, and made his plans accordingly,” said the sheriff. “We are sure now that Lucy made his way to the hay-store in the bishop’s garden and hid there, but after dark he came forth, and may well have lurked to keep watch on his lord’s movements, with this fell intent in mind. He knew Domville would be supping here at the abbey, for all the household knew it. It would not be difficult to wait in hiding for his return, and to see him riding on alone and dismissing his squire provided the very chance revenge needed. Small doubt but Lucy is our man.”

  There was no more then to be said. The sheriff returned to his hunt, convinced of his rightness; and on the face of it, Cadfael allowed, no blame at all to him for the case was black. Huon de Domville was left to the care of Brother Edmund and his helpers, and his coffin bespoken from Martin Bellecote, the master carpenter in the town, for whether he was to find his burial here or elsewhere, he must be decently coffined for his journey to the grave, and with suitable grandeur. His body had no more now to tell.

  Or so Brother Cadfael thought, until he consented to recount the circumstances of death and enquiry to Brother Oswin in the workshop, over the sorting of beans for the next year’s seed. Oswin listened intently to all. At the end he said with apparent inconsequence: “I wonder that he should ride in a late October night without a capuchon. And he bald, too!”

  Cadfael stood at gaze, contemplating him with wonder across a handful of seed. “What was that you said?”

  “Why, for an old man to go bare-headed in the night…”

  He had put his finger firmly on the one thing Cadfael had missed. Domville had not ridden away bareheaded from the abbey gatehouse, that was certain. Cadfael himself had seen him depart, the fine crimson capuchon twisted up into an elaborate hat, gold fringe swinging, and yet he had not thought to look for it where the body lay fallen, or question its absence.