The Leper of Saint Giles bc-5 Page 13

  He did not return directly to the abbey, but continued along the green ride until it emerged on the Foregate, and made his way to the bishop’s house. The great courtyard, usually such a bustle, was quiet indeed on this afternoon, for even the grooms and able-bodied servants had been drafted into the hunt as beaters, and were out somewhere in the woods. Only the older men were left here, which suited Cadfael well enough, for the oldest servants were the most likely to know all their lord’s private business, whether they ever acknowledged it or not, and the absence of the busy and sharp-eared young made confidences more likely.

  He sought out Domville’s chamberlain, who had, it seemed, been in his master’s service many years, and moreover, had the shrewd good sense to see the force of telling unvarnished truth, now that Domville himself was gone. There was no one here to be feared, complete frankness would serve his turn best with the sheriff. There would be an inevitable interregnum, and then a new master. The servants were under no suspicion, and had nothing to fear, why conceal anything that might be of significance?

  The chamberlain was a man well past sixty, gray-haired and staid, with illusionless eyes and the withdrawn, resigned dignity of most old servants. His name was Arnulf, and he had answered all the sheriff’s questions without hesitation, and was willing to answer as candidly any others that Cadfael or any man might put to him. An age had come to an end with his lord’s death, he would have to trim his service to quite another rule, now, or go into retirement and take his ease.

  Nevertheless, the first question Cadfael asked was one Arnulf had certainly not foreseen.

  “Your lord had the name for a womanizer. Tell me this, had he a mistress of such importance—or perhaps a new sweetheart so absorbing—that he could not do without her even for these few days while he married the Massard heiress? Someone he might bring along with him, and install within reach, but apart?”

  The old man gaped, as if such forthright words came curiously from one in a Benedictine habit, but after narrow scrutiny appeared to find, after all, nothing so surprising about it. His manner relaxed noticeably. They had a language and an experience of life in common.

  “Brother, however you may have hit on it, yes, there is such a woman. They come in all kinds, women. I was never a great one for them myself, I’ve had troubles enough without courting more. But he could not go far or long without them. They came and went, with him. By the score! But there’s this one who is different. She stays. Stable as a wife. Like an old gown or a pair of shoes, easy and comfortable, someone he need not make speeches for, or put himself out to flatter and please. I had a feeling always,” said Arnulf reflectively, scrubbing in his beard with thin fingers, “that wherever he went, she wouldn’t be far away. But I know nothing of any plans to bring her here. Not that he ever made use of me in such matters. I helped him into his shirts and hose, and pulled off his boots after hunting, and slept close to fetch him wine in the night if he called. Not for his women. That’s another service. What of her? There’s been no word of her here. I did wonder.”

  “Nor of a palfrey,” asked Cadfael, “pure white, mane and all? A pretty little lady’s jennet out of Spanish stock, I should say by the glimpse I got of her. With a gilded bridle hanging on her stable door.”

  “I know the one,” said Arnulf, startled. “He bought it for her. I was not supposed even to know these things. Where have you seen it?”

  Cadfael told him. “The horse, but not the woman. She left her palfrey and her perfume behind, but she’s gone.”

  “Well,” allowed Arnulf reasonably, “I suppose she might well want to avoid being tangled in a matter of murder, and certainly if she was there, and he found on that path, as they tell, it would seem that he rode to her when he sent young Simon in and went on alone. She might well take fright and think it better to vanish.”

  “She has also very loyal servants there,” said Cadfael drily, “who are exerting themselves to convince me and all the world she never was there at all. By this time I daresay that young fellow has moved the jennet away to a safe place.”

  It had occurred to him, somewhat belatedly, that the steward might have good reason to do as much for his own sake, as well as the lady’s. If she had been in attendance there all this while, waiting for a visit from her lord and keeper, she might well have passed the time pleasantly enough with a younger, handsomer, altogether more personable man who was there to hand. And he, for his part, might have a healthy fear of having the association known, in case it should bring him into suspicion of having made away with his lord for the woman’s sake, in jealousy and despite. It was but one step further to wonder if he had not done that very thing. Say that Domville came that night, after the young man had been blessed with the woman’s favors to the point where he thought of her as his. Say that he was cast out into the night while they were together, and had nothing to do but brood and grieve, until it came to him that his lord’s way home lay clear, and if he removed the act far enough from the lodge, near enough to Shrewsbury, he left the field wide open for any man to be judged the killer. It was possible! It could have happened so. Much depended on the woman. Cadfael wished that he knew more of her.

  “The question now is, since she left her mount behind, where could she go from that remote place, on foot?” It was also, why should she choose to go afoot, but that he did not say, that was a more obscure problem.

  “The manor where he usually kept her—her home, you might say—is well away in Cheshire.” Arnulf considered, and visibly stirred himself to recall things long neglected or forgotten. “But it was somewhere in these very parts he found her. Some rustic beauty, a young girl then, twenty years and more ago, that must have been. Yes, more. She used to be known as Avice of Thornbury, they say her father was the village wheelwright there. They were free folk, I recollect, not villeins.” So the village craftsmen usually were, but tied to their tofts just as surely as the villeins to the land. “Most likely she still has kin there,” said Arnulf. “Would that be far? I’m strange in these parts.”

  “No,” said Cadfael, enlightened, “it is not far. Thornbury I know. There she could have gone on foot.”

  He went away from the bishop’s house with much to think about. The vanishing lady became ever more interesting. Since it was more than twenty years that she had been Domville’s patient, permanent mistress, so firmly established as to have the respectability and the calm subservience of a wife, she must be fully forty years old, some years senior to that young steward at the hunting-lodge, but no doubt she must still have the charms to dazzle him, if she so wished. Yes, he could have fallen victim to desire and jealousy, and seen fit to rid himself of the old, hard man who was her owner and stood between. But the revelation of her probable years had other implications. So far gone towards middle age, a woman was unlikely to strike up another such comfortable liaison, now Domville was dead. That consideration could well have caused her to reflect that her own people were hardly more than a mile away, and that with them she could vanish, and be hidden for as long as she felt the need to hide.

  But why, why should she leave behind a valuable horse, her own property, the gift of her lord? She could just as well have ridden to Thornbury as walked.

  Today was more or less spent, he must go back ready for Vespers, and see what prodigies of destruction or genius Brother Oswin had performed in his absence.

  But tomorrow he would find her!

  At Saint Giles two young men were fretting over their personal problems. Brother Mark had long since made up his mind that the tall leper who matched Lazarus in all particulars but the completeness of his hands was indeed the fugitive squire for whom the sheriff was hunting with such formidable numbers and such ferocious determination. He was therefore caught up in a moral dilemma of some complexity.

  He had heard the story of the supposed theft of the bride’s necklace, but it was as suspect to him as to Brother Cadfael. Too many men, in all manner of circumstances, had been dragged to ruin and death simply by
inserting such valuables into their baggage. It was all too easy a way of wiping out an enemy. He simply did not believe in it. Nor, having observed Huon de Domville, would he willingly have surrendered any man to his vengeance, which was likely to be mortal.

  But the murder, that was another matter. He found it all too credible that a young man so wronged, if that accusation had indeed been false, should be driven to brood on revenge even against his nature, and to extremes. Where then was right? And yet the ambush, and the finishing of a stunned man, stuck fast in Mark’s humble, unknightly craw. Such a vengeance no man could sanction. He was wrought to the limit, and he could not put off his burden upon any other shoulders. He alone knew what he knew.

  He thought of approaching the intruder directly and asking for his confidence, but such a move demanded a privacy hardly to be found in this enclosed community. Not until he was certain of guilt would he make any move that should draw attention to the fugitive. Every man should be adjudged innocent until there was proof against him, and all the more when very suspect and malicious charges had already been thrown at him, and rang leaden as false coin.

  If I can find occasion to be alone with him, unobserved of any, Brother Mark decided, I will speak openly and judge as I find. If I cannot, or until I can, I will watch him as best I may, mark all that he does, challenge him if he attempts any ill, stand ready to speak in his defense if he does none. And pray that God may see fit to make use of me for truth, one way or the other.

  The object of his concern was sitting with Lazarus at a discreet distance from the highway but within view, some quarter of a mile along the road that led towards the river crossing at Atcham. One of the begging bowls they held, at least, was legitimate, but they made no appeals to any of those who passed by, and used their warning clappers only if some charitably disposed soul showed signs of approaching too closely. They sat cross-legged and shrouded in the bleached autumnal grass under the trees. The attitudes were easily learned.

  “Just as you are,” said Lazarus, “you might walk away through their cordon and go free. They will not believe any man so brave or so mad as to walk in a dead leper’s gown, or be themselves so brave or so mad as to risk stripping you to find out.” It was a long speech for him, by the end he stumbled, as if his maimed tongue tired of the effort.

  “What, run and save my own skin and leave her still captive? I do not stir from here,” said Joscelin vehemently, “while she is still in ward to an uncle who plunders her substance, and will sell her for his own profit. To a worse than Huon de Domville, if the price is right! What use is my freedom to me, if I turn my back on Iveta in her need?”

  “I think,” said the slow tongue beside him, “that if truth be told, you want this lady for yourself. Do I belie you?”

  “Not by a hair!” said Joscelin with passion. “I want this lady for myself as I never have wanted and never shall want anything else in this great world. I should want her the same if she lacked not only lands, but shoes on her feet to walk those lands, I should want her if she were what I am feigning to be now, and what you—God be your remedy!—truly are. But for all that, I’d be content—no, grateful!—only to see her safe in the care of a worthy guardian, with all her honors upon her, and free to choose where she would. Surely I’d do my best to win her! But lose her to a better man, yes, that I would, and never complain. Oh, no, you do not belie me! I ache with wanting her!”

  “But what can you do for her, hunted as you are? Is there ever a friend among them you can rely on?”

  “There’s Simon,” said Joscelin, warming. “He doesn’t believe evil of me. He hid me, out of goodwill, it grieves me that I quit the place without a word to him. If I could get a message to him now, he might even be able to speak with her, and have her meet me as she did once before. Now the old man’s gone—but how can that ever have come about!— they may not watch her so closely. Simon might even get me my horse …”

  “And where,” asked the patient, detached voice, “would you take this friendless lady, if you got her out of ward?”

  “I’ve thought of that. I’d take her to the White Ladies at Brewood, and ask sanctuary for her until enquiry could be made into her affairs, and a proper provision made for her. They would not give her up against her will. It would go as far as the king, if need be. He has a good heart, he’d see her justly used. I would a long sight sooner take her to my mother,” burst out Joscelin honestly, “but it would be said I coveted her possessions, and that I won’t endure. I have two good manors coming to me, I covet no man’s lands, I owe no man, and I won’t be misprised. If she still chooses me, I’ll thank God and her, and be a happy man. But I care most that she should be a happy woman.”

  Lazarus reached for his clapper-dish, and set the clapper woodenly clouting, for a plump, solid horseman had halted his pony and turned aside from the road towards them. The rider, nonetheless, smiled from his distance and tossed a coin. Lazarus gathered it and blessed him, and the good man waved a hand and rode on.

  “There is still goodness,” said Lazarus, as if to himself.

  “Praise God, there is!” said Joscelin with unaccustomed humility. “I have experienced it. I have never asked you,” he said hesitantly, “if you have ever had wife and child. It would be great waste if you had always been solitary.”

  There was a lengthy silence, though silences at Lazarus’s side were neither rare nor troublesome. At last the old man said: “I had a wife, long dead now. I had a son. He was blessed, in that my shadow never fell upon him.”

  Joscelin was startled and indignant. “I don’t find you a shadow. Never speak so! Any son of yours might properly joy in his father.”

  The old man’s head turned, the eyes above the veil shone steadily and piercingly upon his companion. “He never knew,” said Lazarus simply. “Hold him excused, he was only an infant. It was my choice, not his.”

  Young and blunt and blundering as he was, Joscelin had learned in haste to understand where he might not pass, and must not and need not wonder. It astonished him, when he looked back, to discover how far his education had progressed in these two days among the outcasts.

  “And there is a question you have never asked me,” he said.

  “Nor do I ask it now,” said Lazarus. “It is a question you have not asked me, either, and since a man can hardly say anything but no to it, what sense is there in asking?”

  In the mortuary chapel of the abbey, after Vespers, Huon de Domville was coffined, in the presence of Prior Robert, Canon Eudo, Godfrid Picard, and the dead man’s two remaining squires. Picard and the two young men had ridden in from the fruitless day’s hunting, tired and irritable, still cloaked and gloved, with no captured malefactor to show for their trouble, though whether that was a matter for regret to anyone here but Picard and Eudo seemed to be in some doubt.

  The candles on the altar and at the head and foot of the bier guttered gently in a chill draught, and the shadows of those present quivered hugely on the walls. Prior Robert’s long white hand took the aspergillum, and shook a few drops of holy water delicately over the dead, and the candlelight caught their flight and turned them to sparks, kindled and dying in the air. Canon Eudo followed, and looking round for the only other kinsman present, handed the aspergillum to Simon, who stripped off his gloves hastily to take it. He stood looking down at his uncle’s body with a somber face as he dipped the brush of sweet herbs, and sprinkled holy water in his turn.

  “I had not thought to do this for many a year yet,” he said, and turned to hold out the aspergillum to Picard and withdraw again into the shadows.

  The green sprays shook some drops of water on the back of his hand as he relinquished them, and Picard watched them fall, and saw the young man shake them off as if startled at their coldness. There was something fascinating in the way the light of the candles picked out so sharply every detail of those ministering hands, cut off at the wrist by dark sleeves. So many severed hands moving and acting with a life of their own, the only pallors in
the enfolding dimness. From Prior Robert’s pale, elegant fingers to Guy’s smooth brown fist, last of the ministrants, they performed their ritual dance and held all eyes. Only when the act of reverence was done could all those present look up, and find relief in the more human pallor of strained and solemn faces. It seemed that everyone drew a deep breath, like swimmers surfacing.

  It was over. The five of them separated, Prior Robert to a brief session of prayers for the dead before supper, Canon Eudo to the abbot’s lodging, the two young men to walk their jaded horses back to the bishop’s house and see them tended, stabled and fed before seeking their own supper and rest. As for Picard, he bade them all a very short goodnight, and withdrew to the guest-hall, and there drew Agnes with him into their own chamber, and closed the door against all the rest of the household, even those most trusted. He had matter of importance to confide to her, and it was for no other ears.

  The little boy Bran had begged and brought away with him from his lesson the strips of worn vellum trimmed from the sheet on which he practiced his letters. He got credit with his teacher for wanting them, though his purpose was not quite what Mark supposed. In the dortoir, where he should long ago have been asleep, he crept to Joscelin’s side with his prizes, and whispered the secret into his ear.

  “For you wanted to send a message. Lazarus told me. Is it true you can write and read?” He was in awe of anyone who had such mysteries at his finger-ends. He nestled close to Joscelin’s side, to be heard and to hear in the most private of whispers. “In the morning you could use Brother Mark’s ink-horn, no one will be watching his desk. If you can write it, I could carry it, if you tell me where. They don’t notice me. But the best piece of the leaf is not very big, it would have to be a short message.”

  Joscelin wrapped the folds of his cloak round the skinny little boy against the chill of the night, and drew him into his arm. “You’re a good, gallant ally, and I’ll make you my squire if ever I get to be knight. And you shall learn Latin hand, and reckoning, and matters far beyond me. But yes, I can write a sort of fist that will serve. Where’s your vellum?” He felt the meager width but sufficient length of the strip that was pressed eagerly into his hand. “It will do very well. Twenty words can say much. Bless you for a clever imp as ever was!”