The Leper of Saint Giles

1

Brother Cadfael set out from the gatehouse, that Monday afternoon of October, in the year 1139, darkly convinced that something ominous would have happened before he re-entered the great court, though he had no reason to suppose that he would be absent more than an hour or so. He was bound only to the hospital of Saint Giles, at the far end of the Monks’ Foregate, barely half a mile from Shrewsbury abbey, and his errand was merely to replenish with oils, lotions and ointments the medicine cupboard of the hospital.

They were heavy on such remedies at Saint Giles. Even when there were few lepers, for whose control and assistance the hospice existed, there were always some indigent and ailing souls in care there, and the application of Cadfael’s herbal remedies soothed and placated the mind as well as the skin. He made this pilgrimage on an average every third week, to replace what had been used. These days he made it with all the better will because Brother Mark, his much-prized and dearly-missed assistant in the herbarium, had felt it to be his destiny to go and serve with the unfortunate for a year, and a visit to Saint Giles was now a blessed reminder of peaceful days departed.

For to make all plain, Cadfael’s forebodings had nothing whatever to do with the momentous events soon to be visited upon the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul of Shrewsbury, no reference to marrying and giving in marriage, no omens of sudden and violent death. He was expecting, rather, that in his absence some vessel full of precious liquid would be broken, some syrup left to boil over, some pan to burn dry, in his workshop in the herb-gardens, or else that his brazier would be fed too generously, and set light to the parcels of dried herbs rustling overhead and, in the worst case, to the whole workshop.

Mark had been gentle, dutiful and neat-handed. In his place Cadfael had been given, for his sins, the most cheerful, guileless, heedless and handless of cherubs, eternally hopeful, never chastened, a raw novice of nineteen fixed for ever at the age of a happy child of twelve. His fingers were all thumbs, but his zest and confidence were absolute. He knew he could do all, his will being so beneficent, and fumbled at the first balk, for ever astonished and aghast at the results he produced. To complete the problem he presented, he was the most good-humored and affectionate soul in the world. Also, less fortunately, the most impervious, since hope was eternal for him. Under reproof, having broken, wrecked, mismanaged and burned, he rode the tide serenely, penitent, assured of grace, confident of avoiding all repetition of failure. Cadfael liked him, as he was infuriated by him, out of all measure, and gloomily made large allowance for the damage the lad was almost certain to do whenever left to follow instructions unsupervised. Still, he had virtues, besides his sweetness of nature. For rough digging, the chief challenge of autumn, he had no peer; he plunged into it with the vigor others devoted to prayer, and turned the loam with a love and fellow-feeling Cadfael could not but welcome. Only keep him from planting what he dug! Brother Oswin had black fingers!

So Brother Cadfael had no thought to spare for the grand wedding which was to take place in the abbey church in two days’ time. He had forgotten all about it until he noted, along the Foregate, how people were gathering in voluble groups outside their houses, and casting expectant looks away from town, along the London road. The day was cloudy and chill, a faint mist of rain just perceptible in the air, but the matrons of Shrewsbury were not going to be done out of a spectacle on that account. By this road both wedding parties would enter, and word had evidently gone before them that they were already approaching the town. Since they would not actually enter the walls, a good number of the burgesses had come forth to join the people of the Foregate parish. The stir and hum were almost worthy of a minor fair-day. Even the beggars gathered about the gatehouse had an air of holiday excitement about them. When the baron of an honor scattered over four counties arrived to marry the heiress to lands as great as his own, there must be lavish largesse to be hoped for in celebration.

Cadfael rounded the corner of the precinct wall, by the open green of the horse-fair, and continued along the highroad, where the houses thinned out, and fields and woods began to reach green fingers to touch the rim of the road in between. Here, too, the women stood before their doors, waiting to glimpse bride and groom when they came, and in front of the large house halfway to Saint Giles a knot of interested gazers had gathered to watch the bustle of activity through the open gates of the courtyard. Servants and grooms flickered to and fro between house and stables, flashes of bright liveries crossed the yard. This was where the bridegroom and his retinue were to lodge, while the bride and her party would lie at the abbey guest-hall. Recalled to mild human curiosity, Cadfael loitered for a moment to stare with the rest.

It was a large house, well walled round, with garden and orchard behind, and it belonged to Roger de Clinton, bishop of Coventry, though he rarely used it himself. The loan of it to Huon de Domville, who held manors in Shropshire, Cheshire, Stafford and Leicester, was partly a friendly gesture towards Abbot Radulfus, and partly a politic compliment to a powerful baron whose favor and protection, in these times of civil war, it would be wise to cultivate. King Stephen might be in firm control of much of the country, but in the west the rival faction was strongly established, and there were plenty of lords ready and willing to change sides if fortune blew the opposite way. The Empress Maud had landed at Arundel barely three weeks previously, with her half-brother Robert, earl of Gloucester, and a hundred and forty knights, and through the misplaced generosity of the king, or the dishonest advice of some of his false friends, had been allowed to reach Bristol, where her cause was impregnably installed already. Here in the mellow autumn countryside everything might seem at peace, but for all that men walked warily and held their breath to listen for news, and even bishops might need powerful friends before all was done.

Beyond the bishop’s house the road opened between trees, leaving the town well behind; and at the fork, a bowshot ahead, the long, low roof of the hospice appeared, the wattled fence of its enclosure, and beyond again, the somewhat higher roof of the church, with a small, squat turret above. A modest enough church, nave and chancel and a north aisle, and a graveyard behind, with a carven stone cross set up in the middle of it. The buildings were set discreetly back from both roads that converged towards the town. Lepers, as they may not go among the populous streets of towns, must also keep their distance even to do their begging in the countryside. Saint Giles, their patron, had deliberately chosen the desert and the solitary place for his habitation, but these had no choice but to remain apart.

It was plain, however, that they had their fair share of human curiosity like their fellows, for they, too, were out watching the road. Why should not the unfortunate at least be free to stare at their luckier brethren, to envy them if they could manage no better than that, to wish them well in marriage if their generosity stretched so far? A shifting line of dark-gowned figures lined the wattle fence, as animated if not as agile as their healthy fellow men. Some of them Cadfael knew, they had settled here for life, and made the best of their cramped lives among familiar helpers. Some were new. There were always new ones, the wanderers who made their way the length of the land from lazarhouse to lazarhouse, or settled for a while in some hermitage on the charity of a patron, before moving on to new solitudes. Some went on crutches or leaned hard on staves, having feet maimed by the rot of disease or painful with ulcers. One or two pushed themselves along on little wheeled carts. One hunched shapeless against the fence, bloated with sores and hiding a disfigured face within his cowl. Several, though active, went with veiled faces, only the eyes uncovered.

Their numbers varied as the restless wandered on, shunning the town as they must shun all towns, to some other hospice looking out over another landscape. By and large, the hospital here sheltered and cared for twenty to thirty inmates at a time. The appointment of the superior rested with the abbey. Brothers and lay brothers served here at their own request. It was not unknown that attendant should become attended, but there was never want of another volunteer to replace and nurse him.

Cadfael had done his year or more in this labor, and felt no recoil, and only measured pity, respect being so much greater an encouragement and support. Moreover, he came and went here so regularly that his visits were a part of a patient and permanent routine like the services in the church. He had dressed more and viler sores than he troubled to remember, and discovered live hearts and vigorous minds within the mottled shells he tended. He had seen battles, too, in his time in the world, as far afield as Acre and Ascalon and Jerusalem in the first Crusade, and witnessed deaths crueller than disease, and heathen kinder than Christians, and he knew of leprosies of the heart and ulcers of the soul worse than any of these he poulticed and lanced with his herbal medicines. Nor had he been greatly surprised when Brother Mark elected to follow in his steps. He was well aware that here was one step beyond, which Mark was predestined to take without his example. Brother Cadfael knew himself too well ever to aim at the priesthood, but he recognized a priest when he saw one.

Brother Mark had seen him approaching, and came trotting to meet him, his plain face bright, his spiky, straw-colored hair erected round his tonsure. He had a scrofulous child by the hand, a skinny little boy with old, drying sores in his thin fair hair. Mark teased aside the hairs that clung to the one remaining raw spot, and beamed down fondly at his handiwork.

“I’m glad you’re come, Cadfael. I was running out of the lotion of pellitory, and see how much good it’s done for him! The last sore almost healed. And the swellings in his neck are better, too. There, Bran, good boy, show Brother Cadfael! He makes the medicines for us, he’s our physician. There, now, run to your mother and keep by her, or you’ll miss all the show. They’ll be coming soon.”

The child drew his hand free, and trotted away to join the sad little group that yet would not be sad. There was chattering there, a morsel of song, even some laughter. Mark looked after his youngest charge, watched the ungainly, knock-kneed gait that stemmed from undernourishment, and visibly grieved. He had been here only a month, his skin was still tissue-thin.

“And yet he is not unhappy,” he said, marveling. “When no one is by, and he follows me about, his tongue never stops wagging.”

“Welsh?” asked Cadfael, eyeing the child thoughtfully. He must surely have been named for Bran the Blessed, who first brought the gospel to Wales.

“The father was.” Mark turned to look his friend earnestly and hopefully in the face. “Do you think he can be cured? Fully cured? At least he’s fed, now. The woman will die here. In any case - she has grown indifferent, kind enough, but glad to have him off her hands. But I do believe he may yet go back whole into the world.”

Or out of it, thought Cadfael; for if he follows you so assiduously he cannot but get the savor of church or cloister, and the abbey is close at hand. “A bright child?” he asked.

“Brighter than many that are brought up to the Latin, and can reckon and read. Brighter than many a one who goes in fine linen, and with a nurse coddling him. I shall try to teach him somewhat, as I can.”

They walked back together to the doorway of the hospital. The hum of expectant voices had risen, and along the highroad other sounds were gradually drawing near, compounded of the jingling of harness, the calls of falconers, conversation, laughter, the muffled beat of hooves using the grassy verge in preference to the naked road. One of the bridal processions was approaching.

“They say the bridegroom will be the first to come,” said Mark, stepping from the open porch into the dimness of the hall, and leading the way through to the corner where the medicine cupboard was kept. Fulke Reynald, a steward of the abbey and superior of the hospital, had one key; Brother Cadfael held the other. He opened his scrip, and began to stow away the preparations he had brought. “Do you know anything about them?” asked Mark, succumbing to curiosity.

“Them?” murmured Cadfael, preoccupied with his review of the gaps in the shelves.

“These gentlefolk who are coming to marry here. All I know is their names. I should not have paid so much heed,” said Mark, shame-faced, “except that our people here, who have nothing but their sores and maimings, have learned more of it than I have, only God knows how, and it is like a spark warming them. As though anything bright that shines on them is more aid than I can give. Yet all it is, is a wedding!”

“A wedding,” said Cadfael seriously, stacking away jars of salves and bottles of lotion made from alkanet, anemone, mint, figwort, and the grains of oats and barley, most of them herbs of Venus and the moon, “a wedding is the crux of two lives, and therefore no mean matter.” He added the fruits of mustard, which belongs rather to Mars, but provides formidable pastes and poultices to fight malignant ulcers. “Every man and woman who has faced the ordeal,” he said thoughtfully, “must feel concern for those about to face it. Even those who have not, may speculate with sympathy.”

Matrimony was one joust he had never attempted, wide as his experience had been before he entered the cloister; but he had brushed fingertips with it once, and circumvented it more than once. He felt some astonishment, once he began remembering.

“This baron has a famous name, but I know no more of him, except that he’s in good odor, they say, with the king. I think I may once have known an old kinsman of the lady. But whether she’s from the same line is more than I know.”

“I hope she may be beautiful,” said Mark.

“Prior Robert would be interested to hear you say so,” said Cadfael drily, and closed the cupboard door.

“Beauty is a very healing thing,” said Brother Mark, earnest and unabashed. “If she is young and lovely, if she smiles on them and inclines her head as she rides by, if she does not shrink at seeing them, she will do more for those people of mine out there than I can do with probing and poulticing. Here I begin to know that blessedness is what can be snatched out of the passing day, and put away to think of afterwards.” He added, recoiling into deprecation: “Of course it need not be someone else’s wedding feast. But how can we waste that, when it offers?”

Cadfael flung an arm about Mark’s still thin and waiflike shoulders, and hauled him away, out of the dimness within, to the gathering excitement and brightening light without. “Let’s hope and pray,” he said heartily, “that it may be the source of blessedness even to the pair caught up in it. By the sound of it, one of them is due here this moment. Come and let’s see!”

The noble bridegroom and his retinue approached in a shimmer of bright colors, with horn-calls and soft, continuous clamor of harness bells, a cortege stretching fifty paces, and fringed with running servants leading the pack ponies, and two couples of tall deerhounds on leashes. The sorry little straggle of outcasts shuffled forward eagerly the few paces they dared, to see the better those fine fabrics and splendid dyes they could never possess, and set up a muted, awed murmur of admiration as the procession drew level with their wattle fence.

In front, on a tall black horse, his own accoutrements and his mount’s very splendid in scarlet and gold, rode a broad-built, gross, fleshy man, inelegant but assured in the saddle, and accorded a station well ahead of all his train, so that his pre-eminence should be seen to be absolute. Behind him came three young squires abreast, keeping a close and wary watch on their lord, as though he might at any moment turn and subject them to some hazardous test. The same tension, just short of fear, passed down the hierarchies that followed, through valet, chamberlain, groom, falconer, down to the boys who were towed along by the hounds. Only the beasts, horse and hound alike, and the hawks on the falconer’s frame, went sleek and complacent, in no awe of their lord.

Brother Cadfael stood with Mark at the gate in the wattle fence, and gazed with sharpening attention. For though any one of the three young squires would have done very well for a bridegroom, it was only too plain that none of them was Huon de Domville. It had not entered Cadfael’s head until now that this baron might be already past the prime, no young lover embarking on marriage in the proper years for that undertaking, but with more gray than black in his short, full beard, and only a curled fringe of gray hair and the glisten of a bald crown showing at the temple, where his elaborately twisted capuchon was tilted rakishly aside. A squat, muscular, powerful body still, but well past fifty if he was a day, and more likely nearing sixty. Cadfael hazarded that by now this one must already have used up at least one wife, and probably two. The bride, rumor said, was barely eighteen, fresh from her nurse. Well, these things happen. These things are done.

Then, as the rider drew closer, Cadfael could not take his eyes from the face. A wide, flat forehead, rendered tall by the receding hair, cast almost no shadow over the shallow settings of small, black, shrewd eyes, as poorly endowed with lashes as with sockets, but malevolently intelligent. The trimmed beard left uncovered a narrow, implacable mouth. A massive, brutal face, muscled like a wrestler’s arm, unsculpted, unfinished. A face that should not have had a subtle mind behind it, to make the man even more formidable, but undoubtedly had. And that was Huon de Domville.

He had drawn close enough now to observe what manner of creatures they were who bobbed and peered and pointed excitedly about the little church, and along the churchyard wall. It did not please him. The black eyes, like small plums embedded in the hard dough of his face, turned dusky red, like smouldering coals. Deliberately he wheeled his horse to their side of the road, leaving the opposite verge, which was wider, and mounting the grass on the near side, and that solely in order to wave the miserable rabble back to their kennels. And his manner of waving was with the full lash of the riding-whip he carried. Doubtful if he ever used it on his horse, blood-stock of this quality being valuable and appreciated, but for clearing his path of lepers it would serve. The tight mouth opened wide to order imperiously: “Out of the way, vermin! Take your contagion out of sight!”

They shrank and drew back in humble haste out of reach, if not out of sight. All but one. Half a head taller than his fellows, one lean, cloaked figure stood his ground, whether out of inability to move quickly, or want of understanding, or in mute defiance. He remained erect, intently gazing through the eye-slot in the veil that covered his face. When he did take a pace back, without turning his head, he went heavily upon one foot, and was too slow to avoid the lash of the whip, if indeed he had intended to avoid it. The blow took him on shoulder and breast. His maimed foot turned under him, and he fell heavily in the grass.

Cadfael had started forward, but Mark was before him, darting down with an indignant cry to drop to his knees and spread an arm over the gaunt figure, putting his own braced body between the fallen man and the next blow. But Domville was already past, disdainful of further noticing the dregs of the world. He neither hastened nor slowed his pace, but rode on without a glance aside, and all his train after him, though holding rather to the roadway, and some with averted faces. The three young squires passed, embarrassed and uneasy. The big, tow-headed youngster in the middle actually turned full-face to the two on the ground, flashed them a dismayed stare from eyes as blue as cornflowers, and rode with his chin on his shoulder until both his fellows elbowed him back to caution and his duty.

The whole cortege passed while Mark was helping the gaunt old man to his feet. The servants followed woodenly, armored against the world by their servitude. Certain more lordly figures, guests or minor relatives, passed blandly, as though nothing whatever had occurred. In their midst a demure cleric fingered his beads, faintly smiling, and ignored all. Rumor said that one Eudo de Domville, a canon of Salisbury, was to perform the marriage ceremony; a man in good odor with the church and the papal legate, and in line for advancement, and probably eager to remain so blessed. He passed with the rest. The grooms, the pages, the deerhounds followed, and all the little bells on bridles and jesses tinkled their way past, and dwindled slowly along the first reach of the Foregate.

Brother Mark came up the incline of grass with his arm about the old leper. Cadfael had drawn back and left them to each other. Mark had no fear of contagion, since he never gave a thought to the peril, all his energy being absorbed into the need. Nor would he ever be surprised, or complain, if at last contagion did seize upon him and draw him even closer to the people he served. He was talking to his companion as they came, mildly and cheerfully, for they were both used to spurning, they did not pay it overmuch notice. Cadfael watched them come, marked the one-sided but steady and forceful gait of the old man, and the breadth of the gesture with which his left hand, emerging momentarily from the shrouding sleeve, put off Mark’s embracing arm, and set a space between them. Mark accepted the dismissal with simplicity and respect, and turned to leave him. Cadfael had seen, moreover, that the left hand, once long and shapely, lacked both index and middle fingers, and had but two joints of the third, and the texture of the maimed parts was whitish, wrinkled and dry.

“No very noble proceeding,” said Mark with rueful resignation, shaking the debris of grass from his skirts. “But fear makes men cruel.”

Brother Cadfael doubted whether fear had played any part. Huon de Domville did not look the man to be afraid of anything short of hellfire, though it was true that the outcasts’ disease did not fall far short of hellfire.

“You have a new man there?” he asked, gazing after the tall leper, who had moved along the bank to regain a good view of the road. “I do not think I have seen him before.”

“No, he came in a week or more ago. He is a wanderer, he goes on perpetual pilgrimage, from shrine to shrine as close as in his condition he may. Seventy years old, he says he is, and I believe him. He will not stay long, I think. He makes a stay here because Saint Winifred’s bones rested here in the church before being received into the abbey. There, so close to the town, he may not go. Here he may.”

Cadfael, who had knowledge of that renowned virgin’s whereabouts which he could never confide to his innocent friend, scrubbed thoughtfully at his blunt brown nose, and reflected tranquilly that even from her far-distant grave in Gwytherin, Saint Winifred would bestir herself to hear the prayers of a poor, afflicted man.

His eyes followed the tall, erect figure. In the shrouded anonymity of dark cloak and hood, and the cloth veil that hid even the faces of those worst disfigured, men and women, old and young, seemed to go secretly and alone through the remnant of life left to them. No gender, no age, no coloring, no country, no creed: all living ghosts, known only to their maker. But no, it was not so. By gait, by voice, by stature, by a thousand infinitesimal foibles of character and kind that pierced through the disguise, they emerged every one unique. This one in his silence had a dominating presence, and in his stillness even under threat a rare and daunting dignity.

“You have talked with him?”

“Yes, but he says little. From his manner of speaking,” said Mark, “I think lips or tongue must be corrupted. Words come slowly, a little mangled, and he tires soon. But his voice is quiet and deep.”

“What remedies are you using on him?”

“None, for he says he needs none, he carries his own balm. No one here has seen his face. That is why I think he must be sadly maimed. You’ll have noticed one foot is crippled? He has lost all toes on that one, but for the stump of the great toe. He has a special shoe built to give him support, a stable sole to walk on. I think the other foot may also be affected, but not so badly.”

“I saw his left hand,” said Cadfael. Such hands he had seen before, the fingers rotted away until they fell like dead leaves, the corrosion of the flesh gnawing slowly until even the wrist shed its bones. Yet it seemed to him that this devouring demon had died of its own greed. There was no ulcerous crust remaining; the seamed white flesh where the lost fingers had once been was dry and healed, however ugly to the view. Firm muscles had moved in the back of the hand when he gestured.

“Has he given you a name?”

“He says his name is Lazarus.” Brother Mark smiled. “I think it is a name he gave himself at a late christening - perhaps when he cut himself off from family and home, according to law. It is a second birth, lamentable though it may be. He was godfather at his own second baptism. I don’t enquire. But I wish he would use our help, and not rely only on his own tending. He must surely have some sores or ulcers that could benefit by your ointments, before he leaves us as he came.”

Cadfael mused, watching the withdrawn figure, motionless at the head of the slope of grass. “Yet he is not numbed! He has his powers of body still, in all such members as are left to him? He feels heat and cold? And pain? If he strikes his hand against a nail, or a splinter in the fence, he knows it?”

Mark was at a loss; he knew the disease only as he had encountered it, unsightly, ulcerated, full of sores. “He felt the sting of the whip, I know, even through the armour of his cloak. Yes, surely he feels, like other men.”

But those who have the true leprosy, thought Cadfael, recalling many he had seen in his crusading days, very long ago, those who whiten like ash, those whose skin powders away in gray patches, in the extreme of their disease do not feel, like other men. They injure themselves, bleed, and are unaware of the injury. They let a foot stray into the fire, sleeping, and only awake to the stench of their own flesh burning. They touch and cannot be sure they touch, hold and cannot lift what they would take up. Without sensation, without purpose, fingers, toes, hands, feet, drop away and rot. As Lazarus had lost fingers and toes. But such victims do not walk, however lamely, as Lazarus walked, do not prise themselves up from the ground with active, effective energy, or grasp a support as Lazarus had grasped the arm Mark offered in his aid, and that with the maimed hand. Not unless, not until, the devil that devoured them has died of his own corruption.

“Are you thinking,” asked Mark hopefully, “that this may not be leprosy, after all?”

“Oh, yes!” Cadfael shook his head at once. “Yes, no question of it, this was certainly leprosy.”

He did not add that in his opinion many of the ills they treated here, though they carried the same banishment and were called by the same name, were not true leprosy. Any man who broke out in nodes that turned to ulcers, or pallid, scaly eruptions of the skin, or running sores, was set down as a leper, though Cadfael had his suspicions that many such cases arose from uncleanliness, and many others from too little and too wretched food. He was sorry to see Brother Mark’s hopeful face fall. No doubt he dreamed of curing all who came.

Along the road came the first distant murmur of another company approaching the town. The whisperings of the watchers, subdued since Domville’s inauspicious passing, took on the cheerful chirping of sparrows again, and they crept a little way down the slope of grass, peering and craning for the first glimpse of the bride. The bridegroom had brought little but dismay with him. The lady might do better.

Brother Mark shook off his small disappointment, and took Cadfael by the sleeve. “Come, you may as well wait and see the rest of it now. I know you have everything in order there in the herbarium, even without me. Why should you hurry back?”

Remembering the particular gifts of Brother Oswin, Cadfael could think of many reasons why he should not leave his workshop for too long, but also of at least one good reason for remaining. “I daresay another half-hour will do no harm,” he agreed. “Let us go and take our stand by this Lazarus of yours, where I may observe him without offending.”

The old man did not stir as he heard them approaching, and they halted somewhat aside, not to disturb his remote contemplation. He had, thought Cadfael, the self-sufficient tranquility of a desert hermit; as those early fathers had sought out their austere solitudes, so he created his about him, even among men. He towered over both of them by a head, and stood straight as a lance, and almost as meager, but for the lean, wide shoulders under the shrouding cloak. Only when the sound of the approaching company blew suddenly closer on a stirring wind, and he turned his head to look intently towards the sound, did Cadfael glimpse the face beneath the hood. The hood itself covered the brow, which by the form of the head should be lofty and broad, and the coarse blue cloth of the veil was drawn up to the cheekbones. In the slit between, only the eyes showed, but they were arresting enough, large, unblemished, of a clear, pale but brilliant blue-gray. Whatever deformities he hid, his eyes saw clearly and far, and were accustomed to looking on distances. He paid no heed to the two who stood near to him. His gaze swept beyond them, to where the approaching party showed as a shimmer of colors and a shifting of light.

There was less ceremony here than with Huon de Domville’s retinue, and the numbers were smaller. Nor was there a single dominant figure in the lead, but a flurry of mounted grooms as outriders, and within their circle, as though within an armed guard, three came riding abreast. On one side a dark, sinewy, olive-faced man perhaps five and forty years old, very splendidly dressed in somber, glowing colors, and well mounted on a light, fast gray, surely part Arab, thought Cadfael. The man had plenteous black hair coiling under a plumed cap, and a clipped black beard framing a long-lipped mouth. It was a narrow, closed face, subtle and suspicious. On the other side rode a lady of about the same years, thin and neat and sharply handsome, dark like her lord, and mounted on a roan mare. She had a pursed, calculating mouth and shrewd eyes, beneath brows tending to a frown even when the mouth smiled. Her head-dress was of the most fashionable, her riding habit had the London cut, and she rode with grace and style, but the very look of her struck with a coldness.

And in between these two, dwarfed and overshadowed, there paced a tiny, childlike creature on a palfrey too large for her. Her touch on the rein was light, her seat in the saddle listless but graceful. She was sumptuously arrayed in cloth of gold and dark blue silks, and within the burden of her finery her slight form seemed cramped and straitened, like a body coffined. Her face gazed ahead, beneath a gilded net heavy with dark-gold hair, into emptiness. A softly rounded face, with delicate features and great iris-gray eyes, but so pale and subdued that she might have been a pretty doll rather than a living woman. Cadfael heard Mark draw in startled breath. It was a shame to see youth and freshness so muted and bereft of joy.

This lord, too, had noted the nature of this place, and of those who had come out from it to see his niece go by. He did not, like Domville, spur deliberately at the offense, but swung his mount the other way, to give the infected a wider berth, and turned his head away to avoid even seeing them. The girl might have passed by without so much as noticing them, so deep was she drowned in her submissive sadness, if the child Bran, all shining eyes, had not so far forgotten himself as to run halfway down the hillock for a nearer view. The flash of movement in the corner of her eye caused her to start and look round, and seeing him, she came suddenly to life in the piteous contemplation of an innocent even more wretched than herself. For an instant she stared at him with nothing but horrified compassion, and then, seeing that she mistook him, seeing that he looked up at her smiling, she smiled too. It lasted only the twinkling of an eye, but for that while she shone with a warm, bright, grieving kindness; and before the clear sky clouded again she had leaned across her aunt’s saddle-bow, and tossed a handful of small coins into the grass at the child’s feet. Bran was so enchanted that he could not even stoop to pick them up, but followed her progress wide-eyed and open-mouthed as she passed by.

No one else in the company offered largesse here. No doubt it was being reserved to make a greater impression at the abbey gatehouse, where there would certainly be a crowd of hopeful beggars waiting.

For no very sound reason, Cadfael turned from the child to look at the old man Lazarus. Bran could afford to take candid delight in the bright colors and pretty clothes of those more fortunate than himself, without envy or greed, but the old in experience might well find a bitter flavor in viewing impossible fruit. The old man had not moved, except that as the riders passed by his head turned to hold those three in sight, with never a glance to spare for the gentlewomen and servants who followed. The eyes staring between hood and veil glittered pale, brilliant and blue as ice, unblinking, as long as the bride remained in sight. When even the last pack-pony had vanished round the curve of the Foregate, he still stood motionless, as though the intentness of his stare could follow them as far as the gatehouse, and pierce the walls to keep unbroken watch on them within.

Brother Mark drew long and rueful breath, and turned to gaze wonderingly at Cadfael. “And that is she? And they mean to marry her to that man? He could be her grandsire - and no gentle or kindly one, either. How can such things be?” He stared along the road as the old man was staring. “So small, and so young! And did you see her face - how sad! This is not with her will!”

Cadfael said nothing; there was nothing reassuring or consoling to be said. Such things were the commonplace of marriage where there were lands and wealth and powerful alliances to be gained, and small say the brides - or often enough the young bridegrooms - had in the disposal of their persons. There might even be brides who could see shrewdly enough the advantages of marrying men old enough to be their grandsires, where there was material good to be gained, since death might very soon relieve them of their husbands but leave them their dower and the status of their widowhood, and with some luck and a deal of cleverness they might manage to make a second match more to their liking. But by her face, Iveta de Massard saw the fate that awaited her rather as her own death than her bridegroom’s.

“I pray God help her!” said Mark fervently.

“It may be,” said Brother Cadfael, rather to himself than to his friend, “that he intends to. But it may also be that he has a right to expect a little support from men in setting about it.”

In the courtyard of the bishop’s house in the Foregate, Huon de Domville’s servants were unloading the pack-horses, and running about with bedding and hangings, and the finery that would grace the marriage service and the bridal bed. Domville’s butler already had wine decanted for his master and Canon Eudo, who was a distant cousin, and the chamberlain had seen to it that there was firing and comfort waiting in the best chamber, a loose, warm gown after the rigor of riding clothes, furred slippers after the long, elegant boots had been drawn off. The baron sprawled in his cushioned chair, spread his thick legs, and nursed his mulled wine, well content. It was nothing to him that his bride’s procession was drawing near from Saint Giles. He had no need and no desire to waste his time standing to watch his purchase go by; he was already sure of her, and he would be seeing enough of her after the marriage. He was here to conclude a bargain highly satisfactory to himself and to the girl’s uncle and guardian, and though it was an agreeable bonus that the child happened to be young, beautiful and appetizing, it was of no very great importance.

Joscelin Lucy turned over his horse to a groom, kicked a bale of napery out of his way, and was making off back to the gate and the road when his fellow Simon Aguilon, the oldest of the three squires in Domville’s service, caught him by the arm.

“Where are you off to so fast? He’ll be bawling for you the minute he’s emptied his first cup, you know that. It’s your turn to wait on their nobilities!”

Joscelin tugged at his flaxed thatch, and loosed a sharp bay of laughter. “What nobility? You saw as well as I did. Strike a poor devil who daren’t strike back, and as near as death ride him down, for no offense in the world. Devil take such nobility! And devil take him and his thirst, too, until I’ve seen Iveta go by.”

“Joss, you fool,” cautioned Simon urgently, “you’ll let that tongue of yours wag too loud and once too often. Cross him now, and he’ll toss you out naked to go home to your father and explain yourself, and how will that help Iveta? Or you, either?” He shook his head over his friend, though good-humoredly, and kept his hold on him. “Better go to him. He’ll have your hide, else!”

The youngest of the three turned from unsaddling his mount, and grinned at the pair of them. “Oh, let him have his glimpse, who knows how many more there’ll be?” He clouted Joscelin amiably on the shoulder. “I’ll go and run his errands for you this time. I’ll tell him you’re busy making sure all the butts of wine are handled gently, that’ll please him. Go and gaze - though what good it will do either of you….”

“Will you, though, Guy? You’re a good fellow! I’ll take your turn of duty when you ask it!” And he was off again gatewards, but Simon flung an arm about his shoulders and bounded into step beside him.

“I’ll come with you. He won’t need me for a white. But hear me, Joss,” he went on seriously, “you take too many risks with him. You know he can advance you if you please him, it’s what your father wants and expects, you’re a fool to put your future in peril. And you can please him, if you give your mind to it, he’s none so hard on us.”

They passed through the gate and stood in the angle of the wall, leaning shoulder to shoulder against the stone gate-pillar and gazing along the Foregate, two tall, strong young men, Simon the elder by three years, and the shorter by the width of a hand. The sullen, tow-headed lad beside him gnawed a considering lip, and scowled at the ground.

“My future! What can he do to my future, more than toss me back to my father in disgrace, and what the devil need I care about that? There are two good manors will be mine, that he can’t take from me, and there are other lords I could serve. I’m a man of my hands, I can hold my own with most…”

Simon laughed, shaking him rallyingly in the arm that circled his shoulders. “You can indeed! I’ve suffered from it, I know!”

“There are lords enough wanting good men of their hands, now the empress is back in England, and the fight’s on in earnest for the crown. I could fend! You could as well be thinking of your own case, lad, you’ve as much to lose as I have. You may be his sister’s son, and his heir now, but how if - ” He set his teeth; it was hard to utter it, but he was perversely determined to drive the knife deep into his own flesh, and twist it to double the pain. “ - how if things change? A young wife … How if he gets a son of this marriage? Your nose will be out of joint.”

Simon leaned his curly brown head back against the stones of the wall, and laughed aloud. “What, after thirty years of marriage to my Aunt Isabel, and God knows how many passages with how many ladies outside the pale, and never a brat to show for it all? Lad, if he has a seed in him, for all his appetites, I’ll eat the fruit myself! My inheritance is safe enough, I’m in no danger. I’m twenty-five, and he’s nearing sixty. I can wait!” He straightened alertly. “Look, they’re coming!”

But Joscelin had already caught the first glimmer of color and movement along the road, and stiffened to gaze. They came on briskly, Godfrid Picard and his party, in haste to gain the hospitable shelter of the abbey. Simon loosed his clasp, feeling Joscelin draw away.

“For God’s sake, boy, what’s the use? She’s not for you!” But he said it in a despairing sigh, and Joscelin did not even hear it.

They came, and they passed. The ogres on either side of her loomed lean and subtle and greedy, heads arrogantly high, but brows knotted and faces pinched, as though there had already been some happening that had displeased them. And there between them was she, a pale desperation in a golden shell of display, her small face all eyes, but blind eyes, gazing at nothing, seeing nothing. Until she drew close, and something - he wanted to believe his nearness and need - disquieted her, caused her to shiver, and turn her great eyes where she hardly dared turn her whole head, towards the place where he stood. He was not certain that she saw him, but he was certain that she knew he was there, that she had felt, scented, breathed him as she passed between her guards. She did not make the mistake of looking round, or in any way changing the fixed, submissive stillness of her face; but as she passed she lifted her right hand to her cheek, held it so a moment, and again let it fall.

“I do believe,” sighed Simon Aguilon, bringing his friend back in his arm to the courtyard, “that you haven’t given up, even now. For God’s sake, what have you to hope for? Two days more, and she’s my lady Domville.”

Joscelin held his peace, and thought of the uplifted hand, and knew in his heart that her fingers had touched her lips; and that was more than had been agreed.

The entire guest-hall of the abbey, apart from the common quarters, had been given over to Sir Godfrid Picard and his wedding party. In the privacy of their own chamber, within, Agnes Picard turned to her husband with an anxious face. “I still do not like this quietness of hers. I do not trust her.”

He shrugged it off disdainfully. “Ah, you fret too much. She has given over the battle. She is altogether submissive. What can she do? Daniel has his orders not to let her out of the gate, and Walter keeps watch on the parish door of the church. There’s no other way out, unless she finds a means to fly over the wall, of leap the Meole brook. No harm in keeping a close eye on her, even within, but not so close as to draw too much attention. But I’m sure you mistake her. That timid mouse has not the courage to stand up at the altar and declare herself unwilling.”

“As well!” said the lady grimly. “I hear this Abbot Radulfus has a fine conceit of his own rights and powers, and is no respecter of barons if he feels his writ infringed. But I wish I could be as sure of her lameness as you.”

“You fret too much, I tell you, woman. Once bring her to the altar, and she’ll speak her words as taught, and no bones about it.”

Agnes gnawed a lip, and still was not quite convinced. “Well, it may be so … But for all that, I wish it was done. I shall breathe the easier when these next two days are over.”

In Brother Cadfael’s workshop in the herbarium, Brother Oswin shuffled his feet, folded his large, willing but disastrous hands, and looked sheepish. Cadfael looked apprehensively round the hut, aware of ill news to come, though it was an advance if the lad even realized it when he had done something mad, without having it pointed out to him. Most things appeared to be still in their places. The brazier burned low, there were no noticeable evil smells, the wines in their great flasks bubbled gently to themselves as usual.

Brother Oswin rendered account self-consciously, gleaning what credit he could before the blow fell. “Brother Infirmarer has fetched the electuaries and the powders. And I have taken Brother Prior the stomachic you made for him. The troches you left drying I think should be ready now, and the dried herbs for the decoction you spoke of, I have ground to fine powder ready for use tomorrow.”

But… Now he was coming to the bad news. That look of astonished reproach, that a thing well-meant and confidently undertaken should so betray him.

“But such a strange thing… I don’t understand how it could happen, the pot must surely have been cracked, though I could see no break in it. The linctus you left boiling… I did watch it most carefully, I’m sure I took it from the brazier when it was just the right thickness, and I stirred it as you told me. You know you said it was wanted urgently for old Brother Francis, his chest being so bad … I thought I would cool it quickly, to be able to bottle it for you, so I took the pot from the fire and set it in a bowl of cold water…”

“And the pot burst,” said Cadfael resignedly.

“Fell apart,” owned Oswin, bewildered and grieved, “in two great pieces, and shed forth all that honey and the herbs into the water. An extraordinary thing! Did you know the pot was cracked?”

“Son, the pot was sound as a bell, and one of my best, but nor it nor any other here is meant to be taken straight from the fire and plumped into cold water. The clay does not like so sharp a change, it shrinks and shatters. And while we are on that, take heed that glass bottles have the same objection,” added Cadfael hastily. “If warm things are to be put in them, the bottles must be warmed first. Never thrust any matter straight from heat to cold or cold to heat.”

“I have cleared away all,” said Oswin apologetically, “and thrown out the pot, too. But all the same, I am sure there must have been a crack somewhere in it… But I am sorry the linctus is wasted, and I will come back after supper and make a fresh brew in its place.”

God forbid! thought Cadfael, but managed to refrain from saying it aloud. “No, son!” he said firmly. “Your duty is to attend Collations and keep the true round of your order. I will see to the linctus myself.” His supply of pots would have to be defended from Brother Oswin’s excellent intentions henceforth. “Now be off and get ready for Vespers.”

Thus Brother Oswin’s latest achievement in the herbarium was the reason for Cadfael returning to his workshop that evening after supper, and for his involvement in all that happened afterwards.