The Leper of Saint Giles

8

Joscelin arose before dawn, with scrupulous care not to awake his bedfellow, who lay now in his abandoned ease and warmth with limbs flung abroad as if discarded. The voluminous leper-cloak Joscelin left draped over the child, for the early air was chilly, and moreover, he dared not draw nearer the town wearing it, though the risk of approaching without its cover was surely as great. He would have to rely on keeping out of sight, and also drew some comfort from the fact that the previous day’s drive must have virtually exhausted the possibility of taking the sheriff’s quarry on the northern side of the Foregate, and therefore, or so at least he hoped, the watch would be concentrated elsewhere.

He stole out through the hall, and picked up Brother Mark’s ink-horn and quill from the desk. He would not wait for light from dawn, and could make none here, but in the church the constant light on the altar, however meager, would be enough for his young eyes and few words. He had already worked out in his mind what he would write, and managed it legibly, if none too neatly, on his strip of vellum. The quill needed trimming, and tended to spit, but he had no knife to correct it. He was come to the condition of those now his comrades, but that his skin and limbs were whole; otherwise he had nothing but what he stood up in, no possessions of any kind at his disposal.

“Simon, for friendship do me two things, tether Briar in cover across the brook from the abbey, and bid Iveta to the herb-garden after Vespers.”

It would be enough, if he could find some way to get it to the right hands. But if he could not, he must withhold it, since he had written Simon’s name. He regretted now the natural impulse to give his missive an address, in case it fell astray, for how could he implicate his friend in his own troubles? But he had no means of cutting off the offending name. It must go as it was, or stay, and destroy the only plan he had. It behooved him to be even more wary and even more audacious, in his attempt to reach the right man.

He went out into just such a pre-dawn dimness and stillness as when he had run from his hiding-place in the bishop’s grounds. Warily he made his way behind the hospice and towards the town, keeping well away from the road, where trees and bushes afforded him cover. When he came to the gardens and backyards of houses he was forced further from the highway, but he had time enough to move with caution. No one would stir at the bishop’s house until the first light came, no one would quit the courtyard until it was full day, and the gentlefolk had broken their fast. He reached the narrow, tree-shaded path that emerged on the Foregate beside the bishop’s boundary wall, and paused to choose his ground. Only by climbing could he see over the wall, and if he must take to the trees it had better be where he could view both the inner and the outer sides of the courtyard, recognize known figures, and watch all the activity about the stables.

He chose his place with care, in the bole of an oak, stretched along a limb still covered well enough to hide him, but affording him views on both sides, and a quick and easy drop to the ground should he have to move in haste. Then there was nothing to be done but wait, for the dawn was still only a grudging pallor in the east. He would miss his breakfast, today nobody need steal for him.

Dawn came at last, in its own good time. The house, the containing wall, the stables and byres and storehouses within, all took shape very gradually out of darkness, and put on color and life. Sleepy servants, bakers and grooms and dairy-maids, first crept, and then bustled, out about their business. Loaded trays of loaves appeared from the bakehouse, carried indoors by scullions. The morning loitered a further while, and the gentry began to make their appearances, Canon Eudo the first of them, bound for the second Mass of the day, then, some little while later, Simon and Guy together, none too eager, and deep in sombre talk. The grooms were leading out, surely, most of the horses in the stables. It seemed that the morning’s hunt was already ordered and preparing to muster.

Muster they did, Guy resigned but sullen among them, and file out from the gate to turn along the Foregate towards the town. But Simon did not mount with them. He was still standing on the steps of the hall, looking after them, and apparently waiting for something. The bishop’s own stable was round a corner of the house and out of Joscelin’s view, but he pricked his ears to the sound of hooves, urgent and lively, coming round thence into the courtyard. In a moment more he saw his own Briar, silvery gray blotched with darker gray, frisk indignantly out into the open air of the morning, tugging a sweating and voluble groom with him. Simon came down from the steps to meet them, ran a hand over gleaming gray neck and shoulder, and held the silvery head between his palms a moment, in an appreciative caress. Joscelin’s heart warmed to him. With all this coil of troubles, he had still spared a thought for the active beast shut up in a stall, and haled him out for exercise. The words he spoke to the groom as he turned back to re-enter the house were not distinguishable at this distance, but his gestures towards horse and gateway had said plainly enough: “Saddle him up and lead him out for me.”

Joscelin waited long enough to see for himself that the groom was about that very business, and then dropped out of his tree, and moved cautiously forward in cover of the bushes until he could see the outside of the gates. And here they came, Briar mischievously lively, impatient for action. The groom led him out, and hitched him indifferently to one of the rings in the wall beside the mounting-block, and there left him to wait for his rider. It could not have turned out better. As soon as the man had gone back into the yard, and was tramping across the cobbles to the stable, Joscelin was out of cover and darting along the wall to caress and soothe a startled and delighted Briar. There was no time for dalliance, and at first he cursed the chance that a couple of horsemen came jingling along the Foregate at that moment, and he was forced to turn his back on the road and stand stolidly holding the bridle as they passed, as though he had been one of the grooms waiting for his master. But the enforced delay gave time for Briar to feel reassured, and stand in charmed quietness, while Joscelin hurriedly knotted his strip of vellum securely in the silvery forelock.

The riders had passed, for the moment the Foregate here was empty, and there was no one on the path between the trees. Joscelin tore himself away from his favorite perforce, shutting his ears to the protesting whinny that pursued him, and ran like a bolting hare back into cover, and did not stop until he had worked his way some distance back towards Saint Giles.

It was done, he dared not stop to see whether it took immediate effect, for now it was broad day, and growing populous on the roads, and he had better hide himself as quickly as possible in his leper’s gown, so much stronger a defense than any weapon, since no one would willingly draw near enough to be contaminated. He could only pray that Simon would find the message - surely before he had been astride Briar long he must notice the knotted mane! - and act on it faithfully. There was at least a safeguard of sorts, Joscelin reflected, for if he made his way to the copses opposite the abbey fields at the time appointed, and failed to find Briar secreted there, he could draw off again, on the assumption that his plea had gone astray, or never been detected. Draw off, and try something else, but never give up, never until Iveta was in better hands, and properly treated.

Meantime, this day of all days, he must remain until evening tamed and exemplary about Saint Giles, taking no risks, drawing no attention to himself.

In the spinney at the edge of the hospital grounds he paused to look ahead before venturing close, suddenly aware of his perilous nakedness without the cloak, now that it was light. And out of the bushes arose a small, hurtling figure with a trailing dark garment bundled under one arm, and embraced him about the thighs with the other arm, reproaching him bitterly in a breathy undertone: “You never woke me! You went away and left me! Why did you?”

Startled and touched, Joscelin sat on his heels and embraced the child heartily in return. “I was not sleeping, and you were, so soundly it would have been shame to disturb you. And it’s done, and I’m back, so hold me excused. I know you’d have done as well or better, never think I didn’t trust you….”

Bran thrust the gown at him sternly. “Put it on! And here is the face-cloth … How would you have got back into the hospice without it?” He had brought a hunk of bread, too, to make up for the missed breakfast. Joscelin broke it in two, and gave him back the greater half, shaken clean out of his own preoccupations by an irresistible tenderness that filled him with a wild urge to laughter.

“What should I do without you, my squire? You see I’m barely fit to be let out without my keeper. Now I promise you I’ll let you bearlead me all this day - except for your lesson-time with Brother Mark, of course! We’ll do whatever you please. You shall call the tune.”

He shrouded himself obediently in the adopted vestments, and they consumed the bread together in silent content before he draped the linen cloth again about his face. Hand in hand they emerged solemnly from the trees, and made their way decorously back into the precincts of Saint Giles.

Simon had trotted an exuberant Briar almost to the abbey gatehouse before he noticed the knotted forelock, and reaching to discover the cause, with some displeasure at such poor grooming, felt the coiled strip of vellum hard under his fingers. He eased to a walk, which did not please his mount, while he disentangled the roll, and uncoiled it curiously.

Joscelin’s none too practiced fist, further complicated by poor light for the writing, and an unbiddable quill, cut to another man’s hand, was nevertheless readable. Simon shut the coil hurriedly in his palm, as though someone might be paying too close attention, and looked back over his shoulder, and all about him, belatedly searching for some sign as to how this sudden message had been placed here for him, and where his elusive correspondent might be. Far too late! He might be anywhere. There was no way of laying hand on him or getting word to him, except by doing what he asked, and setting a scene to which he would certainly come.

Simon put the leaf away carefully in the pouch at his belt, and rode on very thoughtfully. Beyond the gatehouse, toward the bridge that crossed the Severn into the town, the sheriff’s forces were beginning to mass. In the great court of the abbey the usual business of the day proceeded. The lay brothers were coming forth briskly to the main gardens at the Gaye, and going about the affairs of the grange court and the stock. Brother Edmund bustled between the herbarium and the wards of his infirmary, and Brother Oswald the almoner was distributing doles to the few beggars at the gate. Simon rode in soberly through the gates, and handed over Briar to a groom. At the guest-hall he asked audience with Godfrid Picard, and was promptly admitted.

Iveta was sitting with Madlen in her own chamber, listlessly sewing at a piece of decorative tapestry for a cushion. It was true that she could go forth now if she wished, but not beyond the gatehouse. She had tried it once, very fearfully, and been turned back by one of her uncle’s men, civilly but with a faint, furtive grin that made her cheeks burn. And what was the use of going forth only within this closed ground, however pleasant it might have been in other circumstances, when Joscelin was only God knew where, and she had no means of reaching him? Better to sit here and hold her breath, and listen for a wind of freedom, with word of him. The brother who had warded off the lightnings once, and once conjured her back kindly into a bleak world, he was one friend, even if she had not spoken with him of late. And there was also Simon. He was loyal, he did not believe in the charges made against Joscelin. If the chance ever offered, he would help them.

Iveta stitched away and sat very still, all the more after she had caught the faint sound of voices raised in the next room. Even the inner walls here were solid, and held out sound, she did not think Madlen had noticed anything to arouse her interest. Accordingly Iveta carefully suppressed her own. But it was no mistake. Her uncle was quarreling with someone. She detected it by the vicious vehemence of his voice rather than by any loudness, indeed it was purposefully quiet, and words quite indistinguishable. The other voice was younger, less cautious, more furiously defensive, surely astonished and aghast, as if this fell on him out of a clear sky. Still no words, only the thread of significant sound, two voices clashing in bitter conflict. And now she thought she caught an intonation in the second voice which provided a name that could only dismay her. What could have happened between her uncle and Simon? For surely that was Simon’s voice. Was her uncle growing suspicious of every young man who came near her? She knew only too well that he had a treasure to guard, herself, the great honor she bore like a millstone round her neck, the use that could be made of her, the profit that could accrue from her. Yet only a day or so ago Simon had been welcome, privileged, smiled upon by Aunt Agnes.

Madlen sat stolidly stitching at a linen coif for herself, and paid no heed. Her ear was older and duller; if she heard the hum of conversation, that was all.

And even that had ceased. A door closed. Iveta thought she caught a renewed murmur next door, urgent and low. Then the door of her own chamber opened, after a round, confident rap, and Simon entered as of right. Iveta was lost, she could only stare; but he had the right note.

“Goodmorrow, Iveta!” he said easily. And to the maid: “Give me leave a little while, Mistress Madlen!”

Madlen had Agnes’s smiles and becks well in mind, he was still privileged to her. She took up her sewing, made her reverence complacently, indulgent as on the last occasion, and left the room.

The door had barely closed on her when Simon was on his knee beside Iveta, and leaning close. And for all his disciplined calm, he was flushed and breathing hard, his nostrils flaring agitatedly.

“Listen, Iveta, for they’ll not let me in to you again…. if she tells them I’m here with you now, they’ll hunt me out… I’ve word for you from Joss!” She would have questioned, dismayed and anxious, but he laid silencing fingers on her lips, and rushed on, low and vehemently: “Tonight, after Vespers, he bids you come to the herb-garden. And I’m to have his horse waiting on the other side of the brook. Don’t fail him, as I shall not. Have you understood?”

She nodded, almost speechless with wonder and joy and alarm all mingled. “Oh, yes! Oh, Simon, I would do anything! God bless you for his loyal friend! But you … What can have happened? Why, why turn against you?”

“Because I spoke up for Joss. I said he was neither murderer nor thief, and in the end I would see him vindicated, and they’d have to take back all they’ve said against him. They’ll have no more of me, I’m cast off. But here’s his message … look!” She knew the scrawl, and read, quivering. She fondled the slip of vellum as if it had been a holy relic, but closed Simon’s hand over it again, though reluctantly.

“They might find it… you keep it. I’ll do his bidding, and thank you a thousand times for all your goodness. But oh, Simon, I’m sorry that between us we’ve brought you to grief, too…”

“Grief, what grief?” he whispered fiercely. “I care nothing for them, if I have your goodwill.”

“Always, always … more than goodwill! You have been so good to me, what should I have done without you? If we break free … if we can … we’ll find you. You will always be our dearest friend!”

She was clinging to the hand with which he had hushed her, trying to express by touch the gratitude for which words seemed inadequate, but he made a warning grimace and withdrew his hand quickly, rising and standing back from her in one lissome movement, for there was a footstep at the door, a hand at the latch. “The herb-garden!” he whispered, and noted the answering flash of her eyes, at once resolute and terrified.

“I’m glad to see you so much restored,” he was saying formally as the door opened. “I could not take my leave without paying my respects.”

Picard came into the room with deliberate pace, his narrow, subtle face cold, his voice colder still, though carefully civil.

“Still here, Messire Aguilon? Our niece is keeping her room, and should not be disturbed. And I had thought you were in haste to return to your household and make ready. You’re pledged to join the sheriff’s forces this day, I hope you mean to keep your word.”

“I shall do what is required of me,” said Simon shortly. “But not on my friend’s horse! But rest assured, my lord, I shall join the sheriff’s line as I’m ordered, and in good time.”

Agnes had appeared at her lord’s shoulder, tight-lipped, with narrowed eyes glittering suspicion. Simon made a deep reverence to Iveta, a stiff and formal one to Agnes, and marched out of the room. Two heads turned to watch him out of the hall in grim silence, and when he was gone, turned with the same chill unanimity to study Iveta. She bent her head meekly over her embroidery, to hide the defiant joy she could not quite banish from her face, and said never a word. The concentrated silence lasted long, but at length they went away, shutting the door upon her. They had asked nothing. She thought they were satisfied. When had she ever shown any spirit on her own account? They did not know, they had no means of understanding, what prodigies she felt she could do now, for Joscelin.

Brother Cadfael had set out, immediately after breaking his fast, on a mule borrowed from the abbey stables, and by the time Iveta received Joscelin’s message he had passed Beistan, and was in the open woodland near the hunting-lodge. To reach the hamlet of Thornbury it was not necessary to keep to the path that led to the lodge, he struck off somewhat to the right, westward into the edges of the Long Forest. Between lodge and village the distance was hardly more than a mile, yet still it remained a mystery why a woman should abandon a good horse, and choose to remove herself there on foot.

The trees fell back as he approached the village, and left open to the sun a pleasant bowl of green meadows and striped ploughland, compact and well cared for. Scattered among the surrounding woods there were a few small, new assarts cut out of the forest by enterprising younger sons. And in the midst the low, timbered buildings clustered, fronds of blue smoke and the scent of wood fires hanging over them like a veil. Small, remote and poor, a place for hard-working men, but for all that, with plentiful fuel all around, and excellent poaching, which Cadfael judged might well be a communal enterprise here. Plentiful timber of all kinds, too, for the wheelwright’s craft. Elm, essential for the stock, oak, to provide the cleft heartwood for the spokes, with the grain unbroken, and springy, supple ash to make the curved felloes of the rim, they were all here to hand.

Cadfael halted his mule at the first cottage, where a woman was feeding hens in her yard, and asked for the wheelwright.

“You’re wanting Ulger?” she said, leaning a plump arm on her fence and viewing him with friendly curiosity. “His toft’s the far end there, past the pond, you’ll see it by the timber stacks on your right hand. He has a wagon in for a new wheel, he’ll be hard at it.”

Cadfael thanked her and rode on. Beyond the pond, where ducks gossiped and plunged, he saw the stacked wood seasoning, and came at once to the toft, a large undercroft well stocked with tools and materials, a room and a garret above, and in the yard before the house, a wagon standing, propped short of one wheel. The broken halves of it lay on the ground, several spokes shattered, the iron rim salvaged and perhaps to be used again. A new elm stock, already fully provided with spokes, lay star-like on the grass, and the wheelwright, a thickset fellow of about forty-five years, bearded and muscular, was working away with an adze on a length of well-curved ash for the felloes, shaping with the grain of the wood.

“God bless the work!” said Cadfael, halting his mule and lighting down. “I think you must be Ulger, and it’s Ulger I’m seeking. But I looked for an older man.”

The wheelwright rose and abandoned his adze, moving at ease in his own kingdom. He looked at his visitor with amiable curiosity, a round-faced, good-natured soul, but with a dignified reserve about him, too. “My father in his time was also Ulger, and also wheelwright to this and many another hamlet round here. Belike you had him in mind. God rest him, he died some years back. The toft and the office are mine.” And he added, after a rapid and shrewd scrutiny: “You’ll be from the Benedictines at Shrewsbury. By this way and that way, we do get word.”

“And we have our troubles, and you hear of them,” said Cadfael. He slipped the mule’s bridle over a fence-pale, and shook out his habit and stretched his back after the ride. “I tell you truth as I would be told truth. Huon de Domville was murdered early on his wedding-day, and at his hunting-lodge none so far from here he kept a woman. He was on his way from her when he died. And she is no longer at the hunting-lodge. They called her Avice of Thornbury, daughter to that Ulger who must be also your father. In these parts he found and took up with her. I do not think I tell you anything you did not already know.”

He waited, and there was silence. The wheelwright faced him with countenance suddenly hard and still, for all its native candor, and said no word.

“It is no part of my purpose or my need,” said Cadfael, “to bring upon your sister any danger or threat. Nevertheless, she may know what justice needs to know, and not only for retribution, but for the deliverance of the innocent. All I want is speech with her. She left behind her at Domville’s lodge her horse, and I believe much more that was hers. She left afoot. It is my belief that she came here, to her own people.”

“It is many years,” said Ulger, after a long silence, “since I had a sister, many years since I and mine were her own people to Avice of Thornbury.”

“That I understand,” said Cadfael. “Nevertheless, blood is blood. Did she come to you?”

Ulger regarded him somberly, and made up his mind. “She came.”

“Two days ago? After the news came from Shrewsbury of Huon de Domville found dead?”

“Two days ago, late in the afternoon she came. No, the news had not reached us then. But it had reached her.”

“If she is here with you,” said Cadfael, “I must have speech with her.” He looked towards the house, where a sturdy, comely woman moved out and in again as he gazed. In the corner of the yard a boy of about fourteen was fining down cleft oak spokes for some lighter wheel. Ulger’s wife and son. He saw no sign of another woman about the toft.

“She is not here,” said Ulger. “Nor would she be welcome in my house. Only once or twice have we seen her since she chose to go for a Norman baron’s whore, a shame to her kin and her race. I told her when she came that I would do for her all that a man should do for his sister, except let her into the house she abandoned long ago for money and ease and rich living. She was not changed nor put down. Make what you can of her, for I’m in many minds about her. She said calmly and civilly that she wanted nothing from me and mine but three things - the loan of my nag, a plain peasant gown in place of her fine clothes, and some hours of my son’s time to guide her where she was bound, and bring back the horse safely. She had three miles to go, and her fine shoes were not fit for the way.”

“And these three you granted her?” said Cadfael, marveling.

“I did. She put off her finery here in the undercroft, and put on an old gown of my wife’s. Also she stripped off the rings from her hands and a gold chain from her neck, and gave them to my wife, for she said she had no more need of them, and they might pay a part of her debt here. And she mounted my nag, and the boy there went with her on foot, and before night he rode the horse back to us here. And that is all I know of her, for I asked nothing.”

“Not even where she was bound?”

“Not even that. But my son told me, when he returned.”

“And where is she gone?”

“To a place they call Godric’s Ford, west from here and a short way into the forest.”

“I know it,” said Cadfael, enlightened. For at Godric’s Ford there was a small grange of Benedictine nuns, a cell of the abbey of Polesworth. So Avice had made for the nearest female sanctuary in her need, for safe hiding under the protection of a powerful and respected abbey until Huon de Domville’s murderer was known and taken, his death avenged, his mistress forgotten. From that secure haven she might be quite willing to speak out anything she did know to the purpose, provided she herself remained inviolable in her retreat.

So he was thinking, as he thanked Ulger for his help, and mounted to ride on to Godric’s Ford. A very natural course for a discreet woman to take, if she feared she might be drawn into a great scandal and the complex web of a crime.

And yet… ! And yet she had left her jennet behind and gone afoot. And yet she had put off her finery for a homespun gown, and stripped the rings from her fingers, to pay a part of her life’s debt to the kin she had deserted long ago….

The grange at Godric’s Ford was a decent long, low house in a broad clearing, with a small wooden chapel beside it, and a high stone wall enclosing its well-kept kitchen garden and orchard of fruit trees, now graced with only half their yellowing leaves. In a butt of newly dug ground within the wall a middle-aged novice, comfortably rounded in form and face, was planting out cabbage seedlings for the next spring. Cadfael observed her as he turned in at the gate and dismounted, and with his eye for competence and industry approved the confidence of her manner and the economy of her movements. Benedictine nuns, like Benedictine monks, think well of manual labor, and are expected to expend their energies as generously in cultivation as in prayer. This woman, rosily healthy, went about her work like a good, contented housewife, pressing the soil firm round her transplants with a broad foot, and brushing the loam from her hands with placid satisfaction. She was agreeably plump, and not very tall, and her face, however rounded and well-fleshed, yet had solid, determined bones and a notable firmness of lip and chin.

When she became aware of Cadfael and his mule, she straightened her back with the right cautious gradualness and a true gardener’s grunt, and turned upon him shrewd brown eyes under brows quizzically oblique, very knowing eyes that took him in from cowl to sandals in one sweeping glance.

She left her plot, and came unhurriedly towards him.

“God greet you, brother!” she said cheerfully. “Can any here be of service to you?”

“God bless your house!” said Cadfael ceremoniously. “I am seeking speech with a lady who has recently sought sanctuary here within. Or so I reason from such knowledge as I have. She is called Avice of Thornbury. Can you bring me to her?”

“Very readily,” said the novice. In her russet apple cheek a sudden, startling dimple dipped and rose like a curtsey. Beauty, in its most mature and tranquil manifestation, flashed and faded with the change, leaving her demure and plain as before. “If you’re seeking Avice of Thornbury, you have found her. That name belongs to me.”

In the dark little parlor of the grange they sat facing each other across the small table, Benedictine monk and Benedictine nun-in-the-making, eyeing each other with mutual close interest. The superior had given them leave, and closed the door upon them, though the postulant’s manner was of such assured authority that it seemed surprising she should ask anyone’s permission to speak with her visitor, and even more surprising that she did so with such becoming humility. But Cadfael had already come to the conclusion that in dealing with this woman there would be no end to the surprises.

Where now was the expected image of the Norman baron’s whore, spoiled, indulged, kept in state for her beauty? Such a creature should have labored to keep her charms, with paints and creams and secret spells, starved to avoid growing fat, studied the arts of movement and grace. This woman had subsided placidly into middle age, had let the wrinkles form in her face and neck without disguise, and the gray invade her brown hair. Brisk and lively she still was, and would always be, sure of herself, feeling no need to be or seem other than she was. And just as she was she had held Huon de Domville for more than twenty years.

“Yes,” she said immediately, in answer to Cadfael’s question. “I was at Huon’s hunting-lodge. He would always have me close, wherever he went. I have travelled the length and breadth of his honor many times over.” Her voice was low and pleasant, as serene as her person, and she spoke of her past as the most respectable of housewives might, after her man was dead, recalling quiet, domestic affection, customary and unexciting.

“And when you heard of his death,” said Cadfael, “you thought best to withdraw from the scene? Did they tell you it was murder?”

“By the afternoon of that day it was common knowledge,” she said. “I had no part in it, I had no means of guessing who had done such a thing. I was not afraid, if that’s what you may be thinking, Brother Cadfael. I never yet did anything out of fear.”

She said it quite simply and practically, and he believed her. He would have gone further, and sworn that in her whole life she had never experienced fear. She spoke the very word with a kind of mild curiosity, as if she put her hand into a fleece to judge its weight and fineness.

“No, not fear - reluctance, rather, to play a part in any notorious or public thing. I have been discreet more than twenty years, to become a byword now is something I could not stomach. And when a thing is ended, why delay? I could not bring him back. That was ended. And I am forty-four years old, with some experience of the world. As I think,” she said, eyeing him steadily, and the dimple coming and vanishing in her cheek, “you also can claim, brother. For I think I do not surprise you as much as I had expected.”

“As at this time,” said Cadfael, “I cannot conceive of any man whom you would not surprise. But yes, I have been abroad in the world before I took this cowl of mine. Would it be foolish in me to suppose that it was your gift of astonishment that took Huon de Domville’s fancy in the first place?”

“If you’ll believe me,” said Avice, sitting back with a sigh, and folding plump, homely hands upon a rounding stomach, “I hardly remember now. I do know that I had wit enough and gall enough to take the best that offered a wench of my birth, and pay for it without grudging. I still have both the wit and the gall, I take the best of what is offered a woman of my years and history.”

She had said far more than was in the words, and knew very well that he had understood all of it. She had recognized instantly the end of one career. Too old now to make a success of another such liaison, too wise to want one, perhaps too loyal even to consider one, after so many years, she had cast about her for something to do now with her powers and energies. Too late, with her past, to contemplate an ordinary marriage. What is left for such a woman?

“You are right,” said Avice, relaxed and easy. “I made good use of my time while I waited for Huon, as often I have waited, weeks together. I am lettered and numerate, I have many skills. I need to use what I know, and make use of what I can do. My beauty is no longer with me, and never was remarkable, no one is likely to want or pay for it now. I suited Huon, he was accustomed to me. I was his feather-bed when other women had plagued and tired him.”

“You loved him?” asked Cadfael, for her manner with him was such that it was no intrusion to put such a question. And she considered it seriously.

“No, it could not be said that I loved him, that was not what he required. After all these years, certainly there was a fondness, a habit that sat well with us both, and did not abrade. Sometimes we did not even couple,” confided the postulant nun thoughtfully. “We just sat and drank wine together, played chess, which he taught me, listened to minstrels. Nodded over my embroidery and his wine, one either side the fire. Sometimes we did not even kiss or touch, though we slept snugly in the same bed.”

Like an old, married lord and his plain, pleasant old wife. But that was over, and she was one who acknowledged the realities. She had sincerely regretted her dead companion, even while she was thinking hard, and rubbing her hands in anticipation of getting to work upon a new and different enterprise. So much intelligent life must go somewhere, find some channel it can use. The ways of youth had closed, but there were other ways.

“Yet he came to you,” said Cadfael, “on his wedding eve.” And the bride, he thought but did not say, is eighteen years old, beautiful, submissive, and has great possessions.

She leaned forward to the table, her face mild and inward-looking, as though she examined honestly the workings of the human spirit, so obdurate and yet so given to conformity.

“Yes, he came. It was the first time since we came to Shrewsbury, and it turned out the last time of all. His wedding eve … Yes, marriage is a matter of business, is it not? Like concubinage! Love - ah, well, that’s another matter, apart from either of them. Yes, I was expecting him. My position would not have been any way changed, you understand.”

Brother Cadfael understood. The mistress of twenty years standing would not have been dislodged by the equally purchased heiress twenty-six years her junior. They were two separate worlds, and the inhabitant of the alternative world had her own legitimacy.

“He came alone?”

“Yes, alone.”

“And left you at what hour?” Now he was at the heart of the matter. For this honorable whore had certainly never conspired at her lord’s end, nor even cuckolded him with his steward, that jealous, faithful, suspicious soul who clove to her out of long-standing loyalty, surely well-deserved. This woman would have both feet firmly on the ground in dealing with those accidentally her servants, and respect them as they would learn to respect her.

She thought carefully about that. “It was past six in the morning. I cannot be sure how far past, but there was the promise of light. I went out with him to the gate. I remember, there were already colors, it must have been nearing the half-hour. For I went to the patch of gromwell - it went on flowering so late this year - and plucked some flowers and put them in his cap.”

“Past six, and nearer the half than the quarter of the hour,” mused Cadfael. “Then he could not have reached the spot where he was ambushed and killed before a quarter to the hour of Prime, and probably later.”

“There you must hold me excused, brother, for I do not know the place. For his leaving, as near as I dare state, he rode away about twenty minutes after six.”

A quarter of an hour, even at a speed too brisk for the light, to bring him to the place where the trap was laid. How long to account for the final killing? At the very least, ten minutes. No, the murderer could not have quit the spot before at least a quarter to seven, and most probably considerably later.

There was only one vital question left to ask. Many others, which had been puzzling him before he encountered her, and began to find his way past one misconception after another to the truth, had already become unnecessary. As, for instance, why she had discarded all her possessions, even her rings, left her jennet behind in the stable, denuded herself of all the profits of one career. Haste and fear, he had thought first, a bolt into hiding, putting off without coherent thought everything that could connect her with Huon de Domville. Then, when he found her already in a novice’s habit, he had even considered that she might have been stricken into penitence, and felt it needful to give up all before venturing into the cloister to spend the latter half of her life atoning for the former. Now he could appreciate the irony of that. Avice of Thornbury repented nothing. As she had never been afraid, so he felt certain she had never in her life been ashamed. She had made a bargain and kept it, as long as her lord lived. Now she was her own property again, to dispose of as she saw fit.

She had put off all her finery as an old soldier retiring might put off arms, as no longer of use or interest to him, and turn his considerable remaining energies to farming. Which was just what she proposed to do now. Her farm would be the Benedictine conventual economy, and she would take to it thoroughly and make a success of it. He even felt a rueful sympathy for the handful of sisters into whose dovecote this harmless-looking falcon had flown. Give her three or four years, and she would be abbess of Polesworth, and moreover, would further reinforce that house’s stability and good repute, as well as its sound finances. After her death she might well end up as a saint.

Meanwhile, though by this time he was assured of her forthrightness and reliability, she had a right to know that by doing her duty as a citizen she might find her privacy somewhat eroded.

“You must understand,” said Cadfael scrupulously, “that the sheriff may require you to testify when a man stands trial for his life, and that innocent lives may hang on the acceptance of your word. Will you bear witness to all this in a court of law, as you have here to me?”

“In all my life,” said Avice of Thornbury, “I have avoided one sin, at least. No, rather I was never tempted to it. I do not lie, and I do not feign. I will tell truth for you whenever you require it.”

“Then there is one matter more, which you may be able to solve. Huon de Domville, as you may not have heard, dismissed all attendance when he rode to you, and no one in his household admits to knowing where he might have gone. Yet whoever waylaid and killed him on that path had either followed him far enough to judge that he must return the same way - or else, and far more likely, knew very well where he was bound. Whoever knew that, knew that you were there at the hunting-lodge. You have said that you always used great discretion, yet someone must have known.”

“Plainly I was not left to travel unescorted,” she pointed out practically. “I daresay some among his old servants had a shrewd idea I should never be far away, but as for knowing where … Who better than the one who brought me there at Huon’s orders? Two days before Huon and his party came to Shrewsbury. I was always entrusted to one confidant, and only one. Why let in more? For the last three years it has been this same man.”

“Give him a name,” said Brother Cadfael.