The Leper of Saint Giles

9

The sheriff had confined his morning drive to the nearer woods on the southern side of the Meole brook, his line spread like beaters for a hunt, each man just within sight of his neighbors on either hand, and all moving slowly and methodically forward together. And they had netted nothing for all that time and trouble. Nobody broke cover to run from them, nobody they sighted bore any resemblance to Joscelin Lucy. When they drew off to reform and break their fast they had made contact all along their line with the patrols watching the town’s borders. The lepers at Saint Giles had come out curiously to watch their activities at the prescribed distance. Gilbert Prestcote was not pleased, and grew markedly short to question or address. Some others were better satisfied.

“The lad’s surely away home out of this long ago,” said Guy hopefully to Simon, as they dismounted at the bishop’s house to eat a hasty dinner. “I wish for my life, though, we could be certain of it. I could enjoy the hunt for him if I could be quite sure there’s no fear of finding! It would be no hardship to see Picard’s face grow blacker and blacker, and a delight if his horse put a foot in a badger’s sett and threw him. The sheriff has his work to do, and no avoidance, but Picard has no such duty. Office is one thing, but venom’s another.”

“He truly believes Joss killed the old man,” said Simon, shrugging. “No wonder he’s hot after him. All his own plans gone for nothing, and he’s a man who’ll have his revenge at all costs. Will you believe he’s turned against me? I opened my mouth out of turn, and told him flatly I believed Joss never did theft or murder, and he flared at me like wildfire. I’m not welcome to him or his lady any more.”

“Do you tell me?” Guy gaped and sparkled. “And do you know you’re drawn next to him in the line after dinner, when we head further out? Keep a weather eye on Picard, lad, and never turn your back on him, or he might be tempted, if he’s at odds with you. I wouldn’t trust that temper of his too far, and there’s thicker cover where we’re bound.”

He was not very serious, merely exuberant in his relief that his comrade and friend was still at liberty. His attention at the time was on his trencher, for the October air was keen, and provided a healthy young man with a voracious appetite.

“The looks he gave me when he turned me out of Iveta’s room,” admitted Simon ruefully, “you could be right! I’ll keep an eye on him, and be faster in the draw than he. We’re to make our own way back as we please, when the light goes. I’ll ensure I’m far enough ahead of him to keep clear of his blade. In any case,” he said, with a swift private smile, “I have something important to see to before Vespers. I’ll make certain he’s not there to put a bolt through that.” He sat back from the table, satisfied. “Where are you drawn, this time?”

“Among the sheriff’s sergeants, for my sins!” Guy grimaced and grinned. “Is it possible someone has suspected my heart may not be in it? Well, if I turn a blind eye, and they miss taking me up on it, I’m safe enough, they’ll see to that. The sheriff’s a decent man, but vexed and frustrated, with a murdered magnate on his hands, and King Stephen beginning to look this way. No wonder he’s blowing bitter cold.” He pushed back the bench on which he sat, and stretched, drawing breath deep. “Are you ready? Shall we go? I’ll be main glad when we get home this night, and nothing trapped.”

They went out together, down into the valley below Saint Giles, where the beater line was drawing up afresh, to press onward at the same deliberate speed through thicker copses and woodlands, moving south.

From a hillock on the southern side of the highroad, overlooking the broad valley below, two tall, shrouded figures watched the hunters muster and deploy. Over the meadows the strung line showed clearly, before it moved methodically forward and began to thread the open woodlands ahead, each man keeping his dressing by his neighbor on the right, each man keeping his due distance. The air was very faintly misty, but with sunlight falling through the mist, and as the hunters moved in among the trees their clothing and harness winked and flashed through the leaves like motes of bright dust, scintillating and vanishing, reappearing to vanish again. As they swept slowly south, the watchers above as slowly turned to maintain their watch.

“They will keep up this drive until dark,” said Lazarus, and at length swung about to view the deserted fields from which the hunt had been launched. All was quiet and still there now, the stir, the murmur, the play of colors all past. Two threads of silver made the only sparkles of light in the muted sunbeams, the nearer one the mill leat drawn off to feed the abbey pools and mill, the further one the Meole brook itself, here in a stony and broken bed, and looking curiously small by comparison with its broad flow in the abbey gardens, barely a mile downstream. Geese dabbled in a shallow inlet on the southern side. Upstream from them the child minding them fished in a little rock-fringed pool.

“It’s well-timed,” said Joscelin, and drew deep and thoughtful breath. “The sheriff has emptied the valley of all his armed men for me, yes, surely until twilight. Even then they’ll come home out of temper and out of energy. It could not be better.”

“And their mounts ridden out,” said Lazarus drily, and turned his far-sighted, brilliant eyes on his companion. The absence of a face had ceased to trouble Joscelin at all. The eyes and the voice were enough to identify a friend.

“Yes,” Joscelin said, “I had thought of that, too.”

“And few remounts to be had, seeing he has called out almost every man he has, and commandeered almost every horse.”

“Yes.”

Bran came darting down the slope of grass towards them, dived confidently between the two, and took possession of a hand of each. It did not trouble him at all that one of the hands lacked two fingers and the half of a third. Bran was putting on a little flesh with every day, the nodes in his neck had shrunk to insignificance, and his fine hair was growing in thickly over the scars of old sores on a knowing small head.

“They’re away,” he said simply. “What shall we do now?”

“We?” said Joscelin. “I thought it was high time for your schooling with Brother Mark? Are you given a day’s holiday today?”

“Brother Mark says he has work to do.” By his voice, Bran was not greatly impressed by the argument, since in his experience Brother Mark never ceased working except when he was asleep. The child was even inclined to be a little offended at being put off, if he had not had these two other elect companions to fall back on. “You said you’d do whatever I wanted today,” he reminded sternly.

“And so I will,” agreed Joscelin, “until evening. Then I also have work to do. Let’s make the most of the time. What’s your will?”

“You said,” observed Bran, “you could carve me a little horse out of a piece of wood from the winter pile, if you had a knife.”

“Unbeliever, so I can, and perhaps a little gift for your mother, too, if we can find the right sort of wood. But as for the knife, I doubt if they’d lend us one from the kitchen, and how could I dare take the one Brother Mark uses to trim his quills? More than my life’s worth,” said Joscelin lightly enough, and stiffened to recall how little his life might indeed be worth if the hunt turned back too soon. No matter, these few hours belonged to Bran.

“I have a knife,” said the child proudly, “a sharp one my mother used to use to gut fish, when I was little. Come and let’s look for a piece of wood.” The gleaners in the forest had come back well laden, the fuel-store was full, and could spare a small, smooth-grained log to make a toy. Bran tugged at both the hands he held, but the old man slid his maimed member free, very gently, and released himself. His eyes still swept the crowns of the trees below, where even the quiver and rustle of the beaters’ progress had ebbed into stillness.

“I have seen Sir Godfrid Picard only once,” he said thoughtfully. “Which man in the line was he, when they set out?”

Joscelin looked back, surprised. “The fourth from us. Lean and dark, in black and russet - a bright red cap with a plume…”

“Ah, he …” Lazarus maintained his steady survey of the woods below, and did not turn his head. “Yes, I marked the red poll. An easy mark to pick out again.”

He moved forward a few yards more from the highroad, and sat down in the grass of the slope, with his back against a tree. He did not look round when Joscelin yielded to the urging of Bran’s hand, and they left him to his preferred solitude.

Brother Mark had indeed work to do that day, though it could as well have waited for another time, if it consisted of the accounts he was casting up for Fulke Reynald. He was meticulous, and the books were never in arrears. The real urgency lay in finding something to do that could enable him to look busily occupied in the open porch of the hall, where the light was best, and where he could keep a sharp eye on the movements of his secret guest without being too obvious about it. He was well aware that the young man who was no leper had been missing from Prime and from breakfast, and had reappeared innocently hand in hand with Bran, somewhat later. Clearly the child had taken a strong fancy to his new acquaintance. The sight of them thus linked, the boy skipping merrily beside the long strides that so carefully but imperfectly mimicked the maimed gait of Lazarus, the man with bent head attentive, and large hand gentle, had moved Mark to believe, illogically but understandably, that one thus kind and generous of his time and interest could not possibly be either thief or murderer. From the first he had found it hard to credit the theft, and the longer he considered this refugee within his cure - for he could pick him out now without difficulty - the more absurd grew the notion that this young man had avenged himself by murder. If he had, he would have plodded away in his present guise, clapping his clapper industriously, and passed through the sheriffs cordon long ago to freedom. No, he had some other urgent business to keep him here, business that might mean greater peril to his own life before he brought it to a good conclusion.

Yet he was on Mark’s conscience. No one else had detected him, no one else could answer for him, or answer, if it came to the worst, for sheltering him and keeping silent. So Mark watched, had been watching all this day since the truant’s return. And so far the young man had made it easy for him. The whole morning he had kept company with Bran, and been close about the hospital, lending a hand with the work of stacking the gleaned wood, helping to bring in the last mowing from the verges of the road, playing drawing games with the child in a patch of dried-out clay in a hollow where water lay when it rained - good, smooth clay that could be levelled over again and again as a game ended in laughter and crowing. No, a young fellow in trouble who could so blithely accommodate himself to a pauper child’s needs and wants could not be any way evil, and Mark’s duty of surveillance was rapidly becoming a duty of protection, and all the more urgent for that.

He had seen Joscelin and Lazarus cross the highroad and seek their vantage-point over the valley, to watch the afternoon hunt set forth, and he had seen Joscelin return with Bran dancing and chattering and demanding at his side. Now the two of them were sitting under the churchyard wall, blamelessly absorbed in the whittling of a lump of wood brought from the fuel-store. He had only to take a few steps out from the doorway to see them, Bran’s fair head, with its primrose down of new hair, stooped close over the large, deft hands that pared and shaped with such industrious devotion. Now and again he heard gleeful laughter. Something was taking shape there that gave delight. Brother Mark gave thanks to God for whatever caused such pleasure to the poor and outcast, and felt his heart engaged in the cause of whoever brought such blessings about.

He was also human enough to feel curiosity as to what marvels were being produced there under the wall, and after an hour or so he gave in to mortal frailty and went to see. Bran welcomed him with a shout of pleasure, and waved the whittled horse at him, crude, spirited, without details, but an unmistakable horse, one and a half hands high. The carver’s hooded and veiled head was bent over a work of supererogation, gouging out from another fistful of wood the features of a recognizable child. Eyes unwarily bright and blue flashed a glance upwards now and then to study Bran, and sank again to the work in hand. In two whole hands, unblemished, smooth, sunburned, young. He had forgotten to be cautious.

Brother Mark returned to his post confirmed in an allegiance for which he had no logical justification. The little head, already live before it had any shaping but in the face, had enlisted him beyond release.

The afternoon passed so, the light faded to a point where artistry was no longer possible. Mark could not see his figures, which in any case were completed, and he was sure that Joscelin Lucy - he had a name, why not acknowledge it? - could not see to continue his carving, and must have abandoned or finished his little portrait of Bran. Just after the lamps were lighted within, the boy burst in, flourishing it for his tutor’s approval with small, excited shrieks of joy.

“Look! Look, Brother Mark! This is me! My friend made it.”

And it was he, no question, rough, balked here and there by the obstinate grain of the wood and an inadequate knife, but lively, pert and pleased. But his friend who had made it had not followed him in.

“Run,” said Brother Mark, “run and show it to your mother, quickly. Give it to her, and she’ll be so cheered - she’s down today. She’ll like it and praise it. You go and see!” And Bran nodded, and beamed, and went. Even his gait was becoming firmer and more gainly now he had a little more flesh on him and was eating regularly.

Brother Mark rose and left his desk, as soon as the boy was gone. Outside the light was dimming but still day. Almost an hour yet to Vespers. There was no one sitting under the churchyard wall. Down the grassy slope to the verge of the highroad, without haste, as one taking the late air, Joscelin Lucy’s tall, straight figure moved, paused at the roadside to see all empty, crossed, and slipped down to where the old man Lazarus still sat alone and aloof.

Brother Mark forsook his desk, and followed at a discreet distance.

Down there beneath Lazarus’s tree there was a long pause. In the shadows two men stirred, there were words exchanged, but few; plainly those two understood each other very well. Out of the dimness where a hooded figure had stooped and vanished, another figure emerged, outlined against the pallidly luminous sky, tall, lissome, young, unshrouded and uncowled, in blessedly dark and plain clothing that melted away into shade as he moved. He leaned to the tree again. Mark thought that he stooped to a hand, since there was no cheek offered him. The kiss proper by rights between blood-kin was certainly given.

The leper gown remained among the shades. Evidently he would not take the repute of Saint Giles with him into whatever peril he was going out to encounter. Joscelin Lucy, owner here of nothing in the world but what he was and what he wore, stepped out and dropped away down the slope with long, light strides, into the valley. Half an hour now to Vespers, and still dangerously light in the open.

Brother Mark, determined now on his duty, made a wary circle round the old man’s sheltering tree, and followed. Down the steep slope, a light, springy leap over the mill leat for Joscelin, a more awkward and ungainly jump for Mark, and on to the brook. Gleams of light flashed out of the stony bed. Mark got his sandalled feet wet, his vision uncertain in this light, but made the further shore without more damage, and set off along the brookside meadows with the tall young figure still in view.

Halfway along the floor of the valley towards the abbey gardens, Joscelin drew off from the brook into the fringes of woodland and copse that closed in on the meadows. Faithfully Brother Mark followed, slipping from tree to tree, his eyes growing accustomed now to the fading light, so that it did not seem to fade at all, but remained constant and limpid, free as yet of the nightly mist. Looking to his right, Mark could see clearly the outlines of his monastery against the last rosy light of the sunset, roofs and towers and walls, looming above the brook, the serene rise of the pease-fields, and the walls and hedges of the enclosed gardens beyond.

The twilight came; even on the open sward colors put on their final lucent glow before the dusk washed them all into soft shades of gray. Among the trees all was shadow, but Mark, cautiously slipping from bush to bush, could still discern the one shadow that moved. His ear caught also the sounds of movement ahead, deep among the trees, an uneasy stirring and sidling, and then suddenly a soft, anxious whinnying, hastily hushed, he thought, by a caressing hand. A voice whispered, hardly as loudly as the rustle of leaves, and the same hand patted gently at the solid, sleek shoulder. There was joy and hope in the sounds, as clearly as if the words had carried to him.

From his hiding-place among the trees, some yards away, Brother Mark saw dimly the looming pallor that was the head and neck of the horse, silver-gray, an inconvenient color for such a nocturnal enterprise. Someone had kept faith with the fugitive, and brought his mount to the tryst. What was to happen next?

What happened next was the small sound of the bell for Vespers carried clearly but distantly across the brook.

At about this same hour Brother Cadfael was also brought up short by the apparition of a light gray horse, and halted his mule to avoid startling it away, while he considered the implications.

He had not hurried away from Godric’s Ford, feeling it incumbent upon him to give the superior at least a credible account of his errand here, and he had found the ruling sister hospitable and garrulous. They had few visitors, and Cadfael came with the recommendation of his cloth. She was in no hurry to part with him until she had heard all about the frustrated wedding party at the abbey, and the excitement that had followed. Nor was Cadfael disposed to refuse a glass of wine when it was offered. So he took his leave somewhat later than he had expected.

Avice of Thornbury was still at work in the garden when he mounted and rode, tramping the soil firm round her seedlings as vigorously and contentedly as before, and the plot almost filled. With the same purposeful energy she would climb the steps of the hierarchy, as honest and fair-minded as she was ambitious, but ruthless towards weaker sisters who would fall before her for want of her wits, vigor and experience. She gave Cadfael a cheerful wave of her hand, and the dimple in her cheek dipped and vanished again. He mused on the irrepressible imprint of former beauty as he rode away, and wondered if she would not have to find some way of suppressing a quirk that might be so disconcerting to bishops, or whether, on the contrary, it might not yet prove a useful weapon in her armory. The truth was, he could not choose but respect her. More to the point, such evidence as she gave, with her unmistakable forthrightness, no one would dare try to refute.

He made his way back steadily but without haste, letting the mule choose his own pace. And at about the hour of Vespers he was jogging in deepening twilight along the green ride, not far from the spot where Huon de Domville had died. He recognized the oak as he passed, and it was some minutes later, with the lighter spaces of the meadows already in view between the trees, that he became aware of rustling movements on his right, keeping pace with him at a little distance. Caution prompted him to halt the mule and sit silent, straining his ears, and the sounds continued, with no attempt at stealth. That was reassuring, and he resumed his way quietly, still listening. Here and there, where the bushes thinned, he caught the silvery pallor of the beast that moved with him. A horse, slender and built for speed, pale as a spirit flickering between the branches. In Holy Writ, he thought, it was Death who rode the pale horse. Death, however, appeared to have dismounted somewhere. No one was riding this gray, his elaborate saddle was empty, his rein loose on his neck.

Cadfael dismounted in his turn, and led his mule gently aside towards the apparition, coaxing softly, but the gray, though he had drawn close to them for company, took fright at being approached, and started away into the thicker woods beyond. Patiently Cadfael followed, but as often as he drew near the gray horse cantered away to a distance again, leading him still deeper into the woods. Here the hunters had surely threaded their paths during the afternoon, and through these copses they must have returned only very recently, as the light failed, each man making his own way back. One of them had either been thrown, failed to recapture his startled horse, and ended the journey ignominiously on foot, or else …

Suddenly the gray horse reappeared ahead, entire and graceful, in the comparative light of a small, grassy clearing, and the faint radiance of starlight, stooped his head for a moment to crop at the turf, and as Cadfael closed in, tossed heels and mane once more, and made off into the trees on the other side. And this time Cadfael did not follow.

In the small arena of grass a man lay on his back, curled black beard pointing at the sky, long black hair flung up from his head, arms spread abroad, crooked and clawing, one at grass, the other at air. A brocaded cap lay in the grass above his head, visible only by reason of its white plume. And aside by some yards from his empty right hand, something long and thin managed to catch out of the dimness enough light to cast a metallic gleam. Brother Cadfael groped cautiously and found a hilt, and a lean blade the length of a man’s hand and wrist. He smoothed a finger along it, and finding it unblooded, left it where it lay. Let it speak clearer by a better light. Now in the dusk there was little he could do, beyond feeling after the beat of the blood and the hammer of the heart, and finding neither. On his knees beside the dead man, peering close and avoiding his own shadow, he concentrated upon the face, and even in the dimness knew it congested and gaping, the eyes starting, the tongue protruding and bitten.

Like Huon de Domville, Godfrid Picard had been met in the way, riding home, and had not survived the meeting.

Brother Cadfael left everything here as he had found it, abandoned the half-Arab gray to his own wilful devices, and rode for the abbey at the best pace the surprised mule could be induced to raise.