The Leper of Saint Giles (3 page)

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.”