The Leper of Saint Giles (9 page)

Round about him he saw all manner of maimings and disfigurements, and found himself possessed unexpectedly by an overwhelming and unaccustomed humility. Not for a long time had he paid such devout attention to the words of the office, or felt himself so truly drawn into a company at worship.

As for the watch on the road, outside, Lazarus had confided it to the little boy Bran, who knew very well the appearance of the man for whom he was to watch. All was being done for Joscelin by others, and as at this moment there was no resistance he could offer, and no repayment he could make, but to bow his head fervently among the rest and give profound thanks for present mercies. And so he did.

Chapter Five

THEY HAD ROUSED IVETA EARLY, for she had an elaborate toilet to make. Agnes and Madlen bathed, dressed and adorned her, swept up the gold mane of her hair in a dozen shining braids, coiled it in a filigree net, and bound it in a gold circlet stuck with stones. From the coronal a veil of gilt thread hung round neck and shoulders, over the stiff gold broidery of her gown. She submitted to all with a mute tongue and an icy face, so pale that her ivory ornaments looked dun by comparison. She turned obediently under their hands, bent her head as they instructed, did all that was demanded of her. When she was ready they stood her in the midst of the chamber, posed like a gowned statue for a saint’s niche, every fold of her dress coaxed out to perfection, and ordered her not to move, for fear of creasing her splendor. She stood as they had placed her and made no complaint, all the time that they were adorning themselves no less splendidly.

Her uncle came, walked round her with narrowed eyes and critical grimace, twitched the folds of her veil into more severe symmetry, and expressed himself satisfied. Canon Eudo came, smooth and sanctimonious, complimented her not so much on her beauty or appropriate grandeur as on her great good fortune in this match, and the gratitude she owed her guardians for achieving it for her. The guests came, admired, envied, and went to take their places in the church.

At the hour of ten, on other days earmarked for High Mass, her attendants formed at her back, and she was led forth into the main porch of the guest-hall on Picard’s arm, ready to go forth to meet her bridegroom when he came.

There was only one thing amiss with the scrupulous arrangements, which up to this moment had worked to perfection. The bridegroom did not come.

No one, not even Picard, ventured to murmur or look askance for the first ten minutes. Huon de Domville was a law to himself, and though this marriage was certainly profitable to him, he regarded it as a condescension on his part. It was ungracious to come late, but no one doubted that he would come. But when ten more minutes had slipped away, and still no formal procession entered at the gatehouse, and no hoofbeats were heard along the Foregate, there began to be a shifting and murmuring, an uneasy shuffling of feet and then a whispering. Iveta stood in the forefront, and awoke out of her frost to the shivering of doubt all around her, and drew breath in wonder. She gave no sign, only the blood began to stir again in her face, and flush into her set lips, softening them into rose-leaves.

Canon Eudo came floating elegantly from the church, but all his graces could not conceal his agitation. He spoke in low tones with Picard, whose brow was growing black and knotted with anxiety. Cadfael, coming late and in haste from the garden to take his place among the brothers, looked only at the bride, and could not take his eyes from the tiny golden doll they had made of her, not a thread of it real but the small, chill face melting among the gilt, and the quickening spark deep in her iris-purple eyes, making its live way up out of drowning fathoms to the light of day.

She was among the first to catch the hurried clatter of hooves along the Foregate. She turned her eyes without daring to turn her head, as Simon Aguilon, in all his wedding finery, rode into the gateway, dropped his bridle into the porter’s hand, and swung hastily down to stride across the great court to the door of the guest-hall, in evident agitation.

“My lord, I pray your pardon! Things have somehow gone amiss, we don’t know how…” He drew in Canon Eudo, the three heads leaned close, and Agnes hovered with pricked ears and drawn brows. The voices spilled abroad, none the less. Both abbot and prior had emerged from the church, and stood at a dignified distance, in contained displeasure. They could not long be ignored.

“Last night, when we left here to return home—I do his bidding, I do not question, how could I? He said to me that he had a fancy to ride a while, and I should go in, and bid the household go to bed, for he wanted no service that night, nor until he should say the word this morning. And so I did! What else? I thought he would be there asleep this morn, when his chamberlain looked in on him. I slept late myself. They shook me awake a good half-hour past Prime, and said he was not in his bed—nor had been, all night long, for the bed was not pressed.” The young man’s voice had risen, all those crowding in could hear. They were silent enough, all intent on that knot of consternation in the midst.

“Father Abbot,” Simon turned to him with a hasty reverence, “we are greatly afraid that something must have happened to my lord. He has not been home all night, since he sent me in and dismissed all attendance. And very surely he would not be absent or late here, had he his freedom and health to keep the tryst. I fear he may have come by an injury, somehow—a fall, perhaps…. Night riding is risky, but he had a fancy for it. It wants only a crippling stone in a hoof, or a fox’s earth…”

“He left you at the gate of the house?” asked Radulfus. “And rode on?”

“Yes, towards Saint Giles. But I do not know which way he took, after that, or where he was bound, if indeed he had some purpose in mind. He told me nothing.”

“It would be a first step,” said Radulfus drily, “to send out along that road for sign or word of him.”

“So we have done, Father, but vainly. The superior at the hospital has seen nothing of him, and we have ridden further along the road without result. Before taking it further I had, of courtesy, to bring word here. But I have spoken to one of the sheriff’s sergeants, who was out with a patrol beating the woodlands for the prisoner they lost, and his men will be keeping watch also for any sign of my lord Domville. He has sent a man to tell the sheriff what has happened. Father, you will understand that I dared not be too quick to raise an alarm or question anything my lord does, but I think now it is time there should be a full search for him. He may be lying somewhere hurt and unable to rise.”

“I think as you do,” said the abbot with decision, and turned courteously to Agnes Picard, who stood attentive and alert at her husband’s side, one hand closed possessively on Iveta’s golden sleeve. “Madam, I trust this distress may not be long, and that we shall find my lord Domville safe and none the worse, only delayed by some trivial circumstance. But it would be well if you would take your niece within, and have her rest in privacy with you, while these gentlemen—and the brothers of our house, too, if they so choose— go and search for the bridegroom.”

Agnes made brief, anxious acknowledgment, and swept the girl away with her, out of sight. The doors of their apartments closed on them. Iveta had not spoken one word.

They saddled up, mounted and rode, all the men among the wedding guests, all the grooms and pages from the bishop’s house, a squad of men-at-arms from the castle, many of the younger brothers and novices on foot, and one of the boy pupils whose long ears had overheard the news, and who had slipped into hiding before he could be herded away into school. He might pay for his truancy later, but he thought it well worth the risk.

Those mounted chose to ride along the Foregate to where Domville had parted from his squire, and been seen continuing towards Saint Giles. Thence they split into two parties, since the roads forked there, and spread out into the verges on either side of either highway. Those afoot took at once to the byways, some threading their way through the woods down-river, some going round by the mill-pond into the valley of the Meole brook, and so upstream through meadows and copses.

Cadfael joined these last. They spread out in a long line, to cover as wide a swathe as possible, and made their way upstream on both sides of the brook from the limit of the abbey grounds. A mounted man would use only good open country or the well-trodden paths and rides in this richly wooded countryside, and to look for him in the first reaches was pointless, if he had begun from his own gateway. They proceeded briskly, therefore, until they had left the abbey precincts well behind, and were strung out across the valley just below the hospital. They could see the little turret of the church just above the bushes at the crest, where the road ran.

From this point they went more slowly and thoroughly, stretching their line to take in more ground. They knew every path here, and threaded each for some distance as they came to it. No doubt others on the opposite side of the Foregate had reached much the same point, and were proceeding in the same way, but as yet there had been no shout anywhere to direct or call off the hunt.

By this time they were probably half a mile beyond Saint Giles, and the sloping fields and light, scattered copses had thickened into woodland. The climb to the road here was steep, and for some distance, until the gradient grew gentler, no paths descended to cross their line. Then they came, as they had known they would, to a broad green ride, a good, smooth plane of turf that came down from the road and narrowed slightly as it entered the denser woods. South-west from the road it ran, twice fording the ends of the brook, which here was narrow and stony, and wandered away, Cadfael recalled, towards the fringe of the Long Forest, a few miles distant.

They had just emerged on to this green track when the truant schoolboy, who had been running in circles ahead of them in his zeal, came rushing back along the path in great excitement, waving an arm towards the groves behind him.

“There’s a horse grazing back there in a clearing! Saddle and harness and all, but no rider!”

And he whirled and darted back, with all of them hard on his heels. The path continued clear and well-used, closely hemmed by trees, and then expanded into a small, lush meadow; and there, placidly cropping the grass under the bordering trees, Huon de Domville’s tall black horse strolled unalarmed, and raised a mildly wondering stare as so many men suddenly bore down on him. All his harness was in order, nowhere any disarray, but of his rider there was no sign.

“If he’d been near his own home stable,” said the excited boy, proudly possessing himself of the bridle, “he’d have gone back to it, and they’d have been warned. But he was on strange ground, so when he got over his fright, he wandered.”

It was good sense, and he was all eagerness to press on. But there might well be that ahead that was not good for a child to see. Cadfael looked at Brother Edmund the infirmarer, who was next to him, and saw the same thought reflected back to him. If horse and rider had parted by reason on some shock or alarm, and they met the horse first, then Huon de Domville had probably been on his way back when mischance befell him; and if he had lain out all night, it meant he was in no good case. A tough, determined man, he would not let minor injury hold him helpless.

“A startled horse bolts forward, not back,” pursued the voluble imp, glowing, “isn’t that right? Shall we go on?”

“You,” said Cadfael, “may have the credit for taking this beast back to the bishop’s house, and telling them there where you found him. Then go back to your lessons. If you make a good story of it you may escape punishment for running away.”

The boy looked first dismayed, and then mutinous, and began to argue.

“Hop!” ordered Cadfael briskly, cutting off his objections. “You may ride him. Here, up with your foot… so!” He cupped a hand, and hoisted the boy into the saddle before he had time to decide whether to be aggrieved or flattered. But the feel of the fine beast under him did the trick. His face became one complacent beam, he gathered the reins importantly, ignored the stirrups that were far too long for him, dug his heels into the satin sides, and chirruped at his mount as casually as if he rode such beasts every day.

When they had watched him far enough along the ride to be sure that he was competent, and would do as he had been bidden, they turned and went on. The glade ended, trees closed in again on the track. Here and there, in places where the grass was thin and the ground soft, they saw the mark of a hoof. They had gone perhaps another quarter of a mile before Brother Edmund, who was leading, suddenly halted.

“He is here.”

The thick, powerful body lay sprawled on its back, head against the roots of a great oak, arms spread. The trees grew close here, and the deep shadows swallowed the rich colors of his clothing, so that the upturned face stared out of a green darkness, suffused with blood, open eyes bulging and reddened. The brutal, muscular quality of the face seemed to have melted and run like wax from a candle. As well the child had been sent back before he could run ahead of them and stumble over this in valiant innocence, and sicken in too early knowledge of good and evil.

Cadfael put Edmund aside and went forward, dropping to his knees beside the motionless body, and in a moment Edmund followed him, and crouched on the other side. He was accustomed to easing old men into their deaths, but deaths as gentle as affectionate care and the company of friends could make it, and this abrupt severing of a vigorous life appalled and daunted him. The two novices and the lay brother who had followed them drew near and stood silent.

“Is he dead?” asked Brother Edmund fearfully, and understood at once that it was a foolish question.

“Dead some hours. Around dawn, it might be. He’s cooling but not cold.” Cadfael lifted the heavy head on his hand, and felt the sticky foulness of congealed blood on his fingers. High at the back of the head, behind and above the left ear, the bald crown bore a ripped bruise, which had oozed blood from a dozen scratches, now drying. Where his head had lain, and for a hand’s-length above, the bole of the oak bore smeared traces of the impact. Cadfael felt delicately over and round the bruise, and the skull seemed to him intact, there was no depression under his touch.

“He was thrown from his horse, and heavily,” ventured Edmund, watching, “and fell on to this oak-bole. Could such a fall kill him?”

“It could,” said Cadfael distractedly, but did not see fit as yet to make plain that it had not.

“Or if he lay out, not regaining his senses—the chill of the night…”

“He has not been here all night long,” said Cadfael. “The dew of the mist is under him. And if he was thrown, you see he was thrown backwards, not forwards, out of the saddle. The horse did not stumble.” For the body lay diagonally half across the path, head against the tree on the right, his feet towards them as they approached from the brook. “It was in the early morning, and he was hurled backwards. He was certainly riding back then to his own household. The path is good, at least for a man who knows, but I should guess there was also some light already, for I think he was riding briskly, to come down so heavily.”