The leper's return ktm-6

by Michael Jecks

“Christ’s Blood!”

  “Good morning, Sir Baldwin,” said Edgar suavely. “I am glad Chops managed to waken you so quickly.”

  Baldwin peered at him wearily. “There are times, Edgar, when I wonder why I don’t look for a new steward of my household.”

  “It’s morning, sir, and you asked to be woken early so that you could get back to Crediton.”

  “Oh!” Baldwin clutched at his head as he sat up. He closed his eyes, then daringly opened one into a slit. “I think I drank more wine than usual last night.”

  “I think that is a fair comment, sir.”

  “I remember now why I prefer not to drink too much,” Baldwin muttered as he came to his feet.

  “But the evening went very well,” said Edgar, spreading out the knight’s tunic and inspecting it doubtfully. “This is torn.”

  “The dog caught it last night.”

  Edgar left his master to dress himself. Out in the hall once more, he saw that the fire was blossoming flames, and set more logs alongside to dry thoroughly. Returning from the log store, he met Hugh coming through after waking his own master, and the pair of them entered the hall to find Emma leaving it.

  She glowered at them. There was no proof, but she was convinced that these men were responsible for her confinement the previous night. That dog had been left outside her room to prevent her protecting her mistress.

  Emma was not interested in her mistress’ attraction to Sir Baldwin. To the maid, one man was pretty much the same as any other, although she had respected and felt sympathy for Sir Ralph de Liddinstone. It was the comparison between the two that made her feel such disgust for the knight of Furnshill. Ralph would never have invited all his bondsmen and freeholders to a feast such as Baldwin had held the night before; the idea was laughable. No, Sir Ralph was a real nobleman, in Emma’s eye. He was strong, and demonstrated his strength by imposing his will on his tenants, whereas the feeble Furnshill knight thought it better to pander to them.

  In truth, the virulence of her loathing for Baldwin was based on the simple conviction that once her mistress had enjoyed a true, honorable, powerful knight, she would demean the memory of the man by wedding herself to a weakly article like Baldwin. That was why Emma was determined to prevent any possibility of a match between the two; and why she was seized with rage at having been effectively locked in her room the night before, with that slavering hound wandering outside her door. It had stopped her from walking with her mistress and protecting her from Sir Baldwin’s pathetic attempts at courtly lovemaking.

  It was the first time in a long while that Emma had been so effectively thwarted, and she was furious that these two uncultured, common peasants could have succeeded. And now she had to bring the reward to the knight. It made her gorge rise.

  Hugh quailed under her piercing gaze, and dropped back so that Edgar was a little in front and shielding him. She looked Edgar up and down contemptuously. In her hand was a rough bundle. After a moment’s silence, she thrust it into his hands.

  He looked at it with some surprise. “What’s this?”

  “It’s for your master. From my lady. She asked me to tell you to give it to him.”

  Edgar took the light package straight to his master. Baldwin was about to leave his room, and gave his servant a surprised glance when he appeared.

  “What?”

  “This, sir. It’s for you, apparently.”

  Baldwin frowned at it, then motioned Edgar into his room. The servant took it to the bed and untied the cord that bound it. Inside, he found a bright crimson cloth. Shaking it out, he stared.

  “A new tunic?”

  Baldwin felt the fine woollen cloth. “Do you remember? She said she would make me a new tunic last year at Tavistock.” He glanced down ruefully at his old white, stained and worn robe. “I think I had better get changed,” he sighed.

  His head felt as if it was about to fall from his shoulders. When he opened his eyes, everything was misted and befogged, as if he was looking through a badly finished glass window. Movement of any sort was agony; even blinking brought a stab of pain to his temples.

  Gradually, as he recovered his senses, John realized where he was. He was lying on the floor of his room, beside the fire he had been trying to build. He reached out a hand, and slowly, with infinite care, eased himself onto his belly. As he tried to lever himself up, simultaneous bolts like white-hot brands seared his head and leg. Gasping, he had to let himself flop to the ground, and passed out.

  It was not until the sun was already up and shining in through the open door that he could take any interest in his surroundings again. From the light coming in, he could survey the room. It was clear that someone had ransacked the place. All his belongings were all over the floor, his trunk was opened, and his chairs and tables upset. It made him give a wry grin. “Too late, lads!” he whispered.

  At last he could make a second attempt to move. He gradually forced himself into a position from which he could crawl, and inched his way toward the door, sweat beading his brow. It took all his strength to do so without screaming. It was ironic, he thought, that the only thing he had brought with him from Ireland was this: his stoicism.

  Outside the door was his little rainbutt, and beside that his stool. He stared at them, teeth gritted. It seemed an immense distance, but he was determined to get there; he needed water, and he had to get into the daylight to inspect his wounds. The ground was hard, and each time his leg dragged over a pebble or scraped over a rough patch of dried mud, he bit his lip to keep from swearing.

  It took the very last atom of his energy to hoist himself on to the stool. Then, before he looked at his leg, he forced himself to thrust his head under the freezing water. Coming up blowing and panting, the liquid streaming from his face, he felt quickly nauseous, and had to swallow hard to keep the bile at bay, but the feeling soon passed, and he could sink back on the stool with a grunt and a gasp.

  Only then did he look down at his leg. The foot was twisted, and he couldn’t bear to touch his knee, much less move it. When he gingerly touched his head, it felt as if someone had been beating it like a bolt of iron on an anvil. Both sides of his skull were bruised and swollen. Wincing and shaking with pain and reaction, he squinted at his gate: it hung open. Behind him was the storage shed where he kept his ale, and he felt his mouth water at the thought of a strong draft, but he rejected it as being beyond his power.

  His leg was broken, near the knee. He stared at it grimly. His head felt as if it was being ruthlessly sawn in two, and the sensation wasn’t helped by the occasional impression that his vision was doubling. He wanted to throw up, but couldn’t afford the luxury; he must get help, go and see a surgeon or a monk, and get his leg mended. But to do that he must somehow get into town, and he couldn’t crawl the whole way. If he lived down toward the center of town, he could simply call from his door-but if he had lived in the town itself, he wouldn’t have been attacked: his screams would have been heard. Not that he’d managed to make much noise last night, he reminded himself glumly.

  No, nobody was going to come up here. It wasn’t on the beaten track, and if it was, nobody would be likely to spot him in his yard so far from the path.

  John had been a soldier. He knew a little about fixing broken bones, and he eyed his ruined leg sourly for a while. The only way he was going to get help was if he could get himself down to the church to demand it. He took out his knife, doffed his jacket, and began to hack the cloth into strips.

  When Baldwin entered his hall, he felt more than a little self-conscious. His new tunic was of a bright red hue, more colorful than anything he had possessed before, and he could see that Simon was startled to see him so resplendent.

  The knight ignored his friend, instead walking to the quiet woman near the fire. She was clothed in a new tunic of bright red velvet, and as he surveyed it, he recognized the cloth. It was that which he had bought for her in Tavistock.

  “My lady, I am flattered and honored by your gift.”<
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  If he sounded a littly stiffly formal, his face belied it. Jeanne smiled back at him, delighted to see how the color suited him. It was twelve months ago that she and Margaret had bought the cloth, and Jeanne had quickly made up the tunic when she returned home after that first meeting, but it had not seemed right, somehow, to merely send it to him with her compliments. She had wanted to see him wear it for the first time, and now, to be able to see how his face was softened by the color, and by his pleasure, she felt her heart swell with pride that she had achieved this on her own, with only her skill at needlework. “It is my pleasure, Sir Baldwin. I am delighted to see that it fits as well as I had hoped.”

  Margaret smiled, and as she felt her husband prepare to offer a humorous sally, shoved a warning arm through his.

  “Do you recognize this cloth?” Jeanne asked.

  “It is the material I bought you in Tavistock,” he smiled.

  She heard Emma cluck her tongue at her side, but ignored it. “Yes. I have not worn it until now. I wanted to put it on for the first time when you had your gift from me.”

  “Perhaps when you have finished admiring each other’s attire, we can get down to Crediton and find this thief and murderer?” Simon suggested drily.

  Baldwin threw him an irritated look, but Jeanne laughed out loud and pushed him toward the bailiff. “I think your other guest is keen to be off.”

  “What about some food first?”

  Simon indicated a small satchel and wineskin. “It’s ready! We can eat on our journey.”

  With a bad grace, Baldwin submitted, and soon the two men, with Edgar in their train, were on their way, the knight taking the leading position.

  As they began the long, shallow descent from Cadbury toward the town, Simon took a deep gulp of wine. “Where to first?”

  “The leper house. I want to speak to Ralph.” 18

  W hen they arrived at the chapel’s little gate, they found the monk already waiting, a stout cudgel in his hand.

  “Sir Baldwin, I am so glad you could come, sir.”

  “Why? Has something happened?”

  “Hadn’t you heard? I assumed you must have. We had two men stoned last night-a recent inmate, and a travelling man. Both had rocks hurled at them; they could have been killed!”

  Baldwin dropped from his horse and tied it to a branch. “Show me!” he instructed.

  Behind him, Edgar sprang down easily enough, but Simon was less keen. He swung his leg over his rounsey’s rump, and knotted the reins over another branch, but he entered the compound unwillingly. He had never before been into a leper colony.

  There were many laws to protect the public from lepers, and they all had one aim, to acknowledge God’s punishment. Lepers were defiled, and it was the duty of society to exclude them. Now, walking into the chapel’s grounds, Simon felt as if he was entering the very heart of pollution and decay. He could almost sense the vapor given off by the foul, diseased people as if it was reaching out to him, trying to grasp him in its chilly grip. It was perverse to go into a place of such hideous danger.

  At his side he felt Edgar’s presence, and was grateful for it. The servant, still more than his master, seemed to exude confidence and strength, and Simon kept close to him, as though a little of it could rub off on him-and as if there might be some prophylactic merit in numbers. For his part, he was fearful to the point of feeling sick-not merely queasy, but genuinely close to vomiting.

  Ralph led them at a smart pace past the church, along a patch of lawn, which was rimed with hoar-frost, and into one of the little buildings.

  Baldwin glanced in, and almost drew back at the smell. It was not only the stench of disease, but of unwashed bodies, dirty clothes, and filth. He had to swallow hard before he could steel himself to cross the threshold.

  The brother moved confidently to a shadowed corner, but the knight had to pause again, this time to accustom his eyes to the darkness. It was as if the disgusting fumes were clogging all his senses, even his eyes, and blinding him. It was impossible to see anything at first. Then, thankfully, the monk struck a flame from flint and steel, and Baldwin could look about him.

  It was merely a hovel. There was a hearth in the middle, and two straw-filled palliasses lay at either side. Ralph stood between the two, candle held high to illuminate his patients.

  “Quivil!” Baldwin exclaimed.

  “Sir Baldwin?”

  The voice was strained, but it was not merely the hoarseness of the leprosy that made the voice feeble. Baldwin motioned, and Ralph held the light nearer. By it the knight saw the bruises, the clotted blood over the bridge of the nose, the long, ragged slash down one cheek where the flesh had been torn like cloth.

  “Who dared do this?” Baldwin hissed.

  “It was the good gentlefolk of this pleasant town,” said another voice, and Baldwin turned and peered at the man on the other bed.

  Thomas Rodde grimaced as the candle came closer, shutting his eyes against the glare.

  “Why should they do this to you?”

  “They fear us. That makes them hate us. And it only takes a couple of stupid comments about how a leper might have seduced a girl, for drunks to decide to take revenge.”

  “This was done by drunks, you say?”

  “Oh yes. At least, I assume they were. They had an interesting vocabulary; not the sort of thing I’d expect sober men to use.”

  “Did you recognize them?”

  Quivil spoke again. “Arthur, and Jack the smith…” The names were all familiar to Baldwin. None was a great troublemaker, but all were known to take their own action when the fancy took them, rather than troubling the officers of the law.

  “Jack,” he mused, then shot a glance at the other bed again. “You’re not from this town, are you? Your accent is strange.”

  “No, sir. I hail from London originally, although I have been travelling in the north of the country in recent years. I only came to this place a few weeks ago. Now I begin to regret it.”

  “I cannot blame you,” Baldwin smiled sympathetically. “It is not the kind of welcome I would appreciate either, if I was a newcomer. Have you caused insult to any man since you arrived?”

  “Me?” Thomas Rodde was driven to laugh at such an innocent question. When he spoke again, his voice had lost all trace of humor, and his eyes were cold. “What do you think, Sir Knight? Look on me! I used to be a comely enough man: hale, powerful and wealthy. Now? Yes-look on me! I am a shell, something for men and women of all conditions to avoid, pityingly perhaps, but with revulsion. Look on me, Sir Knight! I insult all by existing!”

  “I make no apology, friend, for all I am trying to do is discover who could have had reason to wound you,” Baldwin said soothingly. “You must know that I need to ask questions to find out why this happened.”

  “You have been told who was responsible.”

  “And these men could have got it into their heads to do this,” agreed the knight, “but I always expect to find some other reason to explain why. Men do not suddenly go mad and throw stones at others, no-not even at lepers-without good cause, in my experience. Do you know of any reason why these men should take it into their heads to assault you in the streets?”

  Seeing that both lepers were silent, Ralph interjected, “I know why, Sir Baldwin.”

  The knight could see that the leper master had worked himself into an angry, bitter mood. His lips were pursed, his eyes unblinking. The hand that held the candle didn’t shake, but the other was working steadily, the middle finger clicking its nail against that of the thumb to create an irritated percussion.

  “Why, then, Brother?”

  “Come with me!”

  Ralph led the way out of the hovel and over the grass toward the church. Opening the door of the chapel, he thrust it open and strode inside, his shoes making a strange flapping noise as he passed over the cobbles.

  Simon walked along behind Baldwin, wondering what the monk could be about to show them. He felt a strange prem
onition that another dead man was at the heart of it, and his expectation seemed to be fulfilled when he came upon the aisle and saw the hearse before the altar. The simple metal frame, draped with its cheap black cloth, with the three candles in each of the triangular brackets at head and foot, obviously covered another dead body, and Simon took a deep swallow. He had seen enough dead men in his time, and almost all of them were the victims of violence, but he had never lost his squeamishness. It was different when the body was that of a man who had died in his sleep after a long and useful life, his family and friends at his bedside, the priest ready to give comfort to the passing spirit; then it was a natural, an acceptable event.

  Here, in the chapel of St. Lawrence’s, Simon knew that the body beneath the draped hearse would be that of a leper, someone who had lived out his last years in pain and suffering, always aware that those who had been his friends and relations now despised him for his appalling disease.

  It was with unutterable relief that he realized the priest was not heading toward it. Instead Ralph turned, made his obeisance, and went out to a small chamber at the side. As Simon came closer, he could hear a strange sound. Approaching the door, he realized it was a subdued moaning that issued from within. At first the bailiff was fearful what he might discover inside, but as the monk shoved the door wide, he saw it was only a young woman.

  Baldwin stopped. “Mary? Mary Cordwainer?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Her eyes were red and swollen from weeping-that was the first thing Simon noticed about her. They appeared luminous in the gloom of the dark room, which was little more than a cupboard beside the altar, a kind of lean-to affair at the side of the church which was used as a storeroom for brushes and other essentials necessary to clean the place.

  Ralph threw his arm toward her. “Ask her-ask Mary what was going on last night!”

  “Mary? We have come from Edmund and his friend-you know that they were beaten? Can you tell us anything about it?”

  The knight’s voice, so calm and gentle, was enough to help her take control of herself. She took two deep breaths; each racked her frame, as if she was about to sob anew. She looked at her hands, seeing their cracked and dried skin, and held them over her eyes while a convulsive shudder shook her, and then let them fall.