Leper of Saint Giles

by Ellis Peters

  “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 her
e 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.

  “N
o, 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.