The way back was shorter, since they could make directly for the rear wall of the bishop’s garden, and there was cover all the way. Once or twice Simon, going before, set up a soft whistling, and Joscelin dropped into the bushes, but each alarm passed in a moment, the small sounds that had set it off traced to birds taking flight, or wild things creeping among the dry brush. The wicket in the wall stood ajar as Simon had left it. He went first to open it cautiously and look round within, and then beckoned, and Joscelin dived through it thankfully, and heard it closed and barred behind him. And there was the low wooden fodder-store close against the wall. Within, it smelled of dry grass, and the fine dust stirred by their feet tickled the nose, and stung.
“No one will come here,” said Simon, low-voiced. “The stables in the yard are well stocked. And it’s snug enough lying. Keep close and quiet. I go with my uncle to sup with the abbot tonight, but I’ll bring you meat and drink before then. You’ll dry off nicely here in the hay.”
“It’s a palace,” said Joscelin heartily, and squeezed his friend’s arm with grateful warmth. “I’ll not forget this to you. Whatever happens now, praise God, I shall know there’s one person who refuses to believe me a thief, and one friend I can rely on. But bear in mind, if it comes to it, I’d rather sink alone than drag you down into the muck with me.”
“Leave Simon’s well-being,” said that young man with a confident grin, “to one who loves him well. You take care of your own skin, I’ll vouch for mine. And now I’m gone! He’ll be yelling for me to help him dress for Vespers. That’s the price he pays for supping with the abbot!”
Brother Cadfael marked their presence at Vespers, Huon de Domville somberly splendid for the abbot’s table, in rich crimson and black, Canon Eudo imperturbably demure and ascetic, like a much younger Prior Robert studying for sainthood, but keeping a weather eye on the secular prospects around him, all the same. And in attendance, the young squire Simon Aguilon, curly-haired, athletic and discreet, with a brown, open face stricken into unusual gravity by the events of the day.
The Picards also attended, but the bride, Cadfael noted, did not, nor did the elderly maid. He had caught glimpses of Iveta twice during the later afternoon, but once again with a guardian on either side. She maintained her calm and composed bearing, she wore the same pale but proud and confident face, the slight smile was ready to visit her lips at a glance; but only that once, Cadfael reflected thoughtfully, had she been unquestionably alone, unwatched, at liberty to speak her mind without restraint. And so she had, and confounded all expectation. There was no way of getting round it. She had believed the worst of young Joscelin Lucy, and put him out of her grace with a resolution that seemed far beyond her scope. She was reconciled to her marriage and determined to go through with it, in bitter recoil, perhaps, from a far more pleasing dream which had proved disillusionment on waking.
Then she was all too ingenuous, Cadfael decided, and far too easily convinced. Was there not a cup hidden in the sack of the boy Benjamin, in the Bible story, to make it possible to detain him? And had not the same stratagem been used many times since? But she was very young, and had been, perhaps, so artlessly in love that it took little art to overturn her too rash affection. Yet the trouble with things so obviously suspect, after all, is that they may indeed be true.
He watched the guests cross to the abbot’s lodging after Vespers, and observed the return of Agnes Picard to the guest-hall. There was no room for action, nothing to be done about anything. Cadfael went to his own supper in the refectory, and afterwards to the readings in the chapter-house, but had mislaid, for some reason, both his appetite and his concentration.
The abbot’s guests, no doubt, supped well, but they did not sit very late afterwards. Cadfael had gone to close his workshop before retiring, well after Compline, and was returning to the dortoir when he saw, by the lantern at the gate, Domville and his squire mounting to return to the bishop’s house, and Picard taking his leave of them. Canon Eudo, evidently, was spending the night with the abbot, to see all made ready for the morrow.
They had drank well enough, by the jovial ring of their voices, but certainly not to excess, since Radulfus was an abstemious man himself, and provided as he thought right and fitting, but not beyond. The sharp yellow light distinguished them scrupulously, showed the baron gross, self-indulgent but powerful still, in purse, possessions, body and mind, in no way a small or inconsiderable man. Picard was slenderer, viewed whichever way, a dark, devious, able man, whose subtlety could well complement Domville’s brutal force. Those two together could be formidable to any antagonist. The young man stood patient, assiduous but disinterested, his thoughts probably elsewhere, but his temperament equable. He would not be sorry to heave himself into his bed.
Cadfael watched them ride, saw the youngster hold his lord’s stirrup, almost heard his stifled yawn. He mounted after, light and glad, and fell in at Domville’s elbow, keeping his station neatly with one hand on the rein. He was certainly sober as stone, aware, probably, of his vulnerable situation, as responsible for getting his lord home and bedded. Picard drew back from them, raising a hand in farewell. The two horses walked at leisure out at the gate, and the measured clop of their hooves on the cobbles of the Foregate faded gradually into silence.
Along the Foregate all was dark, but for the faintly luminous quality of moonless starlight, the sky sparkling after several misted days, the air on the clear, near edge of frost. In one or two windows a candle showed. Outside the bishop’s house, where the gate-pillars drew back from the roadway, the wayside trees gave dark green shadow on either flank.
The two horsemen came at an easy walk, and halted briefly in the road, in front of the gates. Their voices, though pitched low, carried clearly in the great stillness.
“Go in, Simon,” said Domville. “I have a fancy to take the air a while. Send the grooms to bed.”
“And your chamber attendants, sir?”
“Dismiss them. Say I want no service tonight, nor until an hour past Prime tomorrow, unless I call. Make sure it’s understood those are my orders.”
The young man bowed his acquiescence without a word. The movement was just perceptible in the utter hush that surrounded it. The man in the shadows, concealing with disciplined stillness an illicit presence thus near the town, heard the slight rustle of a cloak, and the jingle of harness as a horse stirred. Then Simon wheeled obediently and trotted into the courtyard, and Domville shook his bridle and moved onward towards Saint Giles, first at a walk, then breaking into a brisk and purposeful trot.
A shadow among shadows moved along the grassy border of the road after him, with long, uneven strides that made no sound. For a lame man, going upon one foot mangled by disease, he moved at a surprising speed, but he could not maintain the effort for long. But as long as he could hold the steady hoofbeats within earshot, he followed, along the empty Foregate, past the hospice and church, out along the highway beyond. He recognized the moment when the sound, which had been receding steadily, abruptly fell silent, and judged on which side of the road the rider had turned off on to a grassy track. To that spot he continued, no longer in haste.
To the right of the road the ground fell away towards the valley of the Meole brook, and the mill leat that was drawn off from it. Here open woods and scattered copses clothed the slope, below in the valley the trees grew more thickly. Down through this rolling woodland went a grassy ride, wide enough and smooth enough to be ridden safely in the night, with starlight overhead, and half the leaves already shed. By that path Huon de Domville had descended; here the night was empty of sight or sound of him.
The old man turned, and made his way slowly back to Saint Giles, where all his fellows were within doors and asleep, and only he restless and waking. He did not go in, though the outer door was never locked, in case some unfortunate should come in the chill of the night. Before dawn this night might be chill enough, but it was clean and sweet-smelling, and had the pure stillness proper to solitary thought, and he was not sensitive to cold. Outside the fence, in the angle of the cemetery wall, there was a great pile of dried brushings from the final reaping of the grass slope between the hospital and the road. In a day or two it would be carried within to the barn, to store for fodder and litter for the beasts. The old man wrapped his cloak about him, and sat down there on the grass, drawn well back into the stack to have its softness and warmth about him. The clapper-dish that hung at his belt he laid beside him on the ground. There was no human creature stirring about him now to need warning of the presence of a leper.