Out of the darkness along the wall an unexpected voice, low but peremptory, called: “Come! Quickly!”
Joscelin swung towards the invitation instinctively, panting, and half-fell up the grassy slope and into the grasp of a long arm held out to him. A lean, tall figure in a voluminous dark cloak had risen from the ground and was ripping a hasty tunnel open in the stack of drying herbage in the angle of the wall. “Here!” said the voice featureless as the face. “Hide here!”
Joscelin plunged head-first into the heap, and drew it about him frantically. He felt the old man resume his seat on the ground, spread his cloak again, and lean well back against the stack, felt the long spine erect and bony through cloak and gown and grass. Certainly old, certainly a man. The lowered voice might have belonged to either, muffled as it was, but the shoulders pressed well back against him were wide as his own. One hand reached back to grip his knee through the rustling stems, and enjoin stillness, and he froze in instant obedience. The man masking him had a special stillness of his own, a calm that eased Joscelin’s heart and mind by its benevolent contagion.
They were coming. He heard the hoofbeats draw close, heard the foremost horse abruptly pulled up on its haunches, feet sliding on the gravel. He thought that the watcher by the wall had been seen; there was pre-dawn light enough for that, and they had a straight stretch of road ahead of them, and certainly empty. He heard one man dismount, and held his breath in the certainty that he was about to climb the slope.
“Unclean!” called the old man warningly, and clashed the clapper of his dish loudly against the wooden rim. There was wary stillness. The climber had taken heed.
Down the road the second man laughed. “He’d need to be mad to exchange even a gaol for a lazarhouse.” He raised his voice; the old and diseased must also be hard of hearing. “Hark, you, fellow! We’re on the heels of a wretch who’s wanted for thieving. He was headed this way. Have you seen him?”
“No,” said the old man. His voice, besides being muffled behind a veil, was slow in articulation, as if speech gave him trouble; but with labor and patience the words emerged clearly. “I’ve seen no thief.”
“How long have you been sitting there? Have you seen any man pass by here?”
“The night long,” said the arduous voice. “And no one has passed by.”
By the sound of it the two on foot had arrived by this time, out of breath. The four conferred in low tones. “He must have slipped aside into the trees and turned back,” said one. “Turn and take the right of the road. We’ll ride on to the barrier and make sure he’s not wormed his way ahead in cover, and then come back and take the left side.”
The horses stirred and stamped again, and trotted ahead. The two on foot must have turned back to retrace their steps among the trees, beating the bushes for their quarry as they went. There fell a long silence, which Joscelin was afraid to break.
“Stretch out and be easy,” said the old man at last, without turning his head. “We cannot move yet.”
“I have an errand I must do,” said Joscelin, leaning close to the hooded ear to be heard. “For this respite God knows I thank you with all my heart, but I must somehow get to the abbey before daylight, or this liberty you’ve kept for me will not be worth keeping. I have a thing I must do there, for someone else’s sake.”
“What is that thing?” asked the old man equably.
“To prevent, if I can, this marriage they’re making today.”
“Ah!” said the patient, deliberate voice. “Wherefore? And by what means? You may not stir yet, they will be back, and they will look this way and must see all as before. An old leper who has preferred a night under the stars to the cover of a roof—nothing more.” The grass rustled; it might have been the very slight stir of a sigh. “You understood what passed there? Are you afraid of leprosy, boy?”
“No,” said Joscelin, and wavered and reconsidered. “Yes! I was, or I thought I was. I hardly know. I know I am more afraid of failing in what I must do.”
“We have time,” said the old man. “If you are willing to tell me, I am listening.”
Only to such a one, chance met and instantly trusted, could Joscelin have poured out the whole load that weighed on his heart. Suddenly it seemed the most natural thing possible that he should confide without restraint, keep nothing back of his indignant love, the wrong done him, and the greater wrongs done to Iveta. In the middle of his narration the controlling hand pressed his knee for silence and stillness, as the two mounted men passed by again towards the town. And when they were gone, the last echo of hooves lost along the road, he resumed as if the thread had never been broken.
“And you have planned to hide yourself somewhere about the cloister,” mused the old man, at the end of it, “and burst forth to challenge your sometime lord to single combat, and so affront him that he shall not be able to deny you and keep his face?”
“It is the only way I can see,” said Joscelin, though put in such clear terms, he did not think too well of its chances.
“Then be in no haste about it,” said Lazarus, “until daylight comes, for a clapper-dish and a hood and veil can make you faceless and nameless as well as another. One thing I can tell you. Huon de Domville did not lie in his bed this night. He rode out beyond here, turning right from this road, and I have been here every moment since, and unless he knows of another way back, he has not returned. I think he must ride back by the same way he rode out, and until he passes this place, no bridegroom will present himself at the altar. Between us, you and I can make shift to watch for him. If he comes! But how if he never comes?”
It was the strangest night Joscelin had ever passed, and the strangest dawn. Faint mist came with the light, and the rising sun peered through it overhead, while it lay in great swathes in the valley beyond the road. But no Huon de Domville came trotting back towards the bishop’s house.
“Stay in hiding,” said Lazarus at length, “until I come back.” And he rose and went into the hospice, to return presently with a hooded cloak like his own, and a blue linen cloth for a veil. “You may creep out and put them on. If you are not afraid to wear the habit of a dead man? He is in the cemetery there. When they come to die here, they leave such clothing behind, there’s store enough within. The linen they burn, the habits they clean as best they can. A big man he must have been, you’ll find it ample enough.”
Joscelin did all that he was bidden, like a child, or a man in so unpredictable a dream that he must rely on his guide. In such a state it no longer seemed strange that he should open his heart to a leper, accept the protection of the leper cloak, and let himself be led into the hospital where the unfortunates were housed, without conscious fear or revulsion. This was the hand that had been held out to him, and he gripped it warmly and gratefully. He did not even ask how he should pass among the inmates. Surely their number must be known, and he was too large to escape notice. Whether Lazarus had already spoken a word in several ears, or whether the poor know by instinct when one of their fellows is in need, and deploy their movements so subtly as to contain and dissemble him, all those men and women mustered about Joscelin and hid him among them as they assembled in the church for Prime.
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.