It was plain, however, that they had their fair share of human curiosity like their fellows, for they, too, were out watching the road. Why should not the unfortunate at least be free to stare at their luckier brethren, to envy them if they could manage no better than that, to wish them well in marriage if their generosity stretched so far? A shifting line of dark-gowned figures lined the wattle fence, as animated if not as agile as their healthy fellow men. Some of them Cadfael knew, they had settled here for life, and made the best of their cramped lives among familiar helpers. Some were new. There were always new ones, the wanderers who made their way the length of the land from lazarhouse to lazarhouse, or settled for a while in some hermitage on the charity of a patron, before moving on to new solitudes. Some went on crutches or leaned hard on staves, having feet maimed by the rot of disease or painful with ulcers. One or two pushed themselves along on little wheeled carts. One hunched shapeless against the fence, bloated with sores and hiding a disfigured face within his cowl. Several, though active, went with veiled faces, only the eyes uncovered.
Their numbers varied as the restless wandered on, shunning the town as they must shun all towns, to some other hospice looking out over another landscape. By and large, the hospital here sheltered and cared for twenty to thirty inmates at a time. The appointment of the superior rested with the abbey. Brothers and lay brothers served here at their own request. It was not unknown that attendant should become attended, but there was never want of another volunteer to replace and nurse him.
Cadfael had done his year or more in this labor, and felt no recoil, and only measured pity, respect being so much greater an encouragement and support. Moreover, he came and went here so regularly that his visits were a part of a patient and permanent routine like the services in the church. He had dressed more and viler sores than he troubled to remember, and discovered live hearts and vigorous minds within the mottled shells he tended. He had seen battles, too, in his time in the world, as far afield as Acre and Ascalon and Jerusalem in the first Crusade, and witnessed deaths crueller than disease, and heathen kinder than Christians, and he knew of leprosies of the heart and ulcers of the soul worse than any of these he poulticed and lanced with his herbal medicines. Nor had he been greatly surprised when Brother Mark elected to follow in his steps. He was well aware that here was one step beyond, which Mark was predestined to take without his example. Brother Cadfael knew himself too well ever to aim at the priesthood, but he recognized a priest when he saw one.
Brother Mark had seen him approaching, and came trotting to meet him, his plain face bright, his spiky, straw-colored hair erected round his tonsure. He had a scrofulous child by the hand, a skinny little boy with old, drying sores in his thin fair hair. Mark teased aside the hairs that clung to the one remaining raw spot, and beamed down fondly at his handiwork.
“I’m glad you’re come, Cadfael. I was running out of the lotion of pellitory, and see how much good it’s done for him! The last sore almost healed. And the swellings in his neck are better, too. There, Bran, good boy, show Brother Cadfael! He makes the medicines for us, he’s our physician. There, now, run to your mother and keep by her, or you’ll miss all the show. They’ll be coming soon.”
The child drew his hand free, and trotted away to join the sad little group that yet would not be sad. There was chattering there, a morsel of song, even some laughter. Mark looked after his youngest charge, watched the ungainly, knock-kneed gait that stemmed from undernourishment, and visibly grieved. He had been here only a month, his skin was still tissue-thin.
“And yet he is not unhappy,” he said, marveling. “When no one is by, and he follows me about, his tongue never stops wagging.”
“Welsh?” asked Cadfael, eyeing the child thoughtfully. He must surely have been named for Bran the Blessed, who first brought the gospel to Wales.
“The father was.” Mark turned to look his friend earnestly and hopefully in the face. “Do you think he can be cured? Fully cured? At least he’s fed, now. The woman will die here. In any case—she has grown indifferent, kind enough, but glad to have him off her hands. But I do believe he may yet go back whole into the world.”
Or out of it, thought Cadfael; for if he follows you so assiduously he cannot but get the savor of church or cloister, and the abbey is close at hand. “A bright child?” he asked.
“Brighter than many that are brought up to the Latin, and can reckon and read. Brighter than many a one who goes in fine linen, and with a nurse coddling him. I shall try to teach him somewhat, as I can.”
They walked back together to the doorway of the hospital. The hum of expectant voices had risen, and along the highroad other sounds were gradually drawing near, compounded of the jingling of harness, the calls of falconers, conversation, laughter, the muffled beat of hooves using the grassy verge in preference to the naked road. One of the bridal processions was approaching.
“They say the bridegroom will be the first to come,” said Mark, stepping from the open porch into the dimness of the hall, and leading the way through to the corner where the medicine cupboard was kept. Fulke Reynald, a steward of the abbey and superior of the hospital, had one key; Brother Cadfael held the other. He opened his scrip, and began to stow away the preparations he had brought. “Do you know anything about them?” asked Mark, succumbing to curiosity.
“Them?” murmured Cadfael, preoccupied with his review of the gaps in the shelves.
“These gentlefolk who are coming to marry here. All I know is their names. I should not have paid so much heed,” said Mark, shame-faced, “except that our people here, who have nothing but their sores and maimings, have learned more of it than I have, only God knows how, and it is like a spark warming them. As though anything bright that shines on them is more aid than I can give. Yet all it is, is a wedding!”
“A wedding,” said Cadfael seriously, stacking away jars of salves and bottles of lotion made from alkanet, anemone, mint, figwort, and the grains of oats and barley, most of them herbs of Venus and the moon, “a wedding is the crux of two lives, and therefore no mean matter.” He added the fruits of mustard, which belongs rather to Mars, but provides formidable pastes and poultices to fight malignant ulcers. “Every man and woman who has faced the ordeal,” he said thoughtfully, “must feel concern for those about to face it. Even those who have not, may speculate with sympathy.”
Matrimony was one joust he had never attempted, wide as his experience had been before he entered the cloister; but he had brushed fingertips with it once, and circumvented it more than once. He felt some astonishment, once he began remembering.
“This baron has a famous name, but I know no more of him, except that he’s in good odor, they say, with the king. I think I may once have known an old kinsman of the lady. But whether she’s from the same line is more than I know.”
“I hope she may be beautiful,” said Mark.
“Prior Robert would be interested to hear you say so,” said Cadfael drily, and closed the cupboard door.
“Beauty is a very healing thing,” said Brother Mark, earnest and unabashed. “If she is young and lovely, if she smiles on them and inclines her head as she rides by, if she does not shrink at seeing them, she will do more for those people of mine out there than I can do with probing and poulticing. Here I begin to know that blessedness is what can be snatched out of the passing day, and put away to think of afterwards.” He added, recoiling into deprecation: “Of course it need not be someone else’s wedding feast. But how can we waste that, when it offers?”
Cadfael flung an arm about Mark’s still thin and waiflike shoulders, and hauled him away, out of the dimness within, to the gathering excitement and brightening light without. “Let’s hope and pray,” he said heartily, “that it may be the source of blessedness even to the pair caught up in it. By the sound of it, one of them is due here this moment. Come and let’s see!”
The noble bridegroom and his retinue approached in a shimmer of bright colors, with horn-calls and soft, continuous clamor of harness bells, a cortege stretching fifty paces, and fringed with running servants leading the pack ponies, and two couples of tall deerhounds on leashes. The sorry little straggle of outcasts shuffled forward eagerly the few paces they dared, to see the better those fine fabrics and splendid dyes they could never possess, and set up a muted, awed murmur of admiration as the procession drew level with their wattle fence.