Mark had made a little desk for him, the appropriate size for his spindly eight years, and on this day he trimmed a leaf of old, cleaned vellum for his use, leaving the frayed strips he had removed on his own desk close by. The schoolroom was a cramped corner of the hall, close to a narrow window for light. Sometimes they ended using up the rest of the leaf in children’s drawing games, at which Bran could usually win. The leaf could always be cleaned and used again and again, until it wore too thin and frayed away.
Mark went out to find his pupil. The day was clear, but the sunlight moist and mild. Many of the lepers would be out along the fringes of the highroads with their clapper-dishes, keeping their humble distance from all traffic, but crying their appeal to those who passed. But close to his accustomed place beside the cemetery wall Lazarus was sitting, tall, straight-backed, head erect in its shrouding hood and veil. Close beside him, leaning comfortably upon his thighs, was Bran, both hands raised with spread fingers holding a web of coarse thread, with one side of it caught in his teeth. The man’s hands shared the spread of the web. They were playing the old game of cat’s-cradle, and the boy was bubbling with laughter round the cord he nibbled.
It was pleasant and cheering to see old age and childhood in harmony together, and Brother Mark hesitated to break into their concentration. He was about to withdraw and leave them to their game, but the child had caught sight of him, and let fall his tether to call out hastily: “I’m coming, Brother Mark! Wait for me!”
He unwound his fingers from the web, said a blithe farewell to his playmate, who unlaced the thread without a word, and ran willingly to slip his hand into Mark’s, and skip beside him into the hall.
“We were only filling up the time, till you were ready for me,” said the boy.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay out and play, while the weather’s mild like this? You may, of course, if you wish. We can learn in the dark evenings, all the winter long by the fire.”
“Oh, no, I want to show you how well I can do the letters you taught me.”
He had towed Brother Mark indoors, and was at his desk and smoothing the fresh sheet of vellum proudly before him, and still it had not dawned on Mark what he had just witnessed. It was the sight of the thin, careful hand gripping the quill that finally brought enlightenment. He drew in breath so sharply that Bran looked up quickly, in the belief that he must be doing something either very badly, or unexpectedly well, and Mark made haste to reassure and praise him.
But how could he have failed to recognize what he was seeing? The height matched, the erect carriage was right, the width of the shoulders under the cloak—everything was as it should be. Except that both hands from which Bran had been in the act of lifting their web of thread had all their fingers, and were smooth, supple and shapely, a young man’s hands.
Nevertheless, Brother Mark said never a word to the superior of the hospital, or to any other, of what he had discovered, nor did he make any move to confront the interloper. What impressed him most, and caused him to hold his hand, was the unanimity with which his afflicted flock had opened to receive the fugitive, surely with barely a word said, and nothing explained, and had closed about him in the silent solidarity of shared misfortune. Not lightly would he presume to turn back that tide, or dispute the lightness of that judgment.
The hunters came back from their fruitless search with the fall of darkness. Guy, a very reluctant conscript, tramped into the chamber he shared with Simon, kicked off his boots, and lay back on his bed with a great gusty sigh of exasperation.
“Well for you, that you escaped that penance! Hours of draggle-tailing it through the bushes and peering into cottage pig-styes, and scaring out molting hens. I swear I stink of muck! Canon Eudo came bustling back from the church and hunted us all out, but his zeal didn’t run as far as volunteering for the foul work himself. He went back to his prayers— may they do the old man’s soul some good!”
“And you’ve seen nothing of him? Of Joss?” asked Simon anxiously, pausing with one arm in the sleeve of his best cotte.
“If I had, I should have looked the other way, and kept main quiet about it.” Guy smothered a huge yawn, and stretched his long legs at ease. “But no, never a glimpse. The sheriff’s got a cordon round the town that should keep in even a mouse, and they’re planning a slow drive further out on the north side tomorrow, and if that fails, on the brook side the next day. I tell you, Simon, they’re set on taking him. Did you hear they even ransacked the grounds of this house? And found he, or some fellow, had been hiding in one of the outhouses down by the wall?”
Simon completed the donning of his coat, glumly thoughtful. “I heard it. But it seems he was long gone. If it was he.”
“Do you think he may be already out and away? Why should we not at least leave the old man’s stable unlocked tonight? Or move Briar to the open one in the court? A small chance is better than none.”
“If we even knew where he might be … But I’ve been thinking,” agreed Simon, “that at least we’d better have the poor beast out into daylight again, and find him some exercise. Who knows, if I was seen riding him, and Joss got word of it, he might get in touch.”
“I see you no more believe in this charge than I do,” observed Guy, lifting his rumpled head to give his friend a sharp glance. “Nor in that wretched business of the necklace in his saddle-bag, either. I wonder which misbegotten dog among the servants got his orders to hide it there! Or do you suppose the old man saw to it himself? He was never afraid of his own dirty work, as long as I’ve known him.” Guy had been in the baron’s service from twelve years old, beginning as a page fresh from his father’s house, and had even acquired a kind of detached affection for his formidable lord, who had never had occasion to turn formidable to him. “But still, it was a foul way to make away with him,” he said. “And I do still wonder…. If Joss was mad with rage—and he had reason to be—I would not be ready quite to stake my soul he did not kill him. Even that way!”
“But I would,” said Simon with certainty.
“Ah, you!” Guy rose indulgently and clapped his fellow on the shoulder. “Where others hold opinions, you know! Be careful you don’t trip yourself some day by trusting too far. And now I look at you,” he added, twitching the collar of Simon’s best coat into immaculate neatness, “you’re very fine tonight. Where are you off to?”
“Only to the Picards at the abbey. A common courtesy, now the worst of the day’s over and the dust settling. They came close to becoming his kin, they’ll have to be allowed a part in the mourning for him. It costs nothing to defer to the man as elder and adviser until my uncle’s buried. There’ll be messages to send out to my aunt in the nunnery at Wroxall, and one or two distant cousins. Eudo can make himself useful doing the scribing, he has the right flowery style.”
“I warn you,” said Guy, rising lazily to go and demand hot water for his ablutions, “the sheriff and Eudo between them will drive you out with the rest of us to take part in their sweep tomorrow. They’re bent on hanging him.”
“I can always look the other way, like you,” said Simon, and departed to do his duty by one who had almost become a kinsman, and had hoped by this time to have a kinsman’s rights.
Iveta lay in her bed, with Brother Cadfael’s poppy draught measured and ready to her hand, and his. promise that it would bring her sleep like a small, warm core of comfort in her mind. But she did not want to sleep yet. There was a kind of passive pleasure in being here alone in the room, even though she knew that Madlen was within call. They had so seldom left her alone all these weeks, the oppression of their presence had been like a shadow cutting her off from the sun. Only yesterday, and only for those meager minutes, and even then with an eye on her from the distance, had they sent her out to dispose herself where she must be noticed, and might be questioned, so that she might give the right answers, and display the right assured calmness of consent in her hateful destiny. And all the time they had known that Joscelin was not a prisoner, but somewhere at liberty, even if his liberty was that of a hunted man.