“He truly believes Joss killed the old man,” said Simon, shrugging. “No wonder he’s hot after him. All his own plans gone for nothing, and he’s a man who’ll have his revenge at all costs. Will you believe he’s turned against me? I opened my mouth out of turn, and told him flatly I believed Joss never did theft or murder, and he flared at me like wildfire. I’m not welcome to him or his lady any more.”
“Do you tell me?” Guy gaped and sparkled. “And do you know you’re drawn next to him in the line after dinner, when we head further out? Keep a weather eye on Picard, lad, and never turn your back on him, or he might be tempted, if he’s at odds with you. I wouldn’t trust that temper of his too far, and there’s thicker cover where we’re bound.”
He was not very serious, merely exuberant in his relief that his comrade and friend was still at liberty. His attention at the time was on his trencher, for the October air was keen, and provided a healthy young man with a voracious appetite.
“The looks he gave me when he turned me out of Iveta’s room,” admitted Simon ruefully, “you could be right! I’ll keep an eye on him, and be faster in the draw than he. We’re to make our own way back as we please, when the light goes. I’ll ensure I’m far enough ahead of him to keep clear of his blade. In any case,” he said, with a swift private smile, “I have something important to see to before Vespers. I’ll make certain he’s not there to put a bolt through that.” He sat back from the table, satisfied. “Where are you drawn, this time?”
“Among the sheriff’s sergeants, for my sins!” Guy grimaced and grinned. “Is it possible someone has suspected my heart may not be in it? Well, if I turn a blind eye, and they miss taking me up on it, I’m safe enough, they’ll see to that. The sheriff’s a decent man, but vexed and frustrated, with a murdered magnate on his hands, and King Stephen beginning to look this way. No wonder he’s blowing bitter cold.” He pushed back the bench on which he sat, and stretched, drawing breath deep. “Are you ready? Shall we go? I’ll be main glad when we get home this night, and nothing trapped.”
They went out together, down into the valley below Saint Giles, where the beater line was drawing up afresh, to press onward at the same deliberate speed through thicker copses and woodlands, moving south.
From a hillock on the southern side of the highroad, overlooking the broad valley below, two tall, shrouded figures watched the hunters muster and deploy. Over the meadows the strung line showed clearly, before it moved methodically forward and began to thread the open woodlands ahead, each man keeping his dressing by his neighbor on the right, each man keeping his due distance. The air was very faintly misty, but with sunlight falling through the mist, and as the hunters moved in among the trees their clothing and harness winked and flashed through the leaves like motes of bright dust, scintillating and vanishing, reappearing to vanish again. As they swept slowly south, the watchers above as slowly turned to maintain their watch.
“They will keep up this drive until dark,” said Lazarus, and at length swung about to view the deserted fields from which the hunt had been launched. All was quiet and still there now, the stir, the murmur, the play of colors all past. Two threads of silver made the only sparkles of light in the muted sunbeams, the nearer one the mill leat drawn off to feed the abbey pools and mill, the further one the Meole brook itself, here in a stony and broken bed, and looking curiously small by comparison with its broad flow in the abbey gardens, barely a mile downstream. Geese dabbled in a shallow inlet on the southern side. Upstream from them the child minding them fished in a little rock-fringed pool.
“It’s well-timed,” said Joscelin, and drew deep and thoughtful breath. “The sheriff has emptied the valley of all his armed men for me, yes, surely until twilight. Even then they’ll come home out of temper and out of energy. It could not be better.”
“And their mounts ridden out,” said Lazarus drily, and turned his far-sighted, brilliant eyes on his companion. The absence of a face had ceased to trouble Joscelin at all. The eyes and the voice were enough to identify a friend.
“Yes,” Joscelin said, “I had thought of that, too.”
“And few remounts to be had, seeing he has called out almost every man he has, and commandeered almost every horse.”
“Yes.”
Bran came darting down the slope of grass towards them, dived confidently between the two, and took possession of a hand of each. It did not trouble him at all that one of the hands lacked two fingers and the half of a third. Bran was putting on a little flesh with every day, the nodes in his neck had shrunk to insignificance, and his fine hair was growing in thickly over the scars of old sores on a knowing small head.
“They’re away,” he said simply. “What shall we do now?”
“We?” said Joscelin. “I thought it was high time for your schooling with Brother Mark? Are you given a day’s holiday today?”
“Brother Mark says he has work to do.” By his voice, Bran was not greatly impressed by the argument, since in his experience Brother Mark never ceased working except when he was asleep. The child was even inclined to be a little offended at being put off, if he had not had these two other elect companions to fall back on. “You said you’d do whatever I wanted today,” he reminded sternly.
“And so I will,” agreed Joscelin, “until evening. Then I also have work to do. Let’s make the most of the time. What’s your will?”
“You said,” observed Bran, “you could carve me a little horse out of a piece of wood from the winter pile, if you had a knife.”
“Unbeliever, so I can, and perhaps a little gift for your mother, too, if we can find the right sort of wood. But as for the knife, I doubt if they’d lend us one from the kitchen, and how could I dare take the one Brother Mark uses to trim his quills? More than my life’s worth,” said Joscelin lightly enough, and stiffened to recall how little his life might indeed be worth if the hunt turned back too soon. No matter, these few hours belonged to Bran.
“I have a knife,” said the child proudly, “a sharp one my mother used to use to gut fish, when I was little. Come and let’s look for a piece of wood.” The gleaners in the forest had come back well laden, the fuel-store was full, and could spare a small, smooth-grained log to make a toy. Bran tugged at both the hands he held, but the old man slid his maimed member free, very gently, and released himself. His eyes still swept the crowns of the trees below, where even the quiver and rustle of the beaters’ progress had ebbed into stillness.
“I have seen Sir Godfrid Picard only once,” he said thoughtfully. “Which man in the line was he, when they set out?”
Joscelin looked back, surprised. “The fourth from us. Lean and dark, in black and russet—a bright red cap with a plume…”
“Ah, he …” Lazarus maintained his steady survey of the woods below, and did not turn his head. “Yes, I marked the red poll. An easy mark to pick out again.”
He moved forward a few yards more from the highroad, and sat down in the grass of the slope, with his back against a tree. He did not look round when Joscelin yielded to the urging of Bran’s hand, and they left him to his preferred solitude.
Brother Mark had indeed work to do that day, though it could as well have waited for another time, if it consisted of the accounts he was casting up for Fulke Reynald. He was meticulous, and the books were never in arrears. The real urgency lay in finding something to do that could enable him to look busily occupied in the open porch of the hall, where the light was best, and where he could keep a sharp eye on the movements of his secret guest without being too obvious about it. He was well aware that the young man who was no leper had been missing from Prime and from breakfast, and had reappeared innocently hand in hand with Bran, somewhat later. Clearly the child had taken a strong fancy to his new acquaintance. The sight of them thus linked, the boy skipping merrily beside the long strides that so carefully but imperfectly mimicked the maimed gait of Lazarus, the man with bent head attentive, and large hand gentle, had moved Mark to believe, illogically but understandably, that one thus kind and generous of his time and interest could not possibly be either thief or murderer. From the first he had found it hard to credit the theft, and the longer he considered this refugee within his cure—for he could pick him out now without difficulty—the more absurd grew the notion that this young man had avenged himself by murder. If he had, he would have plodded away in his present guise, clapping his clapper industriously, and passed through the sheriffs cordon long ago to freedom. No, he had some other urgent business to keep him here, business that might mean greater peril to his own life before he brought it to a good conclusion.