Yet he was on Mark’s conscience. No one else had detected him, no one else could answer for him, or answer, if it came to the worst, for sheltering him and keeping silent. So Mark watched, had been watching all this day since the truant’s return. And so far the young man had made it easy for him. The whole morning he had kept company with Bran, and been close about the hospital, lending a hand with the work of stacking the gleaned wood, helping to bring in the last mowing from the verges of the road, playing drawing games with the child in a patch of dried-out clay in a hollow where water lay when it rained—good, smooth clay that could be levelled over again and again as a game ended in laughter and crowing. No, a young fellow in trouble who could so blithely accommodate himself to a pauper child’s needs and wants could not be any way evil, and Mark’s duty of surveillance was rapidly becoming a duty of protection, and all the more urgent for that.
He had seen Joscelin and Lazarus cross the highroad and seek their vantage-point over the valley, to watch the afternoon hunt set forth, and he had seen Joscelin return with Bran dancing and chattering and demanding at his side. Now the two of them were sitting under the churchyard wall, blamelessly absorbed in the whittling of a lump of wood brought from the fuel-store. He had only to take a few steps out from the doorway to see them, Bran’s fair head, with its primrose down of new hair, stooped close over the large, deft hands that pared and shaped with such industrious devotion. Now and again he heard gleeful laughter. Something was taking shape there that gave delight. Brother Mark gave thanks to God for whatever caused such pleasure to the poor and outcast, and felt his heart engaged in the cause of whoever brought such blessings about.
He was also human enough to feel curiosity as to what marvels were being produced there under the wall, and after an hour or so he gave in to mortal frailty and went to see. Bran welcomed him with a shout of pleasure, and waved the whittled horse at him, crude, spirited, without details, but an unmistakable horse, one and a half hands high. The carver’s hooded and veiled head was bent over a work of supererogation, gouging out from another fistful of wood the features of a recognizable child. Eyes unwarily bright and blue flashed a glance upwards now and then to study Bran, and sank again to the work in hand. In two whole hands, unblemished, smooth, sunburned, young. He had forgotten to be cautious.
Brother Mark returned to his post confirmed in an allegiance for which he had no logical justification. The little head, already live before it had any shaping but in the face, had enlisted him beyond release.
The afternoon passed so, the light faded to a point where artistry was no longer possible. Mark could not see his figures, which in any case were completed, and he was sure that Joscelin Lucy—he had a name, why not acknowledge it?—could not see to continue his carving, and must have abandoned or finished his little portrait of Bran. Just after the lamps were lighted within, the boy burst in, flourishing it for his tutor’s approval with small, excited shrieks of joy.
“Look! Look, Brother Mark! This is me! My friend made it.”
And it was he, no question, rough, balked here and there by the obstinate grain of the wood and an inadequate knife, but lively, pert and pleased. But his friend who had made it had not followed him in.
“Run,” said Brother Mark, “run and show it to your mother, quickly. Give it to her, and she’ll be so cheered— she’s down today. She’ll like it and praise it. You go and see!” And Bran nodded, and beamed, and went. Even his gait was becoming firmer and more gainly now he had a little more flesh on him and was eating regularly.
Brother Mark rose and left his desk, as soon as the boy was gone. Outside the light was dimming but still day. Almost an hour yet to Vespers. There was no one sitting under the churchyard wall. Down the grassy slope to the verge of the highroad, without haste, as one taking the late air, Joscelin Lucy’s tall, straight figure moved, paused at the roadside to see all empty, crossed, and slipped down to where the old man Lazarus still sat alone and aloof.
Brother Mark forsook his desk, and followed at a discreet distance.
Down there beneath Lazarus’s tree there was a long pause. In the shadows two men stirred, there were words exchanged, but few; plainly those two understood each other very well. Out of the dimness where a hooded figure had stooped and vanished, another figure emerged, outlined against the pallidly luminous sky, tall, lissome, young, unshrouded and uncowled, in blessedly dark and plain clothing that melted away into shade as he moved. He leaned to the tree again. Mark thought that he stooped to a hand, since there was no cheek offered him. The kiss proper by rights between blood-kin was certainly given.
The leper gown remained among the shades. Evidently he would not take the repute of Saint Giles with him into whatever peril he was going out to encounter. Joscelin Lucy, owner here of nothing in the world but what he was and what he wore, stepped out and dropped away down the slope with long, light strides, into the valley. Half an hour now to Vespers, and still dangerously light in the open.
Brother Mark, determined now on his duty, made a wary circle round the old man’s sheltering tree, and followed. Down the steep slope, a light, springy leap over the mill leat for Joscelin, a more awkward and ungainly jump for Mark, and on to the brook. Gleams of light flashed out of the stony bed. Mark got his sandalled feet wet, his vision uncertain in this light, but made the further shore without more damage, and set off along the brookside meadows with the tall young figure still in view.
Halfway along the floor of the valley towards the abbey gardens, Joscelin drew off from the brook into the fringes of woodland and copse that closed in on the meadows. Faithfully Brother Mark followed, slipping from tree to tree, his eyes growing accustomed now to the fading light, so that it did not seem to fade at all, but remained constant and limpid, free as yet of the nightly mist. Looking to his right, Mark could see clearly the outlines of his monastery against the last rosy light of the sunset, roofs and towers and walls, looming above the brook, the serene rise of the pease-fields, and the walls and hedges of the enclosed gardens beyond.
The twilight came; even on the open sward colors put on their final lucent glow before the dusk washed them all into soft shades of gray. Among the trees all was shadow, but Mark, cautiously slipping from bush to bush, could still discern the one shadow that moved. His ear caught also the sounds of movement ahead, deep among the trees, an uneasy stirring and sidling, and then suddenly a soft, anxious whinnying, hastily hushed, he thought, by a caressing hand. A voice whispered, hardly as loudly as the rustle of leaves, and the same hand patted gently at the solid, sleek shoulder. There was joy and hope in the sounds, as clearly as if the words had carried to him.
From his hiding-place among the trees, some yards away, Brother Mark saw dimly the looming pallor that was the head and neck of the horse, silver-gray, an inconvenient color for such a nocturnal enterprise. Someone had kept faith with the fugitive, and brought his mount to the tryst. What was to happen next?
What happened next was the small sound of the bell for Vespers carried clearly but distantly across the brook.
At about this same hour Brother Cadfael was also brought up short by the apparition of a light gray horse, and halted his mule to avoid startling it away, while he considered the implications.
He had not hurried away from Godric’s Ford, feeling it incumbent upon him to give the superior at least a credible account of his errand here, and he had found the ruling sister hospitable and garrulous. They had few visitors, and Cadfael came with the recommendation of his cloth. She was in no hurry to part with him until she had heard all about the frustrated wedding party at the abbey, and the excitement that had followed. Nor was Cadfael disposed to refuse a glass of wine when it was offered. So he took his leave somewhat later than he had expected.
Avice of Thornbury was still at work in the garden when he mounted and rode, tramping the soil firm round her seedlings as vigorously and contentedly as before, and the plot almost filled. With the same purposeful energy she would climb the steps of the hierarchy, as honest and fair-minded as she was ambitious, but ruthless towards weaker sisters who would fall before her for want of her wits, vigor and experience. She gave Cadfael a cheerful wave of her hand, and the dimple in her cheek dipped and vanished again. He mused on the irrepressible imprint of former beauty as he rode away, and wondered if she would not have to find some way of suppressing a quirk that might be so disconcerting to bishops, or whether, on the contrary, it might not yet prove a useful weapon in her armory. The truth was, he could not choose but respect her. More to the point, such evidence as she gave, with her unmistakable forthrightness, no one would dare try to refute.