“And I am in the way. I’m sorry! I’ve put you out enough already.” But he did not want to go, he was too full of matter he needed to unload from his heart, and could not possibly offer to anyone but just such a courteous chance acquaintance, perhaps never to be seen again. “Or—may I stay?”
“By all means, if you’re at leisure to stay. For you serve Huon de Domville, and I fancy his service might be exigent. I saw you pass by Saint Giles. I saw the lady, too.”
“You were there? The old man—he was not hurt?” Bless the lad, he genuinely wanted to know. In the middle of his own troubles, up to the neck, he could still feel indignation at an affront to another’s dignity.
“Neither in body nor mind. Such as he live with a humility that transcends all possibility of humiliation. He was above giving a thought to the baron’s blow.”
Joscelin emerged from his own preoccupation sufficiently to feel curiosity. “And you were there among them—those people? You—forgive me if I offend, it is not meant!—you are not afraid of going among them? Of their contagion? I have often wondered—someone tends them. I know they are forced to live apart, yet they cannot be utterly cut out of humanity.”
“The thing about fear,” said Cadfael, seriously considering, “is that it is pointless. When need arises, fear is forgotten. Would you recoil from taking a leper’s hand, if he needed yours, or you his, to be hauled out of danger? I doubt it. Some men would, perhaps—but of you I doubt it. You would grip first and consider afterwards, and by then fear would be clearly a mere waste of time. You are free of your lord’s table tonight, are you? Then stay and give account of yourself, if you’re so minded. You owe me at worst an excuse—at best, some amends for breaking in uninvited.”
But he was not displeased with his unruly intruder. Almost absent-mindedly Joscelin had taken the bellows from him, and was encouraging the brazier into reviving life.
“He has three of us,” said the boy thoughtfully. “Simon waits on him at table tonight—Simon Aguilon, his sister’s son—and Guy FitzJohn is the third of us, he’s in attendance, too. I need not go back yet. And you know nothing about me, and I think you’re in doubt whether you did right to try and help us. I should like you to think well of me. I am sure you cannot but think well of Iveta.” The name clouded his face again, he gazed ruefully into the satisfactory glow he was producing. “She is …” He struggled with adoration, and exploded rebelliously: “No, she is not perfection, how could she be? Since she was ten years old she had been in wardship to those two! If you were at Saint Giles, you saw them. One on either side, like dragons. Her perfection has been all crushed out of shape, too long. But if she were free, she would grow back into her proper self, she would be brave and noble, like her ancestors. And then I would not care,” he said, turning eyes blindingly blue and bright upon Cadfael, “if she gave it all to someone else, not to me. No, I lie—I should care infinitely, but I would bear it, and still be glad. Only this—this wicked market-bargaining, this defilement, this I will not endure!”
“Mind the bellows! There, draw it out, you’ve given me all the fire I want. Lay it by on the stone there. Good lad! A name for a name is fair exchange. My name is Cadfael, a Welsh brother of this house, born at Trefriw.” Cadfael was pounding honey and a morsel of vinegar into his powdered herbs, and warming his pot by the fire. “Now who may you be?”
“My name is Joscelin Lucy. My father is Sir Alan Lucy, and has two manors in the Hereford borders. He sent me as page to Domville when I was fourteen, as the custom is, to learn my squire-craft in a greater household. And I won’t say my lord has been so hard a man to serve. I could not complain for myself. But for his tenants and villeins, and such as fall under his justice …” He hesitated. “I have my letters, I can read Latin hand. I was at school with monks, it stays with a man. I don’t say my lord’s worse than his kind, but God knows he’s no better. I should have asked my father to take me away to another lord, if…”
If this courtship, to dignify it by that name, had not begun to be mooted between Domville and the Massard heiress. If the boy had not seen, marvelled at, been captivated by, that tiny, fragile, virginal creature between her two dragons. His lord’s entry where she was had been entry also, at whatever hopeless distance, for his esquires.
“By staying with him,” said the youth, wrenching at the insoluble complications of his predicament, “I could at least see her. If I left him, how could I ever get near? So I stayed. And I do try to serve honestly, since I so promised. But oh, Brother Cadfael, is this just? Is it right? For the love of God, she is eighteen years old, and she shrinks from him, and yet, for all I can see, he is better than what she now has. She has no happiness now, and can look for none in her marriage. And I love her! But that’s by the way. Of small account, if she could be happy.”
“Hmmm!” said Cadfael with mild skepticism, and stirred his gently bubbling pot, which began to fill the hut with a heady aromatic sweetness as it simmered. “So many a lover has probably vowed, but with one eye on his own advantage, all the same. I suppose you’ll tell me you’re willing to die for her.”
Joscelin melted suddenly into a boy’s grin. “Well, not with any great eagerness! I’d liefer live for her, if it can be arranged. But if you mean, would I do all in my power to set her free to take another of her own choice, yes, I would. For this match is not of her choice, she dreads and loathes it, she is being forced into it utterly against her will.”
There was no need to labor it; the first glimpse of her face and bearing had said it all for him.
“And those who should most guard her and work for her good are using her for their own ends, and nothing more. Her mother—she was Picard’s sister—died when Iveta was born, and her father when she was ten years old, and she was given over into her uncle’s ward as her nearest kin, which is natural enough, if her kin had proved natural to her! Oh, I am not so blind as not to know there’s nothing new in a guardian making the best profit for himself out of his ward, instead of using his own substance on her behalf, and plundering her lands instead of nourishing them for her future good. I tell you, Brother Cadfael, Iveta is being sold to my lord for his voice and countenance with the king, and advancement under his shadow—but for more than that. She has great lands. She is the only Massard left, all that great honor goes with her hand. And I suspect that the bargain they’ve struck over her means the carving up of what was once a hero’s portion. A great swathe out of those lands of hers will surely stay with Picard, and some of what goes with her to Domville will have been milked hard for years before it passes. A very fine arrangement for both of them, but crying wrong to Iveta.”
And every word could all too well be true. Such things happen when a child is left orphan and heiress to great estates. Even if the child be a boy, and young enough, thought Cadfael, and with no one to protect him, he can be married off to make a profitable alliance for his guardian, to join up lands convenient for exploitation, to spite a rival, just as nimbly and irresistibly as can a girl; but with a girl the thing is more usual, and less to be questioned. No, no one in authority between baron and king will lift a finger to interfere with Iveta’s destiny. Only, perhaps, some rash young hothead like this one, at his own risk and hers.
He did not ask what they had been whispering together about, when he stumbled in upon their embrace. However fretted and angry, young Lucy had still something, some faint, hoarded hope in his sleeve, so much was clear. Better not to ask, not to let him utter it, even if he offered. But there was one thing Cadfael needed to know. The only Massard left, he had said.