Michael JECKS - The Leper's Return

But the solemn voice continued its message of doom. No hurrying brother came to rescue him. He lay uncomfortably until the mass was ended, and then there was silence. It was as if his heart had in truth stopped beating.

Ralph rose to his feet. The Dean was kneeling and praying, and as he finished and stood, Ralph could see the tears glistening. The two men stared at each other for a moment, sharing the pain and sadness of the occasion, as if they were accomplices in Quivil’s destruction, and then Clifford gave a rasping sigh and walked to the door. Ralph put his hand on the leper’s shoulder, and the young man gave a start, looking up at him with desperation. The monk tried to give him an encouraging smile, but Ralph’s face felt as if it was going to crack. Uttering a prayer to God for strength, he helped Quivil up, and walked with him to the door.

Outside, Clifford waited with the other brothers near a newly dug grave. The last stage of the rite had to be completed. Quivil found himself being laid down again, and while he stared up at the priest, Clifford sprinkled dust on his head three times. “Edmund Quivil, you are dead to the world. Be alive again to God.”

Now Ralph took him by the shoulder once more, and while the monks chanted the Libera me, led the leper away to his living purgatory: unalive, though not yet dead.

John saw the pair walking away, and he shook his head sympathetically. Everyone in the town had heard the news about poor Quivil. Gossip of that kind spread quickly.

But the little Irishman didn’t have time to dawdle in the street, he had things to do. He walked back toward the church, and was about to turn up his own road when he heard his name being called.

“Yes? Sir Baldwin, how are you this fine day?”

“Well enough, John,” Baldwin said. He pulled off his gloves and stuck them in his belt. Truth be told, he wasn’t at all content. Witnessing one of his villeins being put through the Office for the Seclusion of a Leper had blunted the pleasure he had felt earlier on seeing what good weather the day promised. “What are you up to, though?”

“Me, Sir Baldwin?”

The knight studied his innocent face. “Yes, John, you! I have been hearing rumors about you.”

“Ah, surely you’d not listen to villainous talk about me, sir?”

“That would depend on how untrue the talk was, wouldn’t it, John?”

“But you know I’m an honest trader, sir. I’d never break the town’s laws.”

“Really? By the way, did you hear about Isabella Gilbard?”

John forced his voice to sound casual, as if he had not only not heard of her, he was sure he wouldn’t want to either. “Isabella? No, I don’t think so.”

“I let her buy her freedom from my manor so she could marry. She was wed in June, but now I hear she has given birth to a bouncing boy – only three months later.”

“It’s a terrible thing when people behave like that,” said John, nodding his head sagely. “Young churls today don’t have the manners their grandparents had.”

“Quite. It means she was fornicating before she was married; before she bought her freedom. I suppose I shall have to impose the lairwite on her.”

John pursed his lips. The lairwite was the fine imposed on bondwomen who proved to have weaker morals than they should, and who gave birth without first going through the formal and necessary process of marrying. The fine could be enforced when the woman subsequently married in an attempt to conceal her incontinence. And John knew as well as the knight that there was another fine, the childwite, for the man who had made her pregnant.

But the fine was imposed on women who were unfree – serfs. It existed to prevent villeins from breeding large numbers of bastards who would then become a drain on an estate. And John was not involved with an unfree woman. He smiled up at the knight confidently. Baldwin seemed to have forgotten his presence for a moment, and was lost in thought, staring over the road at the new church. John was interested despite himself.

“But, Sir Baldwin, surely you wouldn’t pursue her now, not when you’ve already freed her?”

The knight turned slowly and studied him, and suddenly John wanted very much to be somewhere else. Baldwin was known to be kindly and generous, a man who treated all men with respect and courtesy, but now the knight’s eye was cold, his voice scornful. “John of Irelaunde, I am the Keeper of the King’s Peace. It is impossible for me to condone deliberate flouting of the law – by anyone. How would it look if I were to allow Isabella to commit this crime without punishment? Other criminals might think me an easy touch. Oh no, John. I have my office to consider in her case – and in others.”

“Well, Sir Baldwin, I’m glad I’ve never been guilty of such a crime,” John said lightly, but he avoided Baldwin’s gaze.

“You’ve never given birth to a child, you mean? Or do you mean you’ve never tasted the pleasures of illicit love? Are you so innocent, I wonder?”

John grinned weakly. The knight’s words were hitting too close to the mark, and there was a terrible certainty building in him that Baldwin had guessed about his nightly trysts. The direction of this conversation was not to John’s liking, especially when another thought struck him: if news had already come to Baldwin, the gossip in the town must have reached a level which could put him – and her – in some little danger.

It was getting late. John made some apology and scurried off homeward, all the way conscious of the knight’s stare on his back. It was a relief to slam his gate shut behind him. He rested for a moment with his back to it as if bracing himself against a sudden attack. The knight had unsettled him, that was a fact. “Sodding bastard! He was winding me up!”

And back down the hill, as soon as Baldwin saw the little man dart inside his yard, for all the world like a rabbit pelting into its warren at the sound of the hunter and his dogs, the knight’s face broke into a smile. He gave a loud guffaw, and had to lean on a fence while he laughed until the tears came.

“And now take the hint and leave the good wives of Crediton alone, you lecherous little git!”

Sitting before the door to the inn, idly watching the traffic in the street, Jack the smith raised another quart of ale and gulped.

With the slight breeze, he felt refreshingly cool after the searing heat of his smithy, and it was a relief to be able to sit and drink away his thirst, nodding affably to the townspeople as they passed. Few would ignore the smith, for he was an essential part of the town. When tools snapped, he mended them; when horses needed reshoeing, he made them; when cartwheels broke, he had to fit the new steel rims to protect the wood. In all aspects of life, there was little that didn’t require his skills at one point or another.

He finished his drink and collected his small barrel, newly refilled with ale, which he installed on his little handcart, and set off home. There were two chains he must repair, taking out links and replacing them with new ones, an old knife that needed a fresh rivet in its hilt, and he must forge a new axehead. It would take time to finish all that, and he hoped his apprentice was stoking the fires and getting the temperature up.

It was when he had only travelled a few yards, while he was reviewing these jobs, that he saw the man sitting huddled at the side of the road, clapper in hand and bowl before him, calling out to all passers-by. “God bless you, lady!” and “God save you, sir!” as the coins were hurriedly tossed to him, while the donors averted their gaze and hurried by.

Jack strode on, his face fixed firmly forward, prognathous features unmoving.

“Sir? Can you spare something for…”