Michael JECKS - The Leper's Return

It was merely a hovel. There was a hearth in the middle, and two straw-filled palliasses lay at either side. Ralph stood between the two, candle held high to illuminate his patients.

“Quivil!” Baldwin exclaimed.

“Sir Baldwin?”

The voice was strained, but it was not merely the hoarseness of the leprosy that made the voice feeble. Baldwin motioned, and Ralph held the light nearer. By it the knight saw the bruises, the clotted blood over the bridge of the nose, the long, ragged slash down one cheek where the flesh had been torn like cloth.

“Who dared do this?” Baldwin hissed.

“It was the good gentlefolk of this pleasant town,” said another voice, and Baldwin turned and peered at the man on the other bed.

Thomas Rodde grimaced as the candle came closer, shutting his eyes against the glare.

“Why should they do this to you?”

“They fear us. That makes them hate us. And it only takes a couple of stupid comments about how a leper might have seduced a girl, for drunks to decide to take revenge.”

“This was done by drunks, you say?”

“Oh yes. At least, I assume they were. They had an interesting vocabulary; not the sort of thing I’d expect sober men to use.”

“Did you recognize them?”

Quivil spoke again. “Arthur, and Jack the smith…” The names were all familiar to Baldwin. None was a great troublemaker, but all were known to take their own action when the fancy took them, rather than troubling the officers of the law.

“Jack,” he mused, then shot a glance at the other bed again. “You’re not from this town, are you? Your accent is strange.”

“No, sir. I hail from London originally, although I have been travelling in the north of the country in recent years. I only came to this place a few weeks ago. Now I begin to regret it.”

“I cannot blame you,” Baldwin smiled sympathetically. “It is not the kind of welcome I would appreciate either, if I was a newcomer. Have you caused insult to any man since you arrived?”

“Me?” Thomas Rodde was driven to laugh at such an innocent question. When he spoke again, his voice had lost all trace of humor, and his eyes were cold. “What do you think, Sir Knight? Look on me! I used to be a comely enough man: hale, powerful and wealthy. Now? Yes – look on me! I am a shell, something for men and women of all conditions to avoid, pityingly perhaps, but with revulsion. Look on me, Sir Knight! I insult all by existing!”

“I make no apology, friend, for all I am trying to do is discover who could have had reason to wound you,” Baldwin said soothingly. “You must know that I need to ask questions to find out why this happened.”

“You have been told who was responsible.”

“And these men could have got it into their heads to do this,” agreed the knight, “but I always expect to find some other reason to explain why. Men do not suddenly go mad and throw stones at others, no – not even at lepers – without good cause, in my experience. Do you know of any reason why these men should take it into their heads to assault you in the streets?”

Seeing that both lepers were silent, Ralph interjected, “I know why, Sir Baldwin.”

The knight could see that the leper master had worked himself into an angry, bitter mood. His lips were pursed, his eyes unblinking. The hand that held the candle didn’t shake, but the other was working steadily, the middle finger clicking its nail against that of the thumb to create an irritated percussion.

“Why, then, Brother?”

“Come with me!”

Ralph led the way out of the hovel and over the grass toward the church. Opening the door of the chapel, he thrust it open and strode inside, his shoes making a strange flapping noise as he passed over the cobbles.

Simon walked along behind Baldwin, wondering what the monk could be about to show them. He felt a strange premonition that another dead man was at the heart of it, and his expectation seemed to be fulfilled when he came upon the aisle and saw the hearse before the altar. The simple metal frame, draped with its cheap black cloth, with the three candles in each of the triangular brackets at head and foot, obviously covered another dead body, and Simon took a deep swallow. He had seen enough dead men in his time, and almost all of them were the victims of violence, but he had never lost his squeamishness. It was different when the body was that of a man who had died in his sleep after a long and useful life, his family and friends at his bedside, the priest ready to give comfort to the passing spirit; then it was a natural, an acceptable event.

Here, in the chapel of St. Lawrence’s, Simon knew that the body beneath the draped hearse would be that of a leper, someone who had lived out his last years in pain and suffering, always aware that those who had been his friends and relations now despised him for his appalling disease.

It was with unutterable relief that he realized the priest was not heading toward it. Instead Ralph turned, made his obeisance, and went out to a small chamber at the side. As Simon came closer, he could hear a strange sound. Approaching the door, he realized it was a subdued moaning that issued from within. At first the bailiff was fearful what he might discover inside, but as the monk shoved the door wide, he saw it was only a young woman.

Baldwin stopped. “Mary? Mary Cordwainer?”

“Yes, sir?”

Her eyes were red and swollen from weeping – that was the first thing Simon noticed about her. They appeared luminous in the gloom of the dark room, which was little more than a cupboard beside the altar, a kind of lean – to affair at the side of the church which was used as a storeroom for brushes and other essentials necessary to clean the place.

Ralph threw his arm toward her. “Ask her – ask Mary what was going on last night!”

“Mary? We have come from Edmund and his friend – you know that they were beaten? Can you tell us anything about it?”

The knight’s voice, so calm and gentle, was enough to help her take control of herself. She took two deep breaths; each racked her frame, as if she was about to sob anew. She looked at her hands, seeing their cracked and dried skin, and held them over her eyes while a convulsive shudder shook her, and then let them fall.

She was exhausted. Knowing that her man was taken from her, that the life she had planned and prayed for was denied to her, was a hideous shock, but now to have to suffer so much more, when all she was trying to do was alleviate the anguish of others, was still worse. She had looked to her friends and neighbors to support her in her tribulation, and they had rejected her.

“Can you tell us?” Baldwin asked.

“Yes, sir. Yes, I am well now, thank you.”

The knight studied her. He remembered her from before Quivil’s illness as a bright, cheery girl, one who was given to playing pranks when she was still running about the streets with her hair unbraided, who had taken on a solemn steadiness when she was betrothed, as if it was a more fitting demeanor for a wife-to-be. Her face still looked as if it was better suited to laughing than crying, but all pleasure had been wiped from it, as if by a malignant cloth.

Mary stared past him to the bailiff in the doorway. “It was men in the town. I come here every day to help Brother Ralph. There isn’t much for me to do, but I wanted to help all I could. It was the only thing I could do for my poor Edmund, him being so low after his disease. Well, who wouldn’t be low, knowing they’ve got this?” She waved a hand as if to indicate all the inmates and their disease.

“I’ve been coming since the day he was brought here, to dust and sweep, to help change the bandages of the sick men, and sometimes to sit up with the dying, like with the poor soul out there, Bernard, so poor Brother Ralph can get some rest.”