Ellis Peters - The Leper of Saint Giles

It was all over very quickly. She whispered her thanks, looking over her shoulder nervously as though she thought someone might be watching, and hid the vial in her sleeve a good deal more adroitly than Oswin had handled it. His hands and feet seemed to have reverted to their hobbledehoy clumsiness of some years back, in his pimply boyhood, but for all that, the look she gave him in departing made him feel tall, confident and gainly. He was left pensive in the doorway, looking after her as she flitted across the footbridge, and wondering if he had not been hasty in deciding that he had a vocation. It was not too late to change his mind, he had not taken his final vows yet.

This time he did not lower his eyes until she vanished along the pleached alley. Even then he stood for some minutes, still pondering. There were drawbacks in any course of life, he supposed sadly. Neither inside or outside the cloister could a man have everything.

Iveta fled back to her stone bench, sheltered from the breeze, and was sitting there with folded hands and apathetic face when Madlen came out to reclaim her. Iveta rose submissively and went back with her to the guest-hall, and sewed unenthusiastically at the piece of embroidery that had been her cover for weeks, even though her needle was not so industrious that she need unpick at night what she worked during the day, like a certain Dame Penelope, of whom she had once heard tell from a passing jongleur in her father’s house, long ago.

She waited until it was almost time for Vespers, and the light fading outside. Agnes had put on the newly mended gown, and Madlen was tiring her hair for the evening. While Sir Godfrid Picard hunted with savage determination for a fugitive murderer, it was his wife’s part to maintain the appearance of ritual devotion, attend all the needful services, and retain the good opinion of abbot, prior and brothers.

“It’s time you were making ready, girl,” she said, snapping a glance at her niece along a brocaded shoulder.

Iveta let her hands lie in her lap, indifferent, though she kept her wrist pressed firmly upon the vial in her sleeve. “I think I won’t come tonight. My head is so heavy, and I haven’t slept well. If you’ll be my excuse, madam, I’ll eat supper now, with Madlen, and go early to bed.” Naturally if she stayed away, Madlen would inevitably be left to keep guard on her, but she had made her own provision for that.

Agnes shrugged, her fine, steely profile disdainful. “You are very vaporish these days. Still, stay if you prefer. Madlen will make you a posset.”

It was done. The lady went forth without a qualm. The maid set a small table in Iveta’s bedchamber, and brought bread and meat and a brew of honeyed milk and wine, thick and sweet and hot, ideal to drown the heavy sweetness of Brother Cadfael’s poppy syrup. She went and came two or three times before she sat down with her charge, ample time to draw a beaker of the innocent brew, and replace it with the whole contents of Oswin’s vial. Ample time to stir it and be sure. Iveta made a pretense of eating, and declined more of the drink, and was gratified to see Madlen finish the jug with obvious pleasure. Nor had she eaten much, to temper the effect.

Madlen removed the dishes to the kitchen of the guest-hall, and did not return. Iveta waited almost ten minutes in feverish anxiety, and then went to investigate, and found the maid propped comfortably on a bench in a corner of the kitchen, snoring.

Iveta did not wait for cloak or shoes, but ran in her soft leather slippers, just as she was, out into the dusk, across the great court like a hunted leveret, half-blindly, and along the dark green alley in the garden. The silver streak of the leat gleamed at her, she felt her way along the hand-rail of the bridge. The sky was starry over her, still half-veiled as in the day, but pallidly luminous beyond the veil. The air was chill, fresh, heady, like wine. In the church they were still chanting, leisurely and intently, thank God! Thank God and thank Simon! The only loyal friend …

Under the deep eaves of the herbarium workshop Joscelin was waiting, flattened against the wall in the black shade. He reached both arms to her and caught her to him, and she wound her own slight arms about him passionately. They hung silent a long moment, hardly breathing, clinging desperately. Utter silence and stillness, as though the leat, and the brook, and the river itself had stopped moving, the breeze ceased to breathe with them, the very plants to grow.

Then the urgency swept back to swallow everything, even the first stammering utterances of love.

“Oh, Joscelin … It is you….”

“My dear, my dear… Hush, softly! Come, come quickly! This way … take my hand!”

She clung obediently and followed blindly. Not by the way she had come. Here they were over the leat, only the brook remained to be crossed. Out from the closed garden into the fringe of the pease-fields, new-ploughed at this season, that ran down to the Meole. Under the hedge he paused a moment to view the empty dusk and listen with stretched ears for any betraying sound, but all was still. Close to his ear she whispered: “How did you cross? How will you manage with me… ?”

“Hush! I have Briar down the field - did Simon not tell you?”

“But the sheriff has every way closed,” she breathed, shivering.

“In the forest… in the dark? We’ll get through!” He drew her close in his arm, and began to descend the field, keeping close to the dark shelter of the hedge.

The silence was abruptly torn by a loud, indignant neighing, that halted Joscelin in mid-stride. Below at the water’s edge the bushes threshed wildly, hooves stamped, a man’s voice bellowed. Confused shouting broke out, and from the covering bulk of the hedge Briar lunged into the open, dragging one man with him. Other moving shadows followed, four at least, dancing to avoid being trampled as they sought to subdue and calm the rearing horse.

Armed men, the sheriff’s men, ranged the bank between them and freedom. Escape that way was lost, Briar was lost. Without a word Joscelin turned, sweeping Iveta with him in his arm, and began to retrace his steps in furious haste, keeping close to the bushes.

“The church,” he whispered, when she sought to question in terror, “the parish door …” Even if they were still at Vespers, everyone would be in the choir, and the nave of the great church unlighted. They might yet be able to slip through unseen from the cloister, and out by the west door which alone lay outside the precinct wall, and was never closed but in time of great danger and disorder. But even then he knew it was a very meager hope. But if it came to the worst, there could be sanctuary within.

Rapid movement betrayed them. Down by the water, where Briar stood now snorting and quivering, a voice bellowed: “There he goes, back into the garden! We have him in a noose! Come on!” And someone laughed, and three or four men began to surge up the slope, without undue haste. They were quite sure of their prize now.

Joscelin and Iveta fled hand in hand, back through the herb-garden, over the leat, along the alley between the black, clipped hedges, and out into the perilous open spaces of the great court. No help for it now, there was no other way left to them. The gathering darkness might hide identities, but could not hide the haste of their running. They never reached the cloister. An armed man stood blocking the way. They swung towards the gatehouse, where torches were already burning in their sconces on the wall, and two more men-at-arms drew together before the gate. From the garden emerged their pursurers, content and at leisure. The foremost of them swaggered into the flickering light of the torches, and showed the grinning, complacent face of that same astute or well-informed fellow who had suggested to his officer the searching of the bishop’s grounds, and been commended for it. He was in luck again. The sheriff and all but a meager handful of his men out scouring the woods, and the remnant left behind were the ones to run the quarry to ground!