Ellis Peters - The Leper of Saint Giles

“So he did,” shrilled Agnes, glittering with hatred, “thinking you the honest man you seemed then. But Huon’s throat was bruised and cut - the monk there said it, and my lord heard it, and so did you - bruised and cut by a ring the murderer wore on his right hand. And once you had heard that said, who saw you again without gloves? In season and out! But my husband was at the coffining of Huon de Domville yesterday, and then you were forced - were you not, wretch? - to doff your gloves for once to take the aspergillum. And it was to him you handed it thereafter! He saw - oh, not the ring, no, that you had taken off hastily as soon as the monk here spoke of it, but the pale band where it was wont to be, and the square whiteness under the stone. And he remembered then that you used to wear a ring, just such a ring. And he was fool enough to speak out what he had seen, and what he believed, when you came visiting. He cut off all ado with a man he had cause to think a murderer.”

Yes, so he had. So that was the reason for the change! But not, thought Iveta, grown by force too suddenly into a woman, not because a murderer would not have been acceptable to him, provided no breath of suspicion ever blew his way. No, rather because while suspicion was even possible, he dared not risk contamination. Give him absolute security on that point, and he would have made up his differences quickly enough. And Joscelin had still been the law’s quarry, and Joscelin might still have been taken, taken and hanged … And she would have been left believing despairingly that she had but one kind friend in the world, and that was Simon Aguilon! He had sworn that the very reason he was banished was because he had declared his faith in Joscelin! And he might - given time enough to dull pain - he might even have prevailed! She pressed close to Joscelin’s side, and trembled.

“I urged him, I begged him,” moaned Agnes, writhing, “to sever all ties with such a man. You knew all too well he might feel it his duty to speak out what he suspected, even without proof. You have made certain he never shall. But you have not reckoned with me!”

“Woman, you are mad!” Simon flung up his hands against her, his voice high almost to breaking. “How could I have set a snare for my uncle, when I did not know where he had gone, or what he intended, much less by what narrow path he must return? I did not know he had a mistress anywhere within this shire, to tempt him to a night’s visit.”

Cadfael had stood silent throughout this duel. He spoke now. “There is one who will say, Simon Aguilon, that you lie, that you did know, none so well. Avice of Thornbury says, and I fancy there will be two other witnesses to bear her out, once they know she is not at risk and asks no silence, that you, and none other, were the trusted escort who conducted her wherever her lord wanted her. You brought her to the hunting-lodge. The way between was well known to you, for you had ridden it. And Huon de Domville admitted but one man at a time to his private amours. For these last three years you have been that man.”

Agnes uttered a long wail of glee and grief together, that drifted eerily on the blown smoke of the torches. She pointed a triumphant hand. “Strip him! You will see! The ring is on him now, he never would leave it off his person, for another to see and understand. Search him, and you’ll find it. And why should he doff it, if it never left mark on a murdered man?”

The men-at-arms had read the sheriff’s signs, and closed in silently, a tight ring of leather and steel about the two antagonists. Simon had been too intent on the threat before him to regard the quiet vigilance behind. He loosed a defiant cry of anger and impatience, and swung on his heel to stride away. “I need not stay to hear such venom!” he spat, too shrilly.

Only then did he see the solid, silent line of armed men, drawn shoulder to shoulder between him and the gate, and balked like a headed deer. He looked round wildly, unable to believe the collapse of his fortunes.

The sheriff drew a measured pace nearer, and spoke.

“Take off your gloves!”

It was an unlovely thing to see a human creature break and try to run, see him fight like a wildcat when he was hemmed in, and snarl defiance when he was overcome and pinioned. In deference to the abbot they hauled him out through the gates into the Foregate with as little violence as possible, and dealt with him there. He knotted his hands together to balk the removal of his gloves, and when his hands were naked, the pale circle on the middle finger of his right hand glared like snow on new-ploughed russet soil, the large blot of the stone clear to be seen. He struggled and cursed when they felt about his body, sank his head grimly into his chest so that they had to force his head back to withdraw the cord from round his neck, beneath his shirt, and expose the ring to view.

When they had hustled him away, four of them holding him and hard-pressed at that, to a cell in the castle, there fell a dreadful, exhausted silence over the great court. Joscelin, great-eyed, shaken and bewildered, folded his arms about Iveta, and quivered in uncomprehending relief, too shocked to question as yet the devious use that had been made of him throughout. Agnes stood rigid, staring balefully as long as her enemy remained in view, and then, released, clutched her head between her hands and wept, but hardly, in solitary and forbidding grief. Who would have thought she could have loved her unendearing husband?

The virago was gone. She let fall her hands and paced slowly, like one walking in her sleep, through the agitated onlookers who moved aside to give her passage. She looked round once upon them all, from the steps of the guest-hall, having passed by Iveta’s extended hand as though the girl did not exist, and then she went in, and vanished.

“Later,” said Abbot Radulfus, heavily but calmly, “she will speak freely. Her testimony is essential. As for her lord - he is dead already. Need we question, since he cannot be questioned?”

“Not in any tribunal of mine, at any rate,” agreed Gilbert Prestcote drily, and turned to his remaining men. “You, sergeant, before we set off to bring this dead man home, how comes it that you set so apt a watch about the brook here, while we were beating the forest? We had no intimation that ever reached my ears, that a raid might be attempted on these premises.”

“It was after you were all gone forth, my lord,” said the sergeant, “that Jehan here came to me with the notion that since the squire was set on the lady, he might take the chance when there were but few of us left here, to try to win her away.” He haled forth the clever fellow who had won commendation for an earlier idea, equally justified in the event. The man was not quite so sure of himself, now that things were turned topsy-turvy, and his patron was become the villain in the web, but he stood his ground. “It was he who said that the fellow, if he had the wit, might hide in his lord’s own gardens, you’ll remember, and when we searched, we found he had indeed been there, though he was gone when we came to it. This time it seemed just as good sense, so we kept a vigil in secret.”

“Friend,” said Prestcote, eyeing the man-at-arms somewhat ominously, “your guesses seem to be blessed by heaven, but I fancy hell had more to do with them. When did Aguilon put it into your head to search the bishop’s outhouses for our wanted man? At what hour?”

Jehan had the sense to be open about it, though none too happily. “My lord, it was after my lord Domville’s body was brought back here. When he came back to the bishop’s house, then he suggested it. He said I was welcome to the credit if we found our man, and he would as lief keep out of it.”

Joscelin shook his head despairingly between his hands, slow still to understand the whole of it. “But it was he who helped me - he came to find me, he hid me there himself in goodwill…”