Ellis Peters - The Leper of Saint Giles

“In very evil will!” said Brother Cadfael. “Son, you had given him not only the opportunity of hastening his inheritance of a great estate, but also of adding to it this lady’s person and lands. For you had provided him a perfect scapegoat, one wronged and angry and bearing a grudge. Yours would be the first and only name that came to mind, when Huon de Domville was waylaid and murdered. But with that in view he had to have you still at liberty, hidden away somewhere safe, until well after the death, and where he could point the hunt to take you when that was done. It was your leaving your sanctuary that balked his plans and saved your neck.”

“Then tonight,” pursued Joscelin, frowning over this chill treachery as if his head ached, “you mean he set this trap for me, in cold blood? I thought him my one friend, I asked his help…”

“How?” asked Cadfael sharply. “How did you get word to him?”

Joscelin told them the whole of it, though not one word yet of Lazarus or Bran, or any of those who had truly helped him. That he might tell some day, surely to Iveta, perhaps even to Brother Cadfael, but not here, not now.

“So he knew only that you were somewhere close, but not where. He could not send his trusty foil here to lay hands on you, he could only wait for you to come to the law, and you had set the scene yourself. All he had to do was pass on your message to the lady, and see that your horse was waiting for you as you had asked - or you would not have crossed into the garden here to be seized, would you? - and then say the quiet word to Jehan here. He would not wish to appear in the matter himself, certainly,” said Cadfael wryly, “since his pose of loyalty to you was his best commendation with the lady. You once safely taken and hanged,” he said, making no bones about it, for the good-natured lad was wrenching hard at belief in such devious treason in one he had trusted, “I doubt if Godfrid Picard would have balked at matching his niece with a murderer - a successful murderer. It was the peril meantime he could not stomach, in case it reached as far as his own credit, if not his own neck.”

“Speak up, Jehan,” ordered the sheriff, grimly smiling. “Did Aguilon again point you the way to commendation and promotion?”

“This morning,” admitted Jehan unwarily, “he put the notion into my head …”

“This morning! Before ever we set forth! And you said no word to me or to your officer until we were out of the way of your intended feat of arms. Promotion is hardly likely to come your way, fellow, for a while. Think yourself lucky to escape a whipping!”

Jehan was indeed thinking himself well out of a perilous corner, to be dismissed so lightly, and made himself scarce without delay.

“We had best be bringing in this dead man,” said the sheriff, turning brusquely back to the task in hand. “Will you guide us, brother? We’ll go mounted, and with a spare horse for Picard’s last ride.”

They were away, half a dozen mounted men, Cadfael in no way displeased to be astride a fine, sturdy rouncey again instead of a modest little mule. The abbot watched them out of the gates, and then turned to dismiss, with even voice and calm face, the disturbed and wondering brotherhood.

“Go, compose your minds, wash your hands, and go in to supper. The rule still orders our day. Traffic with the world is laid upon us for chastening, and for the testing of our vocation. The grace of God is not endangered by the follies or the wickedness of men.”

They went obediently. At a glance from Radulfus, Prior Robert inclined his head and followed the flock. The abbot was left confronting, with a faint, contemplative smile, the two young creatures still clinging hand in hand, eyeing him steadfastly but doubtfully. Too much had happened to them too suddenly, they were like children half-awake, not yet clear what, of their recollections and experiences, was real, and what was dream. But surely the dreams had been terrifying, and the reality must needs be better.

“I think,” said the abbot gently, “you need not be in any anxiety, my son, about that other charge your lord made against you. In all the circumstances, no just man would consider it safe to believe in such a theft, and Gilbert Prestcote is a just man. I cannot choose but wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “whether it was Aguilon also who hid the necklace in your saddle-bag with the medal of Saint James.”

“I doubt it, Father.” Joscelin took thought to be fair, even now, to a comrade who had done him such grievous wrong. “For truly I feel he had not thought of murder until I was cast off and accused, and broke away to freedom as I did. It is as Brother Cadfael said, he was presented with his chance and his scapegoat. My lord Domville most likely did his own meaner work this time. But, Father, it is not my troubles that weigh on me now. It is Iveta.”

He moistened his lips, feeling for the best words, and the abbot stood silent and imperturbable, and gave him no help. Iveta, too, had looked up at him in startled alarm, as though she feared he might too nobly and stupidly let go of her when she thought herself fairly won.

“Father, this lady has been vilely misused by those who were her guardians. Now her uncle is dead, and her aunt, even if she were fit to care for her, would not be allowed to keep the administration of so great an honor. It is my prayer that you, Father, will take her into your own guardianship from this day, for with you I know she will be used with gentleness and honor, and be happy as she deserves. If you put forward such a request to the king, he will not deny you.”

The abbot waited some moments, and his austere lips were very drily smiling. “And that is all? No plea for yourself?”

“None!” said Joscelin, with the fierce humility that looked and sounded what it was, a nobleman’s arrogance.

“But I have a prayer of my own,” said Iveta indignantly, keeping fast hold of a hand that would have renounced its claim on her. “It is that you will look kindly upon Joscelin, and use him as my favored suitor, for I love him, and he loves me, and though I will be obedient to you in everything else, if you will take me, I will not part with Joscelin, or ever love or marry anyone else.”

“Come,” said the abbot, not quite committing himself to a smile, “I think we three had better sit down to supper together in my lodging, and consider how best to dispose of the future. There’s no haste, and much to think about. Thinking is best after prayer, but will be none the worse for a meal and a glass of wine.”

The sheriff and his party brought back Godfrid Picard’s body to the abbey before Compline. In the mortuary chapel they laid him straight, and brought candles to examine his injuries. His unblooded dagger, found some yards aside in the grass, where Cadfael had discovered and left it, they slid back into its sheath as they unbuckled his sword-belt, but it cannot be said that much thought had been given to the curious circumstance of its lying thus naked and discarded in the glade.

The man was dead, his murderer, murderer already of one man, and a kinsman at that, was in Shrewsbury castle, safe under lock and key. If there were odd circumstances in this second case, no one but Cadfael noticed them, though for a while they puzzled him as much as they would have puzzled his companions, had they troubled to examine them. A man dies, strangled with a man’s hands, yet himself provided with a dagger, and clearly having had time to draw it. To draw, but not to blood it. And those who kill with their hands do so because they are otherwise unarmed.

The night was still. The candles did not flicker, and the light on the dead man’s suffused face, bitten tongue and exposed throat was sharp enough to show detail. Cadfael looked closely and long at the marks of the strong fingers that had crushed out life, but he said nothing. Nor was he asked anything. All questions had already been answered to the sheriff’s satisfaction.