by Ellis Peters
*
The little boy Bran had begged and brought away with him from his lesson the strips of worn vellum trimmed from the sheet on which he practiced his letters. He got credit with his teacher for wanting them, though his purpose was not quite what Mark supposed. In the dortoir, where he should long ago have been asleep, he crept to Joscelin’s side with his prizes, and whispered the secret into his ear.
“For you wanted to send a message. Lazarus told me. Is it true you can write and read?” He was in awe of anyone who had such mysteries at his finger-ends. He nestled close to Joscelin’s side, to be heard and to hear in the most private of whispers. “In the morning you could use Brother Mark’s ink-horn, no one will be watching his desk. If you can write it, I could carry it, if you tell me where. They don’t notice me. But the best piece of the leaf is not very big, it would have to be a short message.”
Joscelin wrapped the folds of his cloak round the skinny little boy against the chill of the night, and drew him into his arm. “You’re a good, gallant ally, and I’ll make you my squire if ever I get to be knight. And you shall learn Latin hand, and reckoning, and matters far beyond me. But yes, I can write a sort of fist that will serve. Where’s your vellum?” He felt the meager width but sufficient length of the strip that was pressed eagerly into his hand. “It will do very well. Twenty words can say much. Bless you for a clever imp as ever was!”
The head from which Brother Mark’s pellitory dressing had erased even the last drying sore of under-feeding and dirt burrowed comfortably into Joscelin’s once-privileged shoulder, and he felt nothing but amused and indulgent affection. “I can get as far as the bridge,” boasted Bran sleepily, “if I keep to the back ways. If I had a capuchon I could get into the town. I’ll go wherever you say…”
“Will your mother be missing and wanting you?” Joscelin breathed into the boy’s ear. The woman, he knew, had given up all care for the world, and waited only to leave it. Even her son she abandoned thankfully into the hands of Saint Giles, patron of the diseased and shunned.
“No, she’s asleep…” So, almost, was her busy and contented child, for whom the excitement of study and the small intrigues of friendship opened the world that was closing on her.
“Come, then, shift close, and go to sleep. Creep inside, and get my warmth.” He turned to let the searching face find a nest in the crook of his shoulder, and was startled by the pleasure he got from its delighted confiding. Long after the child was asleep he lay awake wondering that so much of his interest and energy should be directed elsewhere when his own neck was threatened, and so much of his thought devoted to excluding this small, neglected soul from whatever peril he himself had incurred, by his folly or his fate. Yes, he would write, he would try to find a way of getting his message to Simon, but not by involving the innocent lying easy in his arm.
Joscelin also slept, and with mutual drowsy movements accommodated his guest all night long. Somewhere apart, Lazarus lay wakeful far into the night, long since having discarded his need for sleep.
Chapter 8
JOSCELIN AROSE BEFORE DAWN, with scrupulous care not to awake his bedfellow, who lay now in his abandoned ease and warmth with limbs flung abroad as if discarded. The voluminous leper-cloak Joscelin left draped over the child, for the early air was chilly, and moreover, he dared not draw nearer the town wearing it, though the risk of approaching without its cover was surely as great. He would have to rely on keeping out of sight, and also drew some comfort from the fact that the previous day’s drive must have virtually exhausted the possibility of taking the sheriff’s quarry on the northern side of the Foregate, and therefore, or so at least he hoped, the watch would be concentrated elsewhere.
He stole out through the hall, and picked up Brother Mark’s ink-horn and quill from the desk. He would not wait for light from dawn, and could make none here, but in the church the constant light on the altar, however meager, would be enough for his young eyes and few words. He had already worked out in his mind what he would write, and managed it legibly, if none too neatly, on his strip of vellum. The quill needed trimming, and tended to spit, but he had no knife to correct it. He was come to the condition of those now his comrades, but that his skin and limbs were whole; otherwise he had nothing but what he stood up in, no possessions of any kind at his disposal.
“Simon, for friendship do me two things, tether Briar in cover across the brook from the abbey, and bid Iveta to the herb-garden after Vespers.”
It would be enough, if he could find some way to get it to the right hands. But if he could not, he must withhold it, since he had written Simon’s name. He regretted now the natural impulse to give his missive an address, in case it fell astray, for how could he implicate his friend in his own troubles? But he had no means of cutting off the offending name. It must go as it was, or stay, and destroy the only plan he had. It behooved him to be even more wary and even more audacious, in his attempt to reach the right man.
He went out into just such a pre-dawn dimness and stillness as when he had run from his hiding-place in the bishop’s grounds. Warily he made his way behind the hospice and towards the town, keeping well away from the road, where trees and bushes afforded him cover. When he came to the gardens and backyards of houses he was forced further from the highway, but he had time enough to move with caution. No one would stir at the bishop’s house until the first light came, no one would quit the courtyard until it was full day, and the gentlefolk had broken their fast. He reached the narrow, tree-shaded path that emerged on the Foregate beside the bishop’s boundary wall, and paused to choose his ground. Only by climbing could he see over the wall, and if he must take to the trees it had better be where he could view both the inner and the outer sides of the courtyard, recognize known figures, and watch all the activity about the stables.
He chose his place with care, in the bole of an oak, stretched along a limb still covered well enough to hide him, but affording him views on both sides, and a quick and easy drop to the ground should he have to move in haste. Then there was nothing to be done but wait, for the dawn was still only a grudging pallor in the east. He would miss his breakfast, today nobody need steal for him.
Dawn came at last, in its own good time. The house, the containing wall, the stables and byres and storehouses within, all took shape very gradually out of darkness, and put on color and life. Sleepy servants, bakers and grooms and dairy-maids, first crept, and then bustled, out about their business. Loaded trays of loaves appeared from the bakehouse, carried indoors by scullions. The morning loitered a further while, and the gentry began to make their appearances, Canon Eudo the first of them, bound for the second Mass of the day, then, some little while later, Simon and Guy together, none too eager, and deep in sombre talk. The grooms were leading out, surely, most of the horses in the stables. It seemed that the morning’s hunt was already ordered and preparing to muster.
Muster they did, Guy resigned but sullen among them, and file out from the gate to turn along the Foregate towards the town. But Simon did not mount with them. He was still standing on the steps of the hall, looking after them, and apparently waiting for something. The bishop’s own stable was round a corner of the house and out of Joscelin’s view, but he pricked his ears to the sound of hooves, urgent and lively, coming round thence into the courtyard. In a moment more he saw his own Briar, silvery gray blotched with darker gray, frisk indignantly out into the open air of the morning, tugging a sweating and voluble groom with him. Simon came down from the steps to meet them, ran a hand over gleaming gray neck and shoulder, and held the silvery head between his palms a moment, in an appreciative caress. Joscelin’s heart warmed to him. With all this coil of troubles, he had still spared a thought for the active beast shut up in a stall, and haled him out for exercise. The words he spoke to the groom as he turned back to re-enter the house were not distinguishable at this distance, but his gestures towards horse and gateway had said plainly enough: “Saddle him up and lead him out for me.�
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Joscelin waited long enough to see for himself that the groom was about that very business, and then dropped out of his tree, and moved cautiously forward in cover of the bushes until he could see the outside of the gates. And here they came, Briar mischievously lively, impatient for action. The groom led him out, and hitched him indifferently to one of the rings in the wall beside the mounting-block, and there left him to wait for his rider. It could not have turned out better. As soon as the man had gone back into the yard, and was tramping across the cobbles to the stable, Joscelin was out of cover and darting along the wall to caress and soothe a startled and delighted Briar. There was no time for dalliance, and at first he cursed the chance that a couple of horsemen came jingling along the Foregate at that moment, and he was forced to turn his back on the road and stand stolidly holding the bridle as they passed, as though he had been one of the grooms waiting for his master. But the enforced delay gave time for Briar to feel reassured, and stand in charmed quietness, while Joscelin hurriedly knotted his strip of vellum securely in the silvery forelock.
The riders had passed, for the moment the Foregate here was empty, and there was no one on the path between the trees. Joscelin tore himself away from his favorite perforce, shutting his ears to the protesting whinny that pursued him, and ran like a bolting hare back into cover, and did not stop until he had worked his way some distance back towards Saint Giles.
It was done, he dared not stop to see whether it took immediate effect, for now it was broad day, and growing populous on the roads, and he had better hide himself as quickly as possible in his leper’s gown, so much stronger a defense than any weapon, since no one would willingly draw near enough to be contaminated. He could only pray that Simon would find the message—surely before he had been astride Briar long he must notice the knotted mane!—and act on it faithfully. There was at least a safeguard of sorts, Joscelin reflected, for if he made his way to the copses opposite the abbey fields at the time appointed, and failed to find Briar secreted there, he could draw off again, on the assumption that his plea had gone astray, or never been detected. Draw off, and try something else, but never give up, never until Iveta was in better hands, and properly treated.
Meantime, this day of all days, he must remain until evening tamed and exemplary about Saint Giles, taking no risks, drawing no attention to himself.
In the spinney at the edge of the hospital grounds he paused to look ahead before venturing close, suddenly aware of his perilous nakedness without the cloak, now that it was light. And out of the bushes arose a small, hurtling figure with a trailing dark garment bundled under one arm, and embraced him about the thighs with the other arm, reproaching him bitterly in a breathy undertone: “You never woke me! You went away and left me! Why did you?”
Startled and touched, Joscelin sat on his heels and embraced the child heartily in return. “I was not sleeping, and you were, so soundly it would have been shame to disturb you. And it’s done, and I’m back, so hold me excused. I know you’d have done as well or better, never think I didn’t trust you….”
Bran thrust the gown at him sternly. “Put it on! And here is the face-cloth… How would you have got back into the hospice without it?” He had brought a hunk of bread, too, to make up for the missed breakfast. Joscelin broke it in two, and gave him back the greater half, shaken clean out of his own preoccupations by an irresistible tenderness that filled him with a wild urge to laughter.
“What should I do without you, my squire? You see I’m barely fit to be let out without my keeper. Now I promise you I’ll let you bearlead me all this day—except for your lesson-time with Brother Mark, of course! We’ll do whatever you please. You shall call the tune.”
He shrouded himself obediently in the adopted vestments, and they consumed the bread together in silent content before he draped the linen cloth again about his face. Hand in hand they emerged solemnly from the trees, and made their way decorously back into the precincts of Saint Giles.
*
Simon had trotted an exuberant Briar almost to the abbey gatehouse before he noticed the knotted forelock, and reaching to discover the cause, with some displeasure at such poor grooming, felt the coiled strip of vellum hard under his fingers. He eased to a walk, which did not please his mount, while he disentangled the roll, and uncoiled it curiously.
Joscelin’s none too practiced fist, further complicated by poor light for the writing, and an unbiddable quill, cut to another man’s hand, was nevertheless readable. Simon shut the coil hurriedly in his palm, as though someone might be paying too close attention, and looked back over his shoulder, and all about him, belatedly searching for some sign as to how this sudden message had been placed here for him, and where his elusive correspondent might be. Far too late! He might be anywhere. There was no way of laying hand on him or getting word to him, except by doing what he asked, and setting a scene to which he would certainly come.
Simon put the leaf away carefully in the pouch at his belt, and rode on very thoughtfully. Beyond the gatehouse, toward the bridge that crossed the Severn into the town, the sheriff’s forces were beginning to mass. In the great court of the abbey the usual business of the day proceeded. The lay brothers were coming forth briskly to the main gardens at the Gaye, and going about the affairs of the grange court and the stock. Brother Edmund bustled between the herbarium and the wards of his infirmary, and Brother Oswald the almoner was distributing doles to the few beggars at the gate. Simon rode in soberly through the gates, and handed over Briar to a groom. At the guest-hall he asked audience with Godfrid Picard, and was promptly admitted.
*
Iveta was sitting with Madlen in her own chamber, listlessly sewing at a piece of decorative tapestry for a cushion. It was true that she could go forth now if she wished, but not beyond the gatehouse. She had tried it once, very fearfully, and been turned back by one of her uncle’s men, civilly but with a faint, furtive grin that made her cheeks burn. And what was the use of going forth only within this closed ground, however pleasant it might have been in other circumstances, when Joscelin was only God knew where, and she had no means of reaching him? Better to sit here and hold her breath, and listen for a wind of freedom, with word of him. The brother who had warded off the lightnings once, and once conjured her back kindly into a bleak world, he was one friend, even if she had not spoken with him of late. And there was also Simon. He was loyal, he did not believe in the charges made against Joscelin. If the chance ever offered, he would help them.
Iveta stitched away and sat very still, all the more after she had caught the faint sound of voices raised in the next room. Even the inner walls here were solid, and held out sound, she did not think Madlen had noticed anything to arouse her interest. Accordingly Iveta carefully suppressed her own. But it was no mistake. Her uncle was quarreling with someone. She detected it by the vicious vehemence of his voice rather than by any loudness, indeed it was purposefully quiet, and words quite indistinguishable. The other voice was younger, less cautious, more furiously defensive, surely astonished and aghast, as if this fell on him out of a clear sky. Still no words, only the thread of significant sound, two voices clashing in bitter conflict. And now she thought she caught an intonation in the second voice which provided a name that could only dismay her. What could have happened between her uncle and Simon? For surely that was Simon’s voice. Was her uncle growing suspicious of every young man who came near her? She knew only too well that he had a treasure to guard, herself, the great honor she bore like a millstone round her neck, the use that could be made of her, the profit that could accrue from her. Yet only a day or so ago Simon had been welcome, privileged, smiled upon by Aunt Agnes.
Madlen sat stolidly stitching at a linen coif for herself, and paid no heed. Her ear was older and duller; if she heard the hum of conversation, that was all.
And even that had ceased. A door closed. Iveta thought she caught a renewed murmur next door, urgent and low. Then the door of her own chamber opened
, after a round, confident rap, and Simon entered as of right. Iveta was lost, she could only stare; but he had the right note.
“Goodmorrow, Iveta!” he said easily. And to the maid: “Give me leave a little while, Mistress Madlen!”
Madlen had Agnes’s smiles and becks well in mind, he was still privileged to her. She took up her sewing, made her reverence complacently, indulgent as on the last occasion, and left the room.
The door had barely closed on her when Simon was on his knee beside Iveta, and leaning close. And for all his disciplined calm, he was flushed and breathing hard, his nostrils flaring agitatedly.
“Listen, Iveta, for they’ll not let me in to you again…. if she tells them I’m here with you now, they’ll hunt me out… I’ve word for you from Joss!” She would have questioned, dismayed and anxious, but he laid silencing fingers on her lips, and rushed on, low and vehemently: “Tonight, after Vespers, he bids you come to the herb-garden. And I’m to have his horse waiting on the other side of the brook. Don’t fail him, as I shall not. Have you understood?”
She nodded, almost speechless with wonder and joy and alarm all mingled. “Oh, yes! Oh, Simon, I would do anything! God bless you for his loyal friend! But you… What can have happened? Why, why turn against you?”
“Because I spoke up for Joss. I said he was neither murderer nor thief, and in the end I would see him vindicated, and they’d have to take back all they’ve said against him. They’ll have no more of me, I’m cast off. But here’s his message… look!” She knew the scrawl, and read, quivering. She fondled the slip of vellum as if it had been a holy relic, but closed Simon’s hand over it again, though reluctantly.
“They might find it… you keep it. I’ll do his bidding, and thank you a thousand times for all your goodness. But oh, Simon, I’m sorry that between us we’ve brought you to grief, too…”
“Grief, what grief?” he whispered fiercely. “I care nothing for them, if I have your goodwill.”