fine as a feather of silver. Would a feather float on the air if it was made of silver? he wondered. Could any other metals float if they were carefully constructed to the same dimensions as a feather?
The thought made him give a wry grin at his own foolishness. Metal was metal! Metal was heavy, and couldn’t float, neither on air nor water. The idea was ridiculous. Just because you made something look like something else, just because you changed its outward appearance, didn’t mean you changed its essence…
He jolted along for some moments lost in thought. Appearances, he thought, could be deceptive.
Inevitably his thoughts turned to Coffyn. The man had thought his wife was enjoying an affair with the Irishman, and all because the evidence appeared to support that view. Yet in reality the culprit was his neighbor, an unscrupulous character who was prepared not only to cuckold him, but was also quite possibly willing to spread the rumor that it was John who was guilty, which had at last led to John’s brutal beating at the hands of the jealous husband.
And suddenly Simon had a strange idea.
In the leper camp, Ralph saw to the wounded Quivil. The man was shaken, but his injuries from the stoning were mending nicely, and Ralph was confident that he would be up and about, perfectly well, within a few days. Getting up from the leper’s bedside, he forced his fists into the small of his back and stretched. He was finding that seeing to the needs of his inmates was becoming painful. It was easy to see why those of his colleagues who spent their days tending to the sick were prone to aches and pains in their backs, he felt. It came from constantly bending over their charges.
Edmund Quivil was snoring peacefully enough, and Ralph could hear the church bells tolling from the other side of the town. He moved to the door and wrapped his robe about him more tightly as he saw how cold it was. Shivering, he threw more logs on the fire before pulling the thick curtain over the doorway and walking quickly to the chapel.
Inside he found a couple of the more devout lepers waiting, and with them he went through the mass. There was always so much to be done, but this was the office he most enjoyed. The candles flickered as they cast their soft light, glinting on metal and paintwork, reminding him of his duties: to tend to those souls whom most had already assumed to be consigned to damnation.
It was with a light heart that he left the little chapel. He was always more contented leaving than going in; the small chamber was filled with the love of God. Its pictures of Christ and His mother seemed almost to glow with adoration. The very walls were constructed of kindness and generosity. Its atmosphere of incense and dirty clothing was to Ralph the very essence of worship, for the two smells demonstrated the love of man for God, and Christ’s love of the sick and the dying. There couldn’t be a better place to worship God, he felt, than from inside the chapel of a lazar house.
The ground crunched underfoot. Since he had walked inside the chapel, the frost had dusted the grass, and he inhaled the crisp air with satisfaction. It tasted clean in his mouth, like a fresh mountain spring. Outside his own door, he snuffed the air happily and sighed with pleasure.
He knew many of his friends and fellow-brothers thought he was insane to want to look after the lepers; that was partly why he was here, because at the election for the post there was no one else who wanted the job. But Ralph was convinced it was the best way for him to serve God. This was surely the best way too to save souls, and that was the sacred duty of all who wore the tonsure. They were God’s own army, whose only task was to save mankind in the eternal battle.
Something caught his attention, but he was only aware of it as a niggling irritation at first, something which interrupted the flow of his thoughts. It was like a piece of carpentry where the workman has been forced to leave off his task when he has all but finished. The last little unfinished part is an annoyance. This was similar; it was a tiny part of his normal scenery that was wrong. He looked over the whole encampment, but nothing appeared out of place. Toward the town he could see nothing wrong-until he realized that there was a glow, just over the brow of the hill, where he had never seen one before. It appeared to waver in the night air, and the sight made him frown.
He walked toward the gate. From here he had a good view of the road, and he stared eastward, trying to pierce the gloom, but it wasn’t possible. In the end he was about to return to his room and seek a good night’s sleep, when he saw them.
From the town came what looked like a solid mass of men. They approached inexorably, some carrying burning torches, clad in a malevolent silence that was more intimidating than if they had been chanting slogans or shouting.
He fell back from the gate, his guts churning. The signs were all too easy to recognize; this was an attack. He had heard of the murders in France from a traveller when he lived in Houndeslow. There, he had heard, a whole number of lepers had been captured and burned alive, on the pretext that they had been involved in poisoning wells. It was nonsensical, of course. The lepers depended on the alms of the healthy-if they killed their neighbors, they would be killing themselves-but that hadn’t persuaded the peasants who wanted to extirpate the “sinners.”
His glance roved up and down the camp. He had no choice but to defend the place, but how? 25
S imon was a little in front of the other two when they arrived at the stableyard. It was already dark, and there were no torches lighted. Baldwin bellowed for his grooms as he passed through the gates.
The bailiff was impatient to get to the fire. His horse pranced, hooves pounding at the packed earth, and Simon hunched his shoulders to keep his neck warm. Baldwin kicked his feet free of the stirrups, and leaped down, stumbling and almost falling. Seeing this, Simon gave a short laugh.
“Very funny!” Baldwin growled.
“This is how you do it,” said Simon, and swung his leg over his horse’s neck. As he did so, his mount lifted his head, catching the bailiff’s foot. Simon found his leg rising higher and higher. He had no reins to hold, his feet were free of the stirrups, and suddenly he found himself falling, eyes wide in surprise. He hit the ground with an unpleasant squelch, his ears filled with the delighted, mocking laughter of his friend.
Margaret set aside her tapestry as the two men walked in. She smiled and welcomed Baldwin, but then froze at the sight of her husband. “Simon, what have you done?” she wailed.
“He was showing off, Margaret!” was Baldwin’s unsympathetic contribution.
“I just had an accident in the yard,” said Simon, and yawned.
“You must go and change.”
Baldwin could see her point. Simon was smothered in mud and straw. An old pile of rubbish and hay had broken his fall, but he was liberally bespattered with bright red mud.
“Meg, I can’t. I’m exhausted. Maybe in a while, when I’ve had a chance to warm up a bit.”
Hearing voices, Jeanne walked in and stood on the dais. She returned Baldwin’s smile. “I was wondering whether you were coming home again today. It is very late.”
“We have had an interesting day,” Baldwin said, crossing the room and taking her hand courteously to lead her to the fire. Jeanne listened while he explained all that had happened to them.
“We’re no nearer discovering Godfrey’s killer,” Simon added sourly as Baldwin finished.
“Oh, I can’t be so negative, Simon. We may not have solved the murder, but at least we appear to have solved a theft without knowing it, and we have averted the victimization of the lepers!”
At the gate once more, Ralph would have laughed to hear his words. He held a heavy staff of oak, one which he was sure would do good service if he was able to hit someone with it. The monk was untroubled with the concept of fighting to defend his inmates. It was the natural duty of a religious man to protect his flock, whether the man was a bishop leading the people of his city, his sword in his hand, against barbarians, or the master of a leper house defending his sufferers.
“They don’t look as if they’re going to stop, Brother.”
Ralph glanced to his side. Thomas Rodde stood there, his hat tilted forward as he peered forward through slitted eyes at the approaching horde. The leper wore his gloves, and his strong staff was in his hands, but he stood like an old man, bent at waist and shoulder.
Rodde was no fool. He counted the men, and gave up when he reached twenty. That number of strong and healthy folk could overrun the camp in a matter of minutes. There were only the few lepers here, and of them he and Quivil, even after their ordeal of the night before, were still the most healthy. The best thing for him to do, he knew, would be to run quickly. He had little strength, but this rabble of townspeople was here to evict the lepers. They wouldn’t, if he knew the English at all, be remotely bothered about chasing their prey. Their objective was to see the lepers away from Crediton. What happened after that would be someone else’s problem.
