after the manner of knighthood, since Domville would not even take such an impertinence seriously, but simply throw him out of his household and be done with him. And how would Iveta be helped then?
But need that mean that he was really capable of contemplating the use of murder? Remembering the open brown face, very poorly provided for dissembling, and the headlong manner, surely not adapted to going roundabout, Cadfael could hardly believe it. And yet there was that fragile golden miniature of a girl with her sad, resigned face and empty eyes, two days from her hated marriage, and her fate was a weighty enough matter to demand, if it could not justify, a death or two.
The urgency touched Cadfael, no less than Joscelin Lucy. For here was Guimar de Massard’s granddaughter, stripped of all her kin but these two who hedged her in like guardian dragons. And how could the last of the Massards be left to her fate, without a finger raised from all those who had known her grandfather, and reverenced his memory? As well abandon a comrade wounded and surrounded in battle.
Brother Oswin crept diffidently to Cadfael’s side in the warming-room. “Is the linctus already prepared, brother? The fault was mine, let me do something to make amends. I will rise early and bottle it for you. I have caused you such extra travail, I should make some repayment.”
He had caused more travail than he knew, and more perplexity of mind, but at least he had recalled Cadfael to the remembrance of his first duty here; after, of course, the observance of the rule.
“No, no,” said Cadfael hastily. “The boiling is very well, and it will cool overnight and thicken, after Prime is time enough before bottling. You are reader tomorrow, you must keep the offices strictly, and think only of your reading.”
And leave my brew alone, he thought, as he went to his cell and his prayers. It came clear to him suddenly how like were Brother Oswin’s large hands to those of Joscelin Lucy, and yet how the one pair made a havoc of whatever they touched, and the other pair, for all their size, moved with delicate dexterity, whether on the reins of a speckled gray horse, or sword and lance, or circling the tender body of a heart-heavy girl.
And with equal adroitness, thus driven, on the means of murder?
Cadfael arose well before Prime next morning, and went to bottle his overnight brew, and take a measure of it to Brother Edmund at the infirmary. The day had dawned misty and mild, without wind. In the still air sounds were muted and movements softened, and the great court presented an ordinary picture of routine activities from Prime to breakfast, through the first Mass and the chapter that followed, on this occasion cut short and briskly conducted, there being so much following business to be seen to for the next day’s marriage. There was therefore a rather longer interval left for relaxation before High Mass at ten, and Cadfael took the opportunity of returning to the herb-gardens, and earmarking for Brother Oswin’s afternoon duty those tasks which seemed best proofed against his knack of well-intentioned devastation. Autumn was a good time, since there was digging to be done, to make the cleared ground ready for the operation of the frosts to come.
Cadfael returned to the great court before ten o’clock, when brothers, pupils, guests and townsmen were beginning to gather for High Mass. The Picards were just issuing forth from the guest-hall, Iveta forlornly small and mute between uncle and aunt, but looking, or so Cadfael thought, resolutely composed, as though a faint, reviving wind had blown through the heavy stillness of her despair, and given her heart at least to hope for a miracle. The elderly maidservant, as forbidding of visage as Agnes herself, walked close behind. The child was hemmed in securely every way.
They were moving at leisure towards the cloister and the south door, with Brother Denis the hospitaller in attendance, when the decorous quiet was rudely broken by a furious clatter of hooves at the gatehouse, and into the court galloped a rider on a speckled gray horse, at such headlong speed that he almost rode down the porter, and scattered the servants like hens before the fox. Reining round abruptly with great slithering of hooves on the moist cobbles, he flung the bridle on his horse’s neck, and leaped down with flaxen hair erected and blue eyes blazing, to plant himself squarely in Godfrid Picard’s path, feet spread and jaw jutting, a young man in a formidable rage.
“My lord, it’s you have done this thing to me! I am cast off from my service, thrown out without reason, without fault, with nothing but horse and saddle-bags, and ordered to quit this town before night. This in a moment, and no word of mine will be heard in excuse! And well I know to whom I owe the favor! You, you have complained of me to my lord, and got me turned off like a dog, and I will have satisfaction from you for the favor, man to man, before ever I turn my back on Shrewsbury!”
3
Like a flung stone in a placid pool, this violent invasion cast out flurries of ripples in all directions, to beat against gatehouse and guest-hall and cloister. Brother Denis fluttered uncertainly at gaze, unaware even of the identity of this large and very angry youth, and desirous only of restoring peace in the court, but without the least notion of how to set about it. Picard, brought up almost breast to breast with the solid young body and grim face, flamed red to the cheekbones, and then blanched white with answering fury. He could not go forward, he would not go aside, and even if the startled cluster of servants had not been pressing close behind, he would not have given back an inch. Agnes glared outrage, and quickly reached to grip Iveta by the arm, for the girl had started forward with a faint, desolate cry, the subdued stillness of her face broken, and for one moment sparkling with frantic emotion, as shattered ice takes the light and dazzles. Just for that instant she would have forgotten everything but the boy, sprung to his side without conceal, flung her arms round him, if her aunt’s grasp had not plucked her back without gentleness, drawn her close to a rigid, somberly gowned side, and held her there with steely fingers. Whether from long submission or from newly alerted wit, she shrank and was still, and the light, but not the pain, ebbed out of her face. Cadfael saw it, and was inextricably caught. No young thing hardly out of her nurse’s care should so suffer.
He remembered that look later. At this moment he was held by the impact of Joscelin Lucy’s wildly unwise youth and Godfrid Picard’s subtle, experienced maturity. It was not so unequal a combat as might have been expected. The boy was above himself, and unquestionably a man of his hands, and a son of confident, if minor, privilege.
“I may not ask you to draw, here,” he said high and clearly. Anger raised his voice, as though to reach a marshal in the lists. “I challenge you to name the place and time where we may draw, to good effect. You have done me an offense, I am cast off by reason of your persuasion, do me right, and stand to what you have urged against me.”
“Insolent rogue!” Picard spat back at him disdainfully. “I am more likely to set my hounds on you than dignify you by crossing swords with you. If you are dismissed for a profitless, treacherous, meddling, ill-conditioned wretch, you are rightly served, be thankful your lord did not have you whipped from his door. You have got off lightly. Take care you don’t provoke worse usage than you already have. Now stand out of my way, and get you gone homewards, as you were ordered.”
“Not I!” vowed Joscelin through his teeth. “Not until I have said all that I have to say, here before all these witnesses. Nor will I go for being ordered. Does Huon de Domville own the ground I stand on and the air I breathe? His service he can keep, there are other households at least as honorable as his. But to run with mean tales to him,
