Canon Eudo to the abbot’s lodging, the two young men to walk their jaded horses back to the bishop’s house and see them tended, stabled and fed before seeking their own supper and rest. As for Picard, he bade them all a very short goodnight, and withdrew to the guest-hall, and there drew Agnes with him into their own chamber, and closed the door against all the rest of the household, even those most trusted. He had matter of importance to confide to her, and it was for no other ears.
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.
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
