Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

had been silent about her for some minutes, the prior's voice fading away into distance, assiduously attentive. Then she stole up from her place and went to peer cautiously through the south door into the cloister. Robert had drawn the guests into the garth with him to admire the last of the carefully tended roses. Their backs were turned to her, and the western walk of the cloister stood empty before her. Iveta gathered up her skirts and her courage, only she knew with how much heroism and how little hope, and ran like a frightened mouse from cats, out into the great court, and there looked round her desperately.
    She knew this enclave not at all, it was the first time she had entered it; but she saw between the buildings of the guest-hall and the abbot's lodging the green of pleached hedges framing a narrow alley, and the heads of trees nodding beyond. There must be the gardens, at this hour surely deserted. Somewhere there he had said he would wait for her, and as she passed him she had given him the signal that she would not fail him. Why had she done so? This could be nothing better than a farewell. Yet she sped towards it with a despairing courage she would have done better to summon up long ago, before it was too late. She was already solemnly affianced, a contract almost as binding as marriage itself. Easier far to slip out of life than out of that bargain.
    The thick green walls enclosed her, twilight within twilight. She drew breath and slowed to a walk, uncertain which way to go. The path to the right led between the rear of the guest-hall and the abbey fish-ponds, and beyond the second pool a little footbridge crossed the mill leat near the outflow, and brought her to a gateway in a mellow stone wall. With one more wall between herself and detection she felt unaccountably safer, and there was a curious comfort and calm in the wave of spiced sweetness that rose about her as her skirts brushed the greenery within. Rosemary and lavender, mint and thyme, all manner of herbs filled the walled garden with aromatic odours, grown a little rank now with autumn, ready to sink into their winter sleep very soon. The best of their summer was already harvested.
    A hand reached out of an arbour in the wall to take her hand, and a voice whispered in haste: "This way, quickly! There's a hut here in the corner ... an apothecary's shop. Come! No one will look for us in there."
    Every time she had ever been able to draw close to him - the times had been very few and very brief - she had been startled and reassured by the very size of him, head and shoulders above her, wide in breast and shoulder, long in the arm, narrow and fleet in the flank, as though his engulfing shadow could wall her in from all threats, like a tower. But she knew it could not, and he was as unblessed and vulnerable as she. The very thought had made her even more timorous than she was for herself. Great lords, if they once take against, can quite destroy young squires, however tall and strong and well versed in arms.
    "Someone may come there," she whispered, clinging to his hand.
    "At this time of the evening? No one will come. They're at supper now, they'll be in the chapterhouse afterwards." He drew her along with him in his arm, under the eaves rustling with dried herbs, into the wood-warm interior where glass gleamed on the shelves, and the brazier, fed to burn slowly until it was needed, provided a small eye of fire in the dimness. The door he left open, just as it stood. Better move nothing, to betray the visit of unauthorized strangers. "Iveta! You did come! I was afraid ..."
    "You knew I'd come!"
    "... afraid you might be watched too closely, and every moment. Listen, for we may not have long. You shall not, you shall not be delivered over to that gross old man. Tomorrow, if you'll trust me, if you will to go with me, come at this hour again, here ..."
    "Oh, God!" she said in a soft moan. "Why do we make believe there can be any escape?"
    "But there can, there must!" he insisted furiously. "If you truly want it ... if you love me ..."
    "If I love you ...!"
    She was in his arms, her own slight arms embracing with all their might as much of his hard young body as they could span, when Brother Cadfael, in all innocence, his sandals silent on his well-kept grass paths, darkened the doorway and startled them apart. He was a good deal more astonished than they, and to judge by their faces, much less terrible than whatever they had momentarily taken