Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

make a profitable alliance for his guardian, to join up lands convenient for exploitation, to spite a rival, just as nimbly and irresistibly as can a girl; but with a girl the thing is more usual, and less to be questioned. No, no one in authority between baron and king will lift a finger to interfere with Iveta's destiny. Only, perhaps, some rash young hothead like this one, at his own risk and hers.
    He did not ask what they had been whispering together about, when he stumbled in upon their embrace. However fretted and angry, young Lucy had still something, some faint, hoarded hope in his sleeve, so much was clear. Better not to ask, not to let him utter it, even if he offered. But there was one thing Cadfael needed to know. The only Massard left, he had said.
    "What was the name of her father?" he asked, stirring his thickening brew. Before Compline he would be able to set it aside to cool gradually.
    "Hamon FitzGuimar de Massard." He stressed the patronymic with ceremony and pride. There were still some among the young, it seemed, who had been taught a proper regard for the great names of the dead. "Her grandsire was that Guimar de Massard who was at the taking of Jerusalem, and was captured afterwards at the battle of Ascalon, and died of his wounds. She has his helm and his sword. She treasures them. The Fatimids sent them back after his death."
    Yes, so they had, in courtesy to a brave enemy. They had been asked also to return his body from its temporary burial, and had received the request graciously, but then the intermittent squabbling among the Crusader leaders had cost them the chance of securing the port of Ascalon, and the negotiations for the return of the paladin's body had been neglected and forgotten. Chivalrous enemies had buried him with honour, and there he rested. It was all very long ago, years before these young people were ever born.
    "I remember," said Cadfael.
    "And now it's great shame that the last heiress of such a house should be so misused and defrauded of her happiness."
    "So it is," said Cadfael, lifting his pot from the fire and standing it aside on the beaten earth of the floor.
    "And it must not continue," said Joscelin emphatically. "It shall not continue." He rose, with a vast sigh. "I must go back, no help for it." He eyed the array of bottles and jars, and the dangling bunches of herbs that furnished the workshop with infinite possibilities. "Have you not something among all these wonders that I could slip into his cup? His or Picard's, what does it matter which? Either removed from this world would set Iveta free. And leave the world the sweeter!"
    "If that is seriously meant," said Cadfael firmly, "you are in peril of your soul, boy. And if it is mere levity, you deserve a great clout on the ear for it. If you were not so big, I might attempt it."
    The flashing smile came and went in an instant, warmly if ruefully. "I could stoop," he offered.
    "You know as well as I do, child, that you would not touch such foul methods as murder, and you do yourself great wrong to misuse words."
    "Would I not?" said Joscelin softly, the smile clean gone. "You do not know, brother, how far I would put my soul in peril to make all safe for Iveta."
    Cadfael fretted about it all through Compline, and into the warming-room for the last quiet half-hour before bed. Of course there had been nothing for it but to take the boy sternly to task, tell him firmly and truly that he must abjure all such black thoughts, out of which nothing good could come. None but knightly measures were open to him, since he was destined for knighthood, and he should, he must, forswear all others. The trouble was that the boy had shown very sound sense in retorting that he would be a great fool to challenge his lord to honest combat, 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