Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

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, sombrely 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 offence, 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 honourable as his. But to run with mean tales to him, and blacken my name, was that fair dealing?"
    Picard gave vent to a wordless bellow of impatient rage, and turned to snap imperious fingers at his menservants, half a dozen of whom, solid men-at-arms of an age to be experienced in rough play, came forth blithely enough, three on either side, closing in a half-circle.
    "Take this wastrel out of my sight. The river is handy. Put him to cool in the mud!"
    The women drew back in a flurry of skirts. Agnes and the maid dragging Iveta away by both wrists. The men-at-arms advanced, grinning but wary, and Joscelin was obliged to take some paces back, to avoid being encircled.
    "Stand clear!" he warned, glaring. "Let the coward do his own work, for if you lay hand on me there'll be blood let."
    He had so far forgotten himself as to lay hand to hilt, and draw the blade some inches from the scabbard. Cadfael judged that it was high time to intervene, before the young man put himself hopelessly in the wrong, and both he and Brother Denis were starting forward to thrust between the antagonists, when from the cloister surged the tall presence of Prior Robert, monumentally displeased, and from the direction of the abbot's lodging, swift and silent and thus far unnoticed, the equally tall and far more daunting figure of Abbot Radulfus himself, hawk-faced, shrewd-eyed, and coldly but composedly angry.
    "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Robert spread long, elegant hands between. "You do yourselves and our house great dishonour. Think shame to touch weapon or threaten violence within these walls!"
    The men-at-arms recoiled thankfully into the crowd. Picard stood smouldering but controlled. Joscelin shot his