Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

sword very hastily back into the sheath, but stood breathing heavily and cherishing his fury. He was not an easy young man to abash, and harder still to silence. He made a half-turn that brought him eye to eye with the abbot, who had reached the borders of the dispute, and stood lofty, dark and calm, considering all the offenders at leisure. There fell a silence.
    "Within the bounds of this abbey," said Radulfus at last, without raising his voice, "men do not brawl. I will not say we never hear an angry word. We are also men. Sir Godfrid, keep your men at heel on these premises. And you, young man, so much as touch your hilt again, and you shall lie in a penitent's cell overnight."
    Joscelin bent head and knee, though the abbot might well have thought the gesture somewhat perfunctory. "My lord abbot, I ask your pardon! Threatened or no, I was at fault." But owning his fault, he kept his rage. A close observer might even have wondered if he was not contemplating the possible advantages of offending again, and being cast as promised into a cell within these walls. Locks may be picked, lay brothers suborned or tricked - yes, there were possibilities! He was disadvantaged, however, by a fair-minded disposition not to offend those who had committed no offence against him. "I stand in your mercy," he said.
    "Good, we understand each other. Now, what is this dispute that troubles the peace here?"
    Both Joscelin and Picard began to talk at once, but Joscelin, for once wise, drew back and left the field to his elder. He stood biting a resolute lip and regarding the abbot's face, as Picard brushed him contemptuously aside in the terms he had expected.
    "Father, this impertinent squire has been turned off by his lord for a negligent, ill-conditioned fellow, and he credits me with so advising my lord Domville, as indeed I felt it my duty to do. For I have found him presumptuous, pressing his company upon my niece, and in all ways a troubler of the peace. He came here to brawl with me, resenting his well-deserved dismissal. He has no more than his due, but he will not be schooled. And that is all the matter," he said scornfully.
    Brother Cadfael marvelled how Joscelin kept his mouth shut on the flood of his grievance, and his eyes fixed respectfully upon Radulfus, until he was invited to speak. He must surely have acquired in these few moments a healthy respect for the abbot's fairness and shrewd sense, so to contain himself. He had confidence that he would not be judged unheard, and it was worth an effort at self-control to manage his defence aright.
    "Well, young sir?" said Radulfus. It could not be asserted that he smiled, his countenance remained judicially remote and calm; but there might have been the suggestion of indulgence in his voice.
    "Father Abbot," said Joscelin, "all of us of these two houses came here to see a marriage performed. The bride you have seen." She had been hustled away out of sight, into the guest-hall, long before this. "She is eighteen years old. My lord - he that was my lord! - is nearing sixty. She has been these last eight years orphaned and in her uncle's care, and she has great lands, long in her uncle's administration." Some indication of his unexpected drift had penetrated by then, Picard was boiling and voluble. But Radulfus dipped a frowning brow, and raised a silencing hand, and they gave way perforce.
    "Father Abbot, I pray your help for Iveta de Massard!" Joscelin had gained his moment, and could not hold back. "Father, the honour of which she is lady spans four counties and fifty manors, it is an earl's portion. They have farmed it between them, uncle and bridegroom, they have parceled it out, she is bought and sold, without her will - Oh, God, she has no will left, she is tamed! - against her will! My offence is that I love her, and I would have taken her away out of this prison ..."
    The latter half of this, though Cadfael had drawn close enough to hear all, was certainly lost to most others under a shrill clamour of refutation, in which Agnes played the loudest part. She had a voice that rode high over opposition, Joscelin could not cry her down. And in the midst of the hubbub, suddenly there were crisp hoofbeats in the gatehouse, and horsemen pacing into the court with the authority of office, and in numbers calculated to draw ear and eye. The thread alike of Joscelin's appeal and Picard's refutation was broken abruptly; every eye turned to the gate.
    First came Huon de Domville, the