Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

the body lay, viewing all the trees on both sides with great care, at a level above his own modest height, as Edmund noted without understanding.
    "What is it you're looking for, Cadfael?"
    Whatever it was, he had found it. Some four paces from the dead man's feet he had halted, fixing his eyes first on the trunk on his right, well above his own head, and then transferring the same intent stare to the tree opposite.
    "Come and see. Come, all, and bear me witness when I tell it."
    On either trunk at the same level there was a thin, scored line, scarring the fine ridges of the bark.
    "A rope has been stretched between these trees, throat-height to a man of middle stature and well-mounted, though even at breast-height it would have fetched him down. It was light enough for a canter on so good a pathway, I fancy, for surely he was going briskly. You see how far it toppled him. We shall find the mark of it on his throat."
    They stared, appalled, and had no word to say, as they followed him in awed silence back to where the body lay, and he turned back the collar of the coat, and bared Domville's neck. For the dark-red slash of the cord was not all they found under the beard, on the thick, sinewy flesh. There, plain to be seen, were the wreathing, blackened bruises of two human hands, and the two thumbs, overlapping, had left a great, mangled stain on the Adam's apple, and possibly crushed the gristle within.
    They were still gaping in horrified silence when they heard urgent voices approaching along the ride, the sheriff's loudest among them. The intimation of disaster had gone before, but as yet its magnitude was a secret among these few.
    Cadfael drew the collar close over the evidence of strangulation, and turned with his companions to meet Gilbert Prestcote and his officers.
    When the sheriff had viewed everything Cadfael had to show him, they brought a litter, and lifted Huon de Domville on to it, drawing the folds of his cloak over his face. At the spot from which they raised him they fixed a cross bound from two sticks, to enable them to find and search the place again at need. Then they carried him back, not to the bishop's house but to the abbey, to be laid in the mortuary chapel there and made decent for burial by the monks of Saint Peter's, who should have witnessed his marriage.
    The child Bran, who could pass for any urchin of the Foregate, briefly, at least, and with discretion, simply by shedding his leper cloak, came back from a wary foray along the road, to report to the two tall, veiled men who sat together with their clapper-dishes under the cemetery wall: "They have found him. I saw them carrying him back. They've taken him past the house. I dared not go further."
    "Alive or dead?" asked the slow, calm voice of Lazarus from behind the faded blue face-cloth. The boy knew death already, no need to shield him.
    "His face was covered," said Bran, and sat down beside them. He felt the silence and tension of the other, the new man, the one who was known to be young and whole, and wondered why he trembled.
    "No words," said Lazarus tranquilly. "You have your breathing-space. So has she."
    Within the great court of the abbey the men-at-arms laid down the litter they carried, and from all sides, in haste and anxious clamour that died abruptly into silence and stillness, all those bound up in this matter came flooding, to form a mute, wide-eyed audience all about the bier. They halted at an awed distance, all but the sheriff and his men, and Abbot Radulfus, who advanced with authority. From the guest-hall Picard burst forth, obstinately hopeful, to freeze at sight of the shrouded figure and covered face. The women followed fearfully. The little golden image moved as though she could barely sustain the weight of her finery, yet she came, and did not turn her eyes away. No doubt of it now. Shocking though it might be, this death was life to her. Why, why had she so belied herself yesterday?
    "My lord abbot," said Prestcote, "this is very ill news we bring, for my lord Domville is found indeed, but as you see him. These brothers of your house found him, thrown from his horse on the woodland path that leads out towards Beistan. His horse was grazing unharmed, and is back in his stable. Huon de Domville was thrown against an oak tree, and is dead. It seems that he was on his way home when this thing happened. Father, will you receive him and have body and soul cared for, until due arrangements can be made? His nephew