Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

old servants. His name was Arnulf, and he had answered all the sheriff's questions without hesitation, and was willing to answer as candidly any others that Cadfael or any man might put to him. An age had come to an end with his lord's death, he would have to trim his service to quite another rule, now, or go into retirement and take his ease.
    Nevertheless, the first question Cadfael asked was one Arnulf had certainly not foreseen.
    "Your lord had the name for a womanizer. Tell me this, had he a mistress of such importance - or perhaps a new sweetheart so absorbing - that he could not do without her even for these few days while he married the Massard heiress? Someone he might bring along with him, and install within reach, but apart?"
    The old man gaped, as if such forthright words came curiously from one in a Benedictine habit, but after narrow scrutiny appeared to find, after all, nothing so surprising about it. His manner relaxed noticeably. They had a language and an experience of life in common.
    "Brother, however you may have hit on it, yes, there is such a woman. They come in all kinds, women. I was never a great one for them myself, I've had troubles enough without courting more. But he could not go far or long without them. They came and went, with him. By the score! But there's this one who is different. She stays. Stable as a wife. Like an old gown or a pair of shoes, easy and comfortable, someone he need not make speeches for, or put himself out to flatter and please. I had a feeling always," said Arnulf reflectively, scrubbing in his beard with thin fingers, "that wherever he went, she wouldn't be far away. But I know nothing of any plans to bring her here. Not that he ever made use of me in such matters. I helped him into his shirts and hose, and pulled off his boots after hunting, and slept close to fetch him wine in the night if he called. Not for his women. That's another service. What of her? There's been no word of her here. I did wonder."
    "Nor of a palfrey," asked Cadfael, "pure white, mane and all? A pretty little lady's jennet out of Spanish stock, I should say by the glimpse I got of her. With a gilded bridle hanging on her stable door."
    "I know the one," said Arnulf, startled. "He bought it for her. I was not supposed even to know these things. Where have you seen it?"
    Cadfael told him. "The horse, but not the woman. She left her palfrey and her perfume behind, but she's gone."
    "Well," allowed Arnulf reasonably, "I suppose she might well want to avoid being tangled in a matter of murder, and certainly if she was there, and he found on that path, as they tell, it would seem that he rode to her when he sent young Simon in and went on alone. She might well take fright and think it better to vanish."
    "She has also very loyal servants there," said Cadfael dryly, "who are exerting themselves to convince me and all the world she never was there at all. By this time I daresay that young fellow has moved the jennet away to a safe place."
    It had occurred to him, somewhat belatedly, that the steward might have good reason to do as much for his own sake, as well as the lady's. If she had been in attendance there all this while, waiting for a visit from her lord and keeper, she might well have passed the time pleasantly enough with a younger, handsomer, altogether more personable man who was there to hand. And he, for his part, might have a healthy fear of having the association known, in case it should bring him into suspicion of having made away with his lord for the woman's sake, in jealousy and despite. It was but one step further to wonder if he had not done that very thing. Say that Domville came that night, after the young man had been blessed with the woman's favours to the point where he thought of her as his. Say that he was cast out into the night while they were together, and had nothing to do but brood and grieve, until it came to him that his lord's way home lay clear, and if he removed the act far enough from the lodge, near enough to Shrewsbury, he left the field wide open for any man to be judged the killer. It was possible! It could have happened so. Much depended on the woman. Cadfael wished that he knew more of her.
    "The question now is, since she left her mount behind, where could she go from that remote place, on foot?" It was also, why should she choose to go afoot, but that he did not say, that was a more obscure problem.
    "The manor where he usually kept her - her home,