Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

very well. Twenty words can say much. Bless you for a clever imp as ever was!"
    The head from which Brother Mark's pellitory dressing had erased even the last drying sore of under-feeding and dirt burrowed comfortably into Joscelin's once-privileged shoulder, and he felt nothing but amused and indulgent affection. "I can get as far as the bridge," boasted Bran sleepily, "if I keep to the back ways. If I had a capuchon I could get into the town. I'll go wherever you say ..."
    "Will your mother be missing and wanting you?" Joscelin breathed into the boy's ear. The woman, he knew, had given up all care for the world, and waited only to leave it. Even her son she abandoned thankfully into the hands of Saint Giles, patron of the diseased and shunned.
    "No, she's asleep ..." So, almost, was her busy and contented child, for whom the excitement of study and the small intrigues of friendship opened the world that was closing on her.
    "Come, then, shift close, and go to sleep. Creep inside, and get my warmth." He turned to let the searching face find a nest in the crook of his shoulder, and was startled by the pleasure he got from its delighted confiding. Long after the child was asleep he lay awake wondering that so much of his interest and energy should be directed elsewhere when his own neck was threatened, and so much of his thought devoted to excluding this small, neglected soul from whatever peril he himself had incurred, by his folly or his fate. Yes, he would write, he would try to find a way of getting his message to Simon, but not by involving the innocent lying easy in his arm.
    Joscelin also slept, and with mutual drowsy movements accommodated his guest all night long. Somewhere apart, Lazarus lay wakeful far into the night, long since having discarded his need for sleep.
    Chapter Eight
    Joscelin arose before dawn, with scrupulous care not to awake his bedfellow, who lay now in his abandoned ease and warmth with limbs flung abroad as if discarded. The voluminous leper-cloak Joscelin left draped over the child, for the early air was chilly, and moreover, he dared not draw nearer the town wearing it, though the risk of approaching without its cover was surely as great. He would have to rely on keeping out of sight, and also drew some comfort from the fact that the previous day's drive must have virtually exhausted the possibility of taking the sheriff's quarry on the northern side of the Foregate, and therefore, or so at least he hoped, the watch would be concentrated elsewhere.
    He stole out through the hall, and picked up Brother Mark's ink-horn and quill from the desk. He would not wait for light from dawn, and could make none here, but in the church the constant light on the altar, however meagre, would be enough for his young eyes and few words. He had already worked out in his mind what he would write, and managed it legibly, if none too neatly, on his strip of vellum. The quill needed trimming, and tended to spit, but he had no knife to correct it. He was come to the condition of those now his comrades, but that his skin and limbs were whole; otherwise he had nothing but what he stood up in, no possessions of any kind at his disposal.
    "Simon, for friendship do me two things, tether Briar in cover across the brook from the abbey, and bid Iveta to the herb-garden after Vespers."
    It would be enough, if he could find some way to get it to the right hands. But if he could not, he must withhold it, since he had written Simon's name. He regretted now the natural impulse to give his missive an address, in case it fell astray, for how could he implicate his friend in his own troubles? But he had no means of cutting off the offending name. It must go as it was, or stay, and destroy the only plan he had. It behooved him to be even more wary and even more audacious, in his attempt to reach the right man.
    He went out into just such a pre-dawn dimness and stillness as when he had run from his hiding-place in the bishop's grounds. Warily he made his way behind the hospice and towards the town, keeping well away from the road, where trees and bushes afforded him cover. When he came to the gardens and backyards of houses he was forced further from the highway, but he had time enough to move with caution. No one would stir at the bishop's house until the first light came, no one would quit the courtyard until it was full day, and the gentlefolk had broken their fast. He reached the narrow, tree-shaded path that emerged on