Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

the Foregate beside the bishop's boundary wall, and paused to choose his ground. Only by climbing could he see over the wall, and if he must take to the trees it had better be where he could view both the inner and the outer sides of the courtyard, recognize known figures, and watch all the activity about the stables.
    He chose his place with care, in the bole of an oak, stretched along a limb still covered well enough to hide him, but affording him views on both sides, and a quick and easy drop to the ground should he have to move in haste. Then there was nothing to be done but wait, for the dawn was still only a grudging pallor in the east. He would miss his breakfast, today nobody need steal for him.
    Dawn came at last, in its own good time. The house, the containing wall, the stables and byres and storehouses within, all took shape very gradually out of darkness, and put on colour and life. Sleepy servants, bakers and grooms and dairy-maids, first crept, and then bustled, out about their business. Loaded trays of loaves appeared from the bakehouse, carried indoors by scullions. The morning loitered a further while, and the gentry began to make their appearances, Canon Eudo the first of them, bound for the second Mass of the day, then, some little while later, Simon and Guy together, none too eager, and deep in sombre talk. The grooms were leading out, surely, most of the horses in the stables. It seemed that the morning's hunt was already ordered and preparing to muster.
    Muster they did, Guy resigned but sullen among them, and file out from the gate to turn along the Foregate towards the town. But Simon did not mount with them. He was still standing on the steps of the hall, looking after them, and apparently waiting for something. The bishop's own stable was round a corner of the house and out of Joscelin's view, but he pricked his ears to the sound of hooves, urgent and lively, coming round thence into the courtyard. In a moment more he saw his own Briar, silvery grey blotched with darker grey, frisk indignantly out into the open air of the morning, tugging a sweating and voluble groom with him. Simon came down from the steps to meet them, ran a hand over gleaming grey neck and shoulder, and held the silvery head between his palms a moment, in an appreciative caress. Joscelin's heart warmed to him. With all this coil of troubles, he had still spared a thought for the active beast shut up in a stall, and haled him out for exercise. The words he spoke to the groom as he turned back to re-enter the house were not distinguishable at this distance, but his gestures towards horse and gateway had said plainly enough: "Saddle him up and lead him out for me."
    Joscelin waited long enough to see for himself that the groom was about that very business, and then dropped out of his tree, and moved cautiously forward in cover of the bushes until he could see the outside of the gates. And here they came, Briar mischievously lively, impatient for action. The groom led him out, and hitched him indifferently to one of the rings in the wall beside the mounting-block, and there left him to wait for his rider. It could not have turned out better. As soon as the man had gone back into the yard, and was tramping across the cobbles to the stable, Joscelin was out of cover and darting along the wall to caress and soothe a startled and delighted Briar. There was no time for dalliance, and at first he cursed the chance that a couple of horsemen came jingling along the Foregate at that moment, and he was forced to turn his back on the road and stand stolidly holding the bridle as they passed, as though he had been one of the grooms waiting for his master. But the enforced delay gave time for Briar to feel reassured, and stand in charmed quietness, while Joscelin hurriedly knotted his strip of vellum securely in the silvery forelock.
    The riders had passed, for the moment the Foregate here was empty, and there was no one on the path between the trees. Joscelin tore himself away from his favourite perforce, shutting his ears to the protesting whinny that pursued him, and ran like a bolting hare back into cover, and did not stop until he had worked his way some distance back towards Saint Giles.
    It was done, he dared not stop to see whether it took immediate effect, for now it was broad day, and growing populous on the roads, and he had better hide himself as quickly as possible in his leper's gown, so much stronger a defence than any