Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

well-curved ash for the felloes, shaping with the grain of the wood.
    "God bless the work!" said Cadfael, halting his mule and lighting down. "I think you must be Ulger, and it's Ulger I'm seeking. But I looked for an older man."
    The wheelwright rose and abandoned his adze, moving at ease in his own kingdom. He looked at his visitor with amiable curiosity, a round-faced, good-natured soul, but with a dignified reserve about him, too. "My father in his time was also Ulger, and also wheelwright to this and many another hamlet round here. Belike you had him in mind. God rest him, he died some years back. The toft and the office are mine." And he added, after a rapid and shrewd scrutiny: "You'll be from the Benedictines at Shrewsbury. By this way and that way, we do get word."
    "And we have our troubles, and you hear of them," said Cadfael. He slipped the mule's bridle over a fence-pale, and shook out his habit and stretched his back after the ride. "I tell you truth as I would be told truth. Huon de Domville was murdered early on his wedding-day, and at his hunting-lodge none so far from here he kept a woman. He was on his way from her when he died. And she is no longer at the hunting-lodge. They called her Avice of Thornbury, daughter to that Ulger who must be also your father. In these parts he found and took up with her. I do not think I tell you anything you did not already know."
    He waited, and there was silence. The wheelwright faced him with countenance suddenly hard and still, for all its native candour, and said no word.
    "It is no part of my purpose or my need," said Cadfael, "to bring upon your sister any danger or threat. Nevertheless, she may know what justice needs to know, and not only for retribution, but for the deliverance of the innocent. All I want is speech with her. She left behind her at Domville's lodge her horse, and I believe much more that was hers. She left afoot. It is my belief that she came here, to her own people."
    "It is many years," said Ulger, after a long silence, "since I had a sister, many years since I and mine were her own people to Avice of Thornbury."
    "That I understand," said Cadfael. "Nevertheless, blood is blood. Did she come to you?"
    Ulger regarded him sombrely, and made up his mind. "She came."
    "Two days ago? After the news came from Shrewsbury of Huon de Domville found dead?"
    "Two days ago, late in the afternoon she came. No, the news had not reached us then. But it had reached her."
    "If she is here with you," said Cadfael, "I must have speech with her." He looked towards the house, where a sturdy, comely woman moved out and in again as he gazed. In the corner of the yard a boy of about fourteen was fining down cleft oak spokes for some lighter wheel. Ulger's wife and son. He saw no sign of another woman about the toft.
    "She is not here," said Ulger. "Nor would she be welcome in my house. Only once or twice have we seen her since she chose to go for a Norman baron's whore, a shame to her kin and her race. I told her when she came that I would do for her all that a man should do for his sister, except let her into the house she abandoned long ago for money and ease and rich living. She was not changed nor put down. Make what you can of her, for I'm in many minds about her. She said calmly and civilly that she wanted nothing from me and mine but three things - the loan of my nag, a plain peasant gown in place of her fine clothes, and some hours of my son's time to guide her where she was bound, and bring back the horse safely. She had three miles to go, and her fine shoes were not fit for the way."
    "And these three you granted her?" said Cadfael, marvelling.
    "I did. She put off her finery here in the undercroft, and put on an old gown of my wife's. Also she stripped off the rings from her hands and a gold chain from her neck, and gave them to my wife, for she said she had no more need of them, and they might pay a part of her debt here. And she mounted my nag, and the boy there went with her on foot, and before night he rode the horse back to us here. And that is all I know of her, for I asked nothing."
    "Not even where she was bound?"
    "Not even that. But my son told me, when he returned."
    "And where is she gone?"
    "To a place they call Godric's Ford, west from here and a short way into the forest."
    "I know it," said Cadfael, enlightened. For at Godric's Ford there was a small grange of Benedictine nuns, a cell of the abbey of Polesworth. So Avice had made for