Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

the nearest female sanctuary in her need, for safe hiding under the protection of a powerful and respected abbey until Huon de Domville's murderer was known and taken, his death avenged, his mistress forgotten. From that secure haven she might be quite willing to speak out anything she did know to the purpose, provided she herself remained inviolable in her retreat.
    So he was thinking, as he thanked Ulger for his help, and mounted to ride on to Godric's Ford. A very natural course for a discreet woman to take, if she feared she might be drawn into a great scandal and the complex web of a crime.
    And yet ...! And yet she had left her jennet behind and gone afoot. And yet she had put off her finery for a homespun gown, and stripped the rings from her fingers, to pay a part of her life's debt to the kin she had deserted long ago ...
    The grange at Godric's Ford was a decent long, low house in a broad clearing, with a small wooden chapel beside it, and a high stone wall enclosing its well-kept kitchen garden and orchard of fruit trees, now graced with only half their yellowing leaves. In a butt of newly dug ground within the wall a middle-aged novice, comfortably rounded in form and face, was planting out cabbage seedlings for the next spring. Cadfael observed her as he turned in at the gate and dismounted, and with his eye for competence and industry approved the confidence of her manner and the economy of her movements. Benedictine nuns, like Benedictine monks, think well of manual labour, and are expected to expend their energies as generously in cultivation as in prayer. This woman, rosily healthy, went about her work like a good, contented housewife, pressing the soil firm round her transplants with a broad foot, and brushing the loam from her hands with placid satisfaction. She was agreeably plump, and not very tall, and her face, however rounded and well-fleshed, yet had solid, determined bones and a notable firmness of lip and chin.
    When she became aware of Cadfael and his mule, she straightened her back with the right cautious gradualness and a true gardener's grunt, and turned upon him shrewd brown eyes under brows quizzically oblique, very knowing eyes that took him in from cowl to sandals in one sweeping glance.
    She left her plot, and came unhurriedly towards him.
    "God greet you, brother!" she said cheerfully. "Can any here be of service to you?"
    "God bless your house!" said Cadfael ceremoniously. "I am seeking speech with a lady who has recently sought sanctuary here within. Or so I reason from such knowledge as I have. She is called Avice of Thornbury. Can you bring me to her?"
    "Very readily," said the novice. In her russet apple cheek a sudden, startling dimple dipped and rose like a curtsey. Beauty, in its most mature and tranquil manifestation, flashed and faded with the change, leaving her demure and plain as before. "If you're seeking Avice of Thornbury, you have found her. That name belongs to me."
    In the dark little parlour of the grange they sat facing each other across the small table, Benedictine monk and Benedictine nun-in-the-making, eyeing each other with mutual close interest. The superior had given them leave, and closed the door upon them, though the postulant's manner was of such assured authority that it seemed surprising she should ask anyone's permission to speak with her visitor, and even more surprising that she did so with such becoming humility. But Cadfael had already come to the conclusion that in dealing with this woman there would be no end to the surprises.
    Where now was the expected image of the Norman baron's whore, spoiled, indulged, kept in state for her beauty? Such a creature should have laboured to keep her charms, with paints and creams and secret spells, starved to avoid growing fat, studied the arts of movement and grace. This woman had subsided placidly into middle age, had let the wrinkles form in her face and neck without disguise, and the grey invade her brown hair. Brisk and lively she still was, and would always be, sure of herself, feeling no need to be or seem other than she was. And just as she was she had held Huon de Domville for more than twenty years.
    "Yes," she said immediately, in answer to Cadfael's question. "I was at Huon's hunting-lodge. He would always have me close, wherever he went. I have travelled the length and breadth of his honour many times over." Her voice was low and pleasant, as serene as her person, and she spoke of her past as