Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

down into the valley below Saint Giles, where the beater line was drawing up afresh, to press onward at the same deliberate speed through thicker copses and woodlands, moving south.
    From a hillock on the southern side of the highroad, overlooking the broad valley below, two tall, shrouded figures watched the hunters muster and deploy. Over the meadows the strung line showed clearly, before it moved methodically forward and began to thread the open woodlands ahead, each man keeping his dressing by his neighbour on the right, each man keeping his due distance. The air was very faintly misty, but with sunlight falling through the mist, and as the hunters moved in among the trees their clothing and harness winked and flashed through the leaves like motes of bright dust, scintillating and vanishing, reappearing to vanish again. As they swept slowly south, the watchers above as slowly turned to maintain their watch.
    "They will keep up this drive until dark," said Lazarus, and at length swung about to view the deserted fields from which the hunt had been launched. All was quiet and still there now, the stir, the murmur, the play of colours all past. Two threads of silver made the only sparkles of light in the muted sunbeams, the nearer one the mill leat drawn off to feed the abbey pools and mill, the further one the Meole brook itself, here in a stony and broken bed, and looking curiously small by comparison with its broad flow in the abbey gardens, barely a mile downstream. Geese dabbled in a shallow inlet on the southern side. Upstream from them the child minding them fished in a little rock-fringed pool.
    "It's well-timed," said Joscelin, and drew deep and thoughtful breath. "The sheriff has emptied the valley of all his armed men for me, yes, surely until twilight. Even then they'll come home out of temper and out of energy. It could not be better."
    "And their mounts ridden out," said Lazarus dryly, and turned his far-sighted, brilliant eyes on his companion. The absence of a face had ceased to trouble Joscelin at all. The eyes and the voice were enough to identify a friend.
    "Yes," Joscelin said, "I had thought of that, too."
    "And few remounts to be had, seeing he has called out almost every man he has, and commandeered almost every horse."
    "Yes."
    Bran came darting down the slope of grass towards them, dived confidently between the two, and took possession of a hand of each. It did not trouble him at all that one of the hands lacked two fingers and the half of a third. Bran was putting on a little flesh with every day, the nodes in his neck had shrunk to insignificance, and his fine hair was growing in thickly over the scars of old sores on a knowing small head.
    "They're away," he said simply. "What shall we do now?"
    "We?" said Joscelin. "I thought it was high time for your schooling with Brother Mark? Are you given a day's holiday today?"
    "Brother Mark says he has work to do." By his voice, Bran was not greatly impressed by the argument, since in his experience Brother Mark never ceased working except when he was asleep. The child was even inclined to be a little offended at being put off, if he had not had these two other elect companions to fall back on. "You said you'd do whatever I wanted today," he reminded sternly.
    "And so I will," agreed Joscelin, "until evening. Then I also have work to do. Let's make the most of the time. What's your will?"
    "You said," observed Bran, "you could carve me a little horse out of a piece of wood from the winter pile, if you had a knife."
    "Unbeliever, so I can, and perhaps a little gift for your mother, too, if we can find the right sort of wood. But as for the knife, I doubt if they'd lend us one from the kitchen, and how could I dare take the one Brother Mark uses to trim his quills? More than my life's worth," said Joscelin lightly enough, and stiffened to recall how little his life might indeed be worth if the hunt turned back too soon. No matter, these few hours belonged to Bran.
    "I have a knife," said the child proudly, "a sharp one my mother used to use to gut fish, when I was little. Come and let's look for a piece of wood." The gleaners in the forest had come back well laden, the fuel-store was full, and could spare a small, smooth-grained log to make a toy. Bran tugged at both the hands he held, but the old man slid his maimed member free, very gently, and released himself. His eyes still swept the crowns of the trees below, where even the quiver and rustle