Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

of the beaters' progress had ebbed into stillness.
    "I have seen Sir Godfrid Picard only once," he said thoughtfully. "Which man in the line was he, when they set out?"
    Joscelin looked back, surprised. "The fourth from us. Lean and dark, in black and russet - a bright red cap with a plume ..."
    "Ah, he ..." Lazarus maintained his steady survey of the woods below, and did not turn his head. "Yes, I marked the red poll. An easy mark to pick out again."
    He moved forward a few yards more from the highroad, and sat down in the grass of the slope, with his back against a tree. He did not look round when Joscelin yielded to the urging of Bran's hand, and they left him to his preferred solitude.
    Brother Mark had indeed work to do that day, though it could as well have waited for another time, if it consisted of the accounts he was casting up for Fulke Reynald. He was meticulous, and the books were never in arrears. The real urgency lay in finding something to do that could enable him to look busily occupied in the open porch of the hall, where the light was best, and where he could keep a sharp eye on the movements of his secret guest without being too obvious about it. He was well aware that the young man who was no leper had been missing from Prime and from breakfast, and had reappeared innocently hand in hand with Bran, somewhat later. Clearly the child had taken a strong fancy to his new acquaintance. The sight of them thus linked, the boy skipping merrily beside the long strides that so carefully but imperfectly mimicked the maimed gait of Lazarus, the man with bent head attentive, and large hand gentle, had moved Mark to believe, illogically but understandably, that one thus kind and generous of his time and interest could not possibly be either thief or murderer. From the first he had found it hard to credit the theft, and the longer he considered this refugee within his cure - for he could pick him out now without difficulty - the more absurd grew the notion that this young man had avenged himself by murder. If he had, he would have plodded away in his present guise, clapping his clapper industriously, and passed through the sheriff's cordon long ago to freedom. No, he had some other urgent business to keep him here, business that might mean greater peril to his own life before he brought it to a good conclusion.
    Yet he was on Mark's conscience. No one else had detected him, no one else could answer for him, or answer, if it came to the worst, for sheltering him and keeping silent. So Mark watched, had been watching all this day since the truant's return. And so far the young man had made it easy for him. The whole morning he had kept company with Bran, and been close about the hospital, lending a hand with the work of stacking the gleaned wood, helping to bring in the last mowing from the verges of the road, playing drawing games with the child in a patch of dried-out clay in a hollow where water lay when it rained - good, smooth clay that could be levelled over again and again as a game ended in laughter and crowing. No, a young fellow in trouble who could so blithely accommodate himself to a pauper child's needs and wants could not be any way evil, and Mark's duty of surveillance was rapidly becoming a duty of protection, and all the more urgent for that.
    He had seen Joscelin and Lazarus cross the highroad and seek their vantage-point over the valley, to watch the afternoon hunt set forth, and he had seen Joscelin return with Bran dancing and chattering and demanding at his side. Now the two of them were sitting under the churchyard wall, blamelessly absorbed in the whittling of a lump of wood brought from the fuel-store. He had only to take a few steps out from the doorway to see them, Bran's fair head, with its primrose down of new hair, stooped close over the large, deft hands that pared and shaped with such industrious devotion. Now and again he heard gleeful laughter. Something was taking shape there that gave delight. Brother Mark gave thanks to God for whatever caused such pleasure to the poor and outcast, and felt his heart engaged in the cause of whoever brought such blessings about.
    He was also human enough to feel curiosity as to what marvels were being produced there under the wall, and after an hour or so he gave in to mortal frailty and went to see. Bran welcomed him with a shout of pleasure, and waved the whittled horse at him, crude, spirited, without details, but an unmistakable horse, one