Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

you need."
    "Then may I have such a dose again? For I think tonight I shall need it." It was no lie, but it was a deliberate deception, and Iveta blushed for it, when this yellow-headed youth, rounded and innocent as a new chick, was offering his services so trustingly. "May I take double the dose with me? Enough for two nights? I remember how much he bade me take."
    Brother Oswin would have given her all the resources of the workshop, he was so dazzled. His hand shook somewhat as he filled a small vial for her, and stoppered it, and when she put out her hand, just as shyly, to take it from him, he remembered his duty and lowered his eyes before her, rather late in the day for his peace of mind.
    It was all over very quickly. She whispered her thanks, looking over her shoulder nervously as though she thought someone might be watching, and hid the vial in her sleeve a good deal more adroitly than Oswin had handled it. His hands and feet seemed to have reverted to their hobbledehoy clumsiness of some years back, in his pimply boyhood, but for all that, the look she gave him in departing made him feel tall, confident and gainly. He was left pensive in the doorway, looking after her as she flitted across the foot-bridge, and wondering if he had not been hasty in deciding that he had a vocation. It was not too late to change his mind, he had not taken his final vows yet.
    This time he did not lower his eyes until she vanished along the pleached alley. Even then he stood for some minutes, still pondering. There were drawbacks in any course of life, he supposed sadly. Neither inside or outside the cloister could a man have everything.
    Iveta fled back to her stone bench, sheltered from the breeze, and was sitting there with folded hands and apathetic face when Madlen came out to reclaim her. Iveta rose submissively and went back with her to the guest-hall, and sewed unenthusiastically at the piece of embroidery that had been her cover for weeks, even though her needle was not so industrious that she need unpick at night what she worked during the day, like a certain Dame Penelope, of whom she had once heard tell from a passing jongleur in her father's house, long ago.
    She waited until it was almost time for Vespers, and the light fading outside. Agnes had put on the newly mended gown, and Madlen was tiring her hair for the evening. While Sir Godfrid Picard hunted with savage determination for a fugitive murderer, it was his wife's part to maintain the appearance of ritual devotion, attend all the needful services, and retain the good opinion of abbot, prior and brothers.
    "It's time you were making ready, girl," she said, snapping a glance at her niece along a brocaded shoulder.
    Iveta let her hands lie in her lap, indifferent, though she kept her wrist pressed firmly upon the vial in her sleeve. "I think I won't come tonight. My head is so heavy, and I haven't slept well. If you'll be my excuse, madam, I'll eat supper now, with Madlen, and go early to bed." Naturally if she stayed away, Madlen would inevitably be left to keep guard on her, but she had made her own provision for that.
    Agnes shrugged, her fine, steely profile disdainful. "You are very vaporish these days. Still, stay if you prefer. Madlen will make you a posset."
    It was done. The lady went forth without a qualm. The maid set a small table in Iveta's bedchamber, and brought bread and meat and a brew of honeyed milk and wine, thick and sweet and hot, ideal to drown the heavy sweetness of Brother Cadfael's poppy syrup. She went and came two or three times before she sat down with her charge, ample time to draw a beaker of the innocent brew, and replace it with the whole contents of Oswin's vial. Ample time to stir it and be sure. Iveta made a pretence of eating, and declined more of the drink, and was gratified to see Madlen finish the jug with obvious pleasure. Nor had she eaten much, to temper the effect.
    Madlen removed the dishes to the kitchen of the guest-hall, and did not return. Iveta waited almost ten minutes in feverish anxiety, and then went to investigate, and found the maid propped comfortably on a bench in a corner of the kitchen, snoring.
    Iveta did not wait for cloak or shoes, but ran in her soft leather slippers, just as she was, out into the dusk, across the great court like a hunted leveret, half-blindly, and along the dark green alley in the garden. The silver streak of the leat gleamed at her, she felt her way along the hand-rail of the