Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

understand it - if, indeed, I have yet understood any part of it! - of this young fugitive, who was sensible enough to provide himself with a horse for the venture. Had you been following him?"
    "Yes, Father. For I knew I might be answerable for harbouring one less innocent and good than I thought him - for which thought I promise I had good reason. So all this day I have watched him. He has hardly been a moment out of my sight. And when he discarded his cloak in the dusk, and set off this way, I did follow him. I saw him find his horse tethered in the copse across the brook, and I saw him cross. I was in the water when I heard the outcry after him. As for this day I can speak for all he has done, and there was no blame."
    "And the day when he came to you?" the sheriff demanded sharply. "What of his first appearance among your lepers? At what hour?"
    Brother Mark, single-hearted in his allegiance, kept his eyes fixed upon the abbot's face for guidance, and Radulfus nodded gravely that he, too, required an answer.
    "It was two days ago, at Prime, as I've told you," said Mark, "that I first was aware of him. But at that time he was already provided with the leper cloak, and a face-cloth to hide his face, and behaved altogether conformably with the others. I judge, therefore, he must have been in hiding among us at least some quarter to half an hour, to be so well prepared."
    "And as I have heard," said the abbot thoughtfully, turning to Prestcote, "your men on patrol in the Foregate, my lord, started a hare that same morning, and lost him in the neighbourhood of Saint Giles. At what hour did they sight him?"
    "They reported to me," said the sheriff, pondering, "sighting such a fleeing man the best part of an hour before Prime, and certainly they lost him near Saint Giles."
    Iveta descended one more step. She felt herself suspended in a dream, a double dream that filled her with terror when she looked one way, and wild hope when she looked the other way. For these were not the voices of enemies. And still, blessedly, her uncle did not come, to cast into the balance his black animosity, his narrow malice. She was but two steps behind Joscelin now, she could have stretched out her hand and touched his unkempt flaxed hair, but she was afraid of shattering his braced attention. She did not touch him. She kept an alert eye on the gatehouse, watchful for her chief enemy's return. That was why she was the first to mark Brother Cadfael's arrival. Only she and Agnes were looking that way.
    The little mule, which had enjoyed an unhurried day, was resentful at being urged to speed at the end of it, and manifested his displeasure by halting inside the gatehouse and refusing to budge further. And Brother Cadfael, who had been demanding some effort of him until that moment, sat to gaze in mute astonishment as his eyes lit upon the scene in the great court. She saw his rapid glance rove over all those intent faces, she could almost feel him stretch his ears to pick up the words that were passing. He saw Joscelin standing braced and alert at the foot of the steps, saw sheriff and abbot eyeing each other sombrely, and the draggled little figure of the young brother who, for Iveta, spoke with the unwitting tongue of a minor angel, the kind of angel who would descend with disarming apologies, and of whom no sinner would ever be afraid.
    Hastily but quietly, Cadfael dismounted, surrendered the mule to the porter, and advanced to the edge of the crowd, himself still unnoticed. Obscurely encouraged, Iveta descended one more step.
    "So it would seem," said Radulfus reasonably, "that you were at the hospital, young man, by a quarter of an hour at least before Prime of that day, and perhaps as much as half an hour."
    "I had - acquired my cloak," agreed Joscelin, a little astray now and treading warily, "some little time before I went to the church."
    "And you were instructed how to behave?"
    "I have attended Prime before, I know the office."
    "Perhaps, but it would take some few minutes of instruction," persisted Radulfus mildly, "to pick up the whole order of the day in Saint Giles."
    "I can watch others and do as they do," said Joscelin flatly, "as readily as any other man."
    "Granted, Father," said Gilbert Prestcote impatiently, "that he was there well before the seventh hour of the morning. That I accept. But we have no way of knowing the hour of my lord Domville's death."
    Brother Cadfael had the whole drift of it by then. Finding his way