Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

even if she were fit to care for her, would not be allowed to keep the administration of so great an honour. It is my prayer that you, Father, will take her into your own guardianship from this day, for with you I know she will be used with gentleness and honour, and be happy as she deserves. If you put forward such a request to the king, he will not deny you."
    The abbot waited some moments, and his austere lips were very dryly smiling. "And that is all? No plea for yourself?"
    "None!" said Joscelin, with the fierce humility that looked and sounded what it was, a nobleman's arrogance.
    "But I have a prayer of my own," said Iveta indignantly, keeping fast hold of a hand that would have renounced its claim on her. "It is that you will look kindly upon Joscelin, and use him as my favoured suitor, for I love him, and he loves me, and though I will be obedient to you in everything else, if you will take me, I will not part with Joscelin, or ever love or marry anyone else."
    "Come," said the abbot, not quite committing himself to a smile, "I think we three had better sit down to supper together in my lodging, and consider how best to dispose of the future. There's no haste, and much to think about. Thinking is best after prayer, but will be none the worse for a meal and a glass of wine."
    The sheriff and his party brought back Godfrid Picard's body to the abbey before Compline. In the mortuary chapel they laid him straight, and brought candles to examine his injuries. His unblooded dagger, found some yards aside in the grass, where Cadfael had discovered and left it, they slid back into its sheath as they unbuckled his sword-belt, but it cannot be said that much thought had been given to the curious circumstance of its lying thus naked and discarded in the glade.
    The man was dead, his murderer, murderer already of one man, and a kinsman at that, was in Shrewsbury castle, safe under lock and key. If there were odd circumstances in this second case, no one but Cadfael noticed them, though for a while they puzzled him as much as they would have puzzled his companions, had they troubled to examine them. A man dies, strangled with a man's hands, yet himself provided with a dagger, and clearly having had time to draw it. To draw, but not to blood it. And those who kill with their hands do so because they are otherwise unarmed.
    The night was still. The candles did not flicker, and the light on the dead man's suffused face, bitten tongue and exposed throat was sharp enough to show detail. Cadfael looked closely and long at the marks of the strong fingers that had crushed out life, but he said nothing. Nor was he asked anything. All questions had already been answered to the sheriff's satisfaction.
    "We'd best have a mare out tomorrow, to fetch the grey out of the forest," said Prestcote, drawing up the linen sheet over Picard's face. "A valuable beast, that. The widow could sell him for a good price in Shrewsbury, if she's so minded."
    Having completed his duty here, Cadfael excused himself, and went to look for Brother Mark. He found him in the warming-room, rosily restored after a kitchen supper and a change of clothes, and about to take his leave, and walk back to Saint Giles and his duty.
    "Wait only a brief while for me," said Cadfael, "and I'll bear you company. I have an errand there."
    In the meantime, his errand here was to two young people who had, as he saw when he ran them to earth in the abbot's parlor, of all places, no great need of his solicitude, since they had enlisted a greater patron, and appeared to be on terms of complete confidence with him, partly due, perhaps, to a good wine after extreme stress and rapturous relief. So Cadfael merely paid his respects, accepted their flushed and generous gratitude, exchanged a somewhat ambiguous glance with Radulfus as he made his reverence, and left them to their deliberations, which were certainly proceeding very satisfactorily, but had certain implications for others, not here represented.
    Two warm-hearted children, these, radiant with goodwill towards all who had stood by them at need. Very young, very vulnerable, very eager and impulsive now that they were happy. The abbot would keep them on a close rein for a while, her in some sheltered sisterhood or a well-matroned manor of her own, the boy under discreet watch in whatever service he took up, now that he was clean, honourable and his own best guarantor. But Radulfus would not keep them apart, he was too wise