Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

to try to separate what God or his angels had joined.
    Meantime, there were others to be thought of, and there was need of the coming night, if what Cadfael had divined proved true.
    He turned to the warming-room, where Brother Mark, content and expectant, was waiting for him by the fire. He had not sat so long in the warmth since he was a new novice in the order. It had been well worth getting soused in the Meole brooke.
    "Is everything well?" he asked hopefully, as they set out together along the Foregate in the darkness.
    "Very well," said Cadfael, so heartily that Mark drew pleased and grateful breath, and ceased to question.
    "The little lady for whom you prayed God's help, some days ago," said Cadfael cheerfully, "will do very well now. The lord abbot will see to that. All I want at the hospital is a pleasant word with your wanderer Lazarus, in case he moves on very soon, before I can come again. You know how they snuff the air and grow uneasy, and up anchor suddenly, and sail."
    "I had wondered," confided Brother Mark, "whether he might be persuaded to stay. He has an affection for Bran. And the mother will not live much longer. She has turned her back on the world. Oh, not on her boy - but she feels he has gone beyond her, and has his own saints," explained one of those saints diffidently, without self-recognition. "She is certain he is protected by heaven."
    There were those on earth, too, thought Cadfael, who had some interest in the matter. Two grateful, loosened tongues in the abbot's parlour had poured out all their story without reserve, named names confidingly. Joscelin had a mind quick to learn, and a heart tenacious of affections, and Iveta in the fervour of deliverance wanted to take to her heart and hold fast in her life every soul, high or low, whole or afflicted, who had been good to Joscelin.
    In the open porch before the hall of the hospice the old man Lazarus sat, mute, motionless, patient, with his erect back braced against the wall, and his legs drawn up beneath him on the bench, crossed after the eastern fashion. Curled up in the circle of the old man's left arm, Bran lay uneasily asleep, with Joscelin's wooden horse clasped to his heart. The small lamp above the door of the hall shed a faint yellow light on his spindly limbs and ruffled fair head, and showed a face smudged with tears. He awoke when Cadfael and Mark entered, staring up dazedly out of his nest, and the long arm withdrew from him silently, and let him scramble down from the bench.
    "Why, Bran!" said Brother Mark, concerned and chiding. "What are you doing out of your bed at this hour?"
    Bran embraced him hard, half-relieved and half-resentful, and accused in muffled tones from within the folds of the new and over-ample habit: "You both went away! You left me alone. I didn't know where you were ... You might not have come back! He hasn't come back!"
    "Ah, but he will, you'll see." Brother Mark gathered the boy to him, and took possession of a groping hand. Its fellow was busy retrieving the wooden horse, momentarily discarded but jealously reclaimed. "Come, come to bed, and I'll tell you all about it. Your friend is well and happy, and need not hide any more. Everything that was wrong has been put right. Come, and you shall hear it once from me, and he will tell it all over again when next you see him. As you will, I promise."
    "He said I should be his squire, and learn to read Latin hand, and reckon numbers, if ever he came to be knight," Bran sternly reminded both his present and his absent patron, and allowed himself to be led sleepily towards the inner door. Mark looked back at Cadfael as they went, and at his reassuring nod took the child gently towards the dortoir.
    Lazarus made no movement and said no word when Cadfael sat down beside him. Long ago he had outlived surprise, fear and desire, at least on his own account. He sat gazing out with his far-sighted blue-grey eyes at a night sky now beginning to flow like running water, a lofty, thin stream of cloud carried tranquilly eastwards on a fair breeze, while here on earth the very leaves were still.
    "You'll have heard," said Cadfael, leaning back comfortably against the wall, "what Mark told the child. It was true, thanks be to God! Everything that was wrong has been put right. The murderer of Huon de Domville is taken, guilty past doubt. That is over. Pity is out of reach, short of penitence, and of that there's none. The man has not only killed his uncle, but vilely