The Leper of Saint Giles Read Free

straggle of outcasts shuffled forward eagerly the few paces they dared, to see the better those fine fabrics and splendid dyes they could never possess, and set up a muted, awed murmur of admiration as the procession drew level with their wattle fence.
    In front, on a tall black horse, his own accoutrements and his mount’s very splendid in scarlet and gold, rode a broad-built, gross, fleshy man, inelegant but assured in the saddle, and accorded a station well ahead of all his train, so that his pre-eminence should be seen to be absolute. Behind him came three young squires abreast, keeping a close and wary watch on their lord, as though he might at any moment turn and subject them to some hazardous test. The same tension, just short of fear, passed down the hierarchies that followed, through valet, chamberlain, groom, falconer, down to the boys who were towed along by the hounds. Only the beasts, horse and hound alike, and the hawks on the falconer’s frame, went sleek and complacent, in no awe of their lord.
    Brother Cadfael stood with Mark at the gate in the wattle fence, and gazed with sharpening attention. For though any one of the three young squires would have done very well for a bridegroom, it was only too plain that none of them was Huon de Domville. It had not entered Cadfael’s head until now that this baron might be already past the prime, no young lover embarking on marriage in the proper years for that undertaking, but with more gray than black in his short, full beard, and only a curled fringe of gray hair and the glisten of a bald crown showing at the temple, where his elaborately twisted capuchon was tilted rakishly aside. A squat, muscular, powerful body still, but well past fifty if he was a day, and more likely nearing sixty. Cadfael hazarded that by now this one must already have used up at least one wife, and probably two. The bride, rumor said, was barely eighteen, fresh from her nurse. Well, these things happen. These things are done.
    Then, as the rider drew closer, Cadfael could not take his eyes from the face. A wide, flat forehead, rendered tall by the receding hair, cast almost no shadow over the shallow settings of small, black, shrewd eyes, as poorly endowed with lashes as with sockets, but malevolently intelligent. The trimmed beard left uncovered a narrow, implacable mouth. A massive, brutal face, muscled like a wrestler’s arm, unsculpted, unfinished. A face that should not have had a subtle mind behind it, to make the man even more formidable, but undoubtedly had. And that was Huon de Domville.
    He had drawn close enough now to observe what manner of creatures they were who bobbed and peered and pointed excitedly about the little church, and along the churchyard wall. It did not please him. The black eyes, like small plums embedded in the hard dough of his face, turned dusky red, like smouldering coals. Deliberately he wheeled his horse to their side of the road, leaving the opposite verge, which was wider, and mounting the grass on the near side, and that solely in order to wave the miserable rabble back to their kennels. And his manner of waving was with the full lash of the riding-whip he carried. Doubtful if he ever used it on his horse, blood-stock of this quality being valuable and appreciated, but for clearing his path of lepers it would serve. The tight mouth opened wide to order imperiously: “Out of the way, vermin! Take your contagion out of sight!”
    They shrank and drew back in humble haste out of reach, if not out of sight. All but one. Half a head taller than his fellows, one lean, cloaked figure stood his ground, whether out of inability to move quickly, or want of understanding, or in mute defiance. He remained erect, intently gazing through the eye-slot in the veil that covered his face. When he did take a pace back, without turning his head, he went heavily upon one foot, and was too slow to avoid the lash of the whip, if indeed he had intended to avoid it. The blow