Brother Cadfael 05: Leper of Saint Giles

Prophet, I say they deserved better luck against us than they had. But there was never brutality or unknightly act charged against Guimar de Massard. Why, why did you vanish after that fight? Why let us, who revered you, and your wife and son here in England, grieve you for dead? Had any of us deserved that of you?"
    "Had my wife, had my son, deserved of me that I should lay upon them the load that had fallen upon me?" asked Lazarus, roused and stumbling for once upon the words that tried his mangled mouth. "Brother, I think you ask what you already know."
    Yes, Cadfael knew. Guimar de Massard, wounded and captive after Ascalon, had learned from the doctors who attended him in captivity that he was already a leper.
    "They have excellent physicians," said Lazarus, again calm and still, "wiser than any here. And who should better know and recognize the first bitter signs? They told me truth. They did what I asked of them, sent word of my death from my wounds. They did more. They helped me to a hermitage where I might live with my enemy, as I had died to my friends, and fight that battle as I had fought the commoner kind. My helm and my sword they sent back to Jerusalem, as I asked."
    "She has them," said Cadfael. "She treasures them. You have not been forgotten in your death. I have always known that the best of the Saracens could out-Christian many of us Christians."
    "Chivalrous and courteous I found my captors. At all points they respected and supported me through the years of my penance."
    One nobility is kin to another, thought Cadfael. There are alliances that cross the blood-line of families, the borders of countries, even the impassable divide of religion, And it was well possible that Guimar de Massard should find himself closer in spirit to the Fatimid caliphs than to Bohemond and Baldwin and Tancred, squabbling like malicious children over their conquests.
    "How long," he asked, "have you been on your way home?" For it was a long, long journey across Europe from the midland sea, on broken feet, with a clapper-dish for baggage, and nothing more.
    "Eight years. Ever since they brought word to my hermitage, from the reports of an English prisoner, of my son's death, and told me there was a child, a girl, left orphaned to her dead mother's kin, wanting any remaining of my blood."
    So he had left his cell, the refuge of years, and set off with his begging-bowl and cloak and veil to make that endless pilgrimage to England, to see for himself, at the prescribed distance, that his grandchild enjoyed her lands and had her due of happiness. He had found, instead, her affairs gone far awry, and with his own maimed hands he had straightened them, and set her free.
    "She has her due now," said Cadfael. "But for all that, I think she might be happy to exchange her title to all that great honour for one living kinsman."
    The silence was long and cold, as if he trod upon forbidden ground. Nevertheless, he persisted doggedly. "You are a quenched fire. You have been now for years, I judge. Do not deny it, I know the signs. What God imposed, no doubt for his own good reasons, for reasons as good he has lifted away. You know it. You are a peril to no man. And whatever name you have used all these years, you are still Guimar de Massard. If she cherishes your sword, how much more would she revere and delight in you? Why deprive her now of her true shield? Or yourself of the joy of seeing her happy? Of giving her with your own hand to a husband I think you approve?"
    "Brother," said Guimar de Massard, shaking his hooded head, "you speak of what you do not understand. I am a dead man. Let my grave and my bones and my legend alone."
    "Yet there was one Lazarus," said Cadfael, venturing far and in great awe, "who did rise again out of his tomb, to the joy of his kinswomen."
    There was a long hush while the sailing filaments of cloud were the only things that moved in the visible world. Then the old man's unblemished right hand flashed from within the folds of the cloak, and rose to thrust back the hood. "And was this," asked Guimar, "the face that made his sisters glad?"
    He plucked away the face-cloth, and uncovered the awful visage left to him, almost lipless, one cheek shrunken away, the nostrils eaten into great, discoloured holes, a face in which only the live and brilliant eyes recalled the paladin of Jerusalem and Ascalon. And Cadfael was silenced.
    Lazarus again covered the ruin from sight behind the veil. The quietness and