was Huon de Domville. It had not entered Cadfael’s head until now that thisbaron might be already past the prime, no young lover embarking on marriage inthe proper years for that undertaking, but with more gray than black in hisshort, full beard, and only a curled fringe of gray hair and the glisten of abald crown showing at the temple, where his elaborately twisted capuchon wastilted rakishly aside. A squat, muscular, powerful body still, but well pastfifty if he was a day, and more likely nearing sixty. Cadfael hazarded that bynow this one must already have used up at least one wife, and probably two. Thebride, rumor said, was barely eighteen, fresh from her nurse. Well, thesethings happen. These things are done.

Then, as the rider drew closer, Cadfael could not take hiseyes 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, brutalface, muscled like a wrestler’s arm, unsculpted, unfinished. A face that shouldnot have had a subtle mind behind it, to make the man even more formidable, butundoubtedly had. And that was Huon de Domville.

He had drawn close enough now to observe what manner of creatures they werewho bobbed and peered and pointed excitedly about the little church, and alongthe churchyard wall. It did not please him. The black eyes, like small plumsembedded in the hard dough of his face, turned dusky red, like smoulderingcoals. Deliberately he wheeled his horse to their side of the road, leaving theopposite verge, which was wider, and mounting the grass on the near side, andthat solely in order to wave the miserable rabble back to their kennels. Andhis 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 beingvaluable 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! Takeyour contagion out of sight!”