one Eudo de Domville, a canon of Salisbury, was to perform the marriageceremony; a man in good odor with the church and the papal legate, and in linefor advancement, and probably eager to remain so blessed. He passed with therest. The grooms, the pages, the deerhounds followed, and all the little bellson bridles and jesses tinkled their way past, and dwindled slowly along thefirst reach of the Foregate.

Brother Mark came up the incline of grass with his arm about the old leper.Cadfael had drawn back and left them to each other. Mark had no fear ofcontagion, since he never gave a thought to the peril, all his energy beingabsorbed into the need. Nor would he ever be surprised, or complain, if at lastcontagion did seize upon him and draw him even closer to the people he served.He was talking to his companion as they came, mildly and cheerfully, for theywere both used to spurning, they did not pay it overmuch notice. Cadfaelwatched them come, marked the one-sided but steady and forcefulgait of the old man, and the breadth of the gesture with which his left hand,emerging momentarily from the shrouding sleeve, put off Mark’s embracing arm,and set a space between them. Mark accepted the dismissal with simplicity andrespect, and turned to leave him. Cadfael had seen, moreover, that the lefthand, once long and shapely, lacked both index and middle fingers, and had buttwo joints of the third, and the texture of the maimed parts was whitish,wrinkled and dry.

“No very noble proceeding,” said Mark with rueful resignation, shaking thedebris of grass from his skirts. “But fear makes men cruel.”

Brother Cadfael doubted whether fear had played any part. Huon de Domvilledid not look the man to be afraid of anything short of hellfire, though it wastrue that the outcasts’ disease did not fall far short of hellfire.

“You have a new man there?” he asked, gazing after the tall leper, who hadmoved along the bank to regain a good view of the road. “I do not think I haveseen him before.”