Cadfael flung an arm about Mark’s still thin and waiflike shoulders, andhauled him away, out of the dimness within, to the gathering excitement andbrightening light without. “Let’s hope and pray,” he said heartily, “that itmay be the source of blessedness even to the pair caught up in it. By the soundof it, one of them is due here this moment. Come and let’s see!”

The noble bridegroom and his retinue approached in a shimmer of brightcolors, with horn-calls and soft, continuous clamor of harness bells, a cortegestretching fifty paces, and fringed with running servantsleading the pack ponies, and two couples of tall deerhounds on leashes. Thesorry little straggle of outcasts shuffled forward eagerly the few paces theydared, to see the better those fine fabrics and splendid dyes they could neverpossess, and set up a muted, awed murmur of admiration as the procession drewlevel with their wattle fence.

In front, on a tall black horse, his own accoutrements and his mount’s verysplendid in scarlet and gold, rode a broad-built, gross, fleshy man, inelegantbut 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 threeyoung squires abreast, keeping a close and wary watch on their lord, as thoughhe might at any moment turn and subject them to some hazardous test. The sametension, just short of fear, passed down the hierarchies that followed, throughvalet, chamberlain, groom, falconer, down to the boys who were towed along bythe hounds. Only the beasts, horse and hound alike, and the hawks on thefalconer’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 gazedwith sharpening attention. For though any one of the three young squires wouldhave done very well for a bridegroom, it was only too plain that none of them