The fair head leaned submissively into his hands. The weal grazed the crestof the left cheekbone, and broke the skin along the left side of his head,oozing blood into the pale hair. As Cadfael bathed it, stroking back thetangled locks, the skin quivered under the cold water, and the muck of dust anddrying blood drained away. This was not the newest of his injuries. Thesmoothing of the linen over brow, cheek and chin uncovered a thin, pure,youthful face.

“What’s your name, child?” said Cadfael.

“Liliwin,” said the young man, still eyeing him warily.

“Saxon. So are your eyes, and your hair. Where born? Not here along theborders.”

“How should I know?” said the youth, listless. “In a ditch, and left there.The first I know is being taught to tumble, as soon as I walked.”

He was past fending for himself; perhaps he was even past lying. As well toget out of him whatever he was willing to tell, now, while he was forced tosurrender himself to the hands of others, with his own helplessness like aweight of black despair on him.

“Is that how you’ve lived? Travelling the road, cutting capers at fairs,doing a little juggling and singing for your supper? It’s a hard life, withmore kicks than kindnesses, I dare say. And from a child?” He could guess atthe manner of training that went to school a childish body to the sort ofcontortions a fairground crowd would gape at. There were ways of hurting, byway of punishment, without spoiling the agility of growing limbs. “And solitarynow? They’re gone, are they, that picked you out of your ditch and bent you totheir uses?”

“I ran from them as soon as I was half-grown,” said the soft, weary voice. “Threemummers padding the road, a lad come by for nothing was a gift to them, theyhad their worth out of me. All I owed them was kicks and blows. I work formyself now.”

“At the same craft?”

“It’s all I know. But that I know well,” said Liliwin, suddenly raising hishead proudly, and not wincing from the sting of the lotion bathing his grazedcheek.