“Hmmm!” said Cadfael with mild skepticism, and stirred his gently bubbling pot, which began to fill the hut with a heady aromatic sweetness as it simmered. “So many a lover has probably vowed, but with one eye on his own advantage, all the same. I suppose you’ll tell me you’re willing to die for her.”
Joscelin melted suddenly into a boy’s grin. “Well, not with any great eagerness! I’d liefer live for her, if it can be arranged. But if you mean, would I do all in my power to set her free to take another of her own choice, yes, I would. For this match is not of her choice, she dreads and loathes it, she is being forced into it utterly against her will.”
There was no need to labor it; the first glimpse of her face and bearing had said it all for him.
“And those who should most guard her and work for her good are using her for their own ends, and nothing more. Her mother - she was Picard’s sister - died when Iveta was born, and her father when she was ten years old, and she was given over into her uncle’s ward as her nearest kin, which is natural enough, if her kin had proved natural to her! Oh, I am not so blind as not to know there’s nothing new in a guardian making the best profit for himself out of his ward, instead of using his own substance on her behalf, and plundering her lands instead of nourishing them for her future good. I tell you, Brother Cadfael, Iveta is being sold to my lord for his voice and countenance with the king, and advancement under his shadow - but for more than that. She has great lands. She is the only Massard left, all that great honor goes with her hand. And I suspect that the bargain they’ve struck over her means the carving up of what was once a hero’s portion. A great swathe out of those lands of hers will surely stay with Picard, and some of what goes with her to Domville will have been milked hard for years before it passes. A very fine arrangement for both of them, but crying wrong to Iveta.”
And every word could all too well be true. Such things happen when a child is left orphan and heiress to great estates. Even if the child be a boy, and young enough, thought Cadfael, and with no one to protect him, he can be married off to make a profitable alliance for his guardian, to join up lands convenient for exploitation, to spite a rival, just as nimbly and irresistibly as can a girl; but with a girl the thing is more usual, and less to be questioned. No, no one in authority between baron and king will lift a finger to interfere with Iveta’s destiny. Only, perhaps, some rash young hothead like this one, at his own risk and hers.
He did not ask what they had been whispering together about, when he stumbled in upon their embrace. However fretted and angry, young Lucy had still something, some faint, hoarded hope in his sleeve, so much was clear. Better not to ask, not to let him utter it, even if he offered. But there was one thing Cadfael needed to know. The only Massard left, he had said.
“What was the name of her father?” he asked, stirring his thickening brew. Before Compline he would be able to set it aside to cool gradually.
“Hamon FitzGuimar de Massard.”
He stressed the patronymic with ceremony and pride. There were still some among the young, it seemed, who had been taught a proper regard for the great names of the dead.
“Her grandsire was that Guimar de Massard who was at the taking of Jerusalem, and was captured afterwards at the battle of Ascalon, and died of his wounds. She has his helm and his sword. She treasures them. The Fatimids sent them back after his death.”
Yes, so they had, in courtesy to a brave enemy. They had been asked also to return his body from its temporary burial, and had received the request graciously, but then the intermittent squabbling among the Crusader leaders had cost them the chance of securing the port of Ascalon, and the negotiations for the return of the paladin’s body had been neglected and forgotten. Chivalrous enemies had buried him with honor, and there he rested. It was all very long ago, years before these young people were ever born.
“I remember,” said Cadfael.
“And now it’s great shame that the last heiress of such a house should be so misused and defrauded of her happiness.”
“So it is,” said Cadfael, lifting his pot from the fire and standing it aside on the beaten earth of the floor.
“And it must not continue,” said Joscelin emphatically. “It shall not continue.” He rose, with a vast sigh. “I must go back, no help for it.” He eyed the array of bottles and jars, and the dangling bunches of herbs that furnished the workshop with infinite possibilities. “Have you not something among all these wonders that I could slip into his cup? His or Picard’s, what does it matter which? Either removed from this world would set Iveta free. And leave the world the sweeter!”
“If that is seriously meant,” said Cadfael firmly, “you are in peril of your soul, boy. And if it is mere levity, you deserve a great clout on the ear for it. If you were not so big, I might attempt it.”
The flashing smile came and went in an instant, warmly if ruefully. “I could stoop,” he offered.
“You know as well as I do, child, that you would not touch such foul methods as murder, and you do yourself great wrong to misuse words.”
“Would I not?” said Joscelin softly, the smile clean gone. “You do not know, brother, how far I would put my soul in peril to make all safe for Iveta.”
Cadfael fretted about it all through Compline, and into the warming-room for the last quiet half-hour before bed. Of course there had been nothing for it but to take the boy sternly to task, tell him firmly and truly that he must abjure all such black thoughts, out of which nothing good could come. None but knightly measures were open to him, since he was destined for knighthood, and he should, he must, forswear all others. The trouble was that the boy had shown very sound sense in retorting that he would be a great fool to challenge his lord to honest combat, after the manner of knighthood, since Domville would not even take such an impertinence seriously, but simply throw him out of his household and be done with him. And how would Iveta be helped then?
But need that mean that he was really capable of contemplating the use of murder? Remembering the open brown face, very poorly provided for dissembling, and the headlong manner, surely not adapted to going roundabout, Cadfael could hardly believe it. And yet there was that fragile golden miniature of a girl with her sad, resigned face and empty eyes, two days from her hated marriage, and her fate was a weighty enough matter to demand, if it could not justify, a death or two.
The urgency touched Cadfael, no less than Joscelin Lucy. For here was Guimar de Massard’s granddaughter, stripped of all her kin but these two who hedged her in like guardian dragons. And how could the last of the Massards be left to her fate, without a finger raised from all those who had known her grandfather, and reverenced his memory? As well abandon a comrade wounded and surrounded in battle.
Brother Oswin crept diffidently to Cadfael’s side in the warming-room. “Is the linctus already prepared, brother? The fault was mine, let me do something to make amends. I will rise early and bottle it for you. I have caused you such extra travail, I should make some repayment.”
He had caused more travail than he knew, and more perplexity of mind, but at least he had recalled Cadfael to the remembrance of his first duty here; after, of course, the observance of the rule.