Ellis Peters - The Hermit of Eyton Forest

Twilight or no, Cadfael saw the glance that locked and held fast between the youth and the girl. Hyacinth’s face was still and mute as bronze, but a gleam of the fading light caught the amber brilliance of his eyes, fierce and secret as a cat’s, and a sudden quickening and darkening in their depths that was reflected in the flush and brightness in Annet’s startled countenance. It was no great surprise. The girl was pretty, and the boy undoubtedly attractive, all the more because he had been of invaluable service to her father. And it was natural and human, that that circumstance should endear father and daughter to him, no less than him to them. Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them. I’ll be on my way, then,” said Cadfael to the unregarding air, and mounted softly, not to break the spell that held them still. But from the shelter of the trees he looked back, and saw them standing just as he had left them, and heard the boy’s voice clear and solemn in the silence of the dusk, saying: “I must speak to you!”

Annet did not say anything, but she closed the house door softly behind her, and came forward to meet him at the gate. And Cadfael rode back through the woods mildly aware that he was smiling, though he could not be sure, on more sober reflection, that there was anything to smile about in so unlikely an encounter. For what common ground could there be, for those two to meet on, and hold fast for more than a moment: the abbey forester’s daughter, a good match for any lively and promising young man this side the shire, and a beggarly, rootless stranger dependent on charitable patronage, with no land, no craft and no kin? He went to tend and stable his horse before he sought out Abbot Radulfus to tell him how things stood in Eyton forest. There was a late stir within there, of new guests arrived, and their mounts being accommodated and cared for. Of late there had been little movement about the county; the business of the summer, when so many merchants and tradesmen were constantly on the move, had dwindled gently away into the autumn quiet. Later, as the Christmas feast drew near, the guest halls would again be full with travellers hastening home, and kinsmen visiting kinsmen, but at this easy stage between, there was time to note those who came, and feel the human curiosity that is felt by those who have sworn stability about those who ebb and flow with the tides and seasons. And here just issuing from the stables and crossing the yard in long, lunging strides, the gait of a confident and choleric man, was someone undoubtedly of consequence in his own domain, richly dressed, elegantly booted, and wearing sword and dagger. He surged past Cadfael in the gateway, a big, burly, thrusting man, his face abruptly lit as he swung past the torch fixed at the gate, and then as abruptly darkened. A massive face, fleshy and yet hard, muscled like a wrestler’s arms, handsome in a brutal fashion, the face of a man not in anger at this moment, but always ready to be angry. He was shaven clean, which made the smooth power of his features even more daunting, and the eyes that stared imperiously straight before him looked disproportionately small, though in reality they probably were not, because of the massy flesh in which they were but shallowly set. By the look of him, not a man to cross. He might have been fifty years old, give or take a few years, but time certainly had not softened what must have been granite from the start.

His horse was standing in the stable yard outside an open stall, stripped and gently steaming as if his saddlecloth had only just been removed, and a groom was rubbing him down and hissing to him gently as he worked. A meagre but wiry fellow, turning grey, in faded homespun of a dull brown, and a rubbed leather coat. He slid one sidelong glance at Cadfael and nodded a silent greeting, so inured to being wary of all men that even a Benedictine brother was to be avoided rather than welcomed.

Cadfael gave him good-evening cheerfully, and began his own unsaddling. “You’ve ridden far? Was that your lord I met at the gate?”

“It was,” said the man without looking up, and spared no more words.

“A stranger to me. Where are you from? Guests are thin this time of year.”

“From Bosiet, it’s a manor the far side of Northampton, some miles south-east of the town. He is Bosiet–Drogo Bosiet. He holds that and a fair bit of the county besides.”

“He’s well away from his home ground,” said Cadfael with interest. “Where’s he bound? We see very few travellers from Northamptonshire in these parts.” The groom straightened up to take a longer and narrower look at this inquisitive questioner, and visibly his manner eased a little, finding Cadfael amiable and harmless. But he did not on that account grow less morose, nor more voluble. “He’s hunting,” he said with a grim and private smile.

“But not for deer,” hazarded Cadfael, returning the inspection and caught by the wryness of the smile. “Nor, I dare say, for the beasts of the warren.”

“You dare say well. It’s a man he’s after.”

“A runaway?” Cadfael found it hard to believe. “So far from home? Was a runaway villein worth so much time and expense to him?”

“This one is. He’s valuable and skilled, but that’s not the whole of it,” confided the groom, discarding his suspicion and reticence. “He has a score to settle with this one. One report we got of him, setting out westwards and north, and he’s combed every village and town along all this way, dragging me one road while his son with another groom goes another, and he won’t stop short of the Welsh border. Me? If I did clap eyes on the lad he’s after, I’d be blind. I wouldn’t give him back a dog that ran from him, let alone a man.” His dry voice had gathered sap and passion as he talked, and he turned fully for the first time, so that the torchlight fell on his face. One cheek was marked with a blackening bruise, the corner of his mouth torn and swollen, with the look of a festering infection about it.

“His mark?” asked Cadfael, eyeing the wound.

“His seal, sure enough, and done with a seal ring. I was not quick enough at his stirrup when he mounted, yesterday morning.”

“I can dress that for you,” said Cadfael, “if you’ll wait while I go and make report to my abbot about another matter. You’d best let me, it could take bad ways. By the same token,” he said quietly, “you’re far enough out of his country, and near enough to the border, to do some running of your own, if you’re so minded.”

“Brother,” said the groom with the briefest and harshest of laughs, “I have a wife and children in Bosiet, I’m manacled. But Brand was young and unwed, his heels are lighter than mine. And I’d best get this beast stalled, and be off to wait on my lord, or he’ll be laying the other cheek open for me.”

“Then come out to the guest hall steps,” said Cadfael, recalled as sharply to his own duty, “when he’s in bed and snoring, and I’ll clean that sore for you.”

Abbot Radulfus listened with concern, but also with relief, to Cadfael’s report, promised to send at first light enough helpers to clear away the willow tree, clean out the brook and shore up the bank above, and nodded gravely at the suggestion that Eilmund’s long wait in the water might complicate his recovery, even though the fracture itself was simple and clean. “I should like,” said Cadfael, “to visit him again tomorrow and make sure he stays in his bed, for there may be a degree of fever, and you know him, Father, it will take more than his daughter’s scolding to keep him tamed. If he has your orders he may take heed. I’ll take his measure for crutches, but not let them near him till I’m sure he’s fit to rise.”