Ellis Peters - The Hermit of Eyton Forest

“Which of you was it? Who waited on him last? Which fool among you, fools every one as you are, left the door unbarred? Or has one of you loosed him deliberately, in my despite? I’ll have the hide of the traitorous wretch, whoever he may be. Speak up! Who took the slippery imp his dinner?” The menservants held off out of his immediate reach, every one babbling out his own innocence. The maids fluttered and looked sidelong at one another, but hesitated to say a word against their mistress. But Hiltrude, her courage fast in both hands and bulking encouragingly solid now that it came to the test, laid her work aside and said boldly, not yet sounding defensive: “But, Father, you know I did that myself. You saw me bring out the dish afterwards. Certainly I bolted the door again I feel sure I did. No one else has been in to him since, unless you have visited him yourself, sir. Who else would, unless he was sent? And I’ve sent nobody.”

“Are you so certain, madam?” roared Fulke. “You’ll tell me next the lad’s not gone at all, but sitting there where he should be. If you were the last to go in there, then you’re to blame for letting him slip out and take to his heels. You must have left the door unbolted, how else could he get out? How could you be such a fool?”

“I did not leave it unbolted,” she repeated, but with less certainty this time. “Or even if I may have forgotten,” she conceded defensively, “though I don’t believe I did—but if I did, does it matter so much now? He can’t alter what’s done, nor can anyone else. I don’t see why it should cause such a flurry.”

“You don’t see, you don’t see—you don’t see beyond the end of your nose, madam!

And he to go running back to his abbot, with the tales he can tell?”

“But he has to come back into the light sooner or later,” she said meekly. “You couldn’t keep him shut up for ever.”

“So he has, we all know it, but not yet, not until we’ve got his mark—no, for he can sign his name, which is better!—on the marriage settlements, and made him see he may as well fit his story to ours, and accept what’s done. A few days and it could all have been done our way, the proper way. But I’ll not let him get away without a race for it,” swore Fulke vengefully, and turned to roar at his petrified grooms: “Saddle my horse, and make haste about it! I’m going after him. He’ll make straight for the abbey, and keep well clear of Eaton, surely. I’ll have him back by the ear yet!”

In the full light of afternoon Richard did not dare take to the road, even by skirting the village widely. There he could have made better speed, but might all too easily attract the attention of tenants or retainers who would serve Astley’s ends for their own sakes, and drag him back to his captivity. Moreover, the road would take him far too close to Eaton. He kept to the belt of woodland that stretched westward for half a mile or so above the river, thinning as it went until it was no more than a belt of single oaks spaced out beside the water. Beyond that, emerald water meadows filled a great bend in the Severn, open and treeless. There he kept inland far enough to have some cover from the few bushes that grew along the headlands of the Leighton fields. Upstream, where he must go, the valley widened into a great green level of flood meadows, with only a few isolated trees on the higher spots, but the northern bank where he rode rose within another mile into the low ridge of Eyton forest, where he could go in thick cover for more than half the distance to Wroxeter. It would mean going more slowly, but it was not pursuit he feared then, it was being recognised and intercepted on the way. Wroxeter he must avoid at all costs, and the only way he knew was by fording the Severn there, short of the village and out of sight of the manor, to reach the road on the southern side, and then ride full tilt for the town.

He made a little too much haste in the forest, where his familiarity with the land had led him to take a short cut between paths, and paid for it with a fall when his pony stepped in the soft edge of a badger’s sett. But he dropped lightly enough into the thick cushioning of leaves, and escaped with a few bruises, and the pony, startled and skittish but docile, came back to him readily once the first fright was over. After that he bore in mind that haste was not necessarily another word for speed, and took more care until he came to the more open ways. He had not reasoned about his flight, but set off bent on getting back to the abbey and making his peace there, whatever scoldings and punishments might be waiting for him, once all anxiety on his behalf was banished. He knew enough about grown-up people, however various they might seem in all other ways, to understand that they all shared the same instinct when a child in their charge was recovered out of danger, to hug him first, and clout him immediately afterwards. If, indeed, the clout did not come first! He would not mind that. Now that he had been dragged forcibly away from the schoolroom, and Brother Paul, and his fellow pupils, and even the awesome face of Father Abbot, all he wanted was to get back to them, to have the safe walls and the even safer horarium of the monastic day wrapped round him like a warm cloak. He could, had he even thought of it, have ridden to the mill by the river at Eyton, or the forester’s cottage, any dwelling on this soil held by the abbey, and been received into safe shelter, but that possibility never entered his head. He made for the abbey like a bird to its nest. At this moment he had no other home, lord of Eaton though he might be.

Once out of the forest there was a good and open track almost to the ford, which lay on the southern side of Wroxeter village. Over these two miles he went briskly, but not so fast as to call attention to himself, for here there were other people to be met with occasionally, about their daily business in the fields or travelling the path between villages. He saw none that he knew, and answered such casual greetings as they gave him as briefly as they were given, and did not loiter.

The belt of trees on the near side of the ford came into view, the few willows dipping to the water, and the top of the tower of the collegiate church just showed among the branches, with one corner of a roof. The rest of the village and the demesne lay beyond. Richard approached the shelter of the trees cautiously, and dismounted in cover to peer through at the shallow spread of the water round a small island, and the path that came down from the village to the ford. He heard the voices before he reached a clear view, and halted to listen acutely, hoping the speakers would pass towards the village and leave his path clear. Two women, chattering and laughing, and an accompanying light splashing in the edge of the water, and then a man’s voice, equally idle and easy, teasing and chaffing the girls. Richard ventured closer, until he could see the speakers clearly, and halted with an indrawn breath of exasperation and dismay. The women had been washing linen, and had it spread on the low bushes to dry, and since the day was not cold, and since they had been joined by a young and not unattractive companion, they were in no hurry to leave the shore. Richard did not know the women, but the man he knew only too well, though not his name. This big, red-haired, strutting young gamecock was Astley’s foreman on the demesne farm, and one of the two who had encountered and recognised Richard in the woods, trotting home to the abbey in haste, and taken advantage of the hour and the solitude to do their lord a favour. Those same muscular arms which were now making free with one of the giggling laundresses had hoisted Richard ignominiously out of the saddle, and held him kicking and raging over a thick shoulder that might have been made of oak for all the effect his belabouring fists had on it, until the other miscreant had stopped the boy’s mouth with his own capuchon, and pinioned his arms with his own reins. That same night, when it was fully dark, past midnight and all honest folk in their beds, the same trusted pair had bundled him away to the more distant manor for safekeeping. Richard remembered these indignities bitterly. And now here was this very fellow getting in his way once again, for he could not ride out of cover and make for the ford without passing close and being recognised, and almost certainly recaptured.