Ellis Peters - The Hermit of Eyton Forest

“Twice,” said Hugh, peering, for there was a second such smear, barely perceptible. Coolly and efficiently, a methodical man cleaning his tools after finishing his work! “And see here, this casket on the altar.” He had stepped carefully round the body to look closely at the carved wooden box, and draw a finger along the edge of the lid, above the lock. The flaw was no longer than a thumbnail, but showed where the point of a dagger had been thrust in to prise the box open. He lifted down the cross and raised the lid, which gave readily. The lock was sprung and broken, and the casket was empty. Only the faint aromatic scent of the wood stirred upon the air. There was not even a filming of dust within; the box had been well made.

“So something was taken, after all,” said Cadfael. He did not mention the breviary, though he could not doubt that Hugh had noticed its absence as readily as he.

“But not the silver. What could a hermit have about him of greater value than Dame Dionisia’s silver? He came to Buildwas on foot, carrying only a scrip like any other pilgrim, though to be sure his boy Hyacinth also carried a pack for him. Now I wonder,” said Hugh, “whether this casket was also the lady’s gift, or whether he brought it with him?”

They had been so intent on what they were observing within that they had failed to pay attention to what was happening without, and there had been no sound to warn them. And in the shock of what they had discovered they had almost forgotten that at least one more witness was expected at this meeting. But it was a woman’s voice, not Fulke’s, that suddenly spoke in the doorway behind them, high and confidently, and with arrogant disapproval in its tone. “No need to wonder, my lord. It would be simple and civil to ask me.” All three of them swung round in dismayed alarm to stare at Dame Dionisia, tall and erect and defiant between them and the brightening daylight from which she had come, and which left her half-blind at stepping into this relative obscurity. They were between her and the body, and there was nothing else to startle or alarm her but the very fact that Hugh stood with his hand on the open casket, and the cross had been lifted down. This she saw clearly, while the dying lamp lit nothing else so well. And she was outraged. “My lord, what is this? What are you doing with these sacred things? And where is Cuthred? Have you dared to meddle in his absence?” The abbot moved to place himself more solidly between her and the dead man, and advanced to persuade her out of the chapel.

“Madam, you shall know all, but I beg you, come out into the other room and be seated, and wait but a moment until we set all in order here. Here is no irreverence, I promise you.”

The light from without was still further darkened by the bulk of Astley looming at her shoulder, blocking the retreat the abbot was urging. She stood her ground, imperious and indignant.

“Where is Cuthred? Does he know you are here? How is it he has left his cell? He never does so—” The lie ended on her lips in a sharp indrawn breath. Beyond the abbot’s robe she had seen one small pallor jutting from the huddle of dark skirts, a foot that had shaken loose its sandal. Her vision was clearer now. She evaded the abbot’s restraining hand and thrust strongly past him. All her questions were answered in one shattering glance. Cuthred was indeed there, and on this occasion at least had not left his cell. The long, patrician composure of her face turned waxen grey and seemed to disintegrate, its sharp lines fallen slack. She uttered a great wail, rather of terror than of grief, and half-sprang, half-fell backwards into the arms of Fulke Astley.

SHE NEITHER SWOONED NOR WEPT. She was a woman who did not lightly do either. But she sat for a long while bolt upright on Cuthred’s bed in the living room, rigid and pale and staring straight before her, clean through the stone wall before her face, and a long way beyond. It was doubtful if she heard any of the abbot’s carefully measured words, or the uneasy blusterings of Astley, alternately offering her gallantries of comfort she did not value or need, and recalling feverishly that this crime left all questions unanswered, and in some none too logical way went to prove that the hermit had indeed been a priest, and the marriage he had solemnized still a marriage. At least she paid no attention to either. She had gone far beyond any such considerations. All her old plans had become irrelevant. She had looked closely on sudden death, unconfessed, unshriven, and she wanted no part of it. Cadfael saw it in her eyes as he came out from the chapel, having done what he could to lay Cuthred’s body straight and seemly, now that he had read all it had to tell him. Through that death she was confronting her own, and she had no intention of meeting it with all her sins upon her. Or for many years yet, but she had had warning that if she was willing to wait, death might not be.

At last she asked, in a perfectly ordinary voice, perhaps milder than any she normally used to her household or tenants, but without moving, or withdrawing her eyes from her ultimate enemy: “Where is the lord sheriff?”

“He’s gone to get hold of a party to carry the hermit away from here,” said the abbot. “To Eaton, if you so wish, to be cared for there, since you were his patroness. Or, if it will spare you painful reminders, to the abbey. He shall be properly received there.”

“It would be a kindness,” she said slowly, “if you would take him. I no longer know what to think. Fulke has told me what my grandson says. The hermit cannot answer for himself now, nor can I for him. I believed without question that he was a priest.”

“That, madam,” said Radulfus, “I never doubted.” The focus of her stare had shortened, a little colour had come back into her waxen face. She was on her way back, soon she would stir and brace herself, and turn to look at the real world about her, instead of the bleak distances of judgement day. And she would face whatever she had to face with the same ferocious courage and obstinacy with which she had formerly conducted her battles.

“Father,” she said, turning towards him with abrupt resolution, “if I come to the abbey tonight, will you yourself hear my confession? I shall sleep the better when I have shed my sins.”

“I will,” said the abbot.

She was ready then to be taken home, and Fulke was all too anxious to escort her. No doubt he, who had very little to say here in company, would be voluble enough in private with her. He had not her intelligence, nor nearly so acute an imagination. If Cuthred’s death had cast any shadow on him, it was merely the vexation of not being able to claim proof of his daughter’s marriage, not at all a bony hand on his shoulder. So at any rate thought Brother Cadfael, watching him arm Dionisia to where her jennet was tethered, in haste to have her away and be free of the abbot’s daunting presence.

At the last moment, with the reins gathered in her hand, she suddenly turned back. Her face had regained all its proud tension and force, she was herself again. “I have only now remembered,” she said, “that the lord sheriff was wondering about the casket in there on the altar. That was Cuthred’s. He brought it with him.”

When the abbot and the litter-bearers and Hugh were all on their slow and sombre way back to the abbey, Cadfael took a last look round the deserted chapel, the more attentively because he was alone and without distractions. There was not a single stain of blood on the flags of the floor where the body had lain, only the drop or two left by the point of Cuthred’s own dagger. He had certainly wounded his adversary, though the wound could not be deep. Cadfael sighted a course from the altar to the doorway, and followed it with a newly lighted candle in his hand. In the chapel he found nothing more, and in the outer room the floor was of beaten earth, and such faint traces would be hard to find after the passage of hours. But on the doorstone he found three drops shaken, dried now but plain to be seen, and on the new and unstained timber with which the left jamb of the doorway had been repaired there was a blurred smear of blood at the level of his own shoulder, where a gashed and bloodied sleeve had brushed past.