The Hermit of Eyton Forest Page 12

“The child ran off to him, if that is indeed what he did,” Hugh pursued doggedly, “without saying a word to any other. How if it was indeed to a rogue and murderer he went, in all innocence? The cob is a sturdy little beast, big for Richard, the hermit’s boy a light weight, and Richard the only witness. I don’t say it is so. I do say such things have happened, and could happen again.”

  “True, I would not dispute it,” admitted Cadfael.

  There was that in his tone that caused Hugh to say with certainty: “But you do not believe it.” It was something of which Cadfael himself had been less certain until that moment. “Do you feel your thumbs pricking? I know better than to ignore the omen if you do,” said Hugh with a half-reluctant smile.

  “No, Hugh.” Cadfael shook his head. “I know nothing that isn’t known to you, I am nobody’s advocate in this matter—except Richard’s—I’ve barely exchanged a word with this boy Hyacinth, never seen him but twice, when he brought Cuthred’s message to chapter and when he came to fetch me to the forester. All I can do is keep my eyes open between here and Eilmund’s house, and that you may be sure I shall do—perhaps even do a little beating of the bushes myself along the way. If I have anything to tell, be sure you’ll hear it before any other. Be it good or ill, but God and Saint Winifred grant us good news!”

  On that promise they parted, Hugh riding on to the castle to receive whatever news the watch might have for him thus late in the afternoon, Cadfael moving on through the village towards the edge of the woodland. He was in no hurry. He had much to think about. Strange how the very act of admitting that the worst was possible had so instantly strengthened his conviction that it had not happened and would not happen. Stranger still that as soon as he had stated truthfully that he knew nothing of Hyacinth, and had barely spoken a word to him, he should find himself so strongly persuaded that very soon that lack might be supplied, and he would learn, if not everything, all that he needed to know.

  *

  Eilmund had regained his healthy colour, welcomed company eagerly, and could not be restrained from trying out his crutches at once. Four or five days cooped up indoors was a sore test of his temper, but the relief of being able to hurple vigorously out into the garden, and finding himself a fast learner in the art of using his new legs, brought immediate sunny weather with him. When he had satisfied himself of his competence, he sat down willingly, at Annet’s orders, to share a supper with Cadfael.

  “Though by rights I ought to be getting back,” said Cadfael, “now I know how well you’re doing. The bone seems to be knitting straight and true as a lance, and you’ll not need me here harrying you every day. And speaking of inconvenient visitors, have you had Hugh Beringar or his men here today searching the woods around? You’ll have heard before now they’re hunting Cuthred’s boy Hyacinth for suspicion of killing his master? And there’s young Richard missing, too.”

  “We heard of the both only last night,” said Eilmund. “Yes, they were here this morning, a long line of the garrison men working their way along every yard of the forest between road and river. They even looked in my byre and henhouse. Will Warden grumbled himself it was needless folly, but he had his orders. Why waste time, he says, aggravating a good fellow we all know to be honest, but it’s as much as my skin’s worth to leave out a single hut or let my beaters pass by a solitary bush, with his lordship’s sharp eye on us all. Do you know, have they found the child?”

  “No, not yet. He’s not at Eaton, that’s certain. If it’s any comfort, Eilmund, Dame Dionisia had to open her doors to the search, too. Noble and simple, they’ll all fare alike.”

  Annet waited upon them in silence, bringing cheese and bread to the table. Her step was as light as always, her face as calm, only at the mention of Richard did her face cloud over in anxious sympathy. There was no knowing what went on behind her composed face, but Cadfael hazarded his own guesses. He took his leave in good time, against Eilmund’s hospitable urgings.

  “I’ve been missing too many services, these last days, I’d best get back to my duty, and at least put in an appearance for Compline tonight. I’ll come in and see you the day after tomorrow. You take care how you go. And, Annet, don’t let him stay on his feet too long. If he gives you trouble, take his props away from him.”

  She laughed and said that she would, but her mind, Cadfael thought, was only half on what she said, and she had not made any move to second her father’s protest at such an early departure. Nor did she come out to the gate with him this time, but only as far as the door, and there stood to watch him mount, and waved when he looked back before beginning to thread the narrow path between the trees. Only when he had vanished did she turn and go back into the cottage.

  Cadfael did not go far. A few hundred yards into the woods there was a hollow of green surrounded by a deep thicket, and there he dismounted and tethered his horse, and made his way back very quietly and circumspectly to a place from which he could see the house door without himself being seen. The light was dimming gently into the soft green of dusk, and the hush was profound, only the last birdsong broke the forest silence.

  In a few minutes Annet came out to the door again, and stood for a little while braced and still, her head alertly reared, looking all round the clearing and listening intently. Then, satisfied, she set off briskly out of the fenced garden and round to the rear of the cottage. Cadfael circled with her in the cover of the trees. Her hens were already securely shut in for the night, the cow was in the byre; from these customary evening tasks Annet had come back a good hour ago, while her father was trying out his crutches in the grassy levels of the clearing. It seemed there was one more errand she had to do before the full night came down and the door was closed and barred. And she went to it at a light and joyous run, her hands spread to part the bushes on either side as she reached the edge of the clearing, her light brown hair shaking loose from its coil and dancing on her shoulders, her head tilted back as though she looked up into the trees, darkening now over her head and dropping, silently and moistly, the occasional withered leaf, the tears of the aging year.

  She was not going far. No more than a hundred paces into the woods she halted, poised still in the same joyous attitude of flight, under the branches of the first of the ancient oaks, still in full but tarnished leafage. Cadfael, not far behind her in the shelter of the trees, saw her throw back her head and send a high, melodious whistle up into the crown of the tree. From somewhere high above a soft shimmering of leaves answered, dropping through the branches as an acorn might fall, and in a moment the descending shiver of movement reached the ground in the shape of a young man sudden and silent as a cat, who swung by his hands from the lowest bough and dropped lightly on his feet at Annet’s side. As soon as he touched ground they were in each other’s arms.

  So he had not been mistaken. The two of them had barely set eyes on each other when they fell to liking, blessed as they were with the good ground of his services to her father. With Eilmund laid up helpless in the house she could go freely about her own secret business of hiding and feeding a fugitive, but what would they do now that the forester was likely to be up and about, however limited his range must remain? Was it fair to present her father with such a problem in loyalties, and he an official involved with law, if only forest law? But there they stood linked, as candidly as children, with such a suggestion of permanence about their embrace that it surely would take more than father or lord or law or king to disentangle them. With her long mane of hair loosed, and her feet bare, and Hyacinth’s classic elegance of shape and movement, and fierce, disquieting beauty, they might have been two creatures bred out of the ancient forest, faun and nymph out of a profane but lovely fable. Not even the gathering twilight could dim their brightness.

  Well, thought Cadfael, surrendering to the vision, if this is what we have to deal with, from this we must go on, for there’s no going back. And he stepped rustling out of the bushes, and walked towards them without conceal.

  They heard him and
sprang round instantly with heads reared, cheek to cheek, like deer scenting danger. They saw him, and Annet flung out her arms and shut Hyacinth behind her against the bole of the tree, her face blanched and sharp as a sword, and as decisively Hyacinth laughed, lifted her bodily aside, and stepped before her.

  “As if I needed the proof!” said Cadfael, to afford them whatever reassurance his voice might convey, and he halted without coming too close, though they knew already there was no point in running. “I’m not the law. If you’ve done no wrong you’ve nothing to fear from me.”

  “It takes a bolder man than I am,” said Hyacinth’s clear voice softly, “to claim he’s done no wrong.” Even in the dimming light his sudden, unnerving smile shone perceptibly for a moment. “But I’ve done no murder, if that’s what you mean. Brother Cadfael, is it?”

  “It is.” He looked from one roused and wary face to the other, and saw that they were breathing a little more easily and every moment less tensed for flight or attack. “Lucky for you they brought no hounds with them this morning. Hugh never likes to hunt a man with hounds. I’m sorry, lad, if my visit tonight kept you fretting longer than you need have done in your nest up there. I hope you spend your nights in better comfort.”

  At that they both smiled, still somewhat cautiously and with eyes alert and wild, but they said nothing.

  “And where did you hide through the sergeant’s search, that they never got wind of you at all?”

  Annet made up her mind, with the same thorough practical resolution with which she did everything. She stirred and shook herself, the glossy cloak of her hair billowing into a pale cloud about her head. She drew breath deeply, and laughed.

  “If you must know, he was under the brychans of Father’s bed, while Will Warden sat on the bench opposite drinking ale with us, and his men peered in among my hens and forked through the hay in the loft, outside. You thought, I believe,” she said, coming close to Cadfael and drawing Hyacinth after her by the hand, “that Father was in ignorance of what I was doing. Did you hold that against me, even a little? No need, he knows all, has known it from the beginning, or at least from the moment this manhunt began. And now that you’ve found us out, had we not better all go into the house, and see what our four heads can come up with for the future, to get us all out of this tangle?”

  *

  “They’ll not come here again,” said Eilmund comfortably, presiding over this meeting in his house from the throne of his bed, the same bed under which Hyacinth had couched secure in the presence of the hunters. “But if they do, we’ll know of it in time. Never twice the same hiding place.”

  “And never once any qualms that you might be hiding a murderer?” asked Cadfael, hopeful of being convinced.

  “No need for any! From the start of it I knew I was not. And you shall know it, too. I’m talking of proof positive, Cadfael, not a mere matter of faith, though faith’s no mere matter, come to that. You were here last night, it was on your way back you found the man dead, and dead no more than an hour when you found him. Do you say aye to that?”

  “More than willingly, if it helps your proof along.”

  “And you left me when Annet here came back from doing the work that keeps her busy in the evening. You’ll call to mind I said she’d been long enough about it, and so she had, well above an hour. For good reason, she’d been meeting with this youngster here, and whatever they were about, they were in no hurry about it, which won’t surprise you greatly, I daresay. In short, these two were together in the woods a mile or so from here from the time she left you and me together, until she came back nigh on two hours later. And there young Richard found them, and this lad she brought back with her here, and ten minutes after you were gone she brought him in to me. No murderer, for all that while he was with her, or me, or the both of us, and in this house he slept that night. He never was near the man who was killed, and we can swear to it.”

  “Then why have you not…” Cadfael began, and as hastily caught himself back from the needless question, and held up a hand to ward off the obvious answer. “No, say no word! I see very well why. My wits are grown dull tonight. If you came forward to tell Hugh Beringar he’s after a man proven innocent, true enough you could put that danger away from him. But if one Bosiet is dead, there’s another expected at the abbey any day now he may be there this minute, for all I know. As bad as his sire, so says the groom, and he has good reason to know, he bears the marks of it. No, I see how you’re bound.”

  Hyacinth sat in the rushes on the floor at Annet’s feet, hugging his drawn up knees. He said without passion or emphasis, but with the calm finality of absolute resolution: “I am not going back there.”

  “No, no more you shall!” said Eilmund heartily. “You’ll understand, Cadfael, that when I took the lad in, there was no question of murder at all. It was a runaway villein I chose to shelter, one with good reason to run, and one that had done me the best of turns any man could do for another. I liked him well, I would not for any cause have sent him back to be misused. And then, when the cry of murder did arise, I had no call to feel any differently, for I knew he had no part in it. It went against the grain not to be able to go out and say so to sheriff and abbot and all, but you see it was impossible. And the upshot of it is, here we are with the lad on our hands, and how are we best to make sure of his safety?”

  Chapter 9

  IT WAS ALREADY TAKEN for granted by all of them, it seemed, that Cadfael was on their side, and wholeheartedly a party to their conspiracy. How could it be otherwise? Here was absolute proof that the boy was no murderer, proof that could be laid in Hugh Beringar’s hands with confidence in his justice, no question of that. But it could not be done without exposing Hyacinth to the very danger from which he had escaped once, and could hardly hope to escape a second time. Hugh was bound by law as fast as any man, even his gift for turning a blind eye and a deaf ear would not help Hyacinth if once Bosiet got wind of where he was and who was sheltering him.

  “Between us,” said Cadfael, though somewhat dubiously, “we might be able to get you away out of the county and into Wales, clean away from pursuit…”

  “No,” said Hyacinth firmly, “I won’t run. I’ll hide for as long as I must, but I won’t run any further. It’s what I meant to do, when I set off this way, but I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Why?” demanded Cadfael simply.

  “For two good reasons. One, because Richard’s lost, and Richard saved my skin for me by bringing warning, and I’m his debtor until I know he’s safe, and back where he should be. And two, because I want my freedom here in England, here in Shrewsbury, and I mean to get work in the town when I can with safety, and earn my living, and take a wife.” He looked up with a bright, challenging flash of his amber eyes at Eilmund, and smiled. “If Annet will have me!”

  “You’d best ask my leave about that,” said Eilmund, but with such good humour that it was plain the idea was not entirely new to him, nor necessarily unwelcome.

  “So I will, when the time comes, but I would not offer you or her what I am and have now. So let that wait, but don’t forget it,” warned the faun, gleaming. “But Richard I must find, I will find! That’s first!”

  “What can you do,” said Eilmund practically, “more than Hugh Beringar and all his men are doing? And you a hunted man yourself, with the hounds close on your tail! You stay quiet like a sensible lad, and hide your head until Bosiet’s hunt for you starts costing him more even than his hatred’s worth. As it will, in the end. He has manors at home now to think about.”

  But whether Hyacinth was, by ordinary standards, a sensible lad was a matter for conjecture. He sat very still, in that taut, suggestive way he had, that promised imminent action, the soft glow of Annet’s fire glowing in the subtle planes of his cheeks and brow, turning his bronze to gold. And Annet, beside him on the cushioned bench by the wall, had something of the same quality. Her face was still, but her eyes were sapphire bright. She let them talk about her in her pre
sence, and felt no need to add a word on her own account, nor did she so much as touch Hyacinth’s slender shoulder to confirm her secure tenure. Whoever had doubts about Annet’s claims on the future, Annet had none.

  “Richard left you as soon as he’d delivered his warning?” asked Cadfael.

  “He did. Hyacinth wanted to go with him to the edge of the wood,” said Annet, “but he wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t stir unless Hyacinth went into hiding at once, so we promised. And he set off back along the track. And we came back here to Father, as he’s told you, and saw no one else along the way. Richard would not have gone anywhere near Eaton, or I’d have thought his grandmother might have taken him. But he was bent on getting back to his bed.”

  “It was what we all thought,” owned Cadfael, “not least Hugh Beringar. But he was there early and turned the place wrong side out, and the boy is not there. I think John of Longwood and half the household beside would have told if he’d been seen there. Dame Dionisia is a formidable lady, but Richard is the lord of Eaton, it’s his bidding they’ll have to do in the future, not hers. If they dared not speak out before her face, they’d have done it softly behind her back. No, he is not there.”

  It was long past time for Vespers. Even if he started back now he would be too late for Compline, but still he sat stubbornly going over this whole new situation in his mind, looking for the best way forward, where there seemed to be nothing to be done but wait, and continue to evade the hunt. He was grateful that Hyacinth was no murderer, that at least was a gain. But how to keep him out of the hands of Bosiet was another matter.

  “For God’s sake, boy,” he said, sighing, “what was it you did to your overlord, there in Northamptonshire, to get yourself so bitterly hated? Did you indeed assault his steward?”

  “I did,” acknowledged Hyacinth with satisfaction, and a red reminiscent spark kindled in his eyes. “It was after the last of the harvest, and there was a girl gleaning in the poor leavings in one of the demesne fields. There never was a girl safe from him if he came on her alone. It was only by chance I was near. He had a staff, and dropped her to swing at my head with it when I came at him. I got a few bruises, but I laid him flat against the stones under the headland, clean out of his wits. So there was nothing I could do but run for it. I’d nothing to leave, no land. Drogo distrained on my father two years before, when he was in his last illness and I had all to do, our fields and Bosiet’s harvest labour, and we ended in debt. He’d been after us a long while, he said I was for ever rousing his villeins against him… Well, if I was it was for their rights. There are laws to defend life and limb even for villeins, but they meant precious little in Bosiet’s manors. He’d have had me half-killed for attacking the steward. He’d have had me hanged if I hadn’t been profitable to him. It was the chance he’d been waiting for.”