The Hermit of Eyton Forest Read online

  “How were you profitable to him?” asked Cadfael.

  “I had a turn for fine leather-work—belts, harness, pouches, and the like. When he’d made me landless he offered to leave me the toft if I’d bind myself to turn over all my work to him for my keep. I’d no choice, I was still his villein. But I began to do finer tooling and gilding. He wanted to get some favour out of the earl once, and he had me make a book cover to give him as a present. And then the prior of the Augustinian canons at Huntingdon saw it, and ordered a special binding for their great codex, and the sub-prior of Cluny at Northampton wanted his best missal rebound, and so it grew. And they paid well, but I got nothing out of it. Drogo’s done well out of me. That’s the other reason he wanted me back alive. And so will his son Aymer want me.”

  “If you have a trade the like of that at your finger-ends,” said Eilmund approvingly, “you can make your way anywhere, once you’re free of these Bosiets. Our abbot might very well put some work your way, and some town merchant would be glad to have you in his employ.”

  “Where and how did you meet with Cuthred?” asked Cadfael, curiously.

  “That was at the Cluniac priory in Northampton. I lay up for the night there, but I dared not go into the enclave, there were one or two there who knew me. I got food by sitting with the beggars at the gate, and when I was making off before dawn, Cuthred was for starting too, having spent the night in the guest hall.” An abrupt dark smile plucked at the corners of Hyacinth’s eloquent lips. He kept his startling eyes veiled under their high-arched golden lids. “He proposed we should travel together. Out of charity, surely. Or so that I should not have to thieve for my food, and sink into a worse condition even than before.” As abruptly he looked up, unveiling the full brilliance of wide eyes fixed full and solemnly on Eilmund’s face. The smile had vanished.

  “It’s time you knew the worst of me, I want no lies among this company. I came this way owing the world nothing, and ripe for any mischief, and a rogue and a vagabond I could be, and a thief I have been at need. Before you shelter me another hour, you should know what cause you have to think better of it. Annet,” he said, his voice soft and assuaged on her name, “already knows what you must know too. You have that right. I told her the truth the night Brother Cadfael was here to set your bone.”

  Cadfael remembered the motionless figure sitting patiently outside the cottage, the urgent whisper: “I must speak to you!” And Annet coming out into the dark, and closing the door after her.

  “It was I,” said Hyacinth with steely deliberation, “who dammed the brook with bushes so that your seedlings were flooded. It was I who undercut the bank and bridged the ditch so that the deer got into the coppice. It was I who shifted a pale of the Eaton fence to let out the sheep to the ash saplings. I had my orders from Dame Dionisia to be a thorn in the flesh to the abbey until they gave her her grandson back. That was why she set up Cuthred in his hermitage, to put me there as his servant. And I knew nothing then of any of you, and cared less, and I was not going to quarrel with what provided me a comfortable living and a safe refuge until I could do better. It’s my doing, more’s the pity, that the worse thing happened, and the tree came down on you and pinned you in the brook, my doing that you’re lamed and housebound here—though that slip came of itself, I didn’t touch it again. So now you know,” said Hyacinth, “and if you see fit to take the skin off my back for it, I won’t lift a hand to prevent, and if you throw me out afterwards, I’ll go.” He reached up a hand to Annet’s hand and added flatly: “But not far!”

  There was a long pause while two of them sat staring at him, intently and silently, and Annet watched them no less warily, all of them withholding judgement. No one had exclaimed against him, no one had interrupted this half-defiant confession. Hyacinth’s truth was used like a dagger, and his humility came very close to arrogance. If he was ashamed, it did not show in his face. Yet it could not have been easy to strip himself thus of the consideration and kindness father and daughter had shown him. If he had not spoken, clearly Annet would have said no word. And he had not pleaded, nor attempted any extenuation. He was ready to take what was due without complaint. Doubtful if anyone, however eloquent or terrible a confessor, would ever get this elusive creature nearer to penitence than this.

  Eilmund stirred, settling his broad shoulders more easily against the wall, and blew out a great, gusty breath. “Well, if you brought the tree down on me, you also hoisted it off me. And if you think I’d give up a runaway villein to slavery again because he’d played a few foul tricks on me, you’re not well acquainted with my simple sort. I fancy the fright I gave you that day was all the thrashing you needed. And since then you’ve done me no more injury, for from all I hear there’s been quiet in the woods from that day. I doubt if the lady’s satisfied with her bargain. You show sense, and stay where you are.”

  “I told him,” said Annet, confidently smiling, “you would not pay back injury for injury. I never said a word, I knew he would out with it himself. And Brother Cadfael knows now Hyacinth’s no murderer, and has owned to the worst he knows about himself. There’s not one of us here will betray him.”

  No, not one! But Cadfael sat somewhat anxiously pondering what could best be done now. Betrayal was impossible, certainly, but the hunt would go on, and might well drag all these woods over again, and in the meantime Hugh, in his natural concentration on this most likely quarry, might be losing all likelihood of finding the real murderer. Even Drogo Bosiet was entitled to justice, however he infringed the rights of others. Withholding from Hugh the certainty and proof of Hyacinth’s innocence might be delaying the reassessment that would set in motion the pursuit of the guilty.

  “Will you trust me, and let me tell Hugh Beringar what you have told me? Give me leave,” urged Cadfael hastily, seeing their faces stiffen in consternation, “to deal with him privately—”

  “No!” Annet laid her hand possessively on Hyacinth’s shoulder, burning up like a stirred fire. “No, you can’t give him up! We have trusted you, you can’t fail us.”

  “No, no, no, not that! I know Hugh well, he would not willingly give up a villein to mistreatment, he is for justice even before law. Let me tell him only that Hyacinth is innocent, and show him the proof. I need say nothing as to how I know or where he is, Hugh will take my word. Then he can hold off this search and leave you alone until it’s safe for you to come forth and speak openly.”

  “No!” cried Hyacinth, on his feet in one wild, smooth movement, his eyes two yellow flames of alarm and rejection. “Not a word to him, never a word! If we’d thought you’d go to him we’d never have let you in to us. He’s the sheriff, he must take Bosiet’s part—he has manors, he has villeins of his own, do you think he’d ever side with me against my legal lord? I should be dragged back at Aymer’s heels, and buried alive in his prison.”

  Cadfael turned to Eilmund for help. “I swear to you I can lift this suspicion from the lad by speaking with Hugh. He’ll take my word and hold off from the hunt—withdraw his men, or send them elsewhere. He has still Richard to find. Eilmund, you know Hugh Beringar better than to doubt his fairness.”

  But no, Eilmund did not know him, not as Cadfael knew him. The forester was shaking his head doubtfully. A sheriff is a sheriff, pledged to law, and law is rigid and weighted, all in all, against the peasant and the serf and the landless man. “He’s a decent, fair-minded man, sure enough,” said Eilmund, “but I dare not stake this boy’s life on any king’s officer. No, leave us keep as we are, Cadfael. Say nothing to any man, not until Bosiet’s come and gone.”

  They were all linked against him. He did his best, arguing quietly what ease it would be to know that the hunt would not be pressed home against Hyacinth, that his innocence, once communicated privily to Hugh, would set free the forces of law to look elsewhere for Drogo’s murderer, and also allow them to press their search for Richard more thoroughly, and with more resources, through these forests where the child had vanished. But they ha
d their arguments, too, and there was matter in them.

  “If you told the sheriff, even secretly,” urged Annet, “and if he did believe you, he would still have Bosiet to deal with. His father’s man will tell him it’s as good as certain his runaway is somewhere here in hiding, murderer or no. He’ll go the length of using hounds, if the sheriff draws his men off. No, say nothing to anyone, not yet. Wait until they give up and go home. Then we’ll come forth. Promise! Promise us silence until then!”

  There was nothing to be done about it. He promised. They had trusted him, and against their absolute prohibition he could not hold out. He sighed and promised.

  It was very late when he rose at last, his word given, to begin the night ride back to the abbey. He had given a promise also to Hugh, never thinking how hard it might be to keep. He had said that if he had anything to tell, Hugh should hear it before any other. A subtle, if guileless, arrangement of words, through which a devious mind could find several loopholes, but what he meant had been as clear to Hugh as it was to Cadfael. And now he could not make it good. Not yet, not until Aymer Bosiet should grow restive, count the costs of his vengeance, and think it better to go home and enjoy his new inheritance instead.

  In the doorway he turned back to ask of Hyacinth one last question, a sudden afterthought. “What of Cuthred? With you two living so close—did he have any part in all this mischief of yours in Eilmund’s forest?”

  Hyacinth stared at him gravely, in mild surprise, his amber eyes wide and candid. “How could he?” he said simply. “He never leaves his own pale.”

  *

  Aymer Bosiet rode into the great court of the abbey about noon of the next day, with a young groom at his back. Brother Denis the hospitaller had orders to bring him to Abbot Radulfus as soon as he arrived, for the abbot was unwilling to delegate to anyone else the task of breaking to him the news of his father’s death. It was achieved with a delicacy for which, it seemed, there was little need. The bereaved son sat silently revolving the news and all its implications at length, and having apparently digested and come to terms with it, expressed his filial grief very suitably, but with his mind still engaged on side issues, a shrewdly calculating mind behind a face less powerful and brutal than his father’s, but showing little evidence of sorrow. He did frown over the event, for it involved troublesome duties, such as commissioning coffin and cart and extra help for the journey home, and making the best possible use of such time as he could afford here. Radulfus had already had Martin Bellecote, the master carpenter in the town, make a plain inner coffin for the body, which was not yet covered, since doubtless Aymer would want to look upon his father’s face for a last time and take his farewells.

  The bereaved son revolved the matter in his mind, and asked point-blank and with sharp intent: “He had not found our runaway villein?”

  “No,” said Radulfus, and if he was shaken he contrived to contain the shock. “There was a suggestion that the young man was in the neighbourhood, but no certainty that the youth in question was really the one sought. And I believe now no one knows where he is gone.”

  “My father’s murderer is being sought?”

  “Very assiduously, with all the sheriffs men.”

  “My villein also, I trust. Whether or not,” said Aymer grimly, “the two turn out to be the same. The law is bound to do all it can to recover my property for me. The rogue is a nuisance, but valuable. For no price would I be willing to let him go free.” He bit off the words with a vicious snap of large, strong teeth. He was as tall and long-boned as his father, but carried less flesh, and was leaner in the face; but he had the same shallowly-set eyes of an indeterminate, opaque colour, that seemed all surface and no depth. Thirty years old, perhaps, and pleasurably aware of his new status. Proprietorial satisfaction had begun to vibrate beneath the hard level of his voice. Already he spoke of ‘my property’. That was one aspect of his bereavement which certainly had not escaped him.

  “I shall want to see the sheriff concerning this fellow who calls himself Hyacinth. If he has run, does not that make it more likely he is indeed Brand? And that he had a hand in my father’s death? There’s a heavy score against him already. I don’t intend to let such a debt go unpaid.”

  “That is a matter for the secular law, not for me,” said Radulfus with chill civility. “There is no proof of who killed the lord Drogo, the thing is quite open. But the man is being sought. If you will come with me, I’ll take you to the chapel where your father lies.”

  Aymer stood beside the open coffin on its draped bier, and the light of the tall candles burning at Drogo’s head and feet showed no great change in his son’s face. He gazed down with drawn brows, but it was the frown of busy thought rather than grief or anger at such a death.

  “I feel it bitterly,” said the abbot, “that a guest in our house should come to so evil an end. We have said Masses for his soul, but other amends are out of my scope. I trust we may yet see justice done.”

  “Indeed!” agreed Aymer, but so absently that it was plain his mind was on other things. “I have no choice but to take him home for burial. But I cannot go yet. This search cannot be so soon abandoned. I must ride into the town this afternoon and see this master carpenter of yours, and have him make an outer coffin and line it with lead, and seal it. A pity, he could have lain just as properly here, but the men of our house are all buried at Bosiet. My mother would not be content else.”

  He said it with a note of vexation in his musings. But for the necessity of taking home a corpse he could have lingered here for days to pursue his hunt for the escaped villein. Even as things stood he meant to make the fullest use of his time, and Radulfus could not help feeling that it was the villein he wanted most vindictively, not his father’s murderer.

  By chance Cadfael happened to be crossing the court when the newcomer took horse again, early in the afternoon. It was his first glimpse of Drogo’s son, and he stopped and drew aside to study him with interest. His identity was never in doubt, for the likeness was there, though somewhat tempered in this younger man. The curiously shallow eyes, so meanly diminished by their lack of the shadow and form deep sockets provide, had the same flat malevolence, and his handling of horseflesh as he mounted was more considerate by far than his manner towards his groom. The hand that held his stirrup was clouted aside by the butt of his whip as soon as he was in the saddle, and when Warin started back from the blow so sharply that the horse took fright and clattered backwards on the cobbles, tossing up his head and snorting, the rider swung the whip at the groom’s shoulders so readily and with so little apparent anger or exasperation that it was plain this was the common currency of his dealings with his underlings. He took only the younger groom with him into the town, himself riding his father’s horse, which was fresh and spoiling for exercise. No doubt Warin was only too glad to be left behind here in peace for a few hours.

  Cadfael overtook the groom and fell into step beside him as he turned back towards the stables. Warin looked round to show him a bruise rapidly fading, but still yellow as old parchment, and a mouth still elongated by the healing scar at one corner.

  “I’ve not seen you these two days,” said Cadfael, eyeing the traces of old violence and alert for new. “Come round with me into the herb garden, and let me dress that gash again for you. He’s safely away for an hour or two, I take it, you can breathe easily. And it would do with another treatment, though I see it’s clean now.”

  Warin hesitated only for a moment. “They’ve taken the two fresh horses, and left me the others to groom. But they can wait a while.” And he went willingly at Cadfael’s side, his lean person, a little withered before its time, seeming to expand in his lord’s absence. In the pleasant aromatic coolness of the workshop, under the faintly stirring herbs that rustled overhead, he sat eased and content to let his injury be bathed and anointed, and was in no hurry to get back to his horses even when Cadfael had done with him.

  “He’s hotter even than the old one was on Bra
nd’s heels,” he said, shaking a helpless but sympathetic head over his former neighbour’s fortunes. “Torn two ways, between wanting to hang him and wanting to work him to death for greed, and it isn’t whether or not Brand killed the old lord that will determine which way the cat jumps, for there was no great love lost there, neither. Not much love in all that household to be gained or lost. But good haters, every one.”

  “There are more of them?” Cadfael asked with interest, “Drogo has left a widow?”

  “A poor pale lady, all the juice crushed out of her,” answered Warin, “but better born than the Bosiets, and has powerful kin, so they have to use her better than they use anyone else. And Aymer has a younger brother. Not so loud nor so violent, but sharper witted and better able to twist and turn. That’s all of them, but it’s enough.”

  “Neither one of them married?”

  “Aymer’s had one wife, but she was a sickly thing and died young. There’s an heiress not far from Bosiet they both fancy now—though by rights it’s her lands they fancy. And if Aymer is the heir, Roger’s far the better at making himself agreeable. Not that it lasts beyond when he gets his way.”