The Hermit of Eyton Forest Read online

  “Your pony is safe in the stable,” said Dionisia sharply, “and well cared for, as you are. And you had best mind your manners with me, sir, or you’ll have cause to regret it. They’ve taught you at that abbey school to be saucy to your elders, but it’s a lesson you had better unlearn as quickly as you can, for your own sake.”

  “I’m not being saucy,” he pleaded, relapsing into sullenness. “I only want to be in daylight, I want to go out, not sit here without even being able to see the trees and the grass. It’s wretched in here, without any company…”

  “You shall have company,” she promised, seizing on one complaint to which she could provide a complaisant answer. “I’ll send your bride to keep you company. I want you to get to know her better now, for after today she’ll return to Wroxeter with her father, and you, Richard,” she said warningly and with a sharpening eye on him, “will return with me to your own manor, to take your proper place. And I shall expect you to conduct yourself properly there, and not go hankering after that school, now that you’re married and a man of substance. Eaton is yours, and that is where you should be, and I expect you to maintain that, if anyone—anyone—should call it in question. Do you understand me, sir?”

  He understood her very well. He was to be cajoled, intimidated, bullied into declaring, even to Brother Paul and Father Abbot if need be, that he had run home to his grandmother of his own will, and of his own will submitted to the marriage they had planned for him. He hugged his secret knowledge gleefully to his heart as he said submissively: “Yes, madam!”

  “Good! And now I’ll send in Hiltrude to you, and see that you behave well to her. You will have to get used to her, and she to you, so you may as well begin now.” And she relented so far as to kiss him again on leaving him, though it resembled a slap as much as a kiss. She went out in a dusty swirl of long green skirts, and he heard the bolt shot again after her.

  And what had he got out of all that, except the fact that his pony was in the stable here, and if only he could get to it he might make his escape even now. But presently in came Hiltrude, as his grandmother had threatened, and all his resentment and dislike of the girl, undeserved though it was, boiled up within him into childish anger.

  She still seemed to him to belong at least to the generation of the mother he could hardly remember, but she was not really utterly plain, she had a clear, pale skin and large, guarded brown eyes, and if her hair was straight and of a mousey brown colour, she had a great mass of it, plaited in a thick braid that hung to her waist. She did not look ill-natured, but she did look bitterly resigned and wretched. She stood for a moment with her back to the door, staring thoughtfully at the boy curled up glumly on his bed.

  “So they’ve sent you to be my guard dog,” said Richard unpleasantly.

  Hiltrude crossed the room and sat down on the sill of the shuttered window, and looked at him without favour. “I know you don’t like me,” she said, not sadly but with quite unexpected vigour. “Small reason why you should, and for that matter, I don’t like you. But it seems we’re both bound, no help for it now. Why, why did you ever give way? I only said I would, at last, because I was so sure you were safe enough there at the abbey, and they’d never let it come to this. And then you have to fall into their hands like a fool, and let them break you down. And here we both are, and may God help us!” She relented of the note of exasperation in her own voice, and ended with weary kindness: “It’s not your fault, you’re only a child, what could you do? And it isn’t that I dislike you, I don’t even know you, it’s just that I didn’t want you, I don’t want you, any more than you want me.”

  Richard was staring at her, by this time, with mouth and eyes wide open, struck dumb with astonishment at finding her, as it were, not a token embarrassment, a millstone round his neck, but a real person with a great deal to say for herself, and by no means a fool. Slowly he uncoiled his slim legs and set his feet to the floor, to feel solid substance under him. Slowly he repeated, in a small, shocked voice: “You never wanted to marry me?”

  “A baby like you?” she said, careless of offence. “No, I never did.”

  “Then why did you ever agree to do it?” He was too indignant over her capitulation to resent the reflection on his years. “If you’d said no, and kept saying it, we should both have been saved.”

  “Because my father is a man very hard to say no to, and had begun to tell me that I was getting too old to have another suitor, and if I didn’t take you I should be forced to enter a sisterhood and stay a maid until I died. And that I wanted even less. And I thought the abbot would keep fast hold of you, and nothing would ever be allowed to come of it. And now here we are, and what are we to do about it?”

  Himself surprised at feeling an almost sympathetic curiosity about this woman who had sloughed a skin before his eyes, and emerged as vivid and real as himself, Richard asked almost shyly: “What do you want? If you could have your way, what would you like to have?”

  “I would like,” said Hiltrude, her brown eyes suddenly burning with anger and loss, “a young man named Evrard, who keeps my father’s manor roll and is his steward at Wroxeter, and who likes me, too, whether you think that likely or not. But he’s a younger son and has no land, and where there’s no land to marry to his own my father has no interest. There’s an uncle who may well leave his manor to Evrard, being fond of him and childless, but land now is what my father wants, not someday and maybe land.” The fire burned down. She turned her head aside. “Why do I tell you this? You can’t understand, and it’s not your fault. There’s nothing you can do to better it.”

  Richard was beginning to think that there might be something very pertinent he could do for her, if she in her turn would do something for him. Cautiously he asked: “What are they doing now, your father and my grandmother? She said you’d be going back to Wroxeter after today. What are they planning? And has Father Abbot been looking for me all this time since I left?”

  “You didn’t know? Not only the abbot, but the sheriff and all his men are looking for you. They’ve searched Eaton and Wroxeter, and are beating every bush in the forest. My father was afraid they might reach here by today, but she thought not. They were wondering whether to move you back to Eaton in the night, since it’s been searched already, but Dame Dionisia felt sure the officers had several days” work left before they’d reach Leighton, and in any case, she said, if a proper watch was set there’d be ample time to put you over the river with an escort and send you down to shelter at Buildwas. Better, she said, than moving you back towards Shrewsbury yet.”

  “Where are they now?” asked Richard intently. “My grandmother?”

  “She’s ridden back to Eaton to have everything there looking just as it should. Her hermit went back to his cell in the night. It wouldn’t do if anyone knew he’d been away.”

  “And your father?”

  “He’s out and about among his tenants here, but he’ll not be far away. He took his clerk with him. There’ll be dues unpaid that he wants collected, I daresay.” She was indifferent to her father’s movements, but she did feel some curiosity as to what was going on in this child’s head, to sharpen his voice into such hopeful purpose, and brighten his disconsolate eye. “Why? What is there in that for you? Or for me!” she added bitterly.

  “There might,” said Richard, beginning to glitter, “be something I can do for you, something good, if you’ll do something for me in return. If they’re both out of the house, help me to get away while they’re gone. My pony’s there in the stable, she told me as much. If I could get to him and slip away, you could bolt the door again, and no one would know I was gone until evening.”

  She shook her head decisively. “And who would get the blame? I wouldn’t put it off on to one of the servants, and I’ve no great appetite for it myself. The troubles I already have are enough for me, I thank you!” But she added warily, seeing that his hopeful fire was by no means quenched: “But I would be willing to think out the best means, if
I thought it would solve anything for me. But how can it? For a fair deliverance I’d venture anything Father could say or do. But what’s the use, when we’re tied together as we are, and no way out?”

  Richard bounded up from his bed and darted across the room to settle confidingly beside her on the broad sill. Close to her ear he said breathlessly: “If I tell you a secret, will you swear to keep it until I’m safely away, and help me to get out of here? I promise you, I promise you it will be worth your while.”

  “You are dreaming,” she said tolerantly, turning to look at him thus closely, and seeing his secret brightness undimmed by her disbelief. “There’s no way out of marriage unless you’re a prince and have the Pope’s ear, and who cares about lesser folk like us? True, we’re not bedded, nor will be for years yet, but if you think your old dame and my father would ever let it come to an annulment, you waste your hopes. They’ve got their way, they’ll never let go of their gains.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” he persisted, “we need nothing from Pope or law. You must believe me. At least promise not to tell, and when you hear what it is, you’ll be willing to help me, too.”

  “Very well,” she said, humouring him, even half convinced now that he knew something she did not know, but still doubting if it would or could deliver them. “Very well, I promise. What is this precious secret?”

  Gleefully he advanced his lips to her ear, his cheek teased by the touch of a lock of her hair that curled loose there, and breathed his secret as though the very boards at their backs had ears. And after one incredulous instant of stillness and silence she began to laugh very softly, to shake with her laughter, and throwing her arms about Richard, hugged him briefly to her heart.

  “For that you shall go free, whatever it cost me! You deserve it!”

  Chapter 11

  ONCE CONVINCED, it was she who made the plans. She knew the house and the servants, and as long as there was no suspicion of her subservience she had the entry everywhere, and could give orders to grooms and maids as she pleased. “Best wait until after they’ve brought your dinner and taken away the dish again. It will be a longer time then before anyone comes in to you again. There’s a back gate through the pale, from the stable out into the paddock. I could tell Jehan to turn your pony out to grass, he’s been shut in too long to be liking it. There are some bushes in the field there, round behind the stable, close to the wicket. I’ll make shift to hide your saddle and harness there before noon. I can get you out of here through the undercroft, while they’re all busy in hall and kitchens.”

  “But your father will be home then,” protested Richard doubtfully.

  “After his dinner my father will be snoring. If he does look in on you at all, it will be before he sits down to table, to make sure you’re safe in your cage. Better for me, too, I shall have sat out my morning with you gallantly, who’s to think I’ll change my tune after that? It might even be good sport,” said Hiltrude, growing animated in contemplating her benevolent mischief, “when they go to take you your supper, and find the window still shuttered and barred, and the bird flown.”

  “But then everyone will be harried and cursed and blamed,” said Richard, “because somebody must have drawn the bolt.”

  “So then we all deny it, and whoever looks likeliest to be suspected I’ll bring off safely, saying he’s never been out of my sight and never touched the door since your dinner went in. If it comes to the worst,” said Hiltrude, with uncustomary resolution, “I’ll say I must have forgotten to shoot the bolt after leaving you the last time. What can he do? He’ll still be thinking he has you trapped in marriage with me, wherever you run to. Better still,” she cried, clapping her hands, “I’ll be the one who brings you your dinner, and waits with you, and brings out the dish again—then no one else can be blamed for leaving the door unbolted. A wife should begin at once to wait on her husband, it will look well.”

  “You’re not afraid of your father?” ventured Richard, open-eyed with startled respect, even admiration, but reluctant to leave her to sustain so perilous a part.

  “I am—I was! Now, whatever happens, it will be worth the pains. I must go, Richard, while there’s no one in the stable. You wait and trust me, and keep up your heart. You’ve lifted mine!”

  She was at the door when Richard, still thoughtfully following her light and buoyant passage, so changed from the subdued, embittered creature whose cold hand he had held in the night, said impulsively after her: “Hiltrude—I think I might do worse than marry you, after all.” And added, with barely decent haste: “But not yet!”

  *

  Everything that she had promised she performed. She brought his dinner, and sat with him and made desultory, awkward talk while he ate it, such talk as might be expected to a stranger, and a child at that, and one forced upon her and reluctantly accepted, so that however much he might be resented, there was no longer any point in being at odds with him. Less from guile than because he was hungry and busy eating, Richard responded with grunts rather than words. Had anyone been listening, they would certainly have found the exchanges depressingly appropriate.

  Hiltrude carried the dish back to the kitchen, and returned to him as soon as she had made certain that everyone else about the house was occupied. The narrow wooden stair down into the undercroft was conveniently screened from the passage that led to the kitchen, they had no trouble in skipping hastily down it, and emerging from below ground by the deep doorway where Hyacinth had sheltered, and from there it was just one dangerous dart across open ground to the wicket in the fence, half hidden by the bulk of the stable. Saddle and bridle and all, she had left his harness concealed behind the bushes, and the sable pony came to him gladly. Close under the rear wall of the stable he saddled up in trembling haste, and led the pony out of the paddock and down towards the river, where the belt of trees offered cover, before he dared to tighten the girth and mount. Now, if all went well, he had until early evening before he would be missed.

  Hiltrude went back up the stairs from the undercroft, and took care to spend her afternoon blamelessly among the women of the household, within sight every moment, and occupied with the proper affairs of the lady of the manor. She had bolted Richard’s door, since clearly if it had been inadvertently left unfastened, and the prisoner taken advantage of the fact, even a ten-year-old boy would have the sense to shoot the bolt again and preserve the appearances. When the flight was discovered she could very well protest that she had no recollection of forgetting to fasten it, though admitting at last that she must have done so. But by then, if all went well, Richard would be back in the abbey enclave, and taking belated thought how to present himself as the blameless victim, and bury all recollection of the guilty truant who had run off without permission and caused all this turmoil and anxiety. Well, that was Richard’s affair. She had done her part.

  It was a pity that the groom who had turned Richard’s pony into the paddock should have occasion to fetch in one of the other beasts out to graze, about the middle of the afternoon, since he had noticed that it was slightly lame. He could hardly fail to observe that the pony was gone. Seizing on the first and obvious, if none too likely, possibility, he was halfway across the court crying that there had been thieves in the paddock before it occurred to him to go back and look in the stable for the saddle and harness. That put a somewhat different complexion on the loss. And besides, why take the least valuable beast in sight? And why risk theft in daylight? Good dark nights were more favourable.

  So he arrived in hall announcing loudly and breathlessly that the young bridegroom’s pony was gone, saddle and all, and my lord had better look to see if he still had the boy safe under lock and key. Fulke went himself, in haste, hardly believing the news, and found the door securely bolted as before, but the room within empty. He let out a bellow of rage that made Hiltrude flinch over her embroidery frame, but she kept her eyes lowered to her work, and went on demurely stitching until the storm erupted in the doorway and swell
ed to fill the hall.

  “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.”