The Hermit of Eyton Forest Page 6

  “I might have drowned else,” growled Eilmund, “the brook was building. And you’d best tell the lord abbot to get men out here and shift the tree, before we have a lake there again.”

  “I will, I will! Now, hold fast! I don’t want to leave you with one leg shorter than the other.” By heel and instep he drew out the broken leg steadily to match its fellow. “Now, Annet, your hands where mine are, and hold it so.”

  She had not wasted her time while waiting, but had hunted out straight spars of wood from Eilmund’s store, and had ready sheep’s wool for padding, and rolled linen for bindings. Between them they completed the work neatly, and Eilmund lay back on his brychan and heaved a great breath. His face, weatherbeaten always, nonetheless had a fierce flush over the cheekbones. Cadfael was not quite easy about it.

  “Now if you can rest and sleep, so much the better. Leave the lord abbot, and the tree, and everything else that needs to be dealt with here, to me, I’ll see it cared for. I’ll make you a draught that will ease the pain and help you to sleep.” He mixed it and administered it to Eilmund’s scornful denial of the need, but it went down without protest nonetheless.

  “And sleep he will,” said Cadfael to the girl, as they withdrew into the outer room. “But make sure he keeps warm and covered through the night, for there may be a slight fever if he’s taken cold. I’ll make certain I get leave to go back and forth for a day or two, till I see all’s well. If he gives you a hard time, bear with him, it will mean he’s taken no great harm.”

  She laughed softly, undisturbed. “Oh, he’s mild as milk for me. He growls, but never bites. I know how to manage him.”

  It was already beginning to be twilight when she opened the house door. The sky above was still faintly golden with the moist, mysterious afterglow, dripping light between the dark branches of the trees that surrounded the garden. And there in the turf by the gate Hyacinth was sitting motionless, waiting with the timeless patience of the tree against which his straight, supple back was braced. Even so his stillness had the suggestion of a wild thing in ambush. Or perhaps, thought Cadfael, changing his mind, of a hunted wild thing trusting to silence and stillness to be invisible to the hunter.

  As soon as he saw the door open he was on his feet in a single lissome movement, though he did not come within the pale.

  Twilight or no, Cadfael saw the glance that locked and held fast between the youth and the girl. Hyacinth’s face was still and mute as bronze, but a gleam of the fading light caught the amber brilliance of his eyes, fierce and secret as a cat’s, and a sudden quickening and darkening in their depths that was reflected in the flush and brightness in Annet’s startled countenance. It was no great surprise. The girl was pretty, and the boy undoubtedly attractive, all the more because he had been of invaluable service to her father. And it was natural and human, that that circumstance should endear father and daughter to him, no less than him to them. Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.

  “I’ll be on my way, then,” said Cadfael to the unregarding air, and mounted softly, not to break the spell that held them still. But from the shelter of the trees he looked back, and saw them standing just as he had left them, and heard the boy’s voice clear and solemn in the silence of the dusk, saying: “I must speak to you!”

  Annet did not say anything, but she closed the house door softly behind her, and came forward to meet him at the gate. And Cadfael rode back through the woods mildly aware that he was smiling, though he could not be sure, on more sober reflection, that there was anything to smile about in so unlikely an encounter. For what common ground could there be, for those two to meet on, and hold fast for more than a moment: the abbey forester’s daughter, a good match for any lively and promising young man this side the shire, and a beggarly, rootless stranger dependent on charitable patronage, with no land, no craft and no kin?

  *

  He went to tend and stable his horse before he sought out Abbot Radulfus to tell him how things stood in Eyton forest. There was a late stir within there, of new guests arrived, and their mounts being accommodated and cared for. Of late there had been little movement about the county; the business of the summer, when so many merchants and tradesmen were constantly on the move, had dwindled gently away into the autumn quiet. Later, as the Christmas feast drew near, the guest halls would again be full with travellers hastening home, and kinsmen visiting kinsmen, but at this easy stage between, there was time to note those who came, and feel the human curiosity that is felt by those who have sworn stability about those who ebb and flow with the tides and seasons.

  *

  And here just issuing from the stables and crossing the yard in long, lunging strides, the gait of a confident and choleric man, was someone undoubtedly of consequence in his own domain, richly dressed, elegantly booted, and wearing sword and dagger. He surged past Cadfael in the gateway, a big, burly, thrusting man, his face abruptly lit as he swung past the torch fixed at the gate, and then as abruptly darkened. A massive face, fleshy and yet hard, muscled like a wrestler’s arms, handsome in a brutal fashion, the face of a man not in anger at this moment, but always ready to be angry. He was shaven clean, which made the smooth power of his features even more daunting, and the eyes that stared imperiously straight before him looked disproportionately small, though in reality they probably were not, because of the massy flesh in which they were but shallowly set. By the look of him, not a man to cross. He might have been fifty years old, give or take a few years, but time certainly had not softened what must have been granite from the start.

  His horse was standing in the stable yard outside an open stall, stripped and gently steaming as if his saddlecloth had only just been removed, and a groom was rubbing him down and hissing to him gently as he worked. A meagre but wiry fellow, turning grey, in faded homespun of a dull brown, and a rubbed leather coat. He slid one sidelong glance at Cadfael and nodded a silent greeting, so inured to being wary of all men that even a Benedictine brother was to be avoided rather than welcomed.

  Cadfael gave him good-evening cheerfully, and began his own unsaddling. “You’ve ridden far? Was that your lord I met at the gate?”

  “It was,” said the man without looking up, and spared no more words.

  “A stranger to me. Where are you from? Guests are thin this time of year.”

  “From Bosiet—it’s a manor the far side of Northampton, some miles south-east of the town. He is Bosiet—Drogo Bosiet. He holds that and a fair bit of the county besides.”

  “He’s well away from his home ground,” said Cadfael with interest. “Where’s he bound? We see very few travellers from Northamptonshire in these parts.” The groom straightened up to take a longer and narrower look at this inquisitive questioner, and visibly his manner eased a little, finding Cadfael amiable and harmless. But he did not on that account grow less morose, nor more voluble.

  “He’s hunting,” he said with a grim and private smile.

  “But not for deer,” hazarded Cadfael, returning the inspection and caught by the wryness of the smile. “Nor, I dare say, for the beasts of the warren.”

  “You dare say well. It’s a man he’s after.”

  “A runaway?” Cadfael found it hard to believe. “So far from home? Was a runaway villein worth so much time and expense to him?”

  “This one is. He’s valuable and skilled, but that’s not the whole of it,” confided the groom, discarding his suspicion and reticence. “He has a score to settle with this one. One report we got of him, setting out westwards and north, and he’s combed every village and town along all this way, dragging me one road while his son with another groom goes another, and he won’t stop short of the Welsh border. Me? If I did clap eyes on the lad he’s after, I’d be blind. I wouldn’t give him back a dog that ran from him, let alone a man.” His dry voice had gathered sap and passion as he talked, and he turned fully for the first time, so that the torchlight fell on
his face. One cheek was marked with a blackening bruise, the corner of his mouth torn and swollen, with the look of a festering infection about it.

  “His mark?” asked Cadfael, eyeing the wound.

  “His seal, sure enough, and done with a seal ring. I was not quick enough at his stirrup when he mounted, yesterday morning.”

  “I can dress that for you,” said Cadfael, “if you’ll wait while I go and make report to my abbot about another matter. You’d best let me, it could take bad ways. By the same token,” he said quietly, “you’re far enough out of his country, and near enough to the border, to do some running of your own, if you’re so minded.”

  “Brother,” said the groom with the briefest and harshest of laughs, “I have a wife and children in Bosiet, I’m manacled. But Brand was young and unwed, his heels are lighter than mine. And I’d best get this beast stalled, and be off to wait on my lord, or he’ll be laying the other cheek open for me.”

  “Then come out to the guest hall steps,” said Cadfael, recalled as sharply to his own duty, “when he’s in bed and snoring, and I’ll clean that sore for you.”

  *

  Abbot Radulfus listened with concern, but also with relief, to Cadfael’s report, promised to send at first light enough helpers to clear away the willow tree, clean out the brook and shore up the bank above, and nodded gravely at the suggestion that Eilmund’s long wait in the water might complicate his recovery, even though the fracture itself was simple and clean.

  “I should like,” said Cadfael, “to visit him again tomorrow and make sure he stays in his bed, for there may be a degree of fever, and you know him, Father, it will take more than his daughter’s scolding to keep him tamed. If he has your orders he may take heed. I’ll take his measure for crutches, but not let them near him till I’m sure he’s fit to rise.”

  “You have my leave to go and come as you see fit,” said Radulfus, “for as long as he needs your care. Best keep that horse for your use until then. The journey would be too slow on foot, and we shall need you here some part of the day, Brother Winfrid being new to the discipline.”

  Cadfael smiled, remembering. “It was no slow journey the young man Hyacinth made of it. Four times today he’s run those miles, back and forth on his master’s errand, and back and forth again for Eilmund. I only hope the hermit did not take it ill that his boy was gone so long.”

  *

  It was in Cadfael’s mind that the groom from Bosiet might be too much in fear of his master to venture out by night, even when his lord was sleeping. But come he did, slipping out furtively just as the brothers came out from Compline. Cadfael led him out through the gardens to the workshop in the herbarium, and there kindled a lamp to examine the lacerated wound that marred the man’s face.

  The little brazier was turfed down for the night, but not extinguished, evidently Brother Winfrid had been careful to keep it alive in case of need. He was learning steadily, and strangely the delicacy of touch that eluded him with pen or brush showed signs of developing now that he came to deal with herbs and medicines. Cadfael uncovered the fire and blew it into a glow, and put on water to heat.

  “He’s safe asleep, is he, your lord? Not likely to wake? Though if he did, he should have no need of you at this hour. But I’ll be as quick as I may.”

  The groom sat docile and easy under the ministering hands, turning his face obediently to the light of the lamp. The bruised cheek was fading at the edges from black to yellow, but the tear at the corner of his mouth oozed blood and pus. Cadfael bathed away the encrusted exudations and cleaned the gash with a lotion of water betony and sanicle.

  “He’s free with his fists, your lord,” he said ruefully. “I see two blows here.”

  “He seldom stops at one,” said the groom grimly. “He does after his kind. There are some worse than him, God help all those who serve them. His son’s another made to the same pattern. What else could we look for, when he’s lived so from birth? In a day or so he’s to join us here, and if he has not got his hands on Brand by then—God forbid!—the hunt will go on.”

  “Well, at least if you stay a day or so I can get this gash healed for you. What’s your name, friend?”

  “Warin. Yours I know, Brother, from the hospitaller. That feels cool and kind.”

  “I should have thought,” said Cadfael, “that your lord would have gone first to the sheriff, if he had a real complaint against this runaway of his. The guildsmen of the town would likely keep their mouths shut, even if they knew anything, a town stands to gain by taking in a good craftsman. But the king’s officers are bound, willing or no, to help a man to his own property.”

  “We got here too late, as you saw, to do much in that kind until the morrow. He knows, none so well, that Shrewsbury is a charter borough, and may cheat him of his prey if the lad has got this far. He does intend going to the sheriff. But since he’s lodged here, and reckons the church as well as the law ought to help him to his own, he’s asked to put his case at chapter tomorrow, and after that he’ll be off into the town to seek out the sheriff. There’s no stone he won’t up-end to get at Brand’s hide.”

  Cadfael was thinking, though he did not say it, that there might be time in between to send word to Hugh to make himself very hard to find. “What in the world,” he asked, “has the man done, to make your master so vindictive against him?”

  “Why, he was for ever on the edge of trouble, being a lad that would stand up for himself, yes, and for others, too, and that’s crime enough for Drogo. I don’t know the rights of what happened that last day, but however it was, I saw Bosiet’s steward, who takes his style from his master, carried into the manor on a shutter, and he was laid up for days. Seemingly something had happened between them, and Brand had laid him flat, for the next we knew, Brand was nowhere, and they were hunting him along all the roads out of Northampton. But they never caught up with him, and here we are still hot on his trail. If ever Drogo lays hands on him he’ll flay him, but he won’t cripple him, he’s too valuable to waste. But he’ll have every morsel of his grudge out of the lad’s skin, and then wring every penny of profit out of his skills lifelong, and make good sure he never gets the chance to run again.”

  “Then he had better make a good job of it now,” agreed Cadfael wryly. “If well-wishing can help him, he has it. Now hold still a moment there! And this ointment you can take with you and use as often as you choose. It helps take out the sting and lower the swelling.”

  Warin turned the little jar curiously in his hand, and touched a finger to his cheek. “What’s in it, to work such healing?”

  “Saint John’s wort and the small daisy, both good for wounds. And if chance offers tomorrow, let me see you again and hear how you do. And keep out of his reach!” said Cadfael warmly, and turned to bed down his brazier again with fresh turves, to smoulder quietly and safely until morning.

  *

  Drogo Bosiet duly appeared at chapter next morning, large, loud and authoritative in an assembly where a wiser man would have realised that authority lay with the abbot, and the abbot’s grip on it was absolute, however calm and measured his voice and austere his face. So much the better, thought Cadfael, watching narrowly and somewhat anxiously from his retired stall, Radulfus will know how to weigh the man, and let nothing slip too soon.

  “My lord abbot,” said Drogo, straddling the flags of the floor like a bull before the charge, “I am here in search of a malefactor who attacked and injured my steward and fled my lands. He is known to have made for Northampton, my manor, to which he is tied, being several miles south-east of the town, and I have it in mind that he would make for the Welsh border. We have hunted for him all this way, and from Warwick I have taken this road from Shrewsbury, while my son goes on to Stafford, and will join me here from that place. All I ask here is whether any stranger of his years has lately come into these parts.”

  “I take it,” said the abbot after a long and thoughtful pause, and steadily eyeing the powerful face and arrogant
stance of his visitor, “that this man is your villein.”

  “He is.”

  “And you do know,” pursued Radulfus mildly, “that since it would seem you have failed to reclaim him within four days, it will be necessary to apply to the courts to regain possession of him legally?”

  “My lord,” said Drogo with impatient scorn, “so I can well do, if I can but find him. The man is mine, and I mean to have him. He has been a cause of trouble to me, but he has skills which are valuable, and I do not mean to be robbed of what is mine. The law will give me my rights in the lands where the offence arose.” And so, no doubt, such a law as survived in his own shire would certainly do, at the mere nod of his head.

  “If you will tell us what your fugitive is like,” said the abbot reasonably, “Brother Denis can tell you at once whether we have had such a one as guest in our halls.”

  “He goes by the name of Brand—twenty years old, dark of hair but reddish, lean and strong, beardless—”

  “No,” said Brother Denis the hospitaller without hesitation, “I have had no such young man lodged here, not for five or six weeks back certainly. If he had found work along the way with some trader or merchant carrying goods, such as come with three or four servants, then he might have passed this way. But a young man alone—no, none.”

  “As to that,” said the abbot with authority, forestalling reply from any other, though indeed no one but Prior Robert would have ventured to speak before him, “you would do well to take your question to the sheriff at the castle, for his officers are far more likely than we here within the enclave to know of any newcomers entering the town. The pursuit of criminals and offenders such as you describe is their business, and they are thorough and careful about it. The guildsmen of the town are also wary and jealous of their rights, and have good reason to keep their eyes open, and their wits about them. I recommend you to apply to them.”