The Hermit of Eyton Forest bc-14 Read online

  Drogo entered the forest close to where Eaton land, as the shepherd in the field informed him, bordered Eyton land, and a narrow ride brought him after almost a mile of forest to a small, level clearing ringed round with thick woodland. The stone hut in the centre was stoutly built but small and low-roofed, and showed signs of recent repair after being neglected for years. There was a little square garden enclosure round it, fenced in with a low pale, and part of the ground within had been cleared and planted. Drogo dismounted at the edge of the clearing and advanced to the fence, leading his horse by the bridle.

  The evening silence was profound, there might have been no living being within a mile of the place.

  But the door of the hut stood open, and from deep within a steady gleam of light showed. Drogo tethered his horse, and strode in through the garden and up to the door, and still hearing no sound, went in. The room into which he stepped was small and dim, and contained little but a pallet bed against the wall, a small table and a bench. The light burned within, in a second room, and through the open doorway, for there was no door between, he saw that this was a chapel. The lamp burned upon a stone altar, before a small silver cross set up on a carved wooden casket reliquary, and on the altar before the cross lay a slender and elegant breviary in a gilded binding. Two silver candlesticks, surely the gifts of the hermit’s patroness, flanked the cross, one on either side.

  Before this altar a man was kneeling motionless, a tall man in a rough black habit, with the cowl raised to cover his head. Against the small, steady light the dark figure was impressive, the long, erect back straight as a lance, the head not bowed but raised, the very image of sanctity. Even Drogo held his tongue for a moment, but no longer. His own needs and desires were paramount, a hermit’s prayers could and must yield to them. Evening was rapidly deepening into night, and he had no time to waste.

  ‘You are Cuthred?’ he demanded firmly. ‘They told me at the abbey how to find you.’

  The dignified figure did not move, unless he unfolded his unseen hands. But he said in a measured and unstartled voice: ‘Yes, I am Cuthred. What do you need from me? Come in and speak freely.’

  ‘You have a boy who runs your errands. Where is he? I want to see him. You may well have been cozened into keeping a rogue about you unawares.’

  And at that the habited figure did turn, the cowled head reared to face the stranger, and the sidelong light from the altar lamp showed a lean, deep-eyed, bearded face, a long, straight, aristocratic nose, a fell of dark hair within the hood, as Drogo Bosiet and the hermit of Eyton forest looked long and steadily at each other.

  Brother Cadfael was sitting by Eilmund’s couch, supping on bread and cheese and apples, since like Richard he had missed his usual supper, and well content with a very discontented patient, when Annet came back from feeding the hens and shutting them in, and milking the one cow she kept for their own use. She had been an unconscionable time about it, and so her disgruntled father told her. All trace of fever had left him, his colour was good, and he was in no great discomfort, but he was in a glum fury with his own helplessness, and impatient to be out and about his business again, distrusting the abbot’s willing but untutored substitutes to take proper care of his forest. The very shortness of his temper was testimony to his sound health. And the offending leg was straight and gave no great pain. Cadfael was well satisfied.

  Annet came in demurely, and laughed at her father’s grumbling, no way in awe of him. ‘I left you in the best of company, and I knew you’d be the better for an hour or so without me, and so would I for an hour without you, such an old bear as you’re become! Why should I hurry back, on such a fine evening? You know Brother Cadfael has taken good care of you, don’t grudge me a breath of air.’

  But by the look of her she had enjoyed something more potent than a mere breath of air. There was a brightness and a quivering aliveness about her, as if after strong wine. Her brown hair, always so smoothly banded, had shaken loose a few strands on her shoulders, Cadfael noted, as though she had wound her way through low branches that caught at the braids, and the colour in her cheeks was rosy and roused, to match the brilliance of her eyes. She had brought in a few of the month’s lost leaves on her shoes. True, the byre lay just within the trees at the edge of the clearing, but there were no well-grown oaks there.

  ‘Well, now that you’re back, and I shan’t be leaving him to complain without a listener,’ said Cadfael, ‘I’d best be getting back before it’s full dark. Keep him off his feet for a few days yet, lass, and I’ll let him up on crutches soon if he behaves himself. At least he’s taken no harm from lying fast in the water, that’s a mercy.’

  ‘Thanks to Cuthred’s boy Hyacinth,’ Annet reminded them.

  She flicked a swift glance at her father, and was pleased when he responded heartily: ‘And that’s truth if ever there was! He was as good as a son to me that day, and I don’t forget it.’

  And was it fancy, or did Annet’s cheeks warm into a deeper rose? As good as a son to a man who had no son to be his right hand, but only this bright, confident, discreet and loving daughter?

  ‘Possess your soul in patience,’ advised Cadfael, rising, ‘and we’ll have you as sound as before. It’s worth waiting for. And don’t fret about the coppice, for Annet here will tell you they’ve made a good job of clearing the brook and shaved off the overhang of the bank. It will hold.’ He made fast his scrip to his girdle, and turned to the door.

  ‘I’ll see you to the gate,’ said Annet, and came out with him into the deep twilight of the clearing, where his horse was placidly pulling at the turf.

  ‘Girl,’ said Cadfael with his foot in the stirrup, ‘you blossom like a rose tonight.’

  She was just taking up the loose tresses in her hands, and smoothing them back into neatness with the rest. She turned and smiled at him. ‘But I seem to have been through a thorn bush,’ she said.

  Cadfael leaned from the saddle and delicately picked a sear oak leaf out of her hair. She looked up to see him twirling it gently between his fingers by the stem, and wonderfully she smiled. That was how he left her, roused and braced, and surely having made up her mind to go, undaunted, through all the thorny thickets that might be in the path between her and what she wanted. She was not ready yet to confide even in her father, but it troubled her not at all that Cadfael should guess at what was in the wind, nor had she any fear of a twisted ending. Which did not preclude the possibility that others might have good reason to fear on her account.

  Cadfael rode without haste through the darkening wood. The moon was already up, and bright where it could penetrate the thickness of the trees. Compline must be long over by now, and the brothers making ready for sleep. The boys would be in their beds long ago. It was cool and fresh in the green-scented forest, pleasant to ride alone and at leisure, and have time to think of timeless things that could not be accommodated in the bustle of the day, sometimes not even during the holy office or the quiet times of prayer, where by rights they belonged. There was more room for them here under this night sky still faintly luminous round the rims of vision. Cadfael rode in a deep content of mind through the thickest part of the woodland growth, with a glimmer of light from the open fields ahead before him.

  It was the rustling movement on his left, among the trees, that startled him out of his muse. Something vaguely pale in the gloom moved alongside him, and he heard the slight jingling of a horse’s bit and bridle. A riderless horse, wandering astray but saddled and bridled, for the small metallic sounds rang clear. He had not been riderless when he set out from his stable. In glimpses of moonlight between the branches the pale shape shone elusively, drawing nearer to the path. Cadfael had seen that light roan hide before, that same afternoon in the great court of the abbey.

  He dismounted in haste, and called, advancing to take the slack bridle and run a hand over the dappled forehead. The saddle was still in place, but the straps that had held a small saddle-roll behind it had been sliced through. And where w
as the rider? And why, indeed, had he set out yet again, after returning empty-handed from a day’s hunting? Had someone provided him a clue to start him off again after his prey, even thus late at night?

  Cadfael parted the bushes and turned in from the path, where he had first glimpsed the pale form moving. Here nothing seemed disturbed, the tangle of branches showed no disrupting passage. He worked back a little to emerge again on the path, and there, aside under the bushes in long grass, so hidden that he had ridden past it and seen no sign, he found what he had feared to find.

  Drogo Bosiet lay sprawled on his face, sunk deep in the ripe autumnal herbage, and even against the dark colouring of his gown, Cadfael could just distinguish the darker blot that was his blood, welling out under his left shoulder blade, where the dagger that had killed him had plunged and been withdrawn.

  Chapter Six

  AT SO late an hour there was small chance of reaching immediate help at either abbey or castle, and none of deriving any knowledge from the darkening scene here in the forest. All Cadfael could do, thus alone, was to kneel beside the mute body and feel for a heartbeat or pulse, and listen for any faint sign of breathing. But though Drogo’s flesh was warm, and yielded pliably to handling, there was no breath in him, and the heart in his great chest, almost certainly pierced by the thrust from behind, was stonily still. He could not have been dead very long, but the gush of blood that had sprung out with the blade had ceased to flow, and was beginning to dry at its edges into a dark crust. More than an hour ago, Cadfael thought, judging by what signs he had, perhaps as much as two hours. And his saddle-roll cut loose and taken. Here, in our woods! When did any man ever hear of footpads so close? Or has some cutthroat from the town heard of Eilmund being laid up at home, and ventured to try his luck here for a chance traveller riding alone?

  Delay could not harm Drogo now, and daylight might show at least some trace to lead to his murderer. Best leave him so, and take word to the castle, where there was always a guard waking, and leave a message for Hugh, to be delivered as soon as there was light. At midnight the brothers would rise for Matins, and the same grim news could and should be delivered then to Abbot Radulfus. The dead man was the abbey’s guest, and his son expected within a few days, and to the abbey he must be taken for proper and reverent care.

  No, there was nothing more to be done for Drogo Bosiet, but at least he could get the horse back to his stable. Cadfael mounted, and gathered the loose bridle in his left hand, and the horse came with him docilely. There was no haste. He had until midnight. No need to save time, since even if he reached his bed before Matins, sleep would be impossible. Better take care of the horses and then wait for the bell.

  Abbot Radulfus came early to the church for Matins, to find Cadfael waiting for him in the south porch as he crossed from his lodging. The bell in the dortoir was only just sounding. It takes but a few moments to say bluntly that a man is dead, and by an act of man, not of God.

  Radulfus was never known to waste words in exclamation, and did not do so now at the news that a guest of his house had come to an unlawful end in the abbey’s own forest. The gross affront and grosser wrong he accepted in sombre silence, and the right and duty of retribution, as incumbent now upon the church as on the secular authority, he took up with a deep assenting nod of his head, and a grim tightening of his long, firm lips. In the hush while he thought, they heard the soft, sandalled steps of the brothers descending the night stairs.

  ‘And you have left word for Hugh Beringar?’ asked the abbot.

  ‘At his house and at the castle.’

  ‘No man can do more, then, until first light. He must be brought here, for here his son will come. But you—you will be needed, you can lead straight to where he lies. Go now, I excuse you from the office, go and take some rest, and at dawn ride to join the sheriff. Say to him that I will send a party after, to bring the body home.’

  In the first hesitant light of a chill morning they stood over Drogo Bosiet’s body, Hugh Beringar and Cadfael, a sergeant of Hugh’s garrison and two men-at-arms, all silent, all with eyes fixed on the great patch of encrusted blood that soaked the back of the rich riding coat. The grass hung as heavy and flattened with dew as if after rain, and the moisture had gathered in great pearls in the woollen pile of the dead man’s clothing, and starred the bushes in a treasury of cobwebs.

  ‘Since he plucked out the dagger from the wound,’ said Hugh, ‘most likely he took it away with him. But we’ll look about for it, in case he discarded it. And you say the straps of the saddle-roll were sliced through? After the slaying—he needed the knife for that. Quicker and easier in the dark to cut it loose than unbuckle it, and whoever he was, he wouldn’t want to linger. Strange, though, that a mounted man should fall victim to such an attack. At the least sound he had only to spur and draw clear, surely.’

  ‘But I think,’ said Cadfael, studying how the body lay, ‘that he was on foot here, and leading the horse. He was a stranger, and the path here is very narrow and the trees crowd close, and it was dark or getting dark. See the leaves that have clung to his boot soles. He never had time to turn, the one stroke was enough. Where he had been I don’t know, but he was on his way back to his lodging in our guest hall when he was struck down. With no struggle and little noise. The horse had taken no great alarm, he strayed only a few yards.’

  ‘Which argues an expert footpad and thief,’ said Hugh. ‘But do you believe in that? In my writ and so close to the town?’

  ‘No. But some secret rogue, perhaps even a sneak thief out of the town, might risk one exploit, knowing Eilmund is laid up at home. But this is guessing,’ said Cadfael, shaking his head. ‘Now and then even a poacher might be tempted to try murder, if he came on a man of substance, alone and at night. But guessing is small use.’

  The party sent by Abbot Radulfus to carry Drogo back to the abbey were already winding their way along the path with their litter. Cadfael knelt in the grass, soaking his habit at the knees in the plenteous dew, and carefully turned the stiffening body face upward. The heavy muscling of the cheeks had fallen slack, the eyes, so disproportionately small for the massive countenance, were half open. He looked older and less arrogantly brutal in death, a mortal man like other men, almost piteous. The hand that had lain hidden under his body wore a heavy silver ring.

  ‘Something the thief missed,’ said Hugh, looking down with something of startled regret in his face for so much power now powerless.

  ‘Another sign of haste. Or he would have ransacked every garment. And proof enough that the body was not moved. He lies as he fell, facing towards Shrewsbury. It’s as I said, he was on his way home.’

  ‘There’s a son expected, you said? Come,’ said Hugh, ‘we can leave him to your men now, and my fellows will comb the woods all round in case there’s sign or trace to be found, though I doubt it. You and I will be off back to the abbey, and see what the abbot has brought to light at chapter. For someone must surely have put some notion into his mind, to send him out again so late.’

  The sun was above the rim of the world, but veiled and pale, as they mounted and turned back along the narrow ride. The spider-draped bushes caught the first gleams that pierced the mist, and flashed in coruscations of diamonds. When they emerged into the open, lowlying fields the horses waded through a shallow lilac-tinted sea of vapour.

  ‘What do you know of this man Bosiet,’ asked Hugh, ‘more than he has told me, or I have gleaned without his telling?’

  ‘Little enough, I expect. He’s lord of several manors in Northamptonshire, and some little while since a villein of his, as like as not for a very good reason, laid his steward flat and put him to bed for some days, and then very wisely took to his heels before they could lay hands on him. Bosiet and his men have been hunting for the fellow ever since. They must have wasted a good while searching the rest of the shire, I fancy, before they got word from someone that he’d made for Northampton and seemed to be heading north and west. And between them they’ve f
ollowed this far, making drives in both directions from every halt. He must have cost them far above his value, valuable though they say he is, but it’s his blood they’re after first and foremost, and seemingly they set a higher price on that than on his craft, whatever that may be. There was a very vigorous hate there,’ said Cadfael feelingly. ‘He brought it to chapter with him. Father Abbot was not greatly taken with the notion of helping him to the sort of revenge he’d be likely to take.’

  ‘And shrugged him off on to me,’ said Hugh, briefly grinning. ‘Well, small blame to him. I took your word for it, and stayed out of his way as long as I could. In any case I could give him no help. What else do you know of him?’

  ‘That he has a groom named Warin, the one that rode with him, though not, it seems, on his last ride. Maybe he’d sent his man on some other errand, and couldn’t wait once he got the word, but set off alone. He’s—he was—a man who liked to use his fists freely on his servants, for any offence or none. At least he’d laid Warin’s face open for him, and according to the groom that was no rarity. As for the son, according to Warin he’s much like his father, and just as surely to be avoided. And he’ll be coming from Stafford any day now.’—.

  ‘To find he has to coffin his father’s body and take it home for burial,’ said Hugh ruefully.

  ‘To find he’s now lord of Bosiet,’ said Cadfael. ‘That’s the reverse of the coin. Who knows which side up it will look to him?’

  ‘You’re grown very cynical, old friend,’ remarked Hugh, wryly smiling.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Cadfael owned, ‘of reasons why men do murder. Greed is one, and might be spawned in a son, waiting impatiently for his inheritance. Hate is another, and a misused servant might entertain it willingly if chance offered. But there are other and stranger reasons, no doubt, like a simple taste for thieving, and a disposition to make sure the victim never blabs. A pity, Hugh, a great pity there should be so much hurrying on of death, when it’s bound to reach every man in its own good time.’