Hermit of Eyton Forest (19 page)

“Good
even, Brother!” Matched in height and pace, they fell naturally into step
together as they turned towards the south porch. “I hope to be held excused,”
said Rafe, “for coming to church booted and spurred and dusty from riding, but
I came late, and had no time to make myself seemly.”

“Most
welcome, however you come,” said Cadfael. “Not everyone who lodges with us
shows his face in the church. I’ve had small chance to see you these two days,
I’ve been out and about myself. Have you had successful dealing in these
parts?”

“Better,
at least, than one of your guests,” said Rafe, casting a side glance at the
narrow door that led towards the mortuary chapel. “But no, I would not say I’ve
found quite what I needed. Not yet!”

“His
son is here now,” said Cadfael, following the glance. “This morning he came.”

“I
have seen him,” said Rafe. “He came back from the town just before Vespers. By
the look and the sound of him he’s done none too well, either, with whatever
he’s about. I suppose it’s a man he’s after?”

“It
is. The young man I told you of,” said Cadfael drily, and studied his companion
sidelong as they crossed the lighted parish altar. “Yes, I remember. Then he’s
come back empty-handed, no poor wretch tethered to his stirrup leather.” But
Rafe remained tolerantly indifferent to young men, and indeed to the Bosiet
clan. His thoughts were somewhere else. At the alms box beside the altar he
stopped, on impulse, and dug a hand into the pouch slung at his waist, to draw
out a handful of coins. One of them slipped through his fingers, but he did not
immediately stoop to pick it up, but dropped three of its fellows into the box
before he turned to look for the stray. By which time Cadfael had lifted it
from the tiled floor, and had it in his open palm. If they had not been
standing where the altar candles gave a clear light he would have noticed
nothing strange about it. A silver penny like other silver pennies, the
universal coin. Yet not quite like any he had seen before in the alms boxes. It
was bright and untarnished, but indifferently struck, and it felt light in the
hand. Clumsily arrayed round the short cross on the reverse, the moneyer’s name
appeared to be Sigebert, a minter Cadfael never remembered to have heard of in
the midlands. And when he turned it, the crude head was not Stephen’s familiar profile,
nor dead King Henry’s, but unmistakably a woman’s, coifed and coroneted. It
hardly needed the name sprawled round the rim: “Matilda Dom. Ang.” The
empress’s formal name and title. It seemed her mintage was short-weight.

He
looked up to find Rafe watching him steadily, and with a small private smile
that held more irony than simple amusement. There was a moment of silence while
they eyed each other. Then: “Yes,” said Rafe, “you are right. It would have
been noted after I was gone. But it has a value, even here. Your beggars will
not reject it because it was struck in Oxford.”

“And
no long time ago,” said Cadfael.

“No
long time ago.”

“My
besetting sin,” said Cadfael ruefully, “is curiosity.” He held out the coin,
and Rafe took it as gravely, and with deliberation dropped it after its fellows
into the alms box. “But I am not loose-mouthed. Nor do I hold any honest man’s
allegiance against him. A pity there should have to be factions, and decent men
fighting one another, and all of them convinced they have the right of it. Come
and go freely for me.”

“And
does your curiosity not extend,” wondered Rafe softly, the wry smile
perceptible in his voice, “to wondering what such a man is doing here, so far
from the battle? Come, I am sure you have guessed at what I am. Perhaps you
think I felt it the wiser part to get out of Oxford before it was too late?”

“No,”
said Cadfael positively, “that never did and never would enter my mind. Not of
you! And why should so discreet a man as that venture north into king’s country?”

“No,
granted that argues very little wisdom,” agreed Rafe. “What would you guess
then?”

“I
can think of one possibility,” said Cadfael gravely and quietly. “We heard here
of one man who did not take flight of his own will out of Oxford, while there
was time, but was sent. On his lady’s business, and with that about him well
worth stealing. And that he did not get far, for his horse was found straying
and blood-stained, all that he had carried gone, and the man himself vanished
from the face of the earth.” Rafe was watching him attentively, his face
unreadable as ever, the lingering smile sombre but untroubled. “Such a man as
you seem to me,” said Cadfael, “might well have come so far north from Oxford
looking for Renaud Bourchier’s murderer.”

Their
eyes held, mutually accepting, even approving, what they saw. Slowly and with
absolute finality Rafe of Coventry said: “No.” He stirred and sighed, breaking
the spell of the brief but profound silence that followed. “I am sorry,
Brother, but no, you have not read me right. I am not looking for Bourchier’s
murderer. It was a good thought, almost I wish it had been true. But it is
not.”

And
with that he moved on towards the south door, and out into the early twilight
in the cloister, and Brother Cadfael followed in silence, asking and offering
nothing more. He knew truth when he heard it.

Chapter Ten

IT
WAS ABOUT THE SAME HOUR that Cadfael and Rafe of Coventry emerged from the
church after Vespers, when Hyacinth stole out from Eilmund’s cottage, and made
his way through the deepest cover towards the river. He had been all that day
pinned close within doors, for there had again been men of the garrison
sweeping through the forest, and though their passage was rapid and cursory,
for the aim was to carry the search further afield, and though they knew
Eilmund, and felt no compulsion to investigate his holding a second time, they
were still liable to look in on him in neighbourly fashion as they passed, and
ask him casually if anything of note had come to his attention. Hyacinth did
not take kindly to being shut within doors, nor, indeed, to hiding. By the
evening he was chafing at his confinement, but by then the hunters were on
their way back, abandoning the chase until the morrow, and he was free to do a
little hunting of his own. For all the wariness and fear he felt on his own
account, and admitted with his infallible and fiery honesty, he could not rest
for thinking of Richard, who had come running to warn him, so gallantly and
thoughtlessly. But for that the boy would never have placed himself in danger.
But why should there be danger to him in his own woods, among his own people?
In a troubled England there were lawless men living wild, no doubt of that, but
this shire had gone almost untouched by the war for more than four years now,
and seemed to enjoy a degree of peace and order unmatched further south, and
the town was barely seven miles distant, and the sheriff active and young, and
even, so far as a sheriff can be, popular with his people. And the more
Hyacinth thought about it, the more clear did it seem to him that the only
threat to Richard that he had ever heard of was Dame Dionisia’s threat to marry
him off to the two manors she coveted. For that she had persisted in every
device she could think of. Hyacinth had been her instrument once, and could not
forget it. She must be the force behind the boy’s disappearance.

True,
the sheriff had descended on Eaton, searched every corner, and found no trace,
and no one, in a household devoted to the boy, able to cast the least suspicion
on Dionisia’s indignant innocence. She had no other property where she could
hide either boy or pony. And though Fulke Astley might be willing to connive,
feeling that he had as good a chance of securing Eaton as she had of getting
her hands on his daughter’s inheritance, yet Wroxeter also had been searched
thoroughly, and without success.

Today
the hunt had moved on, and according to all that Annet had gathered from the
returning sergeants it would continue as doggedly on the morrow, but it had not
yet reached Leighton, two miles down-river. And though Astley and his household
preferred to live at Wroxeter, the more remote manor of Leighton was also in
his hold.

It
was the only starting point Hyacinth could find, and it was worth a venture. If
Richard had been caught in the woods by some of Astley’s men, or those from
Eaton who were willing to serve Dionisia’s turn, it might well have been
thought wisest to remove him as far as Leighton, rather than try to hide him
nearer home. Moreover, if she still intended to force this marriage on the
boy—there were ways of getting the right answers out of even the most stubborn
children, more by guile than by terror—she needed a priest, and Hyacinth had
been about the village of Eaton long enough to know that Father Andrew was an honest
man, by no means a good tool for such a purpose. The priest at Leighton, less
well acquainted with the ins and outs of the affair, might be more amenable. At
least it was one thing which could be tested. It was no use Eilmund counselling
him sensibly and good-naturedly to stay where he was and not risk capture; even
Eilmund understood and approved what he called folly. Annet had not tried to
dissuade Hyacinth, only sensibly provided him a black, much worn coat of
Eilmund’s too wide for him but excellent for moving invisibly by night, and a
dark capuchon to shadow his face.

Between
the forest and the meanderings of the river, downstream from the mill and the
fisheries and the few cottages that served them, the open water meadows
extended, and there the light still hung, and a faint ground mist lay veiling
the green, and twined like a silver serpent along the river. But along the
northern rim the forest continued, halfway to Leighton, and beyond that point
the ground rose towards the last low foothills of the Wrekin, and he would have
to make use of what scattered cover remained. But here where trees and
grassland met he could move fast, keeping within the edge of the woods but
benefiting by the light of the open fields, and the stillness and silence and the
careful stealth of his own movements would ensure that he should get due
warning of any other creature stirring in the night.

He
had covered more than a mile when the first small sounds reached him, and he
froze, and stood with pricked ears, listening intently. A single metallic note,
somewhere behind him, harness briefly shaken. Then a soft brushing of bushes as
something passed, and then, unmistakable though quiet, and still some distance
away, a subdued voice ventured briefly what sounded like a question, and as
meekly subsided. Not one person abroad in the dusk, but two, or why speak at
all? And mounted, and keeping to the rim of the woodland like himself, when it
would have been simpler by far to take to the meadows. Riders by night, no more
anxious to be observed than he was, and going in the same direction. Hyacinth
strained his ears to pick up the muted, leaf-cushioned tread of hooves, and try
to determine the line they were taking through the trees. Close to the rim, for
the sake of what light remained, but more concerned with secrecy than with
haste.

Cautiously
Hyacinth withdrew further into the forest, and stood motionless in cover to let
them pass by. There was still enough light left to make them a little more than
shadowy outlines as they came and passed in single file, first a tall horse
that showed as a moving pallor, probably a light grey, with a big, gross man on
his back, bearded, bare-headed, the folds of his capuchon draped on his
shoulders. Hyacinth knew the shape and the bearing, had seen this very man
mount and ride, thus sack-like but solid in the saddle, from Richard Ludel’s
funeral. What was Fulke Astley doing here in the night, making his way thus
furtively, not by the roads but through the forest, from one to the other of
his own manors? For where else could he be bound?

And
the figure that followed him, on a thickset cob, was certainly a woman, and
could be nobody else but his daughter, surely, that unknown Hiltrude who seemed
so old and unpleasing to young Richard.

So
their errand, after all, was not so mysterious. Of course they would want the
marriage achieved as soon as possible, if they had Richard in their hands. They
had waited these few days until both Eaton and Wroxeter had been searched, but
with the hunt being spread more widely they would wait no longer. Whatever risk
they might be taking, once the match was a reality they could weather whatever
storms followed. They could even afford to set Richard free to return to the
abbey, for nothing and no one but the authority of the church could set him
free from a wife.

And
that being so, what could be done to prevent? There was no time to run back
either to Eilmund’s house, and have Annet carry words to castle or abbey, or
direct to the town, and Hyacinth still found himself humanly reluctant to throw
his own chance of liberty to the winds. But it did not arise, there was no time
left at all. If he went back, by the time rescue could arrive for Richard he
would be married. Perhaps there might yet be time to find where they had hidden
him, and whisk him away from under their noses. These two were in no hurry, and
Dame Dionisia had still to make the short journey from Eaton without detection.
And the priest—where would they have found a willing priest? Nothing could be
done until a priest was there.

Hyacinth
forsook the thick cover, and made his way deeper into the belt of forest, no
longer intent on secrecy, only on speed. At the pace the riders were making he
could outrun them on a path, and in this extremity he would venture even the
highroad, if need be, and risk meeting others still out on their own lawful
occasions. But there was a path, too near the open road for the Astleys to
favour it, and merging into the road itself once it had crossed the upland
ridge. Hyacinth reached it and ran, fleet and silent on the thick carpet of
leaves too moist and limp to rustle under his feet. Once out on to the open
track and plunging downhill towards the village, still almost a mile distant,
he drew off again into the fields dipping to the river, and ran from one
scattered covert to another, assured now that he was ahead of Astley. He waded
the little stream that came down from the foot of the Wrekin to reach the
Severn here, and went on along the river bank. One isolated tongue of woodland
came down almost to the water, and from its shelter he could see for the first
time the low stockade of the manor, and the long level of the roof within,
sharp and clear against the glimmer of the water and the pallor of the sky.