Hermit of Eyton Forest (18 page)

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 Brand’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.” It sounded a poor outlook for
the girl, whichever of the two got the better of the contest, but it also
sounded one possible reason why Aymer should not loiter here too long, or he
might lose his advantages at home. Cadfael felt encouraged. Absence from a
newly-inherited honour might even be dangerous, if there was a clever and
treacherous younger brother left behind there to make calculated use of his
opportunities. Aymer would be bearing that in mind, even while he grudged
giving up his vindictive pursuit of Hyacinth. Cadfael still could not think of
the boy as Brand, the name he had chosen for himself fitted him so much better.
“I wonder,” said Warin, unexpectedly harking back to the same elusive person,
“where Brand really got to? Lucky for him we did give him some grace—not that
my lord intended it so!—for at first they thought that a man with the skill he
had at his finger-ends would surely make for London, and we wasted a week or
more searching all the roads south. We got beyond Thame before one of his men
came riding after us, saying Brand had been seen in Northampton. If he’d
started off northwards, Drogo reckoned he’d continue so, and likely to bear
west as he went, and make for Wales. I wonder has he reached it. Even Aymer
won’t follow him over the border.”

“And
you picked up no more sightings of him along the way?” asked Cadfael.

“No,
never a trace. But we’re far out of the country where anyone would know him,
and not everybody wants to get tangled into such a business. And he’ll have
taken another name, for sure.” Warin rose, refreshed but reluctant, to go back
to his duties. “I hope it may stand him in good stead. No matter what the
Bosiets say, he was a decent lad.”

Brother
Winfrid was busy sweeping up leaves under the orchard trees, for the moist
autumn had caused them to fall before they took their bright seasonal
colouring, in a soft green rain that rotted gently into the turf. Cadfael found
himself alone and without occupation after Warin had left him. The more reason
to sit down quietly and think, and a prayer or two wouldn’t come amiss, either,
for the boy who had gone rushing off on his black pony, on his self-appointed,
mad and generous mission, for the rash young man he had set out to save, even
for the hard, malignant lordling cut off without time for penitence or
absolution, and bitterly in need of grace.

The
bell for Vespers called him out of his musings, and he went gladly to answer
it, out through the gardens and across the court to the cloister and the south
door of the church, to be early in his place. In the past few days he had
missed all too many services, he was in need of the reassurance of brotherhood.
There were always a few of the people of the Foregate at Vespers, the devout
old women who inhabited some of the abbey’s grace houses, elderly couples
retired and happy to fill up their leisure and meet their friends at church,
and often guests of the house coming back from the activities of the day.
Cadfael heard them stirring beyond the parish altar, in the vast spaces of the
nave. Rafe of Coventry, he noted, had come in from the cloister and chosen a
place from which he could see within, past the parish altar and into the choir.
Kneeling at prayer, he had still that quiet composure about him, a man secure
and at peace with his own body, and wearing his inscrutable face rather as a
shield than as a mask. So he had not yet moved on to contact those suppliers of
his in Wales. He was the only worshipper from the guest hall. Aymer Bosiet must
be still about his funereal business in the town, or else beating the coverts
in field and forest somewhere after his runaway.

The
brothers came in and took their places, the novices and schoolboys followed.
There was a bitter reminder there, for their numbers were still one short.
There was no forgetting about Richard. Until he was recovered there would be no
peace of mind, no lightness of heart, for any of those children. At the end of
Vespers Cadfael lingered in his stall, letting the procession of brothers and
novices file out into the cloister without him. The office had its beauty and
consolation, but the solitude afterwards was also salutary in its silence,
after the echoes of the music had all died away, and to be here alone in this
evening hour had a special beneficence, whether because of the soft,
dove-coloured light or the sense of enlargement that seemed to swell the soul
to inhabit and fill the last arches of the vault, as a single drop of water
becomes the ocean into which it falls. There was no better time for profound
prayer, and Cadfael felt the need of it. For the boy in particular, equally
solitary somewhere, perhaps afraid. It was to Saint Winifred Cadfael addressed
his plea, a Welshman invoking a Welsh saint, and one to whom he felt very
close, and for whom he had an almost family affection. Herself hardly more than
a child at her martyrdom, she would not let harm come to another threatened
child. Brother Rhun, whom she had healed, was carefully trimming the scented
candles he made for her shrine when Cadfael approached, but he turned his fair
young head towards the petitioner, gave him one glance of his aquamarine eyes,
that seemed to have their own innate light, and smiled and went away. Not to
linger and complete his work when the prayers ended, not to hide in the shadows
and watch, but clean away out of knowledge, on swift, agile, silent feet that
had once gone lamely and in pain, to leave the whole listening vault ready to
receive the appeal in its folded hands, and channel it aloft. Cadfael arose
from his knees comforted, without knowing or asking why. Outside, the light was
fading rapidly, and here within, the altar lamp and Saint Winifred’s perfumed
candles made small islands of pure radiance in a great enfolding gloom, like a
warm cloak against the frost of the outside world. The grace that had just
touched Cadfael had a long enough reach to find Richard, wherever he was,
deliver him if he was a prisoner, console him if he was frightened, heal him if
he was hurt. Cadfael went out from the choir, round the parish altar and into
the nave, sensible of having done what was most needful, and content to wait
patiently and passively until grace should be manifested. It seemed that Rafe
of Coventry had also had solemn and personal prayers to offer, for he was just
rising from his knees in the empty and silent nave as Cadfael came through. He
recognised his acquaintance of the stable yard with a shadowed but friendly
smile, that came and went briefly on his lips but lingered amiably in his eyes.