Hermit of Eyton Forest (2 page)

“It
will take him some time to get back,” Cadfael pointed out comfortably. “And by
all accounts no better provided than when he went.” The empress’s half-brother
and best soldier had been sent overseas, much against his inclination, to ask
help for the lady from her less than loving husband, but Count Geoffrey of
Anjou was credibly reported to be much more interested in his own ambitions in
Normandy than in his wife’s in England, and had been astute enough to inveigle
Earl Robert into helping him pick off castle after castle in the duchy, instead
of rushing to his wife’s side to assist her to the crown of England. As early
as June Robert had sailed from Wareham, against his own best judgement but at
his sister’s urgent entreaty, and Geoffrey’s insistence, if he was to entertain
any ambassador from her at all. And here was September ended, Wareham back in
King Stephen’s hands, and Robert still detained in Geoffrey’s thankless service
in Normandy. No, it would not be any quick or easy matter for him to come to
his sister’s rescue. The iron grip of siege tightened steadily round Oxford
castle, and for once Stephen showed no sign of abandoning his purpose. Never
yet had he come so close to making his cousin and rival his prisoner, and
forcing her acceptance of his sovereignty. “Does he realise,” wondered Cadfael,
closing the lid of a stone jar on his selected seed, “how near he’s come to
getting her into his power at last? How would you feel, Hugh, if you were in
his shoes, and truly got your hands on her?”

“Heaven
forefend!” said Hugh fervently, and grinned at the very thought. “For I
shouldn’t know what to do with her! And the devil of it is, neither will
Stephen, if ever it comes to that. He could have kept her tight shut into
Arundel the day she landed, if he’d had the sense. And what did he do? Gave her
an escort, and sent her off to Bristol to join her brother! But if the queen
ever gets the lady into her power, that will be another story. If he’s a grand
fighter, she’s the better general, and knows how to hold on to her advantages.”
Hugh rose and stretched, and a rising breeze from the open door ruffled his
smooth black hair, and rustled the dangling bunches of dried herbs hanging from
the roof beams. “Well, there’s no hurrying the siege to an end, we must wait
and see. I hear they’ve finally given you a lad to help you in the herb garden,
is it true? I noticed your hedge has had a second clipping, was that his work?”

“It
was.” Cadfael went out with him along the gravel path between the patterned
beds of herbs, grown a little wiry at this end of the growing season. The box
hedge at one side had indeed been neatly trimmed of the straggling shoots that
come late in the summer. “Brother Winfrid—you’ll see him busy in the patch
where we’ve cleared the bean vines, digging in the holms. A big, gangling lad
all elbows and knees. Not long out of his novitiate. Willing, but slow. But
he’ll do. They sent him to me, I fancy, because he turned out fumble-fisted
with either pen or brush, but give him a spade, and that’s more his measure.
He’ll do!”

Outside
the walled herb garden the vegetable plots extended, and beyond the slight rise
on their right the harvested pease fields ran down to the Meole Brook, which
was the rear border of the abby enclave. And there was Brother Winfrid in full
vigorous action, a big, loose-jointed youth with a shock-head of wiry hair
hedging in his shaven crown, his habit kilted to brawny knees, and a broad foot
shod in a wooden clog driving the steel-edged spade through the fibrous tangle
of bean holms as through blades of grass. He gave them one beaming glance as
they passed, and returned to his work without breaking the rhythm. Hugh had one
glimpse of a weather-browned country face and round, guileless blue eyes.

“Yes,
I should think he might do very well,” he said, impressed and amused, “whether
with a spade or a battle-axe. I could do with a dozen such at the castle
whenever they care to offer their services.”

“He’d
be no use to you,” said Cadfael with certainty. “Like most big men, the
gentlest soul breathing. He’d throw his sword away to pick up the man he’d
flattened. It’s the little, shrill terriers that bare their teeth.” They
emerged into the band of flowerbeds beyond the kitchen garden, where the rose
bushes had grown leggy and begun to shed their leaves. Rounding the corner of
the box hedge, they came out into the great court, at this working hour of the
morning almost deserted but for one or two travellers coming and going about
the guest hall, and a stir of movement down in the stables. Just as they
rounded the tall hedge to step into the court, a small figure shot out of the
gate of the grange court, where the barns and storage lofts lined three sides
of a compact yard, and made off at a run across the narrows of the court into
the cloister, to emerge a minute later at the other end at a decorous walk,
with eyes lowered in seemly fashion, and plump, childish hands devoutly linked
at his belt, the image of innocence. Cadfael halted considerately, with a hand
on Hugh’s arm, to avoid confronting the boy too obviously. The child reached
the corner of the infirmary, rounded it, and vanished. There was a distinct
impression that as he quit the sight of any watchers in the great court he
broke into a run again, for a bare heel flashed suddenly and was gone. Hugh was
grinning. Cadfael caught his friend’s eye, and said nothing. “Let me hazard!”
said Hugh, twinkling. “You picked your apples yesterday, and they’re not yet
laid up in the trays in the loft. Lucky it was not Prior Robert who saw him at
it, and he with the breast of his cotte bulging like a portly dame!”

“Oh,
there are some of us have a sort of silent understanding. He’ll have taken the
biggest, but only four. He thieves in moderation. Partly from decent
obligation, partly because half the sport is to tempt providence again and
again.”

Hugh’s
agile black eyebrow signalled amused enquiry. “Why four?”

“Because
we have but four boys still in school, and if he thieves at all, he thieves for
all. There are several novices not very much older, but to them he has no
obligation. They must do their own thieving, or go without. And do you know,”
asked Cadfael complacently, “who that young limb is?”

“I
do not, but you are about to astonish me.”

“I
doubt if I am. That is Master Richard Ludel, the new lord of Eaton. Though
plainly,” said Cadfael, wryly contemplating shadowed innocence, “he does not
yet know it.”

Richard
was sitting cross-legged on the grassy bank above the mill-pond, thoughtfully
nibbling out the last shreds of white flesh from round his apple core, when one
of the novices came looking for him. “Brother Paul wants you,” announced the
messenger, with the austerely complacent face of one aware of his own virtue,
and delivering a probably ominous summons to another. “He’s in the parlour.
You’d best hurry.”

“Me?”
said Richard, round-eyed, looking up from his enjoyment of the stolen apple. No
one had any great cause to be afraid of Brother Paul, the master of the novices
and the children, who was the gentlest and most patient of men, but even a
reproof from him was to be evaded if possible. “What does he want me for?”

“You
should best know that,” said the novice, with mildly malicious intent. “It was
not likely he’d tell me. Go and find out for yourself, if you truly have no
notion.”

Richard
committed his denuded core to the pond, and rose slowly from the grass. “In the
parlour, you say?” The use of so private and ceremonial a place argued
something grave, and though he was unaware of any but the most venial of
misdeeds that could be laid to his account during the past weeks, it behoved
him to be wary. He went off slowly and thoughtfully, trailing his bare feet in
the coolness of the grass, deliberately scuffing hard little soles along the
cobbles of the court, and duly presented himself in the small, dim parlour,
where visitors from the outside world might occasionally talk in private with
their cloistered sons.

Brother
Paul was standing with his back to the single window, rendering the small room
even dimmer than it need have been. The straight, close-shorn ring of hair
round his polished crown was still black and thick at fifty, and he habitually
stood, as indeed he also sat, stooped a little forward, from so many years of
dealing with creatures half his size, and desiring to reassure them rather than
awe them with his stature and bearing. A kindly, scholarly, indulgent man, but
a good teacher for all that, and one who could keep his chicks in order without
having to keep them in terror. The oldest remaining oblatus, given to God when
he was five years old, and now approaching fifteen and his novitiate, told awful
stories of Brother Paul’s predecessor, who had ruled with the rod, and been
possessed of an eye that could freeze the blood. Richard made his small
obligatory obeisance, and stood squarely before his master, lifting to the
light an impenetrable countenance, lit by two blue-green eyes of radiant
innocence. A thin, active child, small for his years but agile and supple as a
cat, with a thick, curly crest of light brown hair, and a band of golden
freckles over both cheekbones and the bridge of his neat, straight nose. He
stood with feet braced sturdily apart, toes gripping the floorboards, and
stared up into Brother Paul’s face, dutiful and guileless. Paul was well
acquainted with that unblinking gaze.

“Richard,”
he said gently, “come, sit down with me. I have something I must tell you.”

That
in itself was enough to discount one slight childish unease, only to replace it
with another and graver, for the tone was so considerate and indulgent as to
prophesy the need for comfort. But what Richard’s sudden flickering frown
expressed was simple bewilderment. He allowed himself to be drawn to the bench
and seated there within the circle of Brother Paul’s arm, bare toes just
touching the floor, and braced there hard. He could be prepared for scolding,
but here was surely something for which he was not prepared, and had no idea
how to confront.

“You
know that your father fought at Lincoln for the king, and was wounded? And that
he has since been in poor health.” Secure in robust, well-fed and well-tended
youth, Richard hardly knew what poor health might be, except that it was
something that happened to the old.

But
he said: “Yes, Brother Paul!” in a small, accommodating voice, since it was
expected of him.

“Your
grandmother sent a groom to the lord sheriff this morning. He has brought a sad
message, Richard. Your father has made his last confession and received his
Saviour. He is dead, my child. You are his heir, and you must be worthy of him.
In life and in death,” said Brother Paul, “he is in the hand of God. So are we
all.”

The
look of thoughtful bewilderment had not changed. Richard’s toes shoved hard
against the floor, and his hands gripped the edge of the bench on which he was
perched.

“My
father is dead?” he repeated carefully.

“Yes,
Richard. Soon or late, it touches us all. Every son must one day step into his
father’s place and take up his father’s duties.”

“Then
I shall be the lord of Eaton now?”

Brother
Paul did not make the mistake of taking this for a simple expression of
self-congratulation on a personal gain, rather as an intelligent acceptance of
what he himself had just said. The heir must take up the burden and the
privilege his sire had laid down.

“Yes,
you are the lord of Eaton, or you will be as soon as you are of fit age. You
must study to get wisdom, and manage your lands and people well. Your father
would expect that of you.”

Still
struggling with the practicalities of his new situation, Richard probed back
into his memory for a clear vision of this father who was now challenging him
to be worthy. In his rare recent visits home at Christmas and Easter he had
been admitted on arrival and departure to a sick-room that smelled of herbs and
premature aging, and allowed to kiss a grey, austere face and listen to a deep
voice, indifferent with weakness, calling him son and exhorting him to study
and be virtuous. But there was little more, and even the face had grown dim in
his memory. Of what he did remember he went in awe. They had never been close
enough for anything more intimate.

“You
loved your father, and did your best to please him, did you not, Richard?”
Brother Paul prompted gently. “You must still do what is pleasing to him. And
you may say prayers for his soul, which will be a comfort also to you.”

“Shall
I have to go home now?” asked Richard, whose mind was on the need for
information rather than comfort.

“To
your father’s burial, certainly. But not to remain there, not yet. It was your
father’s wish that you should learn to read and write, and be properly
instructed in figures. And you’re young yet, your steward will take good care
of your manor until you come to manhood.”

“My
grandmother,” said Richard by way of explanation, “sees no sense in my learning
my letters. She was angry when my father sent me here. She says a lettered
clerk is all any manor needs, and books are no fit employment for a nobleman.”

“Surely
she will comply with your father’s wishes. All the more is that a sacred trust,
now that he is dead.”

Richard
jutted a doubtful lip. “But my grandmother has other plans for me. She wants to
marry me to our neighbour’s daughter, because Hiltrude has no brother, and will
be the heiress to both Leighton and Wroxeter. Grandmother will want that more
than ever now,” said Richard simply, and looked up ingenuously into Brother
Paul’s slightly startled face.