Hermit of Eyton Forest (21 page)

His
door was still bolted next morning, and the servant who brought his breakfast
gave him no chance to slip past, though indeed he had no intention of trying
it, since he knew he would not get far, and his role now was to continue to be
docile and disarm suspicion. When his grandmother drew the bolt and came in to
him it was old familiar habit, rather than guile, that caused him to rise at
her entrance, as he had been taught, and lift up his face for her kiss. And the
kiss was no chillier than it had always been, and for a moment he felt the
inescapable kindness of the blood warm them both, something he had never
questioned, though she had very seldom expressed it. The contact caused him to
shake, and brought the sudden astonished sting of tears into his eyes just as
inevitably as the surge of obstinate recoil into his mind. It did him no harm
with her. She looked down at him from her erect and formidable height with a
somewhat softened gaze.

“Well,
sir, and how do you find yourself this morning? Are you minded to be a good,
obedient boy, and do all you can to please me? If so, you shall find you and I
will get on very well together. You have made a beginning, now go on as you
began. And think shame that you defied and denied me so long.” Richard drooped
his long lashes and looked down at his feet. “Yes, grandmother.” And then, in
meek assay: “May I go out today? I don’t like being shut in here, as if it was
night all the time.”

“We’ll
see,” she said, but to Richard the tone clearly meant: “No!” She would not
reason nor bargain, only lay down the law to him. “But not yet, you have not
deserved it. First prove that you’ve learned where your duty lies, and then you
shall have your freedom again. You are not ill done to, you have everything you
need here, be content until you have earned more and better.”

“But
I have!” he flashed. “I did what you wanted, you ought to do what I want. It’s
unfair to shut me up here, unfair and unkind. I don’t even know what you’ve
done with my pony.”

“Your
pony is safe in the stable,” said Dionisia sharply, “and well cared for, as you
are. And you had best mind your manners with me, sir, or you’ll have cause to
regret it. They’ve taught you at that abbey school to be saucy to your elders,
but it’s a lesson you had better unlearn as quickly as you can, for your own
sake.”

“I’m
not being saucy,” he pleaded, relapsing into sullenness. “I only want to be in
daylight, I want to go out, not sit here without even being able to see the
trees and the grass. It’s wretched in here, without any company…”

“You
shall have company,” she promised, seizing on one complaint to which she could
provide a complaisant answer. “I’ll send your bride to keep you company. I want
you to get to know her better now, for after today she’ll return to Wroxeter
with her father, and you, Richard,” she said warningly and with a sharpening
eye on him, “will return with me to your own manor, to take your proper place.
And I shall expect you to conduct yourself properly there, and not go hankering
after that school, now that you’re married and a man of substance. Eaton is
yours, and that is where you should be, and I expect you to maintain that, if
anyone—anyone—should call it in question. Do you understand me, sir?” He
understood her very well. He was to be cajoled, intimidated, bullied into
declaring, even to Brother Paul and Father Abbot if need be, that he had run
home to his grandmother of his own will, and of his own will submitted to the
marriage they had planned for him. He hugged his secret knowledge gleefully to
his heart as he said submissively: “Yes, madam!”

“Good!
And now I’ll send in Hiltrude to you, and see that you behave well to her. You
will have to get used to her, and she to you, so you may as well begin now.”
And she relented so far as to kiss him again on leaving him, though it
resembled a slap as much as a kiss. She went out in a dusty swirl of long green
skirts, and he heard the bolt shot again after her. And what had he got out of
all that, except the fact that his pony was in the stable here, and if only he
could get to it he might make his escape even now. But presently in came Hiltrude,
as his grandmother had threatened, and all his resentment and dislike of the
girl, undeserved though it was, boiled up within him into childish anger.

She
still seemed to him to belong at least to the generation of the mother he could
hardly remember, but she was not really utterly plain, she had a clear, pale
skin and large, guarded brown eyes, and if her hair was straight and of a
mousey brown colour, she had a great mass of it, plaited in a thick braid that
hung to her waist. She did not look ill-natured, but she did look bitterly
resigned and wretched. She stood for a moment with her back to the door,
staring thoughtfully at the boy curled up glumly on his bed. “So they’ve sent
you to be my guard dog,” said Richard unpleasantly. Hiltrude crossed the room
and sat down on the sill of the shuttered window, and looked at him without
favour. “I know you don’t like me,” she said, not sadly but with quite
unexpected vigour. “Small reason why you should, and for that matter, I don’t
like you. But it seems we’re both bound, no help for it now. Why, why did you
ever give way? I only said I would, at last, because I was so sure you were
safe enough there at the abbey, and they’d never let it come to this. And then
you have to fall into their hands like a fool, and let them break you down. And
here we both are, and may God help us!” She relented of the note of
exasperation in her own voice, and ended with weary kindness: “It’s not your
fault, you’re only a child, what could you do? And it isn’t that I dislike you,
I don’t even know you, it’s just that I didn’t want you, I don’t want you, any
more than you want me.”

Richard
was staring at her, by this time, with mouth and eyes wide open, struck dumb
with astonishment at finding her, as it were, not a token embarrassment, a
millstone round his neck, but a real person with a great deal to say for
herself, and by no means a fool. Slowly he uncoiled his slim legs and set his
feet to the floor, to feel solid substance under him. Slowly he repeated, in a
small, shocked voice: “You never wanted to marry me?”

“A
baby like you?” she said, careless of offence. “No, I never did.”

“Then
why did you ever agree to do it?” He was too indignant over her capitulation to
resent the reflection on his years. “If you’d said no, and kept saying it, we
should both have been saved.”

“Because
my father is a man very hard to say no to, and had begun to tell me that I was
getting too old to have another suitor, and if I didn’t take you I should be
forced to enter a sisterhood and stay a maid until I died. And that I wanted
even less. And I thought the abbot would keep fast hold of you, and nothing
would ever be allowed to come of it. And now here we are, and what are we to do
about it?”

Himself
surprised at feeling an almost sympathetic curiosity about this woman who had
sloughed a skin before his eyes, and emerged as vivid and real as himself,
Richard asked almost shyly: “What do you want? If you could have your way, what
would you like to have?”

“I
would like,” said Hiltrude, her brown eyes suddenly burning with anger and
loss, “a young man named Evrard, who keeps my father’s manor roll and is his
steward at Wroxeter, and who likes me, too, whether you think that likely or
not. But he’s a younger son and has no land, and where there’s no land to marry
to his own my father has no interest. There’s an uncle who may well leave his
manor to Evrard, being fond of him and childless, but land now is what my
father wants, not someday and maybe land.” The fire burned down. She turned her
head aside. “Why do I tell you this? You can’t understand, and it’s not your
fault. There’s nothing you can do to better it.”

Richard
was beginning to think that there might be something very pertinent he could do
for her, if she in her turn would do something for him. Cautiously he asked:
“What are they doing now, your father and my grandmother? She said you’d be
going back to Wroxeter after today. What are they planning? And has Father
Abbot been looking for me all this time since I left?”

“You
didn’t know? Not only the abbot, but the sheriff and all his men are looking
for you. They’ve searched Eaton and Wroxeter, and are beating every bush in the
forest. My father was afraid they might reach here by today, but she thought
not. They were wondering whether to move you back to Eaton in the night, since
it’s been searched already, but Dame Dionisia felt sure the officers had
several days” work left before they’d reach Leighton, and in any case, she
said, if a proper watch was set there’d be ample time to put you over the river
with an escort and send you down to shelter at Buildwas. Better, she said, than
moving you back towards Shrewsbury yet.”

“Where
are they now?” asked Richard intently. “My grandmother?”

“She’s
ridden back to Eaton to have everything there looking just as it should. Her
hermit went back to his cell in the night. It wouldn’t do if anyone knew he’d
been away.”

“And
your father?”

“He’s
out and about among his tenants here, but he’ll not be far away. He took his
clerk with him. There’ll be dues unpaid that he wants collected, I daresay.”
She was indifferent to her father’s movements, but she did feel some curiosity
as to what was going on in this child’s head, to sharpen his voice into such
hopeful purpose, and brighten his disconsolate eye. “Why? What is there in that
for you? Or for me!” she added bitterly.

“There
might,” said Richard, beginning to glitter, “be something I can do for you,
something good, if you’ll do something for me in return. If they’re both out of
the house, help me to get away while they’re gone. My pony’s there in the
stable, she told me as much. If I could get to him and slip away, you could
bolt the door again, and no one would know I was gone until evening.” She shook
her head decisively. “And who would get the blame? I wouldn’t put it off on to
one of the servants, and I’ve no great appetite for it myself. The troubles I
already have are enough for me, I thank you!” But she added warily, seeing that
his hopeful fire was by no means quenched: “But I would be willing to think out
the best means, if I thought it would solve anything for me. But how can it?
For a fair deliverance I’d venture anything Father could say or do. But what’s
the use, when we’re tied together as we are, and no way out?” Richard bounded up
from his bed and darted across the room to settle confidingly beside her on the
broad sill. Close to her ear he said breathlessly: “If I tell you a secret,
will you swear to keep it until I’m safely away, and help me to get out of
here? I promise you, I promise you it will be worth your while.”

“You
are dreaming,” she said tolerantly, turning to look at him thus closely, and
seeing his secret brightness undimmed by her disbelief. “There’s no way out of
marriage unless you’re a prince and have the Pope’s ear, and who cares about
lesser folk like us? True, we’re not bedded, nor will be for years yet, but if
you think your old dame and my father would ever let it come to an annulment,
you waste your hopes. They’ve got their way, they’ll never let go of their gains.”

“No,
it’s nothing like that,” he persisted, “we need nothing from Pope or law. You
must believe me. At least promise not to tell, and when you hear what it is,
you’ll be willing to help me, too.”

“Very
well,” she said, humouring him, even half convinced now that he knew something
she did not know, but still doubting if it would or could deliver them. “Very
well, I promise. What is this precious secret?” Gleefully he advanced his lips
to her ear, his cheek teased by the touch of a lock of her hair that curled
loose there, and breathed his secret as though the very boards at their backs
had ears. And after one incredulous instant of stillness and silence she began
to laugh very softly, to shake with her laughter, and throwing her arms about Richard,
hugged him briefly to her heart. “For that you shall go free, whatever it cost
me! You deserve it!”

Chapter Eleven

ONCE
CONVINCED, it was she who made the plans. She knew the house and the servants,
and as long as there was no suspicion of her subservience she had the entry
everywhere, and could give orders to grooms and maids as she pleased. “Best
wait until after they’ve brought your dinner and taken away the dish again. It
will be a longer time then before anyone comes in to you again. There’s a back
gate through the pale, from the stable out into the paddock. I could tell Jehan
to turn your pony out to grass, he’s been shut in too long to be liking it.
There are some bushes in the field there, round behind the stable, close to the
wicket. I’ll make shift to hide your saddle and harness there before noon. I
can get you out of here through the undercroft, while they’re all busy in hall
and kitchens.”

“But
your father will be home then,” protested Richard doubtfully.

“After
his dinner my father will be snoring. If he does look in on you at all, it will
be before he sits down to table, to make sure you’re safe in your cage. Better
for me, too, I shall have sat out my morning with you gallantly, who’s to think
I’ll change my tune after that? It might even be good sport,” said Hiltrude,
growing animated in contemplating her benevolent mischief, “when they go to
take you your supper, and find the window still shuttered and barred, and the
bird flown.”