Hermit of Eyton Forest (4 page)

The
solemn rites for Richard Ludel took their appointed course. Brother Cadfael
made good use of the time to survey the dead man’s household, from John of
Longwood to the youngest villein herdsman. There was every indication that the
place had thrived well under John’s stewardship, and his men were well content
with their lot. Hugh would have good reason to let well alone. There were
neighbours present, too, Fulke Astley among them, keeping a weather eye on what
he himself might have to gain if the proposed match ever took place. Cadfael
had seen him once or twice in Shrewsbury, a gross, self-important man in his
late forties, running to fat, ponderous of movement, and surely no match for
that restless, active, high-tempered woman standing grim-faced over her son’s
hier. She had Richard beside her, a hand possessively rather than protectively
on his shoulder. The boy’s eyes had dilated to engulf half his face, solemn as
the grave that had been opened for his father, and was now about to be sealed.
Distant death is one thing, its actual presence quite another. Not until this
minute had Richard fully realised the finality of this deprivation and
severance.

The
grandmotherly hand did not leave his shoulder as the cortege of mourners wound
its way back to the manor, and the funeral meats spread for them in the hall.
The long, lean, aging fingers had a firm grip on the cloth of the boy’s best
coat, and she guided him with her among guests and neighbours, properly but
with notable emphasis making him the man of the house, and presiding figure at
his father’s obsequies. That did no harm at all. Richard was fully aware of his
position, and well able to resent any infringement of his privilege. Brother
Paul watched with some anxiety, and whispered to Cadfael that they had best get
the boy away before all the guests departed, or they might fail to get him away
at all, for want of witnesses. While the priest was still present, and those
few others not of the household, he could hardly be retained by force. Cadfael
had been observing those of the company not well known to him. There were two
grey-habited monks from the Savigniac house of Buildwas, a few miles away
down-river, to which Ludel had been a generous patron on occasion, and with
them, though withdrawn modestly throughout into the background, was a personage
less easily identifiable. He wore a monastic gown, rusty black and well worn at
the hems, but a head of unshorn dark hair showed within his cowl, and a gleam
of reflected light picked out two or three metallic gleams from his shoulder
that looked like the medals of more than one pilgrimage. Perhaps a wandering
religious about to settle for the cloister. Savigny had been at Buildwas now
for some forty years, a foundation of Roger de Clinton, bishop of Lichfield. Good,
detached observers surely, these three. Before such reverend guests no violence
could be attempted.

Brother
Paul approached Dionisia courteously to take a discreet leave and reclaim his
charge, but the lady took the wind from his sails with a brief, steely flash of
her eyes and a voice deceptively sweet: “Brother, let me plead with you to let
me keep Richard overnight. He has had a tiring day and begins to be weary now.
He should not leave until tomorrow.” But she did not say that she would send
him back on the morrow, and her hand retained its grip on his shoulder. She had
spoken loudly enough to be heard by all, a solicitous matron anxious for her
young.

“Madam,”
said Brother Paul, making the best of a disadvantaged position, “I was about to
tell you, sadly, that we must be going. I have no authority to let Richard stay
here with you, we are expected back for Vespers. I pray you pardon us.”

The
lady’s smile was honey, but her eyes were sharp and cold as knives. She made
one more assay, perhaps to establish her own case with those who overheard,
rather than with any hope of achieving anything immediately, for she knew the
occasion rendered her helpless.

“Surely
Abbot Radulfus would understand my desire to have the child to myself one more
day. My own flesh and blood, the only one left to me, and I have seen so little
of him these last years. You leave me uncomforted if you take him from me so
soon.”

“Madam,”
said Brother Paul, firm but uneasy, “I grieve to withstand your wish, but I
have no choice. I am bound in obedience to my abbot to bring Richard back with
me before evening. Come, Richard, we must be going.” There was an instant while
she kept and tightened her hold, tempted to act even thus publicly, but she
thought better of it. This was no time to put herself in the wrong, rather to
recruit sympathy. She opened her hand, and Richard crept doubtfully away from
her to Paul’s side.

“Tell
the lord abbot,” said Dionisia, her eyes daggers, but her voice still mellow
and sweet, “that I shall seek a meeting with him very soon.”

“Madam,
I will tell him so,” said Brother Paul. She was as good as her word. She rode
into the abbey enclave the next day, well attended, bravely mounted, and in her
impressive best, to ask audience of the abbot. She was closeted with him for
almost an hour, but came forth in a cold blaze of resentment and rage, stormed
across the great court like a sudden gale, scattering unoffending novices like
blown leaves, and rode away again for home at a pace her staid jennet did not
relish, with her grooms trailing mute and awed well in the rear.

“There
goes a lady who is used to getting her own way,” remarked Brother Anselm, “but
for once, I fancy, she’s met her match.”

“We
have not heard the last of it, however,” said Brother Cadfael drily, watching
the dust settle after her going.

“I
don’t doubt her will,” agreed Anselm, “but what can she do?”

“That,”
said Cadfael, not without quickening interest, “no doubt we shall see, all in
good time.”

They
had but two days to wait. Dame Dionisia’s man of law announced himself
ceremoniously at chapter, requesting a hearing. An elderly clerk, meagre of
person but brisk of bearing and irascible of feature, bustled into the
chapterhouse with a bundle of parchments under his arm, and addressed the
assembly with chill, reproachful dignity, in sorrow rather than in anger. He
marvelled that a cleric and scholar of the abbot’s known uprightness and
benevolence should deny the ties of blood, and refuse to return Richard Ludel to
the custody and loving care of his only surviving close kinswoman, now left
quite bereft of all her other menfolk, and anxious to help, guide and advise
her grandson in his new lordship. A great wrong was being done to both
grandmother and child, in the denial of their natural need and the frustration
of their mutual affection. And yet once more the clerk put forth the solemn
request that the wrong should be set right, and Richard Ludel sent back with
him to his manor of Eaton.

Abbot
Radulfus sat with a patient and unmoved face and listened to the end of this
studied speech very courteously. “I thank you for your errand,” he said then
mildly, “it was well done. I cannot well change the answer I gave to your lady.
Richard Ludel who is dead committed the care of his son to me, by letter
properly drawn and witnessed. I accepted that charge, and I cannot renounce it
now. It was the father’s wish that the son should be educated here until he
comes to manhood, and takes command of his own life and affairs. That I
promised, and that I shall fulfil. The death of the father only makes my
obligation the more sacred and binding. Tell your mistress so.”

“My
lord,” said the clerk, plainly having expected no other answer, and ready with
the next step in his embassage, “in changed circumstances such a private legal
document need not be the only argument valid in a court of law. The king’s
justices would listen no less to the plea of a matron of rank, widowed and now
bereaved of her son, and fully able to provide all her grandson’s needs,
besides the natural need she has of the comfort of his presence. My mistress
desires to inform you that if you do not give up the boy, she intends to bring
suit at law to regain him.”

“Then
I can but approve her intention,” said the abbot serenely. “A judicial decision
in the king’s court must be satisfying to us both, since it lifts the burden of
choice from us. Tell her so, and say that I await the hearing with due
submission. But until such a judgement is made, I must hold to my own sworn undertaking.
I am glad,” he said with a dry and private smile, “that we are thus agreed.”

There
was nothing left for the clerk to do but accept this unexpectedly pliant
response at its face value, and bow himself out as gracefully as he could. A
slight rustle and stir of curiosity and wonder had rippled round the
chapterhouse stalls, but Abbot Radulfus suppressed it with a look, and it was
not until the brothers emerged into the great court and dispersed to their work
that comment and speculation could break out openly. “Was he wise to encourage
her?” marvelled Brother Edmund, crossing towards the infirmary with Cadfael at
his side. “How if she does indeed take us to law? A judge might very well take
the part of a lone lady who wants her grandchild home.”

“Be
easy,” said Cadfael placidly. “It’s but an empty threat. She knows as well as
any that the law is slow and costs dear, at the best of times, and this is none
of the best, with the king far away and busy with more urgent matters, and half
his kingdom cut off from any manner of justice at all. No, she hoped to make
the lord abbot think again and yield ground for fear of long vexation. She had
the wrong man. He knows she has no intention of going to law. Far more likely
to take law into her own hands and try to steal the boy away. It would take
slow law or swift action to snatch him back again, once she had him, and force
is further out of the abbot’s reach than it is out of hers.”

“It
is to be hoped,” said Brother Edmund, aghast at the suggestion, “that she has
not yet used up all her persuasions, if the last resort is to be violence.” No
one could quite determine exactly how young Richard came to know every twist
and turn of the contention over his future. He could not have overheard
anything of what went on at chapter, nor were the novices present at the daily
gatherings, and there was none among the brothers likely to gossip about the
matter to the child at the centre of the conflict. Yet it was clear that
Richard did know all that went on, and took perverse pleasure in it. Mischief
made life more interesting, and here within the enclave he felt quite safe from
any real danger, while he could enjoy being fought over. “He watches the
comings and goings from Eaton,” said Brother Paul, confiding his mild anxiety
to Cadfael in the peace of the herb garden, “and is sharp enough to be very
well aware what they mean. And he understood all too well what went on at his
father’s funeral. I could wish him less acute, for his own sake.”

“As
well he should have his wits about him,” said Cadfael comfortably. “It’s the
knowing innocents that avoid the snares. And the lady’s made no move now for
ten days. Maybe she’s grown resigned, and given up the struggle.” But he was by
no means convinced of that. Dame Dionisia was not used to being thwarted. “It
may be so,” agreed Paul hopefully, “for I hear she’s taken in some reverend
pilgrim, and refurbished the old hermitage in her woodland for his use. She
wants his prayers daily for her son’s soul. Edmund was telling us about it when
he brought our allowance of venison. We saw the man, Cadfael, at the funeral.
He was there with the two brothers from Buildwas. He’d been lodged with them a
week, they give him a very saintly report.”

Cadfael
straightened up with a grunt from his bed of mint, grown wiry and thin of leaf
now in late October. “The fellow who wore the scallop shell? And the medal of
Saint James? Yes, I remember noticing him. So he’s settling among us, is he?
And chooses a cell and a little square of garden in the woods rather than a
grey habit at Buildwas! I never was drawn to the solitary life myself, but I’ve
known those who can think and pray the better that way. It’s a long time since
that cell was lived in.”

He
knew the place, though he seldom passed that way, the abbey’s forester having
excellent health, and very little need of herbal remedies. The hermitage,
disused now for many years, lay in a thickly wooded dell, a stone-built hut
with a square of ground once fenced and cultivated, now overgrown and wild.
Here the belt of forest embraced both Eaton ground and the abbey’s woodland of
Eyton, and the hermitage occupied a spot where the Ludel border jutted into
neighbour territory, close to the forester’s cherished coppice. “He’ll be quiet
enough there,” said Cadfael, “if he means to stay. By what name are we to know
him?”

“They
call him Cuthred. A neighbour saint is a fine thing to have, and it seems
they’re already beginning to bring their troubles to him to sort. It may be,”
ventured Brother Paul optimistically, “that it’s he who has tamed the lady. He
must have a strong influence over her, or she’d never have entreated him to
stay. And there’s been no move from her these ten days. It may be we’re all in
his debt.”

And indeed, as
the soft October days slid away tranquilly one after another, in dim, misty
dawns, noondays bright but veiled, and moist green twilights magically still,
it seemed that there was to be no further combat over young Richard, that Dame
Dionisia had thought better of the threat of law, and resigned herself to
submission. She even sent, by her parish priest, a gift of money to pay for
Masses in the Lady Chapel for her son’s soul, a gesture which could only be
interpreted as a move towards reconciliation. So, at least, Brother Francis,
the new custodian of Saint Mary’s altar, considered it. “Father Andrew tells
me,” he reported after the visitor had departed, “that since the Savigniac
brothers from Buildwas brought this Cuthred into her house she sets great store
by his counsel, and rules herself by his advice and example. The man has won a
great report for holiness already. They say he’s taken strict vows in the old
way, and never leaves his cell and garden now. But he never refuses help or
prayers to any who ask. Father Andrew thinks very highly of him. The anchorite
way is not our way,” said Brother Francis with great earnestness, “but it’s no
bad thing to have such a holy man living so close, on a neighbouring manor. It
cannot but bring a blessing.” So thought all the countryside, for the
possession of so devout a hermit brought great lustre to the manor of Eaton,
and the one criticism that ever came to Cadfael’s ears concerning Cuthred was
that he was too modest, and at first deprecated, and later forbade, the too
lavish sounding of his praises abroad. No matter what minor prodigy he brought
about, averting by his prayers a threatened cattle murrain, after one of
Dionisia’s herd sickened, sending out his boy to give warning of a coming
storm, which by favour of his intercessions passed off without damage, whatever
the act of grace, he would not allow any of the merit for it to be ascribed to
him, and grew stern and awesomely angry if the attempt was made, threatening
the wrath of God on any who disobeyed his ban. Within a month of his coming his
discipline counted for more in the manor of Eaton than did either Dionisia’s or
Father Andrew’s, and his fame, banned from being spread openly, went about by
neighbourly whispers, like a prized secret to be exulted in privately but
hidden from the world.