The Hermit of Eyton Forest bc-14

by Ellis Peters

  ‘But, Father,’ Richard cried with the courage of desperation, determined to get out at last the plain, untangled truth of it, ‘I did what I did so that they’d let me go free, and I could get back to you. I did say the vows, but only because I knew they could not be binding. I am not married! It was not a marriage, because—’

  Both the abbot and Fulke broke into speech, sternly overriding his outburst and ordering his silence, but Richard’s blood was up. If it must out here before everyone, then it must. He clenched his fists, and shouted loudly enough to fetch a stony echo from the walls of the cloister: ‘—because Cuthred is not a priest!’

  Chapter Twelve

  IN THE general ripple and stir of astonishment, doubt and outrage that passed like a sudden gust of wind through the entire assembly, from Prior Robert’s indignant snort to the inquisitive and half-gleeful whisperings and shiftings among the novices, the thing that was clearest of all to Cadfael was that Fulke Astley stood utterly confounded. Never had he had the least notion what was coming, it had taken his breath away. He stood dangling his arms in curious helplessness, as though something of his own being had slipped from his grasp and left him lame and mute. When he had recovered breath enough to speak at all he said what would have been expected of him, but without the confidence of conviction, rather forcibly thrusting the very suggestion away from him in panic.

  ‘My lord abbot, this is madness! The boy is lying. He’ll say anything to serve his turn. Of course Father Cuthred is a priest! The brothers of Savigny from Buildwas brought him to us, ask them, they have no doubts. There has never been any question. This is wickedness, so to slander a holy man.’

  ‘Such slander would indeed be wickedness,’ agreed Radulfus, fixing his deep-set eyes and lowered brows formidably upon Richard. ‘Think well, sir, before you repeat it. If this is a device to get your way and remain here with us, think better of it now and confess it. You shall not be punished for it. Whatever else, it would seem that you have been misused, abducted and intimidated, and that shall excuse you. I would remind Sir Fulke of these circumstances. But if you do not tell truth now, Richard, then you do incur punishment.’

  ‘I have told truth,’ said Richard stoutly, jutting his very respectable chin and meeting the awesome eyes without blinking. ‘I am telling truth. I swear it! I did what they demanded of me because I knew then that the hermit is not a priest, and a marriage made by him would be no marriage.’

  ‘How did you know?’ cried Fulke furiously, stirring out of his confusion. ‘Who told you so? My lord, this is all a childish ruse, and a spiteful one. He is lying!’

  ‘Well? You may answer those questions,’ said Radulfus, never taking his eyes from Richard’s. ‘How did you know? Who told you?’

  But these were the very questions Richard could not answer without betraying Hyacinth, and bringing the hunt on to his trail with renewed vigour. He said with wincing gallantry: ‘Father, I will tell you, but not here, only to you. Please believe me, I am not lying.’

  ‘I do believe you,’ said the abbot, abruptly releasing him from the scrutiny which had made him tremble. ‘I believe you are saying what you have been told, and what you believe to be true. But this is a more serious matter than you can understand, and it must be cleared up. A man against whom such an accusation has been made has the right to speak up for himself, and prove his good faith. I shall go myself, tomorrow early, and ask the hermit whether he is or is not a priest, and who ordained him, and where, and when. These things can be proven, and should be. You will surely have an equal interest, my lord, in finding out, once for all, whether this was indeed a marriage. Though I must warn you,’ he added firmly, ‘that even if it is it can be annulled, seeing it cannot have been consummated.’

  ‘Make the attempt,’ retorted Astley, somewhat recovering his composure, ‘and it will be contested to the limit. But I acknowledge that truth must out. We cannot have such doubts lingering.’

  ‘Then will you not meet with me at the hermitage, as early as may be after Prime? It is fair we should both hear what Cuthred has to say. I am well sure,’ he said with truth, having seen the effect of Richard’s outburst, ‘that you believed implicitly the man was a priest, with full rights to marry and bury. That is not in dispute. Richard has cause to hold to the contrary. Let us put it to the test.’

  There was nothing Astley could object to in that, nor, thought Cadfael, had he any wish to avoid the issue. He had certainly been profoundly shocked by the suggestion of deceit, and wanted the damaging doubt removed. But he did make one more attempt to regain his hold meantime on the boy. He advanced a hand to Richard’s shoulder. ‘I will come to that meeting,’ he said, ‘and see this deluded child proved wrong. But for this night I still hold he stands as my son, and should go with me.’

  The hand closed on Richard’s arm, and the boy started and tore himself away. Brother Paul could no longer restrain himself, he hurried forward out of the staring ranks and drew the truant close to his side.

  ‘Richard stays here,’ said Radulfus firmly. ‘His father entrusted him to me, and I set no limit on his stay with us. But whose son by law and whose husband the child is we must and will examine.’

  Fulke was growing purple in the face again with suppressed anger. He had come so near to capturing the imp, and now to be thwarted, and the whole structure of his and Dionisia’s territorial plans put in jeopardy. He would not give up so easily.

  ‘You take much upon yourself, my lord abbot,’ he began, ‘in denying rights to his kin, you who have no blood claim upon him. And I think you are not without designs upon his lands and goods in keeping him here. You want no marriage for the boy, but rather to school him here until he knows no other world, and will enter tamely into his novitiate, and your house into his inheritance

  ‘

  He was so intent on his accusations, and all those about him so stricken into wonder at his daring, that no one had yet observed the new arrival at the gatehouse. All eyes were on Astley, and all mouths agape in amazement, and Hugh had tethered his horse at the gate and entered on foot, making no noise. He had taken but ten paces into the court when his eye fell first on the grey horse and the black pony, crusted with the drying lather of their hasty ride, and held now by a groom, who stood gaping at the group framed in the archway of the cloister. Hugh followed the man’s fascinated stare, and took in at a glance the same arresting spectacle, the abbot and Fulke Astley face to face in obvious confrontation, and Brother Paul with an arm protectively about the shoulders of a small, wiry, grubby and dishevelled boy, who lifted to the evening light the wide-eyed face, half-frightened, half-defiant, of Richard Ludel.

  Radulfus, standing disdainfully silent under abuse, was the first to notice the new arrival on the scene. Looking clean over his adversary’s head, as with his height he could very well do, he said distinctly: ‘No doubt the lord sheriff will pay the attention due to your charges. As he may also be interested in how Richard came to be in your care at Leighton as late as last night. You should address your complaints to him.’ Fulke span upon one heel so precipitately that he all but lost his balance; and there was Hugh coming briskly down the court to join them, one quirky eyebrow tilted into his black hair, and the eye beneath it bright and sharply knowing, and levelled upon Fulke.

  ‘Well, well, my lord!’ said Hugh amiably. ‘I see you have made shift to discover and restore the truant I have just failed to find in your manor of Leighton. Here am I newly come from there to report failure to the lord abbot as Richard’s guardian, and here I find you have been doing my work for me while I was wild-goose chasing. I take that very kindly of you. I’ll bear it in mind when it comes to considering the little matter of abduction and forcible imprisonment. It seems the woodland bird that whispered in my ear Richard was at Leighton told simple truth, for all I found no trace of him when I put it to the proof, and no one to admit he’d ever been there. You can have been out of the house barely half an hour by some other path when I reached it by the road.’
His observant eye roved over Richard’s taut figure and wary face, and came to rest on the abbot. ‘Do you find him in good heart, and none the worse for being caged, my lord? He’s come to no harm?’

  ‘None to his body, certainly,’ said Radulfus. ‘But there is another matter unresolved. It seems a form of marriage took place last night at Leighton between Richard and Sir Fulke’s daughter. To that Richard agrees, but he says that it was no real marriage, since the hermit Cuthred, who conducted it, is not a priest.’

  ‘Do you tell me so?’ Hugh pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, and swung round upon Fulke, who stood mute but watchful, all too aware of the need to step warily, and think now before he spoke. ‘And what do you say to that, my lord?’

  ‘I say it is an absurd charge that will never stand. He came to us with the good will of the brothers of Buildwas. I never heard word against him, and do not believe it now. We have dealt with him in good faith.’

  ‘That, I am sure, is true,’ said the abbot fairly. ‘If there is anything in this charge, those who desired this marriage did not know of it.’

  ‘But Richard, I think, did not desire it,’ said Hugh, with a somewhat grim smile. ‘This cannot rest so, we must have out the truth.’

  ‘So we are all agreed,’ said Radulfus, ‘and Sir Fulke has contracted to meet with me tomorrow after Prime at the hermitage, and hear what the man himself has to say. I was about to send to you, my lord sheriff, and tell you how this thing stands, and ask you to ride with me tomorrow. This scene,’ he said, casting an authoritative glance round at his all too attentive flock, ‘need not be prolonged, I think. If you will sup with me, Hugh, you shall hear all that has happened. Robert, have the brothers proceed. I am sorry our evening should have been so rudely disrupted. And, Paul

  ‘ He looked down at Richard, who had one fist tightly clenched on a fold of Paul’s habit, ready to hold fast had his tenure been threatened. ‘Take him away, Paul, clean him up, feed him, and bring him to me after supper. He has a great deal to tell us that has not been told yet. There, you may disperse, all, there is no more here to see.’

  The brothers edged aside obediently, and moved away somewhat raggedly to resume the interrupted order of the evening, though there would be furtive whispering even in the frater, and a great deal of excited talk afterwards in the leisured hour before Collations. Brother Paul marched his restored lamb away to be washed and made presentable before abbot and sheriff after supper. Aymer Bosiet, who had looked on with a certain malevolent satisfaction at someone else’s crisis and confusion as a relief from his own, detached himself moodily and went across the court to the guest hall. But Cadfael, suddenly moved to look back, missed the one figure he was seeking. Rafe of Coventry was no where to be seen, and now that Cadfael came to think of it, he must have taken himself off quietly some time before the intriguing scene ended. Because he had no interest in it, and was quite capable of detaching himself from a spectacle which held most men spellbound? Or because he had found something in it that interested him deeply and urgently?

  Fulke Astley was left hesitant, eye to eye with Hugh, and unsure whether it would serve him better to attempt explanations and justification, or to withdraw—if he was allowed to withdraw—in dignified silence, or at least with as few words as possible, and no concessions.

  ‘Tomorrow, then, my lord,’ he said, settling upon brevity, ‘I shall be at Cuthred’s hermitage as I have promised.’

  ‘Good! And you might do well,’ said Hugh, ‘to acquaint the hermit’s patroness with what’s mooted against him. She may wish to be present herself. As at this time, my lord, I have no more immediate need of you. And should I have need in the future, I know where to find you. You may have good reason to be glad that Richard slipped his collar. Mischief undone is best forgotten. Provided, of course, there’s no further mischief in contemplation.’

  Of that Fulke made the best he could. With a curt reverence to the abbot he turned to reclaim his horse, mounted, and rode out at the gatehouse at a deliberate and stately walking pace.

  Brother Cadfael, summoned to join the colloquy in the abbot’s lodging after supper, turned aside on his way, on a sudden impulse, and went into the stable yard. Richard’s black pony was contented and easy in his stall after his strenuous ride, groomed and watered and placidly feeding. But the big chestnut with the white blaze down his forehead was gone from his place, saddle and harness and all. Whatever the occasion for his silent departure, Rafe of Coventry had ridden forth on some local errand of his own.

  Richard sat on a low stool at the abbot’s knee, washed and brushed and meekly grateful to be home, and told his story, or as much of it as he felt justified in telling. He had an interested audience. There were present, besides the abbot, Hugh Beringar, Brother Cadfael at Hugh’s accepted request, and Brother Paul, still reluctant to let the returned prodigal out of his sight. Richard had tolerated, even enjoyed, being shaken, slapped, scrubbed and made much of, the whole chaotic process which had produced this neat, shining schoolboy for the abbot’s inspection. There were gaps in his story, and he knew they would be questioned, but Radulfus was of noble family, and would understand that a nobleman cannot betray those who have helped him, or even certain underlings who at the instance of their masters have injured him.

  ‘Would you know them again, the two who captured you and took you into Wroxeter?’ asked Hugh.

  Richard considered the tempting prospect of revenge on the strapping young fellow who had laughed at his struggles and hindered him at the ford, but rejected it reluctantly as unworthy of his nobility.

  ‘I couldn’t be sure of them. It was getting dark.’

  They did not press him. Instead, the abbot asked: ‘Had you help in escaping from Leighton? You could hardly have broken out on your own, or you would have done it earlier.’

  Answering that presented something of a problem. If he told the truth it would certainly do Hiltrude no harm here among his friends, but if ever it reached her father it could do her harm enough. Better stick to the story as she must have told it, that the door had been mistakenly left unbolted, and he had made his own way out. Cadfael observed the slight flush that mantled in the boy’s well-scrubbed cheeks as he recounted that part of his adventures, with notable brevity and modesty. If it had been true he would have been exulting in it.

  ‘He should have known what a slippery fish he had caught,’ said Hugh, smiling. ‘But you still have not told us why you rode out from the abbey in the first place, nor who told you that the hermit is not the priest he purports to be.’

  This was the crux, and Richard had been thinking about it with unaccustomed labour and pain while he submitted to Brother Paul’s affectionate homily on obedience and order, and the evil consequences to be expected from transgressing their rules. He looked up warily into the abbot’s face, shot an uneasy glance at Hugh, whose reactions as the secular authority were less calculable, and said earnestly: ‘Father, I said I would tell you, but I did not say I would tell any other. There is someone who might be harmed if I told what I know of him, and I know he has not deserved it. I can’t bring him into danger.’

  ‘I would not wish to make you break faith with any man,’ said Radulfus gravely. ‘Tomorrow I’ll hear your confession myself, and you shall tell me then, and rest happy that you’ve done right, and your confidence is sacred. Now you’d best get to your bed, for I fancy you need it. Take him away, Paul!’

  Richard made his ceremonial reverences, glad to have got off so lightly; but as he passed where Hugh sat he hesitated and stopped, plainly with something still on his mind.

  ‘My lord, you said everyone at Leighton said I had never been there, of course they’d be afraid to say anything else. But did Hiltrude say so?’

  Hugh could make connections perhaps faster than most men, but if he instantly made this one he gave no sign of it. With respectful gravity and a blank countenance he said: ‘That’s Astley’s daughter? I never spoke with her, she was not in the house.’


  Not there! So she did not have to lie. She must have slipped out discreetly as soon as her father was gone. Richard said a relieved and grateful goodnight, and went away to his bed with a lightened heart.

  ‘She let him out, of course,’ said Hugh as soon as the door had closed after the boy. ‘She was a victim no less than he. Now I begin to see a pattern. Richard is seized as he rides back through Eyton forest, and what is there in Eyton forest and along that path but Eilmund’s cottage and the hermitage? And to the hermitage we know he did not go. And who should walk into Shrewsbury about noon this day and send me off hotfoot to Leighton, which otherwise I should not have reached before tomorrow, but Eilmund’s girl? And where she got the news she never clearly said, but some passing villager had said he’d seen a boy there who might well be Richard. And Richard, more forthrightly, will not say why he went off there alone, nor who told him the hermit is no true priest. Father, it seems to me that someone—let’s not go so far as to name him!—has very good friends among our acquaintance. I hope they are as good judges! Well, tomorrow, at any rate, there’ll be no hunting. Richard is safely home with you. And to tell truth, I doubt the other quarry will ever be flushed out of cover. Tomorrow our morning business is laid down for us. Let’s first see that resolved.’

  As soon as Prime was over they mounted and rode, Abbot Radulfus, Hugh Beringar and Brother Cadfael, who in any case was bound for Eilmund’s cottage that day, to see how the forester was progressing. It was by no means the first time he had adjusted his legitimate visits to accommodate his reasoned curiosity. That he could count on Hugh to abet his plans was an added advantage, and an additional witness with a sharp eye for the infinitesimal changes by which the human countenance betrays itself might be invaluable in this encounter. The morning was clearer of mist than in recent days, there had arisen a steady, drying wind that was crisping the fallen leaves in the forest rides, and colouring in muted gold those that still hung on the trees. The first frost would set the crowns of the forest blazing in russets and browns and flame. Another week or two, thought Cadfael, and there’d be no shelter for Hyacinth in the trees when inconvenient visitors came to the cottage, even the oaks would be half-naked. But in a few more days, God willing, Aymer would have abandoned his revenge, cut his losses, and made off in haste to secure his gains at home. His father’s body was safely coffined, and though he had only two grooms with him, there was also Drogo’s good horse as a remount for a new master in a hurry, and he would find no difficulty in hiring litter bearers at every way-stage on his journey. He had already scoured the whole region without success, and showed distinct signs of fretting between two desired ends, of which surely the more profitable would win in the end. Hyacinth’s freedom might be nearer than he knew. And he had already served and deserved well, for who else could have got word to Richard that the hermit was not all he claimed to be? Hyacinth had travelled with him, known him well before he ever set foot in Buildwas. Hyacinth might well know things about his reverend master that were known to no one else.