The Hermit of Eyton Forest

by Ellis Peters

  Cadfael had intended to ride on to Eilmund’s cottage, but on impulse he changed his mind, for it seemed to him that after all he could not afford to miss whatever might follow when Cuthred’s body was brought into the court at the abbey, to the consternation of most, the relief, perhaps, of some, and the possible peril of one in particular. Instead of cutting through the forest rides, he mounted and rode back in haste towards Shrewsbury, to overtake the funeral procession.

  *

  They had a curious audience as soon as they entered the Foregate, and the camp-following of inquisitive boys and attendant dogs followed at their heels all along the highroad, and even the respectable citizens came after them at a more discreet distance, wary of abbot and sheriff but avid for information, and breeding rumours as fast as flies breed on summer middens. Even when the cortege turned in at the gatehouse the good folk from market and smithy and tavern gathered outside to peer expectantly within, and continued their speculations with relish.

  And there in the great court, as they carried one bier in from the world, was another funeral party busy assembling to leave. Drogo Bosiet’s sealed coffin was mounted on a low, light cart, hired in the town with its driver for this first day’s travelling, which would be on a good road. Warin stood holding two of the saddled horses, while the younger groom was busy adjusting a full saddle-roll to get the weight properly balanced before loading it. At sight of all this activity Cadfael drew a deep breath of gratitude, sensible that one danger, at least, was being lifted away even earlier than he had dared to hope. Aymer had finally made up his mind. He was bound for home, to make sure of his inheritance.

  The attendants on one death could not forbear from stopping what they were doing to stare at the attendants on the other. And Aymer, coming out from the guest hall with Brother Denis beside him to wish the departing train godspeed, halted at the top of the steps to take in the scene with surprise and sharp speculation, his eyes dwelling longest on the covered form and face. He came striding down to cross purposefully to where Hugh was just dismounting.

  “What’s this, my lord? Another death? Has your hunt brought down my quarry at last? But dead?” He hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry if the corpse was that of his lost villein. The money and favour Hyacinth’s skills brought in were valuable, but revenge would also be a satisfying gain, and just when he had despaired of winning either, and made up his mind to go home.

  Abbot Radulfus, too, had dismounted, and stood looking on with an uncommunicative face, for the two groups carried a curious and disturbing suggestion of a mirror image, gathered about the arriving and departing dead. The abbey grooms who had come to take the bridles of abbot and sheriff hung upon the fringes of the assembly, reluctant to move away.

  “No,” said Hugh, “this is no man of yours. If the boy we’ve been hunting is yours. Of him we’ve seen no sign, whether he is or no. You’re bound for home, then?”

  “I’ve wasted time and effort enough, I’ll waste no more, though I grudge letting him go free. Yes, we’re away now. I’m needed at home, there’s work waiting for me. Who is this one you’ve brought back?”

  “The hermit who was set up no long time ago in Eyton forest. Your father went to visit him,” said Hugh, “thinking the servant he kept might be the fellow you were looking for, but the youngster had already taken to his heels, so it’s never been put to the test.”

  “I remember, soothe lord abbot told me. So this is the man! I never went to him again, what use if the lad he kept was gone?” He looked curiously down at the shrouded figure. The bearers had laid down their burden, awaiting orders where to take the dead. Aymer stooped and turned back the brychan from Cuthred’s face. They had drawn back the wild fell of hair from his temples, and brushed down his bushy beard into order, and the full light of noon shone over the lean countenance, the deep-set eyes, the lofty lids a little bruised and bluish now, the long, straight, patrician nose and full lips within the dark beard. The glare of the half-open eyes was now veiled, the snarl on the drawn-back lips carefully smoothed out to restore his harsh comeliness. Aymer leaned closer, startled and disbelieving.

  “But I know this man! No, that’s to say too much, he never said his name. But I’ve seen him and talked with him. A hermit—he? I never saw sign of it then! He wore his hair trimmed Norman fashion, and had a short, clipped beard, not this untended bush, and he was well clothed in good riding gear, boots and all, not this drab habit and sandals. And he wore sword and dagger into the bargain,” said Aymer positively, “and as if he was well accustomed to the use of them, too.”

  Until he looked up again he was not fully aware of the significance of what he had said, but Hugh’s intent face and instant question made it plain he had touched on something more vital than he knew.

  “You are sure?” said Hugh.

  “Certain, my lord. It was only one night’s lodging, but I diced with him for the dinner, and watched my father play a game of chess with him. I’m certain!”

  “Where was this? And when?”

  “At Thame, when we were looking towards London for Brand. We lodged overnight with the white monks at their new abbey there. This man was there before us, we came well into the evening, and went on south next day. I can’t say the exact day, but it was towards the end of September.”

  “Then if you know him again,” said Hugh, “changed as his condition is, would your father also have recognised him at sight?”

  “Surely he would, my lord. His eyes were sharper than mine. He’d sat over a chessboard with the man, eye to eye. He’d know him again.”

  And so he had, thought Cadfael, when he went man-hunting to the cell in the forest, and came face to face with the hermit Cuthred who had been no hermit a month or so earlier. And he had not lived to return to the abbey and let out to any man what he knew. And what if he knew no great evil of this transformed being? He might still let fall to other ears the casual word that would mean more to them than ever it had to him, and bring to the cell in Eyton forest someone in search of more than a runaway villein, and worse, surely, than a spurious priest. But he had not lived to get further on his return journey than a close forest thicket, sufficiently far from the hermitage to remove suspicion from a local saint reputed never to leave his cell.

  The evidence of circumstances is not positive proof, yet Cadfael had no doubts left. There before them the coffined body and the new corpse rested for a few moments side by side, before Prior Robert directed the bearers to the mortuary chapel, and Aymer Bosiet covered Cuthred’s face again, and turned afresh to his own preparations for departure. His mind was on other things, why distract and detain him now? But Cadfael did suddenly take thought to ask one curious question.

  “What manner of horse was he riding when he halted overnight at Thame?”

  Aymer turned from fastening the straps of his saddlebags in detached surprise, opened his mouth to answer, and found himself at a loss, frowning thoughtfully over his recollections of that night.

  “He was there before us. There were two horses in the priory stables when we came. And he’d left before us next morning. But now you come to ask, when we got to horse, the same two beasts we saw there the night before were still in their stalls. That’s strange! What would such a well-found man, knightly by the look of him and his arms—what would he be doing without a horse?”

  “Ah, well, he may have stabled it somewhere else,” said Cadfael, abandoning the puzzle as trivial.

  But it was not trivial, it was the key to open a very strange door in the mind. There before so many eyes lay the slayer and the slain, side by side, justice already done.

  But who, then, had slain the slayer?

  *

  They were gone, all of them, Aymer on his father’s handsome light roan horse, Warin with the horse Aymer had ridden on the outward journey now on a leading rein, the young groom with the carter and the cart. After the first day-stages Aymer would probably be off at speed, leaving the grooms to bring the coffin after at their s
lower pace, and most likely sending other retainers back along the way to relieve them, once he reached home. In the mortuary chapel Cadfael had seen Cuthred’s body laid out in seemly fashion, hair and beard trimmed, not, perhaps, so closely as the knight at Thame had worn them, but enough to display, in the fixed and austere tranquillity of death, a face appropriate enough to a dignified religious. Unfair that a murderer should look as noble in death as any of the empress’s paladins.

  Hugh was closeted with the abbot, and as yet had said no word to Cadfael of what he made of Aymer’s witness, but by the very questions he had asked it was clear he had made the same connections Cadfael had made, and could not have failed to arrive at the same conclusion. He would speak of it first with Radulfus. My part now, thought Cadfael, is to bring Hyacinth out of hiding, and let him shake himself loose from all suspicion of wrongdoing. Barring, of course, the occasional theft to fill his belly while he lived wild, and a lie or two by way of preserving himself alive at all. And Hugh won’t grudge him those. And that should settle the matter of Cuthred’s ordination once for all, if there’s still any lingering question about it. A sudden conversion can turn a soldier into a hermit, yes, but it takes much longer than that to make a priest.

  He waited for Hugh in his workshop in the herb garden, where Hugh would certainly come looking for him as soon as he left the abbot. It was quiet and aromatic and homely within there, and Cadfael had been too much away from it of late. He would have to be thinking of replenishing his stocks of the regular winter needs very soon, before the coughs and colds began, and the elder joints started to creak and groan. Brother Winfrid could be trusted to take excellent care of all the work in the garden, the digging and weeding and planting, but here within he had much to learn. One more ride, thought Cadfael, to see how Eilmund does, and let Hyacinth know he can and should come forward and speak up for himself, and then I shall be glad to settle down to work here at home.

  Hugh came in through the gardens and sat down beside his friend with a brief, preoccupied smile, and was silent for some moments. “What I do not understand,” he said then, “is why? Whatever he was, whatever he has done, aforetime, here he seems to have lived blameless. What can there have been, perilous enough to make him want to stop Bosiet’s mouth? It may be a suspect thing to change one’s dress and appearance and way of life, but it is not a crime. What was there, more than that, to justify murder? What is there of that enormity, except murder itself?”

  “Ah!” said Cadfael with a relieved sigh. “Yes, I thought you had seen it all as I saw it. But no, I do not think it was murder he had to hide in the obscurity of a hermit’s gown and a forest cell. That was my first thought. But it is not so simple.”

  “As so often,” said Hugh with his sudden, crooked smile, “I think you know something that I do not. And what was that about his horse, down there in Thame? What has his horse to do with it?”

  “Not his horse, but the fact that he had none. What’s a soldier or a knight doing travelling on foot? But a pilgrim may, and never be noticed. But as to knowing something I would have told you long ago if I had been let—yes, Hugh, I do. I know where Hyacinth is. Against my will I promised to say nothing until Aymer Bosiet had given up the pursuit and taken himself off home. As now he has, and now the boy can come forward and speak for himself, as, trust me, he’s well able to do.”

  “So that’s it,” said Hugh, eyeing his friend without any great surprise. “Well, who can blame him for being wary, what does he know of me? And for all that I knew, he could well have been Bosiet’s murderer, we knew of no other with as good a cause. Now he need say no word on that score, the debt is known and paid. And as for his freedom, he need fear nothing from me on that head. I have enough to do without playing the errand boy for Northamptonshire. Bring him forth whenever you like, he may yet shed light on some things we do not know.”

  So Cadfael thought, too, reflecting how little Hyacinth had had to say about his relations with his sometime master. Candid enough, among friends, about his own vagabondage and the mischief done in Eilmund’s coppice, he had scrupulously refrained from casting any aspersions against Cuthred. But now that Cuthred was dead and known for a murderer Hyacinth might be willing to extend his candour, though surely he had known no great harm of his fellow traveller, and certainly nothing of murder.

  “Where is he?” asked Hugh. “Not far, I fancy, if it was he who got word to young Richard that he could safely go through that marriage service. Who would be more likely to know Cuthred for an impostor?”

  “No further,” said Cadfael, “than Eilmund’s cottage, and welcome there to father and daughter alike. And I’m bound there now to see how Eilmund’s faring. Shall I bring the boy back with me?”

  “Better than that,” said Hugh heartily, “I’ll ride with you. Better not hale him out of cover until I’ve called off the hunt by official order, and made it known he has nothing to answer, and is free to walk the town and look for work like any other man.”

  *

  In the stable yard, when he went to saddle up, Cadfael found the bright chestnut horse with the white brow standing like a glossy statue under his master’s affectionate hands, content and trusting after easy exercise, and being polished to a rippling copper sheen. Rafe of Coventry turned to see who came, and smiled the guarded, calm smile with which Cadfael was becoming familiar.

  “Bound out again, Brother? This must be a wearing day you’ve had.”

  “For all of us,” said Cadfael, hoisting down his saddle, “but we may hope the worst is over. And you? Have you prospered in your errand?”

  “Well, I thank you! Very well! Tomorrow morning, after Prime,” he said, turning to face Cadfael fully, and his voice as always measured and composed, “I shall be leaving. I have already told Brother Denis so.”

  Cadfael went on with his preparations for a minute or two in silence. Converse with Rafe of Coventry found silences acceptable. “If you’ll be riding far the first day,” he said then simply, “I think you may need my services before you set out. He drew blood,” he said briefly, by way of adequate explanation. And when Rafe was slow to answer: “A part of my function is to tend illness and injury. There is no seal of confession in my art, but there is a decent reticence.”

  “I have bled before,” said Rafe, but he smiled, a degree beyond his common smile.

  “As you choose. But I am here. If you need me, come to me. It is not wise to neglect a wound, nor to try it too far in the saddle.” He tested the girth, and gathered the reins to mount. The horse sidled and shifted playfully, eager for action.

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” said Rafe, “and I thank you. You will not stop me leaving,” he said in amiable but solemn warning.

  “Have I tried?” said Cadfael, and swung himself up into the saddle and rode out into the court.

  *

  “I never told all the truth,” said Hyacinth, seated beside the hearth in Eilmund’s cottage, with the firelight like a copper gloss on cheekbones and jaw and brow, “not even here to Annet. As to myself I did, she knows the worst I could tell. But not of Cuthred. I knew he was a rogue and a vagabond, but so was I, and I knew nothing worse of him than that, so I kept my mouth shut. One rogue in hiding doesn’t betray another. But now you tell me he’s a murderer. And dead!”

  “And out of further harm,” said Hugh reasonably, “at least in this world. I need to know all you can tell. Where did you join fortunes with him?”

  “At Northampton, at the Cluniac priory, as I told Annet and Eilmund, though not quite as I told it. He was no habited pilgrim then, he was in good dark clothes, with cloak and capuchon, and armed, though he kept his sword out of sight. It was almost by chance we got into talk, or I thought so. But I fancy he guessed I was running from something, and he made no secret he was, too, and suggested we might be safer and pass unnoticed together. We were both heading north and west. The pilgrim was his notion, he had the face and bearing for it. Well, you’ve seen him, you know. I stole the habit for hi
m from the priory store. The scallop shell came easy. The medal of Saint James he had—it may even have been his by right, who knows? By the time we got to Buildwas he had his part by rote, and his hair and beard were well grown. And he came very apt to the dame at Eaton, for her own ends. Oh, she knew no worse of him than that he was willing to earn his keep with her. He said he was a priest, and she believed it. I knew he was none, he owned as much when we were alone. He laughed about it. But he had the gift of tongues, he could carry it off. She gave him the hermitage, so close and handy to the abbey’s woods, to do all the mischief he could in the abbot’s despite. I said that was my part, and he knew nothing of it, but I lied for him. He’d never blabbed on me, no more would I on him.”

  “He abandoned you,” said Hugh flatly, “as soon as he knew the hunt was up for you. You need not scruple to speak out on his account.”

  “Well—I live, and he’s dead,” said Hyacinth. “No call now for me to bear him any grudge. You know about Richard? I’d talked with him only once, but he took me so for a true man he’d hear no wrong of me, nor have me run to earth and dragged back into villeinage. That set me up again in my own respect. I never knew till afterwards that he’d been seized like that on his way back, but I was forced to run or hide, and chose to hide till I could make shift to find him. If it hadn’t been for Eilmund’s goodness to me, and after I’d been a thorn in his flesh, too, your men might have had me a dozen times over. But now you know I never laid hand on Bosiet. And Eilmund and Annet can tell you I’ve not been a step away from here since I came back from Leighton. What can have happened to Cuthred I know no more than you.”

  “Less, I daresay,” said Hugh mildly, and looked across the fire at Cadfael, smiling. “Well, after all you may call yourself a lucky lad. From tomorrow you’ll be in no peril at the hands of any of my people, you can be off into the town and find yourself a master. And which of your names do you choose to keep for a new life? Best have but one, that we may all know with whom we have to deal.”