Hermit of Eyton Forest (3 page)

It
took a few moments to assimilate this news, and relate it to the boy’s entry
into the abbey school when he was barely five years old. The manors of Leighton
and Wroxeter lay one on either side of Eaton, and might well be a tempting
prospect, but plainly Richard Ludel had not concurred in his mother’s ambitious
plans for her grandson, since he had taken steps to place the boy out of the
lady’s reach, and a year later had made Abbot Radulfus Richard’s guardian,
should he himself have to relinquish the charge too soon. Father Abbot had
better know what’s in the wind, thought Brother Paul. For of such a misuse of
his ward, thus almost in infancy, he would certainly not approve.

Very
warily he said, fronting the boy’s unwavering stare with a grave face: 
“Your father said nothing of what his plans for you might be, some day when you
are fully grown. Such matters must wait their proper time, and that is not yet.
You need not trouble your head about any such match for years yet. You are in
Father Abbot’s charge, and he will do what is best for you.” And he added
cautiously, giving way to natural human curiosity: “Do you know this child—this
neighbour’s daughter?”

“She
isn’t a child,” Richard stated scornfully. “She’s quite old. She was betrothed
once, but her bridegroom died. My grandmother was pleased, because after
waiting some years for him, Hiltrude wouldn’t have many suitors, not being even
pretty, so she would be left for me.”

Brother
Paul’s blood chilled at the implications. “Quite old” probably meant no more
than a few years past twenty, but even that was an unacceptable difference.
Such marriages, of course, were a commonplace, where there was property and
land to be won, but they were certainly not to be encouraged. Abbot Radulfus
had long had qualms of conscience about accepting infants committed by their
fathers to the cloister, and had resolved to admit no more boys until they were
of an age to make the choice for themselves. He would certainly look no more
favourably on committing a child to the equally grave and binding discipline of
matrimony. “Well, you may put all such matters out of your mind,” he said very
firmly. “Your only concern now and for some years to come must be with your
lessons and the pastimes proper to your years. Now you may go back to your
fellows, if you wish, or stay here quietly for a while, as you prefer.” Richard
slid out of the supporting arm readily and stood up sturdily from the bench,
willing to face the world and his curious fellow pupils at once, and seeing no
reason why he should shun the meeting even for a moment. He had yet to
comprehend the thing that had happened to him. The fact he could grasp, the
implications were slow to reach beyond his intelligence into his heart. “If
there is anything more you wish to ask,” said Brother Paul, eyeing him
anxiously, “or if you feel the need for comfort or counsel, come back to me,
and we’ll go to Father Abbot. He is wiser than I, and abler to help you through
this time.”

So
he might be, but a boy in school was hardly likely to submit himself
voluntarily to an interview with so awesome a personage. Richard’s solemn face
had settled into the brooding frown of one making his way through unfamiliar
and thorny paths. He made his parting reverence and went out briskly enough, and
Brother Paul, having watched him out of sight from the window, and seen no
signs of imminent distress, went to report to the abbot what Dame Dionisia
Ludel was said to be planning for her grandson.

Radulfus
heard him out with alert attention and a thoughtful frown. To unite Eaton with
both its neighbouring manors was an understandable ambition. The resulting
property would be a power in the shire, and no doubt the formidable lady
considered herself more than capable of ruling it, over the heads of bride, bride’s
father and infant bridegroom. Land greed was a strong driving force, and
children were possessions expendable for so desirable a profit. “But we trouble
needlessly,” said Radulfus, shaking the matter resolutely from his shoulders.
“The boy is in my care, and here he stays. Whatever she may intend, she will
not be able to touch him. We can forget the matter. She is no threat to Richard
or to us.”

Wise
as he might be, this was one occasion when Abbot Radulfus was to find his
predictions going far astray.

Chapter Two

THEY
WERE ALL AT CHAPTER, on the twentieth morning of October, when the steward of
the manor of Eaton presented himself, requesting a hearing with a message from
his mistress.

John
of Longwood was a burly, bearded man of fifty, with a balding crown and neat,
deliberate movements. He made a respectful obeisance to the abbot, and
delivered his errand bluntly and practically, as one performing a duty but
without committing himself to approval or disapproval. “My lord, Dame Dionisia
Ludel sends me to you with her devout greetings, and asks that you will send
back to her, in my charge, her grandson Richard, to take up his rightful place
as lord of the manor of Eaton in his father’s room.” Abbot Radulfus leaned back
in his stall and regarded the messenger with an impassive face. “Certainly
Richard shall attend his father’s funeral. When is that to be?”

“Tomorrow,
my lord, before High Mass. But that is not my mistress’s meaning. She wants the
young lord to leave his studies here and come to take his proper place as lord
of Eaton. I’m to say that Dame Dionisia feels herself to be the proper person
to have charge of him, now that he’s come into his inheritance, as she’s
assured he shall do, without delay or hindrance. I have orders to bring him
back with me.”

“I
fear, master steward,” said the abbot with deliberation, “that you may not be
able to carry out your orders. Richard Ludel committed the care of his son to
me, should he himself die before the boy came to manhood. It was his wish that
his son should be properly educated, the better to manage his estate when he
came to inherit. I intend to fulfil what I undertook. Richard remains in my
care until he comes of age and takes control of his own affairs. Until which
time, I am sure, you will serve him as well as you have served his father, and
keep his lands in good heart.”

“Very
surely I will, my lord,” said John of Longwood, with more warmth than he had
shown in delivering his mistress’s message. “My lord Richard has left all to me
since Lincoln, and he never had cause to find fault, and neither shall his son
ever be the loser by me. On that you may rely.”

“So
I do. And therefore we may continue here with easy minds, and take as good care
of Richard’s schooling and wellbeing as you do of his estates.”

“And
what reply am I to take back to Dame Dionisia?” asked John, without any
apparent disappointment or reluctance.

“Say
to your lady that I greet her reverently in Christ, and that Richard shall come
tomorrow, as is due, properly escorted,” said the abbot with a slightly
admonitory emphasis, “but that I have his father’s sacred charge to hold him in
wardship myself until he is a man, and by his father’s wishes I shall abide.”

“I
will say so, my lord,” said John with a straight, wide stare and a deep
reverence, and walked jauntily out of the chapterhouse. Brother Cadfael and
Brother Edmund the infirmarer emerged into the great court just in time to see
the messenger from Eaton mount his stocky Welsh cob at the gatehouse and ride
unhurriedly out into the Foregate. “There goes a man, unless I’m much mistaken,”
remarked Brother Cadfael sagely, “no way seriously displeased at taking back a
flat refusal. Nor at all afraid of delivering it. A man might almost think
he’ll savour the moment.”

“He
is not dependent on the dame’s good will,” said Brother Edmund. “Only the
sheriff as overlord can threaten his tenure, until the boy is his own master,
and John knows his worth. And so does she, for that matter, having a shrewd
head and proper appreciation of good management. For the sake of peace he’ll do
her bidding, he does not have to relish the task, only to keep his mouth shut.”
And John of Longwood was a man of few words at the best of times, it would
probably be no hardship to him to contain his dissent and keep a wooden face.
“But this will not be the end of it,” Cadfael warned. “If she has a greedy eye
on Wroxeter and Leighton she’ll not give up so easily, and the boy’s her only
means of getting her hands on them. We shall yet hear more from Dame Dionisia
Ludel.”

Abbot
Radulfus had taken the warning seriously. Young Richard was accompanied to
Eaton by Brother Paul, Brother Anselm and Brother Cadfael, a bodyguard stout
enough to fend off even an attempt at abduction by force, which was unlikely in
the extreme. Far more probable that the lady would try using the fond persuasions
of affection and the ties of blood to work upon the boy with tears and
blandishments, and turn him into a homesick ally in the enemy camp. If she had
any such ideas, Cadfael reflected, studying Richard’s face along the way, she
was under-estimating the innocent shrewdness of children. The boy was quite
capable of weighing up his own interests and making the most of what advantages
he had. He was happy enough at school, he had companions of his own age, he
would not lightly abandon a known and pleasant life for one as yet strange,
devoid of brothers, and threatened with a bride already old in his eyes. No
doubt he valued and longed for his inheritance, but his it was, and safe, and
whether he stayed at school or came home, he would not yet be allowed to rule
it as he wished. No, it would take more than grandmotherly tears and embraces
to secure Richard’s alliance, especially tears and embraces from a source never
before known to be demonstratively fond.

It
was a matter of seven miles or more from the abbey to the manor of Eaton, and
for the honour and dignity of the monastery of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in
attendance on so solemn an occasion, they were sent forth mounted. Dame
Dionisia had sent a groom with a stout Welsh pony for her grandson, perhaps as
a first move in a campaign to enlist him as her ally, and the gift had been
received with greedy pleasure, but it would not therefore necessarily produce a
return in kind. A gift is a gift, and children are shrewd enough, and have a
sharp enough perception of the motives of their elders, to take what is offered
unsolicited, without the least intention of paying for it in the fashion
expected of them. Richard sat his new pony proudly and happily, and in the
fine, dewy autumn morning and the pleasure of being loosed from school for the
day, almost forgot the sombre reason for the ride. The groom, a long-legged boy
of sixteen, loped cheerfully beside him, and led the pony as they splashed
through the ford at Wroxeter, where centuries back the Romans had crossed the
Severn before them. Nothing remained of their sojourn now but a gaunt, broken
wall standing russet against the green fields, and a scattering of stones long
ago plundered by the villagers for their own building purposes. In the place of
what some said had been a city and a fortress there was now a flourishing manor
blessed with fat, productive land, and a prosperous church that maintained four
canons. Cadfael viewed it with some interest as they passed, for this was one
of the two manors which Dame Dionisia hoped to secure to the Ludel estate by
marrying off Richard to the girl Hiltrude Astley. So fine a property was
certainly tempting. All this stretch of country on the northern side of the
river extended before them in rich water meadows and undulating fields, rising
here and there into a gentle hill, and starred with clusters of trees just
melting into the first gold of their autumn foliage. The land rose on the
skyline into the forested ridge of the Wrekin, a great heaving fleece of
woodland that spread downhill to the Severn, and cast a great tress of its dark
mane across Ludel land and into the abbey’s woods of Eyton-by-Severn. There was
barely a mile between the grange of Eyton, close beside the river, and Richard
Ludel’s manor house at Eaton. The very names sprang from the same root, though
time had prised them apart, and the Norman passion for order and formulation
had fixed and ratified the differences. As they rode nearer, their view of the
long hog-back of forest changed and foreshortened. By the time they reached the
manor they were viewing it from its end, and the hill had grown into an abrupt
mountain, with a few sheer faces of rock just breaking the dark fell of the
trees near the summit. The village sat serenely in the meadows, just short of
the foothills, the manor within its long stockade raised over an undercroft,
and the small church close beside it. Originally it had been a dependent chapel
of the church at its neighbour Leighton, downriver by a couple of miles.

They
dismounted within the stockade, and Brother Paul took Richard firmly by the
hand as soon as the boy’s foot touched ground, as Dame Dionisia came sweeping
down the steps from the hall to meet them, advanced with authority upon her
grandson, and stooped to kiss him. Richard lifted his face somewhat warily, and
submitted to the salute, but he kept fast hold of Paul’s hand. With one power
bidding for his custody he knew where he stood, with the other he could not be
sure of his standing.

Cadfael
eyed the lady with interest, for though her reputation was known to him, he had
never before been in her presence. Dionisia was tall and erect, certainly no
more than fifty-five years old, and in vigorous health. She was, moreover, a
handsome woman, if in a somewhat daunting fashion, with sharp, clear features
and cool grey eyes. But their coolness showed one warning flash of fire as they
swept over Richard’s escort, recording the strength of the enemy. The household
had come out at her back, the parish priest was at her side. There would be no
engagement here. Later, perhaps, when Richard Ludel was safely entombed, and
she could open the house in funeral hospitality, she might make a first move.
The heir could hardly be kept from his grandmother’s society on this day of all
days.