Hermit of Eyton Forest (7 page)

“Some
of the Eaton men were close, clearing a drainage ditch. They’re carrying him
in.” They were approaching the door by then, coming as fast as they could. She
went out to meet them, with Hyacinth at her elbow. It seemed that he had
something more, something different to say to her, and for the moment had lost
his opportunity, for he hovered silently but purposefully on the edge of the
scurry of activity, as Eilmund was carried into the house and laid on the
couch, and stripped of his wet boots and hose, very carefully but to a muffled
accompaniment of groans and curses. His left leg was misshapen below the knee,
but not so grossly that the bone had torn through the flesh. “Above an hour lying
there in the brook,” he got out, between gritting his teeth on the pain as they
handled him, “and if it hadn’t been for this young fellow I should have been
there yet, for I couldn’t shift the weight, and there was no one within call.
God’s truth, there’s more muscle in the lad than you’d believe. You should have
seen him heft that tree off me.” Very strangely, Hyacinth’s spare, smooth
cheeks flushed red beneath their dark gold sheen. It was a face certainly not
given to blushing, but it had not lost the ability. He said with some
constraint: “Is there anything more I could be doing for you? I would, gladly!
You’ll be needing a skilled hand to set that bone. I’m no use there, but make
use of me if you need an errand run. That’s my calling, that I can do.”

The
girl turned for an instant from the bed, her blue eyes wide and shining on his
face. “Why, so you can, if you’ll be so good and add to our debt. Will you send
to the abbey, and ask for Brother Cadfael to come?”

“I
will well!” said Hyacinth, as heartily as if she had made him a most acceptable
gift. But as she turned back from him he hesitated, and caught her by the
sleeve for an instant, and breathed into her ear urgently: “I must talk to
you—alone, later, when he’s cared for and resting easy.” And before she could
say yes or no, though her eyes certainly were not refusing him, he was off and
away through the trees, on the long run back to Shrewsbury.

Chapter Four

HUGH
CAME LOOKING for Brother Cadfael in mid-afternoon, with the first glimmers of
news that had found their way out of Oxford since the siege began. “Robert of
Gloucester is back in England,” he said. “I have it from an armourer who took
thought in time to get out of the city. A few were lucky and took warning. He
says Robert has landed at Wareham in spite of the king’s garrison, brought in
all his ships safely and taken the town. Not the castle, though, not yet, but
he’s settled down to siege. He got precious little out of Geoffrey, maybe a
handful of knights, no more.”

“If
he’s safe ashore and holds the town,” said Cadfael reasonably, “what does he
want with the castle? I should have thought he’d be hotfoot for Oxford to hale
his sister out of the trap.”

“He’d
rather lure Stephen to come to him, and draw him off from his own siege. My man
says the castle at Wareham’s none too well garrisoned, and they’ve come to a
truce agreement, and sent to the king to relieve them by a fixed date, a
know-all, but truly well informed, though even he doesn’t know the day
appointed—or if he fails them they’ll surrender. That suits Robert. He knows
it’s seldom any great feat to lure Stephen off a scent, but I fancy he’ll hold
fast this time. When will he get such a chance again? Even he can’t throw it
away, surely.”

“There’s
no end to the follies any man can commit,” said Cadfael tolerantly. “To give
him his due, most of his idiocies are generous, which is more than can be said
for the lady. But I could wish this siege at Oxford might be the end of it. If
he does take castle and empress and all, she’ll be safe enough of life and limb
with him, it’s rather he who may be in danger. What else is new from the
south?”

“There’s
a tale he tells of a horse found straying not far from the city, in the woods
close to the road to Wallingford. Some time ago, this was, about the time all
roads out of Oxford were closed, and the town on fire. A horse dragging a
blood-stained saddle, and saddlebags slit open and emptied. A groom who’d
slipped out of the town before the ring closed recognised horse and harness as
belonging to one Renaud Bourchier, a knight in the empress’s service, and close
in her confidence, too. My man says it’s known she sent him out of the garrison
to try and break through the king’s lines and carry a message to Wallingford
for her.”

Cadfael
ceased to ply the hoe he was drawing leisurely between his herb beds, and
turned his whole attention upon his friend. “To Brian FitzCount, you mean?” The
lord of Wallingford was the empress’s most faithful adherent arid companion,
next only to the earl, her brother, and had held his castle for her, the most
easterly and exposed outpost of her territory, through campaign after campaign
and through good fortune and bad, indomitably loyal. “How comes it he’s not
with her in Oxford? He hardly ever leaves her side, or so they say.”

“The
king moved so much faster than anyone thought for. And now he’s cut off from
her. Moreover, she needs him in Wallingford, for if that’s ever lost she has
nothing left but an isolated holding in the west country, and no way out
towards London. She may well have sent out to him at the last moment, in so
desperate a situation as she’s in now. And rumour down there says, it seems,
that Bouchier was carrying treasure to him, less in coin than in jewels. It may
well be so, for he needs to pay his men. Loyal for love though they may be,
they still have to live and eat, and he’s beggared himself already in her
service.”

“There’s
been talk, this autumn,” said Cadfael, thoughtfully frowning, “that Bishop
Henry of Winchester has been busy trying to lure away Brian to the king’s side.
Bishop Henry has money enough to buy whoever’s for sale, but I doubt if even he
could bid high enough to move FitzCount. All this time the man has shown as
incorruptible. She had no need to try and outbid her enemies for Brian.”

“None.
But she may well have thought, when the king’s host closed round her, to send
him an earnest of the value she sets on him, while the way was still open, or
might at least be attempted by a single brave man. At such a pass, it may even
have seemed to her the last chance for such a word ever to pass between them.”

Cadfael
thought on that, and acknowledged its truth. King Stephen would never be a
threat to his cousin’s life, however bitter their rivalry had been, but if once
she was made captive he would be forced to hold her in close ward for his
crown’s sake. Nor was she likely ever to relinquish her claim, even in prison,
and agree to terms that would lightly release her. Friends and allies thus
parted might, in very truth, never see each other again. “And a single brave man
did attempt it,” reflected Cadfael soberly. “And his horse found straying, his
harness awry, his saddlebags emptied, and blood on saddle and saddlecloth. So
where is Renaud Bourchier? Murdered for what he carried, and buried somewhere
in the woods or slung into the river?”

“What
else can a man think? They have not found his body yet. Round Oxford men have
other things to do this autumn besides scour the woods for a dead man. There
are dead men enough to bury after the looting and burning of Oxford town,” said
Hugh with dry bitterness, almost resigned to the random slaughters of this
capricious civil war.

“I
wonder how many within the castle knew of his errand? She would hardly blazon
abroad her intent, but someone surely got wind of it.”

“So
it seems, and made very ill use of what he knew.” Hugh shook himself, heaving
off from his shoulders the distant evils that were out of his writ. “Thanks be
to God, I am not sheriff of Oxfordshire! Our troubles here are mild enough, a
little family bickering that leads to blows now and then, a bit of thieving,
the customary poaching in season. Oh, and of course the bewitchment that seems
to have fallen on your woodland of Eyton.” Cadfael had told him what the abbot,
perhaps, had not thought important enough to tell, that Dionisia had somehow
coaxed her hermit into her quarrel, and that good man had surely taken very
seriously her impersonation of a grieving grandam cruelly deprived of the
society of her only grandhild. “And he fears worse to come, does he? I wonder
what the next news from Eyton will be?”

As
it so happened the next news from Eyton was just hurrying towards them round
the corner of the tall box hedge, borne by a novice despatched in haste by
Prior Robert from the gatehouse. He came at a run, the skirts of his habit
billowing, and pulled up with just enough breath to get out his message without
waiting to be asked.

“Brother
Cadfael, you’re wanted urgently. The hermit’s boy’s come back to say you’re
needed at Eilmund’s assart, and Father Abbot says take a horse and go quickly,
and bring him back word how the forester does. There’s been another landslip,
and a tree came down on him. His leg’s broken.” They offered Hyacinth rest and
a good meal for his trouble, but he would not stay. As long as he could hold
the pace he clung by Cadfael’s stirrup leather and ran with him, and even when
he was forced to slacken and let Cadfael ride on before at his best speed, the
youth trotted doggedly and steadily behind, bent on getting back to the
woodland cottage, it seemed, rather than to his master’s cell. He had been a
good friend to Eilmund, Cadfael reflected, but he might come in for a lashing
with tongue or rod when he at last returned to his sworn duty. Though Cadfael
could not, on consideration, picture that wild, unchancy creature submitting
tamely to reproof, much less to punishment. It was about the hour for Vespers
when Cadfael dismounted within the low pale of Eilmund’s garden, and the girl
flung open the door and came out eagerly to meet him.

“Brother,
I hardly expected you for a while yet. Cuthred’s boy must have run like the
wind, and all that way! And after he’d soaked himself in the brook getting my
father clear! We’ve had good cause to be glad of him and his master this day,
there might have been no one else by for hours.”

“How
is he?” asked Cadfael, unslinging his scrip and making for the house. “His
leg’s broken below the knee. I’ve made him lie still, and packed it round as
well as I could, but it needs your hand to set it. And he lay half in the brook
a long time before the young man found him, I fear he’s taken a chill.” Eilmund
lay well covered, and by now grimly reconciled to his helplessness. He
submitted stoically to Cadfael’s handling, and gritted his teeth and made no
other sound as his leg was straightened and the fractured ends of bone brought
into line.

“You
might have come off worse,” said Cadfael, relieved. “A good clean break, and
small damage to the flesh, though it’s a pity they had to move you.”

“I
might have drowned else,” growled Eilmund, “the brook was building. And you’d
best tell the lord abbot to get men out here and shift the tree, before we have
a lake there again.”

“I
will, I will! Now, hold fast! I don’t want to leave you with one leg shorter
than the other.” By heel and instep he drew out the broken leg steadily to
match its fellow. “Now, Annet, your hands where mine are, and hold it so.” She
had not wasted her time while waiting, but had hunted out straight spars of
wood from Eilmund’s store, and had ready sheep’s wool for padding, and rolled
linen for bindings. Between them they completed the work neatly, and Eilmund
lay back on his brychan and heaved a great breath. His face, weatherbeaten
always, nonetheless had a fierce flush over the cheekbones. Cadfael was not
quite easy about it.

“Now
if you can rest and sleep, so much the better. Leave the lord abbot, and the
tree, and everything else that needs to be dealt with here, to me, I’ll see it
cared for. I’ll make you a draught that will ease the pain and help you to
sleep.” He mixed it and administered it to Eilmund’s scornful denial of the
need, but it went down without protest nonetheless. “And sleep he will,” said
Cadfael to the girl, as they withdrew into the outer room. “But make sure he
keeps warm and covered through the night, for there may be a slight fever if
he’s taken cold. I’ll make certain I get leave to go back and forth for a day
or two, till I see all’s well. If he gives you a hard time, bear with him, it
will mean he’s taken no great harm.” She laughed softly, undisturbed. “Oh, he’s
mild as milk for me. He growls, but never bites. I know how to manage him.”

It
was already beginning to be twilight when she opened the house door. The sky
above was still faintly golden with the moist, mysterious afterglow, dripping
light between the dark branches of the trees that surrounded the garden. And
there in the turf by the gate Hyacinth was sitting motionless, waiting with the
timeless patience of the tree against which his straight, supple back was
braced. Even so his stillness had the suggestion of a wild thing in ambush. Or
perhaps, thought Cadfael, changing his mind, of a hunted wild thing trusting to
silence and stillness to be invisible to the hunter. As soon as he saw the door
open he was on his feet in a single lissome movement, though he did not come
within the pale.

Twilight
or no, Cadfael saw the glance that locked and held fast between the youth and
the girl. Hyacinth’s face was still and mute as bronze, but a gleam of the
fading light caught the amber brilliance of his eyes, fierce and secret as a
cat’s, and a sudden quickening and darkening in their depths that was reflected
in the flush and brightness in Annet’s startled countenance. It was no great
surprise. The girl was pretty, and the boy undoubtedly attractive, all the more
because he had been of invaluable service to her father. And it was natural and
human, that that circumstance should endear father and daughter to him, no less
than him to them. Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of
having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them. I’ll
be on my way, then,” said Cadfael to the unregarding air, and mounted softly,
not to break the spell that held them still. But from the shelter of the trees
he looked back, and saw them standing just as he had left them, and heard the
boy’s voice clear and solemn in the silence of the dusk, saying: “I must speak
to you!”