IT WAS ON THE EIGHTEENTH DAY of October of that year 1142 that Richard Ludel, hereditary tenant of the manor of Eaton, died of a debilitating weakness, left after wounds received at the battle of Lincoln, in the service of King Stephen. The news was duly brought to Hugh Beringar in Shrewsbury castle, since Eaton was one of the many manors in the shire which had been expropriated from William Fitz Alan, after that powerful nobleman took arms on the wrong side in the struggle for the throne, held Shrewsbury for the Empress Maud, and took to flight when Stephen besieged and captured the town. His wide lands, forfeited to the crown, had been placed in the sheriff’s care as overlord, but their tenants of long standing had been left undisturbed, once it was clear that they had wisely accepted the judgement of battle, and pledged their allegiance to the king. Ludel, indeed, had done more than declare his loyalty, he had proved it in arms at Lincoln, and now, it seemed, paid a high price for his fealty, for he was no more than thirty-five years old at his death. Hugh received the news with the mild regret natural to one who had barely known the man, and whose duties were unlikely to be complicated by any closer contact with the death. There was an heir, and no second son to cloud the issue of inheritance, certainly no need to interfere with the smooth succession. The Ludels were Stephen’s men, and loyal, even if the new incumbent was hardly likely to take arms for his king for many years to come, being, Hugh recalled, about ten years old. The boy was in school at the abbey, placed there by his father when the mother died, most likely, so rumour said, to get him out of the hands of a domineering grandmother, rather than simply to ensure that he learned his letters.

It seemed, therefore, that the abbey, if not the castle, had some unenviable responsibility in the matter, for someone would have to tell young Richard that his father was dead. The funeral rites would not fall to the abbey, Eaton having its own church and parish priest, but the custody of the heir was a matter of importance. And as for me, thought Hugh, I had better make certain how competent a steward Ludel has left to manage the boy’s estate, while he’s not yet of age to manage it himself.

“You have not taken this word to the lord abbot yet?” he asked the groom who had brought the message.

“No, my lord, I came first to you.”

“And have you orders from the lady to speak with the heir himself?”

“No, my lord, and would as soon leave that to those who have the daily care of him.”

“You may well be right there,” Hugh agreed. “I’ll go myself and speak with Abbot Radulfus. He’ll know best how to deal. As to the succession, Dame Dionisia need have no concern, the boy’s title is secure enough.” In times full of trouble, with cousins contending bitterly for the throne, and opportunist lords changing their coats according to the pendulum fortunes of this desultory war, Hugh was only too glad to be guardian of a shire which had changed hands but once, and settled down doggedly thereafter to keep King Stephen’s title unchallenged and the tide of unrest at bay from its borders, whether the threat came from the empress’s forces, the unpredictable cantrips of the wild Welshmen of Powys to the west, or the calculating ambition of the earl of Chester in the north. Hugh had balanced his relationships with all these perilous neighbours for some years now with fair success, it would have been folly to consider handing over Eaton to another tenant, whatever the possible drawbacks of allowing the succession to pass unbroken to a child. Why upset a family which had remained submissive and loyal, and dug in its heels sturdily to await events when its overlord fled to France? Recent rumour had it that William Fitz Alan was back in England, and had joined the empress in Oxford, and the sense of his presence, even at that distance, might stir older loyalties among his former tenants, but that was a risk to be met when it showed signs of arising. To give Eaton to another tenant might well be to rouse the old allegiance needlessly from its prudent slumber. No, Ludel’s son should have his rights. But it would be well to have a look at the steward, and make sure he could be trusted, both to keep to his late lord’s policies and to take good care of his new lord’s interests and lands.

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.”

EILMUND, THE FORESTER OF EYTON, came now and then to chapter at the abbey to report on work done, or on any difficulties he might have encountered, and extra help he might need. It was not often he had anything but placid progress to report, but in the second week of November he came one morning with a puzzled frown fixed on his brow, and a glum face. It seemed that a curious blight of misfortune had settled upon his woodland.

Eilmund was a thickset, dark, shaggy man past forty, very powerful of body, and sharp enough of mind. He stood squarely in the midst at chapter, solidly braced on his sturdy legs like a wrestler confronting his opponent, and made few words of what he had to tell.

“My lord abbot, there are things happening in my charge that I cannot fathom. A week ago, in that great rainstorm we had, the brook that runs between our coppice and the open forest washed down some loose bushes, and built up such a dam that it overflowed and changed its course, and flooded my newest planting. And no sooner had I cleared the block than I found the flood-water had undercut part of the bank of my ditch, a small way upstream, and the fall of soil had bridged the ditch. By the time I found it the deer had got into the coppice. They’ve eaten off all the young growth from the plot we cropped two years ago. I doubt some of the trees may die, and all will be held back a couple more years at least before they get their growth. It spoils my planning,” complained Eilmund, outraged for the ruin of his cycle of culling, “besides the present loss.”

Cadfael knew the place, Eilmund’s pride, the farmed part of Eyton forest, as neat and well-ditched a coppice as any in the shire, where the regular cutting of six- or seven-year-old wood let in the light at every cropping, so that the wealth of ground cover and wild flowers was always rich and varied. Some trees, like ash, spring anew from the stool of the original trunk, just below the cut. Some, like elm or aspen, from below the ground all round the stump. Some of the stools in Eilmund’s care, several times cropped afresh, had grown into groves of their own, their open centres two good paces across. No grave natural disaster had ever before upset his pride in his skills. No wonder he was so deeply aggrieved. And the loss to the abbey was itself serious, for coppice wood for fuel, charcoal, hafts of tools, carpentry and all manner of uses brought in good income.

“Nor is that the end of it,” went on Eilmund grimly, “for yesterday when I made my rounds on the other side of the copse, where the ditch is dry but deep enough and the bank steep, what should have happened but the sheep from Eaton had broke out of their field by a loose pale, just where Eaton ground touches ours, and sheep, as you know, my lord, make nothing of a bank that will keep out deer, and there’s nothing they like better for grazing than the first tender seedlings of ash. They’ve made short work of much of the new growth before I could get them out. And neither I nor John of Longwood can tell how they got through so narrow a gap, but you know if the matron ewe takes a notion into her head there’s no stopping her, and the others will follow. It seems to me my forest is bewitched.”

“Far more like,” suggested Prior Robert, looking severely down his long nose, “that there has been plain human negligence, either on your part or your neighbour’s.”

“Father Prior,” said Eilmund, with the bluntness of one who knows his value, and knows that it is equally well known to the only superior he needs to satisfy here, “in all my years in the abbey’s service there has never yet been complaint of my work. I have made my rounds daily, yes, and often nightly, too, but I cannot command the rain not to fall, nor can I be everywhere at once. Such a spate of misfortunes in so short a time I’ve never before known. Nor can I blame John of Longwood, who has always been as good a neighbour as any man needs.”

“That is the truth,” said Abbot Radulfus with authority. “We have had cause to be thankful for his good will, and do not doubt it now. Nor do I question your skill and devotion. There has never been need before, and I see none now. Reverses are sent to us so that we may overcome them, and no man can presume to escape such testings for ever. The loss can be borne. Do what you can, Master Eilmund, and if you should feel in need of another helper, you shall have one.” Eilmund, who had always been equal to his tasks and was proud of his self-sufficiency, said thanks for that somewhat grudgingly, but declined the offer for the time being, and promised to send word if anything further should happen to change his mind. And off he went as briskly as he had come, back to his cottage in the forest, his daughter, and his grievance against fate, since he could not honestly find a human agency to blame. By some mysterious means young Richard got to know of the unusual purport of Eilmund’s visit, and anything to do with his grandmother, and all those people who had their labour and living about the manor of Eaton, was of absorbing interest to him. However wise and watchful his guardian the abbot might be, however competent his steward, it behoved him to keep an eye on his estate for himself. If there was mischief afoot near Eaton, he itched to know the reason, and he was far more likely than was the Abbot Radulfus to attribute mischief, however incomprehensibly procured, to the perversity or malice of humanity, having so often found himself arraigned as the half-innocent agent of misrule. If the sheep of Eaton had made their way into the ash coppice of Eyton not by some obscure act of God, but because someone had opened the way for them and started them towards their welcome feast, then Richard wanted to know who, and why. They were, after all, his sheep.

Accordingly, he kept a sharp eye open for any new comings and goings about the hour of chapter each morning, and was curious when he observed, two days after Eilmund’s visit, the arrival at the gatehouse of a young man he had seen but once before, who asked very civilly for permission to appear at chapter with an embassage from his master, Cuthred. He was early, and had to wait, which he did serenely. That suited Richard very well, for he could not play truant from school, but by the time the chapter ended he would be at liberty, and could ambush the visitor and satisfy his curiosity.

Every hermit worth his salt, having taken vows of stability which enjoin him to remain thenceforth within his own cell and closed garden, and having gifts of foresight and a sacred duty to use them for his neighbours good, must have a resident boy to run his errands and deliver his admonitions and reproofs. Cuthred’s boy, it seemed, had arrived already in his service, accompanying him in his recent wanderings in search of the place of retirement appointed for him by God. He came into the chapterhouse of the abbey with demure assurance, and stood to be examined by all the curious brothers, not at all discomposed by such an assault of bright, inquisitive eyes.

From the retired stall which he preferred, Cadfael studied the messenger with interest. A more unlikely servitor for an anchorite and popular saint, in the old Celtic sense that took no account of canonisation, he could not well have imagined, though he could not have said on the instant where the incongruity lay. A young fellow of about twenty years, in a rough tunic and hose of brown cloth, patched and faded—nothing exceptional there. He was built on the same light, wiry lines as Hugh Beringar, but stood a hand’s breadth taller, and he was lean and brown and graceful as a fawn, managing his long limbs with the same angular, animal beauty. Even his composed stillness held implications of sudden, fierce movement, like a wild creature motionless in ambush. His running would be swift and silent, his leaping long and lofty as that of a hare. And his face had a similar slightly ominous composure and awareness, under a thick, close-fitted cap of waving hair the colour of copper beeches. A long oval of a face, tall-browed, with a long, straight nose flared at the nostrils, again like a wild thing sensitive to every scent the breeze brought him, a supple, crooked mouth that almost smiled even in repose, as if in secret and slightly disturbing amusement, and long amber eyes that tilted upwards at the outer corners, under oblique copper brows. The burning glow of those eyes he shaded, but did not dim or conceal, beneath round-arched lids and copper lashes long and rich as a woman’s.

What was an antique saint doing with an unnerving fairy thing in his employ? But the boy, having waited a long moment to be inspected thoroughly, lifted his eyelids and showed to Abott Radulfus a face of candid and childlike innocence, and made him a very charming and respectful reverence. He would not speak until he was spoken to, but waited to be questioned. “You come from the hermit of Eyton?” asked the abbot mildly, studying the young, calm, almost smiling face attentively.

“Yes, my lord. The holy Cuthred sends a message by me.” His voice was quiet and clear, pitched a little high, so that it rang bell-like under the vault.

“What is your name?” Radulfus questioned.

“Hyacinth, my lord.”

“I have known a bishop of that name,” said the abbot, and briefly smiled, for the sleek brown creature before him had certainly nothing of the bishop about him. “Were you named for him?”

“No, my lord. I have never heard of him. I was told, once, that there was a youth of that name in an old story, and two gods fell out over him, and the loser killed him. They say flowers grew from his blood. It was a priest who told me,” said the boy innocently, and slanted a sudden brief smile round the chapterhouse, well aware of the slight stir of disquiet he had aroused in these cloistered breasts, though the abbot continued unruffled. Into that old story, thought Cadfael, studying him with pleasure and interest, you, my lad, fit far better than into the ambit of bishops, and well you know it. Or hermits either, for that matter. Now where in the world did he discover you, and how did he tame you?

“May I speak my message?” asked the boy ingenuously, golden eyes wide and clear and fixed upon the abbot.

“You have learned it by heart?” enquired Radulfus, smiling.

“I must, my lord. There must be no word out of place.”

“A very faithful messenger! Yes, you may speak.”

“I must be my master’s voice, not my own,” said the boy by way of introduction, and forthwith sank his voice several tones below its normal ringing lightness, in a startling piece of mimicry that made Cadfael, at least, look at him more warily and searchingly than ever. “I have heard with much distress,” said the proxy hermit gravely, “both from the steward of Eaton and the forester of Eyton, of the misfortunes suddenly troubling the woodland. I have prayed and meditated, and greatly dread that these are but the warnings of worse to come, unless some false balance or jarring discord between right and wrong can be amended. I know of no such offence hanging over us, unless it be the denial of right to Dame Dionisia Ludel, in witholding her grandchild from her. The father’s wish must indeed be regarded, but the grief of the widow for her young cannot be put away out of mind, and she bereaved and alone. I pray you, my lord abbot, for the love of God, consider whether what you do is well done, for I feel the shadow of evil heavy over us all.”

All this the surprising young man delivered in the sombre and weighty voice which was not his own, and undeniably the trick was impressive, and caused some of the more superstitious young brothers to shift and gape and mutter in awed concern. And having ended his recital, the messenger again raised his amber eyes and smiled, as if the purport of his embassage concerned him not at all. Abbot Radulfus sat in silence for a long moment, closely eyeing the young man, who gazed back at him unwinking and serene, satisfied at having completed his errand.

“Your master’s own words?”

“Every one, my lord, just as he taught them to me.”

“And he did not commission you to argue further in the matter on his behalf? You do not want to add anything?”

The eyes opened still wider in astonishment. “I, my lord? How could I? I only run his errands.”

Prior Robert said superciliously into the abbot’s ear: “It is not unknown for an anchorite to give shelter and employment to a simpleton. It is an act of charity. This is clearly one such.” His voice was low, but not low enough to escape ears as sharp, and almost as pointed, as those of a fox, for the boy Hyacinth gleamed, and flashed a crooked smile. Cadfael, who had also caught the drift of this comment, doubted very much whether the abbot would agree with it. There seemed to him to be a very sharp intelligence behind the brown faun’s face, even if it suited him to play the fool with it. “Well,” said Radulfus, “you may go back to your master, Hyacinth, and carry him my thanks for his concern and care, and for his prayers, which I hope he will continue on behalf of us all. Say that I have considered and do consider every side of Dame Dionisia’s complaint against me, and have done and will continue to do what I see to be right. And for the natural misfortunes that give him so much anxiety, mere men cannot control or command them, though faith may overcome them. What we cannot change we must abide. That is all.” Without another word the boy made him a deep and graceful obeisance, turned, and walked without haste from the chapterhouse, lean and light-footed, and moving with a cat’s almost insolent elegance.

In the great court, almost empty at this hour when all the brothers were at chapter, the visitor was in no hurry to set out back to his master, but lingered to look about him curiously, from the abbot’s lodging in its small rose garden to the guest halls and the infirmary, and so round the circle of buildings to the gatehouse and the long expanse of the south range of the cloister. Richard, who had been lying in wait for him for some minutes, emerged confidently from the arched southern doorway, and advanced into the stranger’s path. Since the intent was clearly to halt him, Hyacinth obligingly halted, looking down with interest at the solemn, freckled face that studied him just as ardently. “Good morrow, young sir!” he said civilly. “And what might you want with me?”

“I know who you are,” said Richard. “You are the serving-man the hermit brought with him. I heard you say you came with a message from him. Was it about me?”

“That I might better answer,” said Hyacinth reasonably, “if I knew who your lordship might be, and why my master should be concerning himself with such small fry.”

“I am not small fry,” said Richard with dignity. “I am Richard Ludel, the lord of Eaton, and your master’s hermitage is on my land. And you know very well who I am, for you were there among the servants at my father’s funeral. And if you did bring some message that concerns me, I think I have a right to know about it. That’s only fair.” And Richard jutted his small, square chin and stood his ground with bare feet spread apart, challenging justice with unblinking blue-green eyes.

For a long moment Hyacinth returned his gaze with a bright, speculative stare. Then he said in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone, as man to man and quite without mockery: “That’s a true word, and I’m with you, Richard. Now, where can we two talk at ease?”

The middle of the great court was, perhaps, a little too conspicuous for lengthy confidences, and Richard was sufficiently taken with the unmistakably secular stranger to find him a pleasing novelty among these monastic surroundings, and meant to get to know all about him now that he had the opportunity. Moreover, very shortly chapter would be ending, and it would not do to invite Prior Robert’s too close attention in such circumstances, or court Brother Jerome’s busybody interference. With hasty confidence he caught Hyacinth by the hand, and towed him away up the court to the retired wicket that led through the enclave to the mill. There on the grass above the pool they were private, with the wall at their backs and the thick, springy turf under them, and the midday sun still faintly warm on them through the diaphanous veil of haze. “Now!” said Richard, getting down sternly to the matter in hand. “I need to have a friend who’ll tell me truth, there are so many people ordering my life for me, and can’t agree about it, and how can I take care of myself and be ready for them if there’s no one to warn me what’s in their minds? If you’ll be on my side I shall know how to deal. Will you?”

Hyacinth leaned his back comfortably against the abbey wall, stretched out before him shapely, sinewy legs, and half-closed his sunlit eyes. “I tell you what, Richard, as you can best deal if you know all that’s afoot, so can I be most helpful to you if I know the why and wherefore of it. Now I know the end of this story thus far, and you know the beginning. How if we put the two together, and see what’s to be made of them?”

Richard clapped his hands. “Agreed! So first tell me what was the message you brought from Cuthred today!”

Word for word as he had delivered it in chapter, but without the mimicry, Hyacinth told him.

“I knew it!” said the child, thumping a small fist into the thick grass. “I knew it must be some way about me. So my grandmother has cozened or persuaded even her holy man into arguing her cause for her. I heard about these things that have been happening in the coppice, but such things do happen now and then, who can prevent? You’ll need to warn your master not to be over-persuaded, even if she has made herself his patroness. Tell him the whole tale, for she won’t.”

“So I will,” agreed Hyacinth heartily, “when I know it myself.”

“No one has told you why she wants me home? Not a word from your master?”

“Lad, I just run his errands, he doesn’t confide in me.” And it seemed that the unquestioning servitor was in no hurry about returning from this errand, for he settled his back more easily against the mosses of the wall, and crossed his slim ankles. Richard wriggled a little nearer, and Hyacinth shifted good-naturedly to accommodate the sharp young bones that leaned into his side. “She wants to marry me off,” said Richard, “to get hold of the manors either side of mine. And not even to a proper bride. Hiltrude is old . At least twenty-two.”

“A venerable age,” agreed Hyacinth gravely.

“But even if she was young and pretty I don’t want her. I don’t want any woman. I don’t like women. I don’t see any need for them.”

“You’re in the right place to escape them, then,” suggested Hyacinth helpfully, and under his long copper lashes his amber eyes flashed a gleam of laughter. “Become a novice, and be done with the world, you’ll be safe enough here.”

“No, that’s no sport, neither. Listen, I’ll tell you all about it.” And the tale of his threatened marriage, and his grandmother’s plans to enlarge her little palatine came tripping volubly from his tongue. “So will you keep an eye open for me, and let me know what I must be ware of? I need someone who’ll be honest with me, and not keep everything from me, as if I were still a child.”

“I will!” promised Hyacinth contentedly, smiling. “I’ll be your lordship’s liege man in the camp at Eaton, and be eyes and ears for you.”

“And make plain my side of it to Cuthred? I shouldn’t like him to think evil of Father Abbot; he’s only doing what my father wanted for me. And you haven’t told me your name. I must have a name for you.”

“My name is Hyacinth. I’m told there was a bishop so named, but I’m none. Your secrets are safer with a sinner than with a saint, and I’m closer than the confessional, never fear me.”

They had somehow become so content and familiar with each other that only the timely reminder of Richard’s stomach, nudging him that it was time for his dinner, finally roused them to separate. Richard trotted beside his new friend along the path that skirted the enclave wall as far as the Foregate, and there parted from him, and watched the light, erect figure as it swung away along the highroad, before he turned and went dancing gleefully back to the wicket in the enclave wall.

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!”

Annet did not say anything, but she closed the house door softly behind her, and came forward to meet him at the gate. And Cadfael rode back through the woods mildly aware that he was smiling, though he could not be sure, on more sober reflection, that there was anything to smile about in so unlikely an encounter. For what common ground could there be, for those two to meet on, and hold fast for more than a moment: the abbey forester’s daughter, a good match for any lively and promising young man this side the shire, and a beggarly, rootless stranger dependent on charitable patronage, with no land, no craft and no kin? He went to tend and stable his horse before he sought out Abbot Radulfus to tell him how things stood in Eyton forest. There was a late stir within there, of new guests arrived, and their mounts being accommodated and cared for. Of late there had been little movement about the county; the business of the summer, when so many merchants and tradesmen were constantly on the move, had dwindled gently away into the autumn quiet. Later, as the Christmas feast drew near, the guest halls would again be full with travellers hastening home, and kinsmen visiting kinsmen, but at this easy stage between, there was time to note those who came, and feel the human curiosity that is felt by those who have sworn stability about those who ebb and flow with the tides and seasons. And here just issuing from the stables and crossing the yard in long, lunging strides, the gait of a confident and choleric man, was someone undoubtedly of consequence in his own domain, richly dressed, elegantly booted, and wearing sword and dagger. He surged past Cadfael in the gateway, a big, burly, thrusting man, his face abruptly lit as he swung past the torch fixed at the gate, and then as abruptly darkened. A massive face, fleshy and yet hard, muscled like a wrestler’s arms, handsome in a brutal fashion, the face of a man not in anger at this moment, but always ready to be angry. He was shaven clean, which made the smooth power of his features even more daunting, and the eyes that stared imperiously straight before him looked disproportionately small, though in reality they probably were not, because of the massy flesh in which they were but shallowly set. By the look of him, not a man to cross. He might have been fifty years old, give or take a few years, but time certainly had not softened what must have been granite from the start.

His horse was standing in the stable yard outside an open stall, stripped and gently steaming as if his saddlecloth had only just been removed, and a groom was rubbing him down and hissing to him gently as he worked. A meagre but wiry fellow, turning grey, in faded homespun of a dull brown, and a rubbed leather coat. He slid one sidelong glance at Cadfael and nodded a silent greeting, so inured to being wary of all men that even a Benedictine brother was to be avoided rather than welcomed.

Cadfael gave him good-evening cheerfully, and began his own unsaddling. “You’ve ridden far? Was that your lord I met at the gate?”

“It was,” said the man without looking up, and spared no more words.

“A stranger to me. Where are you from? Guests are thin this time of year.”

“From Bosiet, it’s a manor the far side of Northampton, some miles south-east of the town. He is Bosiet–Drogo Bosiet. He holds that and a fair bit of the county besides.”

“He’s well away from his home ground,” said Cadfael with interest. “Where’s he bound? We see very few travellers from Northamptonshire in these parts.” The groom straightened up to take a longer and narrower look at this inquisitive questioner, and visibly his manner eased a little, finding Cadfael amiable and harmless. But he did not on that account grow less morose, nor more voluble. “He’s hunting,” he said with a grim and private smile.

“But not for deer,” hazarded Cadfael, returning the inspection and caught by the wryness of the smile. “Nor, I dare say, for the beasts of the warren.”

“You dare say well. It’s a man he’s after.”

“A runaway?” Cadfael found it hard to believe. “So far from home? Was a runaway villein worth so much time and expense to him?”

“This one is. He’s valuable and skilled, but that’s not the whole of it,” confided the groom, discarding his suspicion and reticence. “He has a score to settle with this one. One report we got of him, setting out westwards and north, and he’s combed every village and town along all this way, dragging me one road while his son with another groom goes another, and he won’t stop short of the Welsh border. Me? If I did clap eyes on the lad he’s after, I’d be blind. I wouldn’t give him back a dog that ran from him, let alone a man.” His dry voice had gathered sap and passion as he talked, and he turned fully for the first time, so that the torchlight fell on his face. One cheek was marked with a blackening bruise, the corner of his mouth torn and swollen, with the look of a festering infection about it.

“His mark?” asked Cadfael, eyeing the wound.

“His seal, sure enough, and done with a seal ring. I was not quick enough at his stirrup when he mounted, yesterday morning.”

“I can dress that for you,” said Cadfael, “if you’ll wait while I go and make report to my abbot about another matter. You’d best let me, it could take bad ways. By the same token,” he said quietly, “you’re far enough out of his country, and near enough to the border, to do some running of your own, if you’re so minded.”

“Brother,” said the groom with the briefest and harshest of laughs, “I have a wife and children in Bosiet, I’m manacled. But Brand was young and unwed, his heels are lighter than mine. And I’d best get this beast stalled, and be off to wait on my lord, or he’ll be laying the other cheek open for me.”

“Then come out to the guest hall steps,” said Cadfael, recalled as sharply to his own duty, “when he’s in bed and snoring, and I’ll clean that sore for you.”

RICHARD HAD BEEN OUT ALL AFTERNOON with the other boys in the main abbey gardens beside the river, where the last pears were just being harvested. The children were allowed to help, and within reason to sample, though the fruit had still to ripen after gathering. But these, the last, had hung so long on the tree that they were already eatable. It had been a good day, with sun, and freedom, and some dabbling in the river where there were safe shallows, and he was reluctant to go indoors to Vespers at the end of it, and then to supper and bed. He loitered at the end of the procession winding its way along the riverside path, and up the green, bushy slope to the Foregate. In the stillness of late afternoon there were still clouds of midges dancing over the water, and fish rising to them lazily. Under the bridge the flow looked almost motionless though he knew it was fast and deep. There had been a boatmill moored there once, powered by the stream.

Nine-year-old Edwin, his devoted ally, loitered with him, but a little anxiously, casting a glance over his shoulder to see how the distance between them and the tailend of the procession lengthened. He had been praised for his stoicism after his fall, and was in no mind to lose the warm sense of virtue the incident had left with him by being late for Vespers. But neither could he lightly desert his bosom friend. He hovered, rubbing at a bandaged knee that still smarted a little.

“Richard, come on, we mustn’t dawdle. Look, they’re nearly at the highroad.”

“We can easily catch up with them,” said Richard, dabbling his toes in the shallows. “But you go on, if you want to.”

“No, not without you. But I can’t run as fast as you, my knee’s stiff. Do come on, we shall be late.”

“I shan’t, I can be there long before the bell goes, but I forgot you couldn’t run as well as usual. You go on, I’ll overtake you before you reach the gatehouse. I just want to see whose boat this is, coming down towards the bridge.”

Edwin hesitated, weighing his own virtuous peace of mind against desertion, and for once decided in accordance with his own wishes. The last black habit at the end of the procession was just climbing to the level of the highroad, to vanish from sight. No one had looked back to call the loiterers, or scold, they were left to their own consciences. Edwin turned and ran after his fellows as fast as he could for his stiffening knee. From the top of the slope he looked back, but Richard was ankle-deep in his tiny cove, skimming stones expertly across the surface of the water in a dotted line of silvery spray. Edwin decided on virtue, and abandoned him.

It had never been in Richard’s mind to play truant, but his game seduced him as each cast bettered the previous one, and he began to hunt for smoother and flatter pebbles under the bank, ambitious to reach the opposite shore. And then one of the town boys who had been swimming under the green sweep of turf that climbed to the town wall took up the challenge, and began to return the shower of dancing stones, splashing naked in the shallows. So absorbed was Richard in the contest that he forgot all about Vespers, and only the small, distant chime of the bell startled him back to his duty. Then he did drop his stone, abandon the field to his rival, and scramble hastily ashore to snatch up his discarded shoes and run like a hart for the Foregate and the abbey. He had left it too late. The moment he arrived breathless at the gatehouse, and sidled in cautiously by the wicket to avoid notice, he heard the chanting of the first psalm from within the church.

Well, it was not so great a sin to miss a service, but for all that, he did not wish to add it to his score at this time, when he was preoccupied with grave family matters outside the cloister. By good fortune the children of the stewards and the lay servants were also accustomed to attend Vespers, which so conveniently augmented the numbers of the schoolboys that one small truant might not be missed, and if he could slip back into their enveloping ranks as they left the church afterwards it might be assumed that he had been among them all along. It was the best course he could think of. Accordingly he slipped into the cloister, and installed himself in the first carrel of the south walk, curled up in the corner, where he could see the south door of the church, by which brothers, guests and boys would all emerge when the service ended. Once the obedientiaries and choir monks had passed, it should not be difficult to worm his way in among the boys without being noticed. And here they came at last, Abbot Radulfus, Prior Robert and all the brothers, passing decorously by, and out into the evening on their way to supper; and then the less orderly throng of the abbey young. Richard was sidling along the wall that concealed him, ready to slip out and mingle with them as they passed, when a familiar and censorious voice made itself heard just on the other side of the wall, in the very archway through which the children must pass. “Silence, there! Let me hear no chattering so soon after divine worship! Is this how you were taught to leave the holy place? Get into line, two and two, and behave with due reverence.”

Richard froze, his back pressed against the chill stone of the wall, and drew back stealthily into the darkest corner of the carrel. Now what had possessed Brother Jerome to let the procession of the choir monks pass by without him, and wait here to hector and scold the unoffending children? For there he stood immovable, harrying them into tidy ranks, and Richard was forced to crouch in hiding and let his best hope of escape dwindle away into the evening air in the great court, leaving him trapped. For of all the brothers, Jerome was the one before whom he would least willingly creep forth ignominiously to be arraigned and lectured. And now the boys were gone, a few abbey guests emerging at leisure from the church, and still Jerome stood there waiting, for Richard could see his meagre shadow on the flags of the floor.

And suddenly it appeared that he had been waiting for one of the guests, for the shadow intercepted and melted into a more substantial shadow. Richard had seen the substance pass, a big, muscular striding man with a face as solid and russet as a sandstone wall, and the rich gown of the middle nobility, short of the baronage or even their chief tenants, but still to be reckoned with. “I have been waiting, sir,” said Brother Jerome, self-important but respectful, “to speak a word to you. I have been thinking of what you told us at chapter this morning. Will you sit down with me in private for a few moments?” Richard’s young heart seemed to turn over within him, for there was he crouched on the stone bench by one of Brother Anselm’s aumbries in the carrel right beside them, and he was in terror that they would immediately walk in upon him. But for his own reasons, it seemed, Brother Jerome preferred to be a little more retired, as if he did not want anyone still within the church, perhaps the sacristan, to observe this meeting as he left, for he drew his companion deep into the third carrel, and there sat down with him. Richard could easily have slid round the corner and out of the cloister now that the way was free, but he did not do so. Pure human curiosity kept him mute and still where he was, almost holding his breath, a little pitcher with very long ears. “This malefactor of whom you spoke,” began Jerome, “he who assaulted your steward and has run from you—how did you say he was called?”

“His name is Brand. Why, have you any word of him?”

“No, certainly none by that name. I do firmly believe,” said Jerome virtuously, “that it is every man’s duty to help you to reclaim your villein if he can. Even more it is the duty of the church, which should always uphold justice and law, and condemn the criminal and lawbreaker. You did tell us this fellow is young, about twenty years? Beardless, reddish dark as to his hair?”

“All that, yes. You know of such a one?” demanded Drogo sharply.

“It may not be the same man, but there is one young man who would answer to such a description, only one to my knowledge who is lately come into these parts. It would be worth asking. He came here with a pilgrim, a holy man who has settled down in a hermitage only a few miles from us, on the manor of Eaton. He serves the hermit. If he is indeed your rogue, he must have imposed on that good soul, who in the kindness of his heart has given him work and shelter. If it is so, then it is only right that his eyes should be opened to the kind of servitor he is harbouring. And if he proves not to be the man, there is no harm done. But indeed I did have my doubts about him, the one time he came here with a message. He has a sort of civil insolence about him that sorts ill with a saint’s service.”

Richard crouched motionless, hugging his knees, his ears stretched to catch every word that passed.

“Where is this hermitage to be found?” demanded Drogo, with the hunger of the manhunt in his voice. “And what is the fellow calling himself?”

“He goes by the name of Hyacinth. The hermit’s name is Cuthred, anyone in Wroxeter or Eaton can show you where he dwells.” And Jerome launched willingly into exact instructions as to the road, which occupied him so happily that even if there had been any small sounds from the neighbouring carrel he probably would not have heard them. But Richard’s small bare feet made no sound on the flags as he slid hastily round into the archway, and fled down the court to the stables, still carrying his shoes. His hard little soles patterned like pebbles on the cobbles of the stableyard, careless of being overheard now that he was safely out of that narrow, darkening carrel, echoing hollowly to the sound of one self-righteous voice and one wolfish one plotting the capture and ruin of Hyacinth, who was young and lively and ranked as a friend. But they should not have him, not if Richard could prevent. No matter how detailed Brother Jerome’s directions, that man who wanted his villein back, and certainly meant him no good if ever he got him, would still have to find his way and sort out the woodland paths as he came to them, but Richard knew every track, and could ride by the shortest way, and fast, if only he could get his pony saddled and smuggled quietly out at the gatehouse before the enemy sent a groom to saddle his own tall horse. For he was hardly likely to do it for himself if he had a servant to do it for him. The thought of the twilit woods did not daunt Richard, his heart rose excitedly to the adventure.

Luck or heaven favoured him, for it was the hour when everyone was at supper, and even the porter at the gatehouse was taking his meal within, and left the gate unwatched while he ate. If he did hear hooves, and come out to see who the rider might be, he came too late to see Richard scramble into the saddle and set off at a round trot along the Foregate towards Saint Giles. He had even forgotten that he was hungry, and felt no pang at going supperless. Besides, he was a favourite with Brother Petrus, the abbot’s cook, and might be able to wheedle something out of him later. As for what was to happen when his absence was discovered, as it surely must be at bedtime even if it passed unremarked at supper, there was no point in giving any thought to that. What mattered was to find Hyacinth, and warn him, if he was indeed this Brand, that he had better get away into hiding as fast as he could, for the hunt was out after him, and close on his heels. After that, let what was bound to happen, happen! He turned into the forest beyond Wroxeter, on a broad ride which Eilmund had cleared for the passage of his coppice wood and trimmed poles. It led directly to the forester’s cottage, but also provided the quickest way to a side-path which continued to the hermitage, the obvious place to look first for Cuthred’s servant. The forest here was chiefly oak, and old, the ground cover light and low, and the deep layers of the leaves of many autumns made riding silent. Richard had slackened speed among the old trees, and the pony stepped with delicate pleasure in the cushioned mould. But for the hush, the boy would never have heard the voices, for they were low and intent, and manifestly the one was a man’s, the other a girl’s, though their words were too soft to be distinguished, meant only for each other. Then he saw them, aside from the path, very still and very close beside the broad bole of an oak tree. They were not touching, though they had eyes only for each other, and whatever they had to say was earnest and of high importance. The shout Richard launched at sight of them startled them apart like fluttered birds.

“Hyacinth! Hyacinth!”

He rolled and fell from his pony, rather than dismounted, and flew to meet them as they started towards him.

“Hyacinth, you must hide—you must get away quickly! They’re after you, if you’re Brand—are you Brand? There’s a man has come looking for you, he says he’s hunting a runaway villein named Brand…” Hyacinth, alert and quivering, held him by the shoulders, and dropped to his knees to have him eye to eye. “What like of man? A servant? Or the man himself? And when was this?”

“After Vespers. I heard them talking. Brother Jerome told him there was a young man newly come into this country, who might be the one he’s looking for. He told him where to find you, and he’s coming to look for you at the hermitage now, this very night. An awful man, big and loud-mouthed. I ran to get my pony while they were still talking, I got away before him. But you mustn’t go back to Cuthred, you must get away quickly and hide.”

Hyacinth caught the boy in his arms in a brief, boisterous embrace. “You’re a true and gallant friend as any man could have, and never fear for me, now I’m warned what can harm me? That’s the man himself, no question! Drogo Bosiet thinks highly enough of me to waste time and men and money on hunting me down, and in the end he’ll get nothing for his pains.”

“Then you are Brand? You were his villein?”

“I love you all the more,” said Hyacinth, “for viewing my villeinage as past. Yes, the name they gave me long ago was Brand, I chose Hyacinth for myself. You and I will keep to that name. And now you and I, my friend, must part, for what you must do now is ride back to the abbey quickly, before the light’s gone, and before you’re missed. Come, I’ll see you safe to the edge of the wood.”

“No!” said Richard, outraged. “I’ll go alone, I’m not afraid. You must vanish now, at once!”

The girl had laid her hand on Hyacinth’s shoulder. Richard saw her eyes wide and bright with resolution rather than alarm in the encroaching twilight. “He shall, Richard! I know a place where he’ll be safe.”

“You ought to try to get into Wales,” said Richard anxiously, even somewhat jealously, for this was his friend, and he was the rescuer, and almost he resented it that Hyacinth should owe any part of his salvation to someone else, and a woman, at that.

Hyacinth and Annet looked briefly at each other, and smiled, and the quality of their smiles lit up the woodland. “No, not that,” said Hyacinth gently. “If run I must, I’ll not run far. But you need not fear for me, I shall be safe enough. Now mount, my lord, and be off with you, back where you’ll be safe, or I won’t stir a step.”

That set him in motion briskly enough. Once he looked back to wave, and saw them standing as he had left them, gazing after him. A second time he looked back, before the spot where they stood was quite hidden from him among the trees, but they were gone, vanished, and the forest was silent and still. Richard remembered his own problems ahead, and took the road homeward at an anxious trot.

AT SO LATE AN HOUR there was small chance of reaching immediate help at either abbey or castle, and none of deriving any knowledge from the darkening scene here in the forest. All Cadfael could do, thus alone, was to kneel beside the mute body and feel for a heartbeat or pulse, and listen for any faint sign of breathing. But though Drogo’s flesh was warm, and yielded pliably to handling, there was no breath in him, and the heart in his great chest, almost certainly pierced by the thrust from behind, was stonily still. He could not have been dead very long, but the gush of blood that had sprung out with the blade had ceased to flow, and was beginning to dry at its edges into a dark crust. More than an hour ago, Cadfael thought, judging by what signs he had, perhaps as much as two hours. And his saddle-roll cut loose and taken. Here, in our woods! When did any man ever hear of footpads so close? Or has some cutthroat from the town heard of Eilmund being laid up at home, and ventured to try his luck here for a chance traveller riding alone?

Delay could not harm Drogo now, and daylight might show at least some trace to lead to his murderer. Best leave him so, and take word to the castle, where there was always a guard waking, and leave a message for Hugh, to be delivered as soon as there was light. At midnight the brothers would rise for Matins, and the same grim news could and should be delivered then to Abbot Radulfus. The dead man was the abbey’s guest, and his son expected within a few days, and to the abbey he must be taken for proper and reverent care. No, there was nothing more to be done for Drogo Bosiet, but at least he could get the horse back to his stable. Cadfael mounted, and gathered the loose bridle in his left hand, and the horse came with him docilely. There was no haste. He had until midnight. No need to save time, since even if he reached his bed before Matins, sleep would be impossible. Better take care of the horses and then wait for the bell.

Abbot Radulfus came early to the church for Matins, to find Cadfael waiting for him in the south porch as he crossed from his lodging. The bell in the dortoir was only just sounding. It takes but a few moments to say bluntly that a man is dead, and by an act of man, not of God.

Radulfus was never known to waste words in exclamation, and did not do so now at the news that a guest of his house had come to an unlawful end in the abbey’s own forest. The gross affront and grosser wrong he accepted in sombre silence, and the right and duty of retribution, as incumbent now upon the church as on the secular authority, he took up with a deep assenting nod of his head, and a grim tightening of his long, firm lips. In the hush while he thought, they heard the soft, sandalled steps of the brothers descending the night stairs. “And you have left word for Hugh Beringar?” asked the abbot.

“At his house and at the castle.”

“No man can do more, then, until first light. He must be brought here, for here his son will come. But you—you will be needed, you can lead straight to where he lies. Go now, I excuse you from the office, go and take some rest, and at dawn ride to join the sheriff. Say to him that I will send a party after, to bring the body home.”

IT HAD ALWAYS BEEN BROTHER JEROME’S CONTENTION, frequently and vociferously expressed, that Brother Paul exercised far too slack an authority over his young charges, both the novices and the children. It was Paul’s way to make his supervision of their days as unobtrusive as possible except when actually teaching, though he was prompt to appear if any of them needed or wanted him. But such routine matters as their ablutions, their orderly behaviour at meals, and their retiring at night and rising in the morning were left to their good consciences and to the sound habits of cleanliness and punctuality they had been taught. Brother Jerome was convinced that no boy under sixteen could be trusted to keep any rule, and that even those who had reached that mature age still had more of the devil in them than of the angels. He would have watched and hounded and corrected their every movement, had he been master of the boys, and made a great deal more use of punishments than ever Paul could be brought to contemplate. It was pleasure to him to be able to say, with truth, that he had always prophesied disaster from such lax stewardship. Three schoolboys and nine novices, in a range of ages from nine years up to seventeen, are quite enough active youngsters to satisfy the casual eye at breakfast, unless someone has reason to count them, and discover that they fall one short of the right tally. Probably Jerome would have counted them on every occasion, certain that sooner or later there would be defaulters. Brother Paul did not count. And as he was needed at chapter and afterwards that day on specific business concerning his office, he had confided the morning’s schooling to the most responsible of the novices, another policy which Jerome deplored as ruinous to discipline. In church the small fry occupied such insignificant places that one more or less would never be noticed. So it was only late in the afternoon, when Paul mustered his flock again into the schoolroom, and separated the class of novices from the younger boys, that the absence of Richard was at last manifest.

Even then Paul was not at first alarmed or disturbed. The child was simply loitering somewhere, forgetful of time, and would appear at a run at any moment. But time slid by and Richard did not come. Questioned, the three boys remaining shuffled their feet uneasily, shifted a little closer together to have the reassurance of shoulder against shoulder, shook their heads wordlessly, and evaded looking Brother Paul in the eye. The youngest in particular looked less than happy, but they volunteered nothing, which merely convinced Paul that Richard was deliberately playing truant, that they were well aware of it and disapproved but would not let out one word to betray him. That he refrained from threatening them with dire penalties for such refractory silence would only have confirmed Jerome in his black disapproval of such an attitude. Jerome encouraged tale-bearers. Paul had a sneaking sympathy with the sinful solidarity that would invite penalties to fall on its own head rather than betray a companion. He merely stated firmly that Richard should be called to account for his behaviour later and pay the penalty of his foolishness, and proceeded with the lesson. But he was increasingly aware of his pupils' inattention and uneasiness, and the guilty glances they slid sidelong at one another over their letters. By the time they were dismissed he felt that the youngest, at any rate, was on the verge of blurting out whatever he knew, and his very distress argued that there was more behind this defection than the mere capricious cutting of a class.

Paul called the child back as they were leaving, half-gratefully, half-fearfully. “Edwin, come here to me!”

Understandably, the other two fled, certain now that the sky was about to fall on them, and in haste to avoid the first shock, whatever followed later. Edwin halted, turned, and slowly trailed his way back across the room, his eyes lowered to the small feet he was dragging reluctantly along the boards of the floor. He stood before Brother Paul, and trembled. One knee was still bandaged, and the linen had slipped awry. Without thinking, Paul unwound it and made it neat again.

“Edwin, what is it you know about Richard? Where is he?” The child gulped out with utter conviction: “I don’t know!” and burst into tears. Paul drew him close and let him bury his nose in a long-suffering shoulder.

“Tell me! When did you last see him? When did he go?” Edwin sobbed inarticulately into the rough woollen folds, until Paul held him off and peered into the smudged and woeful face. “Come! Tell me everything you know.”

And it came out in a flood, between hectic sniffs and sobs. “It was yesterday, after Vespers. I saw him, he took his pony and rode out along the Foregate. I thought he’d come back, but he didn’t, and we were frightened—We didn’t want him to be caught, he’d be in such terrible trouble—We didn’t want to tell, we thought he’d come back and no one need know…”

“Do you tell me,” demanded Paul, appalled and for once sounding formidable, “that he did not sleep here in his bed last night? That he’s been gone since yesterday and not a word said?”

A fresh burst of despairing tears distorted Edwin’s round flushed face, and his violently nodding head admitted the impeachment. “And all of you knew this? You three? Did you never think that he might be hurt somewhere, or in danger? Would he stay out all night willingly? Oh, child, why did you not tell me? All this time we’ve lost!” But the boy was frightened enough already, there was nothing to be done with him but hush and reassure and comfort him, where reassurance and comfort were very hard to find. “Now, tell me—you saw him go, mounted. After Vespers? Did he not say what he intended?” Edwin, very drearily, gathered what sense he had left and fumbled out the rest of it. “He came too late for Vespers. We were down on the Gaye, by the river, he didn’t want to come in, and when he did run after us it was too late. I think he waited to try and slip in with us when we came out of church, but Brother Jerome was standing talking to—to that man, the one who…” He began to whimper again, recalling what he should not have seen, but of course had, the bearers of the litter coming in at the gatehouse, the bulky body motionless, the powerful face covered. “I waited at the school door,” whispered the tearful voice, “and I saw Richard come running out and down to the stables, and then he came back with his pony, and led it out at the gate in a great hurry, and rode away. And that’s all I know. I thought he would soon come back,” he wailed hopelessly. “We didn’t want to get him into trouble…” If they had recoiled from doing that, they had certainly given him ample time and scope to get himself into trouble, deeper than any disloyalty of theirs might have plunged him. Brother Paul resignedly shook and patted his penitent into relative calm.

“You have been very wrong and foolish, and if you’re in disgrace it’s no more than you deserve. But answer everything truthfully now, and we’ll find Richard safe and sound. Go now, at once, and find the other two, and the three of you wait here until you are sent for.”

And Paul was off at a shaken run to take the bad news first to Prior Robert and then to the abbot, and then to confirm that the pony Dame Dionisia had sent as bait to her grandson was indeed gone from his stall. And there was great clamour and running about and turning grange court and barns and guest halls inside out, in case the culprit had not, after all deserted the enclave, or for sounder reasons had returned to it furtively, to try and conceal the fact that he had ever left it. The wretched schoolboys, tongue-lashed by Prior Robert and threatened with worse when anyone had time to perform it, cowered shivering and reduced to tears by the enormity of what had seemed to them good intentions, and having survived the first storm of recriminations, settled down stoically to endure the rest supperless and outcast. Not even Brother Paul had time to offer them any further reassuring words, he was too busy searching through the complex recesses of the mill and nearer alleys of the Foregate. Into this frenzy of alarm and activity Cadfael came riding in the early evening, after parting from Hugh at the gate. This very night there would be sergeants out dragging the woods from Eyton westward for the fugitive who might or might not be Brand, but must at all costs be captured. Hugh was no fonder of manhunts than was Cadfael, and many a misused serf had been driven at last to flight and outlawry, but murder was murder, and the law could not stomach it. Guilty or innocent, the youth Hyacinth would have to be found. Cadfael dismounted at the gatehouse with his mind full of one vanished youngster, to be met by the spectacle of agitated brothers running hither and thither among all the monastic buildings in search of a second one. While he was gaping in amazement at the sight, Brother Paul came bearing down upon him breathless and hopeful. “Cadfael, you’ve been in the forest. You haven’t seen hide or hair of young Richard, have you? I’m beginning to think he must have run home…”

“The last place he’d be likely to go,” said Cadfael reasonably, “while he’s wary of his grandmother’s intentions. Why? Do you tell me you’ve mislaid the imp?”

“He’s gone—gone since last night, and we never knew it until an hour ago.” Paul poured out the dismal story in a cascade of guilt and remorse and anxiety. “I am to blame! I have failed in my duty, been too complacent, trusted them too far… But why should he run away? He was happy enough. He never showed signs…”

“Doubtless he had his reasons,” said Cadfael, scrubbing thoughtfully at his blunt brown nose. “But back to the lady? I doubt it! No, if he went off in such haste it was something new and urgent that sent him running. Last night after Vespers, you said?”

“Edwin tells me Richard dawdled too long by the river, and came too late for Vespers, and must have been lurking in the cloister to slip in among the rest of the boys when they came out. But he could not do it because Jerome stood there in the archway, waiting to speak to Bosiet, who had attended among the guests. But when Edwin looked back he saw Richard come running out down to the stables, and then out at the gate in a hurry.”

“Did he so!” said Cadfael, enlightened. “And where was Jerome, then, and Bosiet, that the boy was able to make off undetected?” But he did not wait for an answer. “No, never trouble to guess. We already know what they had to talk about, between the two of them—a small matter, and private. Jerome wanted no other audience, but it seems he had one of whom he knew nothing. Paul, I must leave you to your hunt a little while longer, and ride after Hugh Beringar. He’s already committed to a search for one vanished lad, he may as well make it for two, and drag the coverts but once.”

Hugh, overtaken under the arch of the town gate, reined in abruptly at the news, and turned to stare meditatively at Cadfael. “So you think that’s the way of it!” he said and whistled. “Why should he care about a young fellow he’s barely seen and never spoken to? Or have you reason to think the two of them have had their heads together?”

“No, none that I know of. Nothing but the timing of it, but that links the pair closely enough. Not much doubt what Richard overheard, and none that it sent him hotfoot on some urgent errand. And before Bosiet can get to the hermitage, Hyacinth vanishes.”

“And so does Richard!” Hugh’s black brows drew together, frowning over the implications. “Do you tell me if I find the one I shall have found both?”

“No, that I gravely doubt. The boy surely meant to be back in the fold before bedtime, and all innocence. He’s no fool, and he has no reason to want to leave us. But all the more reason we should be anxious about him now. He would be back with us, surely, if something had not prevented. Whether his pony’s thrown him somewhere, and he’s hurt, or lost—or whether… They’re wondering if he’s run home to Eaton, but that’s rankly impossible. He never would.”

Hugh had grasped the unspoken suggestion which Cadfael himself had hardly had time to contemplate. “No, but he might be taken there! And by God, so he might! If some of Dionisia’s people happened on him alone in the woods, they’d know how to please their lady. Oh, I know the household there are Richard’s people, not hers, but there must be one or two among them would take the chance of present favours if it offered. Cadfael, old friend,” said Hugh heartily, “you go back to your workshop and leave Eaton to me. As soon as I’ve set my men on the hunt, yes, for both, I’ll go myself to Eaton and see what the lady has to say for herself. If she baulks at letting me turn her manor inside out for the one lad, I shall know she has the other hidden away somewhere about the place, and I can force her hand. If Richard’s there, I’ll have him out for you by tomorrow, and back in Brother Paul’s arms,” promised Hugh buoyantly. “Even if it costs the poor imp a whipping,” he reflected with a sympathetic grin, “he may find that preferable to being married off on his grandmother’s terms. At least the sting doesn’t last so long.”

Which was a very perverse blasphemy against marriage, Cadfael thought and said, coming from one who had such excellent reason to consider himself blessed in his wife and proud of his son. Hugh had wheeled his horse towards the steep slope of the Wyle, but he slanted a smiling glance back over his shoulder. “Come up to the house with me now, and complain of me to Aline. Keep her company while I’m off to the castle to start the hunt.”

And the prospect of sitting for an hour or so in Aline’s company, and playing with his godson Giles, now approaching three years old, was tempting, but Cadfael shook his head, reluctantly but resignedly. “No, I’d best be going back. We’ll all be busy hunting our own coverts and asking along the Foregate until dark. There’s no certainty where he’ll be, we dare miss no corner. But God speed your search, Hugh, for it’s more likely than ours.” He walked his horse back over the bridge towards the abbey with a slack rein, suddenly aware he had ridden far enough for one day, and looked forward with positive need to the stillness and soul’s quiet of the holy office, and the vast enclosing sanctuary of the church. The thorough search of the forest must be left to Hugh and his officers. No point even in spending time and grief now wondering where the boy would spend the coming night, though an extra prayer for him would not come amiss. And tomorrow, thought Cadfael, I’ll go and visit Eilmund, and take him his crutches, and keep my eyes open on the way. Two missing lads to search for. Find one, find both? No, that was too much to hope for. But if he found one, he might also be a long step forward towards finding the other.

There was a newly-arrived guest standing at the foot of the steps that led up to the door of the guest hall, watching with contained interest the continuing bustle of a search which had now lost its frenetic aspect and settled down grimly into the thorough inspection of every corner of the enclave, besides the parties that were out enquiring along the Foregate. The obsessed activity around him only made his composed stillness the more striking, though his appearance otherwise was ordinary enough. His figure was compact and trim, his bearing modest, and his elderly but well-cared-for boots, dark chausses and good plain cotte cut short below the knee, were the common riding gear of all but the highest and the lowest who travelled the roads. He could as well have been a baron’s sub-tenant on his lord’s business as a prosperous merchant or a minor nobleman on his own. Cadfael noticed him as soon as he dismounted at the gate. The porter came out from his lodge to plump himself down on the stone bench outside with a gusty sigh, blowing out his russet cheeks in mild exasperation. “No sign of the boy, then?” said Cadfael, though plainly expecting none. “No, nor likely to be, not within here, seeing he went off pony and all. But make sure first here at home, they say. They’re even talking of dragging the mill-pond. Folly! What would he be doing by the pool, when he went off at a trot along the Foregate—that we do know. Besides, he’ll never drown, he swims like a fish. No, he’s well away out of our reach, whatever trouble he’s got himself into. But they must needs turn out all the straw in the lofts and prod through the stable litter. You’d best hurry and keep a sharp eye on your workshop, or they’ll be turning that inside out.”

Cadfael was watching the quiet dark figure by the guest hall. “Who’s the newcomer?”

“One Rafe of Coventry. A falconer to the earl of Warwick. He has dealings with Gwynedd for young birds to train, so Brother Denis tells me. He came not a quarter of an hour since.”

“I took him at first to be Bosiet’s son,” said Cadfael, “but I see he’s too old—more the father’s own generation.”

“So did I take him for the son. I’ve been keeping a sharp watch for him, for someone has to tell him what’s waiting for him here, and I’d rather it was Prior Robert than take it on myself.”

“I like to see a man,” said Cadfael appreciatively, his eyes still on the stranger, “who can stand stock still in the middle of other people’s turmoil, and ask no questions. Ah, well, I’d better get this fellow unsaddled and into his stall, he’s had a good day’s exercise with all this coming and going. And so have I.”

And tomorrow, he thought, leading the horse at a leisurely walk down the length of the great court towards the stable yard, I must be off again. I may be astray, but at least let’s put it to the test.

He passed close to where Rafe of Coventry stood, passively interested in the bustle for which he asked no explanation, and thinking his own thoughts. At the sound of hooves pacing slowly on the cobbles he turned his head, and meeting Cadfael’s eyes by chance, gave him the brief thaw of a smile and a nod by way of greeting. A strong but uncommunicative face he showed, broad across brow and cheekbones, with a close-trimmed brown beard and wide-set, steady brown eyes, wrinkled at the corners as if he lived chiefly in the open, and was accustomed to peering across distances.

“You’re bound for the stables, Brother? Be my guide there. No reflection on your grooms, but I like to see my own beast cared for.”

“So do I,” said Cadfael warmly, checking to let the stranger fall into step beside him. “It’s a lifetime’s habit. If you learn it young you never lose it.” They matched strides neatly, being of the same modest stature. In the stable yard an abbey groom was rubbing down a tall chestnut horse with a white blaze down his forehead, and hissing gently and contentedly to him as he worked. “Yours?” said Cadfael, eyeing the beast appreciatively.

“Mine,” said Rafe of Coventry briefly, and himself took the cloth from the groom’s hand. “My thanks, friend! I’ll take him myself now. Where may I stable him?” And he inspected the stall the groom indicated, with a long, comprehensive glance round and a nod of satisfaction. “You keep a good stable here, Brother, I see. No offence that I prefer to do my own grooming. Travellers are not always so well provided, and as you said, it’s habit.”

“You travel alone?” said Cadfael, busy unsaddling but with a sharp eye on his companion all the same. The belt that circled Rafe’s hips was made to carry sword and dagger. No doubt he had shed both in the guest hall with his cloak and gear. A falconer is not easily fitted into a category where travel is concerned. A merchant would have had at least one able-bodied servant with him for protection, probably more. A soldier would be self-sufficient, as this man chose to be, and carry the means of protecting himself.

“I travel fast,” said Rafe simply. “Numbers drag. If a man depends only on himself, there’s no one can let him fall.”

“You’ve ridden far?”

“From Warwick.” A man of few words and no curiosity, this falconer of the earl’s. Or did that quite hold good? Concerning the search for the lost boy he showed no disposition to ask questions, but he was taking a measured interest in the stables and the horses they held. Even after he had satisfied himself of his own beast’s welfare, he still stood looking round him at the rest with a keen professional eye. The mules and the working horses he passed by, but halted at the pale roan that had belonged to Drogo Bosiet. That was understandable enough in a lover of good horseflesh, for the roan was a handsome animal and clearly from stock of excellent quality.

“Can your house afford such bloodstock?” He passed a hand approvingly over the glossy shoulder and stroked between the pricked ears. “Or does this fellow belong to a guest?”

“He did,” said Cadfael, himself sparing of words.

“He did? How is that?” Rafe had turned alertly to stare, and in the unrevealing face the eyes were sharp and intent.

“The man who owned him is dead. He’s lying in our mortuary chapel this moment.” The old brother had gone to his rest in the cemetery that same morning, Drogo had the chapel to himself now.

“What kind of man was that? And how did he die?” On this head he had questions enough to ask, startled out of his detachment and indifference.

“We found him dead in the forest, a few miles from here, with a knife wound in his back. And robbed.” Cadfael was never quite sure why he himself had become so reticent at this point, and why, for instance, he did not simply name the dead man. And had his companion persisted, as would surely have been natural enough, he would have answered freely. But there the questioning stopped.

Rafe shrugged off the implied perils of riding alone in the forests of the border shires, and closed the low door of the stall on his contented horse. “I’ll bear it in mind. Go well armed, I say, or keep to the highroads.” He dusted his hands and turned towards the gateway of the yard. “Well, I’ll go and make ready for supper.” And he was off at a purposeful walk, but not immediately towards the guest hall. Instead, he crossed to the archway of the cloister, and entered there. Cadfael found something so significant in that arrow-straight progress towards the church that he followed, candidly curious and officiously helpful, and finding Rafe of Coventry standing hesitant by the parish altar, looking round him at the multiplicity of chapels contained in transepts and chevet, directed him with blunt simplicity to the one he was looking for.

“Through here. The arch is low, but you’re my build, no need to stoop your head.”

Rafe made no effort to disguise or disclaim his purpose, or to reject Cadfael’s company. He gave him one calm, considering look, nodded his acknowledgements, and followed. And in the stony chill and dimming light of the chapel he crossed at once to the bier where Drogo Bosiet’s body lay reverently covered, with candles burning at head and feet, and lifted the cloth from the dead face. Very briefly he studied the fixed and pallid features, and again covered them, and the movements of his hands as they replaced the cloth had lost their urgency and tension. He had time even for simple human awe at the presence of death.

“You don’t, by any chance, know him?” asked Cadfael.

“No, I never saw him before. God rest his soul!” And Rafe straightened up from stooping over the bier, and drew a liberating breath. Whatever his interest in the body had been, it was over.

“A man of property, by the name of Drogo Bosiet, from Northamptonshire. His son is expected here any day now.”

“Do you tell me so? A bleak coming that will be for him.” But the words he used now were coming from the surface of his mind only, and answers concerned him scarcely at all. “Have you many guests at this season? Of my own years and condition, perhaps? I should enjoy a game of chess in the evening, if I can find a partner.”

If he had lost interest in Drogo Bosiet, it seemed he was still concerned to know of any others who might have come here as travellers. Any of his own years and condition!

“Brother Denis could give you a match,” said Cadfael, deliberately obtuse. “No, it’s a quiet time with us. You’ll find the hall half-empty.” They were approaching the steps of the guest hall, side by side and easy together, and the late afternoon light, overcast and still, was beginning to dim into the dove grey of evening.

“This man who was struck down in the forest,” said Rafe of Coventry. “Your sheriff will surely have the hounds out after an outlaw so near the town. Is there suspicion of any man for the deed?”

“There is,” said Cadfael, “though there’s no certainty. A newcomer in these parts, who’s missing from his master’s service since the attack.” And he added, innocently probing without seeming to probe: “A young fellow he is, maybe twenty years old…” Not of Rafe’s years or condition, no! And of no interest to him, for he merely nodded his acceptance of the information, and by the indifference of his face as promptly discarded it.

“Well, God speed their hunting!” he said, dismissing Hyacinth’s guilt or innocence as irrelevant to whatever he had on that closed and armoured mind of his.

At the foot of the guest hall steps he turned in, surely to examine, thought Cadfael, every man of middle years who would come to supper in hall. Looking for one in particular? Whose name, since he did not ask for names, would be unhelpful, because false? One, at any rate, who was not Drogo Bosiet of Northamptonshire!

HUGH CAME TO THE MANOR OF EATON early in the morning, with six mounted men at his back, and a dozen more deployed behind him between the river and the highroad, to sweep the expanse of field and forest from Wroxeter to Eyton and beyond. For a fugitive murderer they might have to turn the hunt westward, but Richard must surely be somewhere here in this region, if he had indeed set out to warn Hyacinth of the vengeance bearing down on him. Hugh’s party had followed the direct road from the Abbey Foregate to Wroxeter, an open, fast track, and thence by the most direct path into the forest, to Cuthred’s cell, where Richard would have expected to find Hyacinth. By young Edwin’s account he had been only a few minutes ahead of Bosiet, he would have made all haste and taken the shortest and fastest way. But he had never reached the hermitage. “The boy Richard?” said the hermit, astonished. “You did not ask me of him yesterday, only of the man. No, Richard did not come. I remember the young lord well, God grant no harm has come to him! I did not know he was lost.”

“And you’ve seen nothing of him since? It’s two nights now he’s been gone.”

“No, I have not seen him. My doors are always open, even by night,” said Cuthred, “and I am always here if any man needs me. Had the child been in any peril or distress within reach of me, he would surely have come running here. But I have not seen him.”

It was simple truth that both doors stood wide, and the sparse furnishings of both living room and chapel were clear to view. “If you should get any word of him,” said Hugh, “send to me, or to the abbey, or if you should see my men drawing these coverts round you—as you will give them the message.”

“I will do so,” said Cuthred gravely, and stood at the open gateway of his little garden to watch them ride away towards Eaton.

John of Longwood came striding out from one of the long barns lining the stockade, as soon as he heard the dull drumming of many hooves on the beaten earth of the yard. His bare arms and balding crown were the glossy brown of oak timber, for he spent most of his time out and active in all weathers, and there was no task about the holding to which he could not turn his hand. He stared at sight of Hugh’s men riding in purposefully at the gate, but in wonder and curiosity rather than consternation, and came readily to meet them. “Well, my lord, what’s afoot with you so early?” He had already taken in the significance of their array. No hounds, no hawks, but steel by their sides, and two of them archers shouldering bows. This was another kind of hunt. “We’ve had no trouble hereabouts. What’s the word from Shrewsbury?”

“We’re looking for two defaulters,” said Hugh briskly. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard we have a man murdered between here and the town, two nights ago. And the hermit’s boy is fled, and suspect of being the man’s runaway villein, with good reason to make away with him and run for the second time. That’s the one quarry we’re after.”

“Oh, ay, we’d heard about him,” said John readily, “but I doubt he’s a good few miles from here by this time. We’ve not seen hide or hair of him since late that afternoon, when he was here to fetch some honey cakes our dame had for Cuthred. She was not best pleased with him, neither, I heard her scolding. And for sure he was an impudent rogue. But the start he’s had, I fancy you won’t see him again. I never saw him carry steel, though,” said John by way of a fair-minded afterthought, and frowned over the resultant doubt. “There’s a chance at least that some other put an end to his master. The threat to haul him back to villeinage would be enough to make the lad take to his heels, the faster the better. In unknown country his lord would be hard put to it to track him down. No need, surely, to kill him. Small inducement to stay and take the risk.”

“The fellow’s neither convicted nor charged yet,” said Hugh, “nor can be until he’s taken. But neither can he be cleared until then. And either way I want him. But we’re after another runaway, too, John. Your lady’s grandson, Richard, rode out of the abbey precinct that same evening, and hasn’t come back.”

“The young lord!” echoed John, stricken open-mouthed with astonishment and consternation. “Two nights gone, and only now we get to hear of it? God help us, she’ll run mad! What happened? Who fetched the lad away?”

“No one fetched him. He up and saddled his pony and off he went, alone, of his own will. And what’s befallen him since nobody knows. And since one of the pair I’m seeking may be a murderer, I’m leaving no barn un-ransacked and no house unvisited, and with orders to every man to keep a sharp lookout for Richard, too. Granted you’re a good steward, John, not even you can know what mouse has crept into every byre and sheep fold and storehouse on the manor of Eaton. And that’s what I mean to know, here and everywhere between here and Shrewsbury. Go in and tell Dame Dionisia I’m asking to speak with her.” John shook his head helplessly, and went. Hugh dismounted, and advanced to the foot of the stairs that led up to the hall door, above the low undercroft, waiting to see how Dionisia would bear herself when she emerged from the broad doorway above. If she really had not heard of the boy’s disappearance until this moment, when her steward would certainly tell her, he could expect a fury, fuelled all the more by genuine dismay and grief. If she had, then she had had time to prepare herself to present a fury, but even so she might let slip something that would betray her. As for John, his honesty was patent. If she had the boy hidden away, John had had no part in it. He was not an instrument she would have used for such a purpose, for he was stubbornly determined to be Richard’s steward rather than hers.

She came surging out from the shadow of the doorway, blue skirts billowing, imperious eyes smouldering. “What’s this I hear, my lord? It surely cannot be true! Richard missing?”

“It is true, madam,” said Hugh watching her intently, and undisturbed by the fact of having to look up to do it, as indeed he would have had to do even if she had come darting down the steps to his level, for she was taller than he. “Since the night before last he’s been gone from the abbey school.”

She flung up her clenched hands with an indignant cry. “And only now am I told of it! Two nights gone! Is that the care they take of their children? And these are the people who deny me the charge of my own flesh and blood! I hold the abbot responsible for whatever distress or harm has come to my grandson. The guilt is on his head. And what are you doing, my lord, to recover the child? Two days you tell me he’s been lost, and late and laggard you come to let me know of it…” The momentary hush fell only because she had to stop to draw breath, standing with flashing eyes at the head of the steps, tall and greying fair and formidable, her long patrician face suffused with angry blood.

Hugh took ruthless advantage of the lull, while it lasted, for it would not last long. “Has Richard been here?” he demanded bluntly, challenging her show of furious deprivation and loss.

She caught her breath, standing open-mouthed. “Here! No, he did not come here. Should I be thus distraught if he had?”

“You would have sent word to the abbot, no doubt,” said Hugh guilelessly, “if he had come running home? They are no less anxious about him at the abbey. And he rode away alone, of his own will. Where should we first look for him but here? But you tell me he is not here, has not been here. And his pony has not come wandering home to his old stable?”

“He has not, or I should have been told at once. If he’d come home riderless,” she said, her nostrils flaring, “I would have had every man who is mine scouring the woods for Richard.”

“My men are busy this minute doing that very thing,” said Hugh. “But by all means turn out Richard’s people to add to the number, and welcome. The more the better. Since it seems we’ve drawn blank,” he said, still thoughtfully studying her face, “and after all, he is not here.”

“No,” she blazed, “he is not here! No, he has not been here! Though if he left of his own will, as you claim, perhaps he meant to come home to me. And for whatever has befallen him on the way I hold Radulfus to blame. He is not fit to have charge of a noble child, if he cannot take better care of him.”

“I will tell him so,” said Hugh obligingly, and went on with aggravating mildness: “My present duty is to continue the search, then, both for Richard and for the thief who killed an abbey guest in Eyton forest. You need not fear, madam, that my search will not be thorough. Since I cannot expect you to make daily rounds of every corner of your grandson’s manor, no doubt you’ll be glad to allow me free access everywhere, to do that service for you. You’ll wish to set the example to your tenants and neighbours.” She gave him a long, long, hostile look, and as suddenly whirled on John of Longwood, who stood impassive and neutral at her elbow. In the gale of her movements her long skirt lashed like the tail of an angry cat. “Open my doors to these officers. All my doors! Let them satisfy themselves I’m neither harbouring a murderer nor hiding my own flesh and blood here. Let all our tenants know it’s my will they should submit to search as freely as I do. My lord sheriff,” she said, looking down with immense dignity upon Hugh, “enter and search wherever you wish.”

He thanked her with unabashed civility, and if she saw the glint in his eye, that just fell short of becoming an open smile, she scorned to acknowledge it, but turned her straight back and withdrew with a rapid and angry gait into the hall, leaving him to a search he already felt must prove fruitless. But there was no certainty, and if she had calculated that such a rash and sweeping invitation would be taken as proof, and send them away satisfied, even shamefaced, she was much deceived. Hugh set to work to probe every corner of Dionisia’s hall and solar, kitchens and stores, examined every cask and handcart and barrel in the undercroft, every byre and barn and stable that lined the stockade, the smith’s workshop, every loft and larder, and moved outward into the fields and sheep folds, and thence to the huts of every tenant and cotter and villein on Richard’s land. But they did not find Richard.

IT WAS ALREADY TAKEN FOR GRANTED by all of them, it seemed, that Cadfael was on their side, and wholeheartedly a party to their conspiracy. How could it be otherwise? Here was absolute proof that the boy was no murderer, proof that could be laid in Hugh Beringar’s hands with confidence in his justice, no question of that. But it could not be done without exposing Hyacinth to the very danger from which he had escaped once, and could hardly hope to escape a second time. Hugh was bound by law as fast as any man, even his gift for turning a blind eye and a deaf ear would not help Hyacinth if once Bosiet got wind of where he was and who was sheltering him.

“Between us,” said Cadfael, though somewhat dubiously, “we might be able to get you away out of the county and into Wales, clean away from pursuit…”

“No,” said Hyacinth firmly, “I won’t run. I’ll hide for as long as I must, but I won’t run any further. It’s what I meant to do, when I set off this way, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“Why?” demanded Cadfael simply.

“For two good reasons. One, because Richard’s lost, and Richard saved my skin for me by bringing warning, and I’m his debtor until I know he’s safe, and back where he should be. And two, because I want my freedom here in England, here in Shrewsbury, and I mean to get work in the town when I can with safety, and earn my living, and take a wife.” He looked up with a bright, challenging flash of his amber eyes at Eilmund, and smiled. “If Annet will have me!”

“You’d best ask my leave about that,” said Eilmund, but with such good humour that it was plain the idea was not entirely new to him, nor necessarily unwelcome.

“So I will, when the time comes, but I would not offer you or her what I am and have now. So let that wait, but don’t forget it,” warned the faun, gleaming. “But Richard I must find, I will find! That’s first!”

“What can you do,” said Eilmund practically, “more than Hugh Beringar and all his men are doing? And you a hunted man yourself, with the hounds close on your tail! You stay quiet like a sensible lad, and hide your head until Bosiet’s hunt for you starts costing him more even than his hatred’s worth. As it will, in the end. He has manors at home now to think about.” But whether Hyacinth was, by ordinary standards, a sensible lad was a matter for conjecture. He sat very still, in that taut, suggestive way he had, that promised imminent action, the soft glow of Annet’s fire glowing in the subtle planes of his cheeks and brow, turning his bronze to gold. And Annet, beside him on the cushioned bench by the wall, had something of the same quality. Her face was still, but her eyes were sapphire bright. She let them talk about her in her presence, and felt no need to add a word on her own account, nor did she so much as touch Hyacinth’s slender shoulder to confirm her secure tenure. Whoever had doubts about Annet’s claims on the future, Annet had none.

“Richard left you as soon as he’d delivered his warning?” asked Cadfael.

“He did. Hyacinth wanted to go with him to the edge of the wood,” said Annet, “but he wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t stir unless Hyacinth went into hiding at once, so we promised. And he set off back along the track. And we came back here to Father, as he’s told you, and saw no one else along the way. Richard would not have gone anywhere near Eaton, or I’d have thought his grandmother might have taken him. But he was bent on getting back to his bed.”

“It was what we all thought,” owned Cadfael, “not least Hugh Beringar. But he was there early and turned the place wrong side out, and the boy is not there. I think John of Longwood and half the household beside would have told if he’d been seen there. Dame Dionisia is a formidable lady, but Richard is the lord of Eaton, it’s his bidding they’ll have to do in the future, not hers. If they dared not speak out before her face, they’d have done it softly behind her back. No, he is not there.”

IT WAS ABOUT THE SAME HOUR that Cadfael and Rafe of Coventry emerged from the church after Vespers, when Hyacinth stole out from Eilmund’s cottage, and made his way through the deepest cover towards the river. He had been all that day pinned close within doors, for there had again been men of the garrison sweeping through the forest, and though their passage was rapid and cursory, for the aim was to carry the search further afield, and though they knew Eilmund, and felt no compulsion to investigate his holding a second time, they were still liable to look in on him in neighbourly fashion as they passed, and ask him casually if anything of note had come to his attention. Hyacinth did not take kindly to being shut within doors, nor, indeed, to hiding. By the evening he was chafing at his confinement, but by then the hunters were on their way back, abandoning the chase until the morrow, and he was free to do a little hunting of his own. For all the wariness and fear he felt on his own account, and admitted with his infallible and fiery honesty, he could not rest for thinking of Richard, who had come running to warn him, so gallantly and thoughtlessly. But for that the boy would never have placed himself in danger. But why should there be danger to him in his own woods, among his own people? In a troubled England there were lawless men living wild, no doubt of that, but this shire had gone almost untouched by the war for more than four years now, and seemed to enjoy a degree of peace and order unmatched further south, and the town was barely seven miles distant, and the sheriff active and young, and even, so far as a sheriff can be, popular with his people. And the more Hyacinth thought about it, the more clear did it seem to him that the only threat to Richard that he had ever heard of was Dame Dionisia’s threat to marry him off to the two manors she coveted. For that she had persisted in every device she could think of. Hyacinth had been her instrument once, and could not forget it. She must be the force behind the boy’s disappearance.

True, the sheriff had descended on Eaton, searched every corner, and found no trace, and no one, in a household devoted to the boy, able to cast the least suspicion on Dionisia’s indignant innocence. She had no other property where she could hide either boy or pony. And though Fulke Astley might be willing to connive, feeling that he had as good a chance of securing Eaton as she had of getting her hands on his daughter’s inheritance, yet Wroxeter also had been searched thoroughly, and without success.

Today the hunt had moved on, and according to all that Annet had gathered from the returning sergeants it would continue as doggedly on the morrow, but it had not yet reached Leighton, two miles down-river. And though Astley and his household preferred to live at Wroxeter, the more remote manor of Leighton was also in his hold.

It was the only starting point Hyacinth could find, and it was worth a venture. If Richard had been caught in the woods by some of Astley’s men, or those from Eaton who were willing to serve Dionisia’s turn, it might well have been thought wisest to remove him as far as Leighton, rather than try to hide him nearer home. Moreover, if she still intended to force this marriage on the boy—there were ways of getting the right answers out of even the most stubborn children, more by guile than by terror—she needed a priest, and Hyacinth had been about the village of Eaton long enough to know that Father Andrew was an honest man, by no means a good tool for such a purpose. The priest at Leighton, less well acquainted with the ins and outs of the affair, might be more amenable. At least it was one thing which could be tested. It was no use Eilmund counselling him sensibly and good-naturedly to stay where he was and not risk capture; even Eilmund understood and approved what he called folly. Annet had not tried to dissuade Hyacinth, only sensibly provided him a black, much worn coat of Eilmund’s too wide for him but excellent for moving invisibly by night, and a dark capuchon to shadow his face.

Between the forest and the meanderings of the river, downstream from the mill and the fisheries and the few cottages that served them, the open water meadows extended, and there the light still hung, and a faint ground mist lay veiling the green, and twined like a silver serpent along the river. But along the northern rim the forest continued, halfway to Leighton, and beyond that point the ground rose towards the last low foothills of the Wrekin, and he would have to make use of what scattered cover remained. But here where trees and grassland met he could move fast, keeping within the edge of the woods but benefiting by the light of the open fields, and the stillness and silence and the careful stealth of his own movements would ensure that he should get due warning of any other creature stirring in the night.

He had covered more than a mile when the first small sounds reached him, and he froze, and stood with pricked ears, listening intently. A single metallic note, somewhere behind him, harness briefly shaken. Then a soft brushing of bushes as something passed, and then, unmistakable though quiet, and still some distance away, a subdued voice ventured briefly what sounded like a question, and as meekly subsided. Not one person abroad in the dusk, but two, or why speak at all? And mounted, and keeping to the rim of the woodland like himself, when it would have been simpler by far to take to the meadows. Riders by night, no more anxious to be observed than he was, and going in the same direction. Hyacinth strained his ears to pick up the muted, leaf-cushioned tread of hooves, and try to determine the line they were taking through the trees. Close to the rim, for the sake of what light remained, but more concerned with secrecy than with haste.

Cautiously Hyacinth withdrew further into the forest, and stood motionless in cover to let them pass by. There was still enough light left to make them a little more than shadowy outlines as they came and passed in single file, first a tall horse that showed as a moving pallor, probably a light grey, with a big, gross man on his back, bearded, bare-headed, the folds of his capuchon draped on his shoulders. Hyacinth knew the shape and the bearing, had seen this very man mount and ride, thus sack-like but solid in the saddle, from Richard Ludel’s funeral. What was Fulke Astley doing here in the night, making his way thus furtively, not by the roads but through the forest, from one to the other of his own manors? For where else could he be bound?

And the figure that followed him, on a thickset cob, was certainly a woman, and could be nobody else but his daughter, surely, that unknown Hiltrude who seemed so old and unpleasing to young Richard.

So their errand, after all, was not so mysterious. Of course they would want the marriage achieved as soon as possible, if they had Richard in their hands. They had waited these few days until both Eaton and Wroxeter had been searched, but with the hunt being spread more widely they would wait no longer. Whatever risk they might be taking, once the match was a reality they could weather whatever storms followed. They could even afford to set Richard free to return to the abbey, for nothing and no one but the authority of the church could set him free from a wife.

And that being so, what could be done to prevent? There was no time to run back either to Eilmund’s house, and have Annet carry words to castle or abbey, or direct to the town, and Hyacinth still found himself humanly reluctant to throw his own chance of liberty to the winds. But it did not arise, there was no time left at all. If he went back, by the time rescue could arrive for Richard he would be married. Perhaps there might yet be time to find where they had hidden him, and whisk him away from under their noses. These two were in no hurry, and Dame Dionisia had still to make the short journey from Eaton without detection. And the priest—where would they have found a willing priest? Nothing could be done until a priest was there.

Hyacinth forsook the thick cover, and made his way deeper into the belt of forest, no longer intent on secrecy, only on speed. At the pace the riders were making he could outrun them on a path, and in this extremity he would venture even the highroad, if need be, and risk meeting others still out on their own lawful occasions. But there was a path, too near the open road for the Astleys to favour it, and merging into the road itself once it had crossed the upland ridge. Hyacinth reached it and ran, fleet and silent on the thick carpet of leaves too moist and limp to rustle under his feet. Once out on to the open track and plunging downhill towards the village, still almost a mile distant, he drew off again into the fields dipping to the river, and ran from one scattered covert to another, assured now that he was ahead of Astley. He waded the little stream that came down from the foot of the Wrekin to reach the Severn here, and went on along the river bank. One isolated tongue of woodland came down almost to the water, and from its shelter he could see for the first time the low stockade of the manor, and the long level of the roof within, sharp and clear against the glimmer of the water and the pallor of the sky.

It was good fortune that the trees approached so closely to the stockade on the side nearest to the river bank. From tree to tree Hyacinth darted, and reaching an oak that spread branches across the barrier, climbed nimbly up into the crotch to peer cautiously within the enclosure. He was looking at the long rear face of the house, across the roofs of barn and byre and stable lining the containing fence. The same pattern of a low undercroft, with hall and chamber and kitchen above on the living floor, and the steps to the only door must be on the opposite side. Here there was no entrance except to the undercroft, and only one small window, and that was shuttered. Under it a small wing had been built out, extending the undercroft. The shingled roof was steep, the eaves dipped fairly low. Hyacinth eyed it speculatively, and debated how securely fastened those shutters might be. To reach them would be easily possible, to find a way in by that road might be more of a problem. But this rear face of the house was the only one sheltered from observation. All this nefarious activity of Astleys and Ludels would be centred round the single great doorway into the hall, on the other side.

He swung himself down to hang by his hands within the pale, and dropped into a shadowy corner between barn and stable. At least stumbling on this nocturnal journey eased him of one fear. Richard was surely here, was alive and well and presentable as they wanted him, well fed, well cared for, probably even indulged beyond normal in the hope of cajoling him into willing consent. Indulged, in fact, with everything he could desire and they furnish, except his freedom. And that was the first profound relief. Now to get him out! Here in the darkening yard there was no one stirring. Hyacinth slid softly out of his shelter and moved round the pale from shadow to shadow, until he slipped round the corner to the eastern end of the house. There were unshuttered windows above him here, subdued light shining through. He refuged in the deep doorway to the undercroft, and stretched his ears for voices from above, and thought that he caught wordless murmurings, as though the aim was to keep everything of this night’s activities secret. Round the next corner, where the steep stairway to the hall door ascended, there was a torch fixed, he knew it by the flickering light spilled on the beaten earth before him by fitful glimpses. There were servants moving there, too, soft-stepping and low-voiced. And the dull sound of hooves, coming at a walk into the court. The bride and her father arriving, thought Hyacinth, and wondered for a fleeting moment how the girl felt about the match, and whether she was not as wronged and slighted as Richard, and even more helpless.

He drew back in some haste, for the grooms would be leading the horses to the stables, which were in the near corner of the yard, for he had heard the beasts stirring in their stalls as he hung listening in the tree. The jutting wing of the undercroft provided cover from that corner. He rounded it and flattened himself into the dark angle of the walls behind the obstruction, and heard a single groom come leading both mounts.

He could not move until the man had gone, and time was snapping at his heels like a herdsman’s dog. But the groom was brisk, and wasted no time on his charges, perhaps wanting his bed, for it must be getting late. Hyacinth heard the stable door slammed to, and the rapid footsteps scurrying away round the corner of the house. Only then, when he was able to draw off and take another look at this almost blind face of the manor, did Hyacinth observe what he had missed before. Through the join in the massive shutters on this, the only shuttered window in the house in these mild nights, a hair-line of light showed. More noticeable still, in one of the boards, close to the join, there was a small round eye of light, where a slanting knot in the wood had fallen out and left a hole. Why should this rear room be shuttered and lighted, unless it had a guest, and one who must be kept safe and secret? Hyacinth doubted if the space between the stone mullions would be large enough to let a man through, but it might be wide enough for a ten-year-old boy, and one rather small for his years. With that low roof beneath the window, they would not want him to make his escape, nor would they want any inquisitive person to see him there within. It could at least be tried. Hyacinth leaped to get a hold of the overhanging eaves, and hauled himself up on to the shingles, to lie flat there against the stone wall, listening, though he had made little noise about it, and no one stirred to take note or investigate. He drew himself cautiously up the slope of the roof to the shuttered window. The timbers were heavy and solid, and secured somehow within the room, for when he laid a hand under the centre, where they joined, and essayed to pull them apart, they held fast as iron, and he had no tools to try and force them apart, and doubted if he could have done it even if he had had a whole armoury of implements. The hinges were strong and immovable. Neither top nor bottom of the shutters yielded to force even by a hair. There must be iron bolts that could be shot from within, and securely locked. And time was running out. Richard was strong-willed, obstinate and ingenious. If it had been possible for him to break out from his prison, he would have done it long ago.

Hyacinth laid his ear to the hair-line crack, but could hear nothing moving within. He must now make sure whether he was wasting the time which was so precious and running out so fast. At the risk of being detected, he rapped with his knuckles against the shutter, and setting his lips to the tiny eye of light, sent a shrill whistle through the hole.

This time there was an audible gasp somewhere in the room, then a rapid scrambling, as if someone had uncurled from being coiled defensively into a corner, set foot to floor, and taken a couple of startled steps across the room, only to halt again in doubt and alarm. Hyacinth rapped again, and called softly through the hole: “Richard, is that you?”

Light footsteps came in a rush, a small body crowded against the inner side of the shutters. “Who is it?” whispered Richard’s voice urgently, close to the crack of light. “Who’s there?”

“Hyacinth! Richard, are you alone? I can’t get in to you. Is all well with you?”

“No!” breathed the voice in indignant complaint, and proving by its spirit and anger that in fact he was in very good heart and excellent condition. “They won’t let me out, they keep hammering and hammering at me to do what they want, and agree to be married. They’re bringing her tonight, they’re going to make me…”

“I know,” groaned Hyacinth, “but I can’t get you out. And there’s no time to get word to the sheriff. Tomorrow I could, but I saw them coming here tonight.”

“They won’t let me out until I do what they want,” Richard hissed grievously into the crack. “I almost said I would. They go on and on at me, and I don’t know what to do, and I’m frightened they’ll only take me and hide me somewhere else if I refuse, because they know every house is being searched.” His voice was losing its bold, belligerent tone and faltering into distress. It’s hard for a boy of ten to stand off for long the implacable adults who hold the upper hand. “My grandmother promised I should have whatever I liked, whatever I wanted, if I’d say the words she wants me to say. But I don’t want a wife…”

“Richard… Richard…” Hyacinth was repeating persistently into this lament, and for a while unheard. “Listen, Richard! They’ll have to bring a priest to marry you—not Father Andrew, surely, he’d have scruples—but someone. Speak to him, tell him it’s against your will, tell him—Richard, have you heard who it’s to be?” A new and arresting thought had entered his mind. “Who is to marry you?”

“I heard them,” whispered Richard, grown calm again, “saying they couldn’t trust Father Andrew. My grandmother is bringing the hermit with her to do it.”

“Cuthred? You’re sure?” Hyacinth had almost forgotten to keep his voice down in his astonishment.

“Yes, Cuthred. Yes, I’m sure, I heard her say so.”

“Richard, listen, then!” Hyacinth leaned close, his lips to the crack. “If you refuse, they’ll only visit it on you, and take you away somewhere else. Better for you to do what they want. No, trust me, do what I say, it’s the only way we can foil them. Believe me, you won’t have anything to fear, you won’t be burdened with a wife, you’re safe as in sanctuary. Just do as I say, be meek and obedient, and let them think you tamed, and they may even let you take your pony and ride back to the abbey, for they’ll have what they wanted, and think it can’t be undone. But it can! Oh, never fret, they won’t want anything more of you, not for years yet! Trust me, and do it! Will you? Quickly, before they come! Will you do it?”

Bemused and doubtful, Richard faltered: “Yes!” but could not help protesting the next moment: “But how can that be? Why do you say it’s safe?” Hyacinth pressed close and whispered the answer. He knew by the sudden shaken spurt of laughter, exuberant and brief, that Richard had caught it and understood. And just in time, for he heard from across the room the sharp clash of a door being unbolted and flung open, and the voice of Dame Dionisia, honey and gall, half cajoling and half menacing, saying firmly and loudly: “Your bride is come, Richard. Here is Hiltrude. And you will be gracious and courteous to her, will you not, and please us all?”

Richard must have darted away from the window at the first touch of a hand on the bolt, for his small, cautious voice said just audibly, and from some yards distant: “Yes, grandmother!” Unwillingly dutiful, reluctantly obedient, a will only half-broken, but half would do!

Her gratified but still wary: “That’s my good child!” was the last thing Hyacinth heard as he edged his way carefully down the slope of the roof and dropped to the ground. He went on his homeward way without haste, content with his night’s work. There was now no urgency, he could afford to go slowly, mindful that he himself was still hunted. For the boy was alive, well fed, well cared for, and in good spirits. No actual harm had come to him, none would come, however he chafed at being a prisoner. And in the end he would have the laugh of his captors. Hyacinth made his way blithely through the soft, chilly night scented with the rising mist of the water meadows, and the deep, dank leaf mould of the woods. The moon rose, but so veiled that it gave only a dim grey light. By midnight he would be safely back in his sanctuary in Eyton forest. And in the morning, by some means Annet would contrive for the purpose, Hugh Beringar should learn exactly where to look for Brother Paul’s lost schoolboy.

When it was all over, and he had done what they wanted, however grudgingly, Richard had expected to be made much of by way of gratitude, perhaps even let out from this small room which was his prison, however comfortable it might be. He was not so foolish as to suppose that they would set him free to do as he pleased. He would have to keep up this meek front for a while, and suppress the inward glee he felt at having the laugh of them in secret, before they would dare to produce him before the world, with what manner of story to account for his loss and recovery he could not guess, but they would have it all off by heart. Certainly they would say he had consented of his own will to the ceremony just completed, and to the best of their knowledge it would then be far too late for him to say anything to the contrary, since what was done could not be undone. Only Richard knew that in fact nothing had been done to need undoing. He had absolute faith in Hyacinth. Whatever Hyacinth said was sooth. But he had considered that they would owe him thanks and indulgence for his compliance. He had preserved his sullen but subdued face, because it would have been too betraying to let even a gleam of laughter show through, but he had repeated all the words they dictated to him, had even brought himself to take Hiltrude’s hand when he was told to do so, though he had never once looked at her until the sound of her soft, dull voice, repeating the vows as resignedly as his own, had jolted him into wondering for a moment if she was being forced as he was. That possibility had never occurred to him until then, and he did lift a furtive glance to her face. She was not so very old, after all, and not very tall, and did not look like a threat so much as a victim. She might not even be really plain if only she did not look so subdued and glum. His startled impulse of sympathy for her was complicated by a grain of equally surprised resentment that she should seem as depressed at marrying him as he had good cause to be at marrying her.

But after all his compliance, not a word of thanks, rather his grandmother studied him ominously and at length, and he was afraid with some lingering suspicion in her eye, and then admonished him grimly: “You have done well to come to your duty at last, and behave yourself fittingly towards those who know best for you. See that you keep to that mind, sir! Now say your goodnight to your wife. Tomorrow you shall get to know her better.”

And he had done as he was told, and they had all left him there, still bolted in alone, though they had sent a servant with food from the supper they were no doubt enjoying in the hall. He sat brooding on his bed, thinking over all that had happened in one late evening, and all that might follow next day. Hiltrude he forgot as soon as she was out of sight. He knew about these affairs. If you were only ten years old they didn’t, for some reason, make you live with your wife, not until you were grown up. While she remained under the same roof with you, you would be expected to be civil to her, perhaps even attentive, but then she would go back with her father to her own home until you were thought to be old enough to share your bed and household with her. Now that he began to think seriously about it, it seemed to Richard that there were no privileges at all attached to being married, his grandmother would go on treating him just as before, as a child of no account, ordering him about, scolding him, cuffing him if he annoyed her, even beating him if he defied her. In short, it behoved the lord of Eaton to regain his liberty by whatever means offered, and escape out of her hold. He could not be very important to her now, he had served his purpose, what mattered was the land settlement. If she felt she had secured that, she might soon be willing to let go of the instrument. Richard rolled himself warmly in his brychans and went to sleep. If they were discussing him in hall, and debating what to do about him, that did not trouble his dreams. He was too young and too innocently hopeful to take his problems to bed with him.

His door was still bolted next morning, and the servant who brought his breakfast gave him no chance to slip past, though indeed he had no intention of trying it, since he knew he would not get far, and his role now was to continue to be docile and disarm suspicion. When his grandmother drew the bolt and came in to him it was old familiar habit, rather than guile, that caused him to rise at her entrance, as he had been taught, and lift up his face for her kiss. And the kiss was no chillier than it had always been, and for a moment he felt the inescapable kindness of the blood warm them both, something he had never questioned, though she had very seldom expressed it. The contact caused him to shake, and brought the sudden astonished sting of tears into his eyes just as inevitably as the surge of obstinate recoil into his mind. It did him no harm with her. She looked down at him from her erect and formidable height with a somewhat softened gaze.

“Well, sir, and how do you find yourself this morning? Are you minded to be a good, obedient boy, and do all you can to please me? If so, you shall find you and I will get on very well together. You have made a beginning, now go on as you began. And think shame that you defied and denied me so long.” Richard drooped his long lashes and looked down at his feet. “Yes, grandmother.” And then, in meek assay: “May I go out today? I don’t like being shut in here, as if it was night all the time.”

“We’ll see,” she said, but to Richard the tone clearly meant: “No!” She would not reason nor bargain, only lay down the law to him. “But not yet, you have not deserved it. First prove that you’ve learned where your duty lies, and then you shall have your freedom again. You are not ill done to, you have everything you need here, be content until you have earned more and better.”

“But I have!” he flashed. “I did what you wanted, you ought to do what I want. It’s unfair to shut me up here, unfair and unkind. I don’t even know what you’ve done with my pony.”

“Your pony is safe in the stable,” said Dionisia sharply, “and well cared for, as you are. And you had best mind your manners with me, sir, or you’ll have cause to regret it. They’ve taught you at that abbey school to be saucy to your elders, but it’s a lesson you had better unlearn as quickly as you can, for your own sake.”

“I’m not being saucy,” he pleaded, relapsing into sullenness. “I only want to be in daylight, I want to go out, not sit here without even being able to see the trees and the grass. It’s wretched in here, without any company…”

“You shall have company,” she promised, seizing on one complaint to which she could provide a complaisant answer. “I’ll send your bride to keep you company. I want you to get to know her better now, for after today she’ll return to Wroxeter with her father, and you, Richard,” she said warningly and with a sharpening eye on him, “will return with me to your own manor, to take your proper place. And I shall expect you to conduct yourself properly there, and not go hankering after that school, now that you’re married and a man of substance. Eaton is yours, and that is where you should be, and I expect you to maintain that, if anyone—anyone—should call it in question. Do you understand me, sir?” He understood her very well. He was to be cajoled, intimidated, bullied into declaring, even to Brother Paul and Father Abbot if need be, that he had run home to his grandmother of his own will, and of his own will submitted to the marriage they had planned for him. He hugged his secret knowledge gleefully to his heart as he said submissively: “Yes, madam!”

“Good! And now I’ll send in Hiltrude to you, and see that you behave well to her. You will have to get used to her, and she to you, so you may as well begin now.” And she relented so far as to kiss him again on leaving him, though it resembled a slap as much as a kiss. She went out in a dusty swirl of long green skirts, and he heard the bolt shot again after her. And what had he got out of all that, except the fact that his pony was in the stable here, and if only he could get to it he might make his escape even now. But presently in came Hiltrude, as his grandmother had threatened, and all his resentment and dislike of the girl, undeserved though it was, boiled up within him into childish anger.

She still seemed to him to belong at least to the generation of the mother he could hardly remember, but she was not really utterly plain, she had a clear, pale skin and large, guarded brown eyes, and if her hair was straight and of a mousey brown colour, she had a great mass of it, plaited in a thick braid that hung to her waist. She did not look ill-natured, but she did look bitterly resigned and wretched. She stood for a moment with her back to the door, staring thoughtfully at the boy curled up glumly on his bed. “So they’ve sent you to be my guard dog,” said Richard unpleasantly. Hiltrude crossed the room and sat down on the sill of the shuttered window, and looked at him without favour. “I know you don’t like me,” she said, not sadly but with quite unexpected vigour. “Small reason why you should, and for that matter, I don’t like you. But it seems we’re both bound, no help for it now. Why, why did you ever give way? I only said I would, at last, because I was so sure you were safe enough there at the abbey, and they’d never let it come to this. And then you have to fall into their hands like a fool, and let them break you down. And here we both are, and may God help us!” She relented of the note of exasperation in her own voice, and ended with weary kindness: “It’s not your fault, you’re only a child, what could you do? And it isn’t that I dislike you, I don’t even know you, it’s just that I didn’t want you, I don’t want you, any more than you want me.”

Richard was staring at her, by this time, with mouth and eyes wide open, struck dumb with astonishment at finding her, as it were, not a token embarrassment, a millstone round his neck, but a real person with a great deal to say for herself, and by no means a fool. Slowly he uncoiled his slim legs and set his feet to the floor, to feel solid substance under him. Slowly he repeated, in a small, shocked voice: “You never wanted to marry me?”

“A baby like you?” she said, careless of offence. “No, I never did.”

“Then why did you ever agree to do it?” He was too indignant over her capitulation to resent the reflection on his years. “If you’d said no, and kept saying it, we should both have been saved.”

“Because my father is a man very hard to say no to, and had begun to tell me that I was getting too old to have another suitor, and if I didn’t take you I should be forced to enter a sisterhood and stay a maid until I died. And that I wanted even less. And I thought the abbot would keep fast hold of you, and nothing would ever be allowed to come of it. And now here we are, and what are we to do about it?”

Himself surprised at feeling an almost sympathetic curiosity about this woman who had sloughed a skin before his eyes, and emerged as vivid and real as himself, Richard asked almost shyly: “What do you want? If you could have your way, what would you like to have?”

“I would like,” said Hiltrude, her brown eyes suddenly burning with anger and loss, “a young man named Evrard, who keeps my father’s manor roll and is his steward at Wroxeter, and who likes me, too, whether you think that likely or not. But he’s a younger son and has no land, and where there’s no land to marry to his own my father has no interest. There’s an uncle who may well leave his manor to Evrard, being fond of him and childless, but land now is what my father wants, not someday and maybe land.” The fire burned down. She turned her head aside. “Why do I tell you this? You can’t understand, and it’s not your fault. There’s nothing you can do to better it.”

Richard was beginning to think that there might be something very pertinent he could do for her, if she in her turn would do something for him. Cautiously he asked: “What are they doing now, your father and my grandmother? She said you’d be going back to Wroxeter after today. What are they planning? And has Father Abbot been looking for me all this time since I left?”

“You didn’t know? Not only the abbot, but the sheriff and all his men are looking for you. They’ve searched Eaton and Wroxeter, and are beating every bush in the forest. My father was afraid they might reach here by today, but she thought not. They were wondering whether to move you back to Eaton in the night, since it’s been searched already, but Dame Dionisia felt sure the officers had several days” work left before they’d reach Leighton, and in any case, she said, if a proper watch was set there’d be ample time to put you over the river with an escort and send you down to shelter at Buildwas. Better, she said, than moving you back towards Shrewsbury yet.”

“Where are they now?” asked Richard intently. “My grandmother?”

“She’s ridden back to Eaton to have everything there looking just as it should. Her hermit went back to his cell in the night. It wouldn’t do if anyone knew he’d been away.”

“And your father?”

“He’s out and about among his tenants here, but he’ll not be far away. He took his clerk with him. There’ll be dues unpaid that he wants collected, I daresay.” She was indifferent to her father’s movements, but she did feel some curiosity as to what was going on in this child’s head, to sharpen his voice into such hopeful purpose, and brighten his disconsolate eye. “Why? What is there in that for you? Or for me!” she added bitterly.

“There might,” said Richard, beginning to glitter, “be something I can do for you, something good, if you’ll do something for me in return. If they’re both out of the house, help me to get away while they’re gone. My pony’s there in the stable, she told me as much. If I could get to him and slip away, you could bolt the door again, and no one would know I was gone until evening.” She shook her head decisively. “And who would get the blame? I wouldn’t put it off on to one of the servants, and I’ve no great appetite for it myself. The troubles I already have are enough for me, I thank you!” But she added warily, seeing that his hopeful fire was by no means quenched: “But I would be willing to think out the best means, if I thought it would solve anything for me. But how can it? For a fair deliverance I’d venture anything Father could say or do. But what’s the use, when we’re tied together as we are, and no way out?” Richard bounded up from his bed and darted across the room to settle confidingly beside her on the broad sill. Close to her ear he said breathlessly: “If I tell you a secret, will you swear to keep it until I’m safely away, and help me to get out of here? I promise you, I promise you it will be worth your while.”

“You are dreaming,” she said tolerantly, turning to look at him thus closely, and seeing his secret brightness undimmed by her disbelief. “There’s no way out of marriage unless you’re a prince and have the Pope’s ear, and who cares about lesser folk like us? True, we’re not bedded, nor will be for years yet, but if you think your old dame and my father would ever let it come to an annulment, you waste your hopes. They’ve got their way, they’ll never let go of their gains.”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” he persisted, “we need nothing from Pope or law. You must believe me. At least promise not to tell, and when you hear what it is, you’ll be willing to help me, too.”

“Very well,” she said, humouring him, even half convinced now that he knew something she did not know, but still doubting if it would or could deliver them. “Very well, I promise. What is this precious secret?” Gleefully he advanced his lips to her ear, his cheek teased by the touch of a lock of her hair that curled loose there, and breathed his secret as though the very boards at their backs had ears. And after one incredulous instant of stillness and silence she began to laugh very softly, to shake with her laughter, and throwing her arms about Richard, hugged him briefly to her heart. “For that you shall go free, whatever it cost me! You deserve it!”

ONCE CONVINCED, it was she who made the plans. She knew the house and the servants, and as long as there was no suspicion of her subservience she had the entry everywhere, and could give orders to grooms and maids as she pleased. “Best wait until after they’ve brought your dinner and taken away the dish again. It will be a longer time then before anyone comes in to you again. There’s a back gate through the pale, from the stable out into the paddock. I could tell Jehan to turn your pony out to grass, he’s been shut in too long to be liking it. There are some bushes in the field there, round behind the stable, close to the wicket. I’ll make shift to hide your saddle and harness there before noon. I can get you out of here through the undercroft, while they’re all busy in hall and kitchens.”

“But your father will be home then,” protested Richard doubtfully.

“After his dinner my father will be snoring. If he does look in on you at all, it will be before he sits down to table, to make sure you’re safe in your cage. Better for me, too, I shall have sat out my morning with you gallantly, who’s to think I’ll change my tune after that? It might even be good sport,” said Hiltrude, growing animated in contemplating her benevolent mischief, “when they go to take you your supper, and find the window still shuttered and barred, and the bird flown.”

“But then everyone will be harried and cursed and blamed,” said Richard, “because somebody must have drawn the bolt.”

“So then we all deny it, and whoever looks likeliest to be suspected I’ll bring off safely, saying he’s never been out of my sight and never touched the door since your dinner went in. If it comes to the worst,” said Hiltrude, with uncustomary resolution, “I’ll say I must have forgotten to shoot the bolt after leaving you the last time. What can he do? He’ll still be thinking he has you trapped in marriage with me, wherever you run to. Better still,” she cried, clapping her hands, “I’ll be the one who brings you your dinner, and waits with you, and brings out the dish again—then no one else can be blamed for leaving the door unbolted. A wife should begin at once to wait on her husband, it will look well.”

“You’re not afraid of your father?” ventured Richard, open-eyed with startled respect, even admiration, but reluctant to leave her to sustain so perilous a part.

“I am—I was! Now, whatever happens, it will be worth the pains. I must go, Richard, while there’s no one in the stable. You wait and trust me, and keep up your heart. You’ve lifted mine!”

She was at the door when Richard, still thoughtfully following her light and buoyant passage, so changed from the subdued, embittered creature whose cold hand he had held in the night, said impulsively after her: “Hiltrude—I think I might do worse than marry you, after all.” And added, with barely decent haste:  “But not yet!”

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 come 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.

SHE NEITHER SWOONED NOR WEPT. She was a woman who did not lightly do either. But she sat for a long while bolt upright on Cuthred’s bed in the living room, rigid and pale and staring straight before her, clean through the stone wall before her face, and a long way beyond. It was doubtful if she heard any of the abbot’s carefully measured words, or the uneasy blusterings of Astley, alternately offering her gallantries of comfort she did not value or need, and recalling feverishly that this crime left all questions unanswered, and in some none too logical way went to prove that the hermit had indeed been a priest, and the marriage he had solemnized still a marriage. At least she paid no attention to either. She had gone far beyond any such considerations. All her old plans had become irrelevant. She had looked closely on sudden death, unconfessed, unshriven, and she wanted no part of it. Cadfael saw it in her eyes as he came out from the chapel, having done what he could to lay Cuthred’s body straight and seemly, now that he had read all it had to tell him. Through that death she was confronting her own, and she had no intention of meeting it with all her sins upon her. Or for many years yet, but she had had warning that if she was willing to wait, death might not be.

At last she asked, in a perfectly ordinary voice, perhaps milder than any she normally used to her household or tenants, but without moving, or withdrawing her eyes from her ultimate enemy: “Where is the lord sheriff?”

“He’s gone to get hold of a party to carry the hermit away from here,” said the abbot. “To Eaton, if you so wish, to be cared for there, since you were his patroness. Or, if it will spare you painful reminders, to the abbey. He shall be properly received there.”

“It would be a kindness,” she said slowly, “if you would take him. I no longer know what to think. Fulke has told me what my grandson says. The hermit cannot answer for himself now, nor can I for him. I believed without question that he was a priest.”

“That, madam,” said Radulfus, “I never doubted.” The focus of her stare had shortened, a little colour had come back into her waxen face. She was on her way back, soon she would stir and brace herself, and turn to look at the real world about her, instead of the bleak distances of judgement day. And she would face whatever she had to face with the same ferocious courage and obstinacy with which she had formerly conducted her battles.

“Father,” she said, turning towards him with abrupt resolution, “if I come to the abbey tonight, will you yourself hear my confession? I shall sleep the better when I have shed my sins.”

“I will,” said the abbot.

She was ready then to be taken home, and Fulke was all too anxious to escort her. No doubt he, who had very little to say here in company, would be voluble enough in private with her. He had not her intelligence, nor nearly so acute an imagination. If Cuthred’s death had cast any shadow on him, it was merely the vexation of not being able to claim proof of his daughter’s marriage, not at all a bony hand on his shoulder. So at any rate thought Brother Cadfael, watching him arm Dionisia to where her jennet was tethered, in haste to have her away and be free of the abbot’s daunting presence.

At the last moment, with the reins gathered in her hand, she suddenly turned back. Her face had regained all its proud tension and force, she was herself again. “I have only now remembered,” she said, “that the lord sheriff was wondering about the casket in there on the altar. That was Cuthred’s. He brought it with him.”

ON HIS WAY DOWN THE COURT TO THE STABLES, leading his horse, and with the better part of an hour left before Compline, Cadfael saw Dame Dionisia coming from the abbot’s lodging, and walking with sober step and decorously covered head towards the guest hall. Her back was as erect as ever, her gait as firm and proud, but somewhat slower than was her wont, and the draped head was lowered, with eyes on the ground rather than fixed challengingly into the distance before her. Not a word would ever be said concerning her confession, but Cadfael doubted if she had left anything out. She was not one to do things by halves. There would be no more attempts to extract Richard from the abbot’s care. Dionisia had suffered too profound a reverse to take any such risks again until time had dimmed the recollection of sudden unshriven death coming to meet her. It seemed she meant to stay overnight, perhaps to make her peace tomorrow, in her own arbitrary fashion, with a grandson by this time fast asleep in his bed, blessedly unmarried still, and back where he preferred to be. The boys would sleep well tonight, absolved of their sins and with their lost member restored. Matter for devout thanksgiving. And as for the dead man in the mortuary chapel, bearing a name which it seemed could hardly be his name, he cast no shadow on the world of the children.

Cadfael led his horse into the stable yard, lighted by two torches at the gate, unsaddled him and rubbed him down. There was no sound within there but a small sighing of the breeze that had sprung up with evening, and the occasional easy shift and stir of hooves in the stalls. He stabled his beast and hung up his harness, and turned to depart.

There was someone standing in the gateway, compact and still. “Good even, Brother!” said Rafe of Coventry.

“Is it you?” said Cadfael. “And were you looking for me? I’m sorry to have kept you up late, and you with a journey to make in the morning.”

“I saw you come down the court. You made an offer,” said the quiet voice. “If it is still open I should like to take advantage of it. I find it is not so easy to dress a wound neatly with one hand.”

“Come!” said Cadfael. “Let’s go to my hut in the garden, we can be private there.”

It was deep dusk, but not yet dark. The late roses in the garden loomed spikily on overgrown stems, half their leaves shed, ghostly floating pallors in the dimness. Within the walls of the herb garden, high and sheltering, warmth lingered. “Wait,” said Cadfael, “till I make light.” It took him a few minutes to get a spark he could blow gently into flame, and set to the wick of his lamp. Rafe waited without murmur or movement until the light burned up steadily, and then came into the hut and looked about him with interest at the array of jars and flasks, the scales and mortars, and the rustling bunches of herbs overhead, stirring headily in the draught from the doorway. Silently he stripped off his coat, and drew down his shirt from the shoulder until he could withdraw his arm from the sleeve. Cadfael brought the lamp, and set it where the light would best illuminate the stained and crumpled bandage that covered the wound. Rafe sat patient and attentive on the bench against the wall, steadily eyeing the weathered face that stooped over him. “Brother,” he said deliberately, “I think I owe you a name.”

“I have a name for you,” said Cadfael. “Rafe is enough.”

“For you, perhaps. Not for me. Where I take help, generously given, there I repay with truth. My name is Rafe de Genville…”

“Hold still now,” said Cadfael. “This is stuck fast, and will hurt.” The soiled dressing came away with a wrench, but if it did indeed hurt, de Genville suffered it as indifferently as he did the foregoing pain. The gash was long, running down from the shoulder into the upper arm, but not deep; but the flesh was so sliced that the lips gaped, and a single hand had not been able to clamp them together. “Keep still! We can better this, you’ll have an ugly scar else. But you’ll need help when it’s dressed again.”

“Once away from here I can get help, and who’s to know how I got the gash? But you do know, Brother. He drew blood, you said. There is not very much you do not know, but perhaps a little I can still tell you. My name is Rafe de Genville, I am a vassal, and God knows a friend to Brian FitzCount, and a liege man to my overlord’s lady, the empress. I will not suffer gross wrong to be done to either, while I have my life. Well, he’ll draw no more blood, neither from any of the king’s party nor oversea, in the service of Geoffrey of Anjou—which I think was his final intent, when the time seemed right.” Cadfael folded a new dressing closely about the long gash.

“Lend your right hand here, and hold this firmly, it shuts the wound fast. You’ll get no more bleeding, or very little, and it should heal closed. But rest it as best you can on the road.”

“I will so.” The bandage rolled firmly over the shoulder and round the arm, flat and neat. “You have a skilled hand, Brother. If I could I would take you with me as a prize of war.”

“They’ll have need of all the surgeons and physicians they can get in Oxford, I fear,” Cadfael acknowledged ruefully.

“Ah, not there, not this tide. There’ll be no breaking into Oxford until the earl brings up his army. I doubt it even then. No, I go back to Brian at Wallingford first, to restore him what is his.” Cadfael secured the bandage above the elbow, and held the sleeve of the shirt carefully as Rafe thrust his arm back into it. It was done. Cadfael sat down beside him, face to face, eye to eye. The silence that came down upon them was like the night, mild, tranquil, gently melancholy. “It was a fair fight,” said Rafe after a long pause, looking into and through Cadfael’s eyes to see again the bare stony chapel in the forest. “I laid by my sword, seeing he had none. His dagger he’d kept.”

“And used,” said Cadfael, “on the man who had seen him in his own shape at Thame, and might have called his vocation in question. As the son did, after Cuthred was dead, and never knew he was looking at his father’s murderer.”

“Ah, so that was it! I wondered.”

“And did you find what you came for?”

“I came for him,” said Rafe grimly. “But, yes, I understand you. Yes, I found it, in the reliquary on the altar. Not all in coin. Gems go into a small compass, and are easily carried. Her own jewels, that she valued. And valued even more the man to whom she sent them.”

“They said that there was also a letter.”

“There is a letter. I have it. You saw the breviary?”

“I saw it. A prince’s book.”

“An empress’s. There is a secret fold in the binding, where a fine, small leaf can be hidden. When they were apart, the breviary went back and forth between them by trusted messenger. God he knows what she may not have written to him now, at the lowest ebb of fortune, separated from him by a few miles that might as well be the width of the world, and with the king’s army gripping her and her few to strangulation. In the extreme of despair, who regards wisdom, who puts a guard on tongue or pen? I have not sought to know. He shall have it and read it for whose heart’s consolation it was meant. One other has read it, and might have made use of it,” said Rafe harshly, “but he is of no account now.” His voice had gathered a great tide of passion that yet could not disrupt its steely control, though it caused his disciplined body to quiver like an arrow in flight, vibrating to the force of his devoted love and implacable hate. The letter he carried, with its broken seal as testimony to a cold and loathsome treachery, he would never unfold, the matter within was sacred as the confessional, between the woman who had written and the man to whom it was written. Cuthred had trespassed even into this holy ground, but Cuthred was dead. It did not seem to Cadfael that the penalty was too great for the wrong committed.

“Tell me, Brother,” said Rafe de Genville, the wave of passion subsiding into his customary calm, “was this sin?”

“What do you need from me?” said Cadfael. “Ask your confessor when you come safely to Wallingford. All I know is, time has been when I would have done as you have done.”

Whether de Genville’s secret would be preserved inviolate was a question never asked, the answer being already clearly understood between them. “This is better than by morning,” said Rafe, rising. “Your order of hours tomorrow need not be broken, and I can be away early, and leave my place cleansed and furbished and ready for another guest, and travel the lighter because I do not go without a fair witness. I’ll say my farewell here. God be with you, Brother!”

“And go with you,” said Cadfael.

He was gone, out into the gathering darkness, his step firm and even on the gravel path, silent when he reached the grass beyond. And sharp upon the last slight sound of his going, the bell rang distantly for Compline.

Cadfael went down into the stables before Prime, in a morning dry and sunny but chill, a good day for riding. The bright chestnut with the white brow was gone from his stall. It seemed empty and quiet there, but for the cheerful chirpings of chatter and laughter from the last stall, where Richard had come down early to pet and make much of his pony for carrying him so bravely, with Edwin, happily restored to grace and to the company of his playmate, in loyal attendance. They were making a merry noise like a brood of young swallows, until they heard Cadfael come, and then they fell to a very prim and seemly quietness until they peeped out and saw that he was neither Brother Jerome nor Prior Robert. By way of apology they favoured him with broad and bountiful smiles, and went back to the pony’s stall to caress and admire him. Cadfael could not but wonder if Dame Dionisia had already visited her grandson, and gone as far as such a matriarch could be expected to go to reestablish her standing with him. There would certainly be no self-abasement. Something of a self-justifying homily, rather: “Richard, I have been considering your future with the abbot, and I have consented to leave you in his care for the present. I was grossly deceived in Cuthred, he was not a priest, as he pretended. That episode is over, we had all better forget it.” And she would surely end with something like: “If I let you remain here, sir, take care that I get good reports of you. Be obedient to your masters and attend to your books…” And on leaving him, a kiss perhaps a little kinder than usual, or at least a little more warily respectful, seeing all he could relate against her if he cared to. But Richard triumphant, released from all anxieties for himself and others who mattered to him, bore no grudge against anyone in the world. By this hour Rafe de Genville, vassal and friend of Brian FitzCount and loyal servitor of the Empress Maud, must be well away from Shrewsbury on his long ride south. So quiet, unobtrusive and unremarkable a man, he had hardly been noticed even while he remained here, his stay would soon be forgotten.

“He is gone,” said Cadfael. “I would not slough off the burden of choice on to you, though I think I know what you would have done. But I have done it for you. He is gone, and I let him go.”

They were sitting together, as so often they had sat at the last ebb of a crisis, weary but eased, on the seat against the north wall of the herbarium, where the warmth of noonday lingered and the light wind was shut out. In another week or two it would be too cold and bleak for comfort here. This prolonged mild autumn could not last much longer, the weather-wise were beginning to sniff the air and foretell the first hard frost, and plentiful snow to come in December. “I have not forgotten,” said Hugh, “that this is the tomorrow when you promised me a fitting ending. So he is gone! And you let him go! Another he, not Bosiet. You were aching for him to tire of his vengeance and depart, more likely to urge him away than try to prevent. Say on, I’m listening.” He was always a good listener, not given to exclamation or needless questions, he could sit gazing meditatively across the dishevelled garden in receptive silence, and never trouble his companion with a glance, and never miss a word, nor need many of them for understanding.

“I am in need of the confessional, if you will be my priest,” said Cadfael.

“And keep your confidences as tightly sealed—I know! My answer is yes. I never yet found you in need of absolution from me. Who is this he who is gone?”

“His name,” said Cadfael, “is Rafe de Genville, though here he called himself Rafe of Coventry, a falconer to the earl of Warwick.”

“The quiet elder with the chestnut horse? I never saw him but the once, I think,” said Hugh. “He was one guest here who had nothing to ask of me, and I was grateful for it, having my hands full of Bosiets. And what had Rafe of Coventry done, that either you or I should hesitate to let him go?”

“He had killed Cuthred. In fair fight. He laid his sword by, because Cuthred had none. Dagger against dagger he fought and killed him.” Hugh had said no word, only turned his head towards his friend for a moment, studied with penetrating attention the set of Cadfael’s face, and waited. “For good reason,” said Cadfael. “You’ll not have forgotten the tale we heard of the empress’s messenger sent out of Oxford, just as King Stephen shut his iron ring round the castle. Sent forth with money and jewels and a letter for Brian FitzCount, cut off from her in Wallingford. And how they found his horse straying in the woods along the road, with blood-stained harness and empty saddlebags. The body they never found. The Thames runs close. There’s room in the woods for a grave. So the lord of Wallingford was robbed of the empress’s treasure. He has beggared himself for her long ago, ungrudging, and his garrison must eat. And the letter meant for him was stolen along with all the rest. And Rafe de Genville is vassal and devoted friend to Brian FitzCount, and loyal liegeman to the empress, and was not minded to let that crime go unavenged.