Free Hermit of Eyton Forest by Ellis Peters

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