The Hermit of Eyton Forest

Chapter Four

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

Abbot Radulfus listened with concern, but also with relief, to Cadfael’s report, promised to send at first light enough helpers to clear away the willow tree, clean out the brook and shore up the bank above, and nodded gravely at the suggestion that Eilmund’s long wait in the water might complicate his recovery, even though the fracture itself was simple and clean. “I should like,” said Cadfael, “to visit him again tomorrow and make sure he stays in his bed, for there may be a degree of fever, and you know him, Father, it will take more than his daughter’s scolding to keep him tamed. If he has your orders he may take heed. I’ll take his measure for crutches, but not let them near him till I’m sure he’s fit to rise.”

“You have my leave to go and come as you see fit,” said Radulfus, “for as long as he needs your care. Best keep that horse for your use until then. The journey would be too slow on foot, and we shall need you here some part of the day, Brother Winfrid being new to the discipline.”

Cadfael smiled, remembering. “It was no slow journey the young man Hyacinth made of it. Four times today he’s run those miles, back and forth on his master’s errand, and back and forth again for Eilmund. I only hope the hermit did not take it ill that his boy was gone so long.”

It was in Cadfael’s mind that the groom from Bosiet might be too much in fear of his master to venture out by night, even when his lord was sleeping. But come he did, slipping out furtively just as the brothers came out from Compline. Cadfael led him out through the gardens to the workshop in the herbarium, and there kindled a lamp to examine the lacerated wound that marred the man’s face. The little brazier was turfed down for the night, but not extinguished, evidently Brother Winfrid had been careful to keep it alive in case of need. He was learning steadily, and strangely the delicacy of touch that eluded him with pen or brush showed signs of developing now that he came to deal with herbs and medicines. Cadfael uncovered the fire and blew it into a glow, and put on water to heat.

“He’s safe asleep, is he, your lord? Not likely to wake? Though if he did, he should have no need of you at this hour. But I’ll be as quick as I may.” The groom sat docile and easy under the ministering hands, turning his face obediently to the light of the lamp. The bruised cheek was fading at the edges from black to yellow, but the tear at the corner of his mouth oozed blood and pus. Cadfael bathed away the encrusted exudations and cleaned the gash with a lotion of water betony and sanicle.

“He’s free with his fists, your lord,” he said ruefully. “I see two blows here.”

“He seldom stops at one,” said the groom grimly. “He does after his kind. There are some worse than him, God help all those who serve them. His son’s another made to the same pattern. What else could we look for, when he’s lived so from birth? In a day or so he’s to join us here, and if he has not got his hands on Brand by then—God forbid!—the hunt will go on.”

“Well, at least if you stay a day or so I can get this gash healed for you. What’s your name, friend?”

“Warin. Yours I know, Brother, from the hospitaller. That feels cool and kind.”

“I should have thought,” said Cadfael, “that your lord would have gone first to the sheriff, if he had a real complaint against this runaway of his. The guildsmen of the town would likely keep their mouths shut, even if they knew anything, a town stands to gain by taking in a good craftsman. But the king’s officers are bound, willing or no, to help a man to his own property.”

“We got here too late, as you saw, to do much in that kind until the morrow. He knows, none so well, that Shrewsbury is a charter borough, and may cheat him of his prey if the lad has got this far. He does intend going to the sheriff. But since he’s lodged here, and reckons the church as well as the law ought to help him to his own, he’s asked to put his case at chapter tomorrow, and after that he’ll be off into the town to seek out the sheriff. There’s no stone he won’t up-end to get at Brand’s hide.”

Cadfael was thinking, though he did not say it, that there might be time in between to send word to Hugh to make himself very hard to find. “What in the world,” he asked, “has the man done, to make your master so vindictive against him?”

“Why, he was for ever on the edge of trouble, being a lad that would stand up for himself, yes, and for others, too, and that’s crime enough for Drogo. I don’t know the rights of what happened that last day, but however it was, I saw Bosiet’s steward, who takes his style from his master, carried into the manor on a shutter, and he was laid up for days. Seemingly something had happened between them, and Brand had laid him flat, for the next we knew, Brand was nowhere, and they were hunting him along all the roads out of Northampton. But they never caught up with him, and here we are still hot on his trail. If ever Drogo lays hands on him he’ll flay him, but he won’t cripple him, he’s too valuable to waste. But he’ll have every morsel of his grudge out of the lad’s skin, and then wring every penny of profit out of his skills lifelong, and make good sure he never gets the chance to run again.”

“Then he had better make a good job of it now,” agreed Cadfael wryly. “If well-wishing can help him, he has it. Now hold still a moment there! And this ointment you can take with you and use as often as you choose. It helps take out the sting and lower the swelling.”

Warin turned the little jar curiously in his hand, and touched a finger to his cheek. “What’s in it, to work such healing?”

“Saint John’s wort and the small daisy, both good for wounds. And if chance offers tomorrow, let me see you again and hear how you do. And keep out of his reach!” said Cadfael warmly, and turned to bed down his brazier again with fresh turves, to smoulder quietly and safely until morning.

Drogo Bosiet duly appeared at chapter next morning, large, loud and authoritative in an assembly where a wiser man would have realised that authority lay with the abbot, and the abbot’s grip on it was absolute, however calm and measured his voice and austere his face. So much the better, thought Cadfael, watching narrowly and somewhat anxiously from his retired stall, Radulfus will know how to weigh the man, and let nothing slip too soon. “My lord abbot,” said Drogo, straddling the flags of the floor like a bull before the charge, “I am here in search of a malefactor who attacked and injured my steward and fled my lands. He is known to have made for Northampton, my manor, to which he is tied, being several miles south-east of the town, and I have it in mind that he would make for the Welsh border. We have hunted for him all this way, and from Warwick I have taken this road from Shrewsbury, while my son goes on to Stafford, and will join me here from that place. All I ask here is whether any stranger of his years has lately come into these parts.”

“I take it,” said the abbot after a long and thoughtful pause, and steadily eyeing the powerful face and arrogant stance of his visitor, “that this man is your villein.”

“He is.”

“And you do know,” pursued Radulfus mildly, “that since it would seem you have failed to reclaim him within four days, it will be necessary to apply to the courts to regain possession of him legally?”

“My lord,” said Drogo with impatient scorn, “so I can well do, if I can but find him. The man is mine, and I mean to have him. He has been a cause of trouble to me, but he has skills which are valuable, and I do not mean to be robbed of what is mine. The law will give me my rights in the lands where the offence arose.” And so, no doubt, such a law as survived in his own shire would certainly do, at the mere nod of his head.

“If you will tell us what your fugitive is like,” said the abbot reasonably, “Brother Denis can tell you at once whether we have had such a one as guest in our halls.”

“He goes by the name of Brand—twenty years old, dark of hair but reddish, lean and strong, beardless—”

“No,” said Brother Denis the hospitaller without hesitation, “I have had no such young man lodged here, not for five or six weeks back certainly. If he had found work along the way with some trader or merchant carrying goods, such as come with three or four servants, then he might have passed this way. But a young man alone—no, none.”

“As to that,” said the abbot with authority, forestalling reply from any other, though indeed no one but Prior Robert would have ventured to speak before him, “you would do well to take your question to the sheriff at the castle, for his officers are far more likely than we here within the enclave to know of any newcomers entering the town. The pursuit of criminals and offenders such as you describe is their business, and they are thorough and careful about it. The guildsmen of the town are also wary and jealous of their rights, and have good reason to keep their eyes open, and their wits about them. I recommend you to apply to them.”

“So I intend, my lord. But you will bear in mind what I have asked, and if any here should recall anything to the purpose, let me hear of it.”

“This house will do whatever is incumbent upon it in good conscience,” said the abbot with chilly emphasis, and watched with an unrevealing face as Drogo Bosiet, with only the curtest of nods by way of leavetaking, turned on his booted heel and strode out of the chapterhouse. Nor did Radulfus see fit to make any comment or signify any conclusion when the petitioner was gone, as if he felt no need to give any further instruction than he had given by the tone of his replies. And by the time they emerged from chapter, some time later, both Drogo and his groom had saddled and ridden forth, no doubt over the bridge and into the town, to seek out Hugh Beringar at the castle. Brother Cadfael had intended to pay a quick visit to the herbarium and his workshop, to see all was in order there and set Brother Winfrid to work on what was safest and most suitable for his unsupervised attentions, and then set off at once for Eilmund’s cottage, but events prevented. For there was a death that day among the old, retired brothers in the infirmary, and Brother Edmund, in need of a companion to watch out the time with him after the tired old man had whispered the few almost inaudible words of his last confession and received the final rites, turned first and confidently to his closest friend and associate among the sick. They had done the same service together many times in forty years of a vocation imposed from birth in Edmund’s case, though willingly embraced later, but chosen after half a lifetime in the outer world by Cadfael. They stood at the opposite poles of oblatus and conversus, and they understood each other so well that few words ever needed to pass between them. The old man’s dying was painless and feather-light, all the substance of his once sharp and vigorous mind gone on before; but it was slow. The fading candle flame did not flicker, only dimmed in perfect stillness second by second, so mysteriously that they missed the moment when the last spark withdrew, and only knew he was gone when they began to realise that the prints of age were smoothing themselves out gently from his face.

“So pass all good men!” said Edmund fervently. “A blessed death as ever I saw! I wonder will God deal as gently with me, when my time comes!” They cared for the dead man together, and together emerged into the great court to arrange for his body to be carried to the mortuary chapel. And then there was a small matter of Brother Paul’s youngest schoolboy, who had missed his footing in haste on the day stairs and rolled down half the flight, bloodying his knees on the cobbles of the court, and had to be picked up and bathed and bandaged, and despatched to his play with an apple by way of reward for his bravery in denying stoutly that he was hurt. Only then could Cadfael repair to the stable and saddle the horse assigned to him, and by then it was almost time for Vespers.

He was leading his horse across the court to the gatehouse when Drogo Bosiet rode in under the archway, his finery a little jaded and dusty from a day’s frustration and exertion, his face blackly set, and the groom Warin a few yards behind him, warily attentive, alert to obey the least gesture, but anxious meantime to stay out of sight and out of mind. Clearly the hunt had drawn no quarry anywhere, and the hunters came back with the approach of evening empty-handed. Warin would have to stand clear of the length of that powerful arm tonight.

Cadfael went forth through the gate reassured and content, and made good speed towards his patient at Eyton.