Brother Cadfael 14: The Hermit of Eyton Forest

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.
    Drogo Bosiet rode through the early twilight by the ways Brother Jerome had indicated to him, asking peremptorily of the villagers in Wroxeter for confirmation that he was on the best road to the cell of the hermit Cuthred. It seemed that the holy man was held in the kind of unofficial reverence common to the old Celtic eremites, for more than one of those questioned spoke of him as Saint Cuthred.
    Drogo entered the forest close to where Eaton land, as the shepherd in the field informed him, bordered Eyton land, and a narrow ride brought him after almost a mile of forest to a small, level clearing ringed round with thick woodland. The stone hut in the centre was stoutly built but small and low-roofed, and showed signs of recent repair after being neglected for years. There was a little square garden enclosure round it, fenced in with a low pale, and part of the ground within had been cleared and planted. Drogo dismounted at the edge of the clearing and advanced to the fence, leading his horse by the bridle.
    The evening silence was profound, there might have been no living being within a mile of the place.
    But the door of the hut stood open, and from deep within a steady gleam of light showed. Drogo tethered his horse, and strode in through the garden and up to the door, and still hearing no sound, went in. The room into which he stepped was small and dim, and contained little but a pallet bed against the wall, a small table and a bench. The light burned within, in a second room, and through the open doorway, for there was no door between, he saw that this was a chapel. The lamp burned upon a stone altar, before a small silver cross set up on a carved wooden casket reliquary, and on the altar before the cross lay a slender and elegant breviary in a gilded binding. Two silver candlesticks, surely the gifts of the hermit's patroness, flanked the cross, one on either side.
    Before this altar a man was kneeling motionless, a tall man in a rough black habit, with the cowl raised to cover his head. Against the small, steady light the dark figure was impressive, the long, erect back straight as a lance, the head not bowed but raised, the very image of sanctity. Even Drogo held his tongue for a moment, but no longer. His own needs and desires were paramount, a hermit's prayers could and must yield to them. Evening was rapidly deepening into night, and he had no time to waste.
    'You are Cuthred?' he demanded firmly. 'They told me at the abbey how to find you.'
    The dignified figure did not move, unless he unfolded his unseen hands. But he said in a measured and unstartled voice: 'Yes, I am Cuthred. What do you need from me? Come in and speak freely.'
    'You have a boy who runs your errands. Where is he? I want to see him. You may well have been cozened into keeping a rogue about you unawares.'
    And at that the habited figure did turn, the cowled head reared to face the stranger, and the sidelong light from the altar lamp showed a lean, deep-eyed, bearded face, a long, straight, aristocratic nose, a fell of dark hair within the hood, as Drogo Bosiet and the hermit of Eyton forest looked long and steadily at each other.
    Brother Cadfael was sitting by Eilmund's