Brother Cadfael 14: The Hermit of Eyton Forest

couch, supping on bread and cheese and apples, since like Richard he had missed his usual supper, and well content with a very discontented patient, when Annet came back from feeding the hens and shutting them in, and milking the one cow she kept for their own use. She had been an unconscionable time about it, and so her disgruntled father told her. All trace of fever had left him, his colour was good, and he was in no great discomfort, but he was in a glum fury with his own helplessness, and impatient to be out and about his business again, distrusting the abbot's willing but untutored substitutes to take proper care of his forest. The very shortness of his temper was testimony to his sound health. And the offending leg was straight and gave no great pain. Cadfael was well satisfied.
    Annet came in demurely, and laughed at her father's grumbling, no way in awe of him. 'I left you in the best of company, and I knew you'd be the better for an hour or so without me, and so would I for an hour without you, such an old bear as you're become! Why should I hurry back, on such a fine evening? You know Brother Cadfael has taken good care of you, don't grudge me a breath of air.'
    But by the look of her she had enjoyed something more potent than a mere breath of air. There was a brightness and a quivering aliveness about her, as if after strong wine. Her brown hair, always so smoothly banded, had shaken loose a few strands on her shoulders, Cadfael noted, as though she had wound her way through low branches that caught at the braids, and the colour in her cheeks was rosy and roused, to match the brilliance of her eyes. She had brought in a few of the month's lost leaves on her shoes. True, the byre lay just within the trees at the edge of the clearing, but there were no well-grown oaks there.
    'Well, now that you're back, and I shan't be leaving him to complain without a listener,' said Cadfael, 'I'd best be getting back before it's full dark. Keep him off his feet for a few days yet, lass, and I'll let him up on crutches soon if he behaves himself. At least he's taken no harm from lying fast in the water, that's a mercy.'
    'Thanks to Cuthred's boy Hyacinth,' Annet reminded them.
    She flicked a swift glance at her father, and was pleased when he responded heartily: 'And that's truth if ever there was! He was as good as a son to me that day, and I don't forget it.'
    And was it fancy, or did Annet's cheeks warm into a deeper rose? As good as a son to a man who had no son to be his right hand, but only this bright, confident, discreet and loving daughter?
    'Possess your soul in patience,' advised Cadfael, rising, 'and we'll have you as sound as before. It's worth waiting for. And don't fret about the coppice, for Annet here will tell you they've made a good job of clearing the brook and shaved off the overhang of the bank. It will hold.' He made fast his scrip to his girdle, and turned to the door.
    'I'll see you to the gate,' said Annet, and came out with him into the deep twilight of the clearing, where his horse was placidly pulling at the turf.
    'Girl,' said Cadfael with his foot in the stirrup, 'you blossom like a rose tonight.'
    She was just taking up the loose tresses in her hands, and smoothing them back into neatness with the rest. She turned and smiled at him. 'But I seem to have been through a thorn bush,' she said.
    Cadfael leaned from the saddle and delicately picked a sear oak leaf out of her hair. She looked up to see him twirling it gently between his fingers by the stem, and wonderfully she smiled. That was how he left her, roused and braced, and surely having made up her mind to go, undaunted, through all the thorny thickets that might be in the path between her and what she wanted. She was not ready yet to confide even in her father, but it troubled her not at all that Cadfael should guess at what was in the wind, nor had she any fear of a twisted ending. Which did not preclude the possibility that others might have good reason to fear on her account.
    Cadfael rode without haste through the darkening wood. The moon was already up, and bright where it could penetrate the thickness of the trees. Compline must be long over by now, and the brothers making ready for sleep. The boys would be in their beds long ago. It was cool and fresh in the green-scented forest, pleasant to ride alone and at leisure, and have time to think of timeless things that could not be accommodated in the bustle of the day, sometimes not