Brother Cadfael 14: The Hermit of Eyton Forest

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    '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.
    Brother Cadfael rode for Eilmund's assart in the middle of the afternoon, with the new crutches Brother Simon had cut to the forester's measure slung alongside, good, sturdy props to bear a solid weight. The fracture appeared to be knitting well, the leg was straight and not shortened. Eilmund was not accustomed to lying by inactive, and was jealous of any other hands tending his woodlands. Once he got hold of these aids Annet would have trouble keeping him in. It was in Cadfael's mind that her father's helplessness had afforded her an unusual measure of freedom to pursue her own feminine ploys, no doubt innocent enough, but what Eilmund would make of them when he found out was another matter.
    Approaching the village of Wroxeter, Cadfael met with Hugh riding back towards the town, after a long day in the saddle. Beyond, in fields and woodlands, his officers were still methodically combing every grove and every headland, but Hugh was bound back to the castle alone, to collect together whatever reports had been brought in, and consider how best to cover the remaining ground, and how far the search must be extended if it had not yet borne fruit.
    'No,' said Hugh, answering the unasked question almost as soon as they were within hail of each other, 'she has not got him. By all the signs she did not even know you'd lost him until I brought the word, though it's no great trick, I know, for any woman to put on such an exclaiming show. But we've parted every stalk of straw in her barns, and what we've missed must be too small ever to be found. No black pony in the stables. Not a soul but tells the same story, from John of Longwood down to the smith's boy. Richard is not there. Not in any cottage or byre in this village. The priest turned out his house for us, and went with us round the manor, and he's an honest man.'
    Cadfael nodded sombre confirmation of his own doubts. 'I had a feeling there might be more to it than that. It would be worth trying yonder at Wroxeter, I suppose. Not that I see Fulke Astley as a likely villain he's too fat and too cautious.'
    'I'm just come from there,' said Hugh. 'Three of my men are still prodding into the last corners, but I'm satisfied he's not there, either. We'll miss no one manor, cottage, assart, all. Of what falls alike on them all none of them can well complain. Though Astley did bristle at letting us in. A matter of his seigneurial dignity, for there was nothing there to find.'
    'The pony,' said Cadfael, gnawing a considering lip, 'must be shut away somewhere.'
    'Unless,' said Hugh sombrely, 'the other fugitive has ridden him hard out of the shire, and left the boy in such case that he cannot bear witness even when we find him.'
    They stared steadily upon each other, mutely admitting that it was a black and bitter possibility, but one that could not be altogether banished.
    'The child ran off to him, if that is indeed what he did,' Hugh pursued doggedly, 'without saying a word to any other. How if it was indeed to a rogue and murderer he went, in all innocence? The cob is a sturdy little beast, big for Richard, the hermit's boy a light weight, and Richard the only witness. I don't say it is so. I do say such things have happened, and could