Brother Cadfael 14: The Hermit of Eyton Forest

into view, the few willows dipping to the water, and the top of the tower of the collegiate church just showed among the branches, with one corner of a roof. The rest of the village and the demesne lay beyond. Richard approached the shelter of the trees cautiously, and dismounted in cover to peer through at the shallow spread of the water round a small island, and the path that came down from the village to the ford. He heard the voices before he reached a clear view, and halted to listen acutely, hoping the speakers would pass towards the village and leave his path clear. Two women, chattering and laughing, and an accompanying light splashing in the edge of the water, and then a man's voice, equally idle and easy, teasing and chaffing the girls. Richard ventured closer, until he could see the speakers clearly, and halted with an indrawn breath of exasperation and dismay.
    The women had been washing linen, and had it spread on the low bushes to dry, and since the day was not cold, and since they had been joined by a young and not unattractive companion, they were in no hurry to leave the shore. Richard did not know the women, but the man he knew only too well, though not his name. This big, red-haired, strutting young gamecock was Astley's foreman on the demesne farm, and one of the two who had encountered and recognised Richard in the woods, trotting home to the abbey in haste, and taken advantage of the hour and the solitude to do their lord a favour. Those same muscular arms which were now making free with one of the giggling laundresses had hoisted Richard ignominiously out of the saddle, and held him kicking and raging over a thick shoulder that might have been made of oak for all the effect his belabouring fists had on it, until the other miscreant had stopped the boy's mouth with his own capuchon, and pinioned his arms with his own reins. That same night, when it was fully dark, past midnight and all honest folk in their beds, the same trusted pair had bundled him away to the more distant manor for safekeeping. Richard remembered these indignities bitterly. And now here was this very fellow getting in his way once again, for he could not ride out of cover and make for the ford without passing close and being recognised, and almost certainly recaptured.
    There was nothing to be done but draw back into deeper cover and wait for them all to go away, back to the village and the manor. No hope of circling Wroxeter by a wider way and continuing on this north bank of the river, he was already too close to the edge of the village and all the approaches were open to view. And he was losing time, and without reasoning why, he felt that time was vital. He lost an hour there, gnawing his knuckles in desperate frustration and watching for the first move. Even when the women did decide to take up their washing and make for home they were in no hurry about it, but dawdled away up the path still bantering and laughing with the young man who strode between them. Only when their voices had faded into silence, and no other soul stirred about the ford, did Richard venture out from cover and spur his pony splashing down into the shallows.
    The ford was smooth going in the first stretch, sandy and shallow, then the path trod dry-shod over the tip of the island, and again plunged into the long passage beyond, a wide archipelago of small, sandy shoals, dimpling and gleaming with the soft, circuitous motion of the water. In mid-passage Richard drew rein for a moment to look back, for the broad, innocent expanse of green meadows oppressed him with a feeling of nakedness and apprehension. Here he could be seen from a mile or more away, a small dark figure on horseback, defenceless and vulnerable, against a landscape all moist, pearly light and pale colours.
    And there, riding at a gallop towards the ford, on the same path by which he had come, distant and small still but all too purposefully riding after him, came a single horseman on a big, light-grey horse, Fulke Astley in determined pursuit of his truant son-in-law.
    Richard shot through the shallows in a flurry of spray, and was off in a desperate hurry through the wet meadows, heading west for the track that would bring him in somewhat over four miles to Saint Giles, and the last straight run to the abbey gatehouse. Over a mile to go before he could find cover in the undulating ground and the scattered groves of trees, but even then he could not hope to shake off the pursuit now