Brother Cadfael 14: The Hermit of Eyton Forest Read Online Free PDF

Brother Paul, firm but uneasy, 'I grieve to withstand your wish, but I have no choice. I am bound in obedience to my abbot to bring Richard back with me before evening. Come, Richard, we must be going.'
    There was an instant while she kept and tightened her hold, tempted to act even thus publicly, but she thought better of it. This was no time to put herself in the wrong, rather to recruit sympathy. She opened her hand, and Richard crept doubtfully away from her to Paul's side.
    'Tell the lord abbot,' said Dionisia, her eyes daggers, but her voice still mellow and sweet, 'that I shall seek a meeting with him very soon.'
    'Madam, I will tell him so,' said Brother Paul.
    She was as good as her word. She rode into the abbey enclave the next day, well attended, bravely mounted, and in her impressive best, to ask audience of the abbot. She was closeted with him for almost an hour, but came forth in a cold blaze of resentment and rage, stormed across the great court like a sudden gale, scattering unoffending novices like blown leaves, and rode away again for home at a pace her staid jennet did not relish, with her grooms trailing mute and awed well in the rear.
    'There goes a lady who is used to getting her own way,' remarked Brother Anselm, 'but for once, I fancy, she's met her match.'
    'We have not heard the last of it, however,' said Brother Cadfael dryly, watching the dust settle after her going.
    'I don't doubt her will,' agreed Anselm, 'but what can she do?'
    'That,' said Cadfael, not without quickening interest, 'no doubt we shall see, all in good time.'
    They had but two days to wait. Dame Dionisia's man of law announced himself ceremoniously at chapter, requesting a hearing. An elderly clerk, meagre of person but brisk of bearing and irascible of feature, bustled into the chapterhouse with a bundle of parchments under his arm, and addressed the assembly with chill, reproachful dignity, in sorrow rather than in anger. He marvelled that a cleric and scholar of the abbot's known uprightness and benevolence should deny the ties of blood, and refuse to return Richard Ludel to the custody and loving care of his only surviving close kinswoman, now left quite bereft of all her other menfolk, and anxious to help, guide and advise her grandson in his new lordship. A great wrong was being done to both grandmother and child, in the denial of their natural need and the frustration of their mutual affection. And yet once more the clerk put forth the solemn request that the wrong should be set right, and Richard Ludel sent back with him to his manor of Eaton.
    Abbot Radulfus sat with a patient and unmoved face and listened to the end of this studied speech very courteously. 'I thank you for your errand,' he said then mildly, 'it was well done. I cannot well change the answer I gave to your lady. Richard Ludel who is dead committed the care of his son to me, by letter properly drawn and witnessed. I accepted that charge, and I cannot renounce it now. It was the father's wish that the son should be educated here until he comes to manhood, and takes command of his own life and affairs. That I promised, and that I shall fulfil. The death of the father only makes my obligation the more sacred and binding. Tell your mistress so.'
    'My lord,' said the clerk, plainly having expected no other answer, and ready with the next step in his embassage, 'in changed circumstances such a private legal document need not be the only argument valid in a court of law. The king's justices would listen no less to the plea of a matron of rank, widowed and now bereaved of her son, and fully able to provide all her grandson's needs, besides the natural need she has of the comfort of his presence. My mistress desires to inform you that if you do not give up the boy, she intends to bring suit at law to regain him.'
    'Then I can but approve her intention,' said the abbot serenely. 'A judicial decision in the king's court must be satisfying to us both, since it lifts