Hermit of Eyton Forest Read Online Free PDF

the wind from his sails with a brief, steely flash of
her eyes and a voice deceptively sweet: “Brother, let me plead with you to let
me keep Richard overnight. He has had a tiring day and begins to be weary now.
He should not leave until tomorrow.” But she did not say that she would send
him back on the morrow, and her hand retained its grip on his shoulder. She had
spoken loudly enough to be heard by all, a solicitous matron anxious for her
young.
    “Madam,”
said Brother Paul, making the best of a disadvantaged position, “I was about to
tell you, sadly, that we must be going. I have no authority to let Richard stay
here with you, we are expected back for Vespers. I pray you pardon us.”
    The
lady’s smile was honey, but her eyes were sharp and cold as knives. She made
one more assay, perhaps to establish her own case with those who overheard,
rather than with any hope of achieving anything immediately, for she knew the
occasion rendered her helpless.
    “Surely
Abbot Radulfus would understand my desire to have the child to myself one more
day. My own flesh and blood, the only one left to me, and I have seen so little
of him these last years. You leave me uncomforted if you take him from me so
soon.”
    “Madam,”
said 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 drily, 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