new friend along the path that skirted the enclave wall as far as the Foregate, and there parted from him, and watched the light, erect figure as it swung away along the highroad, before he turned and went dancing gleefully back to the wicket in the enclave wall.
Hyacinth covered the first miles of his return journey at a springy, long-stepping lope, less out of any sense of haste or duty than for pure pleasure in the ease of his own gait, and the power and precision of his body. He crossed the river by the bridge at Attingham, waded the watery meadows of its tributary the Tern, and turned south from Wroxeter towards Eyton. When he came into the fringes of the forest land he slowed to a loitering walk, reluctant to arrive when the way was so pleasant. He had to cross abbey land to reach the hermitage which lay in the narrow, thrusting finger of Ludel land probing into its neighbour woods. He went merrily whistling along the track that skirted the brook, close round the northern rim of Eilmund’s coppice. The bank that rose beyond, protecting the farmed woodland, was high and steep, but well kept and well turfed, never before had it subsided at any point, nor was the brook so large or rapid that it should have undercut the seasoned slope. But so it had, the raw soil showed in a steep dark scar well before he reached the place. He eyed it as he approached, gnawing a thoughtful lip, and then as suddenly shrugged and laughed. ‘The more mischief the more sport!’ he said half-aloud, and passed on to where the bank had been deeply undercut.
He was still some yards back from the worst, when he heard a muted cry that seemed to come from within the earth, and then an indrawn howl of struggle and pain, and a volley of muffled curses. Startled but quick in reaction, he broke into a leaping run, and pulled up as abruptly on the edge of the ditch, no more than placidly filled now with the still muddied stream, but visibly rising. On the other side of the water there had been a fresh fall, and a solitary old willow, its roots partially stripped by the first slip, had heeled over and fallen athwart the brook. Its branches heaved and rustled with the struggles of someone pinned beneath, half in, half out of the water. An arm groped for a hold through the leaves, heaving to shift the incubus, and the effort fetched a great groan. Through the threshing leaves Hyacinth caught a glimpse of Eilmund’s soiled and contorted face.
‘Hold still! he shouted. ‘I’m coming down!’
And down he went, thigh-deep, weaving under the first boughs to get his back beneath their weight and try to lift them enough for the imprisoned forester to drag himself clear. Eilmund, groaning and gasping, doubled both fists grimly into the soil at his back and hauled himself partially free of the bough that held him by the legs. The effort cost him a half-swallowed scream of pain.
‘You’re hurt!’ Hyacinth took him under the armpits with both hands, arching his supple back strongly beneath the thickest bough, and the tree rocked ponderously. ‘Now! Heave!’
Eilmund braced himself yet again, Hyacinth hauled with him, fresh slithers of soil rolled down on them both, but the willow shifted and rolled over with a splash, and the forester lay in the raw earth, gasping, his feet just washed by the rim of the brook. Hyacinth, muddy and streaked with green, went on his knees beside him.
‘I’ll need to go for help, I can’t get you from here alone. And you’ll not be going on your own two feet for a while. Can you rest so, till I fetch John of Longwood’s men up from the fields? We’ll need more than one, and a hurdle or a shutter to carry you. Is there worse than I can see?’ But what he could see was enough, and his brown face was shaken and appalled under the mud stains.
‘My leg’s broke.’ Eilmund let his great shoulders sink cautiously back into the soft earth, and drew long, deep breaths. ‘Main lucky for me you came this way, I was pinned fast, and the brook’s building again. I was trying to shore up the bank. Lad,’ he said, and grinned ruefully round a groan, ‘there’s more strength in those shoulders of yours than anyone would think to look at you.’
‘Can you bide like that for a little while?’ Hyacinth looked up anxiously at the bank above, but only small clods shifted and slid harmlessly, and the rim of impacted turf, herbage and roots at the top looked secure enough. I’ll run. I’ll not be long.’
And run he did, fast and straight for the Eaton fields, and hailed the first Eaton men he sighted. They came in haste, with a hurdle borrowed from the sheep fold, and between them with care and with some suppressed and understandable cursing from the victim, lifted Eilmund on to it, and bore him the half-mile to his forest cottage. Mindful that the man had a daughter at home, Hyacinth took it upon himself to run on before to give her warning and reassurance, and time to prepare the injured man’s couch.
The cottage lay in a cleared assart in the forest, with a neat garden about it, and when Hyacinth reached it the door was standing open, and within the house a girl was singing softly to herself as she worked. Strangely, having run his fastest to get to her, Hyacinth seemed almost reluctant to knock at the door, or enter without knocking, and while he was hesitating on the doorstone her singing ceased, and she came out to see whose fleet footsteps had stirred the small stones of the pathway.
She was small but sturdy, and very trimly made, with a straight blue gaze, the fresh colouring of a wild rose, and smoothly-braided hair of a light brown sheen like the grain of polished oak, and she looked him over with a candid curiosity and friendliness that for once silenced his ready silver tongue. It was she who had to speak first, for all the urgency of his errand.
‘You’re looking for my father? He’s away to the coppice, you’ll find him where the bank slid.’ And the blue eyes quickened with interest and approval, liking what they saw. ‘You’re the boy who came with the old dame’s hermit, aren’t you? I saw you working in his garden.’
Hyacinth owned to it, and recalled with a lurch of the heart what he had to tell. ‘I am, mistress, and my name’s Hyacinth. Your father’s on his way back to you now, sorry I am to say it, after a mishap that will keep him to the house for a while, I fear. I came to let you know before they bring him. Oh, never fret, he’s live and sound, he’ll be his own man again, give him time. But his leg’s broken. There was another slip, it brought down a tree on him in the ditch. He’ll mend, though, no question.’
The quick alarm and blanching of her face had brought no outcry. She took in what he said, shook herself abruptly, and went to work at once setting wide the inner and the outer doors to open the way for the hurdle and its burden, and making ready the couch on which to lay him, and from that to setting on a pot of water at the fire. And as she went she talked to Hyacinth over her shoulder, very practically and calmly.
‘Not the first time he’s come by injuries, but never a broken leg before. A tree came down, you say? That old willow. I knew it leaned, but I never thought it could fall. It was you found him? And fetched help for him?’ The blue eyes looked round and smiled on him.
‘Some of the Eaton men were close, clearing a drainage ditch. They’re carrying him in.’ They were approaching the door by then, coming as fast as they could. She went out to meet them, with Hyacinth at her elbow. It seemed that he had something more, something different to say to her, and for the moment had lost his opportunity, for he hovered silently but purposefully on the edge of the scurry of activity, as Eilmund was carried into the house and laid on the couch, and stripped of his wet boots and hose, very carefully but to a muffled accompaniment of groans and curses. His left leg was misshapen below the knee, but not so grossly that the bone had torn through the flesh.
‘Above an hour lying there in the brook,’ he got out, between gritting his teeth on the pain as they handled him,
