As it so happened the next news from Eyton was just hurrying towards them round the corner of the tall box hedge, borne by a novice despatched in haste by Prior Robert from the gatehouse. He came at a run, the skirts of his habit billowing, and pulled up with just enough breath to get out his message without waiting to be asked.
‘Brother Cadfael, you’re wanted urgently. The hermit’s boy’s come back to say you’re needed at Eilmund’s assart, and Father Abbot says take a horse and go quickly, and bring him back word how the forester does. There’s been another landslip, and a tree came down on him. His leg’s broken.’
They offered Hyacinth rest and a good meal for his trouble, but he would not stay. As long as he could hold the pace he clung by Cadfael’s stirrup leather and ran with him, and even when he was forced to slacken and let Cadfael ride on before at his best speed, the youth trotted doggedly and steadily behind, bent on getting back to the woodland cottage, it seemed, rather than to his master’s cell. He had been a good friend to Eilmund, Cadfael reflected, but he might come in for a lashing with tongue or rod when he at last returned to his sworn duty. Though Cadfael could not, on consideration, picture that wild, unchancy creature submitting tamely to reproof, much less to punishment.
It was about the hour for Vespers when Cadfael dismounted within the low pale of Eilmund’s garden, and the girl flung open the door and came out eagerly to meet him.
‘Brother, I hardly expected you for a while yet. Cuthred’s boy must have run like the wind, and all that way! And after he’d soaked himself in the brook getting my father clear! We’ve had good cause to be glad of him and his master this day, there might have been no one else by for hours.’
‘How is he?’ asked Cadfael, unslinging his scrip and making for the house.
‘His leg’s broken below the knee. I’ve made him lie still, and packed it round as well as I could, but it needs your hand to set it. And he lay half in the brook a long time before the young man found him, I fear he’s taken a chill.’
Eilmund lay well covered, and by now grimly reconciled to his helplessness. He submitted stoically to Cadfael’s handling, and gritted his teeth and made no other sound as his leg was straightened and the fractured ends of bone brought into line.
‘You might have come off worse,’ said Cadfael, relieved. ‘A good clean break, and small damage to the flesh, though it’s a pity they had to move you.’
‘I might have drowned else,’ growled Eilmund, ‘the brook was building. And you’d best tell the lord abbot to get men out here and shift the tree, before we have a lake there again.’
‘I will, I will! Now, hold fast! I don’t want to leave you with one leg shorter than the other.’ By heel and instep he drew out the broken leg steadily to match its fellow. ‘Now, Annet, your hands where mine are, and hold it so.’
She had not wasted her time while waiting, but had hunted out straight spars of wood from Eilmund’s store, and had ready sheep’s wool for padding, and rolled linen for bindings. Between them they completed the work neatly, and Eilmund lay back on his brychan and heaved a great breath. His face, weatherbeaten always, nonetheless had a fierce flush over the cheekbones. Cadfael was not quite easy about it.
‘Now if you can rest and sleep, so much the better. Leave the lord abbot, and the tree, and everything else that needs to be dealt with here, to me, I’ll see it cared for. I’ll make you a draught that will ease the pain and help you to sleep.’ He mixed it and administered it to Eilmund’s scornful denial of the need, but it went down without protest nonetheless.
‘And sleep he will,’ said Cadfael to the girl, as they withdrew into the outer room. ‘But make sure he keeps warm and covered through the night, for there may be a slight fever if he’s taken cold. I’ll make certain I get leave to go back and forth for a day or two, till I see all’s well. If he gives you a hard time, bear with him, it will mean he’s taken no great harm.’
She laughed softly, undisturbed. ‘Oh, he’s mild as milk for me. He growls, but never bites. I know how to manage him.’
It was already beginning to be twilight when she opened the house door. The sky above was still faintly golden with the moist, mysterious afterglow, dripping light between the dark branches of the trees that surrounded the garden. And there in the turf by the gate Hyacinth was sitting motionless, waiting with the timeless patience of the tree against which his straight, supple back was braced. Even so his stillness had the suggestion of a wild thing in ambush. Or perhaps, thought Cadfael, changing his mind, of a hunted wild thing trusting to silence and stillness to be invisible to the hunter.
As soon as he saw the door open he was on his feet in a single lissome movement, though he did not come within the pale.
Twilight or no, Cadfael saw the glance that locked and held fast between the youth and the girl. Hyacinth’s face was still and mute as bronze, but a gleam of the fading light caught the amber brilliance of his eyes, fierce and secret as a cat’s, and a sudden quickening and darkening in their depths that was reflected in the flush and brightness in Annet’s startled countenance. It was no great surprise. The girl was pretty, and the boy undoubtedly attractive, all the more because he had been of invaluable service to her father. And it was natural and human, that that circumstance should endear father and daughter to him, no less than him to them. Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.
I’ll be on my way, then,’ said Cadfael to the unregarding air, and mounted softly, not to break the spell that held them still. But from the shelter of the trees he looked back, and saw them standing just as he had left them, and heard the boy’s voice clear and solemn in the silence of the dusk, saying: ‘I must speak to you!’
Annet did not say anything, but she closed the house door softly behind her, and came forward to meet him at the gate. And Cadfael rode back through the woods mildly aware that he was smiling, though he could not be sure, on more sober reflection, that there was anything to smile about in so unlikely an encounter. For what common ground could there be, for those two to meet on, and hold fast for more than a moment: the abbey forester’s daughter, a good match for any lively and promising young man this side the shire, and a beggarly, rootless stranger dependent on charitable patronage, with no land, no craft and no kin?
He went to tend and stable his horse before he sought out Abbot Radulfus to tell him how things stood in Eyton forest. There was a late stir within there, of new guests arrived, and their mounts being accommodated and cared for. Of late there had been little movement about the county; the business of the summer, when so many merchants and tradesmen were constantly on the move, had dwindled gently away into the autumn quiet. Later, as the Christmas feast drew near, the guest halls would again be full with travellers hastening home, and kinsmen visiting kinsmen, but at this easy stage between, there was time to note those who came, and feel the human curiosity that is felt by those who have sworn stability about those who ebb and flow with the tides and seasons. And here just issuing from the stables and crossing the yard in long, lunging strides, the gait of a confident and choleric man, was someone undoubtedly of consequence in his own domain, richly dressed, elegantly booted, and
