wearing sword and dagger. He surged past Cadfael in the gateway, a big, burly, thrusting man, his face abruptly lit as he swung past the torch fixed at the gate, and then as abruptly darkened. A massive face, fleshy and yet hard, muscled like a wrestler’s arms, handsome in a brutal fashion, the face of a man not in anger at this moment, but always ready to be angry. He was shaven clean, which made the smooth power of his features even more daunting, and the eyes that stared imperiously straight before him looked disproportionately small, though in reality they probably were not, because of the massy flesh in which they were but shallowly set. By the look of him, not a man to cross. He might have been fifty years old, give or take a few years, but time certainly had not softened what must have been granite from the start.
His horse was standing in the stable yard outside an open stall, stripped and gently steaming as if his saddlecloth had only just been removed, and a groom was rubbing him down and hissing to him gently as he worked. A meagre but wiry fellow, turning grey, in faded homespun of a dull brown, and a rubbed leather coat. He slid one sidelong glance at Cadfael and nodded a silent greeting, so inured to being wary of all men that even a Benedictine brother was to be avoided rather than welcomed.
Cadfael gave him good-even cheerfully, and began his own unsaddling. ‘You’ve ridden far? Was that your lord I met at the gate?’
‘It was,’ said the man without looking up, and spared no more words.
‘A stranger to me. Where are you from? Guests are thin this time of year.’
‘From Bosiet it’s a manor the far side of Northampton, some miles south-east of the town. He is Bosiet?Drogo Bosiet. He holds that and a fair bit of the county besides.’
‘He’s well away from his home ground,’ said Cadfael with interest. ‘Where’s he bound? We see very few travellers from Northamptonshire in these parts.’
The groom straightened up to take a longer and narrower look at this inquisitive questioner, and visibly his manner eased a little, finding Cadfael amiable and harmless. But he did not on that account grow less morose, nor more voluble.
‘He’s hunting,’ he said with a grim and private smile.
‘But not for deer,’ hazarded Cadfael, returning the inspection and caught by the wryness of the smile. ‘Nor, I dare say, for the beasts of the warren.’
‘You dare say well. It’s a man he’s after.’
‘A runaway?’ Cadfael found it hard to believe. ‘So far from home? Was a runaway villein worth so much time and expense to him?’
‘This one is. He’s valuable and skilled, but that’s not the whole of it,’ confided the groom, discarding his suspicion and reticence. ‘He has a score to settle with this one. One report we got of him, setting out westwards and north, and he’s combed every village and town along all this way, dragging me one road while his son with another groom goes another, and he won’t stop short of the Welsh border. Me? If I did clap eyes on the lad he’s after, I’d be blind. I wouldn’t give him back a dog that ran from him, let alone a man.’ His dry voice had gathered sap and passion as he talked, and he turned fully for the first time, so that the torchlight fell on his face. One cheek was marked with a blackening bruise, the corner of his mouth torn and swollen, with the look of a festering infection about it.
‘His mark?’ asked Cadfael, eyeing the wound.
‘His seal, sure enough, and done with a seal ring. I was not quick enough at his stirrup when he mounted, yesterday morning.’
‘I can dress that for you,’ said Cadfael, ‘if you’ll wait while I go and make report to my abbot about another matter. You’d best let me, it could take bad ways. By the same token,’ he said quietly, ‘you’re far enough out of his country, and near enough to the border, to do some running of your own, if you’re so minded.’
‘Brother,’ said the groom with the briefest and harshest of laughs, ‘I have a wife and children in Bosiet, I’m manacled. But Brand was young and unwed, his heels are lighter than mine. And I’d best get this beast stalled, and be off to wait on my lord, or he’ll be laying the other cheek open for me.’
‘Then come out to the guest hall steps,’ said Cadfael, recalled as sharply to his own duty, ‘when he’s in bed and snoring, and I’ll clean that sore for you.’
Abbot Radulfus listened with concern, but also with relief, to Cadfael’s report, promised to send at first light enough helpers to clear away the willow tree, clean out the brook and shore up the bank above, and nodded gravely at the suggestion that Eilmund’s long wait in the water might complicate his recovery, even though the fracture itself was simple and clean.
‘I should like,’ said Cadfael, ‘to visit him again tomorrow and make sure he stays in his bed, for there may be a degree of fever, and you know him, Father, it will take more than his daughter’s scolding to keep him tamed. If he has your orders he may take heed. I’ll take his measure for crutches, but not let them near him till I’m sure he’s fit to rise.’
‘You have my leave to go and come as you see fit,’ said Radulfus, ‘for as long as he needs your care. Best keep that horse for your use until then. The journey would be too slow on foot, and we shall need you here some part of the day, Brother Winfrid being new to the discipline.’
Cadfael smiled, remembering. ‘It was no slow journey the young man Hyacinth made of it. Four times today he’s run those miles, back and forth on his master’s errand, and back and forth again for Eilmund. I only hope the hermit did not take it ill that his boy was gone so long.’
It was in Cadfael’s mind that the groom from Bosiet might be too much in fear of his master to venture out by night, even when his lord was sleeping. But come he did, slipping out furtively just as the brothers came out from Compline. Cadfael led him out through the gardens to the workshop in the herbarium, and there kindled a lamp to examine the lacerated wound that marred the man’s face.
The little brazier was turfed down for the night, but not extinguished, evidently Brother Winfrid had been careful to keep it alive in case of need. He was learning steadily, and strangely the delicacy of touch that eluded him with pen or brush showed signs of developing now that he came to deal with herbs and medicines. Cadfael uncovered the fire and blew it into a glow, and put on water to heat.
‘He’s safe asleep, is he, your lord? Not likely to wake? Though if he did, he should have no need of you at this hour. But I’ll be as quick as I may.’
The groom sat docile and easy under the ministering hands, turning his face obediently to the light of the lamp.
