let my beaters pass by a solitary bush, with his lordship’s sharp eye on us all. Do you know, have they found the child?’
‘No, not yet. He’s not at Eaton, that’s certain. If it’s any comfort, Eilmund, Dame Dionisia had to open her doors to the search, too. Noble and simple, they’ll all fare alike.’
Annet waited upon them in silence, bringing cheese and bread to the table. Her step was as light as always, her face as calm, only at the mention of Richard did her face cloud over in anxious sympathy. There was no knowing what went on behind her composed face, but Cadfael hazarded his own guesses. He took his leave in good time, against Eilmund’s hospitable urgings.
‘I’ve been missing too many services, these last days, I’d best get back to my duty, and at least put in an appearance for Compline tonight. I’ll come in and see you the day after tomorrow. You take care how you go. And, Annet, don’t let him stay on his feet too long. If he gives you trouble, take his props away from him.’
She laughed and said that she would, but her mind, Cadfael thought, was only half on what she said, and she had not made any move to second her father’s protest at such an early departure. Nor did she come out to the gate with him this time, but only as far as the door, and there stood to watch him mount, and waved when he looked back before beginning to thread the narrow path between the trees. Only when he had vanished did she turn and go back into the cottage.
Cadfael did not go far. A few hundred yards into the woods there was a hollow of green surrounded by a deep thicket, and there he dismounted and tethered his horse, and made his way back very quietly and circumspectly to a place from which he could see the house door without himself being seen. The light was dimming gently into the soft green of dusk, and the hush was profound, only the last birdsong broke the forest silence.
In a few minutes Annet came out to the door again, and stood for a little while braced and still, her head alertly reared, looking all round the clearing and listening intently. Then, satisfied, she set off briskly out of the fenced garden and round to the rear of the cottage. Cadfael circled with her in the cover of the trees. Her hens were already securely shut in for the night, the cow was in the byre; from these customary evening tasks Annet had come back a good hour ago, while her father was trying out his crutches in the grassy levels of the clearing. It seemed there was one more errand she had to do before the full night came down and the door was closed and barred. And she went to it at a light and joyous run, her hands spread to part the bushes on either side as she reached the edge of the clearing, her light brown hair shaking loose from its coil and dancing on her shoulders, her head tilted back as though she looked up into the trees, darkening now over her head and dropping, silently and moistly, the occasional withered leaf, the tears of the aging year.
She was not going far. No more than a hundred paces into the woods she halted, poised still in the same joyous attitude of flight, under the branches of the first of the ancient oaks, still in full but tarnished leafage. Cadfael, not far behind her in the shelter of the trees, saw her throw back her head and send a high, melodious whistle up into the crown of the tree. From somewhere high above a soft shimmering of leaves answered, dropping through the branches as an acorn might fall, and in a moment the descending shiver of movement reached the ground in the shape of a young man sudden and silent as a cat, who swung by his hands from the lowest bough and dropped lightly on his feet at Annet’s side. As soon as he touched ground they were in each other’s arms.
So he had not been mistaken. The two of them had barely set eyes on each other when they fell to liking, blessed as they were with the good ground of his services to her father. With Eilmund laid up helpless in the house she could go freely about her own secret business of hiding and feeding a fugitive, but what would they do now that the forester was likely to be up and about, however limited his range must remain? Was it fair to present her father with such a problem in loyalties, and he an official involved with law, if only forest law? But there they stood linked, as candidly as children, with such a suggestion of permanence about their embrace that it surely would take more than father or lord or law or king to disentangle them. With her long mane of hair loosed, and her feet bare, and Hyacinth’s classic elegance of shape and movement, and fierce, disquieting beauty, they might have been two creatures bred out of the ancient forest, faun and nymph out of a profane but lovely fable. Not even the gathering twilight could dim their brightness.
Well, thought Cadfael, surrendering to the vision, if this is what we have to deal with, from this we must go on, for there’s no going back. And he stepped rustling out of the bushes, and walked towards them without conceal.
They heard him and sprang round instantly with heads reared, cheek to cheek, like deer scenting danger. They saw him, and Annet flung out her arms and shut Hyacinth behind her against the bole of the tree, her face blanched and sharp as a sword, and as decisively Hyacinth laughed, lifted her bodily aside, and stepped before her.
‘As if I needed the proof!’ said Cadfael, to afford them whatever reassurance his voice might convey, and he halted without coming too close, though they knew already there was no point in running. ‘I’m not the law. If you’ve done no wrong you’ve nothing to fear from me.’
‘It takes a bolder man than I am,’ said Hyacinth’s clear voice softly, ‘to claim he’s done no wrong.’ Even in the dimming light his sudden, unnerving smile shone perceptibly for a moment. ‘But I’ve done no murder, if that’s what you mean. Brother Cadfael, is it?’
‘It is.’ He looked from one roused and wary face to the other, and saw that they were breathing a little more easily and every moment less tensed for flight or attack. ‘Lucky for you they brought no hounds with them this morning. Hugh never likes to hunt a man with hounds. I’m sorry, lad, if my visit tonight kept you fretting longer than you need have done in your nest up there. I hope you spend your nights in better comfort.’
At that they both smiled, still somewhat cautiously and with eyes alert and wild, but they said nothing.
‘And where did you hide through the sergeant’s search, that they never got wind of you at all?’
Annet made up her mind, with the same thorough practical resolution with which she did everything. She stirred and shook herself, the glossy cloak of her hair billowing into a pale cloud about her head. She drew breath deeply, and laughed.
‘If you must know, he was under the brychans of Father’s bed, while Will Warden sat on the bench opposite drinking ale with us, and his men peered in among my hens and forked through the hay in the loft, outside. You thought, I believe,’ she said, coming close to Cadfael and drawing Hyacinth after her by the hand, ‘that Father was in ignorance of what I was doing. Did you hold that against me, even a little? No need, he knows all, has known it from the beginning, or at least from the moment this manhunt began. And now that you’ve found us out, had we not better all go into the house, and see what our four heads can come up with for the future, to get us all out of this tangle?’
‘They’ll not come here again,’ said Eilmund comfortably, presiding over this meeting in his house from the throne of his bed, the same bed under which Hyacinth had couched secure in the presence of the hunters. ‘But if they do, we’ll know of it in time. Never twice the same hiding place.’
‘And never once any qualms that you might be hiding a murderer?’ asked Cadfael, hopeful of being convinced.
