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 face and listened to the end of this studied speech very courteously. ‘I thank you for your errand,’ he said then mildly, ‘it was well done. I cannot well change the answer I gave to your lady. Richard Ludel who is dead committed the care of his son to me, by letter properly drawn and witnessed. I accepted that charge, and I cannot renounce it now. It was the father’s wish that the son should be educated here until he comes to manhood, and takes command of his own life and affairs. That I promised, and that I shall fulfil. The death of the father only makes my obligation the more sacred and binding. Tell your mistress so.’
‘My lord,’ said the clerk, plainly having expected no other answer, and ready with the next step in his embassage, ‘in changed circumstances such a private legal document need not be the only argument valid in a court of law. The king’s justices would listen no less to the plea of a matron of rank, widowed and now bereaved of her son, and fully able to provide all her grandson’s needs, besides the natural need she has of the comfort of his presence. My mistress desires to inform you that if you do not give up the boy, she intends to bring suit at law to regain him.’
‘Then I can but approve her intention,’ said the abbot serenely. ‘A judicial decision in the king’s court must be satisfying to us both, since it lifts the burden of choice from us. Tell her so, and say that I await the hearing with due submission. But until such a judgement is made, I must hold to my own sworn undertaking. I am glad,’ he said with a dry and private smile, ‘that we are thus agreed.’
There was nothing left for the clerk to do but accept this unexpectedly pliant response at its face value, and bow himself out as gracefully as he could. A slight rustle and stir of curiosity and wonder had rippled round the chapterhouse stalls, but Abbot Radulfus suppressed it with a look, and it was not until the brothers emerged into the great court and dispersed to their work that comment and speculation could break out openly.
‘Was he wise to encourage her?’ marvelled Brother Edmund, crossing towards the infirmary with Cadfael at his side. ‘How if she does indeed take us to law? A judge might very well take the part of a lone lady who wants her grandchild home.’
‘Be easy,’ said Cadfael placidly. ‘It’s but an empty threat. She knows as well as any that the law is slow and costs dear, at the best of times, and this is none of the best, with the king far away and busy with more urgent matters, and half his kingdom cut off from any manner of justice at all. No, she hoped to make the lord abbot think again and yield ground for fear of long vexation. She had the wrong man. He knows she has no intention of going to law. Far more likely to take law into her own hands and try to steal the boy away. It would take slow law or swift action to snatch him back again, once she had him, and force is further out of the abbot’s reach than it is out of hers.’
‘It is to be hoped,’ said Brother Edmund, aghast at the suggestion, ‘that she has not yet used up all her persuasions, if the last resort is to be violence.’
No one could quite determine exactly how young Richard came to know every twist and turn of the contention over his future. He could not have overheard anything of what went on at chapter, nor were the novices present at the daily gatherings, and there was none among the brothers likely to gossip about the matter to the child at the centre of the conflict. Yet it was clear that Richard did know all that went on, and took perverse pleasure in it. Mischief made life more interesting, and here within the enclave he felt quite safe from any real danger, while he could enjoy being fought over.
‘He watches the comings and goings from Eaton,’ said Brother Paul, confiding his mild anxiety to Cadfael in the peace of the herb garden, ‘and is sharp enough to be very well aware what they mean. And he understood all too well what went on at his father’s funeral. I could wish him less acute, for his own sake.’
‘As well he should have his wits about him,’ said Cadfael comfortably. ‘It’s the knowing innocents that avoid the snares. And the lady’s made no move now for ten days. Maybe she’s grown resigned, and given up the struggle.’ But he was by no means convinced of that. Dame Dionisia was not used to being thwarted.
‘It may be so,’ agreed Paul hopefully, ‘for I hear she’s taken in some reverend pilgrim, and refurbished the old hermitage in her woodland for his use. She wants his prayers daily for her son’s soul. Edmund was telling us about it when he brought our allowance of venison. We saw the man, Cadfael, at the funeral. He was there with the two brothers from Buildwas. He’d been lodged with them a week, they give him a very saintly report.’
Cadfael straightened up with a grunt from his bed of mint, grown wiry and thin of leaf now in late October. ‘The fellow who wore the scallop shell? And the medal of Saint James? Yes, I remember noticing him. So he’s settling among us, is he? And chooses a cell and a little square of garden in the woods rather than a grey habit at Buildwas! I never was drawn to the solitary life myself, but I’ve known those who can think and pray the better that way. It’s a long time since that cell was lived in.’
He knew the place, though he seldom passed that way, the abbey’s forester having excellent health, and very little need of herbal remedies. The hermitage, disused now for many years, lay in a thickly wooded dell, a stone- built hut with a square of ground once fenced and cultivated, now overgrown and wild. Here the belt of forest embraced both Eaton ground and the abbey’s woodland of Eyton, and the hermitage occupied a spot where the Ludel border jutted into neighbour territory, close to the forester’s cherished coppice. ‘He’ll be quiet enough there,’ said Cadfael, ‘if he means to stay. By what name are we to know him?’
‘They call him Cuthred. A neighbour saint is a fine thing to have, and it seems they’re already beginning to bring their troubles to him to sort. It may be,’ ventured Brother Paul optimistically, ‘that it’s he who has tamed the lady. He must have a strong influence over her, or she’d never have entreated him to stay. And there’s been no move from her these ten days. It may be we’re all in his debt.’
And indeed, as the soft October days slid away tranquilly one after another, in dim, misty dawns, noondays bright but veiled, and moist green twilights magically still, it seemed that there was to be no further combat over
