Brother Cadfael 14: The Hermit of Eyton Forest Read Free

throw his sword away to pick up the man he'd flattened. It's the little, shrill terriers that bare their teeth.'
    They emerged into the band of flowerbeds beyond the kitchen garden, where the rose bushes had grown leggy and begun to shed their leaves. Rounding the corner of the box hedge, they came out into the great court, at this working hour of the morning almost deserted but for one or two travellers coming and going about the guest hall, and a stir of movement down in the stables. Just as they rounded the tall hedge to step into the court, a small figure shot out of the gate of the grange court, where the barns and storage lofts lined three sides of a compact yard, and made off at a run across the narrows of the court into the cloister, to emerge a minute later at the other end at a decorous walk, with eyes lowered in seemly fashion, and plump, childish hands devoutly linked at his belt, the image of innocence. Cadfael halted considerately, with a hand on Hugh's arm, to avoid confronting the boy too obviously.
    The child reached the corner of the infirmary, rounded it, and vanished. There was a distinct impression that as he quit the sight of any watchers in the great court he broke into a run again, for a bare heel flashed suddenly and was gone. Hugh was grinning. Cadfael caught his friend's eye, and said nothing.
    'Let me hazard!' said Hugh, twinkling. 'You picked your apples yesterday, and they're not yet laid up in the trays in the loft. Lucky it was not Prior Robert who saw him at it, and he with the breast of his cotte bulging like a portly dame!'
    'Oh, there are some of us have a sort of silent understanding. He'll have taken the biggest, but only four. He thieves in moderation. Partly from decent obligation, partly because half the sport is to tempt providence again and again.'
    Hugh's agile black eyebrow signalled amused enquiry. 'Why four?'
    'Because we have but four boys still in school, and if he thieves at all, he thieves for all. There are several novices not very much older, but to them he has no obligation. They must do their own thieving, or go without. And do you know,' asked Cadfael complacently, 'who that young limb is?'
    'I do not, but you are about to astonish me.'
    'I doubt if I am. That is Master Richard Ludel, the new lord of Eaton. Though plainly,' said Cadfael, wryly contemplating shadowed innocence, 'he does not yet know it.'
    Richard was sitting cross-legged on the grassy bank above the mill-pond, thoughtfully nibbling out the last shreds of white flesh from round his apple core, when one of the novices came looking for him.
    'Brother Paul wants you,' announced the messenger, with the austerely complacent face of one aware of his own virtue, and delivering a probably ominous summons to another. 'He's in the parlour. You'd best hurry.'
    'Me?' said Richard, round-eyed, looking up from his enjoyment of the stolen apple. No one had any great cause to be afraid of Brother Paul, the master of the novices and the children, who was the gentlest and most patient of men, but even a reproof from him was to be evaded if possible. 'What does he want me for?'
    'You should best know that,' said the novice, with mildly malicious intent. 'It was not likely he'd tell me. Go and find out for yourself, if you truly have no notion.'
    Richard committed his denuded core to the pond, and rose slowly from the grass. 'In the parlour, you say?' The use of so private and ceremonial a place argued something grave, and though he was unaware of any but the most venial of misdeeds that could be laid to his account during the past weeks, it behoved him to be wary. He went off slowly and thoughtfully, trailing his bare feet in the coolness of the grass, deliberately scuffing hard little soles along the cobbles of the court, and duly presented himself. In the small, dim parlour, where visitors from the outside world might occasionally talk in private with their cloistered sons.
    Brother Paul was standing with his back to the