Hermit of Eyton Forest Read Free Page B

he himself had just said. The heir must take up the burden and the
privilege his sire had laid down.
    “Yes,
you are the lord of Eaton, or you will be as soon as you are of fit age. You
must study to get wisdom, and manage your lands and people well. Your father
would expect that of you.”
    Still
struggling with the practicalities of his new situation, Richard probed back
into his memory for a clear vision of this father who was now challenging him
to be worthy. In his rare recent visits home at Christmas and Easter he had
been admitted on arrival and departure to a sick-room that smelled of herbs and
premature aging, and allowed to kiss a grey, austere face and listen to a deep
voice, indifferent with weakness, calling him son and exhorting him to study
and be virtuous. But there was little more, and even the face had grown dim in
his memory. Of what he did remember he went in awe. They had never been close
enough for anything more intimate.
    “You
loved your father, and did your best to please him, did you not, Richard?”
Brother Paul prompted gently. “You must still do what is pleasing to him. And
you may say prayers for his soul, which will be a comfort also to you.”
    “Shall
I have to go home now?” asked Richard, whose mind was on the need for
information rather than comfort.
    “To
your father’s burial, certainly. But not to remain there, not yet. It was your
father’s wish that you should learn to read and write, and be properly
instructed in figures. And you’re young yet, your steward will take good care
of your manor until you come to manhood.”
    “My
grandmother,” said Richard by way of explanation, “sees no sense in my learning
my letters. She was angry when my father sent me here. She says a lettered
clerk is all any manor needs, and books are no fit employment for a nobleman.”
    “Surely
she will comply with your father’s wishes. All the more is that a sacred trust,
now that he is dead.”
    Richard
jutted a doubtful lip. “But my grandmother has other plans for me. She wants to
marry me to our neighbour’s daughter, because Hiltrude has no brother, and will
be the heiress to both Leighton and Wroxeter. Grandmother will want that more
than ever now,” said Richard simply, and looked up ingenuously into Brother
Paul’s slightly startled face.
    It
took a few moments to assimilate this news, and relate it to the boy’s entry
into the abbey school when he was barely five years old. The manors of Leighton
and Wroxeter lay one on either side of Eaton, and might well be a tempting
prospect, but plainly Richard Ludel had not concurred in his mother’s ambitious
plans for her grandson, since he had taken steps to place the boy out of the
lady’s reach, and a year later had made Abbot Radulfus Richard’s guardian,
should he himself have to relinquish the charge too soon. Father Abbot had
better know what’s in the wind, thought Brother Paul. For of such a misuse of
his ward, thus almost in infancy, he would certainly not approve.
    Very
warily he said, fronting the boy’s unwavering stare with a grave face: 
“Your father said nothing of what his plans for you might be, some day when you
are fully grown. Such matters must wait their proper time, and that is not yet.
You need not trouble your head about any such match for years yet. You are in
Father Abbot’s charge, and he will do what is best for you.” And he added
cautiously, giving way to natural human curiosity: “Do you know this child—this
neighbour’s daughter?”
    “She
isn’t a child,” Richard stated scornfully. “She’s quite old. She was betrothed
once, but her bridegroom died. My grandmother was pleased, because after
waiting some years for him, Hiltrude wouldn’t have many suitors, not being even
pretty, so she would be left for me.”
    Brother
Paul’s blood chilled at the implications. “Quite old” probably meant no more
than a few years past twenty, but