Hermit of Eyton Forest by Ellis Peters Page B

already eatable. It had been a good day, with sun, and freedom, and
some dabbling in the river where there were safe shallows, and he was reluctant
to go indoors to Vespers at the end of it, and then to supper and bed. He
loitered at the end of the procession winding its way along the riverside path,
and up the green, bushy slope to the Foregate. In the stillness of late
afternoon there were still clouds of midges dancing over the water, and fish
rising to them lazily. Under the bridge the flow looked almost motionless
though he knew it was fast and deep. There had been a boatmill moored there
once, powered by the stream.
    Nine-year-old
Edwin, his devoted ally, loitered with him, but a little anxiously, casting a
glance over his shoulder to see how the distance between them and the tailend
of the procession lengthened. He had been praised for his stoicism after his
fall, and was in no mind to lose the warm sense of virtue the incident had left
with him by being late for Vespers. But neither could he lightly desert his
bosom friend. He hovered, rubbing at a bandaged knee that still smarted a
little.
    “Richard,
come on, we mustn’t dawdle. Look, they’re nearly at the highroad.”
    “We
can easily catch up with them,” said Richard, dabbling his toes in the
shallows. “But you go on, if you want to.”
    “No,
not without you. But I can’t run as fast as you, my knee’s stiff. Do come on,
we shall be late.”
    “I
shan’t, I can be there long before the bell goes, but I forgot you couldn’t run
as well as usual. You go on, I’ll overtake you before you reach the gatehouse.
I just want to see whose boat this is, coming down towards the bridge.”
    Edwin
hesitated, weighing his own virtuous peace of mind against desertion, and for
once decided in accordance with his own wishes. The last black habit at the end
of the procession was just climbing to the level of the highroad, to vanish
from sight. No one had looked back to call the loiterers, or scold, they were
left to their own consciences. Edwin turned and ran after his fellows as fast
as he could for his stiffening knee. From the top of the slope he looked back,
but Richard was ankle-deep in his tiny cove, skimming stones expertly across
the surface of the water in a dotted line of silvery spray. Edwin decided on
virtue, and abandoned him.
    It
had never been in Richard’s mind to play truant, but his game seduced him as
each cast bettered the previous one, and he began to hunt for smoother and
flatter pebbles under the bank, ambitious to reach the opposite shore. And then
one of the town boys who had been swimming under the green sweep of turf that
climbed to the town wall took up the challenge, and began to return the shower
of dancing stones, splashing naked in the shallows. So absorbed was Richard in
the contest that he forgot all about Vespers, and only the small, distant chime
of the bell startled him back to his duty. Then he did drop his stone, abandon
the field to his rival, and scramble hastily ashore to snatch up his discarded
shoes and run like a hart for the Foregate and the abbey. He had left it too
late. The moment he arrived breathless at the gatehouse, and sidled in
cautiously by the wicket to avoid notice, he heard the chanting of the first
psalm from within the church.
    Well,
it was not so great a sin to miss a service, but for all that, he did not wish
to add it to his score at this time, when he was preoccupied with grave family
matters outside the cloister. By good fortune the children of the stewards and
the lay servants were also accustomed to attend Vespers, which so conveniently
augmented the numbers of the schoolboys that one small truant might not be
missed, and if he could slip back into their enveloping ranks as they left the
church afterwards it might be assumed that he had been among them all along. It
was the best course he could think of. Accordingly he slipped into the
cloister,