Cadfael viewed it with some interest as they passed, for thiswas one of the two manors which Dame Dionisia hoped to secure tothe Ludel estate by marrying off Richard to the girl HiltrudeAstley. So fine a property was certainly tempting. All this stretchof country on the northern side of the river extended before themin rich water meadows and undulating fields, rising here and thereinto a gentle hill, and starred with clusters of trees just meltinginto the first gold of their autumn foliage. The land rose on theskyline into the forested ridge of the Wrekin, a great heavingfleece of woodland that spread downhill to the Severn, and cast agreat tress of its dark mane across Ludel land and into theabbey’s woods of Eyton-by-Severn. There was barely a milebetween the grange of Eyton, close beside the river, and RichardLudel’s manor house at Eaton. The very names sprang from thesame root, though time had prised them apart, and the Normanpassion for order and formulation had fixed and ratified thedifferences.
As they rode nearer, their view of the long hog-back of forestchanged and foreshortened. By the time they reached the manor theywere viewing it from its end, and the hill had grown into an abruptmountain, with a few sheer faces of rock just breaking the darkfell of the trees near the summit. The village sat serenely in themeadows, just short of the foothills, the manor within its longstockade raised over an undercroft, and the small church closebeside it. Originally it had been a dependent chapel of the churchat its neighbour Leighton, downriver by a couple of miles.