The Red Saint by Warwick Deeping

Denise was so much the saint and the Lady of the Goldspur woods that the country folk had almost ceased to wonder whence she had come, and what her past had been. She was Sancta Denise to them, a woman to whom they went when they were sick or in trouble, who came and prayed for them, and smiled on their children with her miraculous eyes. All the woodland folk in the hundreds round looked on Denise as a saint, a child of mystery who dwelt up yonder amid the great beech trees under the clouds. Offerings were left before her gate, milk, bread, eggs, and herbs, the offerings of the poor. If there was digging to be done, or the grass to be scythed in the glade, some of Aymery's villeins would be there at dawn, working like brown gnomes in the dusk of the breaking day. Four times a year a pedlar brought her the gold thread for her orfrays work, for Denise had wonderful hands, and her embroidery had been worn by queens. The money that she earned Denise spent among the poor, and she might have walked from Rye to Shoreham, and no Sussex man would have laid hands upon her, save to touch her gown for a blessing.

Olivia, Aymery's mother, alone had known Denise's history, and Olivia was dead. Some had said that she was the "love child" of a great lady, others a "ward" who had fled from the King's court rather than be married to some creature who had offered the King money. But Denise was Denise, and her past was of no account, though any hind could have sworn that she was no peasant's child. The cell in the beech wood had been built for her by Dame Olivia, and the ground about it turned into a garden. Denise had become part of the woodland life, a tender and mysterious figure that threw a glamour over the hearts of all.