Virgin in the Ice (3 page)

“Then how,” demanded Cadfael, gaping, “did he come to be picked out of the snow and brought back to you naked only a day or two later? You’re surely grown somewhat careless with your guests, Leonard!”

“But he left us, Cadfael! The day before yesterday he said he must prepare to leave early in the morning, and be on his way. And as soon as he had breakfasted yesterday he left, and I do assure you, well provided for the first part of his journey. We know no more than you how he came to be stricken down still so close to us, and you see he cannot yet speak, to make all plain. Where he had been between yesterday’s dawn and the thick of the night no one knows, but certainly not where he was found, or we should be tolling for him, not trying to heal him.”

“Howbeit, at least you know him. How much do you know of him? He gave you a name?”

The prior hoisted bony shoulders. What does a name tell about a man? “His name is Elyas. I think, though he never said, not long in the cloister. A taciturn man—in particular, I think, he would not speak of himself. He did eye the weather somewhat anxiously. We thought it natural, since he had to brave the way home, but now I fancy there was more in it than that, for he did say something of a party he had left by Foxwood, coming from Cleobury, some people he encountered there in flight from Worcester, and urged to come here with him for safety, but they would push on over the hills for Shrewsbury. The girl, he said, was resolute, and she called the tune.”

“Girl?” Cadfael stiffened erect, ears pricked. “There was a girl holding the rein?”

“So it seemed.” Leonard blinked in surprise at such interest in the phenomenon.

“Did he say who else was in her company? Was there a boy spoken of? And a nun in charge of them?” He realized ruefully the folly of any such attitude to this relationship. It was the girl who called the tune!

“No, he never told us more. But I did think he was anxious about them, for you see, the snow came after he reached us, and over those bleak hills… He might well wonder.”

“You think he may have gone to seek them? To find assurance they had made the crossing safely, and were on a passable way to Shrewsbury? It would not be so far aside from his way.”

“It could be so,” said Leonard, and was mute, searching Cadfael’s face with a worried frown, waiting for enlightenment.

“I wonder, I wonder if he found them—if he was bringing them here for refuge!” He was talking to himself, for the prior was left astray, patiently regarding him. And if he was, thought Cadfael silently, what, in God’s name, had become of them now? Their only helper and protector battered senseless and left for dead, and those three, where? But as yet there was no proof that these were the hapless Hugonins and their young nun. Many poor souls, girls among them, had fled from the despoiled city of Worcester.

Headstrong girls, who called the tune? Well, he had known them crop up in cottage no less than in castle, in croft and toft, and among the soil-bound villein families, too. Women were as various as men.

“Leonard,” he said earnestly, leaning across the table, “have you had no proclamation from the sheriff about two young things lost from Worcester in the company of a nun of the convent there?”

The prior shook a vague but troubled head. “I don’t recall such a message, no. Are you telling me that these… Brother Elyas certainly felt some anxiety. You think these he spoke of may be the ones being sought?”

Cadfael told him the whole of it, their flight, the search for them, the plight of their uncle, threatened with capture and prison if he ventured across the king’s borders in quest of them. Leonard listened in growing dismay. “It could be so, indeed. If this poor brother could but speak!”

“But he did speak. He told you he left them at Foxwood, and they were bent on crossing the hills still towards Shrewsbury. That would mean their venturing clean over the flank of Clee, to Godstoke, where they would be in the lands of Wenlock priory, and in good enough hands.”

“But a bitter, bleak way over,” mourned the prior, aghast. “And that heavy snow the next night.”

“There’s no certainty,” Cadfael reminded him cautiously. “Barely a suspicion. A quarter of Worcester fled this way to escape the slaughter. Better I should keep watch on this patient of ours than waste time on speculation. For only he can tell us more, and besides, him we already have, he was laid at our doors, and him we must keep. Go to Compline, Leonard, and pray for him, and I’ll do as much by his bed. And if he speaks, never fret, I’ll be awake enough to catch his drift, for all our sakes.”

In the night the first sudden but infinitesimal change took place. Brother Cadfael was long accustomed to sleeping with one eye open, and both ears. On his low stool beside the bed he drowsed thus, arms folded, head lowered, one elbow braced on the wooden frame of the bed, to quicken to any move. But it was his hearing that pricked him awake to stoop with held breath. For Elyas had just drawn his first deeper, longer, eased breath, that went down through his misused body from throat to stretched feet, groaning at the disturbed pains that everywhere gored him. The horrid snore in his throat had softened, he drew air, painful though it was, down into his midriff hungrily, like a starving man grasping at food. Cadfael saw a great quiver pass over the mangled face and past the swollen lips. The tip of a dry tongue strove to moisten, and shivered and withdrew from pain, but the lips remained parted. The strong teeth unclenched to let out a long, sighing groan.

Cadfael had honeyed wine standing in a jug beside the brazier, to keep warm. He trickled a few drops between the swollen lips, and had the satisfaction of seeing the unconscious face contort in muscular spasm, and the throat labor to swallow. When he touched a finger to the man’s lips, again closed, they parted in thirsty response. Drop by drop, patiently, a good portion of the drink went down. Only when response failed at last did Cadfael abandon the process. Cold, oblivious absence had softened gradually into sleep, now that a little warmth had been supplied him both within and without. A few days of lying still, for his wits to settle again right way up in his head, thought Cadfael, and he’ll come round and be on his way back to us. But whether he’ll remember much of what befell him is another matter. He had known men, after such head injuries, revive to recall every detail of their childhood and past years, but no recollection whatever of recent injury.

He removed the cooling brick from the foot of the bed, fetched a replacement from the kitchen, and sat down to resume his vigil. This was certainly sleep now, but a very uneasy sleep, broken by whimpers and moans, and sudden shudders that passed all down the long body. Once or twice Elyas labored in evident distress, throat and lips and tongue trying to frame words, but achieving only anguished, indecipherable sounds, or no sounds at all. Cadfael leaned close, to catch the first utterance that should have meaning. But the night passed, and his vigil had brought him nothing coherent.

Perhaps the sounds that measured out the cloistral day were able to reach some quiet core of habit even within the sufferer’s disrupted being, for at the note of the bell for Prime he fell suddenly quiet, and his eyelids fluttered and strove to open, but closed again wincingly against even this subdued light. His throat worked, he parted his lips and began to attempt speech. Cadfael leaned close, his ear to the struggling mouth.

“… madness…” said Elyas, or so Cadfael thought he said. “Over Clee,” he grieved, “in such snows…” He turned his head on the pillow, and hissed with the pain. “So young… wilful…” He was lapsing again into a better sleep, his disquiet easing. In a voice thread-fine but suddenly clearly audible: “The boy would have come with me,” said Brother Elyas.

That was all. He lay once again motionless and mute.

“He has the turn for life,” said Cadfael, when Prior Leonard came in to inquire after the patient as soon as Prime ended, “but there’ll be no hurrying him.” An earnest young brother stood dutifully by to relieve him of his watch. “When he stirs you may feed him the wine and honey, you’ll find he’ll take it now. Sit close and mark me any word he says. I doubt if you’ll have anything more to do for him, while I get my sleep, but there’s a ewer for his use if he needs it. And should he begin to sweat, keep him well covered but bathe his face to give him ease. God willing, he’ll sleep. No man can do for him what sleep will do.”

“You’re content with him?” asked Leonard anxiously, as they went out together. “He’ll do?”

“He’ll do very well, given time and quietness.” Cadfael was yawning. He wanted breakfast first, and a bed after, for all the morning hours. After that, and another look at the dressings on head and ribs, and all the minor hurts that had threatened suppuration, he would have a better idea of how to manage both the nursing of Brother Elyas and the pursuit of the lost children.

“And has he spoken? Any sensible word?” pressed Leonard.

“He has spoken of a boy, and of the madness of attempting to cross the hills in such snows. Yes, I believe he did encounter the Hugonin pair and their nun, and try to bring them into shelter here with him. It was the girl who would go her own way,” said Cadfael, brooding on this unknown chit who willed to venture the hills in both winter and anarchy. “Young and wilful, he said,” But however mad and troublesome they may be, the innocent cannot be abandoned. “Feed me,” said Cadfael, returning to first needs, “and then show me a bed. Leave the absent for later. I’ll not quit Brother Elyas as long as he needs me. But I tell you what we may well do, Leonard, if you’ve a guest in your hall here making for Shrewsbury today. You might charge him to let Hugh Beringar know that we have here what I take to be the first news of the three people he’s seeking.”

“That I’ll certainly do,” said Prior Leonard, “for there’s a cloth merchant of the town on his way home for the Christmas feast, he’ll be off as soon as he’s eaten, to get the best of the day. I’ll go and deliver him the message this minute, and do you go and get your rest.”

Before night Brother Elyas opened his eyes for the second time, and this time, though the return to light caused him to blink a little, he kept them open, and after a few moments opened them wide in blank wonder, astonished by everything on which they rested. Only when the prior stooped close at Cadfael’s shoulder did the brightness of recognition quicken in the sick man’s eyes. This face, it seemed, he knew. His lips parted, and a husky whisper emerged, questioning but hopeful:

“Father Prior…?”

“Here, brother,” said Leonard soothingly. “You are here with us, safe in Bromfield. Rest and gather strength, you have been badly hurt, but here you are in shelter, among friends. Trouble for nothing… ask for whatever you need.”

“Bromfield…” whispered Elyas, frowning. “I had an errand to that place,” he said, troubled, and tried to raise his head from the pillow. “The reliquary… oh, not lost…?”

“You brought it faithfully,” said Leonard. “It is here on the altar of our church, you kept vigil with us when we installed it. Do you not remember? Your errand was done well. All that was required of you, you performed.”

“But how… My head hurts…” The sighing voice faded, the dark brows drew together in mingled anxiety and pain. “What is this weighs on me? How am I come to this?”

They told him, with cautious gentleness, how he had gone forth again from the priory, to make his way home to his own abbey of Pershore, and how he had been brought back broken and battered and abandoned for dead. At the name of Pershore he grasped gladly, there he knew he belonged, and from there he remembered he had set forth to bring Saint Eadburga’s finger-bone to Bromfield, avoiding the perilous route by Worcester. Even Bromfield itself came back to him gradually. But of what had befallen him after his departure he knew nothing. Whoever had so misused him, they were gone utterly from his disturbed mind. Cadfael leaned to him, urging gently:

“You did not meet them again? The girl and boy who would press on over the hills to Godstoke? Foolish, but the girl would go, and her younger brother could not persuade her…”

“What girl and boy were these?” wondered Elyas blankly, and drew his drawn brows more painfully close.

“And a nun—do you not recall a nun who travelled with them?”

He did not. The effort at recall caused him agitation, he dragged at memory and produced only the panic desperation of failure, and in his wandering state failure was guilt. All manner of undischarged obligations drifted elusive behind his haunted eyes, and could not be captured. Sweat broke on his forehead, and Cadfael wiped it gently away.

“Never fret, but lie still and leave all to God, and under God, to us. Your part was done well, you may take your rest.”

They tended his bodily needs, anointed his wounds and grazes, fed him a broth made from their austere stores of meat for the infirmary, with herbs and oatmeal, read the office with him before bed, and still, by the knotting of his brows, Brother Elyas pursued the memories that fled him and would not be snared. In the night, in the low hours when the spirit either crosses or draws back from the threshold of the world, the sleeper was shaken by recollection and dream together. But his utterances then were broken and mumbled, and so clearly painful to his progress that Cadfael, who had reserved to himself that most perilous watch, bent his energies all to soothing away the torment from his patient’s mind, and easing him back into healthful sleep. Cadfael was relieved before dawn, and Elyas slept. The body rallied and healed. The mind wandered and shunned remembrance.

Cadfael slept until noon, and arose to find his patient at rest in wakefulness as he had not been in sleep, very docile, without much pain, and well tended by an elderly brother with long experience of nursing the sick. The day was clear, and the light would last well. Though the frost was unbroken, and without doubt there would be fresh snow in the night, at this hour the sun and the remaining hours of daylight tempted.

“He’s well enough cared for.” said Cadfael to the prior. “I may leave him for a few hours with an easy mind. That horse of mine is rested now, and the ways none so bad until the next fall comes or the wind rises. I’ll ride as far as Godstoke, and ask if these truants ever reached there, and whether they’ve moved on, and by what road. Six days it must be now since he parted from them, at Foxwood you said. If they came safely to the lands of Wenlock priory they may well have made their way either to Wenlock or Shrewsbury by now, and all the coil over them will be done. Then we can all breathe freely.”