Virgin in the Ice (5 page)

Cadfael was slow to recognize, slower to believe, what he had seen. Half an hour later, and he would not have been able to see it at all. Fifty paces on, with a thicket of bushes between, he halted, and instead of remounting, as Yves expected, put the bridle into the boy’s hands, and said with careful calm: “Wait a moment for me. No, we need not turn off yet, this is not the place where the tracks divide. Something I noticed there. Wait!”

Yves wondered, but waited obediently, as Cadfael turned back to the frozen brook. The pallor had been no illusion from some stray reflected gleam, it was there fixed and still, embedded in the ice. He went down on his knees to look more closely.

The short hairs rose on his neck. Not a yearling lamb, as he had briefly believed it might be. Longer, more shapely, slender and white. Out of the encasing, glassy stillness a pale, pearly oval stared up at him with open eyes. Small, delicate hands had floated briefly before the frost took hold, and hovered open at her sides, a little upraised as if in appeal. The white of her body and the white of her torn shift which was all she wore seemed to Cadfael to be smirched by some soiling color at the breast, but so faintly that too intent staring caused the mark to shift and fade. The face was fragile, delicate, young.

A lamb, after all. A lost ewe-lamb, a lamb of God, stripped and violated and slaughtered. Eighteen years old? It could well be so.

By this token, Ermina Hugonin was at once found and lost.

Chapter Four

THERE WAS NOTHING TO BE DONE HERE at this hour, alone as he was, and if he lingered, the boy might come to see what kept him so long. He rose from his knees in haste, and went back to where the horse stamped and fidgeted, eager to get back to his stable. The boy was looking round for him curiously, rather than anxiously.

“What was it? Is there something wrong?”

“Nothing to fret you.” Not yet, he thought with a pang, not until you must know. At least let’s feed you, and warm you, and reassure you your own life is safe enough, before you need hear word of this. “I thought I saw a sheep caught in the ice, but I was mistaken.” He mounted, and reached round the boy to take the reins. “We’d best make haste. We’ll have full darkness on us before we reach Bromfield.”

Where the track forked they bore right as they had been instructed, a straight traverse along the slope, easy to follow. The boy’s sturdy body grew heavier and softer in Cadfael’s arm, the brown head hung sleepy on his shoulder. You at least, thought Cadfael, mute in his anger and grief, we’ll put out of harm’s way, if we could not save your sister.

“You have not told me your name,” said Yves, yawning. “I don’t know what to call you.”

“My name is Cadfael, a Welshman from Trefriw, but now of Shrewsbury abbey. Where, I think, you were bound.”

“Yes, so we were. But Ermina—my sister’s name is Ermina—she must always have her own way. I have far more sense than she has! If she’d listened to me we would never have got separated, and we should all have been safe in Shrewsbury by now. I wanted to come to Bromfield with Brother Elyas—you do know about Brother Elyas?—and so did Sister Hilaria, but not Ermina, she had other plans. This is all her fault!”

And small doubt, by now, that that was true, Brother Cadfael reflected wretchedly, clasping the innocent judge who lay warm and confiding in his arm. But surely our little faults do not deserve so crushing a penalty. Without time to reconsider, to repent, to make reparation. Youth destroyed for a folly, when youth should be allowed its follies on the way to maturity and sense.

They were coming down on to the good, trodden road between Ludlow and Bromfield. “Praise God!” said Cadfael, sighting the torches at the gatehouse, yellow terrestrial stars glowing through a fragile but thickening curtain of snow. “We are here!”

They rode in at the gate, to be confronted by a scene of unexpected activity in the great court. The snow within was stamped into intricate patterns of hooves, and about the stables two or three grooms, certainly not of the household, were busy rubbing down horses and leading them to their stalls. Beside the door of the guest-hall Prior Leonard stood in earnest conversation with a lithe young man of middle height, still cloaked and hooded, and his back turned, but it was a back Cadfael knew very well by now. Hugh Beringar had come in person to probe into the first news of the lost Hugonins, and brought, by the look of it, two or three more officers with him.

His ear was as sharp as ever, he turned towards the arrivals and came striding before ever the horse halted. The prior followed, eager and hopeful at sight of two returning where only one went forth.

Cadfael was down by the time they approached, and Yves, dazzled and excited, had recovered from his sleepiness and braced himself to encounter with a nobleman’s assurance whoever bore down on him. He set both plump paws to the pommel of the saddle, and vaulted down into the snow. A long way down for his short stature, but he lit like an acrobat, and stretched erect before Beringar’s amused and approving eye.

“Make your bow, Yves, to Hugh Beringar, the deputy sheriff of this shire,” said Cadfael. “And to Prior Leonard of Bromfield, your host here.” And to Hugh, aside, he said fervently, while the boy made his solemn reverences: “Ask him nothing, yet, get him within!”

Between them they made a reasonable job of it, quick in response to each other from old habit. Yves was soon led away contentedly with Leonard’s bony but benevolent hand on his shoulder, to be warmed and fed and made much of before bed. He was young, he would sleep this night. He was cloister-educated, he would stir in response to the bells for office, and find nothing but reassurance, and sleep again heartily.

“For God’s sake,” said Cadfael, heaving a great sigh as soon as the boy was safely out of sight, “come within, somewhere quiet, where we can talk. I never expected you here in person, seeing the ties you have at home…” Beringar had taken him companionably by the arm, and was hurrying him into the doorway of the prior’s lodging, and eyeing him intently along his shoulder as they shook the snow from boots and cloaks on the threshold. “We had but a first breath of news of our quarry, I never thought it could tear you away, though thanks be, it did!”

“I’ve left all in very good order behind me,” said Hugh. He had come to meet his friend expecting a glow of good news, and found himself confronted with a gravity that promised little but trouble. “If you have burdens on your mind here, Cadfael, at least you may be easy about affairs in Shrewsbury. The very day you left us, our son was born, a fine, lusty lad as yellow-haired as his mother, and the pair of them flourishing. And for good measure, the Worcester girl has given her man a son, too, only one day after. The house is full of exultant women, and no one is going to miss me for these few days.”

“Oh, Hugh, the best of news! I’m happy for you both.” It was right and fitting, Cadfael thought, a life emerging in defiance of a death. “And all went well for her? She had not too hard a time of it?”

“Oh, Aline has the gift! She’s too innocent to understand that there can be pain in a thing so joyful as birth, so she felt none. Faith, even if I hadn’t had this errand to occupy me, I was as near being elbowed out of my own house as makes no matter. Your prior’s message came very aptly. I have three men here with me, and twenty-two more I have quartered on Josce de Dinan in Ludlow castle, to be at hand if I need them, and to give him a salutary jolt if he really is in two minds about changing sides. He cannot be in any doubt now that I have my eye on him. And now,” said Hugh, drawing up a chair to the fire in the prior’s parlor, “you owe me a story, I fancy, and for my life I can’t tell what to expect of it. Here you come riding in with the boy we’ve been hunting on your saddle-bow, and yet a face on you as bleak as the sky, when you should be beaming. And not a word to be got out of you until he was safe out of earshot. Where did you find him?”

Cadfael sat back with a small groan of weariness and stiffness after his chill ride. There was no longer any urgent need for action. In the night they would never find the place, especially now that the wind was high and the fresh snow altering the landscape on all sides, blowing hillsides naked, filling in hollows, burying what yesterday had uncovered. He could afford to sit still and feel the warmth of the fire on his legs, and tell what he had to tell at his own pace, since there was nothing to be done about it until daylight.

“In an assart in Clee Forest, in shelter with a decent cottar and his wife, who would not let him take his chance alone through the woods until some trustworthy traveller came by to bear him company. Me they considered fit for the task, and he came with me willingly enough.”

“But he was there alone? A pity,” said Hugh with a wry grimace, “that you did not find his sister, too, while you were about it.”

“I am only too afraid,” said Cadfael, the warmth of the fire heavy on his eyelids, “that I have indeed found her.”

The silence lasted a shorter time than it seemed. The significance of that last utterance there was no mistaking.

“Dead?” asked Hugh bluntly.

“And cold.” Cold as ice, encased in ice. The first bitter frost had provided her a glassy coffin, preserving her flesh immaculate and unchanged to accuse her destroyer.

“Tell me,” said Hugh, intent and still.

Cadfael told him. The whole story would have to be told again when Prior Leonard came, for he, too, must help to stand between the boy and too early and too sudden knowledge of his loss. But in the meantime it was a relief to heave the burden from his heart, and know that this was now Hugh’s responsibility as much as his own.

“Can you find the place again?”

“By daylight, yes, I’ll find it. In darkness, no use trying. It will be a fearful thing… We shall have to take axes to hew her out of the ice, unless the thaw comes.” It was a forlorn hope, there was no possible sign of a thaw.

“That we’ll face when we come to it,” said Hugh somberly. “Tonight we’d best get the boy’s story out of him, and see if we can gather from it how she ever came where you happened on her. And where, in heaven’s name, is the nun who fled with her?”

“According to Yves, he left her in Cleeton, safe enough. And the girl—poor fool!—he says went off with a lover. But I took him no further into matters, it was towards the end of the day, and the most urgent thing was to get one, at least, into safety.”

“True enough, and you did well. We’ll wait for the prior, and until the boy’s fed and warmed and easy. Then between us we’ll hope to get out of him all he knows, and more, perhaps, than he realizes he knows, without betraying that he’s lost a sister. Though he’ll have to learn it soon or late,” said Hugh unhappily. “Who else knows the poor girl’s face?”

“But not tonight, let him sleep soundly tonight. Time enough,” said Cadfael heavily, “when we’ve brought her in and made her as comely as may be, before he need see her.”

Supper and security had done much for Yves, and his own natural resilience had done even more. He sat in the prior’s parlor before Compline, face to face with Hugh Beringar, and with Prior Leonard and Brother Cadfael in watchful attendance, and told his story with bluntness and brevity.

“She is very brave,” he said judicially, giving his sister her due, “but very obstinate and self-willed. All the way from Worcester I did feel she had something up her sleeve, and was taking advantage of having to run away. We had to go roundabout at first, and slowly, because there were bands of soldiers roaming even miles from the town, so it took us a long time to get safely to Cleobury, and there we stayed one night, and that was the night Brother Elyas was there, too, and he came with us as far as Foxwood, and wanted us to come with him into Bromfield for safety, and I wanted that, too, and so did Sister Hilaria. From here we could have got an escort into Shrewsbury, and it would not have been a much longer way. But Ermina would not have it! She must always have her own way, and she would go on over the hills to Godstoke. No use my arguing, she never listens, she claims that being the elder makes her the wiser. And if we others had gone with Brother Elyas she would still have gone on over the hills alone, so what could we do but go with her?” He blew out his lips in a disgusted breath.

“Certainly you could not leave her,” agreed Beringar reasonably. “So you went on, to spend the next night at Cleeton?”

“It’s close by Cleeton, a solitary holding. Ermina had a nurse once who married a tenant of that manor, so we knew we could get a bed there. The man’s name is John Druel. We got there in the afternoon, and I remembered afterwards that Ermina was talking apart with the son of the house, and then he went away, and we didn’t see him again until evening. I never thought of it then, but now I’m sure she sent him with a message. That was what she intended all along. For a man came late in the evening, with horses, and took her away. I heard the stir, and I got up and looked out… Two horses there were, and he was just helping her up into the saddle…”

“He?” said Hugh. “You knew him?”

“Not his name, but I do remember him. When my father was alive he used to visit sometimes, if there was hunting, or for Christmas or Easter. Many guests used to come, we always had company. He must be son or nephew to one of my father’s friends. I never paid him much attention, nor he never noticed me, I was too young. But I do remember his face, and I think… I think he has been visiting Ermina now and then in Worcester.”

If he had, they must have been very decorous visits, with a sponsoring sister always in attendance.

“You think she sent him word to come and fetch her?” asked Hugh. “This was no abduction? She went willingly?”

“She went gaily!” Yves asserted indignantly. “I heard her laughing. Yes, she sent for him, and he came. And that was why she would go that way, for he must have a manor close by, and she knew she could whistle him to her. She will have a great dower,” said the baron’s heir solemnly, his round, childish cheeks flushing red with outrage. “And my sister would never endure to have her marriage made for her in the becoming way, if it went against her choice. I never knew a rule she would not break, shamelessly…”

His chin shook, a weakness instantly and ruthlessly suppressed. All the arrogant pride of all the feudal houses of Anjou and England in this small package, and he loved as much as he hated her, or more, and never, never must he see her mute and violated and stripped to her shift.

Hugh took up the questioning with considerate calm. “And what did you do?” The jolt back into facts was salutary.

“No one else had heard,” said Yves, rallying, “unless it was the boy who carried her message, and he had surely been told not to hear anything. I was still dressed, there being only one bed, which the women had, so I rushed out to try and stop them. Older she may be, but I am my father’s heir! I am the head of our family now.”

“But afoot,” said Hugh, pricking him back to the real and sorry situation, “you could hardly keep their pace. And they were away before you could hale them back to answer to you.”

“No, I couldn’t keep up, but I could follow. It had begun to snow, they left tracks, and I knew they could not be going very far. Far enough to lose me!” he owned, and bit a lip that did not quite know whether to curl up or down. “I followed as long as I could by their tracks, and it was uphill, and the wind rose, and there was so much snow the tracks were soon covered. I couldn’t find the way forward or back. I tried to keep what I thought was the direction they’d taken, but I don’t know how much I may have wandered, or where I went. I was quite lost. All night I was in the forest, and the second night Thurstan found me and took me home with him. Brother Cadfael knows. Thurstan said there were outlaws abroad, and I should stay with him until some safe traveller came by. And so I did. And now I don’t know,” he said, visibly sinking into his proper years, “where Ermina went with her lover, or what has become of Sister Hilaria. She would wake to find the two of us gone, and I don’t know what she would do. But she was with John and his wife, they surely wouldn’t let her come to harm.”