Virgin in the Ice (7 page)

“A strange thing followed, though,” said Druel, “for the next day, while we were here telling our tale, and the good folk making room for us in their homes, like Christians as they are, there came a young man afoot, up from the road by the proper way, and asked after just such a party as we had housed. Had any here news, he said, of a young nun of Worcester, in company with two young gentlefolk, brother and sister, making towards Shrewsbury. We were full of our own troubles, but we told him all we knew, and how they were all gone from us before ever this evil befell. And he listened and went away. Up to the wreck of my holding, first, but after that I cannot tell where.”

“A stranger to all here?” asked Hugh, looking round the circle that had gathered, for by then the women had come forth, and hung attentive on the outskirts.

“Never seen before,” said the reeve emphatically.

“What manner of man, then?”

“Why, by his dress husbandman or shepherd like any of us here, a brown homespun man. Not so much as thirty years old, nearer five or six and twenty. Bigger than your lordship, but built like you, light and long. And dark, a black-rimmed eye on him with a yellow glint, like a hawk. And black hair under his hood.”

The women had drawn closer in silence, quiet-eyed and prick-eared. Their interest in the stranger was all the plainer because not one of them voiced it, or volunteered any detail concerning him. Whoever he was, he had made an impression upon the women of Cleeton, and they did not mean to miss anything they could glean about him, or surrender anything they had already gleaned.

“Dark-skinned,” said Druel, “and beaked like a hawk, too. A very comely man.” Yes, so the attentive eyes of the women said. “There was something I thought slow about his speech, now I come to recall…”

Hugh took him up alertly on that. “As though he were not at home in the common English?”

John had not thought of that for himself; he considered it stolidly. “It might be that. Or as if he had a small stumble of the tongue, like.”

Well, if English was not his proper tongue, what was? Welsh? Easily possible here along the borders, but what would a Welshman be doing asking after the fugitives from Worcester? Angevin, then? Ah, that was another matter.

“If ever you should hear or see more of him,” said Hugh, “send me word into Ludlow or Bromfield, and you shall not be losers. And for you, friend, let’s own honestly there’s little chance of recovering all or most of your losses, but some of your stock we may yet win back for you if we can trace these outlaws to their lair. We’ll do our best to that end, be sure.”

He wheeled his horse, and led the way towards the downward track, the others following, but he did not hurry, for one of the young women had drawn off in that direction, and was eyeing him meaningly over her shoulder. As Hugh came by she closed alongside, and laid a hand to his stirrup-leather. She knew what she was about, she had moved far enough to be out of earshot of the village.

“My lord…” She looked up at him with sharp blue eyes, and spoke in a purposeful undertone. “One more thing I can tell you about the dark man, that no one else saw. I said no word, for fear they would close up against him if they knew. He was a very well-looking man, I trusted him, even if he was not what he seemed…”

“In what particular?” asked Hugh, just as quietly.

“He kept his cloak close about him, my lord, and in the cold that was no marvel. But when he went away I followed a little, and I saw how the folds hung at his left side. Country lad or no, he wore a sword.”

“So they went from here together,” said Yves, as they rode down towards the highroad, where they must haste if they were to use the remainder of the daylight. He had been very silent, struggling with revelations that seemed only to make the pattern of events more complex and entangled. “He came back to look for us all, and found only Sister Hilaria. It was evening already, they would be caught in the darkness and the snow. And these same robbers and murderers who have ruined poor John must have attacked them, and left them both for dead.”

“So it would seem,” said Hugh somberly. “We have a plague among us that needs burning out before it spreads. But what are we to make of this simple countryman who wore a sword under his cloak?”

“And asking after us!” Yves recalled, marvelling. “But I know no one like that.”

“What like was the young lord who took away your sister?”

“Not black, nor like a hawk, rather fair-skinned, and fair in the hair, too. And besides, even if he came seeking the two of us she’d left behind, he would not come up from the highroad, not according to the way we set off when I followed them. And he would not come dressed as a peasant, either. Nor alone.”

All of which was shrewd sense. There were, of course, other possibilities. The men of Gloucester, elated by their gains, might well be sending agents in disguise into these regions, probing for any weak spots, and such envoys, thought Cadfael, might have been told to pursue, at the same time, the search for Laurence d’Angers’ nephew and nice, strayed in the Worcester panic.

“Let it lie by a while,” said Beringar, half-grim and half-appreciative, as if he looked forward to interesting encounters. “We shall certainly hear more of Cleeton’s dark stranger, if we just bide quiet and bear his image in mind.”

They were within two miles of Ludlow before the expected snow began with the dusk. They drew close cloak and capuchon, and rode sturdily with heads down, but so close to home that they were in no danger of losing the road. Hugh parted from them under the walls of Ludlow, to ride in to his company there, leaving two of his men to escort Cadfael and the boy the short way on to Bromfield. Even Yves had lost his tongue by then, a little drunk with fresh air and exercise, and already growing hungry, for all he had eaten his hunk of bread and strip of hard bacon long before. He sat braced and stolid in the saddle, hunched under his hood, but emerged from it with a face like a rosy apple as soon as they lighted down in the great court at the priory. Vespers was long over. Prior Leonard was hovering, watchful and uneasy, for the return of his fledgling, and ventured out into the thick haze of snow to reclaim him and bring him in to supper.

It was after Compline when Beringar rode in, let his tired mount be led away to the stables, and came to find Cadfael, who was sitting by the bed where Brother Elyas already slept his secret, remote and troubled sleep. At sight of Hugh’s face, full of hard tidings, Cadfael laid a finger to his lip, and rose to steal away from the bedside into the anteroom, where they could talk without disturbing the sleeper.

“Our friend above Cleeton,” said Hugh, sitting back with a great sigh against the panelled wall, “is not the only one who had fallen victim, Cadfael. We have the devil among us, no question. Ludlow’s in a hum tonight. It seems one of Dinan’s archers has an old father at a hamlet south of Henley, a free tenant holding from Mortimer, and today the lad went off to visit, to see how the old man was making out in this hard weather. A holding not two miles from Ludlow, though solitary. He found the place as we found Druel’s homestead. Not burned, though—smoke or flames would have been seen, and brought Dinan out with all his force like a swarm of bees disturbed. But swept clear of life, goods, gear and all. And there the folk did not escape. Butchered, every one, except for one poor idiot wretch the archer found wandering from house to house, foraging for any crumbs left to live on.”

Brother Cadfael gaped at him in appalled wonder. “That they should dare, so near a strong town!”

“Trying out their claws, in despite of a well-found garrison. And the one man left alive, who hid in the woods until the raiders left, may be uncertain in his wits, but he saw it all, and has given an account that makes excellent sense, and for my part, I think him a good witness. And he says there were about twenty men, and they had daggers, axes and swords among them. Three, he says, were mounted. They came about midnight, and in a few hours had driven off all the stock and departed into the night. And he has small notion of how many days he has been solitary and starving there, but such things as the changes of weather he understands very well, and he says, and will not be shifted, that this took place on the night of the first hard frost, when all the brooks stopped flowing.”

“I take your meaning,” said Cadfael, and gnawed his knuckles in fierce thought. “The same two-legged wolves? The same night, surely. The first hard frost! About midnight this slaughter and pillage by Henley… As if they set out deliberately to blacken Dinan’s face!”

“Or mine,” said Hugh grimly.

“Or King Stephen’s! Well, so they moved off with their spoils maybe two hours after midnight. They would not move fast, driving cattle and carrying food and grain. Not long before dawn they ransacked and burned John Druel’s holding, high on Clee. And in between—would you not say, Hugh?—in between they happened on Brother Elyas and Sister Hilaria, and after their fashion let loose in a little exuberant sport, leaving both dead or dying. Could there be two such bands out on their grisly business on the same night? A wild night, a blizzard night, that might well keep even thieves and vagabonds close to home. There are here men who know these parts like their own palms, Hugh, and neither snow nor frost can cage them.”

“Two such bands?” said Hugh, darkly pondering. “No, that’s out of the reckoning. And consider the line they took that night. The night’s ventures began here under our noses—that’s the furthest range of their foray. They returned eastward, crossing the highway—for somewhere there your Brother Elyas was found—and before dawn they were rounding the high shoulder of Titterstone Clee, where they burned out Druel’s holding. It may not even have been in their plan, simply a frolic by men drunk with success. But it was on their way home, for they’d want to be snug and unseen by dawn. Agreed?”

“Agreed. And are you thinking, Hugh, what I am thinking? Yves rushes out to recall his sister from her folly, and strikes off from that holding uphill, perhaps not on the same level, but surely in the same direction your outlaws took on their way home, two nights later. Somewhere in those uplands lies the manor to which his sister fled with her lover. Does it not look as though he may have taken her to a house far too close neighbor to the devil to be a safe place either for him or for her?”

“I have already made my dispositions,” Hugh assured him with grim satisfaction, “with that in mind. There’s a great swathe of upland there, some of it forested, some of it rock, and bleak as death, too barren even for sheep. The workable manors there go no higher than Druel’s homestead, and even there nest in the sheltered places. Tomorrow at first light I’m going out with Dinan to follow that same line the boy took, and see if I can find what he lost himself seeking, the manor where the girl was taken. First, if we can, let’s get her safe out of it. Then we may go after this challenger who spits in the face of law, with no hostages at stake.”

“But leave the boy here!” said Cadfael, more peremptorily than he had intended.

Hugh looked down at him with a wry and burdened smile. “We shall be away before ever he opens his eyes. Do you think I dare risk confronting him with another and dearer corpse, with your fierce eye on me? No, if luck’s with us we’ll bring him his sister, either intact or a wife irreclaimable, and they shall fight it out between them, he, she and the lover! If luck turns her back on us—well, then you may be needed. But once this girl’s well out of it, this burden is mine, and you may take care of your patient and sit quietly at home.”

Cadfael watched the night through with Brother Elyas, and got nothing more for his pains than he had known already. The barrier remained immovable. When a dutiful brother came to relieve him, he went to his bed, and slept as soon as he lay down. He had the gift. There was no profit in laying awake fretting for what would, in any case, have to be faced on awaking, and he had long ago sloughed off the unprofitable. It took too much out of a man, of what would be needed hereafter.

He awoke only when he was roused by Prior Leonard, which was in the early afternoon, a couple of hours at least after he had intended to be up and doing. By which time Hugh was back from his foray into the hills, and tramped in weary and bleak of countenance to share a late dinner, and report the fruits of his labors.

“There is a manor known as Callowleas, a quarter-circle round the flank of Clee from Druel’s place, and much on the same level.” Hugh paused to frown over his own choice of words. “There was such a manor! It has been wiped out, drained, filleted like a fish. What we found was Druel’s homestead over again, but to another degree. This was a thriving manor, and now it’s a snowy waste, a number of bodies buried or frozen there, nothing living left to speak. We’ve brought back the first of the dead into Ludlow, and left men breaking out others from the drifts. No telling how many they’ll find. By the covering of snow, I should judge this raid took place even before the frost set in.”

“Do you tell me?” Cadfael sat staring, appalled. “Then before the raids of which we already know, and before our little nun was killed, and Brother Elyas reduced to his haunted condition he lies in now. Now you have your finger on a fixed place, is there a name and a lord to go with it? Dinan will know all these tenants who hold from him, and it must be his writ, the old Lacy writ, that runs there.”

“It is. The manor of Callowleas is held from him by a young man who came into his father’s honor only two years ago. Of suitable fortune, person, and age, yes. His name is Evrard Boterei. Not a great family, but respected. By many tokens, he may well be the man.”

“And this place lies in the right direction? The way the girl fled with her lover?” It was a grim reflection, but Hugh shook his head emphatically at despondency.

“Ah, but wait! Nothing’s certain yet, Yves could not name the man. But even if it is so—as I believe it must be—no need yet to bury the girl. For Dinan pointed out that Boterel also holds the manor of Ledwyche, down in the valley of the Dogditch brook, and there’s a good downhill track continues on that way from Callowleas, into forest, and thick forest at that. A little over three miles between the two holdings. We followed it a short way, though I own I had little hope of finding any traces, even if some of the household had escaped the slaughter that way. We had better fortune that I expected, or maybe deserved. Look, this is what I found!”