Ellis Peters - Virgin in the Ice

And this must be the nearest roof to the brook where he had found her. And given a horse to carry it, it would be no great labor to transport the body of a murdered girl that distance. But that might be going too fast. Better see what else the place had to tell, before he jumped to such doubtful conclusions.

He stowed away the scrap of horse-hair carefully in the breast of his habit, and went into the hut. The slight tempering of the bitter air without closed round him gratefully, and the dry, faint odor of the piled hay tickled his nostrils. Behind him, Reyner watched in attentive silence.

Someone had done well with his hay harvest in the past season, and had still a plentiful store here. A bed and bedding provided together, a stout roof overhead - yes, anyone benighted would be thankful to hit on such a refuge. Someone had made use of it in the night just past, the great pile of hay was pressed down by the weight of a long body. So it might have been during other nights. So it might have been by two bodies. Yes, this could well be the place he was looking for. Yet even this place was at least half a mile from the spot where Brother Elyas had been left for dead, and his murderers had been making their way home, not scouring half a mile of deserted countryside.

“Are you thinking,” wondered Reyner, watching him, “that it may be the pair we’re seeking who were in here last night? For someone was, and there are two breadths of foot have trampled the snow on the doorsill here.”

“It could be so,” said Cadfael abstractedly. “Let’s hope so, for whoever was here went forth live and able this morning, it seems, and has left tracks we’ll follow in a moment. If we’ve found all there is to be found here.”

“What more can there be, and they gone?” But Reyner watched Cadfael’s concentration with respect, and was willing to use his own eyes. He came within, looked all round him sharply, and stirred the great pile of hay with a vigorous foot. “Not bad lying, if they got this far. They may haven taken no real harm, after all.” His disturbance of the pile had loosed a wave of scent and a tickling haze of dust, and uncovered a corner of black cloth, well buried under the load. He stooped and tugged at it, and a long black garment emerged, unrolling in his hands, creased and dusty. He held it up, astonished. “What’s here? Who would throw away a good cloak?”

Cadfael took it from him and spread it out to see. A plain travelling cloak, in the coarse black cloth of the Benedictines. A man’s cloak, a monk’s cloak. The cloak of Brother Elyas?

He dropped it without a word, and plunged both arms into the pile, scooping a way down to the floor like a terrier after a rat. More black cloth there, rolled up and thrust deep, deep, to be hidden from all eyes. He brought up the roll and shook it out, and a crumpled ball of white fell clear. He snatched it back and smoothed it in his hands, the austere linen wimple of a nun, soiled now and crushed. And the black, held up to view, was a slender habit tied with its own girdle, and a short cloak of the same cloth. And all thrust away into hiding, where no chance shepherd would ever think to delve until all that hay was used.

Cadfael spread out the habit and felt at the right shoulder, sleeve and breast, and the traces, all but invisible in the shroud in black, confided to his touch what his eyes could not distinguish. On the right breast a patch the size of a man’s hand was stiff and caked, crusted threads crumbled away as he handled it. The folds of shoulder and sleeve bore streaks and specks of the same corruption.

“Blood?” said Reyner, watching and marveling.

Cadfael did not answer that. He was grimly rolling up habit and cloaks together, the wimple tucked inside, and hoisting the bundle under his arm. “Come, let’s see where they went, who slept the night here.”

There was no question where the hut’s last occupants had gone. From the thin layer of snow before the door, where the prints of large feet and small ones showed clearly, two tracks led downhill and merged, first with the broken slurring of people forging through a moderate fall, then ploughing a furrow to the knee and the hip through fluctuating drifts, down towards the bank of bushes and the coppice of burdened trees below. They followed, leading the mules and keeping to the narrow way carved out by those they pursued. It rounded the bushes, but cleft a passage through the belt of trees, where the branches had held off much of the fall. They emerged upon the level where the tracks of a number of men and horses crossed them, coming from the west and moving east. Cadfael stared eastward, marking the course of the tracks till they faded from sight in distance, bearing downward here towards the drainage valley of the brooks, and surely preserving the same direct line and rising again beyond, pointing straight at the wilderness of Titterstone Clee.

“Did we cross such tracks, coming up from the road? For you see the line they take. We came from below, we end above. We must have crossed.”

“We were not looking for such, then,” said Reyner sensibly. “And the wind may have blotted them out here and there.”

“True, so it may.” He had been bent on reaching the empty coffin in the ice, he had not been paying attention to the ground. “Well, let’s see what we have here. Whoever they were, they halted, they came circling, here where the tracks from above come forth from the trees.”

“A horse turned and stood, here,” said Reyner, probing ahead. “Then he wheeled and went on. So did they all. Let’s follow a short way.”

The first scarlet flower of blood sprang up under their feet within three hundred paces. A chain of ruby beads wavered on for as far again, and there was a second starry bloom, and beyond, the chain continuing, thin and clear. The frozen snow held its dyes well. They were at the peak of the day, the brief clarity would soon be gone, but while it was at its height it showed them the frowning outline of the Clee straight before them, the goal of this ancient pathway. Distant, savage and lonely, a fit place for wolves.

“Friend,” said Cadfael, halting with his eyes on that ominous skyline, “I think you and I part company here. By all that I can see, these are last night’s tracks, and they mean several horses and many men, and something aboard that dripped blood. Slaughtered sheep, perhaps? Or wounded men? The band we have to root out come from up there, and if they were not out about their grisly business last night, these tracks lie. There’s a holding somewhere binding up its wounds and laying out its dead, at the very least grieving for its goods and gear. Turn back, Reyner, follow these traces back to where they burned and stole last night, and go take the word to Hugh Beringar, to save what can be saved. Into Ludlow, if Hugh Beringar is not yet back - Josce de Dinan has as much to lose as any.”

“And you, brother?” demanded Reyner doubtfully.

“I’m going ahead, to follow them the way they took. Whether they’ve borne our pair away with them or not, this is our best chance to find where they’ve made their nest. Oh, never fret!” he said, seeing his companion frown and hesitate to leave him, “I’ll mind my going. I’m no beginner at this. But here, take these back with you, and leave them with Prior Leonard until I come.” He drew out the strand of primrose mane, mindful of its importance, and made it secure in the middle of the role of clothing. “Tell him I’ll be with him before night.”

He had gone no more than a quarter of a mile when he crossed the tracks of Reyner’s mule and his own, climbing to the brook. Loose, powdery snow had already been blown over the path there, but if he had been keeping his eyes open he must have seen that a number of travelers had passed that way, though he would not necessarily have read any sinister meaning into that, for the snow-spume had covered the dotted line of red.