Ellis Peters - Virgin in the Ice

“And the place is indeed so strong? I marvel how they’ve contrived so much building in secrecy.”

“A place so remote and harsh, who goes there? A few holdings clinging to the lower slopes, but what is there to draw an honest man above? Not even good grazing. And, Hugh, they have an army within there, the scourings of God knows how wide a swathe of middle England, labor in plenty. And Clee Forest at their feet, and stone all about them, the only crop that summit bears. You know and I know how fast a castle can be reared, given the timber and the need.”

“But runaway villeins turned robber, and petty thieves fleeing from the towns, and such fry, do not build on such a scale, but make themselves hovels in the woods,” said Hugh. “Someone of more weight has the rule there. I wonder who! I do wonder!”

“Tomorrow, if God please,” said Cadfael, “we may find out.”

“We?” Briefly and distractedly Hugh smiled at him. “I thought you had done with arms, brother! You think our two are within there?”

“So the tracks would seem to show. It is not certain that those who slept in the hut through the night, and ran down to meet the horsemen, were Yves and Elyas, but man and boy they were, and do you know of any other such couple gone astray in the night? Yes, I do think they have fallen into the hands of these rogues. Armed or unarmed, Hugh, I am coming with you to get them out.”

Hugh regarded him steadily, and said outright what was on his mind. “Would they bother to burden themselves with Elyas? The boy, yes, his very clothes mark him out as worthy prey. But a penniless monk, wandering in his wits? Once already they’ve battered him all but to death. You think they would hesitate the second time?”

“If they had discarded him,” said Cadfael firmly, “I should have found his body lying. I did not find it. There is no way, Hugh, of knowing what is truth, but to go out and exact it from those who know.”

“That we will do,” said Hugh. “At first light tomorrow I go to the town, to order out on the king’s business every man Josce de Dinan can muster, along with my own men. He owes allegiance, and he will pay it. He has no more use for anarchy in his own baileywick than King Stephan himself.”

“A pity,” said Cadfael, “that we cannot take them at first dawn, but that would lose us a day. And we need the daylight more than they do, they knowing their ground so much better.” His mind was away planning the assault, which was no business now of his, nor had been for many years, but the old enthusiasm still burned up at the scent of action. He caught Hugh’s smiling eye, and was ashamed. “Pardon, I forgot myself, unregenerate as I am.” He turned back to what was his concern, the matter of troubled souls. “There is more to show you, though it has no immediate link with this devils’ castle.”

He had brought the roll of black clothing with him. He unrolled it upon the trestles, drawing aside the creased white wimple and the strand of creamy mane. “These I found in the hay, in that hut, buried well from sight, if Reyner had not kicked the pile apart. See for yourself what lay in that hiding-place. And this - this from without, snagged in the rough wood at the corner of the hut, and a pile of horse-droppings left at the spot.”

He told that tale with the same exactness, needing another mind to work upon these discoveries. Hugh watched and listened with frowning attention, quickened utterly from his weariness and alert to every implication.

“Hers and his?” he said at the end of it. “Then they were there together.”

“So I read it, also.”

“Yet he was found some distance from this hut. Naked, stripped of his habit - but his cloak left behind where they sheltered. And if you are right, then Elyas sets off wildly back to this very place. By what compulsion? How drawn?”

“This,” said Cadfael, “I cannot yet read. But I doubt not it can be read, with God’s help.”

“And hidden - well hidden, you say. They might have lain unnoticed well into the spring, and been an unreadable riddle when they did reappear. Cadfael, have these wolves hidden any part of their worst deeds? I think not. What they break, they let lie where it falls.”

“Devils do so,” said Cadfael, “being without shame.”

“But perhaps not without fear? Yet there is no sense in it, take it all in all. I cannot see where this leads. I am none too happy,” owned Hugh ruefully, “when I try.”

“Nor I,” said Cadfael. “But I can wait. There will be sense in it, when we know more.” And he added sturdily: “And it may not be so dismaying as we think for. I do not believe that evil and good can be so dismally plaited together that they cannot be disentangled.”

Neither of them had heard the door of the room open or close, the small anteroom of the guest-hall, where Hugh’s supper had been laid. But when Cadfael went out with his bundle of clothing under his arm, she was there outside in the stone passage, the tall, dark girl with her sleepless, proud, anxious eyes huge in her pale face, and her black hair a great, swaying cloud round her shoulders, and he knew by the strained urgency of her face that she had come in innocence, hearing voices, and looked within, and drawn back in awe of what she saw. She had shrunk into the shadows, waiting and hoping for him. She was shivering when he took her firmly by the arm and led her away in haste to where the remnants of the day’s fire still burned sullenly in the hall, banked to continue live until morning. But for the surly glow, it was in darkness there. He felt her draw breath and relax a little, being thus hidden. He leaned to stab at the fire, not too roughly, and get an answering red and gratifying warmth out of it.

“Sit down here and warm yourself, child. There, sit back and fear nothing. This same morning, on my life, Yves was live and vigorous, and tomorrow we shall bring him back, if man can do it.”

The hand with which she had gripped his sleeve released him slowly. She let her head rest back against the wall, and spread her feet to the fire. She had on the peasant gown in which she had entered at the gate, and her feet were bare.

“Girl dear, why are you not long ago asleep? Can you not leave anything to us, and beyond us to God?”

“It was God let her die,” said Ermina, and shuddered. “They are hers - I know, I saw! The wimple and the gown, they are Hilaria’s. What was God doing when she was befouled and murdered?”

“God was taking note of all,” said Cadfael, “and making place beside him for a little saint without spot. Would you wish her back from thence?”

He sat down beside her, not touching, very considerate of her grief and remorse. Who had more to answer for? And who needed more gentle usage and guidance, in respect for her self-destroying rage?

“They are hers, are they not? I could not sleep, I came to see if anyone had news, and I heard your voices there. I was not listening, I only opened the door, and saw.”

“You did no harm,” he said mildly. “And I will tell you all I know, as you deserve. Only I warn you again, you may not take to yourself the guilt of the evil another has done. Your own, yes, that you may. But this death, at whosoever’s door it lights, comes not near you. Now, will you hear?”

“Yes,” she said, at once docile and uncompromising in the dark. “But if I may not arrogate blame, I am noble, and I will demand vengeance.”

“That also belongs to God, so we are taught.”

“It is also a duty of my blood, for so I was taught.”

It was every bit as legitimate a discipline as his own, and she was just as dedicated. He was not even sure, sitting beside her and feeling her passionate commitment, that he did not share her aim. If there was a severance, yet they did not go so far apart. What they had in common, he reasoned, was a thirst for justice, which she, bred into another estate, called vengeance. Cadfael said nothing. A devotion so fierce might burn long enough to carry all before it, or it might soften and concede some degree of its ferocity. Let her find her own way, after eighteen her spirit might abate its fury as it saddened and became reconciled to the human condition.