Ellis Peters - The Virgin in the Ice

“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.”

“This man who took your sister away,” pressed Beringar. “You don’t know his name, but you do remember he was acceptable in your father’s house. If he has a manor in the hills, within easy reach of Cleeton, no doubt we can trace him. I take it he might, had your father lived, have been a possible suitor for your sister, even in a more approved fashion?”

“Oh, yes,” said the boy seriously, “I think he well might. There were any number of young men used to come, and Ermina, even when she was only fourteen or fifteen, would ride and hunt with the best of them. They were all men of substance, or heirs to good estates. I never noticed which of them she favored.” He would have been playing with toy warriors and falling off his first pony then, uninterested in sisters and their admirers. “This one is very handsome,” he said generously. “Much fairer than me. And taller than you, sir.” That would not make him a rarity, Beringar’s modest length of steel and sinew had been under-estimated by many a man to his cost. “I think he must be about twenty-five or six. But his name I don’t know. There were so many came visiting to us.”

“Now there is one more thing,” said Cadfael, “in which Yves may be able to help us, if I may keep him from his bed a few minutes more. You know, Yves, you spoke of Brother Elyas, who left you at Foxwood?”

Yves nodded, attentive and wondering.

“Brother Elyas is here in the infirmary. After leaving for home, his errand done, he was attacked by footpads in the night and badly hurt, and the countrymen who found him brought him here to be cared for. I am sure he is on the mend now, but he has not been able to tell us anything about what happened to him. He has no memory of these recent days, only in his sleep he seems to struggle with some half-recalled distress. Waking, his mind is blank, but in sleep he has mentioned you, though not by name. The boy would have gone with me, he said. Now if he claps eyes on you, safe and well, it might be the sight will jog his memory. Will you try it with me?”

Yves rose willingly, if somewhat apprehensively, looking to Beringar for confirmation that he had done all that was required of him here. “I am sorry he has come to harm. He was kind… Yes, whatever I can do for him…”

On the way to the sickroom, with no other witness by, he slipped his hand thankfully, like an awed child, into Brother Cadfael’s comfortable clasp, and clung tightly.

“You mustn’t mind that he is bruised and disfigured. All that will pass, I promise you.”

Brother Elyas was lying mute and still, while a younger brother read to him from the life of Saint Remigius. His bruises and distortions were already subsiding, he seemed free from pain, he had taken food during the day, and at the office bell his lips would move soundlessly on the words of the liturgy. But his open eyes dwelt unrecognizingly upon the boy who entered, and wandered away again languidly into the shadowy corners of the room. Yves crept to the bedside on tiptoe, great-eyed.

“Brother Elyas, here is Yves come to see you. You remember Yves? The boy you met at Cleobury, and parted from at Foxwood.”

No, nothing, nothing but the faint tremor of desperate anxiety troubling the patient face. Yves ventured close, and timidly laid his hand over the long, lax hand that lay upon the covers, but it remained chill and unresponsive under his touch.

“I am sorry you have been hurt. We walked together those few miles. I wish we had kept your company all the way…”

Brother Elyas stared and quivered, shaking his head helplessly.

“No, let him be,” said Cadfael, sighing. “If we press him he grows agitated. No matter, he has time. Only let his body revive as it is doing, and memory can wait. It was worth the trying, but he is not ready for us yet. Come, you’re dropping with sleep, let’s get you safely into your bed.”