Ellis Peters - The Virgin in the Ice

The other face hung beyond and above her left shoulder almost cheek to brow with her. She was tall, but the man behind her was taller, he was stooped protectively and watchfully to bring his face close to hers. A long, spare, wide-browed face with a fine scimitar of a nose and a supple bow of a mouth, and the dilated, fearless golden eyes of a hawk. His head was bared, and capped closely with blue-black hair, coiling vigorously at his temples and sweeping back thick and lustrous over a lofty skull. Cadfael had visions of that face terminating in a short, pointed beard, and with fine-drawn moustaches over the long, fastidious lips. With just such faces had he seen, in his time, proud, mailed Syrians wheeling their line of charge outside Antioch. This face had the same dark coloring and sculptured shape, like cast bronze, but this face was shaven clean in the Norman fashion, the rich hair cropped, the head framed by rough, dun-colored homespun, a local peasant’s wear.

Well, they happen, the lightning-strokes of God, the gifted or misfortunates who are born into a world where they nowhere belong, the saints and scholars who come to manhood unrecognized, guarding the swine in the forest pastures among the beechmast, the warrior princes villein-born and youngest in a starving clan, set to scare the crows away from the furrow. Just as hollow slave-rearlings are cradled in the palaces of kings, and come to rule, however ineptly, over men a thousand times their worth.

But this one would not be lost. It needed only that flashing glimpse of the black-lashed golden eyes to make it certain they would burn their way before him to wherever he set out to go.

And all in the brief moment while the porter was ridding himself of the snow he had collected on his skirts. For the next moment he had stepped within, and closed the wicket behind him, just in time to cut off, short of the gates, the dual vision of youth that was surely advancing to ask for entry.

Brother Cadfael closed his eyes, opened them hopefully, and closed them again upon dazzled recollection that might almost have been delusion. In the between-light of dawn, in the grip of a hard winter, and complicated by the pleasurable, warming glow of torchlight, what dreams may not come!

He had taken but three more labored paces through the fall, and the porter had barely reached the door of his lodge, when the bell pealed at the gate.

The porter turned, startled. He had been preoccupied first with reaching up to the sconces in which his torches were set, and then hurrying back into shelter, and he had seen nothing stirring in the lingering darkness without. Only after his back was turned had the two—if they were real indeed!—stepped within range of the light. He hoisted resigned shoulders, and waded back to open the small grid that would show him who stood without. What he saw astonished him still more, it seemed, but it spurred him into instant action. The great latch lifted, and the lofty wicket swung open.

And there she stood, tall, meek and still confronting them, in a too-large gown of faded brown homespun, a coarse short cloak and ragged-edged capuchon flung back from her head, the sheaf of dark hair tumbling to her shoulders. The sting of cold air had brought out a rosy flush on her cheekbones, in a skin otherwise creamy-white and smooth as ivory.

“May I enter and take shelter here a while?” she said in the mildest of voices and humblest of manners, but with that confidence and calm about her that could not be quenched. “Through weather and mishap and the distresses of war I am here alone. I think you have been looking for me. My name is Ermina Hugonin.”

While the porter was conducting her excitedly into his lodge, and hurrying to inform Prior Leonard and Hugh Beringar of the sudden appearance of the missing lady at their gates, Brother Cadfael lost no time in slipping into the roadway and casting a shrewd eye on the empty countryside in all directions. Empty it was, to all appearance. There were corners, copses, bushes, any of which could quickly conceal the departure of a young and swift-moving man, and either her companion had chosen to vanish among these, or the falcon had indeed taken wing and flown. As for tracks in the snow, a few early-rising good men with sheep to dig out or beasts to feed had already gone to and fro past the gatehouse, and among their traces who was to pick out one man’s foot? She had spoken truth, if a somewhat deceptive truth; she entered here alone. But two had approached the gate, though only one rang to ask admittance.

Now why should such a man, bringing a lost girl to safety, avoid showing his face within? And why, pondered Cadfael, should not the one man who was aware of the evasion make it known openly to all? On the other hand until he knew of a good reason one way or the other, why should he? First hear and consider what the lady had to say.

He went back very thoughtfully to the lodge, where the porter had hurried to prod his fire into life and seat her beside it. She sat self-contained and silent, her wet shoes and skirts beginning to steam gently in the warmth.

“You are also a brother of this house?” she asked, raising dark eyes to study him.

“No, I am a monk of Shrewsbury. I came here to tend a brother who has been lying sick here.” He wondered if any word of Brother Elyas’ misfortunes had reached her, but she gave no sign of knowing anything of a wounded monk, and he forbore from mentioning a name. Let her tell her own story once for all, before Hugh and the prior as witnesses, then he might know where he himself stood. “You know how diligently you have been sought since you fled from Worcester? Hugh Beringar, who is deputy sheriff of the shire, is here in Bromfield, partly on that very quest.”

“I heard it,” she said, “from the forester who has sheltered me. I know from them, too, that my brother has been here, while I have been hunting for him. And only now that I find my way here myself do I learn that he is again lost, and half the night men have been out searching for him. All this countryside knows of it. I fear you have made a poor exchange,” she said with sudden, flashing bitterness, “gaining me and losing Yves. For I am the one who has cost you all so much trouble and time.”

“Your brother was safe and in excellent health,” said Cadfael firmly, “as late as Compline last night. There is no need to suppose that we shall fail of finding him again, for he cannot have gone far. The sheriff’s men in Ludlow will have had their orders overnight, and be out by now. And so will Hugh Beringar, as soon as he has seen you safe and well, and heard whatever you can tell him.”

Hugh was at the door by then, and the brothers had hastily cleared a path through the drifts to bring the girl almost dry-shod up to the guest-hall. Prior Leonard himself led her in to warmth and food and a comfortable seat by the fire. He was distressed that there was no woman guest to provide her a change of clothing.

“That shall be seen to,” said Beringar shortly. “Josce de Dinan has a household full of women, I’ll get from them whatever is needed. But you had better get out of those wet skirts, madam, if it must needs be into habit and sandals. You have nothing with you but what you wear?”

“I gave what I have in exchange for what I wear,” she said with composure, “and for the hospitality that was given me without thought of reward. But some money I still have about me. I can pay for a gown.”

They left her to strip beside the fire, and provided her the habit and shoes of a novice. When she opened the door to them again, and bade them in, it was with the grace of a countess welcoming guests. She had let down and combed her mass of dark hair, it was drying into curls on her shoulders, and swung like heavy, lustrous curtains either side of her face. Wrapped in the black habit, and girdled close about the waist, she returned to her chair and braced herself, facing them squarely, the most beautiful novice Bromfield had ever housed. She had spread out her wet clothes to dry on a bench beside the fire.