Ellis Peters - The Virgin in the Ice

“Ah, but I have the better of you there, for I do know! Make your mind easy about Ermina. She is safe and well in the Bromfield you abandoned. True, believe me! Would I lie to you? I myself took her there to join you, only to find before ever we reached the gate that you were away again on a quest of your own.”

“I couldn’t help it, I had to go…”

It was almost too much to take in, so suddenly. Yves gulped down wonder and grew coherent. Now that he need no longer worry and grieve over Ermina’s fate, whatever the perils hanging over his own, he recoiled for support into resentment against her for ever bringing him and so many others to this pass. “You don’t knew her! She won’t be bidden,” he warned indignantly. “When she finds I’m gone she may do anything ! It was she who caused all this, and if the fit takes her she’ll fly off again on some made folly. You don’t know her as I do!”

He thought it an innocent stranger’s over-confidence that Olivier laughed, however softly and amiably. “She’ll be bidden! Never fret, she’ll be waiting in Bromfield. But I think you have a story to tell me, before I tell mine. Heave it off your heart! You may, we had better not move from here yet. I hear someone stirring below.” Yves had heard nothing. “You left Worcester a fugitive, that I know, and how your sister left you, and why, that I know, too. She has told me, and made no secret of it. And if it please you to know the best, no, she is not married, nor like to be yet, but thinks herself well out of a foolish mistake. And now what of you, after her going?”

Yves nestled into the rough homespun shoulder, and poured out the whole of it, from his first wanderings in the forest to the remembered comfort and kindness of Father Leonard and Brother Cadfael at Bromfield, the tragedy of Sister Hilaria, and the desperate sally after poor, possessed Elyas.

“And I left him there, never thinking…” Yves shrank from remembering the words Brother Elyas had spoken, as they lay side by side in the night. That was something he could not share, even with this admirable being. “I’m afraid for him. But I did leave the door unbarred. Do you think they would find him? In good time?”

“In God’s time,” said Olivier positively, “which is always good. Your God cares for the sick in mind, and will see to it the lost are found,”

Yves was quick to note the strangeness of the chosen words. “My God?” he said, looking up with sharp curiosity into the dark face so close above his own.

“Oh, mine also, though I came to Christendom somewhat roundabout. My mother, Yves, was a Muslim woman of Syria, my father was a crusader of Robert of Normandy’s following, from this same England, and sailed for home again before ever I was born. I took his faith and went to join his people in Jerusalem as soon as I came a man. That’s where I found service with my lord your uncle, and when he returned here I came back with him. I am a Christian soul like you, though I chose it, where you were born to it. And I feel in my bones, Yves, that you will encounter your Brother Elyas again none the worse for the cold night you spent. We’d best be giving our minds rather to how you and I are to get safely out of here.”

“How did you ever get in?” wondered Yves. “How did you know I was here?”

“I did not know it, until this rogue lord of yours hoisted you on the wall there with a knife at your throat. But I saw them pass by with their booty, at some distance, and thought it worth tracking such a company to its den. If they were harrying the countryside by night, and you lost by night… It was possible they might take prisoners, if there was profit to be made out of them.”

“Then you saw, you know, that we have an army of our friends close at hand,” said Yves, suddenly glowing with a new and wonderful idea.

“Of your friends, surely. But mine? Friends better avoided, no blame to them. Have you not understood that I am your uncle’s man, and your uncle is liegeman to the Empress Maud? I have no wish to fall into the sheriffs hands and sit drumming my heels in a Shropshire prison. Though I owe them a favor, too, for it was under cover of their onslaught that I made my way round and on to the rocks below unnoticed, while these vermin within rushed to slam the gates. I should never have succeeded but for the distraction they provided. And once round the stockade in the dark, what difference between one lumpish ruffian stalking the bailey and all the others? I knew where they had left you. I saw your guard relieved.”

“Then you saw that the only reason Hugh Beringar drew his men off was because they threatened to kill me. And he is not gone far, I know it, he would not give up so easily. And now, don’t you see, there is no one holding a knife at my throat, and no reason why they should not attack!”

Olivier had caught his drift, and was eyeing him with respect and amusement. His gaze roved speculatively from the guard’s discarded sword, lying in its sheath under the wall, to the battered conical steel helmet which had rolled into a corner beside it. The amber eyes in their deep, black-lashed settings, came back to Yves, dancing.

“A pity we have no trumpets to sound the onset, but the makings of a very serviceable drum we certainly have. Under the wall with it, then, and try what you can do, while I stand guard here. They’ll have but a matter of minutes to spend trying to hack their way through at us, after that they’ll be busy below, if your friends out there are as quick-witted as you.”

Chapter Thirteen

Brother Cadfael had spent the entire day prowling through the belt of trees, from one end of the crescent to the other, and back again, studying every fold of ground between him and the stockade, in search of even the most tenuous cover by which, once darkness came, a man might hope to approach nearer. Hugh would not allow any man to show himself in the open, and had gone to great pains, while deploying his forces as widely as possible, to keep them well out of sight. Alain le Gaucher could not get out, and the sheriff’s powers could not get in, and absolute deadlock had Hugh gnawing his knuckles in frustration. Small doubt but there were lavish supplies of stolen meat and grain within, enough to keep the garrison snugly for some time. Starving them out would be a long business, and starve the unfortunate boy in the process. Le Gaucher might be willing to surrender him in return for free passage out for himself and all his men, but that would only be to place some other unhappy region under the same scourge. Not even a last resort! It was Hugh’s business to restore order and do justice in this shire, and he meant to see it done.

He had singled out from his ranks a number of men who claimed skill in climbing, and were born and bred in hill country, and drawn them back out of the ravine, to prospect round the summit in both directions, and see if they could find a level where it might be possible to climb out and penetrate the enclosure from the rear without being seen from above. The slight rise of the lip of land behind the fortress afforded cover, but from below it was seen to be cover for a sheer drop where only birds could hope to find foothold. The only remaining possibility was where they could not reconnoiter without being seen, and provoking a blade at the boy’s throat yet again. Close to the stockade there might just be ground enough to let a man inch his way round to the rear, if he had a good head for heights. But to make the assay he would have had to cross a part of that bleak expanse of open rock, making Yves’ death likely and his own certain.

But in the darkness, yes, perhaps. If the covering of snow complicated movement, yet there were places where bare rock cropped out to break the betraying pallor. But the night came all too tranquilly, lambent light from snow and stars, a clear sky, crackling with frost. This one night when fresh snow and driving winds might have made vision delusive, and covered dark garments with their own protective veil, no gale blew and no flake descended. And the stillness and silence were such that even the snapping of a buried branch underfoot might carry as far as the stockade.