Ellis Peters - The Virgin in the Ice

Cadfael leaned across the narrow trestle and took firm hold of the boy’s tight-clasped hands between his own. “Look at me, Yves, and I’ll tell you what we shall do. What you have to do is to put away all fears, and try to remember the very words he used. All of them, if you can. ‘He said that it was he who killed Sister Hilaria!’ Did he indeed say that? Or is that what you understood by what he said? Give me the man’s own words and what I have to do is listen to those words, and to no others, and see what can be made of them. Now! Go back to that night in the hut. Ely as spoke in his sleep. Begin there. Take your time, there is no haste.”

Yves scrubbed a moist cheek against his shoulder, and raised doubtful but trusting eyes to Cadfael’s face. He thought back dutifully, gnawed an unsteady lip, and began hesitantly: “I was asleep, I think, though I was trying not to sleep. He was lying on his face, but I could hear his voice clearly. He said: My sister—forgive me all my sin, my weakness. I, who have been your death! he said. That I’m sure of, that is word for word. I, who have been your death!” He shook and halted there, afraid that that alone might be enough. But Cadfael held him by the hands and nodded understanding, and waited.

“Yes, and then?”

“Then—do you remember how he called on Hunydd? And you said you thought she was his wife, who died? Well, next he said: Hunydd! She was like you, warm and trusting in my arms. After six months starving, he said, such hunger. I could not bear the burning, he said, body and soul …”

The words were returning in full now, as if they had been carved into his memory. Until now he had wished only to forget them, now, when he consented to remember, they came clearly.

“Go on. There was more.”

“Yes. He changed then, he said no, don’t forgive me, bury me and put me out of mind. I am unworthy, he said, weak, inconstant…” There was a long pause, as there had been that night, before Brother Elyas cried out his mortal frailty aloud. “He said: She clung to me, she had no fear, being with me. And then he said: Merciful God, I am a man, full of blood, with a man’s body and a man’s desires. And she is dead, he said, who trusted me!”

He stared, white-faced, amazed to see Brother Cadfael unshaken, thoughtful and calm, considering him across the table with a grave smile.

“Don’t you believe me? I’ve told you truly. All those things he said.”

“I do believe you. Surely he said them. But think—his travelling cloak was there in the hut, together with her cloak and habit. And hidden! And she taken away from that place, and put into the brook, and he found some distance away, also. If he had not led you back to the hut we should not have known the half of these things. Surely I believe all that you have told me, even so you must believe and consider those things I have been able to tell you. It is not enough to say that a thing is so because of one fragment of knowledge, even so clear as a confession, and put away out of sight those other things known, because they cannot be explained. An answer to a matter of life and death must be an answer that explains all.”

Yves gazed blankly, understanding the words, but seeing no hope or help in them. “But how can we find such an answer? And if we find it, and it is the wrong answer…” he faltered, and shook again.

“Truth is never a wrong answer. We will find it, Yves, by asking the one who knows.” Cadfael rose briskly, and drew the boy up with him. “Take heart, nothing is ever quite what it seems. You and I will go and speak yet again with Brother Elyas.”

Brother Elyas lay weak and mute as before, yet not as before, for his eyes were open, intelligent and illusionless, windows on a great, contained grief for which there was no cure. He had a memory again, though it brought him nothing but pain. He knew them, when they sat down one on either side his bed, the boy hopelessly astray and afraid of what might come of this, Cadfael solid and practical and ready with an offered drink, and a fresh dressing for the frost-gnawed feet. The fierce strength of a man in his robust prime had stood Brother Elyas, physically at least, in good stead, he would not even lose toes, and his chest was clear. Only his grieved mind rejected healing.

“The boy here tells me,” said Cadfael simply, “that you have recovered the part of your memory that was lost. That’s well. A man should possess all his past, it is waste to mislay any. Now that you know all that happened, the night they left you for dead, now you can come back from the dead a whole man, not the half of a man. Here is this boy of yours to prove the world had need of you last night, and has need of you still.”

The hollow eyes watched him from the pillow, and the face was wrung with a bitter spasm of rejection and pain.

“I have been at your hut,” said Cadfael. “I know that you and Sister Hilaria took shelter there when the snowstorm was at its worst. A bad night, one of the worst of this bad December. It grows more clement now, we shall have a thaw. But that night was bitter frost. Poor souls caught out in it must lie in each other’s arms to live through it. And so did you with her, to keep the woman alive.” The dark eyes had burned into fierce life, even the wandering mind grew intent. “I, too,” said Cadfael with deliberation, “have known women, in my time. Never unwilling, never without love. I know what I’m saying.”

A voice harsh with disuse, but intelligent and aware, said faintly: “She is dead. The boy told me. I am the cause. Let me go after her and fall at her feet. So beautiful she was, and trusted me. Little and soft in my arms, and clung, and confided… Oh, God!” pleaded Brother Elyas, “was it well done to try me so sorely, and I emptied and starving? I could not bear the burning…”

“That I comprehend,” said Cadfael. “Neither could I have borne it. I should have been forced to do as you did. In my fear for her if I stayed, and for my own soul’s salvation, which is not such a noble motive as all that, I should have left her there asleep, and gone out into the snow and frost of that night, far away from her, to watch the night out as best I could, and return to her in the dawn, when we could go forth together and finish that journey. As you did.”

Yves leaned forward glittering with enlightenment, holding his breath for the answer. And Brother Elyas, turning his head tormentedly on his pillow, mourned aloud: “Oh, God, that ever I left her so! That I had not the steadfastness and faith to endure the longing… Where was the peace they promised me? I crept away and left her alone. And she is dead!”

“The dead are in God’s hand,” said Cadfael, “Hunydd and Hilaria both. You may not wish them back. You have an advocate there. Do you suppose that she forgets that when you went out into the cold you left her your cloak, wrapped about her for warmth, and fled from her with only your habit, to bear the rigor of the winter all those hours to dawn? It was a killing night.”

The voice from the bed said harshly: “It was not enough to help or save. I should have been strong enough in faith to bear the temptation laid on me, to stay with her though I burned….”

“So you may tell your confessor,” said Cadfael firmly, “when you are well enough to return to Pershore. But you shall, you must shun the presumption of condemning yourself beyond what he sees as your due. All that you did was done out of care for her. What as amiss may be judged. What was done well will be approved. If you had stayed with her, there is no certainty that you could have changed what befell.”

“At worst I could have died with her,” said Brother Elyas.

“But so you did in essence. Death from violence fell upon you in your loneliness that same night, as death of cold you had accepted already. And if you were delivered from both, and find you must suffer still many years of this life,” said Cadfael, “it is because God willed to have you so survive and so suffer. Beware of questioning the lot dealt out to you. Say it now, to God and us who hear you, say that you left her living, and meant to return to her with the morning, if you lived out the night, and to bring her safely where she would be. What more was required of you?”