Ellis Peters - The Virgin in the Ice

John Druel was among the first to come, having walked all the way from Cleeton, and he had no need to urge his ownership, for the stout brown mountain cob strained and cried after him as soon as he showed his face in the stable-yard, and their meeting was an embrace. The cob blew sweetly in John’s ear, and John hugged him about the neck, looked him over from head to hocks, and wept on his cheek. The cob was his only horse, worth a fortune to him. Yves had seen him come, and ran to tell Ermina, and the pair of them came flying to greet him and force on him such favors as they still had about them to give.

A wife from Whitbache came to claim her dead husband’s mare. A thin, grave boy from the same manor came in shyly and humbly to call a solid work-horse of hill stock, and it went to him hesitantly, wanting his sire, but acknowledged the child of the same blood with a human sigh.

Not until dinner was over in the refectory, and Brother Cadfael emerged again into the midday sparkle of sun on snow, did Evrard Boterel ride in at the gatehouse, dismount, and look round him for someone to whom he might most properly address himself. He was still somewhat pale and lean from his fever, but much recovered in the vigor of his movement and the clarity of his eye, and he stood with reared head and imperious stare, even frowning a little that no groom ran at once to take his bridle. A fine figure of a young man, fair as his horse’s mane, and well aware of his handsome appearance and his dominant nobility. Such comeliness might well take any young woman’s fancy. What did a young fellow with these advantages have to do to lose his hold? Reality, Ermina had said, had rudely invaded her idyllic fantasy. Well! But was that enough?

Prior Leonard, all goodwill, came beaming down the court with his gangling stride, to greet the visitor civilly, and conduct him into the stable-yard. One of Hugh’s men, seeing the saddled horse untended, and being himself at leisure, came to take the bridle, and Boterel relinquished his mount as to a servant, without a further glance, and went with the prior.

He had come alone. If he had indeed a stolen horse to reclaim, he must take him home on a leading rein.

Brother Cadfael looked round at the guest-hall, very thoughtfully, and saw Ermina in her peasant gown come forth from the doorway and cross to the church, rapid and light, and bearing something rolled up beneath her arm. The dark arch of the porch swallowed her, as the walled enclosure of the stables had swallowed her sometime suitor. Yves would certainly be sitting now with Brother Elyas, his jealously guarded protégé and patient, on whom he waited with proprietorial zeal. Out of sight and out of peril. No arrows loosed here could strike at him.

Without haste, Cadfael stepped out into the cleared court and crossed towards the church, but tempered his going so judiciously that his path converged upon that by which Evrard Boterel and Hugh together emerged from the stables and made for the gatehouse. They, too, were taking their time, and Evrard was sunning into vivacity and smiles; the deputy sheriff was a study worth cultivating. Behind them a lay groom led a fine bay mare, chestnut-maned.

Cadfael reached the spot where their paths would cross, and there halted before the open, dim doorway of the church, so that they, too, came naturally to a halt. Boterel recognized the brother who had dressed his wound once in the manor of Ledwyche, and made gracious acknowledgment.

“I trust I see you fully restored to health,” said Cadfael civilly. His eyes was on Hugh, curious to see if he had taken note of the waiting horse, which the man-at-arms was walking to and from about the court with an admiring eye on his gait and a gentling hand on his neck. There was not much escaped Beringar’s eye, but his face gave away nothing of his thoughts. Cadfael’s thumbs pricked. He had no part to play here, on the face of it, yet his instinct drew him into a complex affair as yet only partly understood.

“I thank you, brother, I am indeed mending, if not mended,” said Evrard buoyantly.

“Little enough to thank me for,” said Cadfael. “But have you yet thanked God? It would be a fair return for mercies, from one preserved in life and limb, and in recovery of so fine a property as this mare of yours. After coils and cruelties in which so many have died, honest men and innocent virgins.” He was facing the open door to the church, he caught the dark quiver of movement within, that froze again into stillness. “For grace, come within now, and say a prayer for those less fortunate—even the one we have coffined here, ready for burial.”

He feared he had said too much, and was relieved to see Boterel confident and unshaken, turning towards the doorway with the light smile of one humoring a well-meaning churchman by consenting to a harmless gesture without significance.

“Very willingly, brother!” Why not? There had been dead left behind to the care of these or others in every rogue raid from Clee, small wonder if one of the last of them lay here newly coffined. He stepped jauntily up the stone stair and into the dim, cold nave, Cadfael close at his shoulder. Hugh Beringar, dark brows drawn down, followed as far as the threshold, and there stood astride, closing the way back.

The radiance of the sunlit snow fell behind them, turning them momentarily half-blind. The great, cold, twilit bulk enclosed them, the lamp on the high altar made an eye of fire ahead, very small and distant, and the only other light within was from the narrow windows, which laid pale bars across the tiles of the floor.

The red eye of the lamp went out suddenly. She must have come quite rapidly the few yards from the mortuary chapel to stand between, but in the brief darkness her movements had been silent and invisible. She came forward in a sweeping, hushed glide, advancing upon Evrard Boterel with hand extended, as in vain entreaty that turned abruptly into a stabbing accusation. He hardly knew what caused the dim air to vibrate until she surged into the first pallid bar of light, veil and cowl drawn close about her face, a slender Benedictine nun in a habit crumpled and soiled from the straw of the hut, the right breast and shoulder clotted and stiffened into a rusty blot of congealed blood. Then pale grey light took her and showed every seamed fold, even the smears that marred her sleeve, as she had fought him and ripped his young wound open again while he lay upon her. She never made a sound, only flew towards him silently along the tiles of the floor.

He gave a great lurch backwards into Brother Cadfael’s shoulder, and uttered a muffled moan of terror, whipping up a hand to cross his body against the unbelievable assault. Under the close-drawn hood great eyes blazed at him, and still she came on.

“No—no! Keep from me! You are dead…”

It was only a strangled whisper in his throat, as her voice might have been quenched under his hands; but Cadfael heard it. And it was enough, even though Evrard had gathered himself the next moment, and braced himself to stand his ground, stiffening almost breast to breast with her as she stepped into the light and became flesh, tangible and vulnerable.

“What fool’s play is this? Do you shelter madwomen here? Who is this creature?”

She flung back the cowl from her head and dragged off the wimple, shaking out her great burden of black hair over the befouled breast of Sister Hilaria’s gown, and showed him the fierce, marble face and burning eyes of Ermina Hugonin.

He was as little prepared for that apparition as for the other. Perhaps he had been thinking her safely dead somewhere under the forest drifts, since he had received no news of her. Perhaps he had concluded that he had nothing now to fear from anything she might have to urge against him, at least not in this world, and he had little consideration for any other. He gave back one hasty step before her, but could give no more, because Cadfael and Hugh stood one on either side between him and the open door. But he gathered himself together gallantly, and faced her with a hurt, bewildered countenance, appealing against inexplicable ill-usage.