A Virgin In The Ice

by Ellis Peters

  “But not Sister Hilaria,” said Yves, clinging to a quarrel which had become his own, and bitterly felt. “If they could run away in time, why could they not save Sister Hilaria?”

  “That you shall ask them, if by God’s grace we do find them. I do not forget Sister Hilaria. Come, we’ve found all we are going to find here.”

  “One small thing,” said Cadfael. “When you heard the horses, Yves, in the dark, and ran out to try to follow your sister, which way did they lead you from here?”

  Yves turned to view the sorry remains of the house from which he had run. “To the right, there, behind the house. There’s a little stream comes down, it was not frozen then— they started up the slope beside it. Not towards the top of the hills, but climbing round the flank.”

  “Good! That direction we may try, another day. I’m done, Hugh, we can go.”

  They mounted and turned back by the way they had come, out of the desolation and ruin of the hollow, over the ridge between the trees, and down the track towards the village of Cleeton. A hard place, bleak to farm, meager to crop, but good for sheep, the rangy upland sheep that brought the leanest meat but the longest fleeces. Across the uphill edge of the settlement there was a crude but solid stockade, and someone was on the watch for strangers arriving, for a whistle went before them into the huddle of house, shrill and piercing. By the time they rode in there were three or four sturdy fellows on hand to receive them. Hugh smiled. Outlaws living wild, unless they had considerable numbers and sufficient arms, might be wise to fight shy of Cleeton.

  He gave them good-day and made himself known. Doubtful if men in isolated places hoped much from the king’s protection, or the empress’s either, but a county sheriff did offer hope of his being on their side in the fight to survive. They brought their reeve, and answered questions eagerly. Yes, they knew of the destruction of John Druel’s holding, and yes, John was safe here, sheltered and fed by the village, at least alive if he had lost everything but life. And his wife and son with him, and the shepherd who labored for him, all saved. A long-legged boy ran eagerly to bring Druel to answer for himself.

  At sight of the lean, wiry husbandman approaching, Yves scrambled down from his saddle and ran to meet him, incoherent in his relief. The man came up with an arm about the boy’s shoulders.

  “My lord, he says you’ve been up there… where my home was. God knows how grateful I am for the kindness here, that won’t let us starve when all our goods and gear are gone, but what’s to become of us poor souls that work hard to make a living, if it’s to be clawed away in a night, and the roof burned over us? It’s hard to live solitary in the hills,” he said roundly, “at best. But outlawry the like of this we never thought to see.”

  “Friend,” said Beringar ruefully, “you may take it I never looked for it, either. Reparation for your losses I cannot offer, but some of what was yours may still be recovered, if we can trace the raiders who took it from you. The boy, here, lodged with you several nights since, and his sister with him…”

  “And vanished from us in the night,” said John, and gave Yves a disapproving frown.

  “That we know, he has told us, and he, at least, had sound reasons, and took his own grave risks. But what we need from you is some account of this attack that fell upon you… when?”

  “Two nights after the lady and the lad fled us. The night of the fourth of the month, it was, but very late, towards dawn. We woke to hear the dogs going mad, and rushed out thinking there might be wolves, in such hard weather. For the dogs were chained, d’you see?—and wolves they were, but of the two-legged kind! Once out, we could hear the sheep bellowing up the hill and see torches up there. Then they begin to come bounding down the slope, knowing the dogs had given the alarm. I don’t know how many men, there might have been a dozen or more. We could not stand, we could only run. From the ridge there we saw the barn take fire. The wind was wild, we knew it must all burn out. And here we are, master, bereft, to make a new start from villeinry, if there’s a yardland to be had under any lord. But with our lives, thanks be to God!”

  “So they came first to your sheep-fold,” said Hugh. “From which direction along that slope?”

  “From the south,” said John at once, “but not from the road—higher on the hill. They came down at us.”

  “And you have no notion who they may be, or from where? You’ve had no rumor beforehand of outlaws setting up anywhere near?”

  No, there had been no warning until then. It had come out of the blue, between midnight of the fourth, and pre-dawn of the fifth.

  “One more question,” said Hugh. “Since you brought off your family with their lives, what became of the nun of Worcester who lodged with you the night of the second, along with this young man and his sister? That they left you that night we know. What of the nun?”

  “Why, she was well out of it,” said Druel thankfully. “I had not her on my heart that night of the burning. She was gone, the afternoon before. Rather late it was for the daylight, but not too far gone. And a safe escort along the way, I reckoned she would do well enough. In a sad, distracted way she’d been, the poor girl, when she found she’d been left alone, but she did not know where to look for her chicks, and neither did we, and what was she to do?”

  “Someone came for her?” asked Hugh.

  “A Benedictine brother. She knew him, he had walked a part of the way with them before, and urged them to go with him to Bromfield, she said. So he urged then, and when she told him how she was forsaken, he said all the more she should put herself and her trouble into the hands of others, who would search for her charges for her, and keep her safe until they were found. He’d had to make his way here from Foxwood, asking after her,” said John, making allowance for the waning of the day when he had reached them. “I never saw woman so thankful to have a friend take her in care. She went with him, and I make no doubt she came safe to Bromfield.”

  Yves stood dumb. “She came,” said Hugh drily, rather to himself than to any other. Safe? Yes, take it as large as words will hold, yes, she came safe. Sinless, conscientious, brave, who at this moment was safer than Sister Hilaria, an innocent gone straight to God?

  “A strange thing followed, though,” said Druel, “for the next day, while we were here telling our tale, and the good folk making room for us in their homes, like Christians as they are, there came a young man afoot, up from the road by the proper way, and asked after just such a party as we had housed. Had any here news, he said, of a young nun of Worcester, in company with two young gentlefolk, brother and sister, making towards Shrewsbury. We were full of our own troubles, but we told him all we knew, and how they were all gone from us before ever this evil befell. And he listened and went away. Up to the wreck of my holding, first, but after that I cannot tell where.”

  “A stranger to all here?” asked Hugh, looking round the circle that had gathered, for by then the women had come forth, and hung attentive on the outskirts.

  “Never seen before,” said the reeve emphatically.

  “What manner of man, then?”

  “Why, by his dress husbandman or shepherd like any of us here, a brown homespun man. Not so much as thirty years old, nearer five or six and twenty. Bigger than your lordship, but built like you, light and long. And dark, a black-rimmed eye on him with a yellow glint, like a hawk. And black hair under his hood.”

  The women had drawn closer in silence, quiet-eyed and prick-eared. Their interest in the stranger was all the plainer because not one of them voiced it, or volunteered any detail concerning him. Whoever he was, he had made an impression upon the women of Cleeton, and they did not mean to miss anything they could glean about him, or surrender anything they had already gleaned.

  “Dark-skinned,” said Druel, “and beaked like a hawk, too. A very comely man.” Yes, so the attentive eyes of the women said. “There was something I thought slow about his speech, now I come to recall…”

  Hugh took him up alertly on that. “As though he
were not at home in the common English?”

  John had not thought of that for himself; he considered it stolidly. “It might be that. Or as if he had a small stumble of the tongue, like.”

  Well, if English was not his proper tongue, what was? Welsh? Easily possible here along the borders, but what would a Welshman be doing asking after the fugitives from Worcester? Angevin, then? Ah, that was another matter.

  “If ever you should hear or see more of him,” said Hugh, “send me word into Ludlow or Bromfield, and you shall not be losers. And for you, friend, let’s own honestly there’s little chance of recovering all or most of your losses, but some of your stock we may yet win back for you if we can trace these outlaws to their lair. We’ll do our best to that end, be sure.”

  He wheeled his horse, and led the way towards the downward track, the others following, but he did not hurry, for one of the young women had drawn off in that direction, and was eyeing him meaningly over her shoulder. As Hugh came by she closed alongside, and laid a hand to his stirrup-leather. She knew what she was about, she had moved far enough to be out of earshot of the village.

  “My lord…” She looked up at him with sharp blue eyes, and spoke in a purposeful undertone. “One more thing I can tell you about the dark man, that no one else saw. I said no word, for fear they would close up against him if they knew. He was a very well-looking man, I trusted him, even if he was not what he seemed…”

  “In what particular?” asked Hugh, just as quietly.

  “He kept his cloak close about him, my lord, and in the cold that was no marvel. But when he went away I followed a little, and I saw how the folds hung at his left side. Country lad or no, he wore a sword.”

  *

  “So they went from here together,” said Yves, as they rode down towards the highroad, where they must haste if they were to use the remainder of the daylight. He had been very silent, struggling with revelations that seemed only to make the pattern of events more complex and entangled. “He came back to look for us all, and found only Sister Hilaria. It was evening already, they would be caught in the darkness and the snow. And these same robbers and murderers who have ruined poor John must have attacked them, and left them both for dead.”

  “So it would seem,” said Hugh somberly. “We have a plague among us that needs burning out before it spreads. But what are we to make of this simple countryman who wore a sword under his cloak?”

  “And asking after us!” Yves recalled, marvelling. “But I know no one like that.”

  “What like was the young lord who took away your sister?”

  “Not black, nor like a hawk, rather fair-skinned, and fair in the hair, too. And besides, even if he came seeking the two of us she’d left behind, he would not come up from the highroad, not according to the way we set off when I followed them. And he would not come dressed as a peasant, either. Nor alone.”

  All of which was shrewd sense. There were, of course, other possibilities. The men of Gloucester, elated by their gains, might well be sending agents in disguise into these regions, probing for any weak spots, and such envoys, thought Cadfael, might have been told to pursue, at the same time, the search for Laurence d’Angers’ nephew and nice, strayed in the Worcester panic.

  “Let it lie by a while,” said Beringar, half-grim and half-appreciative, as if he looked forward to interesting encounters. “We shall certainly hear more of Cleeton’s dark stranger, if we just bide quiet and bear his image in mind.”

  *

  They were within two miles of Ludlow before the expected snow began with the dusk. They drew close cloak and capuchon, and rode sturdily with heads down, but so close to home that they were in no danger of losing the road. Hugh parted from them under the walls of Ludlow, to ride in to his company there, leaving two of his men to escort Cadfael and the boy the short way on to Bromfield. Even Yves had lost his tongue by then, a little drunk with fresh air and exercise, and already growing hungry, for all he had eaten his hunk of bread and strip of hard bacon long before. He sat braced and stolid in the saddle, hunched under his hood, but emerged from it with a face like a rosy apple as soon as they lighted down in the great court at the priory. Vespers was long over. Prior Leonard was hovering, watchful and uneasy, for the return of his fledgling, and ventured out into the thick haze of snow to reclaim him and bring him in to supper.

  It was after Compline when Beringar rode in, let his tired mount be led away to the stables, and came to find Cadfael, who was sitting by the bed where Brother Elyas already slept his secret, remote and troubled sleep. At sight of Hugh’s face, full of hard tidings, Cadfael laid a finger to his lip, and rose to steal away from the bedside into the anteroom, where they could talk without disturbing the sleeper.

  “Our friend above Cleeton,” said Hugh, sitting back with a great sigh against the panelled wall, “is not the only one who had fallen victim, Cadfael. We have the devil among us, no question. Ludlow’s in a hum tonight. It seems one of Dinan’s archers has an old father at a hamlet south of Henley, a free tenant holding from Mortimer, and today the lad went off to visit, to see how the old man was making out in this hard weather. A holding not two miles from Ludlow, though solitary. He found the place as we found Druel’s homestead. Not burned, though—smoke or flames would have been seen, and brought Dinan out with all his force like a swarm of bees disturbed. But swept clear of life, goods, gear and all. And there the folk did not escape. Butchered, every one, except for one poor idiot wretch the archer found wandering from house to house, foraging for any crumbs left to live on.”

  Brother Cadfael gaped at him in appalled wonder. “That they should dare, so near a strong town!”

  “Trying out their claws, in despite of a well-found garrison. And the one man left alive, who hid in the woods until the raiders left, may be uncertain in his wits, but he saw it all, and has given an account that makes excellent sense, and for my part, I think him a good witness. And he says there were about twenty men, and they had daggers, axes and swords among them. Three, he says, were mounted. They came about midnight, and in a few hours had driven off all the stock and departed into the night. And he has small notion of how many days he has been solitary and starving there, but such things as the changes of weather he understands very well, and he says, and will not be shifted, that this took place on the night of the first hard frost, when all the brooks stopped flowing.”

  “I take your meaning,” said Cadfael, and gnawed his knuckles in fierce thought. “The same two-legged wolves? The same night, surely. The first hard frost! About midnight this slaughter and pillage by Henley… As if they set out deliberately to blacken Dinan’s face!”

  “Or mine,” said Hugh grimly.

  “Or King Stephen’s! Well, so they moved off with their spoils maybe two hours after midnight. They would not move fast, driving cattle and carrying food and grain. Not long before dawn they ransacked and burned John Druel’s holding, high on Clee. And in between—would you not say, Hugh?—in between they happened on Brother Elyas and Sister Hilaria, and after their fashion let loose in a little exuberant sport, leaving both dead or dying. Could there be two such bands out on their grisly business on the same night? A wild night, a blizzard night, that might well keep even thieves and vagabonds close to home. There are here men who know these parts like their own palms, Hugh, and neither snow nor frost can cage them.”

  “Two such bands?” said Hugh, darkly pondering. “No, that’s out of the reckoning. And consider the line they took that night. The night’s ventures began here under our noses—that’s the furthest range of their foray. They returned eastward, crossing the highway—for somewhere there your Brother Elyas was found—and before dawn they were rounding the high shoulder of Titterstone Clee, where they burned out Druel’s holding. It may not even have been in their plan, simply a frolic by men drunk with success. But it was on their way home, for they’d want to be snug and unseen by dawn. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. And are you thinking, Hugh, what I am thin
king? Yves rushes out to recall his sister from her folly, and strikes off from that holding uphill, perhaps not on the same level, but surely in the same direction your outlaws took on their way home, two nights later. Somewhere in those uplands lies the manor to which his sister fled with her lover. Does it not look as though he may have taken her to a house far too close neighbor to the devil to be a safe place either for him or for her?”

  “I have already made my dispositions,” Hugh assured him with grim satisfaction, “with that in mind. There’s a great swathe of upland there, some of it forested, some of it rock, and bleak as death, too barren even for sheep. The workable manors there go no higher than Druel’s homestead, and even there nest in the sheltered places. Tomorrow at first light I’m going out with Dinan to follow that same line the boy took, and see if I can find what he lost himself seeking, the manor where the girl was taken. First, if we can, let’s get her safe out of it. Then we may go after this challenger who spits in the face of law, with no hostages at stake.”

  “But leave the boy here!” said Cadfael, more peremptorily than he had intended.

  Hugh looked down at him with a wry and burdened smile. “We shall be away before ever he opens his eyes. Do you think I dare risk confronting him with another and dearer corpse, with your fierce eye on me? No, if luck’s with us we’ll bring him his sister, either intact or a wife irreclaimable, and they shall fight it out between them, he, she and the lover! If luck turns her back on us—well, then you may be needed. But once this girl’s well out of it, this burden is mine, and you may take care of your patient and sit quietly at home.”

  *

  Cadfael watched the night through with Brother Elyas, and got nothing more for his pains than he had known already. The barrier remained immovable. When a dutiful brother came to relieve him, he went to his bed, and slept as soon as he lay down. He had the gift. There was no profit in laying awake fretting for what would, in any case, have to be faced on awaking, and he had long ago sloughed off the unprofitable. It took too much out of a man, of what would be needed hereafter.