A Virgin In The Ice

by Ellis Peters

  There was nothing more for them here, nothing to be gained and little to be blamed, it seemed. The girl had set in motion the whole disastrous course, doubly headstrong in decamping with her lover in the first place, and afterwards, because he was stricken down, in setting off alone to try and amend what she had done so sadly amiss.

  “If you hear of any word of her,” said Hugh, “send to tell me at Bromfield, where I am lodged, or in Ludlow, where you will find my men.”

  “I shall, my lord, without fail.” Evrard fell back again among his untidy pillows, and flinched at a twinge of pain, shifting his shoulder tenderly to ease it.

  “Before we go,” said Brother Cadfael, “can I not dress your wound again for you? For I see that it gives you trouble, and I fancy you have still a raw surface there that sticks to your dressing, and may do further damage. You have a physician here tending you?”

  The young man’s hollow eyes opened wide at this kindly interest. “My leech, I called him, I know. He’s none, but he has some skill, from experience. I think he has looked after me pretty well. You are wise in such matters, brother?”

  “Like your own man, from long practice. I have often dealt with wounds that have taken bad course. What has he used on you?” He was curious about other men’s prescriptions, and there was clean linen bandaging, and a clay ointment jar laid aside on a shelf by the wall. Cadfael lifted the lid and sniffed at the greenish salve within. “Centaury, I think, and the yellow mild nettle, both good. He knows his herbs. I doubt if you could do better. But since he is not here, and you are in discomfort, may I assay?”

  Evrard lay back submissively and let himself be handled. Cadfael unlaced the ties of the young man’s corte, and drew the left shoulder gently out from the wide sleeve, until the shirt could also be drawn down, and his arm freed.

  “You have been out and active today, this binding is rubbed into creases, and dried hard, no wonder it hurts you. You should lie still a day or two yet, and let it rest.” It was his physician’s voice, practical, confident, even a little severe. His patient listened meekly, and let himself be unwound from his wrappings, which enveloped both shoulder and upper arm. The last folds were stained in a long slash that ran from above the heart down to the underside of the arm, with a thin, dark line of blood that ebbed out on either side into pale, dried fluid. Here Cadfael went delicately, steadying the flesh against every turn of the linen. The folds creaked stiffly free.

  A long slash that could have killed him, but instead had been deflected outwards, to slice down into the flesh of his arm. Not deep nor dangerous, though he might well have bled copiously until it was staunched, and since he had ridden hard that same night, no wonder he had lost blood enough to enfeeble him. It was healing now from either end, and healing clean, but certainly, by exertion or some contagion of dirt entering, it had been ugly and festering, and even now, in the centre of the wound, the flesh showed pink, soft and angry. Cadfael cleansed it with a morsel of the linen, and applied a new plaster coated with the herbal salve. The pallid young face stared up at him all the while with unblinking, bruised eyes, wondering and mute.

  “You have no other wounds?” asked Cadfael, winding a fresh bandage about his dressing. “Well, rest this one a day or two longer, and rest your own uneasy mind with it, for we are all on the same quest. Take a little air in the middle of the day, if the sun comes, but keep from cold and give your body time. There, now your sleeve, so… But it would be wise to have these boots off, wrap yourself in your gown, and make yourself content.”

  The hollow eyes followed his withdrawal, marvelling. He found his voice to follow them with thanks only as they were leaving.

  “You have a gifted touch, brother. I feel myself much eased. God be with you!”

  They went out to their horses and the gradually fading light. Yves was dumb. He had come to challenge, and remained to feel sympathy, though almost against his will. He was new to wounds and pain and sickness, until the shock of Worcester he had lived indulged, sheltered, a child. And for his sister’s sake he was deep in bitter disappointment and anxiety, and wanted no promptings from anyone.

  “He has what he claims,” said Brother Cadfael simply, when they were cresting the ridge and heading down into the trees. “A thrust meant for his heart, rubbed raw again later, and poisoned by some foulness that got into the wound. He has been in fever, sure enough, and fretted gouts from his flesh. Everything speaks him true.”

  “And we are no nearer finding the girl,” said Hugh.

  The nightly clouds were gathering, the sky drooping over their heads, an ominous wind stirring. They made all the haste they could to get back into Bromfield before the snow began.

  Chapter 7

  AFTER VESPERS THAT NIGHT the wind rose violently, the vague wisps of snow that drifted aimlessly on the air changed to thin, lashing whips, driving horizontally against the walls and piling new layers of white against every windward surface. By the time supper was over, and Brother Cadfael scurried across the great court to the infirmary to look at his patient, the world outside was an opaque, shifting, blinding mass of flakes, growing ever thicker. This was to be a blizzard night. The wolves might well be abroad again. They knew their ground exceedingly well, and weather that might daunt the innocent had no terrors for them.

  Brother Elyas had been allowed out of his bed for the first time, and was reclining propped by his pillow, bony and shrunken in his voluminous habit. His head wounds had healed over, his body mended of itself, but the constitution of his mind had not the same strength. With mute submission he did whatever he was bidden, with low and listless voice he gave thanks humbly for all that was done for him, but with sunken eyes and painfully knotted brows he stared beyond the walls of his cell, as if half-seeing and half-deluding himself that he saw that part of him that had been reft away and never returned. Only in sleep, and particularly when falling asleep or awaking out of sleep, was he agitated and shaken, as if between waking life and the gentler semblance of death the veil that hid his lost memory from him thinned but did not quite part.

  Yves had followed Cadfael across the court, restless and anxious. He was hovering outside the door of the sickroom when Cadfael came out.

  “Should you not be in your bed, Yves? Such a long, hard day as you’ve had!”

  “I don’t want to sleep yet,” pleaded the boy querulously. “I’m not tired. Let me sit with him for you until after Compline. I’d rather have something to do.” And indeed it might be the best thing for him, to be doing something for someone else, and feeding a draught of herbs to Brother Elyas might spill a drop of comfort to soothe his own troubles and disappointments. “He still hasn’t said anything to help us? He doesn’t remember us?”

  “Not yet. There is a name he calls sometimes in his sleep, but none of our acquaintance.” He called for her as for a thing hopelessly lost, an irreparable grief but not an anxiety, she being beyond pain or danger. “Hunydd. In his deepest sleep he calls for Hunydd.”

  “A strange name,” said Yves, wondering. “Is it a man or a woman?”

  “A woman’s name—a Welshwoman. I think, though I do not know, that she was his wife. And dearly loved, too dearly to leave him in peace if she is only a few months dead. Prior Leonard said of him, not long in the cloister. He may well have tried to escape from what was hard to bear alone, and found it no easier among any number of brethren.”

  Yves was looking up at him with a man’s eyes, steady and grave. Even sorrows as yet well out of his range he could go far towards understanding. Cadfael shook him amiably by the shoulder. “There, yes, sit by him if you will. After Compline I’ll bring someone to take your place. And should you need me, I’ll not be far away.”

  Elyas dozed, opened his eyes, and dozed again. Yves sat still and silent beside the bed, attentive to every change in the gaunt but strong and comely face, and pleased and ready when the invalid asked for a drink, or needed an arm to help him turn and settle comfortably. In the wakeful moments the boy tried
tentatively to reach a mind surely not quite closed against him, talking shyly of the winter weather, and the common order of the day within these walls. The hollow eyes watched him as though from a great distance, but attentively.

  “Strange,” said Elyas suddenly, his voice low and creaky with disuse. “I feel that I should know you. Yet you are not a brother of the house.”

  “You have known me,” said Yves, eager and hopeful. “For a short time we were together, do you remember? We came from Cleobury together, as far as Foxwood. My name is Yves Hugonin.”

  No, the name meant nothing. Only the face, it seemed touched some chord in his disrupted memory. “There was snow threatening,” he said. “I had a reliquary to deliver here, they tell me I brought it safely. They tell me! All I know is what they tell me.”

  “But you will remember,” said Yves earnestly. “It will come clear to you again. You may trust what they tell you, no one would deceive you. Shall I tell you more things? True things, that I know?”

  The wondering, doubting face watched him, and made no motion of rejection. Yves leaned close, and began to talk solemnly and eagerly about what was past.

  “You were coming from Pershore, but roundabout, to avoid the trouble in Worcester. And we had run from Worcester, and wanted to reach Shrewsbury. At Cleobury we were all lodged overnight, and you would have had us come here to Bromfield with you, as the nearest place of safety, and I wanted to go with you, but my sister would not, she would go on over the hills. We parted at Foxwood.” The face on the pillow was not responsive, but seemed to wait with a faint, patient hope. The wind shook the stout shutter covering the window, and filtered infinitely tiny particles of snow into the room, to vanish instantly. The candle flickered. The whine of the gale outside was a piercingly desolate sound.

  “But you are here,” said Elyas abruptly, “far from Shrewsbury still. And alone! How is that, that you should be alone?”

  “We were separated.” Yves was not quite easy, but if the sick man was beginning to ask questions thus intelligently, the threads of his torn recollections might knit again and present him a whole picture. Better to know both the bad and the good, since there was no guilt in it for him, he was the blameless victim, and surely knowledge should be healing. “Some kind country people sheltered me, and Brother Cadfael brought me here. But my sister… We are seeking her. She left us of her own will!” He could not resist that cry, but would not accuse her further. “I am sure we shall find her safe and well,” he said manfully.

  “But there was a third,” said Brother Elyas, so softly, so inwardly, that it seemed he spoke to himself. “There was a nun…” And now he was not looking at Yves, but staring great-eyed into the vault above him, and his mouth worked agitatedly.

  “Sister Hilaria,” said Yves, quivering in response.

  “A nun of our order…” Elyas set both hands to the sides of his bed, and sat up strongly. Something had kindled in the deeps of his haunted eyes, a yellow, crazed light too vivid to be merely a reflection from the candle’s flame. “Sister Hilaria…” he said, and now at last he had found a name that meant something to him, but something so terrible that Yves reached both hands to take him by the shoulders, and urge him to lie down again.

  “You mustn’t fret—she is not lost, she is here, most reverently tended and coffined. It is forbidden to wish her back, she is with God.” Surely they must have told him, but maybe he had not understood. Death could not be hidden away. He would grieve, naturally, but that is permitted. But you may not begrudge it that she has left us, Brother Cadfael had said.

  Brother Elyas uttered a dreadful, anguished sound, yet so quiet that the howl of the wind at the shutter almost drowned it. He clenched both hands into large, bony fists, and struck them against his breast.

  “Dead! Dead? In her youth, in her beauty—trusting me! Dead! Oh, stones of this house, fall and cover me, unhappy! Bury me out of the sight of men…”

  Barely half of it was clear, the words crowded so thick on his tongue, choking him, and Yves in his alarm and dismay was hardly capable of listening, he cared only to allay this storm he had innocently provoked. He stretched an arm across Elyas’ breast, and tried to soothe him back to his pillow, his young, whole strength pitted against this demented vigor.

  “Oh, hush, hush, you mustn’t vex yourself so. Lie down, you’re too weak to rise… Oh, don’t, you frighten me! Lie down!”

  Brother Elyas sat rigidly upright, staring through the wall, gripping both hands against his heart, whispering what might have been prayers, or self-reproaches, or feverish, garbled recollections of times past. Against that private obsession all the force Yves could exert had no influence. Elyas was no longer even aware of him. If he spoke to any, it was to God, or to some creature invisible.

  Yves turned and fled for help, closing the door behind him. Through the infirmary he ran full tilt, and out into the piled, whirling, howling snow of the court, across to the cloister and the warming-room, where surely they would be at this hour. He fell once, and plucked himself shivering out of a drift, halting to clear his eyes. The whole night was a rain of goosefeathers, but cold, cold, and the wind that flung them in his face cut like a knife. He stumbled and slithered to the door of the church, and there halted, hearing the chanting within. It was later than he had thought. Compline had already begun.

  He had been too well schooled in the courtesies and proper observancies, he could not for any cause burst in upon the officer and bawl for help. He hung still for a few moments to get his breath and snake the snow from his hair and lashes. Compline was not long, surely he could go back and battle with his disordered charge until the office was over. Then there would be help in plenty. He had only to keep Brother Elyas quiet for a quarter of an hour.

  He turned, half-blinded as soon as he left cover, and battled his way back through the drifts, laboring hard with his short, sturdy legs, and lowering his head like a little fighting bull against the wind.

  The outer door of the infirmary stood open wide, but he was all too afraid that he had left it so in his haste. He blundered along the passage within, fending himself off from the walls with both hands as he shook off the snow that clung to his face. The door of the sickroom was also wide open. That brought him up with a jolt that jarred him to the heels.

  The room was empty, the coverings of the bed hung low to the floor. Brother Elyas’ sandals, laid neatly side by side under the head of the bed, were gone. And so was Brother Elyas, just as he had risen from his sick-bed, clothed, habited but without cloak or covering, out into the night of the ninth of December, into such a blizzard as had raged the night he came by his all but mortal injuries, and Sister Hilaria by her death. The only name that had reached him in his solitary place.

  Yves charged back along the passage to the doorway, and out into the storm. And there were tracks, though he had not seen them when he entered, because he had not expected them to be there, nor would they last long. They were filling fast, but they showed, large feet tramping down the steps and across the court, not towards the church, no—straight for the gatehouse. And Brother Porter had leave to attend Compline.

  They were still chanting in the church, and Elyas could not have got far. Yves ran to grab his cloak from the porch of the guest-hall, and bolted like a startled hare, in convulsive leaps, towards the gatehouse. The tracks were filling fast, they lingered only as shallowing pits in the whiteness, picked out by the shadows cast from the few burning torches. But they reached and quitted the gate. The world without was nothing but a boiling whiteness, and the depth of the fall made walking hard labor for his short legs, but he plodded on relentlessly. The tracks turned right. So did Yves.

  Some way along the road, wading blindly, with no sense of direction left to him in a snowfall that looked the same wherever he turned his face, but where the ground below him was still dimpled faintly with the furrows and pits of passage, he glimpsed in a momentary emptiness cleared by the gale’s caprice, a black shadow flitting before
him. He fixed his eyes upon it, and plunged determinedly after.

  It took him a long time to overtake his quarry. It was incredible how fast Elyas went, striding, thrusting, ploughing his way, so that now a torn furrow showed where he had passed. In sandals, bare-headed, a sick man—only some terrible force of passion and despair could give him such strength. Moreover, which frightened Yves more than ever, he seemed to know where he was going, or else to be drawn to some desperate meeting-place without his own knowledge or will. The line he sheered through the drifts looked arrow-straight.

  Nevertheless, Yves did overtake him at last, struggling closer with every step, until he was able to stretch out his hand and catch at the wide sleeve of the black habit. The arm swung steadily, as though Elyas remained totally unaware of the weight dragging at him. Almost he plucked himself clear, but Yves clung with both hands, and heaving himself in front of the striding figure, wound his arms about its middle and held on, blocking the way forward with all his weight, and blinking up through the blinding snow into a face as chill and immovable as a death-mask.

  “Brother Elyas, come back with me! You must come back—you’ll die out here!”

  Brother Elyas moved on inexorably, forcing his incubus before him, hampered but undeterred. Yves maintained his hold, and went with him, but hanging back hard, and pleading insistently: “You’re ill, you should be in your bed. Come back with me! Where is it you want to go? Turn back now, let me take you home…”

  But perhaps he was not going anywhere, only trying to get away from somewhere, or from someone, from himself, from whatever it was that had come back to him like lightning-stroke, and driven him mad. Yves pleaded breathlessly and insistently, but in vain. He could not turn him or persuade him. There was nothing left but to go with him. He took a firm grip on the black sleeve, and set himself to keep pace with his charge. If they could find any cottage, or meet with any late traveller he could ask for shelter or help. Surely Brother Elyas must weaken and fail at last, and let himself be prevailed upon to accept any aid that offered. But who would be out on such a night? Who but a poor madman and his sorry keeper! Well, he had offered to take care of Brother Elyas, and he would not let go of him, and if he could not protect him from his own frenzy, he could at least share the penalty. And strangely, in a little while they were moving together as one, and Brother Elyas, though his face remained fixed and his purpose secret, laid an arm about Yves’ shoulders and drew him close against his side, and small, instinctive motions of mutual kindness arose between them, to ease the labor and the cold and the loneliness.