“What was it? Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing to fret you.” Not yet, he thought with a pang, not until you must know. At least let’s feed you, and warm you, and reassure you your own life is safe enough, before you need hear word of this. “I thought I saw a sheep caught in the ice, but I was mistaken.” He mounted, and reached round the boy to take the reins. “We’d best make haste. We’ll have full darkness on us before we reach Bromfield.”
Where the track forked they bore right as they had been instructed, a straight traverse along the slope, easy to follow. The boy’s sturdy body grew heavier and softer in Cadfael’s arm, the brown head hung sleepy on his shoulder. You at least, thought Cadfael, mute in his anger and grief, we’ll put out of harm’s way, if we could not save your sister.
“You have not told me your name,” said Yves, yawning. “I don’t know what to call you.”
“My name is Cadfael, a Welshman from Trefriw, but now of Shrewsbury abbey. Where, I think, you were bound.”
“Yes, so we were. But Ermina—my sister’s name is Ermina—she must always have her own way. I have far more sense than she has! If she’d listened to me we would never have got separated, and we should all have been safe in Shrewsbury by now. I wanted to come to Bromfield with Brother Elyas—you do know about Brother Elyas?—and so did Sister Hilaria, but not Ermina, she had other plans. This is all her fault!”
And small doubt, by now, that that was true, Brother Cadfael reflected wretchedly, clasping the innocent judge who lay warm and confiding in his arm. But surely our little faults do not deserve so crushing a penalty. Without time to reconsider, to repent, to make reparation. Youth destroyed for a folly, when youth should be allowed its follies on the way to maturity and sense.
They were coming down on to the good, trodden road between Ludlow and Bromfield. “Praise God!” said Cadfael, sighting the torches at the gatehouse, yellow terrestrial stars glowing through a fragile but thickening curtain of snow. “We are here!”
They rode in at the gate, to be confronted by a scene of unexpected activity in the great court. The snow within was stamped into intricate patterns of hooves, and about the stables two or three grooms, certainly not of the household, were busy rubbing down horses and leading them to their stalls. Beside the door of the guest-hall Prior Leonard stood in earnest conversation with a lithe young man of middle height, still cloaked and hooded, and his back turned, but it was a back Cadfael knew very well by now. Hugh Beringar had come in person to probe into the first news of the lost Hugonins, and brought, by the look of it, two or three more officers with him.
His ear was as sharp as ever, he turned towards the arrivals and came striding before ever the horse halted. The prior followed, eager and hopeful at sight of two returning where only one went forth.
Cadfael was down by the time they approached, and Yves, dazzled and excited, had recovered from his sleepiness and braced himself to encounter with a nobleman’s assurance whoever bore down on him. He set both plump paws to the pommel of the saddle, and vaulted down into the snow. A long way down for his short stature, but he lit like an acrobat, and stretched erect before Beringar’s amused and approving eye.
“Make your bow, Yves, to Hugh Beringar, the deputy sheriff of this shire,” said Cadfael. “And to Prior Leonard of Bromfield, your host here.” And to Hugh, aside, he said fervently, while the boy made his solemn reverences: “Ask him nothing, yet, get him within!”
Between them they made a reasonable job of it, quick in response to each other from old habit. Yves was soon led away contentedly with Leonard’s bony but benevolent hand on his shoulder, to be warmed and fed and made much of before bed. He was young, he would sleep this night. He was cloister-educated, he would stir in response to the bells for office, and find nothing but reassurance, and sleep again heartily.
“For God’s sake,” said Cadfael, heaving a great sigh as soon as the boy was safely out of sight, “come within, somewhere quiet, where we can talk. I never expected you here in person, seeing the ties you have at home . . .” Beringar had taken him companionably by the arm, and was hurrying him into the doorway of the prior’s lodging, and eyeing him intently along his shoulder as they shook the snow from boots and cloaks on the threshold. “We had but a first breath of news of our quarry, I never thought it could tear you away, though thanks be, it did!”
“I’ve left all in very good order behind me,” said Hugh. He had come to meet his friend expecting a glow of good news, and found himself confronted with a gravity that promised little but trouble. “If you have burdens on your mind here, Cadfael, at least you may be easy about affairs in Shrewsbury. The very day you left us, our son was born, a fine, lusty lad as yellow-haired as his mother, and the pair of them flourishing. And for good measure, the Worcester girl has given her man a son, too, only one day after. The house is full of exultant women, and no one is going to miss me for these few days.”
“Oh, Hugh, the best of news! I’m happy for you both.” It was right and fitting, Cadfael thought, a life emerging in defiance of a death. “And all went well for her? She had not too hard a time of it?”
“Oh, Aline has the gift! She’s too innocent to understand that there can be pain in a thing so joyful as birth, so she felt none. Faith, even if I hadn’t had this errand to occupy me, I was as near being elbowed out of my own house as makes no matter. Your prior’s message came very aptly. I have three men here with me, and twenty-two more I have quartered on Josce de Dinan in Ludlow castle, to be at hand if I need them, and to give him a salutary jolt if he really is in two minds about changing sides. He cannot be in any doubt now that I have my eye on him. And now,” said Hugh, drawing up a chair to the fire in the prior’s parlor, “you owe me a story, I fancy, and for my life I can’t tell what to expect of it. Here you come riding in with the boy we’ve been hunting on your saddle-bow, and yet a face on you as bleak as the sky, when you should be beaming. And not a word to be got out of you until he was safe out of earshot. Where did you find him?”
Cadfael sat back with a small groan of weariness and stiffness after his chill ride. There was no longer any urgent need for action. In the night they would never find the place, especially now that the wind was high and the fresh snow altering the landscape on all sides, blowing hillsides naked, filling in hollows, burying what yesterday had uncovered. He could afford to sit still and feel the warmth of the fire on his legs, and tell what he had to tell at his own pace, since there was nothing to be done about it until daylight.
“In an assart in Clee Forest, in shelter with a decent cottar and his wife, who would not let him take his chance alone through the woods until some trustworthy traveller came by to bear him company. Me they considered fit for the task, and he came with me willingly enough.”
“But he was there alone? A pity,” said Hugh with a wry grimace, “that you did not find his sister, too, while you were about it.”
“I am only too afraid,” said Cadfael, the warmth of the fire heavy on his eyelids, “that I have indeed found her.”
The silence lasted a shorter time than it seemed. The significance of that last utterance there was no mistaking.
“Dead?” asked Hugh bluntly.
“And cold.” Cold as ice, encased in ice. The first bitter frost had provided her a glassy coffin, preserving her flesh immaculate and unchanged to accuse her destroyer.
“Tell me,” said Hugh, intent and still.
Cadfael told him. The whole story would have to be told again when Prior Leonard came, for he, too, must help to stand between the boy and too early and too sudden knowledge of his loss. But in the meantime it was a relief to heave the burden from his heart, and know that this was now Hugh’s responsibility as much as his own.