“She begins to bruise,” said Hugh, and drew a fingertip over her cheekbone and down to the faint discolorations round her lips. “But her throat is unmarked. She was not strangled.”
“Smothered, surely, in the act of ravishment.”
They were all three so intent upon the dead girl that they had not heard the footsteps that approached the closed door of the room, and even had they been listening, the footsteps were light enough to be missed, though they came briskly and without conceal. The first they knew of the boy’s coming was the white burst of reflected light from the snow, as the door was opened wide to the wall, and Yves marched over the threshold with the innocent boldness of his kind. No creeping ingratiatingly through a narrow chink for him, nothing he did was done by half-measures. The abruptness with which they all whirled upon him, and their frowning consternation gave him sharp pause and mild offense. Both Hugh and Prior Leonard stepped quickly between him and the trestle on which the body lay.
“You should not be here, child,” said the prior, flustered.
“Why should I not, Father? No one has told me I should be at fault. I was looking for Brother Cadfael.”
“Brother Cadfael will come out to you in a little while. Go back to the guest-hall and wait for him there . . .”
It was late to ward him off, he had seen, beyond the sheltering shoulders, enough to tell him what lay behind. The linen sheet, quickly drawn up, the unmistakable shape, and one glimpse of short, bright hair where the linen, too hastily drawn, had folded back on itself. His face grew still and wary, his eyes large, and his tongue was silenced.
The prior laid a hand gently on his shoulder and made to turn him back to the doorway. “Come, you and I will go together. Whatever is to be told, you shall hear later, but leave it now.”
Yves stood his ground, and went on staring.
“No,” said Cadfael unexpectedly, “let him come.” He came out from behind the trestle, and took a step or two towards the boy. “Yves, you are a sensible man, no need to pretend to you, after your travels, that violence and danger and cruelty do not exist, and men do not die. We have here a dead body, not known to us. I would have you look at it, if you will, and say if you know this face. You need not fear anything ill to see.”
The boy drew near steadily and with set face, and eyed the shrouded form with nothing worse than awe. Doubtful if it had ever entered his head, thought Cadfael, that this might be his sister, or indeed a woman. He had seen the dilated eyes fix on the short, curling hair; it was a young man Yves expected. Nevertheless, Cadfael would have approached this somewhat differently if he had not been certain already, in his own mind, that this dead girl, whoever she might be, was not Ermina Hugonin. Beyond that he had only a pitiful suspicion. But Yves would know.
He drew down the sheet from her face. The boy’s hands, clenched together before him, tightened abruptly. He drew in breath hard, but made no other sound for a long moment. He shook a little, but not much. The wide-eyed stare he raised to Cadfael’s questioning face was one of shocked bewilderment, almost of disbelief.
“But how is this possible? I thought . . . I don’t understand! She . . .” He gave up, shaking his head violently, and hung over her again in fascinated pity and wonder. “I do know her, of course I do, but how can she be here, and dead? This is Sister Hilaria, who came with us from Worcester.”
Chapter Five
Between them they coaxed and shooed him away across the snowy court. Yves went still in his daze, frowning helplessly over this sudden and inexplicable reappearance in another place of someone he had left safe under a friendly roof some miles away. He was too shaken and puzzled at first to realize fully the meaning of what he had seen, but halfway to the guest-hall it hit him like a blow on the head. He balked, gulped breath in a great sob, and startled himself, if no one else, by bursting into tears. Prior Leonard would have clucked over him like a dismayed hen, but Cadfael clapped him briskly on the shoulder, and said practically:
“Bear up, my heart, for we’re going to need you. We have a malefactor to trace now, and a wrong to avenge, and who but you can lead us straight to the place where you left her? Where else should we start?”
The fit passed as abruptly as it had begun. Yves scrubbed at his smudged cheeks hastily with his sleeve, and looked round alertly enough to see what he could read in Hugh Beringar’s face. In Hugh the authority lay. The role of the cloistered was to shelter and counsel and offer prayers, but justice and law were the business of the sheriff. Yves was not a baron’s heir for nothing, he knew all about the hierarchies.
“That’s true, I can take you straight from Foxwood to John Druel’s holding, it lies higher than Cleeton village.” He caught eagerly at Hugh’s sleeve, wise enough to ask nicely instead of demanding. “May I go with you and show the way?”
“You may, if you’ll stay close and do all as you’re bidden.” Hugh was already committed, Cadfael had seen to that. But far better for the boy to be out in men’s company, and active, than to sit fretting here alone. “We’ll find you a pony your size. Run, then, get your cloak and come after us to the stables.”
Yves ran, restored by the prospect of doing something to the purpose. Beringar looked after him thoughtfully. “Go with him, Father Prior, if you will, see that he has some food with him, for it may be a long day, and no matter how large a dinner he’s eaten half an hour ago, he’ll be hungry before night.” And to Cadfael he said, as they turned together towards the stables: “You, I know, will do whatever you fancy doing, and I’m always glad of your company, if your charges, live and dead, can spare you. But you’ve had some hard riding these last days . . .”
“For an ageing man,” said Cadfael.
“As well I did not say so! I doubt you could outlast me, for all your great burden of years. What of Brother Elyas, though?”
“He needs no more from me, now, than a visit or two each day, to see that nothing’s turned back for him and gone amiss. His body is recovering well. And as for the part of his mind that’s astray, my being here won’t cure it. It will come back of itself one day, or it will cease to be missed. He’s well looked after. As she was not!” he said sadly.
“How did you know,” asked Hugh, “that it could not be the child’s sister?”
“The cropped hair, first. A month now since they left Worcester, long enough to provide her that halo we have seen. Why should the other girl clip her locks? And then, the coloring. Ermina, so Herward said, is almost black of hair and eye, darker brown than her brother. So is not this lady. And they did say, as I remember, the nun was also young, no more than five and twenty or so. No, I was sure he was safe from that worst threat. Thus far!” said Cadfael soberly. “Now we have to find her, and make sure he never shall have to uncover another known face and set a name to it. I have the same obligations as you, and I’m coming with you.”
“Go get yourself booted and ready, then,” said Hugh, without surprise, “and I’ll saddle you one of my own remounts. I came well prepared for any tangles you might get me into. I know you of old.”
To Foxwood was a fairly easy ride, being a used highway, but from Foxwood they climbed by even higher ways, and on tracks more broken and steep. The vast flank of Titter-stone Clee rose here to a bleak plateau, with the highest ground towering over them on the left hand, in cloud that dropped lower as the afternoon passed its peak. Yves rode close at Hugh’s side, intent and important.
“We can leave the village away on our right, the holding lies above here. Over this ridge there’s a bowl of fields John has, and a sheep-pen up the hill.”
Hugh reined in suddenly, and sat with head raised, sniffing the air with stretched nostrils. “Are you getting the same waft I have in my nose? What should a husbandman be burning at this end of the year?”