“He said . . .” The boy advanced a step or two, reassured. “His name is Thurstan. He and his wife have been good to me. He said that here was one I could trust, a Benedictine brother. He said you have been looking for us.”
“He said truly. For you, I think, must be Yves Hugonin.”
The boy said: “Yes. And may I come with you to Bromfield?”
“Yves, very heartily you may, and a warm welcome you’ll get from all those who are out hunting for you. Since you fled from Worcester your uncle d’Angers is come back from the Holy Land, and reached Gloucester only to hear you were lost, and he’s been sending about to have you sought all through this shire. Main glad he’ll be to get you back whole and well.”
“My uncle d’Angers?” The boy’s face wavered between eagerness and doubt. “In Gloucester? But . . . but it was men from Gloucester . . .”
“It was, we know, but none of his doing. Never trouble your head over the divisions that keep him from coming himself to find you, nor you nor I can help those. But we’re pledged to return you to him safe and sound, and that you may rely on. But the search is for three, and here we are fobbed off with but one. Where are your sister and her governess?”
“I don’t know!” It came almost in a wail. The boy’s resolute chin shook for a moment, and recovered gallantly. “I left Sister Hilaria safe at Cleeton, I hope she is safe there still, but what she would do when she found herself alone . . . And my sister . . . My sister is the cause of all this! She went off with her lover, in the night. He came for her, I am sure she sent him word to fetch her away. I tried to follow them, but then the snow came . . .”
Cadfael drew breath in mingled wonder, dismay and relief. Here was at least one of the three safely netted, another might be snug if distracted at Cleeton still, and the third, even if she had committed a great folly, seemed to be in the hands of someone who held her dear, and presumably meant her nothing but good. There might yet be a happy ending to all. But meantime, it bade fair to be a very long and confused story, and here was dusk falling, the rim of the sun already dipped, and several miles to go, and the best thing to be done was to get this one back to Bromfield, and make sure he did not wander to be lost again.
“Come, let’s get you home before night falls on us. Come up before me, your light weight won’t worry this fellow. Your foot on mine, so . . .” The boy had to reach high. His hand was firm and eager in Cadfael’s, he came up with a spring, and settled himself snugly. His body, at first tensed, relaxed with a great sigh.
“I have thanked Thurstan, and said farewell to him,” he said in a soft, gruff voice, reviewing his own behavior scrupulously. “I gave him half what was left in my purse, but it was not very much. He said he did not want nor need it, and I was welcome, but I had nothing else to give him, and I could not go and never leave a token.”
“There may be a time, some day, to visit him again,” said Cadfael comfortably. The boy had been well brought up, and felt his status and its obligations. There was much to be said for the monastic education.
“I should like that,” said the child, wriggling himself warmly into the hollow of Cadfael’s shoulder. “I would have given him my dagger, but he said I should need it, and what would he do with such a thing, when he dared not show it for fear of being thought to have stolen it.”
He seemed to have put away for the present his worries over the two women he had somehow mislaid in the snow, in his gratitude at being relieved of anxiety on his own account. Thirteen years old, they said he was. He had a right to be glad when someone else took charge of him.
“How long have you been there with them?”
“Four days. Thurstan said I’d best wait until someone trusty came by, for there are stories of footpads about the hills and the woods, and in this snow, if I set out alone, I might get lost again. I was lost, two whole days,” said Yves, staring remembered terrors firmly in the eye. “I slept in a tree, for fear of wolves.” He was not complaining, rather doing his best not to boast. Well, let him talk, easing his heart of loneliness and fright like a man stretching his feet to a good fire after a dangerous journey. The real story he had to tell could wait until proper attention could be paid to it. If all turned out well, he might be able to point the way to both the missing ladies, but what mattered now was to reach Bromfield before complete darkness fell.
They went briskly wherever the forest thinned and the lingering light showed their way clearly. The first floating flakes of new snow drifted languidly on the air as they came down to the Hopton brook, and crossed it on solid ice, Cadfael lighting down to lead the horse over. From that point they bore somewhat to the left, though veering gradually away from the course of the brook, and came to the first of the little tributaries that flowed down into it, from the long, gentle slope on their right hand. Every stream was still, frozen now for many days. The sun was gone, only an angry glow remained in the west, sullen under leaden greyness. The wind was rising, the snow beginning to sting their faces. Here the forest was broken by scattered holdings and fields, and occasionally a sheep shelter, roughly propped with its back to the wind. Shapes began to dissolve into a mere mottle of shadows, but for fugitive gleams of reflected light from surfaces of ice, and the bluish mounds where untrodden snow had drifted deep.
The second brook, still and silent like the rest, was a shallow, reed-fringed, meandering serpent of silver. The horse disliked the feel of the ice under him, and Cadfael dismounted again to lead him over. The wide, glassy surface shone opaque from every angle, except when looking directly down into it, and Cadfael was watching his own foothold as he crossed, for his boots were worn and smooth. Thus his eye caught, for a moment only, the ghostly pallor beneath the ice to his left, before the horse slithered and recovered, hoisting himself into the snowy grass on the further side.
Cadfael was slow to recognize, slower to believe, what he had seen. Half an hour later, and he would not have been able to see it at all. Fifty paces on, with a thicket of bushes between, he halted, and instead of remounting, as Yves expected, put the bridle into the boy’s hands, and said with careful calm: “Wait a moment for me. No, we need not turn off yet, this is not the place where the tracks divide. Something I noticed there. Wait!”
Yves wondered, but waited obediently, as Cadfael turned back to the frozen brook. The pallor had been no illusion from some stray reflected gleam, it was there fixed and still, embedded in the ice. He went down on his knees to look more closely.
The short hairs rose on his neck. Not a yearling lamb, as he had briefly believed it might be. Longer, more shapely, slender and white. Out of the encasing, glassy stillness a pale, pearly oval stared up at him with open eyes. Small, delicate hands had floated briefly before the frost took hold, and hovered open at her sides, a little upraised as if in appeal. The white of her body and the white of her torn shift which was all she wore seemed to Cadfael to be smirched by some soiling color at the breast, but so faintly that too intent staring caused the mark to shift and fade. The face was fragile, delicate, young.
A lamb, after all. A lost ewe-lamb, a lamb of God, stripped and violated and slaughtered. Eighteen years old? It could well be so.
By this token, Ermina Hugonin was at once found and lost.
Chapter Four
There was nothing to be done here at this hour, alone as he was, and if he lingered, the boy might come to see what kept him so long. He rose from his knees in haste, and went back to where the horse stamped and fidgeted, eager to get back to his stable. The boy was looking round for him curiously, rather than anxiously.