Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

close to us, and you see he cannot yet speak, to make all plain. Where he had been between yesterday's dawn and the thick of the night no one knows, but certainly not where he was found, or we should be tolling for him, not trying to heal him."
    "Howbeit, at least you know him. How much do you know of him? He gave you a name?"
    The prior hoisted bony shoulders. What does a name tell about a man? "His name is Elyas. I think, though he never said, not long in the cloister. A taciturn man - in particular, I think, he would not speak of himself. He did eye the weather somewhat anxiously. We thought it natural, since he had to brave the way home, but now I fancy there was more in it than that, for he did say something of a party he had left by Foxwood, coming from Cleobury, some people he encountered there in flight from Worcester, and urged to come here with him for safety, but they would push on over the hills for Shrewsbury. The girl, he said, was resolute, and she called the tune."
    "Girl?" Cadfael stiffened erect, ears pricked. "There was a girl holding the rein?"
    "So it seemed." Leonard blinked in surprise at such interest in the phenomenon.
    "Did he say who else was in her company? Was there a boy spoken of? And a nun in charge of them?" He realized ruefully the folly of any such attitude to this relationship. It was the girl who called the tune!
    "No, he never told us more. But I did think he was anxious about them, for you see, the snow came after he reached us, and over those bleak hills ... He might well wonder."
    "You think he may have gone to seek them? To find assurance they had made the crossing safely, and were on a passable way to Shrewsbury? It would not be so far aside from his way."
    "It could be so," said Leonard, and was mute, searching Cadfael's face with a worried frown, waiting for enlightenment.
    "I wonder, I wonder if he found them - if he was bringing them here for refuge!" He was talking to himself, for the prior was left astray, patiently regarding him. And if he was, thought Cadfael silently, what, in God's name, had become of them now? Their only helper and protector battered senseless and left for dead, and those three, where? But as yet there was no proof that these were the hapless Hugonins and their young nun. Many poor souls, girls among them, had fled from the despoiled city of Worcester.
    Headstrong girls, who called the tune? Well, he had known them crop up in cottage no less than in castle, in croft and toft, and among the soil-bound villein families, too. Women were as various as men.
    "Leonard," he said earnestly, leaning across the table, "have you had no proclamation from the sheriff about two young things lost from Worcester in the company of a nun of the convent there?"
    The prior shook a vague but troubled head. "I don't recall such a message, no. Are you telling me that these ... Brother Elyas certainly felt some anxiety. You think these he spoke of may be the ones being sought?"
    Cadfael told him the whole of it, their flight, the search for them, the plight of their uncle, threatened with capture and prison if he ventured across the king's borders in quest of them. Leonard listened in growing dismay. "It could be so, indeed. If this poor brother could but speak!"
    "But he did speak. He told you he left them at Foxwood, and they were bent on crossing the hills still towards Shrewsbury. That would mean their venturing clean over the flank of Clee, to Godstoke, where they would be in the lands of Wenlock priory, and in good enough hands."
    "But a bitter, bleak way over," mourned the prior, aghast. "And that heavy snow the next night."
    "There's no certainty," Cadfael reminded him cautiously. "Barely a suspicion. A quarter of Worcester fled this way to escape the slaughter. Better I should keep watch on this patient of ours than waste time on speculation. For only he can tell us more, and besides, him we already have, he was laid at our doors, and him we must keep. Go to Compline, Leonard, and pray for him, and I'll do as much by his bed. And if he speaks, never fret, I'll be awake enough to catch his drift, for all our sakes."
    In the night the first sudden but infinitesimal change took place. Brother Cadfael was long accustomed to sleeping with one eye open, and both ears. On his low stool beside the bed he drowsed thus, arms folded, head lowered, one elbow braced on the wooden frame of the bed, to quicken to any move. But it was his hearing that pricked him awake to stoop