Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

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.
    "Can you find the place again?"
    "By daylight, yes, I'll find it. In darkness, no use trying. It will be a fearful thing ... We shall have to take axes to hew her out of the ice, unless the thaw comes." It was a forlorn hope, there was no possible sign of a thaw.
    "That we'll face when we come to it," said Hugh sombrely. "Tonight we'd best get the boy's story out of him, and see if we can gather from it how she ever came where you happened on her. And where, in heaven's name, is the nun who fled with her?"
    "According to Yves, he left her in Cleeton, safe enough. And the girl - poor fool! - he says went off with a lover. But I took him no further into matters, it was towards the end of the day, and the most urgent thing was to get one, at least, into safety."
    "True enough, and you did well. We'll wait for the prior, and until the boy's fed and warmed and easy. Then between us we'll hope to get out of him