Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

Hugh, pricking him back to the real and sorry situation, "you could hardly keep their pace. And they were away before you could hale them back to answer to you."
    "No, I couldn't keep up, but I could follow. It had begun to snow, they left tracks, and I knew they could not be going very far. Far enough to lose me!" he owned, and bit a lip that did not quite know whether to curl up or down. "I followed as long as I could by their tracks, and it was uphill, and the wind rose, and there was so much snow the tracks were soon covered. I couldn't find the way forward or back. I tried to keep what I thought was the direction they'd taken, but I don't know how much I may have wandered, or where I went. I was quite lost. All night I was in the forest, and the second night Thurstan found me and took me home with him. Brother Cadfael knows. Thurstan said there were outlaws abroad, and I should stay with him until some safe traveller came by. And so I did. And now I don't know," he said, visibly sinking into his proper years, "where Ermina went with her lover, or what has become of Sister Hilaria. She would wake to find the two of us gone, and I don't know what she would do. But she was with John and his wife, they surely wouldn't let her come to harm."
    "This man who took your sister away," pressed Beringar. "You don't know his name, but you do remember he was acceptable in your father's house. If he has a manor in the hills, within easy reach of Cleeton, no doubt we can trace him. I take it he might, had your father lived, have been a possible suitor for your sister, even in a more approved fashion?"
    "Oh, yes," said the boy seriously, "I think he well might. There were any number of young men used to come, and Ermina, even when she was only fourteen or fifteen, would ride and hunt with the best of them. They were all men of substance, or heirs to good estates. I never noticed which of them she favoured." He would have been playing with toy warriors and falling off his first pony then, uninterested in sisters and their admirers. "This one is very handsome," he said generously. "Much fairer than me. And taller than you, sir." That would not make him a rarity, Beringar's modest length of steel and sinew had been under-estimated by many a man to his cost. "I think he must be about twenty-five or six. But his name I don't know. There were so many came visiting to us."
    "Now there is one more thing," said Cadfael, "in which Yves may be able to help us, if I may keep him from his bed a few minutes more. You know, Yves, you spoke of Brother Elyas, who left you at Foxwood?"
    Yves nodded, attentive and wondering.
    "Brother Elyas is here in the infirmary. After leaving for home, his errand done, he was attacked by footpads in the night and badly hurt, and the countrymen who found him brought him here to be cared for. I am sure he is on the mend now, but he has not been able to tell us anything about what happened to him. He has no memory of these recent days, only in his sleep he seems to struggle with some half-recalled distress. Waking, his mind is blank, but in sleep he has mentioned you, though not by name. The boy would have gone with me, he said. Now if he claps eyes on you, safe and well, it might be the sight will jog his memory. Will you try it with me?"
    Yves rose willingly, if somewhat apprehensively, looking to Beringar for confirmation that he had done all that was required of him here. "I am sorry he has come to harm. He was kind ... Yes, whatever I can do for him ..."
    On the way to the sickroom, with no other witness by, he slipped his hand thankfully, like an awed child, into Brother Cadfael's comfortable clasp, and clung tightly.
    "You mustn't mind that he is bruised and disfigured. All that will pass, I promise you."
    Brother Elyas was lying mute and still, while a younger brother read to him from the life of Saint Remigius. His bruises and distortions were already subsiding, he seemed free from pain, he had taken food during the day, and at the office bell his lips would move soundlessly on the words of the liturgy. But his open eyes dwelt unrecognizingly upon the boy who entered, and wandered away again languidly into the shadowy corners of the room. Yves crept to the bedside on tiptoe, great-eyed.
    "Brother Elyas, here is Yves come to see you. You remember Yves? The boy you met at Cleobury, and parted from at Foxwood."
    No, nothing, nothing but the faint tremor of desperate anxiety troubling the patient face. Yves