Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

eyes opened wide and grew luminous with hope and eagerness.
    "That is my sister's!" he said, shining. "It was too fine for the journey, but I know she had it with her. For him she might wear it! Where did you find it?"
    Chapter Six
    This time they took Yves with them, partly because, though he might have accepted Hugh's fiat gracefully if refused, he would have been restless and miserable all the time of waiting, and partly because, in addition to being the only one who could positively identify Ermina's suitor when found, he was indeed the man of his blood here, the head of his household, and had every right to partake in the search for his lost sister, now they knew she should be well alive.
    "But this is the same way we came down from Thurstan's assart," he said, after they had turned off the highroad by the bridge over the Corve. "Must we continue so?"
    "We must, for some while. Well past the place where you and I would as soon not be," said Cadfael simply, divining his unease. "But we need not turn our eyes away. There is nothing evil there. Neither earth nor water nor air have any part in man's ill-doing." And with an attentive but cautious eye on the boy's grave face he said: "You may grieve, but you must not begrudge that she is gone. Her welcome is assured."
    "She was, of all of us, the only best," said Yves, abruptly eloquent. "You don't know! Never out of temper, always patient and kind and very brave. She was much more beautiful than Ermina!"
    He was thirteen, but taught and gifted, perhaps, somewhat beyond his years, and he had gone afoot in Sister Hilaria's gallant and gentle company many days, close and observant. And if he had glimpsed for the first time a mature kind of love, surely it had been a most innocent and auspicious kind, even now after the apparent mutilation of loss. Yves had come to no harm. In the past two days he seemed to have grown in stature, and taken several long strides away from his infancy.
    He did not avert his eyes when they came to the brook, but he was silent, and so remained until after they had crossed the second brook also; but from that point they veered to the right, and came into open woodland, and the new vistas revived his interest in the world about him, and brightened his eyes again. The brief winter sunlight, which had again drawn down slender icicles from eaves and branches, was already past, but the light was clear and the air still, and the patterns of black and white and dusky greens had their own sombre beauty.
    They crossed the Hopton brook, still motionless as before, half a mile lower down its course than when they had come to Godstoke together. "But we must have been very near," said Yves, marvelling that he might have passed almost within touch of his sister that day, and never known it.
    "Still a mile or so to go."
    "I hope she may be there!"
    "So do we all," said Hugh.
    They came to the manor of Ledwyche over a slight ridge, and emerged from woodland to look down an equally gentle slope towards the Ledwyche brook, into which all the others drained before it flowed on, mile after mile, southward to join the River Teme. Beyond the watered valley the ground rose again, and there, directly before them in the distance, hung the vast, bleak outline of Titterstone Clee, its top shrouded in low cloud. But in between, the valley lay sheltered on all sides from the worst winds. Trees had been cleared from round the manor, except for windbreaks left for protection to crops and stock in the most open places. From their ridge they looked down at an impressive array of buildings, the manor-house itself built long and steep-roofed over a squat undercroft, the entire visible sweep of the stockade lined within with barn and byre and store. A considerable holding, and surely a temptation to the hungry and covetous, in these lawless times, but perhaps too strongly manned to be easy prey.
    It seemed, however, that the holder was not quite easy about his property, for as they drew nearer they could see that on the narrow timber bridge that crossed the brook beyond the manor, men were working busily, erecting a barrier of logs, and above the old, dark wood of the stockade, and especially along that eastward side, glared the white, new wood of recent building. The lord of the manor was heightening his fences.
    "They are here, surely," said Hugh, staring. "Here lives a man who has taken warning, and does not mean to be caught by surprise a second time."
    They rode down with