Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

Porter had leave to attend Compline.
    They were still chanting in the church, and Elyas could not have got far. Yves ran to grab his cloak from the porch of the guest-hall, and bolted like a startled hare, in convulsive leaps, towards the gatehouse. The tracks were filling fast, they lingered only as shallowing pits in the whiteness, picked out by the shadows cast from the few burning torches. But they reached and quitted the gate. The world without was nothing but a boiling whiteness, and the depth of the fall made walking hard labour for his short legs, but he plodded on relentlessly. The tracks turned right. So did Yves.
    Some way along the road, wading blindly, with no sense of direction left to him in a snowfall that looked the same wherever he turned his face, but where the ground below him was still dimpled faintly with the furrows and pits of passage, he glimpsed in a momentary emptiness cleared by the gale's caprice, a black shadow flitting before him. He fixed his eyes upon it, and plunged determinedly after.
    It took him a long time to overtake his quarry. It was incredible how fast Elyas went, striding, thrusting, ploughing his way, so that now a torn furrow showed where he had passed. In sandals, bare-headed, a sick man-only some terrible force of passion and despair could give him such strength. Moreover, which frightened Yves more than ever, he seemed to know where he was going, or else to be drawn to some desperate meeting-place without his own knowledge or will. The line he sheered through the drifts looked arrow-straight.
    Nevertheless, Yves did overtake him at last, struggling closer with every step, until he was able to stretch out his hand and catch at the wide sleeve of the black habit. The arm swung steadily, as though Elyas remained totally unaware of the weight dragging at him. Almost he plucked himself clear, but Yves clung with both hands, and heaving himself in front of the striding figure, wound his arms about its middle and held on, blocking the way forward with all his weight, and blinking up through the blinding snow into a face as chill and immovable as a death-mask.
    "Brother Elyas, come back with me! You must come back - you'll die out here!"
    Brother Elyas moved on inexorably, forcing his incubus before him, hampered but undeterred. Yves maintained his hold, and went with him, but hanging back hard, and pleading insistently: "You're ill, you should be in your bed. Come back with me! Where is it you want to go? Turn back now, let me take you home ..."
    But perhaps he was not going anywhere, only trying to get away from somewhere, or from someone, from himself, from whatever it was that had come back to him like lightning-stroke, and driven him mad. Yves pleaded breathlessly and insistently, but in vain. He could not turn him or persuade him. There was nothing left but to go with him. He took a firm grip on the black sleeve, and set himself to keep pace with his charge. If they could find any cottage, or meet with any late traveller he could ask for shelter or help. Surely Brother Elyas must weaken and fail at last, and let himself be prevailed upon to accept any aid that offered. But who would be out on such a night? Who but a poor madman and his sorry keeper! Well, he had offered to take care of Brother Elyas, and he would not let go of him, and if he could not protect him from his own frenzy, he could at least share the penalty. And strangely, in a little while they were moving together as one, and Brother Elyas, though his face remained fixed and his purpose secret, laid an arm about Yves's shoulders and drew him close against his side, and small, instinctive motions of mutual kindness arose between them, to ease the labour and the cold and the loneliness.
    Yves had no longer any idea of where they were, though he knew that long ago they had left the road. He thought they had crossed a bridge, and that could not have been anything but the River Corve. Somewhere on that upland slope, then. A poor chance of finding a cottage here, even if the snow gave over and let them see their way.
    But it seemed that Brother Elyas knew his way, or was guided to the place where he could not choose but go, for some awful, penitential purpose of which only he knew. A thicket of thorny bushes, heaped with snow, snatched at their garments, sheltering a shallow hollow in the slope. Yves stumbled against a hard, dark surface, and grazed his knuckles on rough wood. A low but sturdy hut, built to give