Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

came within the gates, said regretfully: "I grieve to have to tell you, but quite surely they never arrived here. We have had no such party. But come with me and speak with every fugitive we are still sheltering here in the guest-hall, and the few in the infirmary, in case they can tell you anything of use. For of course we knew nothing of these young people until now, and therefore have not asked about them."
    "Or again it may be," suggested Brother Matthew the cellarer, "that they knew of some kinsman or tenant or old servant here in the town, and therefore have passed us by, and are now within the walls."
    "It is possible," agreed Herward, brightening a little. "But I think Sister Hilaria would prefer to bring them here, to our own order for protection."
    "If there are none here who can help," said the abbot briskly, "the next move is certainly to consult the sheriff. He will know who has been received within the town. You did mention, brother, that the uncle of this young pair is newly come home from Palestine. There are channels he may use to approach the authorities here. How is it that he is not pursuing this enquiry in person? For surely he cannot cast the blame all on you."
    Brother Herward heaved a great sigh that first stiffened his little frame, and then let it collapse dispiritedly into limpness. "The uncle is a knight of Angevin blood - they are his sister's children - by name Laurence d'Angers. Newly home from the Crusade he is, but to Gloucester, to join the forces of the empress. It is also true that he did not arrive there until after this onslaught, and bears no blame for it, as he took no part in it. But no man from Gloucester dare show his face now in our city. The king is there with a great force, and an angry man, like every ruined burgess of the town. The search for these children is deputed to our house, perforce. Nevertheless, this is a quest for creatures absolutely innocent, and I shall so present it to the sheriff."
    "And you shall have my voice," Radulfus assured him. "But first, since none here can provide us news ...?" He looked inquiringly round the chapterhouse, and found only shaken heads. "Very well, we must inquire among our guests. The names, the youth of the parties, the presence of the nun, may yield us some useful word."
    Nevertheless, Cadfael, filing out from chapter among the rest, could not believe that anything would come of such inquiry. He had spent much of his time, in recent days, helping Brother Edmund house and doctor the exhausted travellers, and never a word had been said of any such trio encountered on the way. Travellers' tales enough there had been, freely spilled for the listening, but none of a Benedictine sister and two noble children loose on the roads with never a man to guard them.
    And the uncle, it seemed, was the empress's man, as Gilbert Prestcote was the king's man, to the hilt and bitterness between the factions was flaring up like a torch in tinder over the sack of Worcester. The omens were not good. Abbot Radulfus would lend his own persuasions to the envoy's, and this very day, too, but what countenance the two of them would get for Laurence d'Angers was a dubious speculation.
    The sheriff received his petitioners courteously and gravely in his own apartment in the castle, and listened with an impassive face to the story Herward had to tell. A sombre man, black-browed and black-bearded, and his natural cast of countenance rather forbidding than reassuring, but for all that a fair-minded man in his stern fashion, and one who stood by his word and his men, provided they kept the standards he demanded of them. "I am sorry," he said when Herward had done, "to hear of this loss, and sorrier still that I must tell you at once you will be seeking your party in vain here in Shrewsbury. Since this attack took place I have had word brought to me of every soul from Worcester who has entered the town, and these three are not among them. Many have already left again for home, now that his Grace has reinforced the garrison in Worcester. If, as you say, the uncle of these children has now returned to England, and is a man of substance, can he not undertake the search in person?"
    It was Herward's weakness that he had withheld, up to that point, all but the name of that nobleman, putting off the evil moment. And as yet the name meant nothing, beyond a knight with the credit or the Crusade shedding lustre upon him, newly arrived from the Holy Land, where a