Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

would help," suggested Radulfus mildly, "if Brother Herward gives you some description of the three. Though I do not know if he is well acquainted with the girl, or the nun, her tutor ..."
    "They came several times to visit the boy," said Herward. "I can picture them all three. Your officers should inquire after these - Yves Hugonin, thirteen years old, heir to a considerable portion of his father, is not over-tall for his age, but sturdy and well set-up, with a round, rosy face, and both hair and eyes dark brown. I saw him the morning this coil began, in bright blue cotte, cloak and capuchon, and grey hose. For the women - Sister Hilaria will be known best by her habit, but I should tell you that she is young, not above five and twenty, and well-favoured, a slender woman and graceful. And the girl Ermina ..." Brother Herward hesitated, gazing beyond the sheriff's shoulder, as if to recall more perfectly someone but seldom seen, yet vividly impressed on his vision.
    "She will be eighteen very shortly, I do not know the precise day. Darker than her brother, almost black of hair and eye, tall, vigourous ... They report her quick of mind and wit, and of strong will."
    It was hardly a detailed description of her physical person, yet it established her with surprising clarity. All the more when Brother Herward ended almost absently, as if to himself: "She would be reckoned very beautiful."
    Brother Cadfael heard about it from Hugh Beringar, after the couriers had ridden out to the castles and manors, and carried the word to the towns, to be cried publicly. What Prestcote had promised, that he performed to the letter before he took himself off to the peace of his own manor to keep Christmas with his family. The very announcement of the sheriff's interest in the missing siblings should cast a protecting shadow over them if anyone in this shire did encounter them. Herward had set off back to Worcester with a guarded party by then, his errand only partially successful.
    "Very beautiful!" repeated Hugh, and smiled. But it was a concerned and rueful smile. Such a creature, wilful, handsome, daring, let loose in a countryside waiting for winter and menaced by discord, might all too easily come to grief.
    "Even sub-priors," said Cadfael mildly, stirring the bubbling cough linctus he was simmering over his brazier in the workshop, "have eyes. But with her youth, she would be vulnerable even if she were ugly. Well, for all we know they may be snug and safe in shelter this moment. A great pity this uncle of theirs is of the other persuasion, and cannot get countenance to do his own hunting."
    "And newly back from Jerusalem," mused Hugh, "no way to blame for what his faction did to Worcester. He'll be too recent in the service to be known to you, I suppose?"
    "Another generation, lad. It's twenty-six years since I left the Holy Land." Cadfael lifted his pot from the brazier, and stood it aside on the earth floor to cool gradually overnight. He straightened his back carefully. He was not so far from sixty, even it he did not look it by a dozen years. "Everything will be changed there now, I doubt. The lustre soon tarnished. From which port did they say he sailed?"
    "Tripoli, according to Herward. In your unregenerate youth I suppose you must have known that city well? It seems to me there's not much of that coast you haven't covered in your time."
    "It was St Symeon I favoured myself. There were good craftsmen in the shipyards there, a fine harbour, and Antioch only a few miles upriver."
    He had good cause to remember Antioch, for it was there he had begun and ended his long career as a crusader, and his love affair with Palestine, that lovely, inhospitable, cruel land of gold and sand and drought. From this quiet, busy harbour in which he had chosen at last to drop anchor, he had had little time to hark back to those remembered haunts of his youth. The town came back to him now vividly, the lush green of the river valley, the narrow, grateful shade of the streets, the babel of the market. And Mariam, selling her fruits and vegetables in the Street of the Sailmakers, her young, fine-boned face honed into gold and silver by the fierce sunlight, her black, oiled hair gleaming beneath her veil. She had graced his arrival in the east, a mere boy of eighteen, and his departure, a seasoned soldier and seafarer of thirty-three. A widow, young, passionate and lonely, a woman of the people, not to everyone's taste, too spare, too strong, too