Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

but he went about it eagerly, peeled loose the arms, and shoved the belt towards the stranger, who was waiting for it with commending and commendable placidity and patience, and had it drawn tightly round the guard's upper arms, hobbling them behind his back, before he turned to look closely at his helper. He was smiling. The light here was only from a haze of stars, but very pure and clear, and the smile was unmistakable.
    He reached a hand into the ample breast of the brown homespun cotte he wore, hauled out a long white roll of linen, and held it out to Yves.
    "Wipe your face," said a calm, low voice, in which both smile and praise were implicit, "before I use it to make this loud mouth mute."
    Chapter Twelve
    Yves scrubbed the slime from his cheek and brow in awed and fascinated silence, round eyes fixed all the while upon the face that fronted him across the sprawled body of his tormentor. The faint starlight caught the gleam of white teeth, and bright eyes that shone like amber. The capuchon had fallen back from ruffled black hair that did not curl, but curved and clasped in a thick cap about a shapely, vigourous head. Every line and every movement cried out his youth and audacity. Yves gazed and lost his heart. He had had heroes before, his own father among them, but this one was new and young, and above all, present.
    "Give!" said his ally briefly, and snapped demanding fingers for the length of linen, which Yves hastily surrendered. An end of the cloth was shoved briskly into the guard's open mouth, the length of it whipped about his head to make him blind as well as dumb, and secured round his shoulders to the belt with which his arms were already pinioned. For want of a cord to bind the prisoner's legs, the lacings of his leather jerkin were stripped out in a moment, made fast around his ankles, and doubled back to tie his feet to his wrists in the small of his back. He lay like a package made compact and neat to be slung one side of a pony for carriage. Yves watched, great-eyed, marvelling at the economy of the movements involved in the process.
    They eyed each other, in the breathing space that followed, with mutual content. Yves opened his mouth to speak, and was hushed by a forbidding finger on lips still reassuringly smiling.
    "Wait!" said the deep, serene voice, just above a whisper. Whispers have no identity, but carry alarmingly. This muted murmur reached no ears but the boy's. "Let's see if we may leave the way I came."
    Yves crouched, charmed into stillness, ears pricked, listening and quivering. His companion lay flat over the trap, an ear to the wood, and after a few moments cautiously hoisted one edge to peer down into the timber-scented darkness of the tower below. From outside, about the bailey and the guard-walk along the stockade, came the sounds of movements and voices, from a garrison on the alert, but below among the shadowy beams there was silence and stillness.
    "We may essay. Follow close and do as I do."
    He lifted the trap and swung himself down the ladder by his hands, agile as a cat, and Yves scurried after him. In the dimness of the floor below they froze again, backs to the darkest wall, but nothing moved to threaten them. There were fixed stairs, rough but solid, from the corner of this level. They had reached the middle of the flight and could hear the hum and bustle of activity in the hall, and see the flickering of torches and firelight round the rim of a great door below. One more flight, and they would be in the base of the tower, and level with the hall, only that door between them and Alain le Gaucher and his outlaws. A long arm drew Yves close, and again held him still to listen and watch.
    The base of the tower was half of rock and half of beaten earth, and the air that came up to them was colder here than between the massive timbers above. Peering down fearfully, Yves could see in a far corner the foot of a deep embrasure, and felt the strong draught that blew from it. There was a narrow outer door upon the night, surely the door by which his rescuer had entered, and if they could but reach it unobserved they might yet make their way back by the same route, out of this enemy stronghold. He would not be afraid, with this superb being as a guide, even to venture the traverse of the rocks in the dark. What one had done alone, surely two could do together.
    It was the first tread of that final staircase that undid them. Until then all had been solid and silent, but as