Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

What can this mean? If you live, why have you not sent me word? What is this you are trying to do to me? Have I deserved it? Surely you know I have been wearing out myself and all my household, searching for you?"
    "I know it," she said, in a voice small and hard, cold as the ice that had prisoned and preserved Sister Hilaria. "And if you had found me, and no other by, I should have gone the same way my dearest friend went, since you knew by then you would never get me to wed you. Married or buried, there was no third way for me, else I could tell all too much for your comfort and honour. And I have never said one word here to bring you to account, never a word for myself, since I brought it on myself, and was as much to blame as you. But knowing what I know now, and for her - Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times, I accuse you, murderer, ravisher, I name you, Evrard Boterei, as the killer of my sweet Hilaria ..."
    "You are out of your wits!" he cried, riding indignantly over her accusation. "Who is this woman you speak of? What do I know of any such person? Since the day you left me I've lain in fever and sickness. All my household will say so ..."
    "Oh, no! On, no! Not that night! You rode out after me, to recover me for your honour's sake, to silence me, either by marriage or murder. Never deny it! I saw you ride! You think I was fool enough to believe I could outrun you on foot? Or terrified enough to lose my wits and run like a fool hare, zigzag, leaving tracks plain for you? I laid my traces no further than the trees, towards the Ludlow road where you would expect me to run, and made my way back roundabout to hide half the night among the timber you had stacked for your coward defences. I saw you go, Evrard, and I saw you return, with your wound fresh-broken and bloodied on you. I did not run until you were helped within to your bed and the worst of the blizzard over, and I knew I could run at my own pace, with the dawn barely an hour away. And while I was hiding from you, you killed her!" she wrung out, burning up like a bitter fire of thorns. "On your way back from a fruitless hunt, you found a lone woman, and took your revenge for what I did to you, and all that you could not do to me. We killed her!" cried Ermina. "You and I between us! I am as guilty as you!"
    "What are you saying?" He had called up a little courage, a little confidence. If she raved, he would have become soothing, solicitous, sure of himself, and even in her cold assurance he could find a foothold for his own. "Certainly I rode out to look for you, how could I leave you to die in the frost? I had a fall, weak from my wound as I was, and broke it open again and bled - yes, that is truth. But the rest? I hunted you all that night, as long as I could endure, and never did I halt in my search for you. If I came back empty-handed and bleeding, do you accuse me of that? I know nothing of this woman you speak of ..."
    "Nothing?" said Cadfael at his shoulder. "Nothing of a shepherd's hut close to the track you would be riding, back from the Ludlow road towards Ledwyche? I know, for I've ridden in the opposite way. Nothing of a young nun asleep in the hay there, wrapped in a good man's cloak? Nothing of a freezing brook handy on your way home, afterwards? It was not a fall that ripped your wound open again, it was the doughty fight she made for her honour in the cold night, where you had out your fury and lust upon her for want of another prey, more profitable to your ambitions. Nothing of the cloaks and habit hidden under the straw, to cast the crime on those guilty of everything else that cried to heaven here? Everything but this!"
    The cold, pale light cast all shapes into marble, the shadows withdrew and left them stark. It was not long past noon of a sunlit day without. It was moon-chill and white here within. Ermina stood like a carving in stone, staring now in silence upon the three men before her. She had done what she had to do.
    "This is folly," said Evrard Boterei arduously, as against great odds. "I rode out swathed, after the wounds I got in the storming of Callowleas, I rode back home bleeding through my bindings, what of that? A freezing night of blizzard and snow, and I had taken a fall. But this woman, this nun - the shepherd's hut - these mean nothing to me, I never was there, I do not even know where it is ..."
    "I have been there," said Brother Cadfael, "and found in the snow the droppings of a horse. A tall horse, that left a