Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice

peoples, a mongrel afterthought before they parted. But for all that, she was beautiful and loving, and he was brave and kind, and I think myself well mothered and fathered, and the equal of any man living. And I shall make that good before Ermina's kin, and they will acknowledge it and give her to me!" His deep, soft voice had grown urgent, and his hawk-face passionately earnest, and at the end of it he drew breath deep, and smiled. "I do not know why I tell you all this, except that I have seen you care for her, and wish her the future she deserves. I should like you to think well of me."
    "I am a common man myself," said Cadfael comfortably, "and have found as good in the kennel as in the court. She is dead, your mother?"
    "Else I would not have left her. I was fourteen years old when she died."
    "And your father?"
    "I never knew him, nor he me. He sailed for England from St Symeon after their last meeting, and never knew he had left her a son. They had been lovers long before, when he came fresh to Syria. She never would tell me his name, though often she praised him. There cannot be much amiss," said Olivier thoughtfully, "with a mating that left her such fondness and pride."
    "Half mankind matches without ritual blessing," said Cadfael, surprised at the stirring of his own thoughts. "Not necessarily the worse half. At least no money passes then, and no lands are prized before the woman."
    Olivier looked up, suddenly aware of the oddity of these exchanges, and laughed, but softly, not to disturb the sleeper next door. "Brother, these walls are hearing curious confidences, and I am learning how wide is the Benedictine scope. I might well imagine you speak of your own knowledge."
    "I was in the world forty years," said Cadfael simply, "before I chose this discipline for my cure. I have been soldier, sailor and sinner. Even crusader! At least that was pure, however the cause fell short of my hopes. I was very young then. I knew both Tripoli and Antioch, once. I knew Jerusalem. They will all have changed now, that was long ago."
    Long ago, yes - twenty-seven years since he had left those shores!
    The young man grew talkative at finding so knowledgeable a companion. For all his knightly ambitions and his dedication to a new faith, a part of him leaned back with longing to his native land. He began to talk of the royal city, and of old campaigns, to question eagerly of events before ever he was born, and to extol the charm of remembered places.
    "I wonder, though," admitted Cadfael wryly, recalling how far his own cause had often fallen short, and how often the paynim against whom he had fought had seemed to him the nobler and the braver, "I wonder, born into such a faith, that you should find it easy to leave it, even for a father." He rose as he spoke, recollecting how time must be passing. "I should be waking them. It cannot be long to the Matins bell."
    "It was not easy at all," said Olivier, pondering in some surprise that the same doubt had so seldom troubled him. "I was torn, a long time. It was from my mother I had, as it were, the sign that turned the scale. Given the difference in our tongues, my mother bore the same name as your Lady Mary ..."
    Behind Cadfael's back the door of the little room had opened very softly. He turned his head to see Ermina, flushed and young from sleep, standing in the doorway.
    "... she was called Mariam," said Olivier.
    "I have roused Yves," said Ermina, just above a whisper. "I am ready."
    Her eyes, huge and clear, all the agonizing of the day washed away by sleep, clung to Olivier's face, and at the sound of her voice he flung up his head and answered the look as nakedly as if they had embraced heart to heart. Brother Cadfael stood amazed and enlightened. It was not the name the boy had spoken, it was the wild rise of his head, the softened light over his cheek and brow, the unveiled, unguarded blaze of love, turning the proud male face momentarily into a woman's face, one known and remembered through twenty-seven years of absence.
    Cadfael turned like a man in a dream, and left them together, and went to help a sleepy Yves to dress and make ready for his journey.
    He let them out by the wicket door while the brothers were at Matins. The girl took a grave and dignified leave, and asked his prayers. The boy, still half asleep, lifted his face for the kiss proper between respected elder and departing child, and the young man, in generous innocence and in acknowledgement of a