Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

glittering whiteness.
    The porter had come out to greet her and ask her business, but she had observed Prior Robert emerging from the cloisters, and made for him like a homing bird, making him so low and unwary a reverence that she almost fell on her knees.
    "Father Prior, my master - Father Ailnoth - has he been all night in the church with you?"
    "I have not seen him," said Robert, startled, and put out a hand in haste to help her keep her feet, for the rounded stones were wickedly treacherous. He held on to the arm he had grasped, and peered concernedly into her face. "What is amiss? Surely he has his own Mass to take care of soon. By this time he should be robing. I should not interrupt him now, unless for some very grave reason. What is your need?"
    "He is not there," she said abruptly. "I have been up to see. Cynric is there waiting, ready, but my master has not come."
    Prior Robert had begun to frown, certain that this silly woman was troubling him for no good reason, and yet made uneasy by her agitation. "When did you see him last? You must know when he left his house."
    "Last evening, before Compline," she said bleakly.
    "What? And has not been back since then?"
    "No, Father. He never came home all night. I thought he might have come to take part in your night offices, but no one has seen him even here. And as you say, by now he should be robing for his own Mass. But he is not there!"
    Halted at the foot of the day stairs, Cadfael could not choose but overhear, and having overheard, inevitably recalled the ominous black-winged bird swooping along the Foregate towards the bridge at very much the same hour, according to Diota, when Ailnoth had left his own house. On what punitive errand, Cadfael wondered? And where could those raven wings have carried him, to cause him to fail of his duty on such a festal day?
    "Father," he said, coming forward with unwary haste, slithering on the frosty cobbles, "I met the priest last night as I was coming back from the town to be in time for Compline. Not fifty paces from the gatehouse here, going towards the bridge, and in a hurry."
    Prior Robert looked round, frowning, at this unsolicited witness, and gnawed a lip in doubt how to proceed. "He did not speak to you? You don't know where he was bound in such haste?"
    "No. I spoke to him," said Cadfael dryly, "but he was too intent to mark me. No, I have no notion where he was bound. But it was he. I saw him pass the light of the torches under the gate. No mistaking him."
    The woman was staring at him now with bruised, hollow eyes and still face, and the hood had slipped back from her forehead unnoticed, and showed a great leaden bruise on her left temple, broken at the centre by a wavering line of dried blood.
    "You're hurt!" said Cadfael, asking no leave, and put back the folds of cloth from her head and turned her face to the dawning light. "This is a bad blow you've suffered, it needs tending. How did you come by it?"
    She shrank a little from his touch, and then submitted with a resigned sigh. "I came out in the night, anxious about him, to see if there was anyone stirring, or any sign of him. The doorstone was frozen, I fell and struck my head. I've washed it well, it's nothing."
    Cadfael took her hand and turned up to view a palm rasped raw in three or four grazes, took up its fellow and found it marked almost as brutally. "Well, perhaps you saved yourself worse by putting out these hands. But you must let me dress them for you, and your brow, too."
    Prior Robert stood gazing beyond them, pondering what it was best to do. "Truly I wonder ... If Father Ailnoth went out at that hour, and in such haste, may not he also have fallen, somewhere, and so injured himself that he's lying helpless? The frost was already setting in ..."
    "It was," said Cadfael, remembering the glassy sheen on the steep slope of the Wyle, and the icy ring of his own steps on the bridge. "And sharply! And I would not say he was minding his steps when I saw him."
    "Some charitable errand ..." murmured Robert anxiously. "He would not spare himself ..."
    No, neither himself nor any other soul! But true enough, those hasty steps might well have lunged into slippery places.
    "If he has lain all night helpless in the cold," said Robert, "he may have caught his death. Brother Cadfael, do you tend to this lady, do whatever is needful, and I will go and speak to Father Abbot. For I think we had best call all the brothers and lay brothers together, and set in