It was early in November of 1139 that the tide of civil war, lately so sluggish and inactive, rose suddenly to sweep over the city of Worcester, wash away half its livestock, property and women, and send all those of its inhabitants who could get away in time scurrying for their lives northwards away from the marauders, to burrow into hiding wherever there was manor or priory, walled town or castle strong enough to afford them shelter. By the middle of the month a straggle of them had reached Shrewsbury, and subsided thankfully into the hospitable embrace of monastery or town, to lick their wounds and pour out their grievances.
They were not in too bad case, apart from the old or sick, for the winter had not yet begun to bite hard. The weather-wise foretold that there was bitter cold in store, heavy snows and hard and prolonged frosts, but as yet the land lay dour, cloudy and mild, with capricious winds, but clear of frost or snow.
“Thanks be to God!” said Brother Edmund, the infirmarer, devoutly. “Or we should have had more burials on our hands than three, and they all past their three score and ten.”
Even so, he was hard put to it to find beds in his hospice for all those who needed them, and there was thick straw laid down in the stone hall for the overflow. They would live to return to their spoiled city before the Christmas feast, but now, exhausted and apathetic with shock, they needed all his care, and the abbey’s resources were stretched to their limits. A few fugitives with distant relatives in the town had been taken into the houses of their kin, and were warmly provided. A pregnant woman near her time had been taken, husband and all, into the town house of Hugh Beringar, the deputy sheriff of the shire, at the insistence of his wife, whom he had brought here to the security of the town, complete with her women, midwife, physician and all, because she, too, looked forward to giving birth before the Nativity, and had a welcome for any who came in the same expectation, and in any kind of need.
“Our Lady,” remarked Brother Cadfael ruefully to his good friend Hugh, “had no such reception.”
“Ah, there is but one of my lady! Aline would take in every homeless dog she saw in the streets, if she could. This poor girl from Worcester will do well enough now, there’s nothing amiss with her that rest won’t mend. We may yet have two births here for this Christmas, for she can’t well be moved until she’s safely over her lying-in. But I daresay most of your guests will soon be shrugging off their fears and heading for home.”
“A few have left already,” said Cadfael, “and more of the hale ones will be off within days. It’s natural they should want to get home and repair what they can. They say the king is on his way to Worcester with a strong force. If he leaves the garrison better found, they should be safe over the winter. Though they’ll need to draw stores from eastwards, for their own reserves will all have been carried off.”
Cadfael knew from old experience the look, the stench, the desolation of a gutted town, having been both soldier and sailor in his young days, and seen service far afield. “And besides wanting to reclaim what’s left of their store before Christmas,” he said, “there’s the spur of the winter coming. If the roads are cleared of bad customs now, at least they can travel dry-shod and warm enough, but another month, another week it may be, and who knows how deep the snow will be?”
“Whether the roads are cleared of bad customs,” said Beringar in wary reflection, “is more than I should care to say. We have a pretty firm hold here in Shropshire —thus far! But there’s ominous word from east and north, besides this uneasiness along the border. When the king is all too busy in the south, and his mind on where his Flemings’ next pay is to come from, and his energy mostly wasted in wavering from one target to another, ambitious men in remoter parts are liable to begin to spread their honors into palatines, and set up kingdoms of their own. And given the example, the lesser fry will follow it.”
“In a land at war with itself,” agreed Cadfael sombrely, “you may take it as certain that order breaks down, and savagery breaks out.”
“Not here, it shall not,” said Hugh grimly. “Prestcote has kept a close rein, and in so far as it falls to me as his man, so will I.” For Gilbert Prestcote, King Stephen’s sheriff of Shropshire, was planning to keep Christmas in the chief manor of his own honor, in the north of the county, and the castle garrison and the rule of law throughout the southern half of the shire would be left in Beringar’s hands. This attack on Worcester might be only a foretaste of further such raids. All the border towns were at risk, as well from the precarious loyalties of constables and garrisons as from the enterprise of the enemy. More than one lord in this troubled land had already changed his allegiance, more than one would do so in the future, some, perhaps, for the second or third time. Churchmen, barons and all, they were beginning to look first to their own interests, and place their loyalty where it seemed likely to bring them the greater profit. And it would not be long before some of them came to the conclusion that their interests could be served just as well by flouting both contendants for the crown, and setting up on their own account.
“There was some talk of your castellan in Ludlow being none too reliable,” observed Cadfael. “For all King Stephen set him up in the honor of Lacy, and trusted Ludlow castle to him, there have been rumors he was casting his eyes toward the empress. Touch and go with him, as I heard it, if the king had not been close and with a sharp eye on him.”
Anything Cadfael had heard, Hugh had certainly heard. There was not a sheriff in the land who had not all his intelligencers alerted, these days, and his own ear to the ground. If Josce de Dinan, in Ludlow, had indeed been contemplating defection, and thought better of it, Hugh was content to accept his present steadfastness, but with reservations, and was watching him still. Distrust was only one of the lesser horrors of civil war, but saddening enough. It was well that there could still be absolute trust between tried friends. In these days there was no man living who might not suddenly have acute need of a steady and stout back braced against his own.
“Ah, well, with King Stephen on his way to Worcester with an army, no one is going to lift finger or show face until he draws off again. But for all that, I never stop listening and watching.” Hugh rose from the bench against the wall of Cadfael’s workshop, brief refuge from the world. “Now I am going home to my own bed, for once—even if I am banished from my wife’s by my own arrogant brat. But what would a devout religious like you know about a father’s tribulations!”
What, indeed? “You must all come to it,” said Brother Cadfael complacently, “you married men. Third and unwanted where two are lost in admiring each other. I shall go to Compline and say a prayer for you.”
He went first, however, to the infirmary, to check with Brother Edmund on one or two patients who were slow in their recovery from their wanderings, being feeble from age or poverty and hunger, and renew the dressing on a knife-wound which was ill to heal, and only then went to Compline, there to pray for many more, besides his friend, his friend’s wife, and his friend’s child to come, this winter child.
England was already frozen into a winter years long, and he knew it. King Stephen was crowned, and held, however slackly, most of England. The Empress Maud, his rival for the throne, held the west, and came with a claim the equal of Stephen’s. Cousins, most uncousinly, they tore each other and tore England between them, and yet life must go on, faith must go on, the stubborn defiance of fortune must go on in the husbandry of the year, season after season, plough and harrow and seed, tillage and harvest. And here in the cloister and the church, the sowing and tillage and harvest of souls. Brother Cadfael had no fear for mankind, whatever became of mere men. Hugh’s child would be a new generation, a new beginning, a new affirmation, spring in midwinter.
*
It was on the last day of November that Brother Herward, sub-prior of the Benedictine monastery of Worcester, appeared at chapter in the fraternal house of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Shrewsbury, where he had arrived the previous night, and been entertained in Abbot Radulfus’ own lodging as a cherished guest. Most of the brothers had no knowledge of his coming, and wondered who this could be, brought in courteously by their own abbot, and seated at his right hand. For once Brother Cadfael knew no more than his fellows.
The abbot and his guest made a sharp contrast. Radulfus was tall, erect, vigorous, with strong, austere features, magisterially calm. When needed, he could blaze, and those scorched drew back advisedly, but his fire was always in control. The man who entered beside him was meager, small and slight of body, grey of tonsure, still tired after his journey, but his ageing eyes were direct of gaze, and his mouth set into lines of patience and endurance.
“Our brother, Sub-Prior Herward of Worcester,” said the abbot, “has come to us with an errand in which I have been unable to help him. Since many of you here have been active in serving those unfortunates who came to us from that city, it is possible that you may have heard from them something which may be to the purpose. I have therefore asked him to repeat his request here to all.”
The visitor rose, to be better seen and heard by all present. “I am sent to make enquiry after two noble children who were in Benedictine care in our town, and fled from it when the attack fell upon us. They have not returned, and we have traced their steps as far as the borders of this county and there lost them. It was their intention to make for Shrewsbury, and therefore, since our order is responsible for them, I came to find out whether they ever reached here. Father Abbot tells me that to his knowledge they never did, but it may be that some others among the fugitives may have seen them or got word of them in their travels, and spoken of them here among you. I should be grateful for any news that might lead to their safe recovery. And these are their names: the girl Ermina Hugonin, almost eighteen years of age, who was in the care of our sister convent in Worcester, and her brother Yves Hugonin, who was in our charge, and is only thirteen. They are orphaned of both parents, and their uncle and natural guardian has long been overseas in the Holy Land, and is only now returned, to be met by the news of their loss. It will be understood here,” said Brother Herward wryly, “that we feel ourselves greatly to blame for having failed in our charge, though to say truth, we are not wholly at fault. As this thing befell, it was taken out of our hands.”
“In such confusion and peril,” agreed Radulfus ruefully, “it would be much to ask of any man that he should order all successfully. But children of such tender age...”
Brother Edmund asked hesitantly: “Are we to understand that they left Worcester alone?” He had not meant to sound either incredulous or censorious, but Brother Herward bowed his head meekly to the implied reproach.
“I would not wish to excuse myself or any of my house. Yet it fell out, perhaps, not quite as you suppose. That attack came in the early morning, but on the south side it was held, and we did not hear how grave it showed, or how great the force coming against us, until later, when they came about, and broke in by the north. It so happened that the boy Yves was visiting his sister, and they were quite cut off from us. The Lady Ermina is, dare I say, a headstrong young woman. In such a case, though the sisters thought best to gather in their church and abide the issue there, trusting that even these marauders—for I must tell you many were already drunk and wild—would respect their cloth, and do them no more harm than to steal, perhaps, their more valuable furnishings—the sisters, I say, held that faith required them to remain, but the Lady Ermina thought otherwise, and would slip away out of the town, as so many did, and make away into some safe and distant refuge. And since she would not be dissuaded, and her brother held with her, the young nun who was her tutor there offered that she would go with them, to see them safe into shelter. When all the raiders were gone, and we had put out the fires, and seen to the dead and wounded, only then did we get word that they had escaped out of the city and intended to reach Shrewsbury. They were well provided, though without horses, since all were seized at sight. The girl had her jewels, and store of money, and wit enough not to let them be seen on the way. And sorry I am to say it, it was well that she would go, for these men of Gloucester did not respect the sisters as they had hoped and trusted, but ravaged and burned, stole away some, the youngest and best-favored among the novices, and bitterly misused the prioress who tried to prevent. The girl did well to venture, and I pray she and her brother, and Sister Hilaria with them, are safe in shelter somewhere this moment. But alas, I do not know.”
Brother Denis the hospitaller, who knew every soul who came within the gates, said regretfully: “I grieve to have to tell you, but quite surely they never arrived here. We have had no such party. But come with me and speak with every fugitive we are still sheltering here in the guest-hall, and the few in the infirmary, in case they can tell you anything of use. For of course we knew nothing of these young people until now, and therefore have not asked about them.”
“Or again it may be,” suggested Brother Matthew the cellarer, “that they knew of some kinsman or tenant or old servant here in the town, and therefore have passed us by, and are now within the walls.”
“It is possible,” agreed Herward, brightening a little. “But I think Sister Hilaria would prefer to bring them here, to our own order for protection.”
“If there are none here who can help,” said the abbot briskly, “the next move is certainly to consult the sheriff. He will know who has been received within the town. You did mention, brother, that the uncle of this young pair is newly come home from Palestine. There are channels he may use to approach the authorities here. How is it that he is not pursuing this enquiry in person? For surely he cannot cast the blame all on you.”
Brother Herward heaved a great sigh that first stiffened his little frame, and then let it collapse dispiritedly into limpness. “The uncle is a knight of Angevin blood—they are his sister’s children—by name Laurence d’Angers. Newly home from the Crusade he is, but to Gloucester, to join the forces of the empress. It is also true that he did not arrive there until after this onslaught, and bears no blame for it, as he took no part in it. But no man from Gloucester dare show his face now in our city. The king is there with a great force, and an angry man, like every ruined burgess of the town. The search for these children is deputed to our house, perforce. Nevertheless, this is a quest for creatures absolutely innocent, and I shall so present it to the sheriff.”
“And you shall have my voice,” Radulfus assured him. “But first, since none here can provide us news...?” He looked inquiringly round the chapterhouse, and found only shaken heads. “Very well, we must inquire among our guests. The names, the youth of the parties, the presence of the nun, may yield us some useful word.”
Nevertheless, Cadfael, filing out from chapter among the rest, could not believe that anything would come of such inquiry. He had spent much of his time, in recent days, helping Brother Edmund house and doctor the exhausted travellers, and never a word had been said of any such trio encountered on the way. Travellers’ tales enough there had been, freely spilled for the listening, but none of a Benedictine sister and two noble children loose on the roads with never a man to guard them.
And the uncle, it seemed, was the empress’s man, as Gilbert Prestcote was the king’s man, to the hilt and bitterness between the factions was flaring up like a torch in tinder over the sack of Worcester. The omens were not good. Abbot Radulfus would lend his own persuasions to the envoy’s, and this very day, too, but what countenance the two of them would get for Laurence d’Angers was a dubious speculation.
*
The sheriff received his petitioners courteously and gravely in his own apartment in the castle, and listened with an impassive face to the story Herward had to tell. A sombre man, black-browed and black-bearded, and his natural cast of countenance rather forbidding than reassuring, but for all that a fair-minded man in his stern fashion, and one who stood by his word and his men, provided they kept the standards he demanded of them. “I am sorry,” he said when Herward had done, “to hear of this loss, and sorrier still that I must tell you at once you will be seeking your party in vain here in Shrewsbury. Since this attack took place I have had word brought to me of every soul from Worcester who has entered the town, and these three are not among them. Many have already left again for home, now that his Grace has reinforced the garrison in Worcester. If, as you say, the uncle of these children has now returned to England, and is a man of substance, can he not undertake the search in person?”
It was Herward’s weakness that he had withheld, up to that point, all but the name of that nobleman, putting off the evil moment. And as yet the name meant nothing, beyond a knight with the credit or the Crusade shedding lustre upon him, newly arrived from the Holy Land, where a relatively secure peace held at this time. But no help for it, the truth would out.
“My lord,” owned Herward, sighing, “Laurence d’Angers is willing and anxious to make search for his nephew and niece, but for that he requires your countenance, or the special dispensation of his Grace the king. For he returned home as an Angevin owing allegiance to the Empress Maud, and had attached himself and his men to her forces at Gloucester.” He hurried on, to have all said while speech was allowed him, for the sheriff’s level brows had drawn together into a steely bar above eyes now narrowed and bright in understanding. “He had not arrived in Gloucester until a week after the attack, he took no part in it, knew nothing of it, cannot be held responsible for it. He came only to discover that his kin were lost, and all his desire is to find them and see them into safety. But it is impossible for a man of Gloucester to come near Worcester now, or to enter the king’s lands except by special safe-conduct.”
“So you,” said Prestcote after a daunting pause, “are acting on his behalf—the king’s enemy.”
“With respect, my lord,” said Herward with spirit, “I am acting on behalf of a young girl and a boy of tender years, who have done nothing to make them enemies to king or empress. I am not concerned with faction, only with the fate of two children who were in the charge of our order until this evil befell. Is it not natural that we should feel responsible for them, and do all we can in conscience to find them?”
“Natural enough,” allowed the sheriff dryly, “and moreover, as a man of Worcester yourself you’re hardly likely to feel any great warmth towards the king’s enemies, or want to give them aid or comfort.”
“We suffered from them, like the rest of Worcester, my lord. King Stephen is our sovereign, and as such we acknowledge him. The only duty I feel here is to the children. Consider what must be the dismay, the anxiety, of their natural guardian! All he asks—all we ask for him—is leave to enter the king’s lands, not in arms, and search for his niece and nephew without hindrance. I do not say such a man, however innocent of this murderous raid, and even with his Grace’s safe-conduct and countenance, would be utterly safe among the men of our shire or yours, but that risk he is willing to take. If you will give him safe-conduct, he pledges himself to pursue this quest, and no other end. He will go unarmed, and with only one or two attendants to help him. He will take no action but to find his wards. My lord, I entreat it of you, for their sake.”
Abbot Radulfus added his own plea, very restrainedly. “From a Crusader of unblemished repute, I believe such a pledge may be accepted without question.”
The sheriff considered, darkly and in frowning silence, for some minutes, and then said with chill deliberation: “No. I will issue no safe-conduct, and if the king himself were here and minded to grant it, I would urge him to the contrary. After what has happened, any man of that faction found in any part of my territory will be treated as a prisoner of war, if not as a spy. If he be taken in any ill circumstances, his life may be forfeit, and even if on no wrong errand, his liberty. It is not a matter of his intent alone. Even a man so pledged, and true enough to his pledge, might take back with him knowledge of castles and garrisons that would stand the enemy in good stead later. Also, and above all, it is my duty to combat the king’s enemies and reduce their forces wherever chance offers, and if I can pluck away a good knight from them I will do it. No affront to Sir Laurence d’Angers, whose reputation, as far as I know it, is honorable enough, but he shall not have his safe-conduct, and if he ventures without it, let him look to his head. No doubt he did not come home from Palestine to rot in a prison. If he risks it, it is his own choice.”
“But the girl Ermina,” began Herward in dismayed appeal, “and her brother, a mere child—are they to be left unsought?”
“Have I said so? Sought they shall be, to the best I can provide, but by my own men. And if found, they shall be delivered safely to their uncle’s care. I will send out orders to all my castellans and officers, to look out for such a company of three, and make due inquiries after them. But I will not admit the empress’s knight to the lands I administer for the king.”
It was all they would get from him, and they knew it by voice and face, and made the best of it.
“It 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-favored, 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, vigorous... 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 Prescote 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 favored myself. There were good craftsmen in the shipyards there, a fine harbor, 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 harbor 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 scornful. The void left by her dead man had ached unbearably, and drawn in the young stranger heart and soul into her life, to fill the gap. For a whole year he had known her, before the forces of the Cross had moved on to invest Jerusalem.
There had been other women, before her and after. He remembered them with gratitude, and with no guilt at all. He had given and received pleasure and kindness. None had ever complained of him. If that was a poor defense from the formal viewpoint, nevertheless he felt secure behind it. It would have been an insult to repent of having loved a woman like Mariam.
“They have alliances there that ensure peace now, if only for a time,” he said reflectively, “I suppose an Angevin lord might well feel he’s more needed here than there, now it’s his own liege lady in the lists. And the man bears a good name, from all I hear. A pity he comes when hate’s at its height.”
“A pity there should be cause for hate between decent men,” agreed Hugh wryly. “I am the king’s man, I chose him with my eyes open. I like Stephen, and am not likely to leave him for any lure. But I can see just as plainly why a baron of Anjou should rush home to serve his lady every whit as loyally as I serve Stephen. What a bedevilment of all our values, Cadfael, is this civil war!”
“Not all,” said Cadfael sturdily. “There never was, for all I could ever learn, a time when living was easy and peaceful. Your boy will grow up into a better ordered world. There, I’ve finished here for tonight, and it must be nearly time for the bell.”
They went out together into the cold and dark of the garden, and felt on their faces the first flakes of the first snow of the winter. The air was full of a drifting unease, but the fall was light and fitful here. Further south it set in heavily, borne on a north-westerly wind, dry, fine snow that turned the night into a white, whirling mist, shrouding outlines, burying paths, blown into smooth, breaking waves only to be lifted and hurled again into new shapes. Valleys filled to a treacherous level, hillsides were scoured clean. Wise men stayed within their houses, clapped to shutter and door, and stopped the chinks between the boards, where thin white fingers reached through. The first snow, and the first hard frost. Thank God, thought Cadfael, hastening his steps as he heard the Compline bell begin to sound, Herward and his company will be far on their way home now, they’ll weather this well enough.
But what of Ermina and Yves Hugonin, astray somewhere between here and Worcester, and what of the young Benedictine sister who had offered, in her gallant innocence, to go with them and see them safe into sanctuary?