Brother Cadfael came back from Compline to see Elyas settled for the night, and brought a young brother with him to relieve Yves of his watch. They found the door standing open, the bed wildly disturbed, and the room empty.
There might, of course, have been explanations less dire than the obvious one, but Cadfael made straight for the outer door again at a purposeful run, and looked for the signs he had not looked for when entering. The court had been crisscrossed with new tracks at the end of Compline, and even these the continuing snow was rapidly obliterating, but there were still traces of someone who had set a straight course for the gatehouse. Mere dimples in the whiteness, but discernible. And the boy gone, too! What could have erupted there in the sickroom to spur Elyas into such unreasonable and perilous action, after his long apathy and submission? Certainly if he had taken it into his disordered head to do something drastic a half-grown lad would not have been able to stop him, and more than likely pride would not let Yves abandon a creature for whom he had assumed, however briefly, the responsibility. He was getting to know Yves fairly well by now.
“You run to the guest-hall,” he ordered the young brother briskly, “tell Hugh Beringar what’s amiss, and make sure they are not within there. I’ll go to Prior Leonard, and we’ll have the whole household searched.”
Leonard took the news with concern and distress, and had every brother scouring the enclave at once, even to the grange court and the barns. Hugh Beringar came forth booted and cloaked, in resigned expectation of the worst, and was short with any who got in his way. With both the secular and the cloistral law directing, the search did not take long, and was fruitless.
“My fault entirely,” Cadfael owned bitterly. “I entrusted the poor wretch to a boy hardly less wretched. I should have had more sense. Though how or why this can have arisen between them is more than I can see. But I should not have taken the least risk with either of them. And now my foolishness has lost them both, the most forlorn pair this house held, who should have been guarded at every step.”
Hugh was already busy disposing the men he had here at hand. “One to Ludlow, as far as the gate, where either they’ll have passed, or you may have them kept safely if they arrive hereafter. And you go with him, but to the castle, have out ten men, and bring them down to the gate, where I’ll come. Wake up Dinan, too, let him sweat, the boy’s son to a man he must have known, and nephew to one he may well want to have dealings with soon. I won’t risk men by sending them out in this beyond a mile or so, or in less than pairs, but our pair can’t have got far.” He turned on Cadfael just as vehemently, and clouted him hard between the shoulders. “And you, my heart, stop talking such arrogant foolery! The man seemed quiet and biddable, and the boy needed using, and could be trusted to the hilt, as you very well know. If they’ve miscarried, it’s none of your blame. Don’t arrogate to yourself God’s own role of apportioning blame and praise, even when the blame lands on your own shoulders. That’s a kind of arrogance, too. Now come on, and we’ll see if we can’t bring home the two of them out of this cold purgatory. But I tell you what I shall be telling my fellows at Ludlow—move out no more than an hour from home, keep touch, and turn back on the hour, as near as you can judge. I’m not losing more men into the snow this night. At dawn, if we’ve caught nothing before, we’ll take up the search in earnest.”
With those orders they went forth into the blizzard, hunting in pairs, and obscurely comforted, in Cadfael’s case at least, by the reflection that it was a pair they were hunting. One man alone can give up and subside into the cold and die, far more easily than two together, who will both brace and provoke each other, wrangle and support, give each other warmth and challenge each other’s endurance. In extremes, not to be alone is the greatest aid to survival.
He had taken Hugh’s impatient reproof to heart, too, and it gave him reassurance no less. It was all too easy to turn honest anxiety over someone loved into an exaltation of a man’s own part and duty as protector, a manner of usurpation of the station of God. To accuse oneself of falling short of infallibility is to arrogate to oneself the godhead thus implied. Well, thought Cadfael, willing to learn, a shade specious, perhaps, but I may need that very argument myself some day. Bear it in mind!
Blundering blindly ahead with a burly young novice beside him, northwards across the Corve, Cadfael groped through a chill white mist, and knew that they were all wasting their time. They might probe the drifts as they would, but the weather had the laugh of them, covering everything in the same blank pall.
They all drew in again resignedly to Bromfield when they judged the time to be spent and the work impossible. The porter had set fresh pine torches in the shelter of the arched gateway to provide a beacon glow homeward, for fear some of the searchers should themselves go astray and be lost, and from time to time he set the bell ringing as an added guide. The hunters came back snow-caked and weary, and empty-handed. Cadfael went to Matins and Lauds before seeking his bed. The order of observances must not be utterly disrupted, even to go out in defense of innocent lives. Nothing could now be done before dawn. Not by men. But God, after all, knew where the lost might be found, and it would do no harm to put in a word in that quarter, and admit the inadequacy of human effort.
*
He arose at the bell for Prime, and went down with the rest in the winter darkness to the cold church. The snow had ceased at the first approach of morning, as it had done for several days, and the reflected light from all that depth of whiteness brought a pure and ghostly pallor even before dawn. After the office Cadfael ploughed his way alone down towards the gatehouse. The world around him was a waste of white broken by shadowy dark shapes of walls and buildings, but the porter had kept his torches burning hopefully under the archway, and they shed a full, reddish light over the stonework, and into the outer world beyond. To replenish them he had had to open the wicket in the gate and pass through, and as Cadfael approached he was in the act of re-entering, pausing in shelter to stamp off snow before he came within, and closed the wicket again behind him.
Thus it happened that he was facing inwards while Cadfael was facing out, and only Cadfael saw what he saw. The wicket was lofty, to admit mounted men, and Brother Porter was short and slight, and stooping to shake his skirts clear. Behind him, and not many paces behind, two faces suddenly glowed out of the dimness into the flickering light of the torches, and shone clear before Cadfael’s eyes. Their suddenness and their beauty took his breath away for a moment, as though a miracle had caused them to appear out of the very air. No heavenly visitors, however, these, but most vividly and vitally of this world.
The girl’s hood had fallen back on her neck, the red light flowed over a great disordered coil of dark hair, a wide, clear forehead, arched, imperious black brows, large dark eyes too brilliant to be black, by the reflections in them the darkest and reddest of browns. She had, for all her coarse country clothes, a carriage of the head and a lance-like directness of gaze that queens might have copied. The lines that swooped so graciously over her cheekbones and down to full, strongly folded lips and resolute chin made so suave a moulding that Cadfael’s finger-ends, once accomplished in such caresses, stroked down from brow to throat in imagination, and quivered to old memories.
The other face hung beyond and above her left shoulder almost cheek to brow with her. She was tall, but the man behind her was taller, he was stooped protectively and watchfully to bring his face close to hers. A long, spare, wide-browed face with a fine scimitar of a nose and a supple bow of a mouth, and the dilated, fearless golden eyes of a hawk. His head was bared, and capped closely with blue-black hair, coiling vigorously at his temples and sweeping back thick and lustrous over a lofty skull. Cadfael had visions of that face terminating in a short, pointed beard, and with fine-drawn moustaches over the long, fastidious lips. With just such faces had he seen, in his time, proud, mailed Syrians wheeling their line of charge outside Antioch. This face had the same dark coloring and sculptured shape, like cast bronze, but this face was shaven clean in the Norman fashion, the rich hair cropped, the head framed by rough, dun-colored homespun, a local peasant’s wear.
Well, they happen, the lightning-strokes of God, the gifted or misfortunates who are born into a world where they nowhere belong, the saints and scholars who come to manhood unrecognized, guarding the swine in the forest pastures among the beech-mast, the warrior princes villein-born and youngest in a starving clan, set to scare the crows away from the furrow. Just as hollow slave-rearlings are cradled in the palaces of kings, and come to rule, however ineptly, over men a thousand times their worth.
But this one would not be lost. It needed only that flashing glimpse of the black-lashed golden eyes to make it certain they would burn their way before him to wherever he set out to go.
And all in the brief moment while the porter was ridding himself of the snow he had collected on his skirts. For the next moment he had stepped within, and closed the wicket behind him, just in time to cut off, short of the gates, the dual vision of youth that was surely advancing to ask for entry.
Brother Cadfael closed his eyes, opened them hopefully, and closed them again upon dazzled recollection that might almost have been delusion. In the between-light of dawn, in the grip of a hard winter, and complicated by the pleasurable, warming glow of torchlight, what dreams may not come!
He had taken but three more labored paces through the fall, and the porter had barely reached the door of his lodge, when the bell pealed at the gate.
The porter turned, startled. He had been preoccupied first with reaching up to the sconces in which his torches were set, and then hurrying back into shelter, and he had seen nothing stirring in the lingering darkness without. Only after his back was turned had the two—if they were real indeed!—stepped within range of the light. He hoisted resigned shoulders, and waded back to open the small grid that would show him who stood without. What he saw astonished him still more, it seemed, but it spurred him into instant action. The great latch lifted, and the lofty wicket swung open.
And there she stood, tall, meek and still confronting them, in a too-large gown of faded brown homespun, a coarse short cloak and ragged-edged capuchon flung back from her head, the sheaf of dark hair tumbling to her shoulders. The sting of cold air had brought out a rosy flush on her cheekbones, in a skin otherwise creamy-white and smooth as ivory.
“May I enter and take shelter here a while?” she said in the mildest of voices and humblest of manners, but with that confidence and calm about her that could not be quenched. “Through weather and mishap and the distresses of war I am here alone. I think you have been looking for me. My name is Ermina Hugonin.”
*
While the porter was conducting her excitedly into his lodge, and hurrying to inform Prior Leonard and Hugh Beringar of the sudden appearance of the missing lady at their gates, Brother Cadfael lost no time in slipping into the roadway and casting a shrewd eye on the empty countryside in all directions. Empty it was, to all appearance. There were corners, copses, bushes, any of which could quickly conceal the departure of a young and swift-moving man, and either her companion had chosen to vanish among these, or the falcon had indeed taken wing and flown. As for tracks in the snow, a few early-rising good men with sheep to dig out or beasts to feed had already gone to and fro past the gatehouse, and among their traces who was to pick out one man’s foot? She had spoken truth, if a somewhat deceptive truth; she entered here alone. But two had approached the gate, though only one rang to ask admittance.
Now why should such a man, bringing a lost girl to safety, avoid showing his face within? And why, pondered Cadfael, should not the one man who was aware of the evasion make it known openly to all? On the other hand until he knew of a good reason one way or the other, why should he? First hear and consider what the lady had to say.
He went back very thoughtfully to the lodge, where the porter had hurried to prod his fire into life and seat her beside it. She sat self-contained and silent, her wet shoes and skirts beginning to steam gently in the warmth.
“You are also a brother of this house?” she asked, raising dark eyes to study him.
“No, I am a monk of Shrewsbury. I came here to tend a brother who has been lying sick here.” He wondered if any word of Brother Elyas’ misfortunes had reached her, but she gave no sign of knowing anything of a wounded monk, and he forbore from mentioning a name. Let her tell her own story once for all, before Hugh and the prior as witnesses, then he might know where he himself stood. “You know how diligently you have been sought since you fled from Worcester? Hugh Beringar, who is deputy sheriff of the shire, is here in Bromfield, partly on that very quest.”
“I heard it,” she said, “from the forester who has sheltered me. I know from them, too, that my brother has been here, while I have been hunting for him. And only now that I find my way here myself do I learn that he is again lost, and half the night men have been out searching for him. All this countryside knows of it. I fear you have made a poor exchange,” she said with sudden, flashing bitterness, “gaining me and losing Yves. For I am the one who has cost you all so much trouble and time.”
“Your brother was safe and in excellent health,” said Cadfael firmly, “as late as Compline last night. There is no need to suppose that we shall fail of finding him again, for he cannot have gone far. The sheriff’s men in Ludlow will have had their orders overnight, and be out by now. And so will Hugh Beringar, as soon as he has seen you safe and well, and heard whatever you can tell him.”
Hugh was at the door by then, and the brothers had hastily cleared a path through the drifts to bring the girl almost dry-shod up to the guest-hall. Prior Leonard himself led her in to warmth and food and a comfortable seat by the fire. He was distressed that there was no woman guest to provide her a change of clothing.
“That shall be seen to,” said Beringar shortly. “Josce de Dinan has a household full of women, I’ll get from them whatever is needed. But you had better get out of those wet skirts, madam, if it must needs be into habit and sandals. You have nothing with you but what you wear?”
“I gave what I have in exchange for what I wear,” she said with composure, “and for the hospitality that was given me without thought of reward. But some money I still have about me. I can pay for a gown.”
They left her to strip beside the fire, and provided her the habit and shoes of a novice. When she opened the door to them again, and bade them in, it was with the grace of a countess welcoming guests. She had let down and combed her mass of dark hair, it was drying into curls on her shoulders, and swung like heavy, lustrous curtains either side of her face. Wrapped in the black habit, and girdled close about the waist, she returned to her chair and braced herself, facing them squarely, the most beautiful novice Bromfield had ever housed. She had spread out her wet clothes to dry on a bench beside the fire.
“My lord,” she said, “and Father Prior, to say this briefly, I have been the cause of great trouble and cost to you and many others, and I am sensible of it. It was not intended, but I did it. Now that I am come to make what amends I may, I hear that my brother, who was here in safety, and whom I hoped to join here, has gone forth overnight and vanished again. I cannot but lay this, with the rest, to my own charge, and I am sorry. If there is anything I can do to help in the search for him...”
“There is but one thing you can do to help us all,” said Hugh firmly, “and take one anxiety, at least, off our hands. You can remain here, not setting a foot outside these walls, until we find and bring your brother to join you. Let us at least be sure that you are safe, and cannot be lost again.”
“I could wish better, but what you order, I will do. For this while,” she added, and jutted her lip at him.
“Then there are things I need to know from you, now, shortly, and the rest can wait. You are but a part of my business here. The king’s peace is also my business, and you, I think, have good reason to know that the king’s peace is being flouted in these parts. We know from Yves you left him and Sister Hilaria at Cleeton, and sent word to Evrard Boterei to come and fetch you away to his manor of Callowleas. We have seen what is left of Callowleas, and we have been to Ledwyche looking for you, and heard from Boterel that you reached there with him safely, but rode out while he lay in fever from his wounds got in the fighting, and went to look for the companions you had left behind. What had befallen Callowleas could well befall others, no wonder you were in desperate anxiety.”
She sat gnawing her underlip and staring at him with unwavering eye, her brows drawn close. “Since Evrard has told you all this, I need only confirm it. He is recovered, I trust? Yes, I did fear for them. There was good cause.”
“What happened to you? Boterel had already told us that you did not return, and from the time he recovered his wits and found you were gone, he has been searching for you constantly. It was folly to set out alone.”
Surprisingly, her lips contorted in a wry smile. She had already admitted to folly. “Yes, I am sure he has been hunting high and low for me. We may set his mind at rest now. No, I did not reach Cleeton. I don’t know these ways, and I was benighted, and then the snow came... In the dark I lost myself utterly, and had a fall, and the horse bolted. I was lucky to be found and taken in by a forester and his wife, lifelong I shall be grateful to them. I told them about Yves, and how I feared for him, and the forester said he would send up to Cleeton and find out what had happened, and so he did. He brought word how poor John’s holding was ravaged, the night after Callowleas, and how Yves was lost even before— the same night I committed my greatest fault and folly.” Her head reared proudly and her back stiffened as she declared her regret, and with fiery stare dared anyone else here present either to echo her self-condemnation, or attempt to deprecate it. “Thanks be to God, John and his family escaped alive. And as for their losses, I take them as my debts, and they shall be repaid. But one relief they brought me from Cleeton,” she said, quickening into warmth and affection, “for they told me Sister Hilaria that was gone, well before the raiders came, for the good brother of Pershore came back, in his anxiety over us, and he brought her away safely.”
The dead silence passed unnoticed, she was so glad of that one consolation. One innocent escaped from the landslide her light-hearted escapade had set in motion.
“All this time, while I stayed with them, we have been sending about for news of Yves, for how could I make any move until I knew how he fared? And only yesterday morning we heard at last that he was here, safe. So I came.”
“Only in time,” owned Hugh, “to find him lost again just as you are found. Well, I trust he need not be lost for long, and if I leave you without ceremony, it is to look for him.”
Cadfael asked mildly: “You found you own way here, alone?”
She turned her head sharply, and gave him the wide, challenging gaze of her dark eyes, her face still calm and wary.
“Robert showed me the way—the forester’s son.”
“My business,” said Hugh, “is also with these outlaws who have set up house somewhere in the hills, and hunted you out of Callowleas and Druel out of his holding. I mean to have out enough men to smoke out every last yard of those uplands. But first we’ll find the two we’ve lost.” He rose briskly, and with a meaningful gesture of his dark head and lift of an urgent eyebrow drew Cadfael away with him out of the room.
“For all I can see, the girl knows nothing of what happened to Sister Hilaria, and nothing of Brother Elyas. I have my men and as many of Dinan’s mustering to take up this hunt, and small time to break unpleasant news gently. Stay here with her, Cadfael, make sure she doesn’t elude us again—and tell her! She’ll have to know. The more truths we can put together, the nearer we shall be to clearing out this nest of devils once for all, and going home for Christmas to Aline and my new son.”
*
She was hungry, and had a healthy appetite, Cadfael judged, at any time. It was plenteous activity that kept her slender as a young hind. She ate with pleasure, though her face remained guarded, thoughtful and withdrawn. Cadfael let her alone until she sat back with a sigh of physical content. Her brows were still drawn close, and her eyes looked rather inward than outward. Then, quite suddenly, she was looking at him, and with sharp attention.
“It was you who found Yves and brought him here? So Father Prior said.”
“By chance it was,” said Cadfael.
“Not only chance. You went to look for him.” That commended him; her face warmed. “Where was it? Was he very cold and wretched?”
“He was in all particulars a young gentleman very much in command of himself. And he had found, as you did, that simple country people can be hospitable and kind without thought of reward.”
“And since then both you and he have been looking for me! While I was looking for him! Oh, God!” she said softly and with dismayed reverence. “All this I began. And so mistakenly! I did not know even myself. I am not now the same woman.”
“You no longer wish to marry Evrard Boterei?” asked Cadfael placidly.
“No,” she said as simply. “That is over. I thought I loved him. I did think so! But that was children’s play, and this bitter winter is real, and those birds of prey in that eyrie up there are real, and death is real, and very close at every step, and I have brought my brother into danger by mere folly, and now I know that my brother is more to me by far than ever was Evrard. But never say I said so,” she flared, “when he comes back. He is vain enough already. It was he told you what I had done?”
“It was. And how he tried to follow you, and lost himself, and was sheltered in the forest assart where I found him.”
“And he blamed me?” she said.
“In his shoes, would not you?”
“It seems to me so long ago,” she said, wondering, “and I have changed so much. How is it that I could do so much harm, and mean none? At least I was thankful when they told me that that good brother from Pershore—how I wish I had listened to him!—had come back to look for us, and taken Sister Hilaria away with him. Were they still here when you came from Shrewsbury? Did she go on, or turn back to Worcester?”
She had arrived at what was for her a simple question before he was ready, and the flat silence fell like a stone. She was very quick. The few seconds it took him to marshal words lasted too long. She had stiffened erect, and was staring at him steadily with apprehensive eyes.
“What is it I do not know?”
There was no way but forward, and plainly. “What will give you no comfort in the hearing, and me no joy in the telling,” said Brother Cadfael simply. “On the night when your upland wolves sacked Druel’s house, they had already done as much to a lonely hamlet nearer here, barely two miles from Ludlow. Between the two, on their way back to their lair, it seems that they encountered, by cruel ill-luck, the two after whom you ask. It was already evening when they left Druel’s holding, and the night was wild, with high winds and blinding snow. It may be they went astray. It may be they tried to take shelter somewhere through the worst. They fell in the way of thieves and murderers.”
Her face was marble. Her hands gripped desperately at the arms of her chair, the knuckles bone-white. In a mere thread of a whisper she asked: “Dead?”
“Brother Elyas was brought back here barely alive. Your brother was watching with him last night when they both went out into the snow, who can guess why? Sister Hilaria we found dead.”
There was no sound from her for a long moment, no tear, no exclamation, no protest. She sat containing whatever grief and guilt and hopeless anger possessed her, and would show none of it to the world. After a while she asked in a low and level voice: “Where is she?”
“She is here, in the church, coffined and awaiting burial. In this iron frost we cannot break the ground, and it may be the sisters at Worcester will want to have her taken back to them when that is possible. Until then Father Prior will find her a tomb in the church.”
“Tell me,” said Ermina with bleak but quiet urgency, “all that befell her. Better to know the whole of it than to guess.”
In simple and plain words he told her the manner of that death. At the end of it she stirred out of her long stillness, and asked: “Will you take me to her? I should like to see her again.”
Without a word and without hesitation he rose, and led the way. His readiness she accepted thankfully; he knew that he had gained with her. She would not be hemmed in, or sheltered from what was her due. In the chapel where Sister Hilaria lay in her new coffin, made in the brothers’ own workshop and lined with lead, it was almost as cold as out in the frost, and the body had not suffered any flawing of its serene beauty. She was not yet covered. Ermina stood motionless by the trestles a long time, and then herself laid the white linen face-cloth back over the delicate face.
“I loved her very much,” she said, “and I have destroyed her. This is my work.”
“It is nothing of the kind,” said Cadfael firmly. “You must not take to yourself more than your due. What you yourself did, that you may rue, and confess, and do penance for, to your soul’s content, but you may not lift another man’s sins from his shoulders, or usurp God’s right to be the only judge. A man did this, ravisher and murderer, and he, and only he, must answer for it. Whatever action of any other creature may have thrown our sister in his way, he had command of the hands that killed and outraged her, he and no other. It’s of him her blood will be required.”
For the first time she shook, and when she would have spoken she had not her voice under control, and was forced to wait and wrestle for clear speech.
“But if I had not set my heart on that foolish marriage, if I had consented to go with Brother Elyas straight here to Bromfield, she would be living now...”
“Do we know that? Might not you, too, have fallen into such hands? Child, if men had not done as they did, any time these five centuries, of course things would have gone on differently, but need they have been better? There is no profit in ifs. We go on from where we stand, we answer for our own evil, and leave to God our good.”
Ermina wept, suddenly and irresistibly, but would not be seen to weep. She swept away from him to kneel trembling at the altar, and remained there a long time. He did not follow her, but waited patiently until she chose to rejoin him. When she came back her face was drained but calm. She looked very tired, and very young and vulnerable.
“Come back to the fire,” said Cadfael. “You’ll take cold here.”
She went with him docilely, glad to settle beside the hearth again. The shivering left her, she lay back and half-closed her eyes, but when he made a move as if to leave her she looked up quickly. “Brother Cadfael, when they sent from Worcester to ask for news of us, was there word said of our uncle d’Angers being in England?”
“There was. Not only in England but in Gloucester, with the empress.” That was what she had meant, though she had been feeling her way towards it cautiously. “Openly and fairly he asked leave to come into the king’s territories himself to look for you, and leave was refused. The sheriff promised a search by his own men, but would not admit any of the empress’s party.”
“And should any such be found here and taken—in the search of us—what would happen to him?”
“He would be held prisoner of war. It is the sheriff’s duty to deny to the king’s enemies the service of any fighting man who falls into his hands, you must not wonder at it. A knight lost to the empress is a knight’s gain to the king.” He saw how doubtfully and anxiously she eyed him, and smiled. “It is the sheriff’s duty. It is not mine. Among men of honor and decent Christian life I see no enemies, on either side. Mine is a different discipline. With any man who comes only to rescue and fetch away children to their proper guardian, I have no quarrel.”
She frowned momentarily at the word children, and then laughed, with angry honesty, at the very instinct that showed her still a child. “Then you would not betray such a man even to your friend?”
Cadfael sat down opposite her and settled himself comfortably, for it seemed she had matters on her mind, and wished to unburden herself. “I have told you, I take no side here, and Hugh Beringar would not expect me to go always his way in every particular. He does his work and I mine. But I must tell you that he has already some knowledge of a presence in these parts, a stranger, who came to Cleeton enquiring for all you three who left Worcester together. A countryman by his dress, they said, young, tall and dark, eyed and beaked like a hawk, black-haired and dark-skinned.” She was listening intently, her underlip caught between her teeth, and at every detail the color flamed and faded in her cheeks. “And one that wore a sword under his cloak,” said Cadfael.
She sat very still, making up her mind. The face at her shoulder in the torchlight of the gatehouse hung vividly in Cadfael’s imagination, and surely even more urgently in hers. For a moment he thought she would prevaricate, shrug off the image, declare her guide to be no more than she had said, a forester’s son. But then she leaned forward and began to speak with vehement eagerness.
“I will tell you! I will tell you, and not even exact any promise, for I know I need not. You will not give him up. What I said was true, that I was taken in and helped by the forester and his wife. But the second day that I was there with them, there came a youth asking for news of such a company as I had, before I shattered it. Dressed as I was when you first saw me today, still he knew me for what I was, and so did I him, for nothing could show him less than noble. He spoke French freely, but English a little slowly. He told me that my uncle had returned, and was in Gloucester with the empress, and had sent him secretly to find us and bring us safe to him. His errand is that, and nothing more, but here he goes with danger all about him, knowing he may fall into the sheriff’s hands.”
“He has eluded them so far,” said Cadfael mildly. “He may very well go on slipping through our fingers to the end, and hale you away with him to Gloucester.”
“But not without Yves. I will not go without my brother, he knows that. I did not want to come here, but he so wished it. Let me know, he said, that you at least are in safety, and leave the hunt to me. And I have done and I will do what he bids me. But I could not bear it if through his care for us he fell into the king’s hands, and was left to rot in a prison.”
“Never go looking for disaster,” said Cadfael cheerfully. “Expect the best, and walk so discreetly as to invite it, and then leave all to God. You have not given this paladin a name.” No, but he had a face, and a memorable face, too.
She was buoyantly young. Grief was fiercely felt, but so was hope, so was joy, so was the adulation of heroes. The very thought of her champion had lifted her out of the shadows of guilt and death, she glowed as she spoke of him. “They call him Olivier de Bretagne—it is a name they gave him in his own land, because of his parentage. For he was born in Syria, and his mother was of that country, and his father a Frankish knight of the Crusade, from England. He leaned to his father’s faith, and made his way to Jerusalem to join his father’s people, and there he took service with my uncle, six years ago now. He is his favorite squire. Now he has come home with him, and who else would be trusted with this search?”
“And with his small experience here and halting English,” said Cadfael appreciatively, “he was not afraid to venture into these stormy regions, among his lord’s enemies?”
“He is not afraid of anything! He is bravery itself! Oh, Brother Cadfael, you do not know how fine he is! If you could only once see him, you must become his friend!”
Cadfael did not say that he had seen him, that requisite first time, briefly, like the blazing recollection of a dream. He was thinking, with nostalgic fondness, that some other lonely soul wearing the Cross had found, somewhere in that burning land of sun and sea and sand, a woman to his liking, who must have liked him no less, if she had borne him such a son. The east was full of glorious bastards. That one of them should come home to his father’s land, baptized into his father’s faith, was no marvel. No need to look beyond the admirable fruit.
“You have that promise you did not ask,” said Brother Cadfael. “Olivier is safe with me. I will do nothing to uncover him. In your need or his, I will stand your friend.”