A Virgin In The Ice

by Ellis Peters

  Within, men swarmed to hold the gate closed and bar it securely, and the din of shouted orders and confused movements washed back and forth like storm-water in a foundering ship. The stout gate was ajar, quivering, and the running foot soldiers flung themselves into the human ram to hurl it wide and break into the bailey.

  From high above their heads a great voice suddenly bellowed like thunder: “Hold, you below! King’s men or whatever you be, stand, and look up here! Look, I say! Put up and quit my gates, or take this infant carrion with you!”

  All heads within and without the gate came up with a jerk to stare at the top of the tower, and on both sides archers froze with bows drawn, and lance and sword were lowered. Between two of the crude timber merlons of the parapet Yves stood balanced, held by a great hand gripping his clothes in the small of the back, and over the merlon beside him leaned a raging, bristling head, tawny gold, long hair and beard streaming in a capricious wind that could hardly be felt below. A mailed hand held a naked dagger at the boy’s throat.

  “You see him?” roared the lion, glaring down with eyes fire-gold with fury. “You want him? Living? Then draw off! Haul off out of range, out of sight, or I cut his throat now and throw him down.”

  Hugh stood holding the sword he had drawn to probe through the yielding chink of the gate, and stared up with a white, fixed face. Yves was stiff as a beam of wood, looking neither down nor up, but straight before him at empty sky. He never made a sound.

  “I do not know you, sir,” said Hugh, carefully and low, “but I am the king’s man here, and I say to you, you have now no refuge, here or anywhere. Harm him, and I will be your death. Be advised. Come down, yield yourself and all these your men and trust to find some mercy that way, for otherwise there is none.”

  “And I say to you, king’s man, take your rabble out of my sight, now, without argument, or you may have this piglet, bled ready for eating. Now, I say! Turn and go! Shall I show you?” The point of the dagger pricked, in the clear air they saw the little bubble of blood that grew, and burst, and slid down in a fine thread.

  Hugh clapped his sword into the scabbard without another word, mounted and wheeled his horse, and waved all his men back from the stockade, back into the trees, back out of sight. Behind him he heard vast laughter that still resembled the hungry roar of a hunting lion.

  Archers and all had shrunk far back to be invisible, watching that threat. They drew together in stunned silence, down among the trees. This was deadlock indeed. They knew they dared not advance, and that resplendent wild beast in the tower knew just as surely that they would not depart.

  *

  “But I know him, if you do not,” said Josce de Dinan. “A by-blow of the Lacy clan by a younger son of the house. His brother the right side the sheets, after the father married, is a tenant of mine. This one served in France some years, for Normandy against Anjou. They call him Alain le Gaucher, because he’s left-handed.”

  Even those who had seen the man now for the first time needed no reminders. It was the left hand that had held the dagger against the boy’s throat, and turned the point quite coldly to pierce the skin.

  *

  Yves felt himself hoisted by the small of his back, in the fist that gripped the fullness of his clothes and bruised his spine with hard knuckles, and dumped hard upon his feet on the timbers of the roof. The jarring shock ran up from his heels to his head, and shook his eyes wide open. He had been so intent upon uttering no sound that he had bitten his tongue, the blood ran warm within his lower lip. He swallowed it, and braced his quaking feet into the planks under him. The thin thread of blood trickling down his neck from the prick of the dagger hardly troubled him, and was already drying.

  He had never yet been so frightened, as he had never been so rough-handled, suddenly plucked erect by the neck, hauled up confusing staircases in the dark, windowless bulk of the tower, finally dragged up a last vertical ladder and through a heavy trap to the dazzle of daylight on the roof. The lion’s voice had roared in his ears, the lion’s own fist had hoisted him to the parapet, with a furious lunge that might well have hurled him over. By instinct he had held his tongue, and made no sound. Now, suddenly released, he felt his knees give way under him, and stiffened them indignantly. He still had not uttered word or cry. He held that thought to him like an accolade, and stood doggedly waiting for the pounding of his heart to ease. It was an achievement that he stood erect at all.

  Alain le Gaucher stood with hands spread along the merlons, grimly watching the besiegers draw off into the gully. The three of his men who had followed him aloft here stood waiting for his orders. So did Yves, bracing himself not to quail when the thick, powerful body swung round on him, and the fiery eyes hung on him with calculating intensity.

  “So the brat has his value still, if not in money! Good reason to hold him fast, we may have to make further use of him to the same end. Oh, they’ll not go far out of sight, I know—not yet, not until they’ve tried every roundabout way they can find, and been baulked at every attempt by a small knife at a small piglet’s throat. Now we know they’ll dance to our tune. Imp, you may yet be worth an army to us.”

  Yves found no comfort in that. They would not even seek a ransom for him, his value as a hostage being far higher, now that their fortress was known. They could not hide it again, and enjoy the secrecy of their night exploits by wiping out every witness, as before. But for some while, at least, they could go on repeating the threat to kill their prisoner, perhaps even bargain with his life for freedom to march out unchallenged and resume their activities elsewhere. But no, Hugh Beringar would not so tamely give up, nor would he leave a hostage in such hands a moment longer than he must. He would find some way, short of frontal assault, of breaking into this lair. Yves did his best to believe that, and kept his face expressionless and his mouth shut.

  “You, Guarin, stay here with him. You shall be relieved of the watch before dark, and he’ll give you no trouble. Short of clambering over the parapet and dashing his brains out below, what can he do? And I fancy he’s not yet so mad with fear as to choose that way. Who knows, he may even come to like the life with us—eh, chicken?” He jabbed a hard finger into Yves’s ribs and laughed. “Have your dagger ready. If they come out of hiding, if you see any of them making roundabout to come at us, challenge on the instant, and repeat the threat. And if they persist,” he said, with a sudden snap of large teeth like a trap closing, “bleed him! If it comes to worse yet, I’ll take the knife myself. Me they’ll believe!”

  The man called Guarin nodded and grinned, and loosened his dagger in its sheath, suggestively.

  “The rest of you, down, and we’ll make better dispositions. I want a watch on every foot of our boundaries. They’ll be probing busily before they give up from the cold. There’s no sheriff born is going to camp in the open up here in such a winter. Not for longer than a night.”

  There was a ring set into the trap, by which to lift it. He set his own great hand to it, and heaved it out as easily as lifting a ladle, and dropped it with a hollow thud upon the boards. Below, it could be secured by bolts, the metal rang as it fell.

  “We’ll shut you up here, for safety’s sake. Never fret, you shall have your food brought, and quit your watch by twilight, but with this chick fresh from the egg I take no chances. He’s too effective a tool to risk.” He clouted Yves on the shoulder in passing, as forthrightly as he had stroked the knife across his throat, and plunged through the trap, swinging down the tall ladder to the next floor. His men followed him briskly. Guarin hauled the trap into place, and they both heard the bolts slide into their sockets below, and the last man clambering down the ladder.

  The two of them were left in their rough timber eyrie, staring at each other. There was frozen snow under their feet, and frost in the air they breathed. Yves licked dried blood from his lip, and looked about him for the most favorable ground. The tower had been built high enough to command as wide a view as possible, without allowing its own o
utline to stare too obviously above the line of the rock. The wall surrounding it rose breast-high to him before the merlons began, he could lean between them and look out every way, but to the rear, above the sheer cliffs, he could see only the rim of the escarpment, and beyond, the distant land below. The space up here was too wide and open to be comfortable, wind and weather could make it a bitter ordeal, though this day was better than any that had gone before.

  Within his vision nothing now stirred, except for the fierce bustle inside the bailey, where every watch-point was being manned, and every loophole supplied with an archer. The king’s men had gone to earth like foxes. Yves selected the snow-free corner of his ground, backing into the wind, and sat down on the boards there with his back hunched against the timbers and his arms hugging his knees. Every contact nursed a shred of warmth. He was going to need all he could get. But so was Guarin.

  Not one of the worst of them, this Guarin. Yves had taken the measure of many of those close about their chieftain, by this time, he knew those who took pleasure in hurting, in defiling, in making other human creatures writhe and abase themselves. And there were more than enough of them, but this Guarin was none. The boy had even learned how some of them had come into this service, and could pick out worst from best. Some were footpads, murderers, thieves from choice, born to prey on their own kind. Some were petty tricksters from the towns, who had fled from justice and taken refuge where even their small skills could be used. Some were runaway villeins who had committed some angry revolt against tyranny, and put themselves on the wrong side of the law. Several were of better birth, younger sons and landless knights who considered themselves soldiers of fortune in this company. Some were even men disabled in honest service, and cast off when they were of no further profit; but these were few, and trapped, they did not belong in this garrison, but had blundered into it by ill-fortune, and could not get loose.

  Guarin was a big, slow-witted, easy-going soul, without cruelty. He had no objection, as far as Yves could see, to robbing and sacking and burning, provided others did the killing. He would go with the crowd and behave himself conformably, but he would rather not let blood himself if it could be avoided. But for all that, he would carry out his orders. It was the only way he knew of ensuring a share with the rest, all the food he needed, and all the drink, a roof above him, and a fire. If his lord told him point-blank to kill, he would kill and never hesitate.

  The day enlarged over the two of them, and brightened. The murderous weather, if it had not yet softened, held a kind of promise. It was past noon when someone thumped merrily at the trap, hauled back the bolts below, and rose out of the dark, wood-scented pit of the tower with a bag of bread and meat and a pitcher of hot, spiced ale for the watchman. There was enough for two, and Guarin spared a portion for his prisoner. They were lavish with their provender. They had the provisions from at least four local holdings to feed them.

  The food and drink helped for a while, but as the day wore away the cold came down again and bit hard. Guarin stamped about the boards to keep himself warm, constantly patrolling in order to keep watch in every direction, and paid no attention to his prisoner except for a hard stare now and again to remind him that he was helpless, and had better not attempt anything on his own behalf. Yves fell into an uneasy doze for a while, and awoke so cold and stiff that he found it necessary to get up and stamp his feet and clap his arms vigorously to get his blood flowing again. His guard laughed at that, and let him dance and exercise as he liked. What harm could he do?

  The light was beginning to fail. Yves fell to pacing the tower a few steps behind his watchman, peering out at every embrasure upon a world still peopled only by his enemies. On the precipice side, in particular, he craned perilously to see below, but still had only the barren cliff-edge and the distance before him. That entire side of the square tower looked out upon the sky. But at the eastern corner, while Guarin’s back was turned, Yves found a rough join in the timbers by which he could gain a foothold and hoist himself up to achieve a better view. Below him the rim of rock levelled out, and by straining perilously round towards the void he could see at last that the stockade did not continue all round the castle, but terminated where it met the cliff-edge. Here at the corner the drop was not quite sheer, he could see the first jagged folds over the edge, every ledge with its smooth burden of untrodden snow. All that motionless, empty whiteness everywhere, as though the friends on whom he relied had deserted him.

  But the whiteness was not quite motionless, nor the rocky landscape quite empty. Yves blinked in disbelief, seeing the outline of one hanging drift move, and show for an instant the shape of a raised head, a shadowy visage lifted briefly to judge the next stage of a solitary and perilous climb. The next moment there was nothing to be seen there, at the extreme edge of the stockade and some ten yards down the broken face, but a mound of snow. Yves stared, straining anxious, elated eyes, but there was no more movement.

  A shout behind him caused him to slither down frantically from his perch, even before Guarin’s hand plucked him down and shook him heartily. “What are you about? Fool, there’s no way down there for you.” He laughed at the thought, but blessedly did not look where the boy had been looking. “As well get your throat slit as break your bones at the bottom of that fall.”

  He kept his grip on the boy’s shoulder, and marched him along before him, as if he really believed his prisoner might yet slip through his fingers and cost him dear. Yves went where he was hustled, and thought it wise to whine a little about his usage, to keep the man amused and distracted.

  For now he was sure he had not been deceived. There was a man down there among the rocks, a man who had covered his dark garments with a white linen sheet to move invisibly in the snow, a man who had clambered at his peril, surely not up the whole cliff-face, but laboriously round the rim from the trees, just below vision, to make his way out across the rock face beyond the stockade, and into the bailey where no one watched, where it was thought impenetrable. And in so disciplined a fashion, slow-moving even in this icy coldness, able to freeze into ice himself, and be part of the rocks and the winter. And now he was waiting for the dark, before venturing the last perilous passage.

  Yves trotted submissively where the hand gripping his shoulder drove him, and hugged to his heart the blazing conviction that he was not abandoned, that heroes exerted themselves on his behalf, that heroism was also required of him before all was won, and that he must not fall short.

  *

  Darkness had closed in, and Guarin was the one complaining, before his relief came clattering up the ladder, shot back the bolts, and heaved up the trap to emerge on the roof.

  This one was decidedly not among the least offensive, a bristle-bearded, pock-marked, flat-nosed cutpurse with a malicious fist, and dirty nails that liked pinching. Yves had some few bruises from him already, and gnawed a dubious lip at seeing him burst up out of the depths. He knew no name for him. Possibly he had never had a name, only some epithet by which he might be known, short of proper parentage or Christian baptism.

  Guarin was none too fond of him, either, he grunted vexation at such a late relief, when he had been promised it before dark. They snarled at each other before parting, which left Yves time to shrink into his sheltered corner out of sight and mind. There might be a bleak interval. But there was someone out there in the enclosing night, not so far away, coming to his aid.

  Guarin grumbled and clumped his way down the long ladder, and Yves heard the bolts shot home. They had their orders. He was left isolated here with this unpredictable cutthroat, who would stop only short of his lord’s ban. He dared not kill or maim. Short of either, no doubt he would take it for granted he had free leave to hurt.

  Yves sat back against the solid timber wall, shrunken into his corner with back to the wind. It was made clear to him at once that his new guard felt no goodwill towards him, blaming him for the discomfort of being perched up here in the frosty night, instead of below by the fire.<
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  “Pest of a brat,” he snarled, and kicked savagely at the boy’s ankles in passing, “we should have cut your throat there on the road where we first met you. If the king’s men had found you dead they’d have had no call to hunt for you living, and we should have been snug and merry here still.” All of which, Yves had to own as he drew in his feet and sat hunched in his corner, was probably true enough. He made himself as small as he could, and held his tongue, but silence did nothing to placate his custodian, rather it seemed to infuriate him.

  “If I had my way, you should dangle from one of these merlons for the kites. And never think you’ll escape it in the end. Whatever bargain they strike over you, it can be broken once we’re clear away. What’s to stop you being promised in return for passage, and delivered up carrion? Devil take you, answer me!” He kicked out again viciously, driving his toe deliberately at the boy’s groin. The stab was not quite evaded, as Yves rolled hastily away, and cost him a gasp of pain and rage.

  “What’s to stop it?” he flashed, goaded. “Only that your lord still keeps some dregs of his breeding, and puts some small value on his word. And you’d best do his bidding to the letter, for this moment he has far more use for me than he has for you. He could swing you from a merlon with a light heart and nothing to lose.”