A Virgin In The Ice

by Ellis Peters

He knew he had been a fool, but he was sick of trying to be wise against his nature. He saw the great fist coming for his hair, and dived below it and sprang clear. On this limited ground he might be cornered in the end, but he was lighter and faster than his tormentor, and at least movement was warmer than keeping still. The man came after him, shrewd enough to do his cursing low-voiced, for any bellowing up here was liable to fetch someone up to enquire the cause. He muttered his obscenities as he charged, both thick arms flailing for a hold. “What, you naked chick, use such insolence to me, would you? Big talk from a thrapple I could wring one-handed? If your neck’s safe, is that warrant for your skin? Or a few teeth down your saucy throat?”

  In the act of slipping beneath a grasping arm, Yves saw beyond his enemy’s shoulder the heavy trap in the floor beginning to rise. They had been too intent on each other to hear the bolts being withdrawn, even if it had not been done with unusual care and quietness. The head that emerged, though seen only by this late twilight, which below must be already full darkness, was none that Yves knew, and came forth so steadily and silently that his heart leaped with desperate hope. How do you recognize at first sight someone who cannot possibly be a member of an outlaw gang of thieves and murderers? If the guard turned fully about now, he would be looking straight at the newcomer, who was just setting foot to the boards and rising erect. This raving, fumbling wretch must not turn! And if Yves eluded him now he would turn, to follow and punish.

  Yves slipped in the frozen snow, or seemed to slip, and the threshing fist had him by the breast of his cotte and slammed him back against the parapet. The fellow to it gripped his hair and forced his head up, as the creature spat copiously in his face, and laughed in triumph. Wrenching aside as best he could from the infamy, and unable to raise a hand to wipe the slime away, Yves saw the invading stranger straighten to his full height, without haste or sound, and lower the trap back into place, eyes fixed all the while on the writhing pair pinned to the wall before him. He did not quit the sensible precaution to rush to the rescue. It was the greatest of praise, and Yves felt his heart swell with gratitude and admiration. For he had just been shown that his act had been understood and appreciated, that he was not a mere victim, but a partner in this secret and splendid war.

  He saw the first rapid, silent stride taken towards him, and then his head was buffeted violently aside by a great blow on the cheek, and a second that knocked him back again, and turned him dizzy and faint. To make all sure, he raised his voice in a frantic whine, not too loudly, but enough to cover the movements of one who must be already close: “Don’t! You’re hurting me! Let me go! I’m sorry, I’m sorry… don’t hit me…” Something of a crow about the tone, and his hackles erected all the time, but this creature did not know the difference, he was chuckling and quaking with merriment.

  He was still laughing when the long arm took him about the face, muzzling his mouth, and jerked him backwards top the boards, and a long-legged, agile, youthful body dropped astride him, drove a knee into his belly, and therewith all the wind out of him, and jolting off his conical steel helmet, calmly hoisted him high enough to drive his skull back against the wood with stunning force, laying him out on the floor limp as a landed fish, and just as silent.

  Yves dropped ecstatically upon the pair of them, like a half-trained hawk stooping, and fell to unbuckling the belt that held the guard’s sword and dagger. His hands were shaking, but he went about it eagerly, peeled loose the arms, and shoved the belt towards the stranger, who was waiting for it with commending and commendable placidity and patience, and had it drawn tightly round the guard’s upper arms, hobbling them behind his back, before he turned to look closely at his helper. He was smiling. The light here was only from a haze of stars, but very pure and clear, and the smile was unmistakable.

  He reached a hand into the ample breast of the brown homespun cotte he wore, hauled out a long white roll of linen, and held it out to Yves.

  “Wipe your face,” said a calm, low voice, in which both smile and praise were implicit, “before I use it to make this loud mouth mute.”

  Chapter 12

  YVES SCRUBBED THE SLIME from his cheek and brow in awed and fascinated silence, round eyes fixed all the while upon the face that fronted him across the sprawled body of his tormentor. The faint starlight caught the gleam of white teeth, and bright eyes that shone like amber. The capuchon had fallen back from ruffled black hair that did not curl, but curved and clasped in a thick cap about a shapely, vigorous head. Every line and every movement cried out his youth and audacity. Yves gazed and lost his heart. He had had heroes before, his own father among them, but this one was new and young, and above all, present.

  “Give!” said his ally briefly, and snapped demanding fingers for the length of linen, which Yves hastily surrendered. An end of the cloth was shoved briskly into the guard’s open mouth, the length of it whipped about his head to make him blind as well as dumb, and secured round his shoulders to the belt with which his arms were already pinioned. For want of a cord to bind the prisoner’s legs, the lacings of his leather jerkin were stripped out in a moment, made fast around his ankles, and doubled back to tie his feet to his wrists in the small of his back. He lay like a package made compact and neat to be slung one side of a pony for carriage. Yves watched, great-eyed, marvelling at the economy of the movements involved in the process.

  They eyed each other, in the breathing space that followed, with mutual content. Yves opened his mouth to speak, and was hushed by a forbidding finger on lips still reassuringly smiling.

  “Wait!” said the deep, serene voice, just above a whisper. Whispers have no identity, but carry alarmingly. This muted murmur reached no ears but the boy’s. “Let’s see if we may leave the way I came.”

  Yves crouched, charmed into stillness, ears pricked, listening and quivering. His companion lay flat over the trap, an ear to the wood, and after a few moments cautiously hoisted one edge to peer down into the timber-scented darkness of the tower below. From outside, about the bailey and the guard-walk along the stockade, came the sounds of movements and voices, from a garrison on the alert, but below among the shadowy beams there was silence and stillness.

  “We may essay. Follow close and do as I do.”

  He lifted the trap and swung himself down the ladder by his hands, agile as a cat, and Yves scurried after him. In the dimness of the floor below they froze again, backs to the darkest wall, but nothing moved to threaten them. There were fixed stairs, rough but solid, from the corner of this level. They had reached the middle of the flight and could hear the hum and bustle of activity in the hall, and see the flickering of torches and firelight round the rim of a great door below. One more flight, and they would be in the base of the tower, and level with the hall, only that door between them and Alain le Gaucher and his outlaws. A long arm drew Yves close, and again held him still to listen and watch.

  The base of the tower was half of rock and half of beaten earth, and the air that came up to them was colder here than between the massive timbers above. Peering down fearfully, Yves could see in a far corner the foot of a deep embrasure, and felt the strong draught that blew from it. There was a narrow outer door upon the night, surely the door by which his rescuer had entered, and if they could but reach it unobserved they might yet make their way back by the same route, out of this enemy stronghold. He would not be afraid, with this superb being as a guide, even to venture the traverse of the rocks in the dark. What one had done alone, surely two could do together.

  It was the first tread of that final staircase that undid them. Until then all had been solid and silent, but as soon as a foot was set on this warped board it tilted and settled again with a loud clap, and the echoes took the impact and flung it about the tower in a chain of hollow reverberations. In the hall someone cried out an alarm, there was a rushing of feet, and the great door was flung open, spilling forth firelight and armed men.

  “Back!” snapped the stranger instantly, and whipped rou
nd without hesitation to hoist the boy before him up the flight they had just descended. “Up to the roof, quickly!” There was no other way of retreat, and the brief check below to accustom eyes to the darkness after the lighted hall could last only a moment. It was already over, the foremost man loosed a great bellow of alarm and rage, and came for the stairs in a bull’s rush, with three or four more on his heels. The blast of the uproar they raised almost blew the fleeing pair up the steps of the tower.

  Where the long flight ended, the ladder in sight, Yves felt himself lifted and flung halfway up to the open trap, and that was the height of a tall man. He gripped and climbed, but looking over his shoulder and hesitating, loth to leave his companion behind, until he was ordered sharply: “Go! Up, quickly!” He completed the climb in a wild scramble, and flung himself down on his belly by the trap, craning anxiously over the rim, just in time to see, in a confusion of shadows further confused by the starlight through the trap, how the foremost pursuer came lurching up the narrow wooden treads of the stairway, drawn sword flailing. A big, bulky man, blocking off from view those who followed him.

  Yves had not even noticed, until that moment, that his ally already wore a sword. The one they had taken from the guard still lay here on the roof, though Yves had possessed himself of the dagger and buckled it proudly to his belt as substitute for the one taken from him. The brief flash of a blade, like distant lightning, stabbed the darkness below, a trick of starlight following its slashing course. The outlaw loosed an outraged yell, his short sword struck from his hand and flung below to clatter on the boards. The next moment a braced foot took him in the chest and hurled him backwards while he was off balance. Down he went in a long, echoing fall, and swept his followers down with him. The stairway was narrow and unguarded, two or three went backwards under their leader’s massive weight, one at least went over the side, to a heavier fall below.

  The young man turned without another glance, and sprang halfway up the ladder to the roof, and in a moment was beside Yves. The naked sword he swung glittering along the ice of the roof, and leaned to grip the uprights of the ladder with both muscular hands, and haul it aloft after him. As soon as Yves had recovered his wits he leaned eagerly to clutch from rung to rung and help to hoist the weight. With all his might, and all the breath he had regained, he heaved and exulted. The ladder had been braced against a wooden bar both below and above, but not fixed. It rose blithely, out of reach of the tallest long before the first of the attackers erupted furiously below and leaped to try and hold it.

  The lower end rose clear, tilted aside and clattered on the roof, ringing a glassy cry from the splintered ice. The roars of anger below fumed out of the open trap, and Yves leaned to drag the cover over to shut them out, but his ally waved him aside, and the bewitched boy drew back obediently. Whatever his hero did would be right and wise.

  And his hero, palpably smiling, though the smile was hidden in the dark, simply took their prisoner, now uneasily stirring in his bonds, by the cord that bound his feet to his wrists in the small of his back, dragged him to the trap, upended him judiciously so that his head should not take the impact below, and tipped him almost gently through the trap to fall upon his friends, and lay two or three of them flat on the boards. Their startled and aggrieved outcry was cut off when the trap was clapped into place above.

  “Quick, now,” said the placid voice almost chidingly, “here with the ladder, here over the trap. So! Now you lie there upon that end, and I upon this, and who will shift us?”

  Yves lay as he had been ordered, flat on his belly on the ladder, his face buried in his arms, panting and shivering, for a long time. The boards under him throbbed to the din below, spent in ugly fury six feet short of reaching the trap. And if they did rear something that would enable them to reach it, how were they to shift it or penetrate it? The trap fitted close, no lance nor sword could be thrust through the cracks. Even if they should climb up and batter a way through with an axe, only one could emerge at a time, and they two above were armed and ready. Yves lay braced, willing his weight to be double, spreading arms and legs, holding his breath. For all the bitter cold, he was in a lavish sweat.

  “Look up, my heart,” said the voice at the other end of the ladder, almost gaily, “and show me that gallant face again, bruises, grime and all. Let me look at my prize!”

  Yves lifted his head from his arms and stared dazedly along the ladder into bright, gold-gleaming eyes and an indulgent, glittering smile. A young, oval face under that thick, close cap of black hair, high-cheekboned, thin-black-browed, long-lipped, and with a lean, arrogant beak of a nose, like a scimitar. Smooth-shaven as a Norman, smooth-skinned as a girl, but of an olive, glossy smoothness.

  “Take breath, and let them rave, they’ll tire of it. If we failed to get past them, neither can they get at us. We have time to think. Only keep well below the parapet. They know their ground, and might think it worth setting their archers to watch for an unwary head.”

  “How if they set fire to the tower and burn us out?” wondered Yves, trembling as much with excitement as fear.

  “They’re no such fools. They could not, without setting the hall ablaze with it. Moreover, why be in haste to do anything, when they know we cannot break out? Here in the cold or in a cell below, they have us cornered. At as this moment, true enough. You and I, Messire Yves Hugonin, have some thinking of our own to do.” He cocked his head, raising a hand for silence, to listen to the babel of voices below, which had sunk into a low, conspiratorial muttering. “They grow content. We’re securely trapped up here, they’ll leave us to freeze. They’re needed below, all that’s wanted here is a couple of men to watch our only way out. They can wait to flay us.”

  The prospect did not seem to dismay him at all, he stated it serenely. Below them the hum of consultation receded and stilled. He had judged accurately, Alain le Gaucher knew how to concentrate on what was most urgent, and needed all his company to man his stockade. Let his prisoners, lords though they might be of a tower-top some dozen or so paces square, enjoy their lordship until it chilled them into helplessness, and if need be, killed them. Whatever they did, they could not get away.

  A wary, suspicious stillness fell below. And the cold, no question of it, was biting sharply, congealing into the deepest, darkest and deadliest of the night.

  The young man eased from his braced listening, and turned to reach a long arm towards the boy. “Come close, let’s share what warmth we have. Come! In a while we may move, but now we’ll hold down the lid together over hell a little longer. While we consider what to do next.”

  Yves wriggled thankfully along the ladder and was drawn warmly into the embracing arm. They settled together until they found mutual ease, and fitted snugly into one comforting mass. Yves drew breath deep into him, and leaned his cheek almost shyly into this admired and welcoming shoulder.

  “You know me, sir,” he said hesitantly. “I do not know you.”

  “You shall, Yves, you shall. I had no leisure until now to present myself respectfully to your lordship. To any but you, my friend, I am Robert, son to one of the foresters of Clee Forest. To you…” He turned his head to meet the boy’s round-eyed, earnest stare, and smiled. “To you I can freely be what I really am, if you can keep a blank face and a still tongue when needed. I am one of the newest and least of the esquires of your uncle, Laurence d’Angers, and my name is Olivier de Bretagne. My lord is waiting anxiously in Gloucester for news of you. I am sent to find you, and I have found you. And be sure, I will not now lose you again.”

  Yves sat speechless, lost between bewilderment, joy and apprehension. “Truly? My uncle sent you to find us and take us to him? They did tell me in Bromfield that he was seeking us—my sister and me.” The thought of Ermina made him tremble and falter, for what was the use of being found while she remained lost? “She—my sister… She left us! I don’t know where she is!” It ended in a forlorn wisp of sound.

  “Ah, but I have the better of you there,
for I do know! Make your mind easy about Ermina. She is safe and well in the Bromfield you abandoned. True, believe me! Would I lie to you? I myself took her there to join you, only to find before ever we reached the gate that you were away again on a quest of your own.”

  “I couldn’t help it, I had to go…”

  It was almost too much to take in, so suddenly. Yves gulped down wonder and grew coherent. Now that he need no longer worry and grieve over Ermina’s fate, whatever the perils hanging over his own, he recoiled for support into resentment against her for ever bringing him and so many others to this pass. “You don’t knew her! She won’t be bidden,” he warned indignantly. “When she finds I’m gone she may do anything! It was she who caused all this, and if the fit takes her she’ll fly off again on some made folly. You don’t know her as I do!”

  He thought it an innocent stranger’s over-confidence that Olivier laughed, however softly and amiably. “She’ll be bidden! Never fret, she’ll be waiting in Bromfield. But I think you have a story to tell me, before I tell mine. Heave it off your heart! You may, we had better not move from here yet. I hear someone stirring below.” Yves had heard nothing. “You left Worcester a fugitive, that I know, and how your sister left you, and why, that I know, too. She has told me, and made no secret of it. And if it please you to know the best, no, she is not married, nor like to be yet, but thinks herself well out of a foolish mistake. And now what of you, after her going?”

  Yves nestled into the rough homespun shoulder, and poured out the whole of it, from his first wanderings in the forest to the remembered comfort and kindness of Father Leonard and Brother Cadfael at Bromfield, the tragedy of Sister Hilaria, and the desperate sally after poor, possessed Elyas.

  “And I left him there, never thinking…” Yves shrank from remembering the words Brother Elyas had spoken, as they lay side by side in the night. That was something he could not share, even with this admirable being. “I’m afraid for him. But I did leave the door unbarred. Do you think they would find him? In good time?”