“I have already made my dispositions,” Hugh assured him with grim satisfaction, “with that in mind. There’s a great swathe of upland there, some of it forested, some of it rock, and bleak as death, too barren even for sheep. The workable manors there go no higher than Druel’s homestead, and even there nest in the sheltered places. Tomorrow at first light I’m going out with Dinan to follow that same line the boy took, and see if I can find what he lost himself seeking, the manor where the girl was taken. First, if we can, let’s get her safe out of it. Then we may go after this challenger who spits in the face of law, with no hostages at stake.”
“But leave the boy here!” said Cadfael, more peremptorily than he had intended.
Hugh looked down at him with a wry and burdened smile. “We shall be away before ever he opens his eyes. Do you think I dare risk confronting him with another and dearer corpse, with your fierce eye on me? No, if luck’s with us we’ll bring him his sister, either intact or a wife irreclaimable, and they shall fight it out between them, he, she and the lover! If luck turns her back on us?well, then you may be needed. But once this girl’s well out of it, this burden is mine, and you may take care of your patient and sit quietly at home.”
Cadfael watched the night through with Brother Elyas, and got nothing more for his pains than he had known already. The barrier remained immovable. When a dutiful brother came to relieve him, he went to his bed, and slept as soon as he lay down. He had the gift. There was no profit in laying awake fretting for what would, in any case, have to be faced on awaking, and he had long ago sloughed off the unprofitable. It took too much out of a man, of what would be needed hereafter.
He awoke only when he was roused by Prior Leonard, which was in the early afternoon, a couple of hours at least after he had intended to be up and doing. By which time Hugh was back from his foray into the hills, and tramped in weary and bleak of countenance to share a late dinner, and report the fruits of his labors.
“There is a manor known as Callowleas, a quarter-circle round the flank of Clee from Druel’s place, and much on the same level.” Hugh paused to frown over his own choice of words. “There was such a manor! It has been wiped out, drained, filleted like a fish. What we found was Druel’s homestead over again, but to another degree. This was a thriving manor, and now it’s a snowy waste, a number of bodies buried or frozen there, nothing living left to speak. We’ve brought back the first of the dead into Ludlow, and left men breaking out others from the drifts. No telling how many they’ll find. By the covering of snow, I should judge this raid took place even before the frost set in.”
“Do you tell me?” Cadfael sat staring, appalled. “Then before the raids of which we already know, and before our little nun was killed, and Brother Elyas reduced to his haunted condition he lies in now. Now you have your finger on a fixed place, is there a name and a lord to go with it? Dinan will know all these tenants who hold from him, and it must be his writ, the old Lacy writ, that runs there.”
“It is. The manor of Callowleas is held from him by a young man who came into his father’s honor only two years ago. Of suitable fortune, person, and age, yes. His name is Evrard Boterei. Not a great family, but respected. By many tokens, he may well be the man.”
“And this place lies in the right direction? The way the girl fled with her lover?” It was a grim reflection, but Hugh shook his head emphatically at despondency.
“Ah, but wait! Nothing’s certain yet, Yves could not name the man. But even if it is so?as I believe it must be?no need yet to bury the girl. For Dinan pointed out that Boterel also holds the manor of Ledwyche, down in the valley of the Dogditch brook, and there’s a good downhill track continues on that way from Callowleas, into forest, and thick forest at that. A little over three miles between the two holdings. We followed it a short way, though I own I had little hope of finding any traces, even if some of the household had escaped the slaughter that way. We had better fortune that I expected, or maybe deserved. Look, this is what I found!”
He drew it out from the breast of his cotte, and held it up over his fist, a net of fine gold filigree threads on a band of embroidered ribbon, made to pass round the head when the hair was netted, and tie over the brow. The bow in which it had been tied had been dragged askew, but not undone, for the band had torn apart a little aside from it.
“Caught in thick woodland, well down the path. They were in haste, whoever rode that way, they cut through a dense thicket to come the quickest way down the slope, there were broken twigs hanging to bear witness. I say they, but I fancy one horse only, with two riders. A low branch caught and dragged this from her head. And since that gives us every hope that the wearer got away safely from that terror, we may very well show this to Yves, and say how it was found. If he knows it for hers, then I’m bound for Ledwyche, to see if luck’s still on our side.”
There was no hesitation. The moment Yves set eyes on the handful of gold cobweb, his eyes opened wide and grew luminous with hope and eagerness.
“That is my sister’s!” he said, shining. “It was too fine for the journey, but I know she had it with her. For him she might wear it! Where did you find it?”
Chapter Six
This time they took Yves with them, partly because, though he might have accepted Hugh’s fiat gracefully if refused, he would have been restless and miserable all the time of waiting, and partly because, in addition to being the only one who could positively identify Ermina’s suitor when found, he was indeed the man of his blood here, the head of his household, and had every right to partake in the search for his lost sister, now they knew she should be well alive.
“But this is the same way we came down from Thurstan’s assart,” he said, after they had turned off the highroad by the bridge over the Corve. “Must we continue so?”
“We must, for some while. Well past the place where you and I would as soon not be,” said Cadfael simply, divining his unease. “But we need not turn our eyes away. There is nothing evil there. Neither earth nor water nor air have any part in man’s ill-doing.” And with an attentive but cautious eye on the boy’s grave face he said: “You may grieve, but you must not begrudge that she is gone. Her welcome is assured.”
“She was, of all of us, the only best,” said Yves, abruptly eloquent. “You don’t know! Never out of temper, always patient and kind and very brave. She was much more beautiful than Ermina!”
He was thirteen, but taught and gifted, perhaps, somewhat beyond his years, and he had gone afoot in Sister Hilaria’s gallant and gentle company many days, close and observant. And if he had glimpsed for the first time a mature kind of love, surely it had been a most innocent and auspicious kind, even now after the apparent mutilation of loss. Yves had come to no harm. In the past two days he seemed to have grown in stature, and taken several long strides away from his infancy.
He did not avert his eyes when they came to the brook, but he was silent, and so remained until after they had crossed the second brook also; but from that point they veered to the right, and came into open woodland, and the new vistas revived his interest in the world about him, and brightened his eyes again. The brief winter sunlight, which had again drawn down slender icicles from eaves and branches, was already past, but the light was clear and the air still, and the patterns of black and white and dusky greens had their own somber beauty.
