many a cock has got his neck wrung for crowing too loud.”
Yves shifted a little to ease his pain, drew deep breath to have his voice steady, and got out his name. This was no time for the stupidity of heroism, not even for obstinate insistence on his dignity.
“My name is Yves Hugonin. My family is noble.”
The hands released him. The bearded man leaned back in his chair at ease. His face had not changed, he had not been at all angry; anger had little part in his proceedings, which were entirely cold. Predatory beasts feel no animosity against their prey, and no compunction, either.
“A Hugonin, eh? And what were you doing, Yves Hugonin, where we found you, alone in the early morning of such a winter day?”
“I was trying to find my way to Ludlow,” said Yves. He rose from his knees and shook his disordered hair back from his face. Not a word must be said of anyone but himself; he picked his way delicately between truth and falsehood.”! was at school with the monks in Worcester. When the town was attacked they sent me away to escape the fighting and slaughter there. I was with some other people, trying to reach any safe town, but in the storms we were separated. Country people have fed and sheltered me, and I was making my way to Ludlow as best I could.”
He hoped it sounded convincing. He did not want to have to invent details. He still recalled with misgivings the shout of laughter it had provoked when he mentioned the manor of Whitbache, and claimed residence there, and wondered uneasily why.
“Where did you spend last night, then? Not in the open!”
“In a hut in the fields. I thought I should get to Ludlow before night, but when the snow came on, and I lost my way. When the wind dropped and it stopped snowing,” he said, talking to evade further probing, “I set out again. And then I heard you, and thought you might set me right.”
The bearded man considered, eyeing him with the disturbing smile that contained merriment without warmth. “And here you are, with a stout roof over your head, a good fire at your back, and food and drink for you if you behave yourself seemly. There’s a price, of course, to pay for your bed and board. Hugonin! And Worcester … Are you son to that Geoffrey Hugonin who died a few years back? The most of his lands, I recall, lay in that shire.”
“I’m his son and his heir, if ever I come to it.”
“Ah! There should be no difficulty, then, in paying for your entertainment.” The narrowed eyes gleamed satisfaction. “Who stands guardian to your lordship now? And why did he let you go stravaging off into the winter so poorly provided, and alone?”
“He was only newly arrived in England from the Holy Land, he knew nothing of it. If you send now, you may hear of him in Gloucester, he is of the empress’s party.” The lion shrugged that off indifferently. In the civil war he belonged to neither side, and cared nothing which side others chose. He had set up his own party, and acknowledged no other. But certainly he would extort ransom as cheerfully from one as from the other. “His name is Laurence d’Angers,” said Yves, “my mother’s brother.” That name was known, and welcomed with satisfaction. “He will pay handsomely to have me back,” said Yves.
“So sure?” The bearded man laughed. “Uncles are not always to anxious to ransom nephews who will one day come into great estates. Some have been known to prefer to leave them unredeemed, to be hustled out of the world as unprofitable, and come into the inheritance themselves.”
“He would not come into my inheritance,” said Yves. “I have a sister, and she is not here in this extreme.” It pierced him with sudden renewed dismay that he did not know where she was at this moment, and her situation might be just as dire as his own, but he kept his voice steady and his countenance wooden. “And my uncle is an honorable man,” he said stiffly. “He will ransom me and never grudge it. So he gets me back alive and undamaged,” he added emphatically.
“Complete to every hair,” said the lion, laughing, “if the price is right.” He gestured to the fellow who stood at Yves’ shoulder. “I put him in your charge. Feed him, let him warm himself by the fire, but if you let him slip through your fingers, your own neck pays for it. When he has eaten, lock him away safe in the tower. He’ll be worth far more than all the plunder we’ve brought from Whitbache.”
Brother Elyas awoke from the dreamless peace of sleep to the agonizing dream of waking life. It was daylight, lines of pale morning slid between the boards of the hut, cold and white. He was alone. But there had been someone else, that he remembered. There had been a boy, a boy who had kept him company sturdily, and lain by him in the hay, a warmth by his side. Now there was no one. Brother Elyas missed him. In the snow they had clung together in mutual kindness, trying to alleviate more than the cold and the cruelty of the wind. Whatever became of him, he must find the boy, and make sure that no harm should come to him. Children have a right to life, a right so many of their elders have forfeited by follies, by failures, by sins. He was outcast, but the boy was innocent and pure, and must not be surrendered to danger and death.
Elyas rose, and went to open the door. Under the eaves, where the wind had driven the snow away, leaving only a thin layer, the small footmarks showed clearly, only the powdering of a late squall clouding them. They turned right, down the slope, and there in the deeper snow a short, vigorous body had ploughed a jagged furrow, round the bank of bushes, down into the coppice of trees.
Elyas followed where the boy had led. Beyond the belt of trees there was a beaten track that crossed on an almost level course, climbing gently towards the east. Horses had passed this way, and men afoot with them, enough men to carve out a flattened road. They had come from the west. Had they taken the boy away with them towards the east? There would be no tracing one child’s passage here, but surely he had run and struggled down the slope to join them.
In his dream, which neither cold nor pain could penetrate, and only the memory of the boy could influence, Brother Elyas turned towards the east, and set out along the track the unknown company had taken. The furrow they had ploughed through barren level, even fall and drift was simple to follow, the weaving route was surely older than all the pathways here, made to render the climb equable and easy. It wound along the hillside in a long curve. Elyas had gone some three hundred paces when he saw beneath him the first splash of dark red in the white.
Someone had shed blood. Only a little blood, but a dotted line of ruby beads continued from it, and in a few moments he found another blossom of blood at his feet. The sun was rising now, pale through the mist, which lifted with the day. The red gleamed, frozen on the surface of the snow. Not even the brief noon sun would thaw it away, though the wind might spread blown snow over it. Brother Elyas followed, drop by drop along the way where someone had bled. Blood can requite blood. If someone had taken and hurt the boy, then a man already fingered by despair and death might still die to some purpose.
Immune from any further onslaughts of cold, pain and fear, on sandalled feet through frozen drifts, Brother Elyas went in search of Yves.
