Virgin in the Ice Read Online Free PDF

countryside like their own palms. A stranger would have had to lie up somewhere and wait till he could see his way. In these drifts, and with such a wind blowing, and the snow so dry and fine, paths appear and vanish twice in a day or more. You could walk a mile, and think you knew every landmark, and see nothing you recognized on the way back.”
    “And this sick man of ours—no one knows him here?”
    Prior Leonard stared startled and embarrassed surprise. “Why, yes! Did I never make that plain? Well, my messenger was enlisted in great haste, there was no time to make a long tale of it. Yes, this is a Benedictine brother of Pershore, who came on an errand from his abbot. We have been treating with them for a finger-bone of Saint Eadburga, whose relics, as you know, they possess, and this is the brother who was entrusted with bringing it here to us in its reliquary. He delivered it safely some days ago. The night of the first of the month he arrived here, and stayed to witness the offices when we installed it.”
    “Then how,” demanded Cadfael, gaping, “did he come to be picked out of the snow and brought back to you naked only a day or two later? You’re surely grown somewhat careless with your guests, Leonard!”
    “But he left us, Cadfael! The day before yesterday he said he must prepare to leave early in the morning, and be on his way. And as soon as he had breakfasted yesterday he left, and I do assure you, well provided for the first part of his journey. We know no more than you how he came to be stricken down still so close to us, and you see he cannot yet speak, to make all plain. Where he had been between yesterday’s dawn and the thick of the night no one knows, but certainly not where he was found, or we should be tolling for him, not trying to heal him.”
    “Howbeit, at least you know him. How much do you know of him? He gave you a name?”
    The prior hoisted bony shoulders. What does a name tell about a man? “His name is Elyas. I think, though he never said, not long in the cloister. A taciturn man—in particular, I think, he would not speak of himself. He did eye the weather somewhat anxiously. We thought it natural, since he had to brave the way home, but now I fancy there was more in it than that, for he did say something of a party he had left by Foxwood, coming from Cleobury, some people he encountered there in flight from Worcester, and urged to come here with him for safety, but they would push on over the hills for Shrewsbury. The girl, he said, was resolute, and she called the tune.”
    “Girl?” Cadfael stiffened erect, ears pricked. “There was a girl holding the rein?”
    “So it seemed.” Leonard blinked in surprise at such interest in the phenomenon.
    “Did he say who else was in her company? Was there a boy spoken of? And a nun in charge of them?” He realized ruefully the folly of any such attitude to this relationship. It was the girl who called the tune!
    “No, he never told us more. But I did think he was anxious about them, for you see, the snow came after he reached us, and over those bleak hills… He might well wonder.”
    “You think he may have gone to seek them? To find assurance they had made the crossing safely, and were on a passable way to Shrewsbury? It would not be so far aside from his way.”
    “It could be so,” said Leonard, and was mute, searching Cadfael’s face with a worried frown, waiting for enlightenment.
    “I wonder, I wonder if he found them—if he was bringing them here for refuge!” He was talking to himself, for the prior was left astray, patiently regarding him. And if he was, thought Cadfael silently, what, in God’s name, had become of them now? Their only helper and protector battered senseless and left for dead, and those three, where? But as yet there was no proof that these were the hapless Hugonins and their young nun. Many poor souls, girls among them, had fled from the despoiled city of Worcester.
    Headstrong girls, who