The Virgin in the Ice
Edith Pargeter
 In November 1139, the Empress's armies have attacked and pillaged Worcester. Among the many who fled the city were two noble children in the Benedictine Order's care: Yves Hugonin and his sister Ermina. A young nun, Sister Hilaria, who was Ermina's tutor, was with them. They have since vanished. The children's uncle, Laurence d'Angers, who has recently returned from the Holy Land to enter the Empress's service, seeks leave to enter the King's lands to search for them, but he is refused permission by the King's officer in Shrewsbury, Sheriff Gilbert Prestcote. Prestcote promises instead to find them and send them to safety. As the first snowstorms of winter sweep the countryside, Prior Leonard of the Benedictine Priory at Bromfield near Ludlow asks for Brother Cadfael of Shrewsbury Abbey, a worldly-wise monk who has been on Crusade and lived for years in Syria and who is a skilled physician and apothecary, to tend a monk who has been waylaid by robbers, beaten and stabbed and left for dead in the snow. At Bromfield, the injured man, Brother Elyas, babbles about a party of refugees which might well be those sought. Cadfael rides out into the snow-covered countryside to search for them and finds one of the children, thirteen year old Yves, sheltering with a forester. As they ride back to Bromfield through the evening, Yves tells Cadfael that he, Ermina and Sister Hilaria, had been staying at the smallholding of John Druel, a relative of Ermina's childhood nurse. The headstrong Ermina eloped with a lover some nights previously. When Yves tried to pursue them, he became lost in the woods. Sister Hilaria is presumably safe with Druel. Cadfael dismounts to lead the horse across a frozen stream, and sees the body of a young woman frozen into the ice. Fearing it is that of Ermina, he conceals his discovery from Yves. At Bromfield, Cadfael finds that his friend, Deputy Sheriff Hugh Beringar, has arrived to help search for the missing children, and reports his distressing find to him. The next morning, the body is retrieved from the ice and brought to the chapel at Bromfield. As the body thaws, Cadfael sees that it is not dark of hair and eye, as Ermina was described, but fair. There is blood on the corpse, from whoever presumably ravished and smothered her. Yves enters the chapel unexpectedly, and to his horror, recognises the corpse as that of Sister Hilaria. Cadfael and Beringar go to Druel's smallholding and find that it has been looted and burned by brigands, though Druel escaped to the nearby village of Cleeton. He relates that his place was attacked on the night of the first blizzards, but Sister Hilaria had left in Brother Elyas's company a few hours before. The villagers also tell Beringar that a stranger, dressed as a common woodsman but with a sword concealed under his cloak, later came to Cleeton, asking after the children and the nun. Beringar hears from Ludlow that on the night Druel's place was sacked, the brigands attacked other settlements, committing indiscriminate murder. Cadfael surmises that they met Elyas and Hilaria on their way, murdered Hilaria and left Elyas for dead. Yet another settlement which was attacked even before that night was the manor of Callowleas, which belonged to Evrard Boterel, Ermina's lover. Most of its inhabitants were killed, but Beringar finds evidence that Boterel and Ermina were able to escape to the manor of Ledwyche, which Boterel also holds. At Ledwyche, Boterel tells Beringar, Cadfael and Yves that after their flight from Callowleas, Ermina was frantic with worry for Yves and left Ledwyche in the snowstorm to search for him. Boterel rode out after her into the blizzard, but already had a knife wound in the shoulder and collapsed from the wound. That night, another snowstorm blows up. While Cadfael and the brothers of Bromfield are at Compline, Yves stays with Brother Elyas, who is recovering, although disoriented. When Yves tells him that Sister Hilaria is dead, Elyas becomes distressed and walks purposefully out of the priory, into the storm, wearing only his habit. Yves pursues him, but cannot turn him back. They reach a shepherd's hut, where Elyas appears to confess in a fit of grief to despoiling and murdering Hilaria. As dawn breaks, Yves hears noises nearby and goes to seek help, but runs into the arms of the brigands. As he is obviously noble and worth a ransom, they take him prisoner, tied by a halter to a pack horse laden with plunder from yet another village they have destroyed. Yves leaves a trail in the new-fallen snow for others to follow, by puncturing a skin full of red wine and letting it drip slowly. That same dawn, Ermina Hugonin arrives at Bromfield Priory, escorted by the handsome stranger, who vanishes before anyone but Cadfael sees him. Ermina quickly learns of Sister Hilaria's death, and is stricken with guilt that her reckless conduct led indirectly to it. Cadfael tells her that Hilaria's ravisher and murderer alone must bear the guilt and penalty of the act. Ermina recovers and also tells Cadfael that the stranger who helped her is Olivier de Bretagne, a Syrian-born squire in her uncle's service, masquerading as a local forester's son. She no longer loves Boterel, and is clearly smitten with Olivier. As the search for Yves and Elyas begins, Cadfael wonders what purpose Elyas had in mind when he walked into the blizzard, and asks to be taken to the spot where Elyas was first found injured. He then goes to where Sister Hilaria's body was found, more than a mile away, and is puzzled that anyone, least of all bandits who have left their other victims where they fell, should carry a corpse so far to conceal it. He finds the nearby hut, where there are signs that Yves and Elyas sheltered there during the night, but are now gone. Inside, concealed under a heap of straw, Cadfael also finds Hilaria's wimple and habit, which are stained with blood from her attacker, and Elyas's cloak. Casting about for Yves's or Elyas's tracks, he finds those of the brigands, marked by the trail of wine drops left by Yves. He follows the trail, and discovers that the brigands have built a rough fort on top of Titterstone Clee Hill. The next morning, Cadfael guides Hugh Beringar's armed men to the fort. They attack, but the brigands' leader, who is recognised as a mercenary named Alain le Gaucher, forces them to draw back by holding a knife to Yves's throat. Yves is left on top of the fort's tower. As night falls, Olivier de Bretagne makes his way to the tower by stealth and overcomes the brigand guarding Yves. When he and Yves try to escape, they are detected and forced to return to the tower. Yves realises that Beringar and Cadfael cannot be far away, and beats a helmet and sword together to alert them that he is no longer menaced by Le Gaucher. Beringar and his men attack again, and set fire to the fort. As the fire threatens Yves and Olivier, they try to break out, but Yves collides with le Gaucher and is taken hostage again. Brother Elyas wanders into the battle and confronts le Gaucher who, unnerved by the sight of a man he thought he had left dead, lets go of Yves. Olivier then kills le Gaucher in single combat before disappearing. Cadfael takes the wounded back to Bromfield. Yves tells him of Elyas's apparent confession. With his knowledge of men and the discovery of the hidden cloak, Cadfael establishes that when Elyas and Hilaria sheltered together in the hut, Elyas, tormented by desire, left her alone but with his cloak for warmth. He was himself attacked by le Gaucher's men a mile away. Elyas is now wracked with guilt for abandoning Hilaria to her fate, unable to fully protect her or to master himself. Evrard Boterel arrives at Bromfield to reclaim a stolen horse. Cadfael invites him into the chapel to pray for the dead. Inside, Ermina confronts him, dressed in Hilaria's wimple and habit, and frightens him into confessing to Hilaria's murder. She then tells Cadfael and Beringar that she turned against Boterel when he fled in terror from Callowleas rather than defend his people against the brigands. When Boterel then tried to take her by force rather than lose the lands she would bring him as a wife, she wounded him with a knife, and hid in the woods. She saw Boterel ride out to search for her and return, and now knows that it was he who came upon Sister Hilaria alone in the hut and raped and murdered her in a rage against Ermina herself. Her realization is confirmed by Cadfael's observations, matching the blood stains on Hilaria's body with Boterel's wound. Ermina has let Cadfael know that Olivier will come for her and Yves after Compline. When Olivier arrives, Cadfael suggests waiting until Matins, when they can leave undetected. While Cadfael and Olivier wait together, Olivier tells of his early years in Syria and of his mother, Mariam. Cadfael realises that Olivier is his own son. Elyas is recovering his peace of mind, Hilaria's murderer is in prison, the brigands are exterminated and Yves and Ermina are on their way to their uncle's care. With their respective tasks accomplished, Beringar and Cadfael return to Shrewsbury, with Cadfael in a daze.