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nothing about that winter journey that Cadfael would ever forget. It was
hardly a year and a half past, the attack on the city of Worcester, the flight
of brother and sister northwards towards Shrewsbury, through the worst weather
for many a year. Laurence d’Angers had been but a name in the business, as he
was now in this. An adherent of the Empress Maud, he had been denied leave to
enter King Stephen’s territory to search for his young kin, but he had sent a
squire in secret to find and fetch them away. To have borne a hand in the
escape of those three was something to remember lifelong. All three arose
living before Cadfael’s mind’s eye, the boy Yves, thirteen years old then,
ingenuous and gallant and endearing, jutting a stubborn Norman chin at danger,
his elder sister Ermina, newly shaken into womanhood and resolutely shouldering
the consequences of her own follies. And the third…
    “I
have often wondered,” said Hugh thoughtfully, “how they fared afterwards. I
knew you would get them off safely, if I left it to you, but it was still a
perilous road before them. I wonder if we shall ever get word. Some day the
world will surely hear of Yves Hugonin.” At the thought of the boy he smiled
with affectionate amusement. “And that dark lad who fetched them away, he who
dressed like a woodsman and fought like a paladin… I fancy you knew more of him
than ever I got to know.”
    Cadfael
smiled into the glow of the brazier and did not deny it. “So his lord is there
in the empress’s train, is he? And this knight who was killed was in d’Angers’
service? That was a very ill thing, Hugh.”
    “So
Abbot Radulfus thinks,” said Hugh sombrely.
    “In
the dusk and in confusion—and all got clean away, even the one who used the
knife. A foul thing, for surely that was no chance blow. The clerk Christian
escaped out of their hands, yet one among them turned on the rescuer before he
fled. It argues a deal of hate at being thwarted, to have ventured that last
moment before running. And is it left so? And Winchester full of those who
should most firmly stand for justice?”
    “Why,
some among them would surely have been well enough pleased if that bold clerk
had spilled his blood in the gutter, as well as the knight. Some may well have
set the hunt on him.”
    “Well
for the empress’s good name,” said Cadfael, “that there was one at least of her
men stout enough to respect an honest opponent, and stand by him to the death.
And shame if that death goes unpaid for.”
    “Old
friend,” said Hugh ruefully, rising to take his leave, “England has had to
swallow many such a shame these last years. It grows customary to sigh and
shrug and forget. At which, as I know, you are a very poor hand. And I have
seen you overturn custom more than once, and been glad of it. But not even you
can do much now for Rainald Bossard, bar praying for his soul. It is a very
long way from here to Winchester.”
    “It
is not so far,” said Cadfael, as much to himself as to his friend, “not by many
a mile, as it was an hour since.”
     
    He
went to Vespers, and to supper in the refectory, and thereafter to Collations
and Compline, and all with one remembered face before his mind’s eye, so that
he paid but fractured attention to the readings, and had difficulty in
concentrating his thoughts on prayer. Though it might have been a kind of
prayer he was offering throughout, in gratitude and praise and humility.
    So
suave, so young, so dark and vital a face, startling in its beauty when he had
first seen it over the girl’s shoulder, the face of the young squire sent to
bring away the Hugonin children to their uncle and guardian. A long, spare,
wide-browed face, with a fine scimitar of a nose and a supple bow of a mouth,
and the fierce, fearless, golden eyes of a hawk. A head capped closely with
curving, blue-black hair, coiling crisply at his temples and clasping his
cheeks