Read Virgin in the Ice for Free Online Page A

face, it seemed, he knew. His lips parted, and a husky whisper emerged, questioning but hopeful:
    “Father Prior…?”
    “Here, brother,” said Leonard soothingly. “You are here with us, safe in Bromfield. Rest and gather strength, you have been badly hurt, but here you are in shelter, among friends. Trouble for nothing… ask for whatever you need.”
    “Bromfield…” whispered Elyas, frowning. “I had an errand to that place,” he said, troubled, and tried to raise his head from the pillow. “The reliquary… oh, not lost…?”
    “You brought it faithfully,” said Leonard. “It is here on the altar of our church, you kept vigil with us when we installed it. Do you not remember? Your errand was done well. All that was required of you, you performed.”
    “But how… My head hurts…” The sighing voice faded, the dark brows drew together in mingled anxiety and pain. “What is this weighs on me? How am I come to this?”
    They told him, with cautious gentleness, how he had gone forth again from the priory, to make his way home to his own abbey of Pershore, and how he had been brought back broken and battered and abandoned for dead. At the name of Pershore he grasped gladly, there he knew he belonged, and from there he remembered he had set forth to bring Saint Eadburga’s finger-bone to Bromfield, avoiding the perilous route by Worcester. Even Bromfield itself came back to him gradually. But of what had befallen him after his departure he knew nothing. Whoever had so misused him, they were gone utterly from his disturbed mind. Cadfael leaned to him, urging gently:
    “You did not meet them again? The girl and boy who would press on over the hills to Godstoke? Foolish, but the girl would go, and her younger brother could not persuade her…”
    “What girl and boy were these?” wondered Elyas blankly, and drew his drawn brows more painfully close.
    “And a nun—do you not recall a nun who travelled with them?”
    He did not. The effort at recall caused him agitation, he dragged at memory and produced only the panic desperation of failure, and in his wandering state failure was guilt. All manner of undischarged obligations drifted elusive behind his haunted eyes, and could not be captured. Sweat broke on his forehead, and Cadfael wiped it gently away.
    “Never fret, but lie still and leave all to God, and under God, to us. Your part was done well, you may take your rest.”
    They tended his bodily needs, anointed his wounds and grazes, fed him a broth made from their austere stores of meat for the infirmary, with herbs and oatmeal, read the office with him before bed, and still, by the knotting of his brows, Brother Elyas pursued the memories that fled him and would not be snared. In the night, in the low hours when the spirit either crosses or draws back from the threshold of the world, the sleeper was shaken by recollection and dream together. But his utterances then were broken and mumbled, and so clearly painful to his progress that Cadfael, who had reserved to himself that most perilous watch, bent his energies all to soothing away the torment from his patient’s mind, and easing him back into healthful sleep. Cadfael was relieved before dawn, and Elyas slept. The body rallied and healed. The mind wandered and shunned remembrance.
    Cadfael slept until noon, and arose to find his patient at rest in wakefulness as he had not been in sleep, very docile, without much pain, and well tended by an elderly brother with long experience of nursing the sick. The day was clear, and the light would last well. Though the frost was unbroken, and without doubt there would be fresh snow in the night, at this hour the sun and the remaining hours of daylight tempted.
    “He’s well enough cared for.” said Cadfael to the prior. “I may leave him for a few hours with an easy mind. That horse of mine is rested now, and the ways none so bad until the next fall comes or the wind rises. I’ll ride as far as Godstoke,