Brother Cadfael 06: A Virgin In The Ice by Ellis Peters Page B

here, a brown homespun man. Not so much as thirty years old, nearer five or six and twenty. Bigger than your lordship, but built like you, light and long. And dark, a black-rimmed eye on him with a yellow glint, like a hawk. And black hair under his hood."
    The women had drawn closer in silence, quiet-eyed and prick-eared. Their interest in the stranger was all the plainer because not one of them voiced it, or volunteered any detail concerning him. Whoever he was, he had made an impression upon the women of Cleeton, and they did not mean to miss anything they could glean about him, or surrender anything they had already gleaned.
    "Dark-skinned," said Druel, "and beaked like a hawk, too. A very comely man." Yes, so the attentive eyes of the women said. "There was something a thought slow about his speech, now I come to recall ..."
    Hugh took him up alertly on that. "As though he were not at home in the common English?"
    John had not thought of that for himself; he considered it stolidly. "It might be that. Or as if he had a small stumble of the tongue, like."
    Well, if English was not his proper tongue, what was? Welsh? Easily possible here along the borders, but what would a Welshman be doing asking after the fugitives from Worcester? Angevin, then? Ah, that was another matter.
    "If ever you should hear or see more of him," said Hugh, "send me word into Ludlow or Bromfield, and you shall not be losers. And for you, friend, let's own honestly there's little chance of recovering all or most of your losses, but some of your stock we may yet win back for you if we can trace these outlaws to their lair. We'll do our best to that end, be sure."
    He wheeled his horse, and led the way towards the downward track, the others following, but he did not hurry, for one of the young women had drawn off in that direction, and was eyeing him meaningly over her shoulder. As Hugh came by she closed alongside, and laid a hand to his stirrup-leather. She knew what she was about, she had moved far enough to be out of earshot of the village.
    "My lord ..." She looked up at him with sharp blue eyes, and spoke in a purposeful undertone. "One more thing I can tell you about the dark man, that no one else saw. I said no word, for fear they would close up against him if they knew. He was a very well-looking man, I trusted him, even if he was not what he seemed ..."
    "In what particular?" asked Hugh, just as quietly.
    "He kept his cloak close about him, my lord, and in the cold that was no marvel. But when he went away I followed a little, and I saw how the folds hung at his left side. Country lad or no, he wore a sword."
    "So they went from here together," said Yves, as they rode down towards the highroad, where they must haste if they were to use the remainder of the daylight. He had been very silent, struggling with revelations that seemed only to make the pattern of events more complex and entangled. "He came back to look for us all, and found only Sister Hilaria. It was evening already, they would be caught in the darkness and the snow. And these same robbers and murderers who have ruined poor John must have attacked them, and left them both for dead."
    "So it would seem," said Hugh sombrely. "We have a plague among us that needs burning out before it spreads. But what are we to make of this simple countryman who wore a sword under his cloak?"
    "And asking after us!" Yves recalled, marvelling. "But I know no one like that."
    "What like was the young lord who took away your sister?"
    "Not black, nor like a hawk, rather fair-skinned, and fair in the hair, too. And besides, even if he came seeking the two of us she'd left behind, he would not come up from the highroad, not according to the way we set off when I followed them. And he would not come dressed as a peasant, either. Nor alone."
    All of which was shrewd sense. There were, of course, other possibilities. The men of Gloucester, elated by their gains, might well be sending agents in disguise into