Virgin in the Ice Read Free

the rest, could not believe that anything would come of such inquiry. He had spent much of his time, in recent days, helping Brother Edmund house and doctor the exhausted travellers, and never a word had been said of any such trio encountered on the way. Travellers’ tales enough there had been, freely spilled for the listening, but none of a Benedictine sister and two noble children loose on the roads with never a man to guard them.
    And the uncle, it seemed, was the empress’s man, as Gilbert Prestcote was the king’s man, to the hilt and bitterness between the factions was flaring up like a torch in tinder over the sack of Worcester. The omens were not good. Abbot Radulfus would lend his own persuasions to the envoy’s, and this very day, too, but what countenance the two of them would get for Laurence d’Angers was a dubious speculation.
    The sheriff received his petitioners courteously and gravely in his own apartment in the castle, and listened with an impassive face to the story Herward had to tell. A sombre man, black-browed and black-bearded, and his natural cast of countenance rather forbidding than reassuring, but for all that a fair-minded man in his stern fashion, and one who stood by his word and his men, provided they kept the standards he demanded of them. “I am sorry,” he said when Herward had done, “to hear of this loss, and sorrier still that I must tell you at once you will be seeking your party in vain here in Shrewsbury. Since this attack took place I have had word brought to me of every soul from Worcester who has entered the town, and these three are not among them. Many have already left again for home, now that his Grace has reinforced the garrison in Worcester. If, as you say, the uncle of these children has now returned to England, and is a man of substance, can he not undertake the search in person?”
    It was Herward’s weakness that he had withheld, up to that point, all but the name of that nobleman, putting off the evil moment. And as yet the name meant nothing, beyond a knight with the credit or the Crusade shedding lustre upon him, newly arrived from the Holy Land, where a relatively secure peace held at this time. But no help for it, the truth would out.
    “My lord,” owned Herward, sighing, “Laurence d’Angers is willing and anxious to make search for his nephew and niece, but for that he requires your countenance, or the special dispensation of his Grace the king. For he returned home as an Angevin owing allegiance to the Empress Maud, and had attached himself and his men to her forces at Gloucester.” He hurried on, to have all said while speech was allowed him, for the sheriff’s level brows had drawn together into a steely bar above eyes now narrowed and bright in understanding. “He had not arrived in Gloucester until a week after the attack, he took no part in it, knew nothing of it, cannot be held responsible for it. He came only to discover that his kin were lost, and all his desire is to find them and see them into safety. But it is impossible for a man of Gloucester to come near Worcester now, or to enter the king’s lands except by special safe-conduct.”
    “So you,” said Prestcote after a daunting pause, “are acting on his behalf—the king’s enemy.”
    “With respect, my lord,” said Herward with spirit, “I am acting on behalf of a young girl and a boy of tender years, who have done nothing to make them enemies to king or empress. I am not concerned with faction, only with the fate of two children who were in the charge of our order until this evil befell. Is it not natural that we should feel responsible for them, and do all we can in conscience to find them?”
    “Natural enough,” allowed the sheriff dryly, “and moreover, as a man of Worcester yourself you’re hardly likely to feel any great warmth towards the king’s enemies, or want to give them aid or comfort.”
    “We suffered from them, like the rest of Worcester, my lord. King