Cadfael: The Virgin in the Ice

The Set-up: The story opens with Brother Oswin (Mark Charnock), Cadfael's young assistant, running in the snow with a nun. When she stumbles and tells him that she cannot go on, he assures her that she can and guides her safely to a nearby hut where they can take shelter from the storm. They huddle together for warmth, but Oswin distrusts the carnal urges which he has had and leaves her, fleeing into the night, where he is set upon by so-called bandits who beat him, stab him and leave him for dead.
Meanwhile, back at the Abbey Cadfael (Derek Jacobi) is worried over Oswin not returning and we learn soon enough that an orphaned boy and girl are missing, when Hugh Beringar is called to the Abbey to be asked by the Abbott if he would consider allowing the lost children's uncle to search for them - said uncle being a supporter of the Empress Maude. The Deputy Sheriff, Hugh Beringar (Sean Pertwee), most assuredly will not allow them onto Stephen's lands, but he will search for the children in the uncle's stead.

The Rest: Eventually the children are individually found and one of them lost again. Oswin is found, as is the nun he was with, but she is dead and has clearly been raped. The so-called bandits turn out to be some of the uncle's men who have decided to find the kids and then ransom them back to the uncle. Oswin is blamed for the nun's rape and murder, accused first by Brother Jerome (Julian Firth), but later supported by the Prior, Sheriff Beringar and for a while even by Cadfael. There is also a mysterious woodsman who helps the daughter make her way to the Abbey, and later turns out to be one of the uncle's men, but noble and true.

Commentary: Excuse me big-haired dude, but what have you done with the real Hugh Beringar? Are you perhaps hiding him under your wavy locks that are so bouncy atop your head? Seriously, I want the other actor back - the one who only smirked if it was appropriate, not every time he was on camera. My theory - at the end of the first series when Hugh gets stabbed by the Welshman, they slipped up and accidentally 'really' stabbed the actor, and he said, "Screw this! I'm outta he-ere!" Fortunately, everyone else appears to be the same. Phew.
Brother Oswin, whom I've come to think of as Brother Doofus, is really front and center in this story, for which the actor got a nice hair cut. Good for him. Brother Jerome (Julian Firth) (thanks to my "dealer", I always think of him as Brother Jack-ass) also got a hair cut, but his hair wasn't so big before. But, his hair cut has made him unhappy, and he is positively whiny in this episode. He's so whiny that Prior Jack-ass, I mean Prior Robert (Michael Culver) has to tell him to take it down a notch.
So, the woodsman turns out to be a crusader in service to the missing kids uncle. Okay, I'll buy that. He is a "half-breed", of a Syrian (that might say "Persian", but he is definitely from Syria) mother and an English father. Okay, I will also buy that, as I am sure that there were plenty of such children during the crusades. But, this self-named half-breed only comes West after his mother's death and never knew his father, only that his mother spoke highly of him, and yet some how this kid, who is actually called Olivier de Briton (or de Britaigne - hey I'm only listening not seeing these things written down so cut me some slack for Christ's sake), speaks with a perfect British accent while using perfect English. Not buying that so much. Right before he rides off into the night to deliver his two charges to their uncle, Olivier tells Cadfael about his mother and father, and through Cadfael's careful questioning, Cadfael realizes that Olivier is actually his son. What? I'll allow that Cadfael could very well have had a child with a Syrian woman, but that said child would grow up, survive storming Jerusalem as a crusader in his own right, travel West under service of his former captain, and then end up going on a secret mission to find a lost pair of children only to meet at an Abbey the one man in the whole of existence who is his father? Remember what I thought about Cadfael's before?

The Proof: There are no plants or herbs or tinctures that Brother Cadfael uses to solve this one - it's all his intuition.