Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  "Yes," he answered tentatively.

  The girl's eyes widened. "You speak," she whispered.

  It was useless to explain to someone so primitive that there were other languages besides her own, so Saladin merely shooed her away and proceeded to dress himself.

  The house was a good one, laid out in Roman style, although the floors were wood rather than mosaic tile. In the hallway a chest lay open, its top splintered. Fine clothes of Roman cut lay strewn across the floor, along with broken pieces of jewelry. Beyond it, in the large sitting room and in the atrium past that, lay scattered objects: a wax tablet, some account ledgers, cushions with the stuffing ripped out. The polished wooden floor was stained with large dark spots.

  This is the room I saw, Saladin realized. The bodies were here.

  Just then the girl beckoned to him. There was the aroma of cooking food coming from the kitchen. She led him into the dining room, where broken dishes and glassware lay all over the floor. The girl did not seem to mind the debris; she stepped carefully over it as she brought a clay pot filled with soup to the inlaid wood table. Smiling, she set a bowl in front of him and poured soup into it.

  "What is in here?" he asked suspiciously.

  She shrugged. "Roots. Herbs." She said something else that he could not understand. He poked around the pot and found the haunch of a small animal. So she had not used the human bodies, at least.

  "Where are the people?"

  "Dead. Saxons. Today. I saw them. Very lucky." She fondled the necklace she wore. "Pretty things."

  Saladin stared at her. Apparently, it had not bothered her in the least to find a house filled with murdered people. Worse, she had probably seen the attack. What sort of life had she led before moving into the woods to live like a wild animal?

  Distractedly, he turned his attention to the soup. He was hungry, and it tasted good. He drank the entire bowl without speaking, then held it out for the girl to refill.

  "What is your name?" he asked when she brought it to him.

  "Nimue," she said, pronouncing it “Nim-oo-way”.

  "Where is your family?"

  "Dead," she answered without much concern. "Long ago."

  "How did you find me?"

  She smiled at him. "I waited. I looked for a place to stay the winter, and I waited for you. Am I beautiful?"

  "Certainly not." He examined her appearance. "You're filthy."

  She frowned, puzzled. He had used the Latin word. Unfamiliar with its English equivalent, he picked up the hem of the garment she was wearing—a man's toga—and wiped her face with it. "Dirt," he said, pointing out the black smear.

  She touched her face.

  "And your hair . . . "He made a move to touch it, then recoiled. Her head was swarming with lice. "You're perfectly disgusting," he said, pushing her away.

  She fell into the corner of the room, her lips trembling. Then she stood up, emitted a loud sob, and fled.

  Saladin rolled his eyes. It was bad enough that he was doomed to die in this wilderness; but the fact that he would be spending an entire winter of his precious mortal life with a vermin-covered girl was almost more than he could bear.

  But one had to be philosophical, he reasoned. He had been fortunate to find this place at all. From the looks of things, the freshly killed inhabitants seemed to have been prosperous.

  He took a look around. There was some food left in the pantry, although it was obvious that the Saxon raiders had helped themselves to plenty. Every room had a fireplace, with piles of dry logs beside each. There was furniture, and the clothing, which was quite fine and obviously imported. There was even a wine cellar, although its stock had been completely depleted.

  Nimue ran past him, dressed once again in her rags and skins, bolting out the back entrance off the kitchen. He followed her with some amusement.

  "Are you running away?" he asked, but she did not turn around.

  As he walked back inside, he noticed the neat pile of frozen bodies stacked like logs beside the house. There was a woman, her throat cut—the lady of the house, by the looks of her elaborate hairstyle—and her husband, dressed finely, although his clothes were covered with blood. Two others appeared to be household servants. The girl must have carried them out here by herself, Saladin thought. Why, she was strong as an ox.

  He looked out over the brown grass of the fields, and was suddenly overcome by despair. There was no hope at all, he knew. The cup was in the hands of a king and would never be released. He went back inside and sank into the down-feather sofa in the room stained with blood.

  The loss of the cup had been his own mistake. He should not have taunted the barbarians with Arthur's death. He should have killed him silently, subtly, perhaps under the guise of examining him. But he had been too angry at the time to think properly. The betrayal of Merlin, who owed Saladin his life, had been a great blow.

  The cup made men into beasts. Even Merlin, the most educated and compassionate of men, had succumbed finally to its spell. Merlin had meant to kill Saladin with his magic, without the slightest compunction. To possess the cup, a man would do anything.

  Perhaps the one called the Christ had known what he held in his hands during his last supper, after all. Perhaps he had known and, because he was more than human, was able to put it aside.

  Saladin knew that he, too, should try to put it aside, or else waste what little was left of his life in idle dreaming. The king would never let the cup go. Only Merlin could gain possession of it, and Merlin belonged to the king.

  Only Merlin . . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The next sound he heard was the thundering of a horse's hoofbeats. Saladin got up, blinking hard, his hands shaking. Had the Saxon invaders returned while he dozed? Still groggy but tense with fear, he grabbed the iron poker from beside the fireplace and edged toward the door.

  The horse outside whinnied. Saladin inhaled sharply. He recognized the sound. It belonged to his own horse. Before he could move, the girl bounded into the room, whooping and gesturing wildly.

  "Come! Come!" she shouted. She was even dirtier than before, and smelled of horse.

  The stallion was lathered with sweat. It stomped its forepaw when it saw him. The girl gentled him with a touch.

  "How . . . how did you . . . "

  "I took him from the king's stable," she said proudly.

  Saladin touched the horse's glistening flank. He was unsaddled. Nimue must have ridden him bareback.

  "But the grooms. The knights . . ."

  She laughed and ran a short distance away. Then she produced a medley of strange sounds with her mouth. The stallion's ears danced. He turned and walked directly to her.

  "How on earth did you do that?" Saladin asked.

  Nimue patted the animal on the rump, urging it toward the meadow. "I can talk to all the animals," she said. "To get your horse, I just opened the door of his stall and called to him. The grooms were busy. They never even saw him leave."

  "You rode him out of the castle grounds?"

  She shook her head. "I waited in the woods for him. I rode him from there."

  "And no one saw you?"

  "No," she said, as if it were a ridiculous question. "No one ever sees me."

  Saladin laughed. "A wood sprite, that's what you are."

  She smiled at him shyly. "Do you love me now?"

  Saladin was taken aback. "Love you?"

  He hadn't meant to sound quite so incredulous. She had rescued his horse, after all. And when her face crumpled into a mask of utter dejection, Saladin felt a twinge of remorse along with his general irritation.

  "Oh, stop that at once," he said when she began to cry. "Look. Go wash your face. And your hair. Take the bugs out of it. You'll look better, at least. That is, you'll feel better."

  She stared at him, pouting. "Don't understand you."

  Once again he realized that he had been speaking a mixture of English and Latin.

  "Well, never mind." He took her by the wrist
and led her to the kitchen, where a big bar of brown soap lay on the bottom of a wooden tub. He picked it up and slapped it into her hand. "Wash yourself with this," he said, trying to enunciate clearly. He pulled her hair. "This, too."

  "Aggh," she shrieked, wriggling away from him.

  "Go to the river. Don't come back until you're clean."

  Nimue gave him a hateful look. He opened the door and kicked her outside.

  My horse, he thought with more joy than he could remember feeling in years. He could leave Britain, go back to Rome . . . But why bother with Rome? There were places he'd never been, islands in the China Sea where the women painted their faces stark white and the aristocracy spent their leisure hours guessing the fragrances of exotic blossoms. Places in India where holy men lay on beds of nails to clear their minds, and kings with green beards and robes of billowing silk rode elephants into battle.

  His excitement rose, then sank abruptly, shattering like glass against the inexorable truth. He would not have time to see any of those pictures. When the cup was stolen, the rest of his life had been stolen from him also.

  Merlin!

  Only Merlin could give it back . . .

  He looked out at the river. Nimue was standing hip-deep in it, scrubbing the tangled mass on her head. Saladin shivered to think how cold the water must be, but the girl stood stoically, performing the task he had set for her.

  Well, she was accustomed to hard living, he reasoned. Even among the barbarians of this land, she wasn't quite human.

  Suddenly his throat went dry. She wasn't quite human. Why, that was marvelous!

  He couldn't take his eyes off her. From a distance, she appeared to have quite a good figure. He stood in the doorway, transfixed, as Nimue rinsed the lye suds off her hair and dressed once again in the rags she had been wearing.

  "A wood sprite," Saladin said aloud.

  He had found a way to get the cup back.

  By the time Nimue returned to the villa, Saladin had assembled everything she needed from the smashed trunks in the hall: Combs, dainty slippers, and a woman's robes, including a linen under-tunic, a white silk gown with long sleeves and a round neck, and a shorter over-tunic of palest green silk.

  Nimue looked at the items, arrayed neatly on the bed where Saladin had slept. Her eyes were expectant, half-delighted, half-frightened.

  "You wish me to wear these?" she asked.

  "Take off your clothes," Saladin commanded.

  Nimue shrank away.

  "Oh, bother with you," he said, ripping the filthy rags off her body and tossing them into the fire. She yelped and tried to retrieve them, but he held her back. "Here, put this on for the moment." He handed her a magnificent cloak the color of sapphires.

  She wrapped it around herself, preening this way and that.

  "Hold still." He pulled over the small stool by the fireplace and pushed her onto it. Then, using an ivory comb, he yanked at the wasp's nest of hair that seemed to spring out of Nimue's head like a yellow thicket. She screamed with each stroke, shutting her eyes tight against the involuntary tears that ran down her face, but made no attempt to move from the stool.

  "Good girl," he said, as if he were currying a mare. In fact, the business of untangling the wretch's hair was far more troublesome than caring for any animal. Freed from its balled-up state, it reached below her waist, and was thick and heavy besides. Saladin actually felt himself working up a sweat as he tore away the knots and cast them onto the floor.

  "There," he said at last. He gave a neat center part to the cascade of golden waves, then stood back to admire his work.

  The effect, caused as much by the soap as the comb, was nothing less than shocking. The girl's skin was milky white, flushed with rose pink in her cheeks. It was so flawlessly smooth that Saladin almost lost his revulsion for pale skin.

  Her teeth were small and even—miraculous, considering the girl's diet and lack of self-regard. They were surrounded by lovely soft lips, dark and full and well defined. And her eyes, catching the reflection of the cloak, were an astonishing turquoise blue.

  "Why, you really are beautiful," Saladin said in amazement.

  She smiled at him, nearly brimming over with happiness.

  "Remarkable!"

  "Remarkable!" Nimue repeated, laughing.

  "Now put on these things." He stripped the cloak off her and held out the undergarment, noticing the lithe young body. It was perfect, strongly muscled, yet too young to be stringy. Her breasts were surprisingly full, tipped by small pink nipples, and below, between her long legs, sprouted a fine golden down.

  He handed her the clothes, one after the other, instructing her on how to wear each piece. When she was finished, he took a long golden string he had found at the bottom of one of the chests and wrapped it artfully around her waist.

  Nimue looked down at herself, plucking at the fine fabric. "Jewels," she shouted suddenly, darting out of the room. She made no sound as she moved, Saladin noticed. That was good. That would work wonderfully.

  When she came back, she was wearing the same necklace of broken pottery she had been playing with earlier, its red and yellow clay beads bouncing against her breast.

  "No, no," Saladin said, yanking it off her. The beads spilled onto the floor. Nimue gasped, heartbroken. "Don't do anything I don't tell you to do!" he snapped.

  She lowered her eyes.

  "That's better. I'm going to teach you some things," he said quietly. "I want you to pay a great deal of attention, do you understand?"

  She nodded.

  "We'll speak English. You'll have to teach me what you know of it."

  He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. "I have a plan for you."

  She nodded again, waiting.

  "Are you afraid of wizards?"

  Nimue's eyes opened wide.

  "Oh, he won't hurt you. In fact, I think he'll fall quite in love with you."

  Her forehead creased. "What about you?"

  Saladin smiled. "Nimue, if you do what I ask of you, I shall love you for all my long, long life."

  She looked up at him, the turquoise eyes welling.

  "Now suppose you tell me about yourself."

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  There was nothing particularly romantic about Nimue's past. She was the offspring of a German mercenary hired to protect a farmstead some twenty miles inland. Her mother had been a camp follower. The mercenaries and their women traveled in packs, setting up camps outside the estates they were hired to protect, and remained for the length of their contract, or until their employers' money ran out.

  Gold was scarce; only families who had hoarded it since the time of the Roman occupation could afford to pay the mercenaries, since they rarely traded their fighting services for food. Nimue's father, a huge blond warrior named Horgh, had amassed quite a fortune during his twelve years in Britain, returning after each engagement to his village on the Rhine, where he kept a wife and several children.

  Nimue was not his only bastard. In the camps where she grew up, several of the children bore Horgh's likeness. Nimue's mother, a beautiful but feebleminded woman, never seemed to mind it when her man took a new woman to bed, or even the fact that he hoarded all his money in a distant country while she and her daughter lived on scraps cast aside by the soldiers.

  The child herself had little to say about the matter. Her father rarely spoke to her; at any rate, their languages were different, and she could not understand him when he did speak. Her mother was almost completely silent with other human beings. Sometimes she took Nimue into the woods, where she called to the small animals and birds, who flocked to her and the little girl as if they were beacons in the darkness.

  Nimue learned all her survival skills from her mother: how to read the weather, how to shelter in the winter, how to kill a wounded animal painlessly and take its fur. In fact, it was their practice to flee to the woods when the Saxons raided their encampments rather than risk being slaughtered in camp.

  It wa
s during one of these precautionary flights that her mother was killed. A Saxon bludgeoned her with a metal-studded club while she ran with her small daughter toward the forest. Nimue screamed, but the Saxon who had killed her mother had gone on to the camp rather than chase a child into the woods. Later, when everything was quiet and the house and its outbuildings lay in smoldering ruins, Nimue went back.

  The camp was deserted. Apparently the mercenaries had been warned about the size of the Saxon raiding party and, to a man, had deserted before the invaders arrived. All that was left were the bloodied bodies of the women and children. In the main house, too, the owner of the estate had been killed, along with his family and servants, and the tenant farmers who had fought the Saxons with them.

  Nimue buried her mother, as she had watched the camp women bury fallen soldiers all her life. When she was finished, she listened to the song of birds in the still air. She no longer knew a single living human being.

  She took what clothing and food she could salvage from the wreckage at the camp and went into the woods to live. She had been eleven years old.

  By the time Saladin found her she was nearly twenty, though she looked younger, and completely self-sufficient. This was important to Saladin and his plan.

  "He'll come before spring," he told her as he set her behind him on the big stallion. She was dressed beautifully, and he did not want to mar her appearance with a long walk. "Find food if you have to, but keep clean."

  The girl could find food, of that he had no doubt. In fact, it annoyed him somewhat to be losing her hunting skills. For the past several weeks, while he taught Nimue the things she would need to know, she had kept the table well stocked with pheasant and quail and had even brought down a deer with nothing more than a rope and knife. She had proven to be an excellent cook, too, flavoring the wild meat with herbs she collected from the countryside. In addition to hunting and cooking, she also made herself useful by chopping wood and keeping the house fires lit. She had even buried the bodies of the former tenants.