“My name is Tancred Olafsson.”
Part Norman, part Viking, like her Magnus, Elfrida thought, smiling as the boy thanked her for a carrot and leek pie. Tancred flushed, possibly because of her smile, then steadied himself by addressing her husband.
“Rowena is my kin and we were brought up together. We are not close kin, not a cousin or any kind of consan–consan—”
“Consanguinity,” Magnus supplied helpfully. He bit into a pie himself and the two chewed companionably, although they looked very different. Tancred was short where Magnus was tall, a sturdy boy where Magnus was muscled and strapping. Fair, smooth-skinned and amiable, Tancred was very much a page in a great house, with the manners and fine clothes to match. His black cloak alone was worth one or two heavy bags of gold. Seated cross-legged beside him in his grass-stained tunic, Magnus appeared like a dark demon with a youthful charge.
“How old are you, Tancred?” she asked.
The lad’s apple-blossom skin took on a ruddy shade again. “Old enough to ride and follow tracks. When Rowena sent me her pet finch I knew I had to act.”
“So you were not sick?” Elfrida asked, and received a stare from the boy.
“I am never sick.”
“Your age, lad,” grunted Magnus.
“Twelve.” Tancred kicked the grass, then stopped when Magnus glanced at his leg.
“So the finch was a pre-arranged signal. Your parents and kin, will they not be missing you?” Elfrida persisted.
Tancred shrugged. “I can send them word,” he mumbled.
“We shall do that tomorrow,” Magnus said, “when I send a herald back with you to return you to your people.”
“Not so, my lord!” The boy surged to his feet, indignant as a ruffled cockerel. “I came to rescue Rowena! She needs me!”
“You know where she is?” Elfrida could scarcely believe their good fortune. Was it going to be this easy?
Tancred thrust out his chest and put his thumbs in his belt, perhaps imitating an older relative. “I know where she is not and where she never wants to be.”
“The nunnery?” Elfrida prompted.
Tancred blushed afresh and said nothing.
“Are you also Lady Astrid’s ward?” Magnus asked.
“No.”
“Have you searched for Rowena?” Magnus went on.
“Yes! Everywhere I can think of and more.”
Elfrida hesitated then chose to be direct. “Do you think she ran away?”
“Why send me the finch, then? As you guessed, that was her signal for me to help.”
“And before you could give it, she vanishes,” Magnus observed. “Lady Astrid tells us Rowena was stolen away.”
“By a dark Jewish stranger.” The boy flung himself back onto the grass. “I have heard this news.” Magnus raised his eyebrows, and Tancred added quickly, “my lord.”
“Elfrida and Magnus will do very well for our names,” Elfrida said swiftly. “What else have you heard of this stranger?”
“That no one but his victims sees him.”
“So how does Father Jerome know what he looks like?”
Tancred started at Magnus’s dark rumble of a question but said at once, “He must be mistaken, because no one knows. I know people say he is dark and Jewish, but that is what people always say. The rumor is he has some other girls with him. A few peasants for the most part, easily seduced.”
Elfrida counted to ten in the Arabic Magnus had taught her and strove to ignore Tancred’s unconscious, snobbish cruelty. “Does Rowena ride?” she asked.
“She has a bay pony called Apple.”
“Because Apple loves apples?” Elfrida’s question was rewarded by a grin from Tancred but Magnus was more interested in the pony’s whereabouts.
“Is the beast missing?” he demanded.
“No, my lord— Magnus. I have brought Apple with me, for Rowena when… when she is found.”
Elfrida understood Magnus’s question. If the pony had gone it might still be that Rowena had either run away or been drawn away, and it would have made the area to be searched that much greater.
She is kidnapped for sure and possibly still close.
But Tancred’s other news, what should she make of that? Father Jerome had given a precise description of the stranger but was that a lie? Elfrida tried to remember if she had seen anything of the stranger in her vision, gained any sense of him from the posy he had left. Dispirited, she heard Magnus assure Tancred that he would not be packed off back to his parents tomorrow. He would ride with Magnus and the other men, ride with hounds following the scent of Rowena’s tokens and see if they could trace the girl. Meanwhile tonight, Tancred would sleep with them and Magnus’s household in the great hall, his ponies safely stabled.
Does Magnus want to bring Father Jerome and Tancred face to face and see what happens? she wondered, without much heart. As the three of them gathered up their things and set off for the hall, Elfrida kept returning to the youth’s dismissive words, “A few peasants… easily seduced.”
We have no tokens of theirs and we should have.
She swore then and there to herself that she would not forget the other girls. I will rescue them, too, as well as Rowena. If need be in spite of the Lady Astrid and this boy.
The vow gave her heart, but she remained disconcerted. Magnus would never be so casually dismissive, would he?
Chapter 5
Mark lost no time in taking Magnus aside in the buttery of the great hall, shooing away the carver and server while Elfrida found Tancred bedding and a mattress.
Magnus explained who the boy was, then asked, “Where is that priest?” He had been thwarted in seeing Father Jerome’s face when Tancred strolled into the hall beside him.
“In there with Lady Astrid and her maids.” The rangy, ginger-headed Mark thumbed at the solar door. “Both took to the great bed with possets and potions and blankets and bedcaps, not to mention the good ale of your lady. How Elfrida will manage tomorrow with them, I dread to think. I do not envy her.”
“Any more on the lasses or who took them?”
Mark scratched his nose. “The priest let fall that the stranger was wearing a pair of fine iron prick spurs.”
“Spurs, yet he arrived on foot, begging like a bad traveling player?”
“Father Jerome claimed he had forgotten the spurs before. Me, I think he was too active attending to Lady Astrid’s and his own comforts to remember until she glided off to the bath-house. He followed soon after and then we were busy.”
“Nightcaps and the rest,” Magnus supplied.
“They seem very close, that pair,” said Mark, jerking his head to the closed solar door. “Our Father Jerome and the Lady Astrid. Sleeping together, eating together. What else, eh?”
Because Mark was an old campaigner, Magnus let it pass. “But at least they do not join the hunt tomorrow.”
“Mother be thanked! Does the boy go with us?”
“Tancred?” Ever mindful of his scars, Magnus glanced from the buttery into the hall. “Rowena knows him, so yes. She will feel safe with him.”
He clapped Mark on the shoulder and went to join Elfrida.
I have to tell her she stays at home tomorrow and she will not like it. Yet perhaps if she is not bouncing around on the back of a horse she will take my seed more easily. He did not want to consider the darker idea, that Elfrida would want to ride with him because she would be less likely to become pregnant.
“Spurs are a detail and very real, not part of a folktale,” Elfrida said. Part of her was relieved that the kidnapper was as described, but his being a horseman possibly widened the area of any search.
“He will have a good horse.” Lying beside her on a thin straw pallet, Magnus was watching the servers rake together the remains of the smoldering summer fire and dowse the torch lights in the great hall. Close to the longest day as it was, Elfrida could see well in the summer night and knew that her husband was disconcerted. She decided to fight at onc
e, while others around them were snoring and settling. Less than an arm’s stretch away from her, Tancred was already an unmoving coiled ball.
“You want to leave me behind tomorrow, but you must not.” She shook Magnus’s leg. “I know I am an indifferent rider, but I can help. What if Rowena is injured? What if the others are harmed? Will a boy like Tancred understand or care?”
“His easily seduced peasants, eh? I knew that would hurt you.” Magnus traced a finger down the side of her face, a slow, comforting touch. “He will learn better.”
His reassuring stroke glided down her spine and the sparkle of his caress made her toes curl. Elfrida fought to keep on her war charge.
“I should be there and so should Lady Astrid.”
That stopped him, as she knew it would. He cupped her face with his hand and narrowed his eyes. “You, madam, I can understand for arguing to come on a quest, any quest, especially one concerning young, vulnerable creatures, but our Norman harpy?”
This was a new word to her. “A harpy?”
“Tis in my book, my bestiary.”
“Along with the porcupine.”
He chuckled. She guessed that he, too, was remembering that moment last winter, when he had accused her of wearing more prickles than a porcupine in their earlier, deadly quest against the necromancer, but she knew she had not won him yet. His next words confirmed it.
“Aye, my Elfrida, and I will show you the harpy, but not tomorrow. I am sorry to say that you must remain with Lady Astrid at the hall and be as nice of a host as you can manage. She will slow us down too much, otherwise.”
He kissed her, slowly, deeply, and the throbbing in her toes swept over her body.
“You do not battle fairly,” she said, when she could catch a breath, “and neither do I.”
She wanted to caress him intimately, to join with him, but was too proud to try to persuade through any sexual wiles. “Make it a mark of nobility to the lady that she can ride fast,” she whispered.
He smiled at her and her heart felt to do a tumbler’s flip within her chest. Still she contested the point. For the sake of the young girls, I must. Even if my wifely instincts prompt me to stay at the hall to please him, the witch in me says I must go with Magnus.
“Lady Astrid will not want to deny it, Magnus. Challenge her to come. If she and the less-than-holy father are involved in high malice and politics we need to keep them close and watch them carefully. You have a knack of seeing truth. So have I. How the lady reacts, what she looks at or even what she does not consider, will show us much. And it is summer, not winter.”
“Enough,” her companion grumbled. “You snared me at ‘high malice’ and converted me at ‘politics.’ The other poor lasses may be this fellow’s food, treasure, whatever, but Rowena—Rowena is different. I sense that he took her on orders but holds her when he should not.”
The tingling heat whirling in her loins had become an itch she was desperate for him to scratch, but his last words chilled her.
“You think Rowena is an heiress as well as a postulant?”
“It makes a grim sense, Elfrida. I do not feel Lady Astrid or her priest have been honest with us, do you? If Rowena is heir to rich estates and if her parents and family are dead, do you see what follows? Even if she destined for the church, if she is missing, then the church cannot control those estates.”
“Does the Lady Astrid?”
“For a time, at least, while the law decides. Especially if the lady has the ear of our king. If the church does not have the girl, they cannot have her lands, either. They would need to prove she is dead to inherit.”
Elfrida shivered. The whole “kidnapping” could even be with King Henry’s acceptance and approval, she realized, sickened at the thought. “Dead?”
“I think a marriage or betrothal is more likely. The church would protest but the deed would be done.”
“You think Lady Astrid has a marriage or betrothal in mind for Rowena?”
Magnus trailed his hand slowly down her spine and rested his palm on her bottom. “I think we speak to Tancred tomorrow and find out exactly who Rowena is, and her parents and kin.”
Elfrida swallowed. To tempt Magnus to continue his loving exploration, she skimmed her hands up his thighs. “But if the man who took Rowena was meant to hand her over and he has not, does that mean Lady Astrid wants our help after all?”
Magnus patted her rump. “I sense the lady is seeking her everywhere, by every method. We are just one of many.”
“A famous one of many,” Elfrida felt compelled to add. She wondered how she could discuss this sensibly, when what she longed to do was caress her husband, love him.
“Perhaps. I sense a hasty plan, poorly thought out and acted out at speed. I suspect Rowena’s parents and close kin died suddenly and Lady Astrid is seeking to take advantage.”
How have they died? Elfrida sent her silent question out into the ether. She waited, but received nothing back from the spirit world. Sometimes the spirits do not want to tell or share. “Perhaps they sickened.”
“Does Rowena even know, poor lass?” Considering, Magnus paused in his brushing of her back and bottom. Elfrida almost protested, but forced herself to make a coherent reply.
“She may have suspected something, hence her signal to Tancred. But if Tancred knows that Rowena’s people are dead, why did he not say?”
“Because he does not trust us fully yet.”
“It seems none of them do.”
“Those are nobles for you,” Magnus agreed. “But I do not like the bad planning of this whole matter, Elfrida. Bad, hasty planning and carelessness! Look how this pair in our great bed are concerned with their comforts first, when they should be thinking of how best to recover Rowena. Speed and carelessness breed panic and mistakes, fatal ones.”
“Perhaps they cannot decide if they want her found or not. Yet, Magnus, if they did arrange for her abduction, why not use their own men? That is simpler and surer.”
“They do not trust their own men with this.” The instant Magnus spoke, Elfrida knew it was true.
“Then, for all these reasons, we must find Rowena and her captor before Lady Astrid does.” Elfrida scowled. “Now you have won,” she complained. My witch instincts are mistaken.
“How so, elfling?” Magnus resumed his caress.
Elfrida bit hard on the inside of her lip, using pain as a focus against his tender pleasuring. If Magnus can reason while we are embracing, so can I. “We cannot afford for Astrid and the priest to be with you when you do trace Rowena. We need time to plan and consider how to best help her, without their knowledge.”
Magnus did not smile in his victory, which she took as a serious sign. Again his hand paused. “I am sorry, Elfrida. I like you with me, and you questing with me. I thought you had argued your way onto my horse tomorrow, but now I discover you and I have argued you off it again.”
He sounded so downcast she hugged him. “No matter. You can tell me everything tomorrow evening. You will…” She stopped herself suggesting that if any of Lady Astrid’s men rode with Magnus tomorrow, they should also be watched. If Rowena was found, such men might need to be kept apart from their lady while Rowena’s safety and best interest was determined. Magnus knows this already. He will know what to do.
“I shall strive to learn more from the Lady Astrid here at the house,” she finished firmly instead.
“If any can, my heart, it will be you.”
“Even so, I wish— Magnusss…” Her breath hissed out as his fingers now skimmed over her breasts. She forgot the rest of what she was saying.
He turned her to her side, rippled his fingers up her skirt and brushed her intimate curls. Desire, banked and waiting inside her, stoked into sudden, urgent longing. Clumsy in her explosive need, she tugged savagely at his braies, keen to stroke and touch him in return, to whisper love words and praise.
“What?” She was startled when he pitched her gently onto her belly, pressing her to the rushes. C
hecking she was ready for him, he smoothly and surely eased into her from behind in the manner of a beast, tonguing her ear and kissing her mouth.
For the second time that night, being pinned by him, being entered by him in such a loving, masterful way spurred her response. As far as she could, she rose back, rocking against him, clenching her teeth to stop from howling out her satisfaction. A blistering release burst through her, shimmering in a wave of dizzying joy. She felt him charge within her, harder and harder yet, glorious and furiously fast, plugging every inch of her as heat flung off him like lightning off a storm. In a rapturous, unending groan he gifted her with himself, with his seed, and the blissful transported peace after was as awesome as the pleasure had been.
What next? Elfrida thought, drifting into sleep. Do I care? How very masterful Magnus is these days, as if I am no witch at all… Does that matter? What will happen tomorrow and tomorrow night? What…?
Chapter 6
Elfrida felt sinfully languid the following dawn, the more so when Magnus took his leave of her with a long kiss and a whispered promise. “Until tonight, wife.” He and half his men clattered openly from the manor, Tancred yawning and tousle-headed in their midst, too sleepy to complain at the lack of breakfast.
Father Jerome and three more of Lady Astrid’s party had also joined the gathering of horses, dogs and men in the yard and set out. Elfrida watched them leave. The priest’s sudden appearance had been a surprise, especially as he proved to ride as swiftly as the others. Waving them off, Elfrida peered through the standing clouds of dust and considered the day ahead.
What Father Jerome and his men do not know is that Magnus has already sent Mark and his best tracker on ahead to Warren Bruer, with half of Rowena’s shift for their hounds. They will start at the church there and look for the track of a single horse, tethered somewhere close to the church. Let them find something.
“Please, Holy Mother, let Magnus recover Rowena and the others, safe and well, untouched and untroubled. And let no malice touch his company this day.”
The stranger prays to the mother, too, and he is handsome. But my Magnus is more of a man. The Holy Mother will surely like him the better of the two.
Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment Page 4
