“No more,” said Elfrida, calm while those around her were fluttering and flapping their hands, Lady Astrid still mouthing French and her maids uttering tiny cries of distress. “It is a message. See the red and gold streamers? Those colors mean something. If the archer had hit any of us he would have been sorry.”
She scowled, her amber eyes as brilliant and piercing as a falcon’s. Magnus sensed her mounting disgust as she added, “It would have been a mistake.”
“Maybe, though a shout or trumpet call would have served as well.” Magnus stepped forward and plucked the arrow and its streamers out of the ground, but Elfrida was already moving.
“They meant it as both message and threat,” she tossed over her shoulder. “Let me pass, please.”
The stuttering crowd parted, then she was running, with Magnus racing after her. They reached the sleeping Ruth together and stood before her.
This child sleeps still and Elfrida looks as grim as she ever can.
Magnus checked his weapons and stared along the road, where a boiling cloud of dust betrayed new riders. A scampering behind them signaled that Tancred, Lady Astrid and their people had also read the streamers and were hurrying to meet whoever was coming.
“Unless I am mistaken, the colors attached to the arrow are those of the Percivals,” Magnus said quietly. “It is a small troop, so they dare not attack.”
Squinting her eyes into the fierce sun, Elfrida nodded. “They wish to parley, or have a spoken message to deliver. One or ’t’other, though I am not sure which.”
Gripping his sword hilt, Magnus did not greatly care. “Now we shall have answers, at least.” I shall get them at sword’s point, if need be.
Slim and straight beside him, Elfrida sighed. “I doubt that we shall like them.”
Chapter 10
The herald was a Percival. A bastard Percival, but Master Oswin knew his due. Once he had stepped down from his horse, the Lady Astrid and then the Lord Tancred should have greeted him. Instead a rough, hideously mangled country knight strode forward and growled in English, “Keep your men back. What terms from Silvester?”
“You have no courtesy, sir!” Oswin flared. He gasped as a steel blade knocked against his shoulder and the rough knight spoke again, his words dropping like stones.
“Do not talk to me of fine manners. Splendor in Christendom, man, you could have hit anyone with that loosed arrow! Worse, you fired at my wife. Do not dare tell me I should be pleased.”
Oswin stared down the long sword point into a dark devil’s face and felt his bowels turn to water. His party had stopped on the road, leaving him exposed. Above his own ragged breathing, Oswin heard the scarred knight.
“Speak to me of manners when your kindred act as true lords and save the lasses who have been taken. Now, what terms?”
“We know where your lands and manor—” Faster than an adder, the sword lay against Oswin’s neck. The rest of his proud speech suffocated in his throat.
“Never make threats that you cannot make good. I am a crusader who fought at Azaz. I have waded through blood.”
Standing beside this towering, bestial figure, a plain-clothed wren of a girl stared through Oswin’s skull as if she knew his thoughts.
“He does not come from Silvester,” she remarked in English. “Though he knows him.”
She smiled and Oswin recognized how beautiful she was, with her sweet face and her long red hair. Despite his sweating terror, he felt soothed.
“At your service,” he mumbled, conscious of the beast-knight’s sword still nibbling his neck.
“Come, Master Oswin, can we not help each other?” Inviting a response, the girl lifted her delicate hands. “You are from…?”
How does she know my name? “I am the herald of Sir Richard de Coucy.”
The wench widened a pair of sparkling golden-brown eyes and, to please her, Oswin found himself adding, “My lord is the elder brother of the young lord Tancred.”
“No brother of mine!” Tancred flung himself closer. “He wants Rowena! She was betrothed to me first!”
“Family quarrels are always the worst,” remarked the ugly knight. It was impossible to tell if he smiled or scowled, but he lifted his sword from Oswin’s naked throat and sheathed it. “Say on, Tancred. This is useful.”
Tancred said nothing. The young woman, meanwhile, glanced at Lady Astrid, giving Oswin the strange idea that she even knew that lady’s plans. He rubbed at his grazed neck.
“My Lord Richard offers his manor as a place of parley,” he said quickly, before Tancred raised another complaint or the comely redhead beguiled him into a further confession.
“Let your noble lord come here to Warren Bruer,” the louring knight answered. “We shall meet in the church. Let the families of the missing girls be summoned. Have the priest stand as surety for all.”
“Will Father Jerome wish to do this, Magnus?” asked the young woman.
“If he wants peace with me, he will,” came back the brusque response. “The fellow lied to us.”
“By silence only,” said Lady Astrid, speaking for the first time.
“Unlike you, then, my lady, but as my Elfrida says, there has been rather too much silence.” Magnus slapped Oswin so heartily on his back that the herald almost stumbled. “Go back to your lord. We shall wait for your return and his appearance.”
“I shall go with you,” said Lady Astrid.
“And I.” Tancred moved closer to his aunt.
Oswin dared not take such terms back to Lord Richard, nor have his lord’s quarrelsome family ride along with him. “That will not do.”
“Aye, I thought it would not.” Magnus folded his arms across his chest. “What surety can you provide me with, herald? We might ride into a trap.”
“The Lord Tancred, the Lady Astrid to remain with your men.”
“No!” bawled Tancred, while the lady looked pained.
“What else?” demanded Magnus.
Reluctantly—his lord had ordered him to offer this only if nothing else was deemed acceptable—Oswin tapped the pouch attached to his belt. “I am further instructed to give you the holy relic of the Virgin, her bridal coronet, for your men to keep as hostage with my lord’s brother and aunt.”
He untied the pouch and displayed the relic, turning it so the crown’s many jewels sparkled in the sunlight.
Many gasped at the sight of this sacred object, but the man, Magnus, merely looked at the girl, Elfrida. She said something in a language that Oswin did not understand, but however she answered, Magnus held out his hand.
“Done, master herald. Now let us be going.”
Of course it was not so smooth or simple. Magnus did not expect it to be. Elfrida would not leave Ruth until the girl’s mother had arrived. Then she would not go until Ruth had stirred, which the child did at once when Elfrida touched her hand. Then Ruth had to have eaten and drunk something. After that, Magnus had found himself promising that Mark and two others would escort mother and daughter safely back to their homes on horseback.
She will make a good mother, my Elfrida. Unless she does not wish to be a mother.
More instructions followed for a bemused-looking Mark, then finally Magnus lifted his wife onto his horse and settled behind her. In a column of twos, the troop rode west along the cobbled road, cloaks swirling in the breeze. The haughty herald cast rather too many admiring glances at Elfrida for Magnus’s liking, but his witch was not concerned by such trifles.
“I am most sorry for any long delay, Magnus,” she said at once in the old speech—our speech—though he chose not to be mollified quite yet.
“Humph! That would be more convincing if you had spent less time gossiping with Ruth.”
“Talking, husband—”
“Still, she almost smiled at me just now instead of screaming, so that is progress and all to the good. Did you learn more from your talk?”
She twisted about in the saddle to look up at him and he, used to her antics while on hors
eback, gripped her legs firmly with his so she did not fall. His horse, also accustomed to this shifting passenger, whickered and pranced a step or two along the road, to remind her to attend.
Elfrida, not at all disconcerted, laughed at them both. “We spoke of food and midsummer. You were beside us and heard.”
“Even so.”
“Yes.” The brief merriment in her face faded. She turned slightly, looking straight forward between the horse’s ears, and spoke over the beast’s steady canter. “He is very close but well hidden. That is why I asked after food. A local dish may show us where he is. Ruth’s memories are scattered, a few images only. Corncockle flowers and meadowsweet. A pool. Red kites. Barley bread, a little stale. A soft cheese coated in brine.”
That stirred a memory in Magnus and he mulled it while trees and fields flickered past at the corners of his sight. This was good, rising country with lush grass, a land for sheep and well-tended pea and barley crops. Elfrida was right. Silvester was camped close. If I can just remember the name of the cheese, the place where it is made, I shall know where to search next.
He hoped the parley would give him some new insights, but in truth he had little hope. If this encounter at least confirmed his and Elfrida’s suspicions concerning Silvester, that would be a start.
“Why is Lady Astrid riding with us?”
His wife’s very direct question broke into his welter of thoughts. Magnus tightened his grip on the reins, staring at the straight-backed woman cantering directly in front of them, handling her fiery mount with ease. “She feigns a sudden illness well, does she not? And recovers in a miraculous fashion. But to say truth, I am glad she came with us rather than remaining behind and beguiling my men. As for being a hostage short, Mark has the relic and Lord Richard will want that returned with all its gems.”
“The relic returned but not Tancred? His own brother?”
He sensed her bewildered indignation and agreed with her. “’Tis a grim business, I know, but Richard and Tancred are rivals for Rowena.”
“Yet surely Lord Richard is already surrounded by lands and goods!”
Magnus said nothing. After a moment, Elfrida murmured, “Rowena is very beautiful.”
“So her present captor will not want to relinquish her, whatever the original plan.” Speaking in the old tongue in order to share frankly and plan ahead before they reached Lord Richard’s manor, both of them were careful not to mention Silvester’s name.
“That is what happened, is it not?” said Elfrida quietly. “There is your hasty plan. Rowena’s close kin die suddenly, she becomes an heiress and former secret betrothals look too small. But if she is spirited away to some place where neither Tancred nor the church can find her, she can emerge later as already betrothed, almost married.”
She squeezed his arms. “He should have given her up by now. They, whoever plotted this”—Elfrida nodded to the riding Lady Astrid—“must have expected him to pass her over to them.”
“A risky plan, since they knew what the fellow was like and his liking for young maids. They did not even arrange that he would see her first. Or if they did, they did not mark his excitement.”
Elfrida stiffened and he felt the rage boiling in her, anger as heat. When she spoke it was in a low, cold voice. “Six others taken, also. Six. They did nothing. They promised and cajoled so their people would work, they took trace from the families of the missing maids so it would seem that they cared and still they did nothing.”
“The kidnapper is one of theirs, a nobleman, no doubt a Percival.”
“Tancred, as bad as the rest…”
That, he knew, hurt her. “We do not abandon them,” he said. “I promise you, we shall find these other girls.”
She crossed herself. “Soon,” she agreed, clearly making her wish a prayer.
After that brief exchange the column accelerated and Elfrida had to concentrate on riding. She listened to the earth spitting and hissing beneath the horses’ hooves and sensed the rolling tension in Magnus’s big bay. This was a place of spiteful spirits and secrets, of sweet cicely bursting from rank ditches, of raptors preying out of cloudless blue skies. Was it any wonder the Percivals flourished here?
Gripping the bay’s stiff mane, leaning back against Magnus as he brought his arms ever tighter about her, she allowed the passing country to seep into her.
Silvester knows every brook and tree of this land, as I know mine. He worships the white lady, the sacred Virgin and mother, and gathers corncockle, cicely and meadowsweet in her honor. Purple and white are her colors. He will want to have his maids arrayed in the same shades, perhaps for the coming midsummer revels.
Magnus and I must seek out dyers and flax workers and question them. Something else nagged at her, something she had known or been told and had forgotten. Even as she tried to remember, the memory slipped away.
There were the jewels Silvester gave to his maidens, too, although Ruth had shaken her head when Elfrida had asked her if she had kept any of his tokens.
She feared I would take the gem. It is precious to her, not only because it is gold, but because of the man who gave it.
Saddened, Elfrida fingered her own bright wedding ring, wishing for a selfish instant that Lady Astrid had never sought out Magnus.
And why did she? To disguise her own failure by involving and then blaming him. If he had recovered Rowena, she would have taken the girl back, and continued her plotting, playing two brothers off each other.
Is Silvester also a relative of hers? Surely he must be.
“Is she his cousin? His mother?” she asked aloud, appalled at the last idea.
“Hola!” Magnus’s shout shattered her gloomy thoughts. “What a place!”
Chapter 11
The manor shimmered in the warm late afternoon light like a great tent in a breeze. Magnus counted two towers and twenty banners, two jetties and three floors, a great hall, two kitchens and a bath house.
Plenty of laundresses here.
“How can this lord want more?” Elfrida whispered. His generous wench did not understand greed.
“What kind of manners will they have?” she went on. “I do not want to shame you.”
“Never that, my heart,” he said easily. He knew it was the snobbish poison of Lady Astrid that inspired his wife’s fears, but part of him was disappointed. Does she not realize by now that I am never ashamed of her? What does she fear of me, that I will repudiate her because she uses the wrong knife for her meat? And yet, are we not alike in this? I fear ridicule from my looks. She fears ridicule from her class.
He hugged her with his thighs. “Should you make any mistake, I will accept kisses as excuses.”
As he hoped, that made her laugh. A greater joy to him was the greeting given to him and his people by a crusty house steward. Already awaiting them outside the manor steps, the elderly retainer at once informed him that their chamber had been made ready.
“My Lord Richard bids you welcome. You have time to relax, bathe and change in your room before supper.”
“We have a room,” breathed Elfrida. “So rich.”
“We have our solar at home,” he reminded her, but she was right. A private room for a pair of guests was grand indeed. The warrior in him guessed another reason for this bounty too, a hard-headed, practical reason.
The lord wants to question his herald and Lady Astrid in private first. That is what I would do. What I will also do is post my own guards outside our room and in the stables.
Then Elfrida and I shall take a bath, together.
“Excellent! Many thanks!” Magnus replied, smiling broadly as he dismounted.
Elfrida glanced at the bath-tub, then at him, a flicker of longing falling across her face like a beam of light, then she shook her head. “I must speak to Githa. She knows more than her mistress wants her to know about Silvester. I must learn what it is.”
“Githa will be bathing and changing,” Magnus replied. He had his own designs for spending time ver
y pleasantly before supper and catching the desire in Elfrida’s face, he intended to see them all through. In any hunt there is always waiting and this is our lingering time. I know, Elfrida, more than you, what will take that strain from your eyes and the frown from your forehead. It will also ease your heart and mine. He rippled his fingers. “Come, wife. Our bath will soon be ready.”
Still tense, she sped away, across the chamber and leaned over the wooden half-barrel. “Only if the water is invisible.”
“They must heat it and bring it. While they do we will sample the bed.” Determined to keep her with him, he untied the bed curtains and drew them closed. “The evening will be long and we shall need our wits. We should snatch a nap.”
Whistling, he danced across the wooden floor and gathered her close while she was still chuckling at his caper. Swinging her along with him, he had her back by the bed and bundled through the curtains before she could speak.
“Listen,” he said, blowing a kiss on the back of her neck as she seemed about to protest. “Our bath-water. The first of many ewers, jugs, and buckets.”
If her ears could prick up like a hound’s, they would have, he thought, amused, as she scrambled up on her knees on the bed. Scarcely breathing, her right hand half-raised as if ready to defend, her bright eyes traced the moving shadows beyond the bed curtains.
“Why do they not speak?” she whispered, when a slosh of water confirmed that the servants had begun to fill the tub and were gone for the next bucket-load.
“Nobles do not like their people talking.” He kissed her summer freckles, as many as he could, while she tugged at his belt and tunic, inhaling deeply.
“I stink,” he warned.
“I love how you smell.” Tearing off his tunic, she buried her nose in his armpit for an instant, then kissed down his ribs. “When you bested Oswin, I wanted to do this and more. Salt and leather and my Magnus.” She flicked her tongue across his belly curls, not quite bold enough yet, he guessed, to go lower.
Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment Page 7
