"Well, then, if I must." Allouette didn't really seem to be upset at the news. She glared at the lock, saying, "Turn, good dame."
The widow's lips pressed thin with effort and the lock groaned, then gave and fell open.
"Well done," Gregory said softly.
Allouette shrugged impatiently. "A bagatelle."
"Not to them."
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Dame Musgrave yanked the lock loose from the hasp, opened the chest, and gasped.
"Is it gold, then?" Gregory asked. "I had thought that might be the reason for its weight."
"It is indeed gold, sir, and surely enough to pay our rent and pay for food till the children are grown." She turned to Allouette, tears in her eyes. "Oh, thank you, kind lady, a thousand times—and you, good sir."
Allouette stood stiff, staring with surprise at the elation the thanks gave her. Then she thawed and nodded. "It was our pleasure, good woman. Take the gold from the chest and hide it about you, all three of you, that you may take it to a safe place. Then have your children fill in the hole."
"We shall, we shall!" Dame Musgrave seized her hand and kissed it. "So much for they who say the witches are evil! Ever shall I sing your praises, sir and demoiselle."
Allouette managed to escape without too many more praises, though the children's did move her, especially since they were lisped through tears.
When she and Gregory were back in the greenwood, he said softly, "You need not be so surprised, you know. You are truly a good woman."
"Stuff and nonsense!" Allouette said angrily. "I am a wicked woman who has done one good deed, and you would be wise to remember that, sir!"
"I shall remember that you said it," Gregory temporized.
Allouette looked daggers at him but couldn't ignore the elation in her heart. "You have the advantage of me, sir— you know far more of mathematics than I. I shall require that you share that knowledge with me."
"Gladly," Gregory said, and began to explain the rest of plane geometry. She listened intently, drinking the concepts directly from his mind before he could put them into words and breathed, "Fascinating!"
Gregory broke off, realizing what she had done and staring in surprise. Then his eyes began to glow and he said, "You are truly the most wondrous of women, lustrous as a pearl and brilliant as a diamond."
Allouette turned away, feeling her face grow hot again. "I
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was speaking not of my face and form, sir, but of things of the mind!"
"So was I," Gregory said.
She darted a puzzled glance at him. Surely he could not mean that mathematics meant more to him than the pleasures of the senses.
"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," Gregory said frankly, "but the glory of your mind exceeds even that of your face and form."
Now she blushed indeed, blushed beet-red and lowered her gaze, feeling the thrill of his admiration warring against her old cynicism. "I had rather speak of geometry than of my beauty, sir."
"If you must," Gregory sighed, "but there is a beauty to mathematics, too. Contemplation of its orders can lift the mind to an elevation matched only by the finest music or the most excellent poetry. I have never met another who could share that delight."
"Nor have you now, I suspect," Allouette said tartly. She turned away, chin high as she rode the forest pathway—but found herself remembering his arms around her. Foolish girl! she scolded herself. His embrace had felt as good as any other man's, no more and no less. Wrenching her mind back to the poor and weak, she proclaimed, "Thus it begins."
"Thus indeed." Gregory's voice was a caress.
She steeled herself against it. "I meant aiding the weak and desperate, wizard."
"I understood that."
She cast him a doubtful glance, then quickly looked away from his beaming smile. "I shall do more to make amends, much more."
"I rejoice to hear it,' Gregory said, "but with whom must you make amends?"
"With myself, of course," Allouette snapped. "My victims are either dead or far too wary of me to accept any aid I might offer—and it was unkind of you to remind me of that, sir."
"My apologies, lady," Gregory said with contrition.
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"Accepted," Allouette grumbled. "Who else needs assistance, wizard?"
"Why, I do not know," Gregory said. "Let us ride and seek/'
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. + + .A
They didn't find anyone else in need that day, of course they were in a forest, not a city. But after dinner, Allouette found time to practice meditation again and considered Gregory's advice first with contempt, then with growing seriousness. Trying to imagine the sound one hand would make trying to clap was nonsense, of course, but merely thinking about it did seem to be leading her deeper into her trance.
The next day, they came to a village whose well had gone dry. Allouette attempted dousing and pronounced the water table still full but lower than when the well had been dug. The villagers were ready to start digging on the instant, but Gregory asked them what they would do if the well went dry the next year. "Dig again," they answered, but Allouette watched Gregory's speculative gaze and told them, "There might be a better way."
Gregory showed the blacksmith how to build a giant auger, then set the villagers to building a stand for it. They ran a pole through the top of the earth auger and harnessed two mules to it, then sent them plodding around and around in a circle.
"Why not let me dig as I did yesterday?" Allouette demanded.
"Because you might not be here next year, when the well fails again," Gregory told her.
When the auger came up wet, the townsfolk cheered, then fell silent, frowning. The elders asked, "How are we to draw up the water? Your hole is too small for a bucket!"
But Gregory had already set the village smith to making the first brazen pipe the town had seen. They forced it into the hole, section by section, while Allouette showed the town potter how to make a stout earthenware spout. It was fired and ready by the time the pipe was in place and, remembering the basic physics she had learned in school, she harnessed a
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plunger to it, clad in leather to make it airtight. Then she poured in a little water to prime it and began working the handle. The villagers began to growl about wasted labor as she pushed it up and down, up and down, then, wearied, turned it over to another woman. When the water began to flow, the villagers exclaimed in awe, as though they had witnessed magic—which, as far as they were concerned, they had.
4 'It works!" Allouette said, pink with pleasure.
They accepted the villagers' profusive thanks, then rode off into the forest, discussing ways of calculating air pressure. They expanded the discussion into the peregrinations of air masses and weather. When the trees shielded them from the villagers' sight, though, Gregory added his own thanks, telling Allouette that to the villagers, she had been a fountain in the desert. "To myself, too," he told her. "I never understood what all this nonsense about love and beauty was. Now all the verses of the love-crazed poets seem only common sense to me, for I have met you."
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Allouette turned away, blushing again. "Be not so effusive, sir! I know you well enough by now, well enough to see that you would have felt only kindliness toward me if I had not shown them how to craft a pump and wished to discuss with you how its partial vacuum brought water up."
"That is so," Gregory confessed.
He was the most maddening man she had ever met.
Another village was beset by invisible monsters; Allouette realized that it had to be something in their food. When Gregory found that their only bread was rye, he examined it closely and identified the little black specks as a fungus that, he said, induced hallucinations. Allouette saw to importing barley from the next county and, with Gregory's smiling but hard-eyed support, talked the baron into paying for it. As they rode away, the tw
o discussed how the fungus had induced hallucinations, which led to a discussion of the nervous system. Gregory listened to her with shining eyes, then said, "So it is not only a matter of your working upon people's minds by manipulating images into symbols—you have actually understood how their brains worked."
"Well, as much as anyone can," Allouette demurred.
"You are the only esper in all the land who has done so by herself," Gregory told her. "Who else would care? Who else could guess? You are an empath as well as a telepath, and the brilliance of your mind is alloyed by tenderness!"
Allouette squirmed, eyes downcast. "You do me too much honor, sir."
"My words cannot do enough." For a moment Gregory dropped his mind shield and she caught a glimpse of herself as he saw her—a shining, ethereal vision. It lasted only a
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moment before he raised his shield again, but that was enough to make her tremble. "Sir! You do me far too much credit! Besides, I am nowhere nearly as beautiful as you think."
"No, you are more beautiful than even my thoughts can show," Gregory said. "Still, does the fact of your beauty matter so much as my perception of it?"
"Does it exist at all, except in your perception?" Allouette retorted, but she rode on, shaken.
Understanding that, Gregory shrugged. "You might as well ask whether the falling of a tree would make a sound if it fell in the depths of the forest with no living creature near."
"Of course it would!" Allouette frowned at him, relieved to be back on safe ground. "A sound wave is a sound wave."
"It may be a wave in the air, but if there is no ear for it to strike, is it truly sound?"
They rode on, companionably (and safely) wrangling about philosophy. The discussion produced no concrete results, of course, but it served Allouette remarkably well that evening as an aid to meditation.
She needed it. She had begun to imagine Gregory in bed holding her in his arms and had need to banish the vision.
Gregory managed to keep the conversation philosophical the next day, but Allouette gave it frequent tangents, goading him into talking about the arts and the social sciences. She listened with rapt attention. When she knew something he didn't— the anarchists had given her a firm but biased grounding in history—she told it to him. They compared notes on different versions of the same events with hilarious results.
That evening, as they cleaned their bowls, Gregory remarked, "You seem to be completely recovered from the ordeal of your healing—at least, in being rested and restored to full energy."
"In that respect, perhaps," Allouette said, frowning, "though in others, I doubt that I ever will."
"Surely you will recover from the healing." Gregory reached out to touch her hand.
His touch was light, ever so light, but it sent a thrill through her whole body. She shivered but forced her hand to hold its
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place. ' 'Recover from the healing, yes—but will I ever truly be healed?"
4 'You shall," Gregory said with full conviction. "You have only to believe in your own inborn goodness and your own worth." His hand opened to cover hers and his eyes seemed to expand, filling her vision. "/ believe in it," he said softly. "I believe you are a woman of immense talents and intelligence, born good and loving and generous. That goodness cannot be eradicated, only covered up, hidden even from yourself—but it is still there and is the true source of your beauty."
She shivered again, but the thrill had centered within her and begun to glow. "Surely you do not mean that you would fail to see beauty in me if I were wicked!"
"I mean exactly that," Gregory said, and his hand caressed hers. "Never before have I failed to shake off the effect of a woman's loveliness. Only you are so outstanding, so vibrant and brilliant, yet so warm and tender that I cannot resist your allure."
She could not stop trembling, so her voice turned harsh. "What a heap of nonsense! If you so believed that, sir, you would have attempted to ravish me even as I woke!"
"Never," Gregory said, with total sincerity. "Never could I seek to hurt you, and such would be hurt."
Allouette shrugged impatiently, as though the word itself made no difference. "Seduce, then. You would have sought to seduce me any of these past few nights if you truly could not resist my charms."
"It is your mind I cannot resist, not your body. Then, too, I have been reared to respect women and would never seek to force upon you attentions you might not want—fully and freely, of your own will."
"What good is it to me if you love only my mind?" she challenged, then spoke from a surge of anger. "These past days you have spoken a lover's words, sir, flirting shamelessly but never following your words with actions. I tire of such teasing. Make love to me here and now or be done with your blandishments and honeyed words."
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Alarm shadowed Gregory's eyes. "Do you challenge me? Surely love cannot come thus!"
"Surely it can—if you have the courage for it. I think you fear the act itself, sirrah. You are willing to speak of it all day, to versify and make poetry of it, but poets only sing about the things they cannot do. If you mean what you say, give me proof in a kiss!" She leaned forward, eyelids growing heavy, lips moist and parting just a little.
Gregory hesitated, then seemed to hear Geoffrey's voice inside his head commanding, Take the cash and let the credit go! Suddenly he understood Allouette's misgivings and leaned forward, brushing her lips with his own.
What began as a brushing deepened most amazingly and most quickly. She gasped, then responded with ardor equal to his own, and in minutes he was lost in the wonder of her kiss.
After ten minutes of this, with only quick gasps of air, though, Allouette grew impatient. Would he never reach out to caress?
It seemed he would not. She reached out instead, finding his hand by touch and guiding it to the curve of her breast. He froze, then thawed and drew his fingers lightly over the swelling, and Allouette gasped with surprise at the exquisite sensations his touch evoked. Never since Orly's first caress had she felt such. How could this be?
Still, he seemed quite content to tickle and caress the cloth that covered her. She reached out for his hand again and, step by step and with a few whispered directions, guided him into deeper and deeper intimacies. She was amazed at his skill, for though he was undoubtedly completely new to the game, he seemed to know exactly where to touch, where to tickle, and how to use his lips to best effect; he was the strangest combination of virgin and experienced lover that she had ever discovered. Any presence of mind, or notions she might have had of planning, vanished into a jumble of sheer sensation as he touched here, caressed there, matching her thrill for thrill until they lay naked on a bed of fragrant bracken, touching and marvelling at the sensations they evoked in one another, sensations that spiralled upward and farther upward until their
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minds mingled in ecstasy and the world went away, stripping their souls bare and leaving them joined for a timeless moment as the essence that was the innate Allouette regained the ecstasy she had known with Orly and went past it, so far past that they seemed to reach the sun coupled, a sun that filled them and surrounded them, then burst into fragments that fell and faded, leaving them separate but paired again, and Allouette knew in her heart that she had regained herself, that her cure was complete.
Then they lay in one another's arms, gasping in amazement and, yes, even a little in fright, quivering and holding each to the other for dear life as their pulses slowed and the world began to come back. They lay embracing, catching their breaths, and began to become aware of tiny thoughts, sharp thoughts, larger and rapacious thoughts all around them, as though the whole world had fallen to copulating with them.
At last Allouette looked up at the stunned, disbelieving, and awed face that hovered over hers and whispered, "You had better intend to stay near me for a long time, sir, for I shall want many more such moments!
"
"I shall stay," Gregory whispered, then smiled as his voice turned to a purr. "Oh, be sure I shall stay, most lovely of women, for as long as you will have me!"
She eyed him askance, her cynicism returning. "You should be careful what you promise, sir."
"Promise?" asked Gregory. "I thought it was a demand."
Then he kissed her again, and it was a while before she thought coherently.
They celebrated the sunrise in much the same manner, then dressed and breakfasted, their gazes locked so completely it was amazing their hands found their mouths. Then Gregory sighed with regret that he must tear his gaze away from her and went to bring the horses.
They rode for some while in silence, only looking into one another's eyes now and then and smiling. At last Gregory said, "Does it not seem to you that the whole world must be in love today?"
"It seems so indeed," Allouette said with a tender smile.
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Then her eyes widened in shock and she stiffened. "It seems so in cold fact! Listen a moment and see! Every living creature near us has copulated last night and this morning, even though most of them were far from their seasons!"
Gregory lost his smile. He gazed off into space a few moments, listening to deer and foxes and even earthworms. Then, with a feeling of dread, he reached farther and listened to the thoughts of the people in the nearest village, only now going out and about their daily rounds though the sun had been up for an hour and more, and the plowman should have been in the fields long since. He turned to Allouette, words of dismay on his lips—and saw her smiling at him with a dreamy, lazy, satiated look. 'It would seem, sir, that we must forfend, or the birth rate of the whole kingdom will soar as the overflow of our lovemaking stimulates all living creatures around us."
"We shall have to find some way to block our unwitting projections, then," Gregory said, "for I do not mean to deny myself your desires, whenever and wherever they may occur!"
Allouette gave a low, exulting cry and leaned forward from her saddle to kiss him.
All around them, birds began to bill and coo.
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