“I hear them.” Magnus was shaking those nearest to him, gesturing for quiet. Off in the darkness, Elfrida could sense others being prodded awake. She sighed, her dream still clinging to her, sweet and full of promise.
Is the dream a sign of things to come or of how I should act?
Magnus breathed in to the base of his lungs, glad to smell no fresh fires. Whoever was out there might be seeking shelter or be about sin, but they were not coming with blazing brands to torch the place. Their own fire was embers only, which in case of an attack was a good thing, one less danger.
Pressing his ear to the hut wall, he heard the faint rattle of swords in scabbards, the snorting of horses, the punctuated gasps of men trying to creep over snow and branches and be quiet about it.
Thieves for certain, he decided grimly, twisting back to Elfrida. “Keep safe and out of sight,” he warned, touching the pale disc of her face with his good hand. Feeling her soft skin against his callused palm, he wished he could have dreamed for just a little longer.
“Stand away from the walls,” he warned her, vividly aware that neither wattle and daub nor thatch would stop a blade. She nodded once, sharply, and vanished into the shadows.
“Armed, are we?” He growled to his men.
“Aye!”
He could just make them out in the gray gloom of the hut, crouched by the horses and beside the stouter timbers, fists on their weapon hilts. Pride in them surged through in a chest-filling, tunic-bursting moment and then he was ready, colder than ice.
“Go!” he ordered, waiting impatiently as Mark, who knew his fighting mind almost as well as Peter’s, snatched back the broken door just as the outsiders broke into a frenzied, ragged charge for the entrance.
The first skewered himself on Magnus’s blade in the doorway. Magnus punched the screaming, falling body away with his stump and roared out to cut down the rest.
* * * *
Magnus sprang, nimble as a charging bull, and his men streamed after him. Elfrida heard the shrieks and groans outside and paced inside, unable to hunker down quietly and hide, as ordered. Staring out of the shattered doorway, she could see nothing clearly except black mounds, fire ash, and shadows on the threshold, and darker trails on the snow—all from the blood and bodies of men, she realized with a sickening jolt as the building shook and a man’s severed arm fell halfway into the hut itself. As she stared at the limb, it twitched, the fingers moving as if it might crawl toward her.
Yelling, Elfrida ran for one of the walls. Her fingers gasped the timber, and she began to haul herself up, ignoring the stinging cuts to her hands and face from the ancient, cobwebbed thatch. Reaching the roof, she swung up with her feet, trying to smash her way free.
Out, out! her mind chanted as she kicked and gobbets of turf rained down on her. Her arms were burning, feeling as if they were about to be wrenched from her body, but she kept swinging and kicking, and in a burst of filthy snow she broke through.
Arms trembling, she pulled herself out onto the roof and sprawled, panting, her mind still filled by that twitching, severed arm.
Help Magnus, she ordered herself and squirmed onto her side, her feet sliding on the steep roof before she scrabbled for a true purchase. Hooking one leg around a roof beam, she looked about for missiles to throw down on the enemy, ready to hurl both turf and curses.
As she turned her head, Elfrida spotted Magnus at once, in the middle of a heaving mass of arms, flashing swords, whirling staves, and jerking figures. He stood and swayed like a mighty tree in a storm, legs apart, his right arm hugging a shield and his left fielding a sword with the piercing speed of a kingfisher.
He is so fast, so hard, so decisive. How can he be so very fast?
His blade thrust and dipped, quicker than her sewing needle, and each time his challenger toppled facedown in the snow. Already he was covered head to foot in blood, yet he took no more heed of his yelling attackers and their flailing swords than a butcher did of a pig’s squeals at hog-killing time. As she gasped and stared, he sliced yet another stave in two, lunging forward and towering over the small, skinny, screaming, and now weaponless brigand. The moon lit Magnus brightly and his scarred face was both terrible and expressionless.
“No!” she shrieked, and unbelievably he heard and checked the stroke, clubbing the scrawny, crawling lad with his shield instead.
“Thank the Mother...” Elfrida drooped in relief but was too late for herself. She felt herself sliding and twisted, scrabbling desperately for a purchase, then skidded down the roof and fell.
Chapter 10
Magnus saw her fall. He seemed to be trapped within a snare where his limbs would only move with grinding slowness, a finger’s width at a time, when he wanted to make haste, to sprint like a boy—and more than anything, to catch her.
Move! He raged inwardly at his sluggish legs as the shield he had tossed aside rolled off into the snow as slowly as a ball coated in honey. His arms were as heavy as boulders and almost as stiff as he tried to reach out with them, to save that bright rainbow dazzle of Elfrida tumbling, feetfirst, down and down. Off to the side he saw Mark’s mouth gape in an oval of shock and heard a howl.
Something hit him foursquare in the chest, and he tottered and seized, gripping tight even as he lost his footing, knocked onto his backside in the snow. He shook more snow from his eyelids.
“Mmmmnnn Magnus.”
He understood his name and nothing more. Blinking, waiting for his heart to stop thumping, he lowered his arms and dropped Elfrida into his lap.
What have I done with my sword? For a dreadful moment he could not remember, then felt his sword hilt rub against his tunic and heard his scabbard scrape along his wooden foot. He had sheathed it, thank all the saints.
“I am not hurt.”
He could understand her now. “I told you to keep safe, Lady.”
“That’s a brave lass,” Mark called from outside the hut, gesturing to a squire to calm their horses while the rest of Magnus’s men chased those brigands who could run. “Still, you should give her a box on the ear.”
“There is that,” Magnus agreed, as Mark disappeared inside the hut. He had been badly scared, and he longed to make her backside smart as much as his own. From the edge of his vision, he watched the sniveling thief who had caused her to fall finally creep off behind a holly tree and was sorry to let the creature go. But what the devil had Elfrida been on the roof for?
“I hoped to help, and the door was blocked,” came her answer, when he growled the question.
“Splendor in Christendom! You think I cannot fight my own fights?” Furious, he tipped up her chin, startled to see tear streaks on her pale, drawn face.
Why would she not be shocked? When has this little witch seen any fighting, save in a simple village brawl?
As swiftly as it had risen, his anger died. No longer appalled at her wild courage, he found himself admiring her—if she would shout like that for an enemy, how would she be for a friend? He remembered his first skirmishes, how he had been sick after each one. As he glanced about the scene of carnage, he saw Mark emerge from the hut and toss a severed arm into the nearest hollow.
No wonder she wanted to get out.
“’Tis past now, the fighting.” He tried to brush falling snow off her hair.
Contrary and stubborn as ever, she shook her head. “It has begun.”
“If so, you will not do that, or anything like, again.” He frowned, determined to wring that promise from her. “Elfrida, you will swear to me this moment—”
Instead, she lifted her head and kissed him gently on the mouth, wrapping her arms about his neck.
She does this to win her own way, he thought, before thought was gone. He was sitting in a snowdrift, snow falling steadily on him, and he was warm. His mouth tingled and Elfrida’s lips were fresh and sweet. Speechless with desire, he deepened their kiss and felt her yield to him, heard her sigh, and knew that how he looked no longer mattered.
At last she dr
ew back and nestled her head against his chest, as he had seen Alice do so often with Peter and had always envied, until now.
“What was that?” he demanded, his voice half a croak.
She dimpled a very pretty, very exasperating smile at him. “A kiss of peace, my lord,” she said.
“Humph!” Magnus stayed where he was, sitting in the falling snow with Elfrida snuggled quietly in his lap, until his men had returned.
No one wanted to sleep in the hut again, and the moon was setting, the sky changing from black to dark blue. Without words, it was decided they would move on, and soon enough they were off.
* * * *
Elfrida dozed in the saddle, a feat she would have considered impossible before the previous night. To her disappointment, she did not dream of a summer garden or Magnus but of her sister, Christina, smiling and dancing in a room decked with mistletoe. She woke with a parched mouth and a headache.
Silently, as if he was the diviner instead of her, Magnus handed her a flask of ale. The drink eased her thirst, and the drumming in her head was replaced by the steady canter of horses’ hooves. They rode on through gently falling snow on a wide, high track that Magnus called the great road, with oak and lime trees on either side and bright splashes of holly bushes. They rode in the direction of the rising sun, and when they came to a tall keep set on a high, bare outcrop, a keep with a moat of water round its stout stone walls, Magnus squeezed her thighs with his longer legs.
“Castle Denzil. How does it feel to you?”
“A place without magic,” Elfrida answered at once. “But plenty of malice,” she added as a raven soared over the snowcapped walls toward the forest. She longed to say something witty or courtly but dare not in case the old speech let her down again and she said something bawdy. Her cheeks tingled with heat as she tried to concentrate on the castle, rather than her companion’s long, hard body. “Why build here?” It seemed a remote and cheerless spot.
“Close to the road, the woods, good vantage, see any traveler for leagues.” Magnus scratched at his patchy, black beard as if he, too, was distracted. “’Tis a great pity we did not snare a stag or boar on our way, for Sir Gregory will expect gifts, and handsome ones at that, it being so close to Christmas.”
Elfrida could not be sure if he was jesting or not. She raised her head and watched the weak winter sun turn the stones of the keep yellow. Hoping Sir Magnus could not hear her belly grumble with hunger, she wondered if the castle had such a thing as a bathhouse. “What then?”
“Ah, never fret, my Elfrida! I have gold, and that should sweeten our coming.”
“Will we be welcome? Will he remember you?”
“They have not put an arrow through us yet, so I think yes to that, on both counts.”
They were in the shadow of the keep by then. Elfrida could hear the scurrying and shouts inside and see men on the catwalks and battlements pointing at the pennants carried by Magnus’s followers. Before they stopped at the guard tower, she shook Magnus’s arm and twisted awkwardly in the saddle to look at him.
“Sir Gregory knows you as Sir Magnus, but what am I?”
“My young mistress, of course,” came back the calm reply. “My pretty, red-haired lover.”
He kissed the top of her astonished head and swept them through the gatehouse tower into the small bailey, where Gregory Denzil was waiting. Greetings and reunions took place, of which Elfrida understood no word. Enduring the stares of Denzil’s men, she sat rigidly in the saddle, taking care to look at no man or thing for too long, lest her stare be misinterpreted as interest. Gregory Denzil himself she quickly summed up as a small, wiry fighter, hung about with knives as a workman is with tools, and with a loud, boasting voice. She disliked him on sight as a backslapping, woman-beating bully, but he had as little magic in him as the red wart on his forehead.
A human threat, like his men, she thought, wishing she could hand out healing poultices and potions to the broken-lipped, broken-down maids who limped and tottered out of the way as their party dismounted and then burst into the castle’s great hall. Even at this early hour, men were drinking at the benches and playing dice, or betting on dogs fighting each other on the filthy floor. Determined not to be unsteady on her legs after so much unaccustomed riding, she kept a tight grip on Magnus’s arm—and he on hers, she noted with amusement. Together they picked a careful way through bones and waste to the dais where Gregory and his chosen held a kind of court.
A strange, wild court, it was without order. Gregory seized a man who was lounging in the single chair and threw him off the dais, straight into the central fire, guffawing as the miscreant screamed, desperately trying to beat the flames off his cloak and tunic. Gregory took the man’s place at the table and cocked his legs on the long trestle, kicking aside the salt dish and pouring the bag of gold Magnus had given him onto a plate of sweets. He chuckled at the bouncing coins, and his men echoed him while Magnus swept a bench with his cloak and motioned her to sit.
The bench had a flaw in the wood that nipped her bottom. Magnus crowded beside her on her left, keeping his stump tucked under the table. Mark settled at her other side and at once began to sniff suspiciously at his shoes. A short order from Magnus stopped him and made him keep close watch on the hall where the drinking, gaming, belching, and breaking wind continued unabated.
Gregory sat on his special chair alongside Magnus, still laughing, and he jerked his black eyebrows at her in a friendly way. He pushed a half-filled cup to her and said something, to which Elfrida smiled and opened her hands to show she meant no disrespect. He said something else, and she touched the simple wooden cross held on a cord about her neck, showing she was Christian. She would not drink from that cup even if compelled, since a dead meat fly floated in it.
“Ah, a gentle!” crowed Gregory. Kicking his legs off the table, he lurched to his feet and pulled his scarlet cap off his balding head, bowing to her and ignoring the smirks and sniggers of his men.
Magnus growled, glowering at her as if she was at fault for understanding Gregory.
His host chuckled and spoke, then nodded to her. “As I observed to your lord, you are dainty, my sweet, and worthy of all attentions.”
“How is it you speak my tongue?” she asked.
“I know many,” came back the casual reply. “But now, since you are dainty—”
He clapped his hands and called out in his own dialect, and the men on the lower tables rose as one and began to work. Brooms appeared from corners of the hall, and the men fairly ran with them, sweeping debris off the trestles onto the floor then scooping the rubbish into the fire, which crackled like a greedy, living thing. In moments servers had dashed in with buckets of water and scrubbing brushes to tackle the grimy benches, and then a troop of pages appeared, each with an armload of fresh greenery for strewing.
Under cover of this domestic frenzy, Magnus leaned toward her. “I like it not that he understands your speech,” he remarked in the old tongue, not saying Gregory’s name so the fellow would not know he talked of him.
“Pray God he does not know our speech,” Elfrida murmured, feeling wary herself and then absurdly happy because Magnus replied, “Yes, it is ours, is it not?”
She hugged that sweet thought to herself as a small door close to the dais opened and a group of women entered to applause. Beside her she felt Magnus start and noticed Mark smooth out his tunic, thrusting out his chest to look impressive. She felt hot color flood her face and wished she had a cup to drink from so she could avoid staring at these new guests.
“All young.” Magnus growled. “Fancy gowns. Trinkets for the troops.” He snorted and snapped his fingers at a passing server, gesturing for fresh wine. “Gregory always was a wencher.”
The gowns of the young women were fancy, Elfrida conceded, telling herself she was too wise to be disconcerted by such trifles as she sat in her travel-stained dress. But it seemed there was a gown for her, too, as a pretty, blonde girl who reminded her achingly of Christin
a now peeled off from the group speeding into the hall and approached her. She carried a rustling swathe of dark blue in her outstretched arms.
Lower down the hall, fresh drink was now being served, and the men whistled and hooted as one by one the score of women took their places at each trestle. The blonde with the blue gown smiled at her.
Elfrida rose. She had already decided that she would not change in full view of the hall—such customs were well and good for kings but not for her. Without glancing at Magnus or Gregory—she needed no permission from either—she turned and walked through the small door.
Chapter 11
It was a modern solar—she thought that was the term—and filled with winter sunlight from a rich window with real glass. She was tempted to dart forward and touch the surface of that strange substance but knew she must be as languid as a queen. She dropped onto one of the many great cushions arranged against the room’s luxuriously warm wall hangings and waited, warming her hands by a small brazier.
The blonde, whom she decided was less beautiful than Christina, hurried into the solar, her white-knuckled hands gripping the gown. To Elfrida’s horror, she dropped to her knees amidst the cushions and dried meadowsweet and began to plead in a high, strange dialect.
Elfrida forgot about being languid. She rushed to the blonde and knelt beside her, cradling her fair head against her shoulder. “Yes, I will wear it,” she kept saying, trying to draw the dress from those knotted fists. She could feel the girl shuddering and muttered a charm to keep her safe, calling out, “We are returning!” when a heavy hand smacked against the door. The blonde by now was shivering like a bird in a trap and unable to help her. Elfrida unlaced and kicked off her gown, bundling it into a ball, and tugged on the blue dress. She did not trouble with most of the laces—she did not want the blonde to suffer because of her perceived tardiness.
“Coming!” she shouted, scooping up her old dress, flinging her hair across her shoulders and helping the blonde to her feet. Giving her a last, comforting shoulder squeeze, Elfrida urged her to the door and thrust herself forward, when Gregory stumbled in.
Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 10