Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Lindsay Townsend

  “No. I am coming down. Stay there.”

  Her crushing, bitter disappointment was again swallowed in anger. How dare he order her? Ignoring the distinctive light-and-sharp tread of his crossing the floorboards of the upper room, Elfrida snatched at the ladder and began to climb. Before she had reached the second chamber, she was shouting again.

  “I told you to take care! We have a prisoner now, and what do we do with her? Do you never listen? ’Tis the same as before, with my old gown, and now today, I warned you—”

  Magnus appeared at the top of the ladder, leaning down from the second chamber, his face looming into hers like an ugly man in the moon. “Why are you wasting time? Why bother coming up here? No one is here, no Forest Grendel, no missing brides. We should get back.”

  She was so furious she took a hand off the ladder to shake her fist at him. “I am the witch! I know what to look for, and you do not! Will you always—”

  The rest of her complaint was whipped away in a dizzying rush as Magnus seized the loose front of her man’s tunic and hauled her up the rest of the ladder. He dropped her onto the floorboards beside him. “You are up now, so look.” He growled.

  “Will you always ignore me when it suits you?” Elfrida persisted, determined to have her say.

  He stuck his hand into his belt, and she saw his knuckles tighten, heard the leather creak under his fist. “Is that what you think?” he asked coolly.

  Elfrida swallowed, hoping he would say he was sorry. Or is he no different from the Yarr men, who call me a scold because I dispute with them?

  “It is difficult,” she offered, feeling as if she was on a lonely, strange track. If Magnus would only come to meet her, that would be better.

  Still he said nothing. In despair she turned away from him and began to look about, noticing another ladder to a third floor.

  “Elfrida.” He laid a warm hand upon her shoulder and then a strong arm about her waist. “Shall we look together?”

  She began to weep, and he gathered her in, stroking her hair. “I know you are sad. I know you are frightened,” he murmured.

  She dashed the tears from her face. “I am not frightened.”

  “More than me, then. This is a queer place.”

  She clamped her teeth together before she said something she would regret, and she looked up at him. Trying to ignore her own blaze of temper, she noticed a tightening about his eyes and a grimmer-than-usual set to his crooked mouth. Truly, he was not mocking or making light of the matter.

  But he does not understand and so wants to hurry to leave. She could recognize and respect that. “I do not think we should linger here,” she said.

  “I agree.”

  “But we must search.” When he did not agree to that, she said, “You took the key.”

  He reached into his tunic and brought it out. “Take it, then.”

  He dropped it into her palm and stalked off to the second ladder.

  When will I learn to say nothing? Elfrida thought.

  She forced herself to put their quarrel aside as they went through the strange wooden keep. At Magnus’s brusque suggestion, they began at the very top of the tower, Elfrida biting her tongue a second time as he insisted on going first on the step ladder to the third floor. Once there, he did offer a hand to help her through the narrow trapdoor, but she shook her head, determined to prove her independence. She did not want his touch to divert her, either, as a deep instinct, a witch instinct, warned that she needed all her wits about her.

  She stepped from the ladder onto the floor and stood quietly for a moment. “Did you climb up here?” she asked Magnus.

  “I put my head up through the trapdoor, saw no one, nothing to aid our search, and climbed back down.” He cleared his throat. “You were calling by then.”

  “I was shouting.”

  “That, too.”

  She felt herself blushing, and when he took her hand in his she was glad of the contact and did not attempt to break free. “There are things about this chamber,” she said quietly. “Traces.”

  He stood beside her, patient and steady as a boulder. If he considered her ideas merest fancy, he gave no sign as he glanced again about the seemingly deserted room. Glad they were friends again, she squeezed his hand.

  “Is there a lantern hereabouts?” she asked softly. “I need more light.”

  “I saw one on the second floor.” Magnus dropped a swift kiss onto her forehead and limped around her to where the ladder jutted out through the trapdoor. An instant later she heard him busy on the floor below her, while on the lowest floor she thought she heard a quiet weeping and the faint rattle of the locked door.

  I must ask Magnus if he understands Hedda’s speech, she thought, then put the matter aside. When Magnus’s long arm stretched above the trapdoor, gripping a small lantern, she thanked him and quickly lit the lantern.

  She set the flickering light into a wall sconce, relieved to do so because her hands were not quite steady. Magnus climbed all the way up again and sat beside the ladder, dangling his legs down into the trapdoor. She almost warned him to take care before sharply reminding herself that this was Sir Magnus, warrior, knight, and not a man to be mollycoddled. She did not want to start their quarrel off anew, either.

  Even one-handed he climbs well, and his peg leg is as steady on the ladder as my feet, so he would be right to be annoyed. Sometimes I know I fuss too much.

  Silent, arms clasped before her so she would not be tempted to rush in and touch, she waited until her sight had adjusted to the greater light. The room, a rough square of massive, planked timbers, shone faintly golden by the glow of the lantern. That by itself might have steadied and reassured her, except—

  She slowly breathed in, taking in the now-familiar and expected scent of costly spices. “Ginger for passion, saffron for peace, cinnamon to show respect, for it is expensive,” she murmured.

  “I can smell something burnt, a kind of resin,” Magnus remarked. “I would say frankincense, but why burn it?”

  “To fumigate a space,” Elfrida answered. She wished she had a clove of garlic, or a sprig of fresh rosemary, to protect him completely in this place. All she could do was take his hand in hers, saying a prayer against demons in her mind.

  He smiled, clearly thinking she clasped his fingers for reassurance. “We shall look together, my dainty.” In his mouth, unlike Gregory Denzil’s, the final word was a caress.

  Glad of his goodwill, and wishing a circle of prayer about them both, Elfrida padded slowly across the room from side to side, foot by foot, like thread on a shuttle. Magnus matched her step for step.

  “These walls have been painted white recently,” he said.

  “That shows intent and purity of purpose.”

  “And the white powder on the floor?” He leaned down and, before she could stop him, wetted his finger and tasted the powder. “Salt.”

  “A circle of salt,” Elfrida agreed. She had noticed the scattering of salt at once. The circle had been swept away but carelessly, man fashion.

  “Not for my meat, then, but for what?”

  “To protect or to contain. The circle may have been for the magic worker to stand within, safe, or to hold a demon.”

  “Splendor in Christendom,” she saw Magnus mouth, and her hand was pulled as he made the sign of the cross. He glanced at her, and his mouth went grim. “What else?”

  She knelt and plucked a seed from the floor. Again it was a trace, a token that the wizard—she was sure whoever worked here was a man—was up to no good. “Seeds of the parsley plant. Do you know what they say of the parsley seed? It goes back and forth to hell seven times before it sprouts. And here”—she leaned forward and swept up a tiny, gray-green, dry frond—“is wormwood, to protect against demons.”

  “The fellow wants things both ways,” said Magnus. “But is it our Forest Grendel?”

  “It must be, surely.” Elfrida rose to her feet, excitement and dread both bubbling within her. “We have the
laundress whimpering downstairs with a set of long-limbed clothes. We have spices. We have a tower and a blue door and mistletoe.” She frowned. “I thought to see mistletoe within.”

  “Ah.” Magnus coughed, and his mangled features melded into a look Elfrida realized was embarrassment. “There was a heap of green stuff at the top of the ladder. I put my hand in it by accident and tossed it away into that corner.”

  She grinned. “One for you.”

  She focused on the darkest part of the chamber, where part of the ceiling dipped down and there were still many shadows that the lantern could not dispel. The northern end, she admitted. The North, site of the devil. As she watched the bare wall, she noticed a thin, black strip coiled close into the corner like a sleeping adder.

  “Let me.” Magnus stretched out with his right arm but stopped when he heard her hiss of breath. “Surely it can do me no more damage than I have already?”

  “I do not know.” Elfrida was ashamed to admit it but felt compelled to do so. “The...the arrangement of whatever is under there could be important.”

  He said nothing, and she wondered if he was disappointed in her for stopping him, then she was afraid in case he was.

  Though I should not be fretting over such things. Consider Christina!

  “We could take a part each,” Magnus suggested.

  Relief gushed through her. He had listened to her, he had heeded her. “That would be best.”

  Carefully, they edged to the wall and nipped a piece of the shining, black cloth between them.

  “This is a fine silk.” Magnus confirmed what she suspected, although she had never seen or handled the cloth before. It was as dark as midnight and light and thin as a shadow, though as she lifted it away from the wall, it whispered, as if speaking to its master.

  She stared at the objects now revealed, all ranged against the northern wall, and knew the worst. Within a chalice of polished copper, marked by a strange script, were the herbs of magic—vervain, periwinkle, sage, mint. Within a small dark mirror she saw her own distorted reflection. Upon a small gold platter was a tiny pile of nail parings and strands of hair. Sickened, she almost snatched the golden strands from the platter then compelled herself to touch nothing.

  “The lettering is Greek.” Magnus leaned in so far she thought he would crash against the wall. “I fear my Greek is not good, and I have forgotten most of what I learned in Outremer. I think it means something like the dark one, or the beautiful dark one.”

  Elfrida had seen enough but knew she must still keep searching. There was a narrow strip of parchment beside the gold platter. She unrolled it, the dry-tomb taste of horror choking her mouth and lungs as she saw the list of names. This script was Latin, which she could read a little.

  “Those are Arabic numbers.” Magnus, still gripping his end of the black silk, ignored the names and pointed to a squiggle on the parchment. “That is the letter two and one, twenty-one.”

  “With the sign for the month of December beside it.” Elfrida rolled up the parchment and replaced it on the floor before turning her full attention to the final object on the floor by the wall. It was a clay figure, carefully fashioned in the shape of a man but with three heads. Each head wore a “crown” of mistletoe berries. Scratched onto the chest of the figure were the Arabic numerals for twenty-one and the astrological sign of the archer Sagittarius.

  Moving with great care and deliberation so she would not give way to the rising panic inside her own breast, Elfrida pooled her end of the black cloth over the items. Ever quick, Magnus did the same at the opposite side. He knew when to keep silent, too, as Elfrida stalked into the middle of the chamber and this time found a fragment of burnt ashes upon the floor. She moved to the left and found another fragment, then another, making the shape of a triangle.

  Now she was sure, too sure. She swallowed, smothering the rising scream in her throat. Digging her fingernails into her palms, her hands felt clammy, and her gut crawled.

  “We should take the lantern.” She was glad her voice sounded steady. “Leave all as we found it. Please do not ask why.”

  “No.” Magnus strolled across to the wall sconce and lifted down the lantern. “I will light you down.”

  She was too tense to protest that she should leave the chamber last and ensure no sign of them remained. Stepping over another small heap of ash, she hastened down the ladder. She started as Magnus blew out the lantern and rapidly chanted the prayer of Saint Patrick against demons until he appeared in the second room.

  “Thank Christ and all the saints.” Wrung out, she threw herself against his broad chest and flung her arms about him.

  “What is amiss? You near weeping and the maid below sobbing and rattling the door—if any came now they would think I beat you both.” He combed her hair with his fingers and rocked her in his arms. “Tell me now,” he said. “Tell me the worst.”

  Chapter 18

  “The Forest Grendel uses this tower for magic.” Elfrida leaned against the southern wall of the second chamber, a room filled with stacked logs and braziers, wicker hurdles, a broken horse harness, and barrels of apples. An odd room for a mystical place, Magnus thought. He took a reddened, wizened apple from the barrel closest to him and bit in.

  It was sour, and he tossed it back into the barrel.

  “Do not leave any piece you have touched,” Elfrida said wearily. Too cast down and depleted to stand, she slid down the wall onto her heels, looking as if she longed to clasp her arms around her knees and rock there.

  “Why not?” Magnus asked, to stop her doing just that.

  “He could use it against you.”

  He remembered the nail clippings and worse, much worse, Elfrida’s dress that he had carelessly flung away to Gregory Denzil. Retrieving the apple from the barrel, he finally swallowed the mouth-crinkling chunk. It was sour enough to make his eyes water, but he imagined it as the Grendel’s head and got it down.

  “It is worse than I feared.” Elfrida frowned as the woman in the room below them moaned softly and rattled the door again, like a wandering ghost.

  “You are a good witch, are you not? Could he not be the same?”

  His ploy to play advocate for the devil worked. She jerked up her head so hard she hit the back wall. “Not so! He is nothing like me! This creature is evil. He wishes to draw demons, seduce them, summon them, and he means to use my sister to do it! That is why he stole away brides!”

  Magnus realized he must have looked puzzled, for she started to say more, in her own dialect, then stopped, shuddering. He sat down beside her and pulled her onto his lap.

  He knew they should make haste away. He knew they should still be looking for the Grendel’s other towers, that he should bribe or threaten the laundress into confessing all she knew, by sign language if need be. But Elfrida had the kind of dazed shock freezing her limbs that he had seen on warriors after the bloodiest of battles, and he did not want her to suffer.

  His single urgent thought was to console. He feathered his hand over her shivering back while his right arm clasped her snugly. He kissed her ears and forehead, her flawless nose, her adorable freckles. Her lips caught his, and the summer heat between them made the scent of the stored apples wholesome. She whispered then said in the old tongue, “I am safe again.”

  “Always, my heart,” he said, softly touching her breast and feeling her heart thud into his hand. “We are a haven for each other,” he said in his own tongue, knowing she would understand the meaning, if not the words.

  She lowered her head and sighed. “Sir.”

  “Hush.” She was the witch, but he knew this magic better, understood what she needed, and guessed it would heal them. He bore her to the floor and deftly eased down her braies. She was ready for him, embracing, and he slid into her, taking her slowly, tenderly to each rise. When she was golden again, and glowing, he flowed into her, their union a time of summer in winter.

  Afterward she was as loose-limbed as an Eastern dancer and also more
herself. “Was that wise?” she asked as he helped her to tie her braies.

  “Never fret.” He slapped her rump for the pleasure of it and hauled her again onto his knees.

  “Our time—”

  “We have not lingered for so long, nor will we. Why brides? Because they are virgin?”

  “Yes, and we should be leaving. It will be dark soon.”

  Magnus kissed her and gave her a tiny push. “Go to it, then, since you must.”

  She scrambled to her feet. “What do we do with Hedda?”

  “Give her our flasks and bits of food and leave her here. She will not starve for food or cold, not in three days. And that is the length of time we have, is it not? Three days until the twenty-first of this month? Within a time of three?” He reminded Elfrida of the spell she had created and the promise she had made within her own home.

  She stared at him, blushing. For an instant he thought it was because she was glad he had remembered her magic, or she was perhaps still shy of him and their joining, but then another lodged in his mind, a bitter, dark reason.

  “You feared I might do away with her. Why? Because she would be in our way? Because she is no gentlewoman?”

  Her eyes glanced away from his, and his indignation hardened into anger. “You asked me without much hope, in a rush, because you dreaded my answer. If I had chosen differently, what would have followed? Would you have trusted me again?” Revolted, he turned and smashed his fist into the wall. “Do you trust me now? Was this some kind of test?”

  “I had to ask,” Elfrida panted. “She is ours for the moment. And you would not harm a lady.”

  “Nor any woman!”

  “Yes.” She looked directly at him. “Believe me, I know that now.”

  Yet you still asked. As a warrior, Magnus could understand the question. As her lover, it repelled him. Unable to look at her, he turned toward the final ladder.

  “Magnus.” Her lost, young voice compelled him to turn back. “I am sorry.”

  “So am I.”