Elfrida stopped sweeping and washed and strained some dried peas. She fetched water from her well and put the peas in a cauldron to cook slowly over the fire.
It will be a homely supper, but something, if Magnus returns tonight. She knew he would try to do so with all his heart, and she hugged that knowledge close as she chopped garlic and onions into the pottage.
The simple task had warmed her fingers, so she found her spindle and began to spin some wool thread, part of her mind recalling what Magnus had said about felt cloth. She knew that keeping busy would help her mood and also clear her thoughts. The answer to the danger of Joseph Denzil was in her grasp, she sensed, only she had not understood it yet.
She was flattered by Magnus describing her as a warrior of magic, she acknowledged. It made her feel valued and one of his peers. He had sought her advice, too, in their struggles with the Denzils. He had told her he was learning.
What am I learning?
She found her lantern and set it on her table for later. She spun in the sunlight by the doorway, standing beside the bench where she had sewn the sleeves into Christina’s wedding gown. The thread on her spindle broke, and she repaired it, whispering a charm to make it secure.
Witchcraft was part of her life. Magnus had never asked her to relinquish it, nor did he fear her. She knew he had moments of disquiet, especially when she had charmed the laundress, but he was easy now. He trusted her witchcraft.
“What would he say?” she murmured aloud, putting aside her spindle and stirring the bubbling pottage. “That it is my craft, women’s business.”
And what is the women’s work that I aid?
“Childbearing, tending pregnant cows, making sure the stores are sweet and fresh, making clothes, making bread dough, brewing ale, gardening, helping with the harvests.”
All living things, she realized, all fruitful.
Joseph Denzil had told her he was dying. He had sought a bride of frost and snow, not of bountiful summer. He had not seen her as his equal because he had never recognized her magic as such and had not known her when they met face to face. He had plotted to steal life by sacrificing other brides. He was a necromancer, seeking to control demons and spirits. Even the wolfsbane poison had been left as a means of serving death.
“His magic means death,” Elfrida said, staring at the seething peas. She could plant dried peas and they would sprout, for her magic was concerned with life.
She clapped her hands together. “And that is how I must cleanse him forever from our homes and woods, through rituals of life. His magic is not the only way! I called myself a warrior of magic and was pleased when Magnus called me so, but in truth my magic is women’s magic, life magic, magic not bound by numbers or times of three or anything such. There were other ways, more certain ways, older ways of defeating Joseph.”
I must plan for that. As she thought it, she began to smile...
* * * *
Magnus swung down from his horse and knelt at the wayside shrine. He had stopped here weeks ago, without much hope. So much had changed since then. He had changed. The battered little statue of the unknown saint no longer seemed a kindred soul but one he could be kind to. And he had promised the saint an offering when he next traveled this way.
“Greetings, Holy One.” He knelt and brushed the mounds of snow from the beleaguered figure. “I bring you my offering, as promised.”
He laid some gold coins at the foot of the wooden statue. The coins were from his own wagon, which was still safe at Top Yarr, and also from Gregory Denzil’s treasure chest, which Baldwin had recovered from the solar of Denzil’s castle.
“My good little witch Elfrida also sends her greetings.” It felt good to say Elfrida’s name, to announce her as his. He had a woman now, and he intended to keep her. He was keen to show her off to others, Peter and Alice to start with, and then more.
He laid a wreath of holly and ivy before the saint. Elfrida would have chosen such, he thought, and the red berries picked up the faded paint on the saint’s cloak.
“Thank you for Elfrida. Thank you for saving her sister. Thank you for freeing the slave women.” To those he had given the rest of Denzil’s treasure and sent them off with an escort to the nearest convent of nuns that his men could find. The women might not choose to stay at such a place forever, but it would be a respite to begin with.
He placed another row of gold coins on top of the first. “Thank you for Elfrida loving me.”
Each day when he woke, that was his first thought—she loves me. Christmas was fast approaching, the time of merrymaking and gifts, but he had already had his present.
Thank the Lord that all my other obligations are finished at last! Now I can plan for myself. Tonight, when I reach Top Yarr again, I shall ask Elfrida to marry me. Will she accept? Do witches have husbands?
“This witch will,” he vowed, adding quickly, “Please, Holy One, let her accept me.”
He laid out a third row of coins then simply tipped the rest of the leather bag over the shrine. Coins, silver, copper, and gold, spilled around the gently smiling figure in a shower of bounty, sparkling in the sunshine and snow.
He left without looking back, keen to be on his way.
* * * *
Elfrida looked up from the pottage when the vast shadow fell across her from the doorway. The sight of Magnus towering there, the sunset bright behind him, outlining his craggy, scarred profile and long, sinewy body, set her heart and breath and thoughts speeding.
“Ah, you are back,” she said, while her inner witch voice scolded her. Naturally he is back! Say something startling and witty that will remind him how amazing you think him!
“Did you have a good journey, Sir...Magnus?”
She rapped her spoon on the side of the cauldron, wishing she could have done better than that. She had such hopes, such plans. “I have been cooking,” she said, thinking she might at least appeal to his hunger. “’Tis not great knightly fare, but it is wholesome.”
“So you are back to ‘sir’ again, eh? I shall have to change that.”
Her heartbeat sped up even faster as he strode across to her, growling a hasty apology for dropping clumps of snow on her newly swept floor. “It does not matter,” she managed to begin, before he scooped her into his arms.
“Never fret over pottage, Elfrida, ’tis you I wish to have.”
Then he was kissing her lips and throat and ears, murmuring against her hair. “Better than a drink of warm mead, you are, and a blessed sight after a long day of riding. That fool Mark said you might be anxious—no, he is not that, and I do not care for such trifles now.”
He whirled her right off her feet, swirling her about so she gasped, anxious her flying feet would knock over the cauldron.
He threw her up, and she felt herself sailing in the air, then he caught her safely and gathered her tight in a pair of arms that felt like ropes of iron.
“Now, madam,” he said, bending his fearsome, black brows onto her and spoiling his grim scowl by the golden gleam in his eyes, “you will spend Christmastime with me, at my manor. Then we shall have a day or so here, then back to the manor again. We shall divide our time between each place, for you are the good witch of the forest, and I am lord of my manor, and both need our attention, yes?”
She nodded, wondering what was coming next. Magnus clearly had a speech in mind, and she thought it wise to let him say it.
He gave her a squeeze and a sweet, lingering kiss. “Does that sound fair and just to you?”
“What?” Elfrida stammered. His tongue had teased and explored all parts of her lips and teeth and mouth, and she fairly tingled, her whole body feeling as if she had bathed in honey. “Forgive me, Magnus, could you say over?”
He chuckled. “What a dazzled thing you are! You look as I feel. And ‘Magnus’ is a good start.”
Feeling she could not ask anything while her wits were so besieged, Elfrida tried to ease herself out of his grasp. When that failed, she tried another t
actic. “The pottage burns!”
He sniffed and shook his head. “No, it does not, but since you are keen to be away from me—”
“I am not,” Elfrida replied and she felt herself blush for being so revealing. And yet surely she and Magnus had gone past such points where their love needed to be recited like poetry? “This is not going as I planned!” she burst out in frustration.
“No, for sure it is not, and the time for teasing is gone.” Magnus planted her down, none too gently, on a stool, and knelt before her. He brushed a strand of her hair away from her reddened face and took a deep breath.
“Will you marry me?”
* * * *
He had meant to speak more of the advantages for both of them, but he had to know her answer, now. “Elfrida?”
“Yes!” She flung her arms about him, “Yes, please! But—”
Sensing her withdrawal, he wrapped his arms about her narrow middle so she could not escape.
“I am a knight and should marry a lady, is that what you are going to say? We have had this talk before. You are the woman I want.”
Her amber eyes narrowed. “Have we spoken so before?”
“Never fret, for sure we have!” he answered, crossing his fingers against what could be a lie, though truly he did not care. She has accepted me.
She dipped her head, a gesture he recognized as a moment of shyness before she asked something. “What, my heart?”
“I have a favor to beg of you, if I may.”
He felt his own heart expanding, his body glowing with well-being. He felt generous to the whole of Christendom and beyond because Elfrida was to be his wife. “You would have some new gowns? I have some yellow silk from the East that I brought back.” He had bought it in Outremer, hoping that one day it would make his wife to be a bridal gown. For years he had kept it, deep in the bottom of his clothes chest in his manor, telling himself he was too ugly now and a fool for hoping and yet still unable to let it go...
But Elfrida was shaking her head. “We shall divide our days between here and your home?”
“We shall.”
“I shall be your lady?”
Remembering her hurt when she told him that Joseph had called her a peasant, Magnus went down on both knees before her. “Let me swear fealty to you.”
She looked startled, years dropping from her face so she seemed almost a young girl, before joy dimpled her lips and cheeks. “How so, my lord?”
He reluctantly uncoiled his arms from her slender body and put his arms together, covering his right stump with his left hand. “I should bring my hands close, as if in prayer, but since that is impossible now, this is how I do it. Now, you place your hands about mine.”
She did so, her fingers cool and trembling against his.
Kneeling before her, he spoke, “I, Sir Magnus of Norton Mayfield, swear my undying fealty and love to you, Elfrida of Top Yarr. I will be your knight, and you will be my lady. May God strike me dead if I ever break faith with you.”
“Hush!” said Elfrida quickly, glancing around him as if the walls of her hut had grown ears. “That is too much!”
“Not for my wife.”
He was in earnest. He offered her marriage and a marriage between equals. Elfrida kissed him firmly on his scarred mouth to make fast his promise, relieved she was already sitting down. “Are you sure?” she wanted to ask him, but she knew that he was.
He smiled at her, looking deeply into her eyes. “Do I smell pottage? May I have some, wife to be?”
She laughed and broke from him to find spoons and dishes for them both.
Epilogue
It was the very eve of Christmas, and he and Elfrida were not yet home at his manor. She had asked if they could come to the wooden tower with the blue door, not explaining her reasons but promising him a full account. Since it was clearly important to her, he had agreed, surprised by her request but happy enough to please her.
Of course Mark and some of his most trusted men were camped outside and watching out, Christmas Eve or not. He was not so much in love as to be foolish.
“Do you expect Denzil to creep back here so we can catch him again?” he asked and was rewarded by her swift smile.
“I neither know nor care if Joseph chooses to come back here, Magnus. That is not why I asked if we could come here tonight.”
He watched her pace about the ground floor of the wooden tower with the blue door, carrying a new, fat, burning candle—one of her own lights, he realized. “What are you looking for?”
“Signs and devices of evil, but there are none on this floor. Can we go up?”
He held the ladder for her and hopped up after. He found her patrolling the second floor and rummaging through the barrels of apples.
“Why do you do this?” he asked.
She looked up from a barrel, her face taut in concentration. “To purify this space.”
“Would fire not work just as well or better?”
“I shall burn this.” She pulled a long, fine white gown from a barrel and allowed it to drift to the floor. “As for the rest”—she glanced about the chamber—“a cleansing is more complete, surer. It will finish things.”
She would not look at him, and Magnus began to suspect there was something she was not yet saying. Joseph Denzil was still free out there, wandering in these forests. It would be good to know he was finished.
“Can I eat an apple now?” he asked, settling cross-legged on the bare floor.
She nodded and continued to move slowly about the room with her flickering candle, at times casting salt, at times saying what sounded to be a prayer.
He had savored his snack, core and all, when she touched his shoulder. “Can we lift some of the apples up to the top floor?”
“Nothing easier.” She was working, so he went with her desires, thinking that he would carry their basket of stores up to the top floor, too. If they were going to be a while, they should certainly break their fast.
“Why do we do this? Can you tell me?” he asked as he bundled apples into his cloak, and she leaned down through the trapdoor to collect his “parcel.”
“They are the means of life,” she answered cryptically, and he let it go at that, recalling the stories of his granddad concerning apples and gods.
Before he could join her through the trapdoor to the third chamber, she began to scamper back down the ladder. “I have things to collect. Mark brought them for me.”
“Did he indeed?” Magnus remarked, and wondered how Elfrida and Mark were so reconciled now that Mark would fetch and carry for her.
“He did. I will not be long.” Still on the ladder, she kissed him. “May I beg another favor and ask you to wait here? It will only be for moments—I will be as quick as I can be, I promise.”
“Take all the time you need,” he said, feeling intrigued but most content.
After waiting for battles to begin and sieges to stop, the time he watched her slipping to and fro from floor to floor and rushing in and out of the tower seemed nothing. He found another few pebbles tucked into his tunic and began to play a game of catch with them, feeling like a young lad again, hovering outside his lady’s chamber.
The sweet thing was, Elfrida was his lady, and soon he would be admitted.
He nodded as she sped past with another bundle and presently he heard the sound of breaking glass and pots and smelt the singe of burning cloth. She put her head through the trapdoor.
“This will be my last trip,” she said breathlessly. “You can come up, sir, if you wish.”
He steadied the ladder for her as she carried a small wooden bowl with her to the second floor, saying as she passed him, “I must bury this, but then I shall be done.”
“Take Mark out with you, when you go,” Magnus said.
He watched her safely onto the ground floor and then mounted the ladder upstairs.
All signs of the necromancer were gone—that was his first thought. His second was that Elfrida had made the chamber beautiful
, rich, and mysterious as an Eastern church.
There was a small, narrow window to the east of the old hunting tower. This she had opened so he could see the bright, starry sky, and it was not cold—there were braziers lit and burning steadily and a sweet scent of warm rosewater, the dried petals of roses warming in copper bowls.
It was as white as it had been before, but now the braziers and five fat, burning candles gave it the sheen of a pearl. It was a place of comfort, too, for there were goblets and flasks and a basket of apples, and baskets of other foods that he would look at later, once he had tested the smooth bed.
It was made up beneath the narrow casement, a nest of blankets and sheets that Elfrida surely must have borrowed, for he could not think she possessed so many.
I must have been distracted not to see this heap of stuff traveling with us today from Top Yarr to here, but then I scarcely heeded any in my company save Elfrida.
He chuckled, amused she had achieved this beneath his very nose, and knowing very well what it was. “A bridal chamber,” he said aloud and smiled.
* * * *
Elfrida thanked Mark and sped back inside the tower. When she had buried the last of Joseph’s evil toys, she had a flash of sight, or foresight. She saw a tall, thin figure, lying prone and still in the snow, with a spray of mistletoe hanging over his heart and a black cat settled by his feet, a creature she had never seen before, only sensed. She blinked, and the vision changed, for the cat spat at her and slunk off between the trees into the forest. She tried to see where the place was but could not hold the picture—it was gone.
“Then it is truly finished,” Magnus said when she climbed up to him and told him all. He was also lying prone, but on the bed she had made, looking very comfortable in the candlelight. “It is over, and we both may rest.”
He opened his arms. “Come to bed, my Snow Bride.”
Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 28