Dark Maiden

by Lindsay Townsend

  “Last summer, how did we travel for so long together without this?” Geraint spoke her thought.

  “We did what we must for the time,” Yolande said firmly. “As you did with this.” She touched her belly.

  Geraint covered her palm and stomach with his spread fingers. “Katherine told me,” he confessed, trailing little kisses of peace down her neck. “As a test, I think.”

  “To see if you would run off or panic?” Yolande snorted. “She does not know you.” Even deep in the heart of the holly, she could tell Geraint was blushing. “You would never do either,” she said stoutly.

  He blew on her eyelids. “But you were so shocked to learn it and then so disappointed in me, rightly disappointed.”

  Yolande shrugged and yawned. Her breasts, which had been sore for days, were now warm and tender. “I was hot as hellfire for about a prayer’s length, mad at you and myself, but you looked so humble and penitent, I forgave you.” He scowled and she caught his lower lip between her teeth. “You wear humility as a leper carries his bell.” She chuckled as his scowl deepened.

  “Can we move on from this?” he demanded.

  Thoroughly enjoying herself, Yolande nonetheless decided she had teased enough. “Do you mind?”

  “Only at having to share you, my Yolande, but then our child, it will be ours, yours and mine. We may not be able to travel quite so much, mind, nor you take on all the restless dead.”

  And how do I feel about that? Content. Yolande looked down at her flat belly. It is a price I am happy to pay. If I survive this final test, of course…

  “I am glad you do not ask.” Geraint leaned over and kissed her.

  “Ask what?”

  “If I will miss traveling.”

  Yolande shrugged, completely unconcerned. “We shall always move from place to place, just more slowly.”

  “Much more slowly in a few months, when you are nice and fat.”

  “Fat, eh? Then I shall be too heavy.” She twisted and pinned him, wallowing in his warm body. “I will be able to do this and you will just have to put up with it.”

  “Is that right?” Somehow he eeled away from her, slithering out from under her in that boneless way he had, and then she was beneath him.

  “Now you have me, what are you going to do?” She chuckled.

  “Guess as I go,” he said.

  Again he made love to her, and a little less carefully than before, which she was glad of. She liked her lusty pairings with Geraint. Later, as she grew larger, she might have to remind him she was pregnant, not made of parchment.

  For now she lay in their holly bower, replete and satisfied.

  “I suppose we should go back before the others wake,” she said.

  “We can stay out, for all I care.” Geraint had found a comb from somewhere and he advanced on her. “Sit up.”

  She stuck out her tongue but did as he asked, shuffling into her dress.

  “That was a pleasing surprise.” He tapped her gown with the comb.

  “Easier than braies for what I had in mind.”

  “You had in mind, eh? Wanton wench.”

  “Less of the wanton. It was on your mind as well—or if not exactly your mind then other parts.” Yolande yawned. He was running the comb through her hair, another comfort for them both. “I should go back soon, whatever you do. Will you keep my bow?”

  “Always.” As solemn as a stone angel, he concentrated on teasing out a knot. “How did you guess to come to the roof?”

  “I saw the shadow of the sleeper by the door. In the maids’ hut we have no spies or watchers and I could walk out over the threshold. He does not see women as a threat.”

  “More jest on him.” Geraint carried on combing and Yolande stretched her arms above her, luxuriating a little more.

  As a spiritual warrior, should I be this sensual? Why not? I am of the world and being a wife and a mother I understand very clearly what is at stake.

  Geraint was part of her personal stake.

  “He does not like you,” she remarked. “Perhaps he fears you will steal his thunder.”

  “I have no desire to play prophet.”

  “No, but that will not matter to Peter. I sense malice in him, husband. He means to do you ill in some way.”

  “Certainly he does. And lots of men like him have tried and failed.”

  It was excellent that he was confident but love made her determined to warn him fully. “Watch him, Geraint. Watch your things and his people. One of his followers may place something into your pack and claim you stole it. And we do not know yet how they deal with a supposed crime here.”

  “Perhaps Peter will say I am a demon and that will be enough.”

  “Geraint—”

  He laid a palm on her head as if in blessing. “I will treat Peter and his ilk like a pit of snakes. Rest as easy as you can or you will make the babe within you ill.”

  “Truly?” She had not considered that possibility but what did she understand of childbearing and rearing? Her mother had never spoken of either. She knew women were often sickly during pregnancy, or indulged strange food cravings, but so far she had developed neither. To be sure—as Geraint might say—she was a little less sure of herself of late but she had assumed such doubts to be healthy and spiritual, to do with her coming battle with evil.

  I never guessed this new softness in myself was because I was with child. Yet I cannot be gentle or unsure when I fight.

  One fear she no longer entertained was the dread of a malign spirit or demon possessing her womb. Somehow she knew, and she did not question it, that this wee infant was hers and Geraint’s.

  The mystic Katherine thought the same too, if more proof were needed.

  “Why did Katherine not want to tell me I was pregnant? Why did she ask you to say nothing?”

  Geraint tucked the comb into the mass of hair at the nape of her neck and gathered her so she was sitting on his lap. “She warned me that you had other trials and must find out in your own time. ‘It will be instructive for her,’ was what she said. Mystics never explain, least of all to tumblers.”

  Yolande removed the comb and started to use it on Geraint’s shaggy mop, ignoring his extravagant flinches. “Peter is not possessed, nor are his followers, yet I cannot quite trust him.”

  “Never trust a cleric.” Geraint twitched like a nervous horse beneath her ministrations.

  “Hold, I am not so bad. He has the bearing of a priest, certainly.” Struggling with a tangle of black curls that she guessed she would simply have to cut away, Yolande recollected how Peter had welcomed them. “Maybe I am wrong but I sense he told me I am with child to drive a wedge between us.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Why should he want to do that?”

  “I have no notion, Yolande. So…apart from less-than-holy Peter, do you think there is evil here?”

  Yolande thought of the good things in this forest community—the freed serfs, Theodore, the way everyone seemed healthy and well fed, Peter healing Walter. But there were no children or old folks and the young men watched each other and over everything hung a sense of waiting.

  “Evil comes,” she said. And will I be sure enough to best it? Will fighting with this child in me, fighting for this child as well as for my man and for mankind, make me more of a warrior?

  She was tempted to ask Geraint then scolded herself for her weakness.

  “We have seen no walnut trees,” Geraint reminded her, on a different track. He never really wanted her closing on devilry, rather going away from it.

  To comfort him, she answered, “Nor the labyrinth.”

  “And so we stay,” sighed Geraint. “A pity, that, a pity.”

  Yolande could only agree.

  * * * * *

  A long time before dawn, Yolande returned to the maids’ hut. Much as he could see the wisdom in gulling Peter into believing that she was being converted, Geraint did not like it. As for his returning, he flatly refused.

  “I’
d rather be in the stocks,” he said. Even his wife’s melting, understanding glance would not shift him. He waited alone until he could be sure Yolande was safely asleep with the girls before he crawled from the holly.

  It was going to be another hot day, possibly even hotter than yesterday. He loved the sun, as did Yolande. He stood a moment, enjoying the fresh stillness in the air, glancing up at the faintly pink and deep-blue, cloudless sky, smelling the soft, dry earth and wild herbs and bluebells.

  To wander for once in these forests without a care, how would that be?

  Excellent for a day then dull unless Yolande were with me.

  Geraint threw himself into a somersault to stretch the stiffness from his back then picked up Yolande’s bow and quiver again. “Let me go after that maze,” he said in Welsh, wondering, as he moved on, why his antics had disturbed no animals or birds.

  Where are the woodland beasts? Hunted out or hiding? Has Peter really driven them away? It was a thing he intended to mention to Yolande when he saw her again.

  Forests were of no particular lure to him, for he liked people, entertaining people, and there was little chance of that in this place of oak, ash, towering limes and beeches, budding elder bushes, leaf litter and drying grass. Kicking his way through fallen branches, he crossed here and there, weaving a pattern and remembering the paths he made as he would a complex juggle.

  Moving is not so hard here as Katherine has been told, nor is finding the place again. Perhaps those who spoke to her were determined not to return so they said it was impossible.

  Climbing, he turned and glimpsed the pale roofs of the settlement, the kitchen plots bursting with peas and beans, the slender coil of smoke as an early riser kindled a fire.

  Watching with him, perched on a straggly elder bush, was a black bird. The bird looked at him and he stared at the bird. The back of his neck did not prickle but it was a near matter.

  “Spy on another,” he ordered and the bird began to preen instead.

  He studied the place again, deciding that if this truly was the Jerusalem of the forest then it was lacking. “Where are the craftsmen?” he asked aloud, thinking of the smith and carpenter in High Woodhead and wondering how they fared, building what he had asked them to make for him—and paid for up front in gold.

  He grinned, looking forward to seeing his wife’s face when she saw it, then shielded his eyes to cut the early morning glimmer. Down in the hollow, flitting from shadow to shadow, was a rabbit.

  The rabbit began nibbling at a dandelion. Not a hare, at least, only a bunny. Yolande does not have a witch in animal form to deal with here.

  “But where is the stock, the sheep, the pigs? Where do they gather their water? What will they live on through the winter?”

  It half alarmed, half disgusted him that he should be so aware of such settled things. He remembered Yolande in one village, plaiting chicory, garlic and rosemary leaves through a pony’s bridle so the nervous beast would not be witch-ridden at night. He had helped her mend a fence at another hamlet and wind honeysuckle ’round it. This would keep the pigs inside the pen and encourage them to mate more readily.

  He had a skim of knowledge and Yolande had more. As she understood spiritual malice, so he appreciated the malice of humans.

  They grow no sickness herbs here and I must be seeking fresh marshmallow and garlic for myself, for that Peter will be accusing me soon and I must be ready.

  He moved on, wondering if he would recognize a walnut tree if he saw one.

  I recognize that though.

  Through a gap in some oak branches, his first sight of the labyrinth.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cut out of the forest floor with spades and paved with round river pebbles, the maze was a plain thing, about the size of a great hall but circular. It had many branches through to its center but, as Yolande had seen in her dream, every true pathway was to the left, the sinister side.

  Is there something else in there too? I am not sure.

  Geraint stared, unblinking, wishing he could see as clearly in the spirit world as his wife but finding nothing more than a sense of wrongness. In the end, deciding he was wasting time, he spat to the right for luck and set off deeper into the forest in search of a stream and marshmallow, Yolande’s bow bouncing jauntily across his back.

  * * * * *

  Water lapping her ankles, Yolande filled the second water barrel in the little river and prepared to haul it up by its leather straps. Carrying an armload of green stuff, Joan chattered beside her and another, silent, woman called Sorrel was off farther along the bank, digging for pignuts.

  No man had joined them in their chores.

  “You have no well?” she asked, puffing as she lifted the barrel. For an instant, her loins burned and she worried about her baby but told herself not to be soft.

  “Peter says God will provide.” Joan launched into a paean of praise for Peter and she and Sorrel scrambled up the woodland path to the settlement. Trailing behind, desperate not to take a tumble with the heavy weight on her back, Yolande let Joan’s words drift past her.

  If this place is the setting of my final trial, I cannot see it or sense it. That, perhaps, is my greatest danger, for how can I strive?

  Sometimes, my daughter, evil is the everyday work of man. You and your father forget that too often. Her mother’s old warning was so clear Yolande backed up a step and looked ’round, anxious that Joan or Sorrel might also have heard. The shorthaired, pale Sorrel was peering into her gathering bag and Joan strolled ahead, darting off the track to pull more strewing herbs.

  “Do the menfolk pray?” Yolande called up to her. So far, in the gathering of water, firewood and plants, only women were involved. Perhaps the maids and girls here are like the lay brothers in a monastery, serving and preserving the mundane while Peter and his male followers are the monks.

  “They meditate and sometimes they walk the labyrinth,” said Joan, in a singsong, dreamy way. “Each time they are purified, heaven on earth comes closer.”

  “Where is your labyrinth?” Yolande asked.

  “Away…” Joan waved her free arm, indicating a possible direction.

  “We are freed through labor.” Sorrel spoke for the first time, her voice surprisingly deep. “This is the end of days. We keep our chastity and serve the men, for they are created in the form of God and we are not.” She glowered at Yolande.

  She disapproves of my pregnancy. For the first time since learning she was with child, nausea overcame her. Swallowing, Yolande quickened her steps.

  “You all seem happy,” she remarked, aware of how feeble her words must sound. “Happy and healthy and in good spirits.”

  “Oh, there is no death here,” said Joan. “We need no graveyards. When we have made the New Jerusalem complete, we shall walk together into heaven.”

  “When will that be?” Yolande asked, falling into the same singsong way of speech.

  “When the men have walked the labyrinth for seven times on May Day.”

  An old holiday, May Day, scarcely a Christian festival at all. And seven times? Parsley seed is said to go seven times to the devil and back before it sprouts.

  “They will walk?” Yolande asked, wondering whether to add that in the Christian labyrinths she had seen, the penitent traveled into the sacred maze on their knees.

  “They will walk and Peter will pray.”

  Yolande tasted a bitter salt sweat on her upper lip. The womenfolk, she noted, were merely witnesses, not allowed to take part. She dared not close her eyes in case she saw the labyrinth in her mind, with its sickly oak trees and walnut tree. “What then?” she croaked.

  “We shall be our own divine Masada,” said Sorrel.

  “With our men made angels to bring us to paradise,” breathed Joan, kissing her fronds of meadowsweet, cleavers, campion and iris.

  Yolande shuffled the straps of her water barrel and transferred it into her arms. It was clutch the barrel for a brutal, homely comfort, or scream.r />
  I may be wrong, but Great Maria! What if I am right?

  * * * * *

  “A blessing there are no children.”

  Geraint heard Yolande’s heartfelt statement deep within his head, sounding like the bell to prayer. His tunic bulging with plants, he twisted right around, expecting to see his wife. When he did not, he knew it was time to run.

  He sprinted, weaving ’round trees, speeding up hillsides, half rolling down slopes with his pack and Yolande’s bow on his other side so as not to squash the plants or her armor. Remembering his way back as he would a complex pattern of tumbling, he hurried almost a mile before he saw filmy puffs of smoke and guessed he had returned to New Jerusalem.

  Has Yolande seen the labyrinth yet? No matter, we have much to discuss.

  His heartbeat, already racing, jumped when he saw her shining amidst the oak trees and the huts. She was chopping wood with Theodore, he holding the wood, she wielding the axe. Geraint admired the way her body moved as she worked.

  “Geraint!”

  He had done nothing but pant to grab his breath but she had sensed him there. As Theodore glanced up, glowing with effort, Yolande pointed so he could greet Geraint too.

  They waved and Joan, sleek as a seal and with a black waterfall of hair, glanced up from a stone where she knelt grinding dried peas and raised an arm too. Farther off, between the trees, other women were busy tending fires and what smelled like great cauldrons of pottage.

  “All the women are working,” Geraint said as he kissed Yolande in greeting, “but none of the men except Theodore. So where are they?”

  “Meditating.” The briskness of her answer made Geraint stifle laughter.

  “I have not the spiritual skill.” Theodore was shamefaced. “And I like to be doing.”

  “You do very well, Master Theo,” called Joan.

  Yolande gave a knowing look first to Joan and then to Theodore. To be sure, when she deals with the living, my Bathsheba likes those about her to be in love and happy, and maybe these two would make a match.

  Delighted with his married state, he was glad to help others into the same. “Hey, Theodore, Joan, will you show me where to take victuals? I have fresh green stuff in my pack, enough for everyone.”