Within the circle of men, Theodore lowered his arms. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Commander, you told us Masada was a place of angels.”
“If dead men, women and children are angels then yes,” said Yolande. “But Peter did not tell you that, did he? He did not say the folk there killed themselves. A mortal sin for some, murder for others.”
Theodore crossed himself and several women gathered their children into their arms.
“There is still a little left in the broken pot,” Yolande went on, not caring if the pot or its contents were there or not. She wanted the others to witness Peter’s reluctance, to understand how they had almost been duped, hoodwinked into murder. “Drink, Peter. Become an angel first.”
Sulfur streaking his face in yellow tears, Peter lowered his head as if in prayer but she was not convinced, not for all the saints in heaven. The man had not yielded yet.
A slight movement off to his side distracted her but only for an instant. Stalking alongside her, matching her step for step, Geraint had the left side covered.
“Running away already, Jehan?” he shouted. “Should you not be plunging into the river to prove your innocence?” He whipped back his arm, throwing fast and hard.
Off beneath the shadow of the walnut tree, Jehan stumbled, dropping the pack he had gathered to himself and was trying to creep away with. Shrieking, he gripped his bleeding elbow, staring at the cut Geraint’s stone had made as if his injured arm no longer belonged to him.
“Not going to plan, is it, you bastards?” Geraint yelled in Welsh.
“This is our final test!” cried Sorrel suddenly from within the circle of women. “The false prophets, the black with her unholy spawn. Believe Peter and be ready for heaven!”
“Be not afraid,” Peter called out. An echo of his words ran ’round the two circles but Theodore still looked uncertain.
Fighting down the urge to gag as the murky stink of evil filled her, Yolande took a step closer and aimed the bow squarely at Peter’s groin.
“Drink,” she said again. “Show us all the way to heaven.”
Peter wet his lips, rising as she walked closer to him, and wiped a sulfur tear away. “I cannot. You have destroyed it, you and your unholy spawn. Fight me and your child will die.”
His threat was more devastating than his commonplace repeat of Sorrel’s words. An answering ripple in her womb forced Yolande to lower her bow but she would not give up. For the sake of Geraint and her baby, for Theodore and Joan, for Walter and the children and a hundred nameless others, she dared not.
Liar.
Determined to dismiss Peter’s malice, she closed herself against him, shutting his reaching evil out from her soul.
She was near to a suffocating panic still. Geraint laid his arm across her body, shielding her and her baby. The odor of rottenness retreated a little as she sensed the demon at the center of the labyrinth beginning to stir again.
I will kill the fruit of your womb, it said inside her mind. I know your name, Yolande. Your carnal unions make you mine.
“We are married, united in the eyes of God,” Yolande whispered.
And the caresses you enjoyed before you were married? How are those different from what has been done here?
Guilt threatened but she refused to be pulled down by it. “Such things were a joy for us alone, intimacy we could share as we moved toward our wedding,” she replied in Latin, hastily crossing herself. “What has been done here is an ignoring of women and their pleasure and a denial of closeness for them and their men. True partnerships are discouraged in this place.” Indeed, were any of the men and women here married? She did not think so.
There is no marriage in heaven, hissed the demon in her mind.
“We are not in heaven. On earth, marriage is a sacrament, blessed by God for the comfort and companionship of men and women and the rearing of children.”
But not your child, Yolande. It is already dead.
She had anticipated this brutal attack but hearing the soft, cold words inside her she could not stop her reaction. With sickening dread she imagined the words, the evil wish, reaching down to her belly, strangling the spark of life there. Her challenge to Peter, the Latin she had ready for him, dissolved into an oily bitterness that tied her tongue. She trembled and again her husband moved, pitting his human sinews against a pride older than man, against a creature that hated human life.
You cannot shield me from this, beloved.
As if he had heard her thought, Geraint twisted ’round and kissed her ear. “We do well, cariad, warrior mine. They have not lynched us yet. We three are safe.”
Geraint is right to call you a human trinity, my daughter. The voice, warm and loving, was Katherine’s. Take a comfort from him.
I do. Yolande was surprised to find only a moment had passed. The circles of men and women remained, clustered ’round the labyrinth. Jehan still moaned behind the walnut tree. Theodore looked worried while Joan watched him. And Peter—I am Legion, Peter’s voice mocked her. You shall not stop my sacrifice.
“Why the drink, Peter?” She kicked the trailing yellow sulfur tendrils away from her feet and legs. “Did you decide poison was surer than having the men here kill the women? That was the plan, was it not? The men as angels would slay the women before killing each other. But then you realized some men were still thinking, still uncertain, and so you chose a simpler method, but why? And why should murder bring anyone to heaven?”
“You understand nothing,” said Peter but this time there was no echo from the others.
Yolande spoke again. “Why a labyrinth that goes to the sinister side? Why is there no marriage or birth or death here? Why no church?”
“We have no need for such indulgences,” broke in Walter, gasping a little. “Have we?”
“Your question answers you, Walter,” Geraint said quietly. A new rustle of voices rose around them as the young squire stuttered in his breathing, at one point clawing at his throat to expel the evil there.
And is it a surprise he cannot fill his lungs in this mawkish yellow fog? But I can do something and I will.
“Your man needs healing.” Trusting him, Yolande passed her bow to Geraint and approached the squire. “Peter, your man needs help.”
Indifferent, looking almost sulky, Peter glanced at the younger man. “His faith will save him, unless he is unworthy.”
Walter dropped to his knees. Men close to him flinched but Peter never stirred.
“For pity’s sake, man, do something!” Geraint shouted but Peter kept still, as pitiless as stone.
“Do not fear.” Yolande made the sign of the cross on Walter’s back and began the great psalm, The Lord is my Shepherd, in Latin. She stroked his hair, praying for him to be well.
Please, Holy Mother, whatever happens let me be a channel of healing for Walter.
She sensed it flowing through her, a clear, sweet charity, and about her feet the yellow fog broke up and was dispelled. Walter’s breathing steadied and his color returned to normal. In the woodland—for the first time in an age—she scented bluebells and heard birdsong.
“Be healed in Christ,” she said.
Theodore answered, “Amen.”
“What are you, woman?” Peter snarled, at last losing control. “Aping men, your betters.”
With Walter sitting on his heels and breathing sweetly, Yolande reckoned it was time to reveal herself. “You do not like women, do you, Peter? Yet we are the vessels of life, bearers of the holy miracle that God and the Virgin grant to us. What are you but a cleric of death?” Geraint, understanding without her needing to speak, gave her the bow. “You have no church here, no New Jerusalem, only a nest of vipers. I am the exorcist sent to cleanse it.”
Reveal the evil, she called in Latin in her mind and fired a second arrow deep into the middle of the labyrinth.
“Come out,” she cried. “Get back whence you came!”
In a cloud of yellow sulfur, the demon roared, writhing against a
second sacred pinning, and a child screamed, “Look, a snake. There’s a snake in the maze!”
Everyone turned. A huge adder basked in the center of the sunlit labyrinth. It whipped away and vanished into the undergrowth. The demon was gone, the yellow fog melting to nothing.
Yolande lowered her bow, desperate to sit down or quench her thirst or kiss Geraint, or all three. Out of nowhere, while her weariness warred with relief, she had a sudden craving for strawberries and fell to her knees, praying thanks.
My trial, my final trial, is near complete and this sweet craving a sign that all is well. We are still three, Geraint, the babe and I.
But there was still the matter of Peter and Jehan.
It is not over yet.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Standing over his exhausted wife as she sank to her knees, Geraint fixed on the human side of this strange New Jerusalem. Peter and his ally would keep. If the pair had no followers, everything here at this labyrinth would stop.
“Are you cows or men?” he demanded, staring at the circle of men and daring them to stare back. “Becoming angels with a few words and a little drink? Purifying yourselves by making the women do all the work and playing you off like whores in the stews? Are you so mad as to believe it to be so easy? Would Richard Rolle have done that? Think for yourselves!”
“Commander?” Theodore wove gently past Joan and out of the circle. Approaching Peter, he looked to the hermit for an answer but the man was silent.
“Commander, nothing!” bawled Geraint, slamming a fist against his thigh in blazing frustration. “They were going to make you drink, Master Theodore, then sidle off when you were dead.”
“You and all the women and children, Theo,” Yolande said, speaking with an unnatural calm. “They plotted to murder every one of you, including your Joan.”
Joan jerked ’round, her mouth forming a wondering, “Me?” When Theodore, blushing like a sunset, held out his arms, Joan nudged Sorrel aside and broke from the women’s circle. She stumbled as she came and Theodore hurried to meet her. Their fingers locked together and they were one.
Yolande tugged on Geraint’s arm and he helped her to her feet. Only he sensed how tired she was as he braced her, but she addressed Theodore like a knight rallying his troops. “Be as you were before, Mister Theodore, here in your greenwood. Be equals, men and women, plan for your winter, build your church. I know a priest who would come here once a month or two and a mystic who would help you and there would be no tithes or titles, no peasants or lords.”
“Why a church?” asked Joan, frowning prettily.
Geraint jumped into the moment. “A church for your weddings, of course.”
Theodore tightened his grip on Joan. “If it suits you, my heart, it does me,” he said gently and Joan hugged him.
They will have interesting youngsters, Geraint reflected but the love was there, right enough. Theodore wrapped both arms about Joan’s middle, luxuriating in nestling against her bosom, and Joan kissed his hair.
Geraint watched the circle carefully. “Decide now,” he said. “Those who want, go with Peter and Jehan deeper into the forest. Take what Jehan brought with him.”
A sharp nudge made him break off. “You gamble with lives,” said Yolande in her father’s tongue but Geraint smiled.
“I do not think so,” he replied in Welsh. “You understand spirits and souls, cariad, but I know people. Look you, no one is hurrying to join them.” Possibly Sorrel, blind to the last, would creep after Peter, but even Walter remained where he was, settled on the leaf-litter, hugging his knees.
Hard to worship a man who leaves you to die as a lesson.
“But Peter would have murdered them and—”
“And he did not and could not because of you.” Geraint looked into Yolande’s face, saw the craving for justice there and knew he must take care.
Her strongest trial will be against herself, Katherine had warned and here it was.
“Would you leave almighty God nothing to do?” he challenged.
Yolande’s fist clenched around her bow. It would be the work of a prayer’s length to finish them off. She wanted so much to stuff Peter full of arrows, turn him into a human hedgehog. Her belly ached with it. Why not? He had threatened her. Jehan had insulted her. They had meant Geraint evil and over a hundred people ill.
They would have killed my baby.
Anger gave her energy. She lifted the bow, brought an arrow from her quiver, notched it, aimed it at Peter.
“Look,” she spat through clenched teeth. “He does nothing. Sits there, surly as a cuckoo chick. He does not even try to pray.”
“What God or saint would heed him?” breathed Geraint into her ear. “He guesses he is finished, even if you do not. At least not yet.” He closed his hand over hers on the bow grip and the bow of Saint Sebastian shook in her arms.
“For what, though, husband? Why follow such practices as would attract a marauding demon? The murder of his followers would have been an inevitable sacrifice to it.” Peter’s plan bewildered her. Even the devil in hell did not do that.
“Some judges like to hang men for the thrill, I have heard it said.”
Vengeance sang in her head, its siren voice so tempting and so right. “If I let him go, he will do it again.” She could picture the arrows piercing Peter, savored the idea of knocking that blank expression off him.
“Word of him shall go ’round. I will make sure of it.”
“Jugglers’ chatter?” The gossip of the roads and the traveling men flew everywhere. If Geraint promised, it would be done, and well done.
“Leave them to the Marys,” Geraint said. “Would that not be fitting?”
He released her and stood back, giving her the choice.
Yolande drew on the bowstring. At this short distance she could drive an arrow right through Peter, venomous heart and all. She searched his green eyes, seeking any scrap of remorse.
“Liar!” It was not Yolande screaming but Sorrel, who had broken out of the circle and was running toward the walnut tree. Lightning flamed, sunlight flashing from a dagger blade.
Peter finally spoke, gasping, “No!” He sprawled beneath the tree, Sorrel crouching on his twitching legs.
“You said there was no marriage here!” Sorrel thrust her dagger into Peter’s chest again. “You said we would be joined in heaven!”
Others closed on her before she struck a third time but Peter was already dead.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Geraint looked up from his gathering and waved at Katherine sitting in the doorway of her woodland hut. She beckoned to him and he left the strawberry picking and wandered over.
“Yolande?” she asked.
He gave her his basket of strawberries. “Busy with Father Eudo and a bishop’s scribe. Jehan is claiming benefit of clergy, although the king’s coroner wants the man to stand trial in his court.”
Katherine ate a strawberry. “Although he accused you, Jehan was the one who stole the gold crucifix at the fair?”
Geraint devoured a strawberry himself. “The idiot was seen too. Father Eudo recognized him from his villagers’ account and I helped him haul Jehan away to the local reeve, Master Pernod.”
“That must have been pleasing.”
“Yes, indeed.” Sweeter than the strawberry he was eating.
“And the young woman? Sorrel?”
“Slipped away in the night. No one will hunt her.”
“Good.” Katherine stretched until her shoulders cracked. “You say Yolande has buried the labyrinth in the forest?”
“That and pruned the walnut tree. ’Tis so short these days only an imp could nest in it. The birds and animals are returning too.” They had sensed the evil lurking beneath the labyrinth even if Peter’s followers had not.
“And the hermit?”
Geraint hesitated but Katherine saw everything. “Father Eudo had him buried,” he admitted.
“Yolande is still angry then?”
“Can you blame her? Turns out that Peter was a cleric and the church wants to hide what he did.”
“But the church’s Father Eudo has been helpful. I heard he preached forgiveness and generosity.”
Good for Father Eudo. ’Tis a pity I like the fellow now, even trust him, for all his courtesy to my wife. I certainly always trust Yolande.
“The new village in the forest will not go hungry this winter because of him,” said Katherine.
“And Mister Theo, who turns out to be a born bargainer.” Thinking of the newly wed little man, Geraint gave himself some credit. Theodore was beginning to work gold too and, according to the smith of High Woodhead, already showing promise.
Katherine ate three strawberries at once, giggling as if she had stolen a fortune. “Very good. What of your plans?”
Used to her sudden questions, Geraint rubbed his palms together. “Building well.”
“The smith’s wife tells me it is fine work, ready in a day or so. For May Day. For the bearing of life, not the bringing of death.”
Geraint gave up. He could not be more cryptic or informed than a mystic. “I hope Yolande will like it.”
Katherine patted his hand and ate another strawberry.
* * * * *
Yolande checked her gown, her plaits and bare feet. Since venturing out of the forest and returning to High Woodhead two days earlier, she and Geraint had come together at the end of each day only to cuddle and snuggle down in Father Eudo’s barn. Geraint had told her she was no longer talking in her sleep, and since she had no memory of any kind of nightmares or dreams, she believed him and was glad of that progress. This evening, she hoped to make progress of a different kind.
She glanced at her boots, tucked behind her on top of the stocks. That morning, after giving her strawberries for breakfast, Geraint had asked her to wait by the church when she returned from Katherine’s. He had been very mysterious about what he was doing, saying only that she should spend the day with the female mystic and stroll back at sunset.
Katherine had been equally foggy about what Yolande’s husband was about. “Let him surprise you, Yolande. It will be good practice for when your child comes,” she had said.
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