by Janzen, Tara
All would still have been aright, if the Cypriot hadn’t chosen that moment to shy away. The struggling woman and the lunging horse proved too much for him, sending him tumbling with the maid in his arms. They fell together, with him twisting his body to take the brunt of it, another brilliant flash of instinct he couldn’t have controlled for naught. He lay on the ground, the breath knocked out of him, hardly believing what he’d done.
“Are you hurt?” he asked when he could. Stupid bugger, he called himself, a thousand times worse than any fool if he’d caused her harm. He lightened his grip only a bare fraction, so if he had hurt her she wouldn’t lose his support all at once.
“Are you hurt?” he asked again when she failed to respond. On the ground, in the dark, with the mare prancing around them, ’twas impossible to see her face, though it was mere inches from his. Her braids lay across his gambeson like faerie ropes, each bound end glinting with its strip of Quicken-tree cloth. “Ceri?” he said more softly, listening beyond his own rough breath for the sound of hers.
“I live.” The words were mumbled against his chest.
She lives. Damn the chit for making him smile when he should be drawn and quartered.
“Are you hurt?”
“My shoulder. Where Ragnor bit me.”
He swore silently and prayed Caradoc had not forgotten all they’d seen and endured in Saladin’s dungeons. The red beast deserved no better.
He deserved little better himself. He’d despaired of her tears ever stopping the first sennight he’d had her. She’d wakened him before dawn at least once each morn with her crying. Her bruises had spread and grown more colorful, her eyes had been continually puffy, her nose runny. It had been only the last few days that he’d thought she would come around at all. Last night he’d been sure of it, with her show of fight over the book. True, he’d completely subjugated her again with his brief foray across her mouth, but the relapse had been minor and short-lived.
Moira had been the miracle worker, though. Her touch had healed the maid in ways far beyond his skills, bringing strength and wholeness into a broken bone, paleness into an angry red scar, and spirit back into a sorely set-upon heart. The woman he’d spoken with in Deri would have indeed been a handful for Morgan, or any man, to control; the way she’d sat there, holding court under woven willow wands, bargaining with nothing as if she held the world in her hands.
He hoped he hadn’t undone Moira’s work, for he couldn’t re-create what the Quicken-tree woman had done, not even with the salve she’d given him, and he wasn’t about to take Ceridwen back to the camp, not when Rhuddlan watched her like a hungry hawk circling prey.
Gently, so as not to disturb her more, he unwound the reins from his fist, releasing the Cypriot with a command to stay. More carefully still, he rolled Ceridwen off him and onto her side.
“Ahhh.”
Her small gasp sent a wave of self-recrimination washing through him. How could he have been so careless, or so clumsy as to fall, for that matter, and how in the hell had he gotten so angry so quickly? He’d learned to curb his temper years ago—the night Jalal had so kindly offered to slit his other wrist for him with a newly tempered Damascene blade, the very one he’d taken from her earlier—and naught had made him lose his temper since, except the maid.
He looked down at her and found her looking up at him, her eyes narrowed in wariness, her face drawn against the pain he’d caused.
“I’m sorry, cariad.” He brushed the hair back from her brow. “I did not mean for you to fall.” He never stumbled. He never got mad. Disgust had been the limit of his emotional tether for years.
“Then you should not have dragged me from the mare,” she said, her tone no less cautious for the sarcasm she put into her admonition.
“Aye. I should not have.” He fought another smile.
“The next time you decide to lose your wits, leave me well enough out of it.”
“’Twas not witlessness, but anger.”
“At me?” Her sarcasm gave way to astonishment.
“Aye,” he admitted sheepishly. Another dusty emotion dragged out of his youth, he thought with appropriate pessimism.
“And what could be more witless than that?” she demanded. “I have spoken not one word since leaving your friend’s camp.”
“Wasn’t you, but what I was thinking.”
“Then you think too much.”
“So it’s been said.” He let out a heavy sigh and levered himself up. When she would have followed suit, he restrained her with a light touch. “Let me see what damage I have done first, and fix it as best I may.”
A short time later he wondered exactly how much control over himself he’d lost. More than he’d thought, for he would swear on anything sacred that he had not meant to arrange things so according to his wishes.
Yet there she was, sitting amidst the greenery of gentian, woodruff, and celandine in the unbloomed meadow, her gown and chemise loosened and slipped from her shoulders.
Folds of the poor gray cloth and fine linen were gathered in her hands at the middle of her chest, revealing the soft upper curves of her breasts. He was on his knees, facing her, sitting back on his heels with his thighs on either side of her legs. A thousand more sins upon his head for the natural contrivance of such a provocative position.
He smoothed the rasca salve over the ruddy wounds, probing the muscles underneath, grateful nothing had broken open. She flinched, but he continued.
“Try to relax your shoulder, Ceri.” He pressed a little harder, helping her rotate the joint in the direction he asked. The scar tissue went deeper than he would have imagined.
“You’re hurting me,” she groused.
“Not too much, and in the end it will do you good.” He released his hold, sliding his hand down to her wrist and lifting her arm. Delightful.
“Your touch is not as warm as Moira’s.”
“My pardon.” He released her arm and took another dab of salve. Her skin was cool where he worked the rasca in with his thumb and fingers, but soft, so soft. He widened the area of his massage, sliding his palm across her collarbone and up and around her throat and neck, then coming back down to her shoulder and upper arm. His gaze followed the course of his hand with a look more hungry than any Rhuddlan had cast in her direction.
’Twas the softness, he was sure, that made his mouth long to press itself against her skin. ’Twas pure desire for the erotic that made his tongue want to do the same, to taste and feel her, to trace a path to her breast.
“Does feel better when you do that,” she said with a sigh, tilting her head farther to one side to give him greater access. A great fall of braids slipped over her opposite shoulder and cascaded into her lap.
Did him no good to call her innocent in his mind this time. However naively, she had opened herself to him.
“Aye, for me too.” He didn’t bother to disguise the huskiness in his voice. Let her hear what she did to him, he thought.
Hear she did, her breath stopping oh-so-predictably, her eyes flashing upward to meet his, the irises purple with the night, the golden lashes fading into shadows.
Beauty had never known such grace as the curves of her face and body in the moonlight. The crown of oak leaves had not been torn asunder by their fall, but still lay as a garland upon her brow, turning her evermore into the wood nymph of his dreams.
Shah mat. The phrase crossed his mind as he looked at her. The king is dead. He would have her for his own.
His hand rose from her shoulder, his palm cupping around her neck, his thumb stroking up the center of her throat. With nothing but the very best of intentions, he lifted her chin, angling her mouth to meet his slow descent.
He kissed her while she was still mesmerized with shock, the sweet, complying wench. Yet he was careful, using only his lips, partly open, and not his tongue, whose wily, plundering ways would do naught to win her until she was ready for such. And he used his breath—to warm her, to infuse and tease, letting it
play across her mouth, dip into corners, and be sucked inside by her own gentle inhalation. He used his breath to tell her she would be his.
He did not lay his other hand upon her breast to feel the weight and softness of her, though he had to close his fingers into his palm to keep himself from it. He did not press her down into the grass and the budding flowers. He did not lay himself upon her though the picture of it was clear in his mind and the feel of it was ripe in his loins. He kissed her only in the most chaste way he knew how, and still it was heaven.
Heaven, dear God, Ceridwen thought, her every sense awash with pleasure, but a heaven rife with danger. What she felt with Dain’s mouth on hers was so wicked and sweet, she feared she could die of it. Her body ached and pulsed with a need to draw him closer even as her mind warned her to beware of the sorcerer’s seduction. He would steal her will. Aye, he was doing it now, softening her resistance, making her yearn.
She reached for him, and in the same moment, he pulled away, leaving her hand raised in the shadows between them. His downward glance brought a chagrined smile to his face.
“I see I have moved too quickly.”
“Nay,” she said, snatching her hand back to the crumpled material at her breasts. “It was I.”
For no good reason other than to mortify her more, tears welled in her eyes. She wiped at one with the back of her hand, but to no avail. Another took its place, and then another. Her single consolation was that the damn things had the decency to fall in silence.
“’Twas only a kiss, cariad,” he said, and she could have hit him. Instead, she agreed.
“Aye.” She pulled her gown up, shrugging it over her shoulders, barely aware of the ease of the movement, she trembled so inside. God save her. She was damned more surely than Abbess Edith could have imagined. For if that was only a kiss, then she was wanton clear to the bone, and the object of her lust was no less than a depraved magician.
~ ~ ~
Evergreen woodlands grew thick all around Madron’s cottage, littering the ground with seed cones and needles, and hiding the wattle and daub building from view until they were nearly upon it. ’Twas on a rocky track through the pine trees that Dain and Ceridwen had approached, with him leading the mare on foot, having decided against the hardships of riding with the maid. The cruck-built cottage boasted a storage loft and a stable in its third bay, and he left the Cypriot there, next to Madron’s dappled gray mare and with a portion of hay to keep her content.
The cobbled path leading to the door was bordered by a variety of plants coming into their own with the warmer weather: enchanter’s nightshade, monkshood, white hellebore, herb of grace, arnica, foxglove. All were beautiful. All were deadly. ’Twas Madron’s little joke, and a true enough warning for those with any knowledge of herbs and poison.
Smoke curled from a hole in the thatched roof, putting a savory scent upon the air and making Dain wonder what it was the witch burned in her fire. The frames and shutters of the unglazed windows were carved with pictures of beasts and flowers, mountains and valleys, and the moon and the stars. He reached for the latch on the door.
“Should we not announce ourselves?” Ceridwen asked.
A catch in her voice made him pause with the door still closed.
“She knows we’re here, Ceri,” he said. “She’s known of our coming since we passed the rise.” He spoke of the hill to the north of the cottage.
“Then ’tis too late to return to the tower, or to Llynya’s grove?”
“Aye.” He started to pull on the latch, but once again she stopped him, this time with her hand clutching his sleeve.
“’Tis not good, my being here,” she said. “Mayhaps I should wait with the mare.”
“Madron wants to meet you, not harm you, and should she change her mind, I will intercede.”
“You have not proven to be particularly trustworthy.” She was blunt to the point of insult.
Pleased as he was that her tears had stopped, and that she was speaking to him again, he would have wished for less honesty and more diplomacy. They had kissed, had they not? Her sweetly divine mouth had touched his. And if his plans held true, they would soon kiss again in a manner much more to his liking.
“Come,” he said, opening the door. “If needs be, I will prove myself here.” He slipped an arm around her waist, and thus Ceridwen found herself passing over the threshold of Madron’s home—against her will and with Lavrans’s hand at her back pushing her forward.
A fire blazed in a stone hearth in the middle of an earthen floor. Above it, a cauldron hung by chains on an iron tripod. Ceridwen had been in villagers’ cottages before, and she had expected things to be arranged in such a manner. What she could not have expected was for all the area around the earthen circle to be planked with oak floor beams instead of strewn with common rushes.
Her eyes narrowed first in confusion, then in uneasy suspicion. If Madron was not a misplaced Norman lady—and with a name like Madron, how could she be—then there was a fortune in the king’s wood at her feet, enough to send the thief, and anyone in the thief’s cottage, to the gallows. The furniture upon the costly floor was no less fine and treasonous, a table, chairs, and cupboard in hand-carved maple rubbed to a warm shine. Animal skins of every type covered the plastered walls. Beaver and badger mixed with roe buck and red deer, the very sight of which made her stomach roll, for they could only have been poached from the king’s forest. Any one of them was reason enough to lose an ear or a hand on the chopping block. Beautiful coverlets of ermine, weasel, and lynx lay upon the arms of the chairs, waiting to warm a guest, or hang him. She retreated a step, despite Lavrans’s presence behind her, not caring that she’d backed herself against him.
“We must leave this place,” she said. “God forbid one of the king’s foresters or, dear Christ, the verderer should find we have been here.”
“Fear not, little one.” A woman’s voice, dry and crackly with age, came out of the shadows at the far end of the room, near causing Ceridwen’s heart to stop. “Me mistress, Madron, hast bargained well for all ye see. The Sheriff of Hay-on-Wye hi’self gave her Ursus.”
A knobby-jointed hand lifted from the darkness, the only part of the woman’s body Ceridwen could see, and gestured to a huge bearskin stretched between the cruck frame supporting the end wall. The head and claws of the animal had been left intact, giving the illusion that the bear had risen on its hind legs and was on the attack. A shiver raced up Ceridwen’s spine. ’Twould be the gallows for sure.
“Fear not, little one,” the voice came again, and after the voice, the hag herself, her bowed body supported by a staff of yew. “Ursus hast been tame fer quite some time.” A cackling laugh followed the statement. “Quite some time.”
The old woman used the staff with every step, her slight bulk rolling and hitching as she walked. Her clothing draped her body in hodgepodge layers of brown and muddy yellow homespun, looking more like grain sacks than a gown. The broad leather belt at her waist was hung clear ’round with various sized pouches made of skins, fur, and cloth worked with feathers. A flyaway mass of graying hair was coiled at the nape of her neck, most of it escaping from her coif. A dozen copper and silver bracelets jangled on her wrist.
She was much older than even her voice had allowed, with deep creases running from the sides of her nose to her mouth, and spidery lines fanning out from the outer corners of her eyes and down her cheeks.
But her eyes, ah, Lord, her eyes, Ceridwen thought, stepping back again. They were green like the Quicken-tree’s, yet full of mystery, and deeper and darker, so much darker, as if all of Rhuddlan’s people could have been born in their verdant depths and still left green behind.
“Or is it me who makes ye tremble?” the hag rasped, hobbling closer.
Partly, Ceridwen thought, but she would never admit it. She pushed back against Lavrans, expecting he would help in her retreat. He did not. He held her firm where they stood.
“Good mother,” he said, greeting
the old woman. “We regret the lateness of our coming, but—”
“As well ye should,” the old woman interrupted, shaking her staff at him.
“But we’re pleased to be in your company now,” he continued, dry amusement in his voice. “Though I must say you’re looking rather ancient this e’en, aren’t you?”
“I thought it best,” was the hag’s curt reply. “’Tis not safe fer women in the deep woods at night, as the maid well knows.” She jabbed her staff toward Ceridwen, who flinched.
“If there is danger in Wroneu this night, we did not see it,” Lavrans said.
“Auch,” the old woman swore. “And to think me mistress worried ye had been set upon by sackpurses and robbers ta ha’ missed her supper, and that she would ha’ to send this good mother abroad ta bring ye safely back where ye should ha’ been in the first place.”
Throughout the admonishing speech she directed at Lavrans, the woman’s eyes did not leave Ceridwen, which added much to her discomfort as she tried to hold the hag’s gaze and watch the staff at the same time. The intensity of those old, searching eyes made the skin on the back of her neck tingle. Something in the steely green perusal was familiar, familiar and unsettling, for Ceridwen believed she had endured that gaze before, at a different time, in a different place, and mayhaps when she’d had something to hide; though such a strong and detailed feeling made no more sense than Madron sending the old woman out into the woods to find them.
“But now I see what kept ye from Madron’s table.” The servant reached out to touch one of Ceridwen’s tiny braids. “Quicken-tree cake is filling despite its taste, but mayhaps ye have room fer a posset while we wait fer the lady?”
“Aye, old mother,” Lavrans said, answering for both of them. He took Ceridwen’s hand and drew her deeper into the cottage.
She did not resist. The fire was warm, the cottage uncommonly comfortable—for the very same reasons that made it threatening—and posset a rare luxury. He led her to the chair closest to the stone hearth, one draped and softened with pelts of ermine. She balked ever so slightly, belatedly wondering if the king and his foresters knew of the shire reeve’s generosity.