Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment

by Lindsay Townsend

  Mortified, feeling her face ablaze with shame, Elfrida passed quickly round the gloating boy. “I must see to the ale.” It was the first excuse she could think of, one fitted, she supposed, to a peasant wife.

  She stumbled back along the path to the manor house. Somehow she crossed the yard, aware that Tancred was not troubling to follow. Why should he? I have no power in this household. Passing a lean-to where the blacksmith had his forge, she flinched as a pair of eyes stared back at her from the shadows. She stepped closer.

  “Aye, you never run from trouble.” Magnus leaned out of the gloom and grasped her to him, drawing her into the smithy. “Did you like my indignation?”

  He did not mean it! Relief was her first sensation, flooding through her, making her shudder. Magnus stroked her hair.

  “You surely did not think it real, elfling? That was to give Tancred the idea that I am for Castle Black Cliff.”

  “But you tricked me as well.” Hurt and anger began to dance in bright, dazzling spots before her eyes. She wanted to knock him over. Furious, she kicked his foot, striking the peg one by mistake. Every bone in her toes jangled and smarted and there was a curious tightness in her chest. “You let me believe I had offended you and said nothing, even when I tried for your pardon. You walked away from me.”

  He shrugged, petting her still as if she was a mewling pup. “A moment’s discomfort, Elfrida. Surely worth it?”

  “You never thought I doubted your fighting skills!”

  “Why should I?” he replied, maddeningly calm. “I fight as well as Peter. I know it and so do you.”

  “In spite of your wounds.”

  His brows drew together at that. Careful, Elfrida. He is not so calm after all.

  “Naturally,” he growled. “And you have to admit it got Tancred off our backs for the rest of today.”

  “And made me look a fool. Didn’t you care?”

  His caressing hand stilled. “What?”

  Elfrida was aware that her temper was too fierce. Perhaps she made too much of Magnus’s dissembling and her reaction to it, but she would not stop. “Once you told me that I was your equal. Would you have treated Peter so carelessly, or Alice? I know I am no noblewoman—”

  The black look on his face made her stop. Slowly, as if struggling with his temper, Magnus breathed out through his nose. He folded his arms across his strapping chest. “I have won us a day to seek the lasses without Tancred or that priest breathing down our necks. Tancred has just gone by without a glance. He’ll be for the hall and more games of chess. He thinks we are not going anywhere today.”

  It infuriated her that he was right, but still she needed to know. “Tell me.”

  “Tell you what? I grow weary of this complaint. You make too much of this.”

  “Perhaps so, but I did not turn my back on you.”

  “Nor I on you, madam.”

  “No, you assumed I would trot after you, to beg.” The hurtful words were out before she could prevent them.

  “Splendor in Christendom!” He yanked her against him. She felt his heart thundering against her ear. “Were it not that the smith will soon be back from his breakfast I would deal with you here and now. Believe me, you would not like it, Elfrida.”

  Another instant and he would make good his threat, she realized. Lamenting her lack of physical strength when pitted against his, she forced herself to be quiet.

  How had they gone so badly wrong? Why did she think such things? Magnus did not understand. I give her honor, feed, clothe, protect her, love her. We are man and wife. What else can I do?

  Explain to her, said Peter’s Alice in his mind. Lady Astrid and Tancred between them have made her doubt her place, not as a witch, but as your wife.

  Sage advice, so why was his head empty of speech? Elfrida was still in his arms and she felt a thousand leagues away. He ran his hand down her back and heard her sigh. They had this taut thread of sensuality between them—they always had it.

  “Tonight,” he said, wishing that sounded more of a promise, less of a threat. “We shall have this out fully tonight.” What do I mean by that? He did not know. He only wanted this strange war between them to be over.

  Elfrida closed her eyes. For a terrible instant, with the tension yawning between them like a chasm, he did not know how to reach her.

  “Why not the castle?” he asked desperately, keen for any diversion and conscious that time was passing. Every day the maids were held captive was a day too long.

  Time is passing. Trying to force her scattered wits back into considering Silvester’s likely whereabouts, Elfrida was aware of two things. That she hated this sudden rift between Magnus and herself and that, for the missing girls, time pressed. Am I wrong, though? Has the distance always been there between us but is only now revealed? Look how we make love these days, never face to face. And what will he do to me tonight?

  Pushing aside such selfish thoughts, she spoke. “As I said before, the castle is too public.”

  “And this is a man who likes his secrets even more than the rest of his kindred do.” Magnus still held her but spoke without looking at her directly.

  “He would be vulnerable there, too, unless he has a troop of men.” See how carefully we are speaking to each other, Magnus and I.

  “To the lord of the castle?”

  “To the lord and to Lord Richard and his men once Richard and the Lady Astrid ride to castle Black Cliff. Even if he lived at the castle before he took Rowena, Silvester will not now keep his maids where they can be easily stolen from him.”

  Finally Magnus grinned and squeezed her waist. “Aye, I see that.”

  Relieved they were speaking more easily to each other again, Elfrida admitted the rest. “Githa lied by omission when she told me that Silvester was unknown to her. She meant that they had not been introduced or spoken to each other, but she recognized him all the same. She knows his connection to Lady Astrid and Tancred.”

  Magnus shrugged as if to suggest this is old news, but Elfrida ignored it. “I thought her words strange at the time,” she went on, her voice quickening with excitement, “ but I had forgotten what else she told me until a moment ago. Silvester is interested in fashion and clothes and so is Githa. She particularly mentioned the dyers of Bittesby.”

  Magnus whistled, understanding at once. “You think Silvester hides in the town?”

  “If Bittesby is where expensive spices are to be had, rich jewels and lush clothes, I think he will have a house there.”

  “The cheese!” Magnus snapped his fingers. “The cheese Ruth ate while she was with Silvester—Bittesby makes a soft cheese, coated in brine. I knew I would remember it!”

  Excitement and a greedy rush of exhilaration, of hunting, burst through Elfrida. “Ruth’s other memory is of red kites,” she whispered.

  “Town scavengers,” Magnus said. He clenched his fist.

  “Bittesby.” Elfrida sensed its rightness even as she wondered at her own slowness. “Why did I not think of a town before?”

  Magnus was shaking his head. “A town is the last place I expected Silvester to choose. Busy, loud, full of curious neighbors and houses with scant defenses.”

  “And strangers,” Elfrida interrupted him. “Strangers and runaways. People not asking too many questions. Neighbors who will spy for him and pass on the gossip.”

  “Gossip, eh? So no need for stout walls. He hides in plain sight. Excellent! Bittesby town is but two days’ ride away, maybe less.”

  Before Magnus could move away from the shadows, Elfrida seized his arm. “I must come with you, sir. You and I alone, I think, until we are sure we have found Silvester’s lair.”

  “Indeed?”

  She did not quail under his frown though it was a near thing. “Please,” she almost said, but she was done with begging.

  “I have a plan,” she began as he shifted. When he strode into the sunlight, the rest of her words withered inside her mouth.

  He hooked his hand into his belt
. “I will not have you as bait.”

  He understood part of her idea, then. This would be only gossip-bait, she wanted to say, but Magnus’s growl stopped her.

  “So small you are,” he said. “So slender still. If I were only more a man, this caper of yours would be impossible.” His fingers whitened on his belt and he fell silent.

  “What?” Magnus’s frustration raked through Elfrida’s mind like claws. As she stared at him, horrified, he jerked his head aside, checking no one was close. Her own feelings now raging, and even with all her magic she could not sense the rest of his thought. That was always the difficulty with magic and thought sensing. She needed a cool, calm head to do such things and at present her thoughts and feelings were in tumult, with fear uppermost.

  “My lord?” What does he mean? “Please, Magnus.”

  They marched across the yard in the same arrow-straight diagonal that Tancred had taken toward the steps of the great hall. Magnus snatched her hand and veered left to the stables, acknowledging the smith coming the other way.

  “Are we leaving?” she ventured.

  “Let me think.”

  He thought while he saddled an older palfrey, a plodding beast who went no farther these days than a league or so. Elfrida handed him the reins and they both shook their heads at the stable lads.

  “Come.” He had her up in the saddle before him, marking her girlish shape afresh. He had guessed it might fall out in this manner, Elfrida with a wild notion of putting herself in harm’s way to save others. She has done it before when we have joined together in a quest. But I never like it. Were I more a man, she would be with child by now, big-bellied as her sister. She would have no magic to hide her pregnancy and we would not be having this conversation. The shame of it made him burn anew. Peasants had youngsters. Peter and Alice had twins. What if Elfrida wearies of her childless state and turns away from me?

  “I am too old for him.” Elfrida’s words came between Star’s slow hoof beats. “The town gossip might draw him out of his town house to look, but once he sees me, Silvester will lose interest. And we will have found him without any knocking on doors. He will suspect nothing.”

  If she dresses her hair like a maid she will pass as one for sure.

  Tancred sprinted out of the great hall, saw the ancient palfrey and relaxed. “Ride with us!” Magnus hollered, but the boy shook his head, clearly thinking they were on an amble around Norton Mayfield.

  Sitting lower in the saddle, Elfrida hunched her narrow shoulders. “He will not want to be with me.” Then, as if wary of being scolded, she added, “I am not troubled by his arrogance. Tancred does not defeat me.”

  Saddened by how she saw herself through the boy’s spiteful mirror, Magnus wanted to comfort her, longed for reassurance himself. Still, tonight is the last night of mating as we are doing, according to my book. Then she will be breeding and happy.

  Cheered by that, Magnus dismounted by the church. “Stay,” he warned Star and went inside. When he returned a few moments later he found Elfrida exactly where he had left her.

  He smiled at her. “I did not mean you, my heart. I only passed a message to our priest.” She did not ask him what message, which he took as a poor sign. “Elfrida—”

  “Leave it,” she said roughly. “We have scratched at each other too much already this day and we cannot afford to quarrel more, not when the safety of the girls are at stake.” She stopped and took in a deep breath. “I know you will say that Silvester may have men with him, too many even for you to fight. I know I am not a noble or a knight who has listened to battle tactics from childhood.”

  “I did not say that.”

  “These girls may not want to leave Silvester. Have you considered that?”

  “I have.”

  “They will leave with me.”

  Which is why I am even considering your plan, or a variation of it, though I dislike it intensely. “Why the haste?” he asked, scrambling for more time. “Another day and Peter and some of the Templars could ride with us.”

  “And if you go with more men, your company will stand out. Silvester will hear of it and flee before you are through the town gates. What if he is not there but learns he is being searched for?”

  “He knows that already.”

  “But the girls, Magnus! Would you kidnap them again? Tear them away from a man who may be a monster but to them might be an angel? Would you only take care with Rowena?”

  Part of him could not believe she had just said that. “Elfrida, that is unworthy.”

  She blushed, but he found no pleasure in her shame, nor in her mumbled, “I am sorry.” He mounted behind her and rode on, every pleasure at their discovery of where the missing maids might be now spoilt.

  Chapter 16

  Mark stared at Father Luke, his priest. The man had run from the church at Norton Mayfield and was red-faced and sweating.

  “A May pole,” Mark repeated. “For midsummer? Now? With everything else that is happening? Sir Peter coming soon and the Templars and the rest?”

  “Set up today, in the road by the church,” wheezed the priest. “That is what our lord wants.”

  He spoke loudly enough for Tancred and Father Jerome to hear. Up on the dais of the great hall, the sulky pair had their heads bent over the chess board again, but Mark had no doubt they were listening. At least when Father Luke passed Mark a scrap of parchment, neither spotted it.

  “To it, then.” Mark screwed the parchment into his fist and wandered outside to read. After he had done so, he passed the scrap to one of the servers to be sure he had his lord’s message right.

  He had. The server whistled and stared. “Is he mad?”

  “’Tis as good a plan as another.” Mark also understood something else. This whole busy scene of putting up a May pole would throw Tancred and that priest off the scent. “Elfrida is with him.”

  “And we know how careful she is.”

  “Watch your mouth, boy.” Sensible and concerned for their lord, yes, thought Mark. But careful? He and the server glanced at each other and both hurried for the stables.

  Magnus nudged Star to the watermill at the southern edge of his Norton Mayfield lands, where the river flowed fast and bright. In the shadow of the creaking mill he dismounted again. “Mark should be waiting for us inside.”

  Elfrida nodded, wishing she could have this whole day over. Time presses for the girls and why are we here? I wish I could persuade Magnus. We should hasten to Bittesby. But I have lost his favor. I should not have said what I did about Rowena. Magnus is no Percival. And what did he mean about his being more of a man?

  Dispirited, she slid off the bony bay and opened the mill door to a blistering fog of flour, a tumult of grinding mill-stones. She flung up an arm, clapping her hands over her ears as the ground shuddered under her feet. Magnus scowled, shouting something before hooking her up and carrying her through the mill into a narrow side chamber.

  In this room she could hear again and the dusty flour was a little less thick, but it still formed a billowing cloud within the room. Dropped onto the dirt floor by her husband with no more ceremony than he might have released a bag of wheat, she coughed like a cat with a fur ball. Magnus smeared chaff from his eyes, cursing beneath his breath.

  “How the miller stands this I do not know,” he said at length.

  “The money is good.” Mark detached himself from leaning against a beam and approached. “A fresh horse is tethered for you, sir, my lady.”

  I am no lady. Elfrida bit down hard on that. She glanced at Magnus. “A message through Father Luke?”

  “It seemed the easiest way. Have you brought the clothes?” he asked Mark.

  Mark handed him a parcel. “Sir, I have two horses—”

  “Go back, welcome Peter to the manor and tell him how things are when you get the chance. Keep a watch on Father Jerome and Tancred, especially Father Jerome. I do not want that priest getting word to the Lady Astrid.”

  “Do you think he w
ould try to or even want to?” Elfrida asked, thinking at once of Father Jerome’s pale, sunken look when he realized his lady had gone off without him.

  Magnus shrugged. “Why should I care? Mark, I will take both your horses. We shall go faster with two, riding and guiding.”

  Mark tugged on his red nose. “I ride Star?” He sounded horrified.

  “He is smooth enough and steady.”

  “And slow. What do I tell our reluctant guests?”

  “Tell Tancred and that priest as little as possible. Let them think we have gone to my wife’s village.”

  That will match Tancred’s idea of me. Elfrida did not watch as Mark saluted and left by way of a low side door. Why did I accuse Magnus of being like the Percivals? Now we are more estranged than ever.

  Magnus shook out the parcel. “If we are to ride to Bittesby you will need to change.” He pointed to the green gown Mark had brought, her best. “Do you need assistance?”

  “No.”

  “Let me help.” His face was grim. He stood over her without indulgence, giving no quarter. She changed hastily, with faltering fingers, stripping away her gown of flowers and casting sleeves and robe aside in a bright puddle of color and fading scent. The green gown was tricky for her to lace, but she managed. Magnus did not touch her in any way. He drummed his fingers on a beam in time to the mill stones’ relentless pounding.

  “Plait your hair,” he ordered when she stood before him.

  Silently she complied, weaving her froth of red hair into a single thick thread that bounced along her spine.

  “Wear this.” Magnus held out the veil Mark had brought. It was very long and heavy, thick and black.

  “It was my mother’s head rail,” Magnus added. “In case you were wondering.”

  “Good. Not the Lady Astrid’s.” Her attempt at humor did not make him smile. Was this how they would be on the ride and within the town? No more than civil to each other? Is he angry because I am right in my plan and he must bring me along to Bittesby? Or is he still hurt because of what I said to him earlier? Her own feelings were in such a quiver that she could not sense his or his thoughts. “Do I…do I pin it right, Magnus?”