Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment (16 page)

He knows Silvester. Silvester and the maids are somewhere here in town
.

“He has a house behind Broad Street,” Magnus confirmed later, while Elfrida shook and spread the furs Alfric had left for them on the floor beside the fire. “The old man”—Magnus pointed up to the attic chamber where Alfric slept, already snoring after her supper of porry and oat pancakes—“tells me Silvester is beloved throughout the town.”

Elfrida felt a chill about her heart. “Beloved?”

“Alfric’s very word. Last summer, Bittesby had a great pestilence of rats. Silvester, with his flute and drums, is said to have driven them out.”

“More likely the winter we had last year finished them off.”

“I agree, but the folk here believe in him, Silvester alone. Not the Percivals or Giffords.”

Elfrida shook another fur, aware she was taking a long time with their bedding. Magnus stood by the open door, his head cocked as the curfew bells rang out over the town. “Do they hide him?” she asked.

“Not hide, so much as let him live secretly among them. Silvester has told them that he likes to be discreet, set apart from his more famous kin. The townsfolk lie for him. Strangers are told nothing. Alfric believes we know Silvester, which is why he talked. Although”—Magnus pursed his mangled lips—“Alfric seems afraid not of telling too much but of showing too much. Perhaps he and Silvester have not always seen eye to eye.”

Elfrida thought of the widower. She had sensed mainly sadness and loneliness from Alfric, but she could see how her husband was also probably right. “Not so much love between them, then?”

“I do not think so.”

“Do you know who lives with him? Silvester, that is?”

Magnus threw a pebble out into the darkening garden plot. “I did not ask too many questions, or the old man would have been suspicious. But we know where Silvester lives, Elfrida! We can watch him. Tomorrow. Early morning. In Outremer the time before dawn was always the best for ambush and for spying. Bittesby will be no different.” Clearly relishing the challenge, he slapped the doorjamb and turned in the doorway.

Pale in his mother’s veil, Elfrida stared at him. Tension rolled off her and when he glanced down at the heap of furs she blushed.

“Kiss me good night?” He watched relief glitter in her eyes before she tucked her head down and moved hurriedly to him.
Shy and awkward, but she wants me as much as I desire her.
After their earlier clashes today he was both glad and sorry, glad she still yearned for him, sad he had caused her grief.

Take her. She is your wife.
Magnus shifted restively from foot to foot. This was the way the Percivals behaved—one step further and he would be on the way to thinking like Lady Astrid and the rest of her kind
. They have corrupted me.

“Magnus.” Elfrida tucked herself against him. “Thank you for having me with you today. I know you would have ridden faster without.”

He began to speak, but she touched his lips with trembling fingers. “I am sorry. For what I said in the mill, Magnus. I was wrong.”

He kissed her hand. “So was I. I would not have you so sad. I love you. Do you believe me? What else must I do to prove it to you?”

She flinched at his abrupt, raw question, making him feel even more ashamed. Without thought, only wanting to convince, he gathered her into his arms, tugged off her borrowed, black, unwieldy veil and buried his face in her hair. “Never leave you,” he found himself saying, “Never.”

Elfrida stiffened in his arms. “Do you think I would ever abandon you?” she spat. Before he guessed what she would do she gripped his hair and, painfully, dragged his head up. “I have left my kin, village and kind for you!”

She was witch-mad, he realized, her eyes slitted in fury and her face no longer pale but red. For an instant he actually feared her a little, but then the moment caught him and he laughed. “What fools we are!”

Fools indeed
. She had been as anxious as him. Her fury at his thinking she might leave him was balm. She muttered something in her own dialect and even tried to shake him. He tore his hair free of her working fingers and kissed her.

“Not that way,” she gasped, when they broke apart to look at each other. “Please, sir, not–not—” She broke off, covering her face with her hands as a long head to heel shudder ran through her.

“Hush, little one.” He stroked the tips of her ears, a tickling, gentle caress that made his own toes curl. He did not quite understand. “I thought you, like me, enjoyed the way we have made love of late. Did I hurt you, instead?”

“No, never,” she said, and began to weep. “I never see your face now! We do not kiss in our unions. How do I explain? They are good, lusty and I feel so much pleasure I swear I might die, but I cannot touch or share, only receive… I am not saying it right! Forgive me…”

“Aye, you are a passionate wench and no harm in that. Sssh, Elfrida…” He rocked her, astonished and humbled by her outburst
. Feel so much pleasure I swear I might die.
He felt the same, but for her it was not enough.
I cannot touch or share.

He felt her shiver anew and thought of his book.
If we do not mate the same way tonight, you will miss the chance to get her with child.

What of that? Magnus thought. Yes, he wanted children, heirs and so on. He wanted Elfrida pregnant and happy. Children would tie her to him even more.

But tonight she needs me, not my seed.
Whether for good or ill, whether it means I miss my chance of mating with her, she needs me.

What if you lose her later because you do not give her a child now?

Magnus dismissed the fear. It was selfish and unloving.
Tonight is for her, only her. That is what love is, to give willingly even in the face of loss.

“Hush.” His understanding pierced him
. No wonder that harpy Astrid hurt her so much with her arrogance, and made her doubt her place. In a worse, more intimate way I have done the same. Elfrida is a witch, my witch, and a warrior of magic, but in our bed she is a gentle, loving soul.
“We shall be slow, yes? Very tender.”

Still a new wife, he thought. They had been married for less than a year. “Will you guide us, sweeting?”

She wiped her eyes and nodded. The sight of her damp lashes tore at his heart. She lifted his hand in both of hers and kissed his fingers before she drew him to their bed of furs.

“Magnus.” She knelt on a wolf skin and he knelt with her so they would be equal. She glanced at the still-open door. By the twilight he saw her blush. “Will you guide us, too?”

“I will,” he said.

He gave himself to her, allowing her to kiss, embrace, fondle, and admire. She nipped and tasted and tongued, at times in places she had never done before. He glowed and burned in the summer night, each scar a wound of trust, courage, and fellowship.

“The greatest wound you cannot see,” he said, when she touched and spoke of them. “In here.” He tapped his ribs and pressed her hand over his heart, his brown eyes gazing into hers. “Whenever I lose you. Whenever you are not with me.”

She shook her head. “I am always with you.”

Emboldened by his loving admiration, she wore her jewels and amulets and nothing else. He cupped her breasts as she mounted him. They made love face to face, staring into each other’s eyes. He was slow and patient, utterly open to her as he begged—Magnus begged!—for her to move a little faster. “Just a little, please, God.”

“I love you,” she whispered, shifting faster, feeling his release fire deep inside her, hearing his strangled cry of her name. Her yielding was so close…

“Always you.” He kissed her, his mouth caressing, his brown eyes still holding her, his body warmer than the furs. She was melting, growing and at the same time fading, flying on a sweet carpet of pleasure.

She sank against him, blissful when he wrapped his arms about her and covered them both with the furs. Coiled over his belly and chest, his body hairs tickling her breasts and stomach, the furs tickling her bottom, she slept.

The world shimmered with sparkling dew when Magnus gently shook her awake.

“Is it time?” she asked.

“Indeed. I have left more coins for the old man.”

Closing the door after them, they stepped out into the pre-dawn freshness. There was no need to speak. They walked through the sleeping town hand in hand, taking a circuitous route by way of the walls to the short alley at the back of Broad Street.

Magnus pointed their joined hands at a handsome two story house with a new jetty and shutters painted purple and white. Elfrida nodded, then stopped as a door in the house opened.

Magnus began to move back into the shadows. She dug her nails into his callused palm. “Keep still,” she hissed.

A small, slim figure, carrying two empty ewers, walked across the cobblestones to a well in the middle of the alley. As the girl put down the ewers and lowered the pail into the well, her hood fell away from her hair. From accounts, and her own dream-vision, Elfrida knew her at once.

It was Rowena.

Magnus guessed who the girl was from Elfrida’s stiffening. And Rowena was beautiful. She had long black hair, blue eyes, perfect, even features, and a serene expression.

For all that she lacks fire
, Magnus decided, when he could breathe again.

Beside him Elfrida said something in her own dialect. A chaffinch flitted from a cherry tree onto the ground in front of the girl, tilting its head up as if to admire.

My witch did that.
Magnus did not know how he knew that, but he did. For an instant the flesh on his bones chilled to ice as his wife’s casual command of magic disconcerted him afresh. Only for a moment, for Rowena released the pail and spoke to the bright, bobbing little bird.

Elfrida whistled—Magnus had thought he was the whistler—and the chaffinch pecked its way over a cart rut toward them, with Rowena following. Step by step she came, soundless as the bird. He wondered how long it would be before she spotted them and screamed at him.

“What then?” he thought, realizing too late he had spoken aloud.

It broke both spells. The bird flew off and Rowena stopped, her blue eyes bright with surprise. She stared at him, then Elfrida.

“I know you,” she said to Elfrida in Norman French, her voice childish and sweet. “Did you send my bird back to me just now? My finch?”

“Rowena.” Elfrida had no French and would not understand her question. “Pax,” she added, using the Latin to try to convince they came in peace. “Tancred.”

Rowena’s slim black eyebrows came together in puzzlement, but Magnus thought that she even frowned prettily. More astonishing still, she had not called him monster or beast, or made the sign of the evil eye against him.
Brave then, or simple?

“Tancred.” Elfrida said again, and she glanced at him.

“We know your betrothed,” Magnus said softly in Norman French, and braced himself.
Do I snatch her away if she shrieks?

Rowena looked back toward the house with the purple and white shutters. It remained quiet, but for how long?
If Silvester has men with him, there may be trouble
. Was the girl signaling to someone inside?

Elfrida made the sign of the cross with her free hand. Rowena turned and faced them again. Her color had not changed, nor her countenance. She was still calm.

“Sir.” She spoke to him directly. “My father had a knight like you, much scarred. Were you a crusader?”

Not simple at all.
Amazed by this strange beginning, by their whole encounter, Magnus found himself answering. “Yes, demoiselle.”

“I would like to travel to Jerusalem one day. Why is Tancred not with you?”

Elfrida did not understand what Rowena said, but she clearly heard the question in the girl’s voice. “Tancred waits for you at our house,” she said in English. “I have your head-rail, too. The one you embroidered with daisies.”

Magnus translated, adding, “Father Jerome advised him to wait for you at our house.” He hoped his mention of the priest would make the partial truth convincing.

Not by a flicker of expression did the child react in any way.
Wary. With her family who can blame her?

“Rowena?” Magnus tried softly. “We should not linger here.”

“Tancred should be here.” Rowena turned to go back but Elfrida moved first, releasing his hand and slipping across to the girl in a swirl of green and black.

“Did Silvester tell you that Tancred would come for you?” she asked, glancing at Magnus. Her words, translated into Norman French, sounded harsh to him, but Rowena shook her head.

“Ruth is safe,” Elfrida said, trying another way to gain the girl’s trust. Magnus again translated.

“She has brown hair,” said Rowena.

When she understood what the girl had said, Elfrida laughed softly and tugged on her own flame-colored locks. “This is the color of Ruth’s hair, and you know it,” she said. “You need not set traps for us. Ruth is with her mother now, safe and well.”