Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) (2 page)

“The one here was only an orphan and disliked by all but her lover. It was rumored she had run off to some town. We did not tell anything of the other maiden.”

Magnus said nothing, but the headman sensed his disapproval. “What else would you have us say? They are women, after all. If they knew the danger, their wits would not stand it.”

Magnus nodded, thinking of
Alice
’s likely response to
that
statement as he smelled the man’s shame and frustration. In essence, however, what the fellow admitted was the stark truth. The men had to work in the fields or forest and the women at home. It was how they survived.

“Move from these villages—” he began, but the headman interrupted.

“We will not be driven from our homes!”

“Move the young women,” Magnus continued steadily. “They can come to my manor, and my people will guard them.”

“They will not go.”

You do not want them to go
, Magnus translated in his mind.

The headman glowered at him across the fire. “You said you would find the beast! You are Sir Magnus, the famed warrior of the East! We had heard of your exploits in arms even here, and when we sent the messenger we could scarcely hope that you would come. I know we cannot offer much gold, but for the renown of such a chase, we thought it would be enough.”

“Renown feeds no bellies,” Magnus answered dryly, “but you need not fret. I have never yet turned away from helping a maid, be she free or bond.”

“So you will find the beast?”

“I will, but it will take me time and many of my men. You say the monster is hard to track.” Magnus stirred the fire again. He wanted more light to give these old men heart. “I will catch it,” he vowed. “The more you tell me, the better. Have you anything of the creature’s?”

A sturdy peasant, straighter and more lithe than the huddled group by the fire, stepped from the wall shadows and tossed him a bundle. Fumbling in the dark, Magnus accidentally dropped the rough cloth parcel into the rushes and heard the peasant mutter something that the headman chose not to translate. Magnus guessed it would be about his scars and missing hand and ignored it, too. He did not have to justify his fighting skills to any low-born farmer. He scrabbled for and retrieved the parcel as the old men burst into squalls of chatter, hard and urgent as showers of hail. Guessing that he was in for more long-winded exclamations, he shifted on the stool, then warned himself sternly to listen.

I will look tonight, too
.
For as long as there is light, and I can see any kind of trail, I will look. But for the trouble to afflict this village and two more! It is worse than I realized.

* * * *

Returning from the beehives at the end of her garden, Elfrida was about to walk through the village to the hut of the headman when she saw Walter stumbling toward her. His homely face was stark with horror, and as soon as he spotted her, he began to shout.

“He has her! I cannot find them! I have looked everywhere!”

He slumped to his knees in the slush and dropped further, his breath spurting in choking gasps. Elfrida reached him as he rolled onto his back, still wheezing. Her own breath stopped as she saw the claw marks on his arms and throat. She swung the lantern round but saw nothing that should not be there in the garden.

“Christina?” she croaked, her throat closing with dread.

“Alive, I swear it! I heard her crying as she was carried off.”

Elfrida found she could breathe again. “Have you roused the men?” she demanded, hearing now, too late, the wail of horns and of many voices. Already in the nearby woodland she saw the bobbing flares of torches and prayed they did not search in vain.

Let her be alive, oh Lord. Let her be safe!

Walter clutched her, dragging her down into the snow with him. “He came from nowhere, like a great spider. I heard nothing.”

Why did I not hear? Christina taken, and I heard nothing!

“Had he a horse? Was he alone?”

Walter shook his head. He had begun to shake. “He was dark as a spider...ugly... moved quicker than lightning. Had her snatched and gone.... I went after them.... He slashed at me.”

Elfrida knocked off Walter’s trembling arms and sprinted to the house, leaving him prone in the snow.

“Christina! Christina!” she shrieked, her voice higher than anyone’s, but her sister was not safe at home. Only a scrap of her blue veil remained in their hut, caught on one of the roof struts. She must have rushed out to greet Walter, as she thought, and run straight into—what?

Elfrida dashed into the yard, screaming her sister’s name. She flung the lantern into a stack of hay and screamed again as the precious winter hay burned up in towering, crackling flames, giving much-needed light. “Christina!”

The hay blazed, and she could see the other villagers, the other houses and gardens, the paths through the hamlet and the trees beyond, but there was no sign or shape of Christina.

She was gone, as Walter said, carried off into the wilderness by a monster.

* * * *

Elfrida dropped the twigs she had been using as divining rods into the snow. This clearing was the place. Here was where she would make her stand.

After two days without sleep or food, she was drained of all feeling, dry from crying. Day and night she had sought everywhere for Christina. Walter had been constantly at her side, calling, praying, and urging the dog he had meant to give Christina, to seek her out. At sunset on the second day, the village headman had compelled Walter to go to church, to leave offerings to the local saint for Christina’s safe recovery. He had tried to order Elfrida, but she had pleaded “woman’s trouble” as an excuse not to enter the church and finally she was alone. Her head ached and buzzed as if filled with bees, but the thudding panic was gone.

Swiftly, as the sinking sun bled into darkness in the west, she began to search for Christina by witch ways. She had done this from the start, but now, without Walter’s anxious, hovering presence, she felt her power growing. She chanted to the wood elves, promising them a year and a day of ale if she they helped her. She tossed Christina’s veil high into the cold, still air, calling on the old gods Gog and Magog to point out the track of the beast. She thought of her sister, her long blonde hair, blue eyes, and sweet face and whispered,
Where now, where now?

She drew a picture in her mind of the great forest and the villages she knew: Great Yarr, Top Yarr, where she lived,
Lower Yarr
and Selton, the new place. She imagined the cat’s cradle of paths to and fro from settlement to settlement. Christina was light to carry, but even a child was too heavy to bear away on such narrow woodland tracks, and surely smashed twigs would have marked the beast’s passage?

Had he flown away, then?

“Be he a demon in flight, or be he as nimble as a squirrel in the treetops, I will have him!” she shouted, striking an oak tree to seal her promise. She found two branches beneath the tree and took them as the oak’s gift, using them to divine where in these woods Christina had been taken.

Here in this clearing lay a clear sign, a long strand of blonde hair trailing across the snow in a golden thread. Gold but no red, praise God, so she could hope her sister still lived.

Elfrida turned slowly in this small circle, glimpsing the path of the sun and the rising new moon through a screen of holly and oak trees. About her the woods seemed deathly quiet, and yet she felt she was being watched by something with a mind—that, or something was coming. She knew it from the raised hairs on the back of her neck.

Coming, not watching. It cannot see me yet, I vow, so I have time.

Had she time enough? She must return to the village, to change her clothes, and to make ready.

She listened intently, reaching out with all her senses, but again her first instinct remained compelling. The beast was in this forest, and he would be drawn closer by the right inducements.

“And I know what those are,” she said aloud, turning to hurry back to the home that was not a home, now that Christina was gone.

Walter had not admitted anything to her, not directly, but from his muttered remarks and fractured exclamations as he feverishly searched alongside her for his betrothed, Elfrida had learned a great deal.

“She is the third!” Walter had cried out, beating his fists against the walls of their empty hut. “The third in her wedding garb, and the most beautiful: one black-haired, one brown, and my Christina!”

He had refused to say more, even when Elfrida had threatened to curse him, but his outburst told her what he and the elders had been hiding from the village women. The brute who had carried off Christina had kidnapped other pretty young girls, also dressed in their wedding gowns. He stole brides.

I will dress myself as a bride and return here with my own wedding feast, with food and drink in abundance. Let him think me a bridal sacrifice, his red-haired bride, left for him by the village. And, by Christ and all his saints, this time I will be ready for him!

It is a blessing I am a healer and have so many potions ready prepared. If I put sleeping draughts in the wine, food, and sweets, surely I can tempt the beast to take some? I can smear tinctures of poppy on my skin and clothes, so any taste will induce sleep
.

Sleep, not death, for she had to know where he had taken Christina.

I will coax the truth from the groggy monster, and then the village men can have him.

Part of her knew she was being wild, unreasonable, that she should talk to Walter, tell the villagers, but she did not care. Talk would waste more precious hours, and they might even try to stop her. For her sister she would do anything, risk anything. But she must hurry, she must do something, and she had little time.

It was full dark before Elfrida was finished,
midnight
on the day after the start of Advent, two days after Christina should have been married. She shivered in the glinting snow, her breath suspended between the frosted, white ground and the black, star-clad sky.

She glanced over the long boulder she had used as an offering table for her wine and food, not allowing herself to think too closely about what she had done. She had lit a small fire and banked it so that it would burn until morning, to stop her freezing and to keep wolves at bay, and now by its tumbling flames she saw her own small, tethered shadow writhing on the forest floor.

She would not dwell on what could go wrong, and she fought down her night terrors over Christina, lest they become real through her thoughts. She lifted up her head and stared above the webbing of treetops to the bright stars beyond, reciting a praise chant to herself. She was a warrior of magic, ready to ensnare and defeat the beast.

“I have loosened my hair as a virgin. I am dressed in a green gown, unworn before today. My shoes are made of the softest fur, my veil and sleeves are edged with gold, and my waist is belted in silver. There is mutton for my feast, and dates and ginger, wine and mead and honey. I am a willing sacrifice. I am the forest bride, waiting for my lord—”

Her voice broke. Advent was meant to be a time of fasting, and she had no lord. None of the menfolk of Yarr would dare to take Elfrida the wisewoman and witch to be his wife. She knew the rumors—men always gossiped more than women—and all were depressing in their petty spitefulness. They called her a scold because she answered back.

“I need no man,” she said aloud, but the hurt remained. Was she not young enough, fertile enough,
pretty
enough?

Keep to your task
, Elfrida reminded herself.
You are the forest bride, a
willing virgin sacrifice
.

She had tied herself between two tall lime trees, sometimes struggling against her loose bonds as if she could not break free. She could, of course, but any approaching monster would not know that, and she wanted to bait the creature to come close—close enough to drink her drugged flask of wine and eat her drugged “wedding” cakes. Let him come near so she could prick him with her knife and tell him, in exquisite detail, how she could bewitch him. He would fear her, oh yes, he would...