Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment (13 page)

Tancred’s fair head jerked up. He glared at her. “You know the obligations of family?”

“Why so surprised?” asked Elfrida gently. “I know my loyalties here are to Rowena and the missing girls. I keep my promises.”

“As do I,” put in Magnus. “I have not given up my search for them.”

Twisting round on his seat, Tancred seized upon this less-than-startling news. “You say that because of Elfrida, because you dote on her! You would not care else!”

“I do not answer to you.” Magnus held his temper in check and kept his voice deliberately sanguine.
Hellfire in Christendom! Now Elfrida will worry that I spoil her. If I do, ’tis no one’s business but mine. If any man here dares to say anything on the matter, I shall knock in his teeth.

He waved aside Tancred’s protest. “I will keep looking for all the girls because it is the right thing to do. Because that is what your brother will be doing, if only for Rowena. And because that is what I want to do.”

Sitting beside Tancred, Father Jerome cleared his throat. “I believe I know where Silvester can be found.”

So the priest has changed sides again. What a surprise.

“You knew Silvester when he came to the church at Warren Bruer,” said Elfrida. “You told Rowena she was safe to go with him.”

Tancred stopped breathing for an instant and reddened, but Father Jerome said nothing. He certainly did not deny what Elfrida had guessed.

“Where is the fellow then, Priest?” demanded Magnus.

Father Jerome picked up a chess piece, a pawn, and tossed it from hand to hand. His handsome face remained still. He was so even-featured that Magnus could not tell if he was disconcerted or not.

“You hoped that the Lady Astrid would help Tancred and Rowena to marry,” promoted Elfrida, giving the priest an excuse Magnus would not have supplied.

“Yes, I did.” Father Jerome looked at Tancred. “The plan was always that Silvester would hide Rowena for a day or two, until word could be sent to you.”

“You did not know that Rowena had already sent him a message,” remarked Elfrida.

“Nor that my lady would change her plans.”

“Ah, it stings that she left you behind.”

Father Jerome’s fist tightened on the chess piece but again he said nothing. Magnus was unsure if the priest had spoken from pride or injured feelings and did not really care. Either way, the fellow was clearly smarting.
And he deserves it
.

Beneath the table Elfrida made the sign against evil. “A man who stands for Christ. A liar,” she said softly in the old tongue. “A liar like Tancred, Lady Astrid, and Githa, and yet he is also a priest. How many days in our search have these folk lost us?”

Magnus heard her hurt and touched her foot with his. He could feel her heat and shimmer of anger, building fast.
Steady, little witch. We need to learn what Jerome knows first.

“What did you say?” Tancred asked her. “Were you talking about me then?”

“Where is Silvester?” Magnus repeated, ignoring the lad.

Father Jerome dropped the pawn, where it rolled off the table and onto the dais floor with so loud a clatter that the harvesters paused in their meal for an instant and heads turned to the high table. Magnus called out, “Ale for everyone,” and the awkward moment of silence passed.

“Tell us,” he ordered, under the rush of servers and raising of emptied ale cups.

“It is a castle,” said Elfrida, adding swiftly to Magnus alone in the old speech, “I have seen it in our quarry’s mind.”

Tancred stuffed a huge strawberry into his mouth, as if to stop himself saying anything.

“Black cliff?” Elfrida went on, in English, speaking to the hall at large.

“Castle Rocher Noir,” agreed Father Jerome, with a sigh, hunching down lower at the table. “Lady Astrid and Silvester both served at the castle when they were younger. She and Lord Percival must be convinced that Silvester is living there still.”

“With the result that Astrid and Richard have joined forces to parley with this castle Rocher Noir—that’s castle Black Cliff to you and me, Elfrida—to hand Rowena over to them,” Magnus observed. It made a kind of sense to him, although if the master of the castle was unmarried or had sons, then Rowena might already be plighted to yet another squire or knight. “Is this a new castle? I have not heard of it.”

Tancred burst into a spate of excited Norman French, overwhelming Father Jerome’s more guarded answer. Not that it mattered. As clearly as if she had spoken, Magnus heard his wife’s voice within his head.
They are both wrong
.

Magnus forced himself to be patient through Tancred’s increasingly excited descriptions of castle Rocher Noir, his chatter about its possible weak points. The lad was looking at Elfrida by now and smiling.
He wants to win her favor again before he asks if we can besiege the place.
Father Jerome meanwhile seemed to be trying to apologize, claiming the secrets of the confession as his reason for not being honest before. Magnus listened until the fellow paused for breath, then called for silence in the hall.

He rose and thanked the harvesters for their hard work. He told them that more of his wife’s good ale would be ready at the end of the day. When the cheering had died down, he told them that his good friend Peter of the Mount was coming to the manor and that some of his men would need beds for the night in the village. Finally he wished them all Godspeed in their labor and promised that he would help with the coming wheat harvest. “If any need us in the next hour, my lady and I will be in the flower garden,” he finished.

“She has so many flowers already!” shouted an aspiring jester.

On that note of laughter Magnus seized the moment to quit the great hall with Elfrida. Tancred and Father Jerome would have to wait.
I want to know what she knows. I want to know why she thinks Silvester is not at Castle Rocher Noir.

The summer heat struck her like a great hand. Elfrida lengthened her stride and hurried beneath the shade of the apple and pear trees, whispering thanks to the Holy Mother for the swelling fruits. A bee investigated her belt of lilies, then buzzed away to gather nectar from the pink and white roses that Magnus had planted for her in the early spring.

He squeezed her fingers. “Tancred will be chasing out here soon.”

“He wants you to attack the castle.”

Magnus brought her hand to his crooked mouth and kissed her thumb. “You do not think Rowena and the other maids are there.”

“A castle is too large, too public.”

“For sure Silvester will guard them close, as a dragon keeps a hoard. So where? A cave?”

“Nowhere so harsh.” She turned and sure enough Tancred approached, tearing carelessly through the rose thorns. She turned round again. “What say you to a delay until Peter comes?” She prayed that Magnus appreciated she was playing for time, hoping to throw Tancred off their real intent.

Her husband stopped on the speedwell and primrose path, his expression hidden in the shade of the trees. His voice when it came was as bitter as winter and loud enough to carry across the garden. “So Peter and the Templar knights understand siege craft better than I do?”

Appalled that he had misunderstood her, Elfrida reached for him. “No, Magnus, please, I did not mean anything of the kind. If you will only listen.”

Her hands closed on air. He stalked away from her, long-legged and lethal, far faster than she could walk unless she picked up her skirts and ran after him. A stifled snigger behind her told her that Tancred had heard everything.

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.”