Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment (15 page)

“There is a cloak. Will you wear it?”

Elfrida glanced at the black cloak draped over his shoulder and shook her head. She would feel buried alive in that. “The day is too warm.”

He took a step closer and her heart hammered in her chest. She prayed he would kiss her but he merely tweaked the veil more closely about her face so that it hung down over her ears and covered all her hair. “There.” He looked minded to touch the tip of her nose but withdrew, turning and stalking for the side door Mark had used.

Elfrida touched the veil, already feeling smothered by its weight. “Do I look older, as you intended?” she asked, as Magnus was silhouetted in the doorway.

“We have a long ride,” was his only answer.

After the cities of Outremer, all English towns seemed small to Magnus but Elfrida was wide-eyed. Their ride to Bittesby had been fast and hard and he had expected her to be dropping with weariness. Instead she sat high in the saddle and remained lively, as if intoxicated by the new sights, sounds, and scents.

“Their gardens are so narrow,” she remarked, glancing this way and that as he nudged their horses through the town gate. “But they grow many good fruit trees and flowers. How do they all fit in? There are so many people here!”

It was close to sunset and curfew, so the streets would be emptying, but Magnus did not contradict her. He wished she was not with him, that she was secure at his manor, but he was glad to see her interest.

If only her excitement did not give such a pretty color to her eyes and lips and face.
He had hoped his mother’s old-fashioned, heavy veil would make Elfrida look older. Instead, in some curious way her gown, necklace and veil made her seem younger, as if she played at being a housewife
. The blessed thing is, this is my doing. I want her safe from Silvester.

She brushed his hand. “Do we use our names here?” she asked softly, flinching when a pie seller standing at a street corner bawled out his wares.

“My father’s name was Guy, so I will be Sir Guy.”

“And I shall be Rachel.”

Magnus scowled. “No.” He drew rein and dismounted, longing to tug her off the horse and drag her out of sight into one of the tall houses. He stared up into her glittering amber eyes. “I have said before, I will not have you as bait.”

Her lower lip jutted, making her look still more youthful. “It is but a name.”

“And if Silvester has a dozen men to call from the taverns to set against us?”

She blushed, looking past him. “Every second house seems to have a bush or branch over its door,” she said, mentioning the custom that indicated such houses sold ale or wine. Magnus went along with her change of subject.

“There are more pie sellers in the alleyways than I remember.”

Her smile flashed out. “Do you also remember the goldsmiths?”

In snatches of conversation on the long ride they had agreed they should visit the dyers of Bittesby, the jewelers and spice sellers, any of the townsfolk with whom Silvester might have had dealings. Since Magnus had no intention of telling any of these people where he and Elfrida would really stay that night, he thought it safe enough to do this and see what they learned.

He laughed and pointed. “No need to remember, they are right by the town wall, next to the gate.”

She was relieved by his chuckle and glad to be off the back of the horse. After a long day in the saddle, her thighs, arms, and even her teeth ached with the constant pounding of the road. She marveled at how fresh Magnus seemed and swore she would not totter or delay him.
He has allowed me to come, against his own wishes, so I must strive to be a good wife and help-mate.

It was no hardship to be either. She loved him.

“I will see if the smiths have stabling for the horses,” Magnus remarked. He offered her his arm to cross the cobblestones, guiding the horses with his hand. Elfrida wet her parched lips with her tongue and went with him, fighting not to limp.

The goldsmiths, working out of doors on tables and fashioning copper and silver pieces rather than fine gold or jewelry, rose as one at their approach. The eldest, waving to the other two to carry the tables inside, greeted her husband.

A gracious exchange followed in Norman French. Elfrida was brought a chair and a cup of wine, which she shared with Magnus. The eldest smith smiled a lot and seemed agreeable, nodding vigorously at Magnus’s horses and settling quickly on a price for stabling the pair.

When their horses were led away and a plate of strawberries was placed on her lap by another of the apprentices, Elfrida nodded thanks and glanced at her husband. “Is it long to curfew?” she asked him in their Norton Mayfield speech.

“The watchmen know me,” the elder goldsmith assured her in the same tongue. “You may take your ease, Lady—?”

“Christina,” Elfrida supplied, aware of Magnus breathing out slowly beside her.

“Christina my wife,” he said now, “and soon to be three and twenty. I seek a gem for her.”

“I would love a ring similar to that you made for Ruth, my maid,” said Elfrida quickly. “You remember her? A small, pretty red-head? She came with my kinsman.”

She listened intently, watching the apprentice and his master. Neither were disconcerted by her questions.

“A ring of garnet,” the goldsmith said, “very delicate and finely wrought. Geraint made it for part of his master work. Yes, I remember. Your maid was delighted and Sir Silvester well pleased.”

We are making him another,
was the smith’s unsaid speech, whispered clear in Elfrida’s head. “Yes, Silvester said he was pleased,” she began, but the smith had different concerns from hers.

“Gold and silver combined, with flashes of garnet—”

“Have you any rings for us to see?” Magnus cut across the smith’s description.

The smith scuttled indoors, calling to more, unseen apprentices. Magnus plucked a strawberry from Elfrida’s plate and fed it to her. “Christina, eh?” he remarked softly, with raised brows.

“Three and twenty?” she answered in turn, glad they were easier again with each other.

“Word will be spreading already round the town of our arrival. I want it known you are my wife.”

“Your
old
wife.”

His eyes crinkled with amusement as he ate a strawberry, quite unconcerned. “Three and twenty is not so different from nineteen.” He did not add, though Elfrida knew he thought it,
And this way Silvester will certainly not be interested.

Magnus bought a gold and silver ring and necklace for Elfrida. He asked after dyers and tailors, mentioning a particular love of purple and white put together, and was told the dyers had their stalls inside the town and their workshops outside the walls, “down by the river, at the bridge.”

“We shall stroll there before curfew,” Magnus said, clasping Elfrida firmly by the hand.

“You have a place tonight?” the goldsmith asked as Elfrida rose, clearly responding to his prompt.

“Either a bed at the Swan or the Bear,” Magnus replied, naming two taverns he had spotted farther along the street. “I shall let Christina decide.”

“Most gracious, my lord,” murmured Elfrida, slipping her fingers free of his and pinching him. “Where are we really staying?” she asked, when they were out in the street.

Magnus stretched his arms above his head and turned about as if loosening himself after their long ride. Over the wooden walls he spotted the meadows close to the river, with apprentices playing bowls and firing arrows at archery butts. Bittesby was so small they could walk there and to the dyers in less than an hour.

“A more private widow’s house, along one of the quieter streets,” he replied quietly, and sighed. “That is, if we can find a widow who does not shriek and scream for the watchmen at the sight of me.”

“Hush! She will not.”

“Hopefully, one widow will not scream at my gold, at least,” Magnus went on, marking the man-shaped shadow that fell over the drinking fountain across the street from them. Instantly alert, he watched how the shadow detached from the trickle of water and trailed after them as they moved. Beside him, Elfrida touched one of her witch amulets, then her eating dagger.

He frowned, disliking the fact that she had also guessed they were being followed. “Do nothing,” he growled.

“Silvester? Already?” she breathed.

“Too soon to say,” he answered, seeing another figure prowling in a street parallel to theirs, matching their pace and going in the same direction. A scrawny ruffian with a straw hat tied to his shoulders shoved past Magnus.

And when he turns, it will be their signal to attack.

He lunged down an alleyway to the left with the sun striking directly into his and the followers’ eyes. In that instant, while all were blinded, he pulled Elfrida into a house passageway. “Go through to the yard,” he ordered.

She ran, stopping when a new shadow carrying the knife of a cutpurse blocked the low-roofed, narrow passageway ahead of her. Magnus grabbed one of the house struts, wrested it free in a shoulder-wrenching tear and moved forward to pass her.

Elfrida detected a slight shift in the air behind them—a new, more urgent threat.

“Stop!” she screamed and the creeping figure behind Magnus stumbled. Magnus turned back in the closed-in space and kicked the creature in the balls, leaving him coughing and crawling out into the alley. The straw-hatted man stepped into the alley side of the passageway, murder in his eyes.

Magnus thumped the house walls with his improvised wooden club and straw-man backed away and fled. The cutpurse waiting in the yard where Magnus had told her to flee was already gone.

“Are you all right?” he and Elfrida said together.

Magnus dropped the strut in the narrow passageway and she ran into his arms.

“No more tonight,” Magnus had said and Elfrida was glad of it. He had wanted them off the streets and she agreed. Hurrying between the town wall and the house yards and gardens, Elfrida touched each door as they passed.

“Here,” she said, laying a hand against the sun-bleached wood of a tall, narrow corner dwelling and sensing a sad quiet within. Magnus knocked sharply and in moments they were inside.

Their host was not a widow but a spry, thin man who looked like a priest. From the tools scattered around the room he was, or had been a carpenter, but one with no wife now in the house to make him tidy them up. He smiled broadly at Elfrida, asked their names, raised sandy eyebrows at Magnus’s scars but otherwise said nothing. He was glad of the coins Magnus pressed into his knotted palm and gladder still of their company. “Alfric, that’s me. I have enough food for us, or will have, and you can sleep by the fire. Wait! I have some sweets, too, if I can find them…”

Ignoring Magnus’s plea to be easy, Alfric began lifting pots and pans from the fireplace, seeking the honey drops he swore he had made. Elfrida whispered a charm to help the man find them and closed her eyes. Her mind returned to the passageway and their would-be attackers.

Magnus could have been killed
. A murder in a brawl was no good way for any to die, leastways a knight. Sickened at the thought of her knight being hurt, Elfrida shuddered and opened her eyes. Gloriously hale and as alive as he could be, Magnus regarded her solemnly.

“Were they Silvester’s men?” she asked softly, while their host had his back to them.

Magnus sat on a stool by the little fire and patted his knee. Too shy to sit on him after their earlier quarrel, she shook her head, then instantly felt guilty. They were no longer sparking off each other but she dreaded that her harsh words were still between them. Needing to be close, she stepped to him and ruffled his hair. “You had a cobweb,” she murmured, as an excuse.

“No matter.” He did not hug her as she hoped he might but answered her earlier question. “I think those fellows in the alley were common thieves and purse cutters. They gave up quickly enough.”

“Bittesby is not as safe as it was,” complained Alfric as he stood on a stool to look over a row of glass and earthenware bottles on a high shelf above the fire, “but no one ever troubles me here. Was it out on Broad Street?”

“Close to the horse trough,” Magnus said quickly—a safe enough answer as there were several throughout the town. “Why is it less safe, Master Alfric? Do Silvester and the other town lords not care?”

Still without his sweets, Alfric stepped off the stool, gripping a pot lid. For an instant he looked bewildered and Elfrida said quietly, “May I help?”

The widower glanced at her, entreaty in his faded eyes and face.

“May I cook and you and…Guy talk?”

This suited everyone. Elfrida slipped outside into the kitchen garden to gather fresh greens for the pot and left Magnus chatting with the old man. As she left, Magnus said quietly, “Leave the door open.”

I am safe enough,
she wanted to say, but reaction after their fight in the passageway had set in and she was glad to prop the back door. Building up the fire, scrubbing leeks, chopping onions, she saw Magnus and Alfric with their heads close together, Alfric drawing on the dirt floor with a stick.