The Lioness and Her Knight (15 page)

"Are you my friend?" Luneta whispered under her breath. "Who are you?"

"Didn't you hear Brother Matthew? Call me Snowflake." Then the voice disappeared in an explosion of mirth.

They followed the cattle trail for two hours, and when that trail ended, Snowflake directed Luneta around a field of bracken to a small stream and told them to follow that stream. Rhience asked Luneta no questions but turned wherever she said to turn. At last, when the sun began to set, Rhience pulled up and said, "Here's a good place to camp. Are we almost there, or should we stop for the night?"

"How should I know?" Luneta demanded.

"Ask, why don't you?"

Luneta felt herself turning red, but she said, "Well?"

"You'd best camp," Snowflake replied in her ear. "You won't come up on Ywain for a day or two yet."

Luneta looked up to Rhience's patient gaze. "Er, I think ... he says we should camp."

Rhience nodded and dismounted. For the next half-hour they were both occupied in rubbing down their horses, building a fire, and opening the packs of dried food that Rhience had brought with them, but when at last they were seated by their fire, eating, Rhience said, "You want to explain this to me?"

Luneta nodded, but she felt very self-conscious as she said, "It's a voice, right in my ear. Do you think I'm mad?"

"I've thought so for months," Rhience replied. "But hearing a voice isn't necessarily a sign of it. What does your voice tell you?"

"He says that we won't come up on Ywain for another day or two."

"Does your voice have a name?"

Luneta reddened again and, in a small voice, said, "He says to call him Snowflake."

Rhience began to laugh. "Ah, a spirit with a sense of humor. My favorite sort."

When Rhience said "spirit," Luneta looked up sharply. "It
is
a spirit, isn't it? Do you think it's leading us to our death or something?"

Rhience cocked his head and thought for a moment. "I shouldn't think so. I've a notion that evil spirits would take themselves too seriously to call themselves Snowflake. Can you imagine it? Satan and his demons gathered in council—Marduk, Mephisto, and the wicked Snowflake?"

Luneta began to laugh. "True. And I must say that Snowflake doesn't
sound
evil."

Snowflake's voice said, "I thank you, my dear. And please tell Brother Matthew that his insight into the spirits is quite accurate."

"Who's Brother Matthew?" Luneta asked.

Rhience stared at Luneta. "Where did you hear that name?"

Luneta tapped her ear. "Snowflake says to tell Brother Matthew that his insight into the spirits is accurate. Is it you?"

Rhience nodded, grinning. "I think I told you once that at one time I was planning to enter a religious life." Luneta nodded. "It was a bit more extreme than that. I was a novice at a monastery, nearly accepted into the cloister. While there, I took the name Matthew. It seemed more religious to me."

"As you did when you were a knight. Sir Calo-something, wasn't it?"

"Calogrenant," Rhience said. "Yes. Just like that."

"What happened at the monastery?"

"I was quite a success there," Rhience said, leaning back against a boulder and giving Luneta a lopsided smile. "I'm good at numbers and figures, and I know something of land management. Before I left to join the church, I was practically running the family estates. I think Father Abbot was grooming me to be overseer of the monastery lands."

"Would you have liked that?" Luneta asked, a little surprised.

"I think so," Rhience said. "The problem was that I wasn't as suited for the rest of monastic life. Not serious enough, you see. They were forever trying to heal me of my levity. Once my preceptor caught me telling faery stories to some of the orphans. He took me by the ear off to the scriptorium, where he made me read an improving book about some old fellow named Simeon Stylite. This chap ate only once a week, slept only a couple of hours a night, and to top it off lived the last half of his life up on top of a tower, all to prove his devotion."

"This was supposed to cure you of laughing too much?"

Rhience grinned. "Yes. And it just made me laugh, which got me two days of solitude. When I got out, I packed and left."

"So then you changed your name to Sir Calogrenant and became a knight."

"And now I've taken back my real name and become who I really am."

"A fool?" Luneta asked.

"Just so," Rhience said. He unrolled his blankets and stretched out on them. "Tell Snowflake good night for me."

They rode off before sunrise the next morning, still following Snowflake's whispered directions. It was growing late when they came to the first human they had encountered since leaving Oxford: a thick-waisted shepherdess with rosy cheeks and freckles. She was sitting on a fallen tree surrounded by her flock, but she was paying the sheep no attention, and although the winter wind was cold, she was fanning herself and making odd clucking noises. Rhience glanced quizzically at Luneta, then rode close to the shepherdess, who jumped to her feet. "Oh, lawks!" she said.

"Lawks, indeed," Rhience replied politely, inclining his head. "Truly you say so."

The girl blinked and asked, "Say what?"

"Lawks. A truer word has never been spoken."

"Lawks?" she asked.

"Lawks," Rhience repeated gravely.

"Shut up, Rhience," Luneta said. "Don't mind him. He's a fool."

The shepherdess looked at Luneta, eyeing her fine gown with admiration, then dropped a rough curtsy. "Indeed, your ladyship. I beg your pardon for being forward, and for not speaking respectful to ye when ye come up, as my mother would be shocked to hear of me not doing. But I
have
had such a shock!"

"Lawks," said Rhience.

"What gave you such a shock?" Luneta asked, ignoring him.

"That man! Did ye see him?"

"We saw no one," Luneta said. "Did a man threaten you?"

"Nay, your ladyship. He no more than took one look at me and he run off, which isn't hardly a surprise, considering."

"Considering what?" Luneta asked.

"Well..."The girl glanced nervously at Rhience. "I hardly like to say, miss."

"You can trust us," Luneta said.

The girl leaned forward. "It's that he weren't ... didn't have ... well, it was all just right there!"

"All what?" asked Luneta.

The girl clamped her lips shut. "That, your ladyship, I won't say for no persuading."

Luneta glanced helplessly at Rhience, but the fool only grinned. "Do you mean that this man was naked?" he asked the girl. Her face brightened to a shiny cherry color, but she nodded expressively.

"It must be him," Luneta said. "Snowflake said that he'd lost his wits." She turned to the girl. "Did you see which direction he went?"

"Yes, ma'am," the girl said. She pointed at a thick clump of bushes at the edge of a wooded area. "He saw me and just jumped up, turned around, and run off that way. He went right through those gorse bushes."

"Ouch," said Rhience.

"Just there by that big oak!" she said, pointing. "I'll never forget it! The last thing I saw as he jumped into the shrubbery was ... was..."

"His lawks," Rhience supplied.

Luneta struggled to keep her countenance, thanked the shepherdess for her help, and led the way to the wooded area. "He must be frozen," she said.

"Not to mention scratched," Rhience said. "Shocking!"

"Well, and so it was to that poor girl!" Luneta said. "It wasn't very nice of you to make fun of her, you know."

"Don't be silly. She's just had the time of her life and will bore her friends and family for many years to come, telling the story every chance she gets. Now, what do you think is back in those woods?"

They found out twenty minutes later when they rode into a clearing where a stocky man in a heavy fur robe was turning a whole haunch of venison on a spit over a cheerful fire. "Welcome, travelers!" he called. "Come and share my bounty!"

"We thank you, sir," Luneta replied, "but we must—"

"Just a minute, lass," Rhience said. "It's almost dark, and we won't be able to look much longer anyway. And perhaps this gentleman can help us." More loudly, Rhience said, "We thank you indeed, Father. 'Bounty' is the right word. That's a lovely piece of meat. The hermits of this country do well by themselves."

"God provides, my son," the old man replied, laughing. "But all I have is yours to share. How did you know I was a hermit? I didn't get around to putting on the old sackcloth this morning."

"A bit chilly for sackcloth, I would think. No, I noticed your beads on the bench by the door, and besides, who else would live in such a cottage alone like this?" Rhience dismounted and led his horse to the well while he talked.

"Who else indeed? But I must say, it's not such a bad life as I'd expected. I'm new here, you know. The last hermit in this hut died—some think of starvation."

"Indeed?" asked Rhience, casting another glance at the haunch of venison.

"But as I said, God provides."

"Do you hunt, sir?" Rhience inquired.

The hermit shook his head and beamed at them. "I'll tell you all about it while we eat, if you like."

At last able to fit a word in, Luneta said, "Before you begin, we need to ask you—"

"Let's listen to the good holy man first, Luneta," Rhience said. "I've a feeling we may learn all we want to know."

"I came here to keep a vow," the jovial man said over a delicious meal of perfectly roasted venison. "I didn't start out a hermit, as you might have guessed. I'm a butcher by trade, and to tell the truth, I haven't been a very good Christian, what with one thing and another. I don't mean I was dishonest—ask anyone and they'll tell you Godwulf the Butcher has the fairest scales anywheres about—but I do like my food and beer and I did go on the occasional spree, so that it most drives our priest up a tree when he thinks on my sins. Well, it pleased God to let me come down deathly ill last month so that I thought I was about to cock up my toes, and here comes Father Richard saying that I might be healed if I would just make a vow to obey him for three months. Like I said, I thought I was dead anyway, so I decided to give him a bit of pleasure before I died, and I took his vow. Then, what do you think happened? I got well!"

"How disappointing," Rhience said sympathetically.

"Well, it was! Not at first, of course; I mean, I didn't
mind
God healing me."

"That's big of you," Rhience said.

"But it was right downheartening to think I'd just given three months of my life to that priest. And I didn't know the half of it, either. As soon as I was well, Father Richard tells me that for my three months, he wanted me to live in this forest hermitage that's just come open and say prayers all day and eat only what God provided for me."

"I knew a preceptor in a monastery once who sounds a bit like your Father Richard," Rhience commented.

"Sour bloke, eh? But then what do you think happened? Three nights ago, on my first night here, I'm just sitting by the fire listening to my gut rumble, and out of the woods crawls this young man as naked as a skinned rabbit."

Luneta shot a quick glance at Rhience, who only nodded and said, "Indeed?"

"Well, I wasn't feeling so well myself, as I said, but at least I had some clothes, and so I thought to help him. I spoke to him, but he didn't seem to understand me. Mad, you know. I'm a big fellow and handy with my fists, so I wasn't rightly afraid of him, and I soft-talked him over by the fire and put a thick fur robe over his shoulders. He went to sleep right there, and the next morning I wake up and there's a brace of rabbits, fresh killed, lying on the doorstep."

"The madman gave them to you?"

"And a fine game hen the next morning, and a whole deer today. By now we've got it all worked out regular, even if we never say a word. Every night, sometime around midnight, he comes and drops off whatever he's killed during the day and curls up in this robe by the fire and eats whatever I've cooked and left for him. I never ate so well in my life! When Father Richard said I was to eat only what God provided, you could tell he didn't expect God to provide much, but I'll tell you this—God provides like the merry dickens! I may just decide to stay a hermit!"

By this time, Rhience was shaking with laughter, clearly enjoying their jovial host very much indeed. He talked with Godwulf in high good spirits for another hour while Luneta waited. At last the best-fed hermit in England went inside to sleep off his penance.

"It sounds as if all we have to do is wait here, and Ywain will come to us," Luneta said.

"True," Rhience replied. "But let me ask you this. What will you do with him once you find him?"

Luneta had already been wondering that. "I know," she said. "When we came after him, it was because I was afraid he was in danger."

"I suppose living naked in the forest in winter could be considered danger," Rhience said.

"True. It wouldn't be
my
choice, anyway. But he does have a place to get warm, and he seems to be able to get food."

"You think we should leave him here?" Rhience said.

Luneta shrugged. "Even if we could drag him away by force, which I doubt, where would we take him?" Rhience nodded thoughtfully. "I don't want to make any decisions now, though," Luneta said. "I need to see him first and try to talk with him."

Luneta never got that chance. An hour or so before midnight, as she stood in the shadows of the trees, watching the fire and waiting for Ywain, a now familiar voice spoke to her, not at her ear but from beside her. "Lady Luneta," it said.

Luneta looked down to see a little bearded man with leafy hair and an impish grin. "Snowfiake?" she said.

"It's as good as most of my names," the little elf replied. "I've come to fetch you."

Luneta stared at the little man. "Fetch me where?" she asked.

Come and see.

"Why?"

"You'll understand when you're there."

"I have to be back at midnight or so to talk to Ywain. How long will it take?"

The little man giggled. "That's a nonsense question. There's no answer."