A Bed of Spices (33 page)

She was alive.

In the deep of the night, Charles stirred. He had not slept easily, in spite of the loving attentions of the woman at his side. Absently, he stroked her soft back and her fleshy arm for comfort. Helga nestled closer to his shoulder, her wealth of hair spilling over his chest.

“Trouble sleeping, my sweet?” she asked softly.

He sighed and kissed her hair. “Yes.”

“Let me rub your back.”

“No.” He did not want to stop holding her. “I have missed you.” He growled to hide his deep emotion, and stroked her breast.

“I am weary of staying away in temper,” she admitted. “There is comfort for me here in these dark times.”

“The times will be darker yet, I fear.”

“Aye,” she said quietly. “But you do not need to shoulder all of it, my lord. The plague will come and take who it likes and there is naught you can do.”

“I can protect those in my house,” he said. “When I return from Benfeld, we will shut the castle up as if for a siege. I would have you here then.”

“I cannot promise you that. Plague or not, there is work I must do.”

“Can you not find someone else to do it, woman?”

She chuckled. “None I would trust.”

He let that settle, then came to the thing keeping him awake. “What of that young jew?”

Next to him, Helga’s body was not quite so pliant as a moment before. “What of him?”

“A handsome youth, is he not?”

She laughed, a bawdy, husky sound he loved. “Handsome is only the beginning!”

“Rica looked at him as if she would murder him,” he said slowly, and waited.

Helga said nothing.

Charles scowled. “Why must you be so silent when I wish to hear your thoughts?”

She lifted up on one elbow. The moonlight creeping around the shutters was kind to her face. “I am only a woman, my lord,” she said with an ironic twist to her lips. “What could you wish to hear from me?”

He grunted. “Perhaps I do not wish to hear the truth in this,” he admitted. “What I saw today I did not like.”

“What did you see?”

“Too much,” he said, and remembered. Rica unsettled and flushed and trying to get the man’s attention, while trying to push it away. And then that single, blazing smile the Jew had given her. It was not the joyous smile of a man newly struck, but one deep with intimacy and knowledge. “It is he she loved,” he said, and knew it to be truth.

Helga moved close and kissed him. “You must rest, my lord.”

Charles closed his eyes. It was true, then, or Helga would have denied it. All this time, she had known and kept it to herself, when he might have done something to stop the tragedies that had befallen them. He clutched her arms. “Why did you not tell me?”

“There are things, my lord,” she said and opened her palm along his jaw, “that women sometimes owe one another. Your daughter is a wise woman. You have not given her the trust she deserved. Trust her now.”

With sorrow, he thought of Rica’s protests that she choose someone more to her liking, her protests against Rudolf in particular. If only he had listened, perhaps his other daughter would not now be dead.

And yet—“She cannot wed a Jew!” he said.

Helga kissed him, as if to stop his talk. This time, he let himself be carried away by her strong, skillful hands. When they were finished, he finally slept.

For three days
, Solomon left his father and went to walk on the paths he knew to be Rica’s favored places. He slogged through the mud along the river Ill and climbed to the copse of trees overlooking the Rhine. He lingered in the winter-bare orchards nearby the castle walls and waited patiently along the path to Helga’s.

On the fourth day, it was cold. He huddled deep into his cloak as he paced along the Ill, remembering with pleasure the days he had spent swimming there, and the time he had first kissed Rica. She had been bathing, and the thought of her naked in the river only moments before had made him wild.

But he did not regret that kiss, or any after. In finding Rica, he had somehow found himself, a self apart from all the things his family and religion and teachers had expected of him.

She was not there when he arrived, and somehow he did not mind. It seemed if fate had charted their paths so closely, then he only need be faithful.

And so he admired the dark trees with their frostings of snow and tapped branches to watch the glistening fall of flakes tumble in the cold, misty air. The river was frozen white at the sides, but the ice was thin as glass in the middle. He could see water running through it.

The silence was vast and clean, as if he were the only man on the earth. It made him feel large and calm.

When he heard the crack of branches in the forest behind him, he turned in the middle of this great silence, knowing it would be Rica at last.

She ducked through the branches, cloaked in blue wool, the hood up to cover her head. Leo bounded forward, racing for the edge of the river, and Rica cried out toward him, “No, Leo!”

He halted at Solomon’s side and licked his hand.

Rica froze beneath the branches of a sheltering pine, her cloak dotted with snow fallen from the trees. She stared at him for a moment as if he were a huge dragon about to breathe fire and burn her to cinders, there in the forest.

Then, before he said a word, she turned and bolted through the trees.

“Rica!” he shouted. His voice rose like an explosion through the silence. Spurred by her flight, he ran after her.

She rushed headlong over the path, ducking beneath the low branches and dashing around shrubs. Her skirts nearly tripped her once and she made a sharp sound, then righted herself.

He caught up with her and reached out, snagging her arm. She screamed, trying to tear herself away from him.

“You are not Etta!” he said furiously.

With an abrupt, strong movement, she flung off his arm. Her hood fell away from her face. “No, I am not!” she cried. “But it matters not where you are concerned.”

She had never looked more beautiful to him. He stepped forward. “Rica, forgive me. I meant to keep you safe. That’s all.”

“You are like all the rest of them.” Tears sprung to her eyes and she brushed them away with her wrist.

“You say what pleases you, caring not for the wishes and passions of a woman.”

Solomon frowned and took a step backward. What had he expected? That she would tumble, as she had before, into the circle of his arms? Yes. That he could coax her easily, as he had coaxed dozens of women to him in the past.

His own shallowness appalled him. The words and pleading he had composed fluttered away from him like leaves on a winter wind. “I have suffered for this arrogance, Rica, more than you will know.” He straightened. “If you have no wish for me, so be it.”

With a leaden heart, he turned away and began to walk back down the hill.

Rica gripped the trunk of a slender tree, watching him leave. She fought her need of him, fought the foolish woman weakness that rose in her breast, the same selfish foolishness that had led to so much disaster last summer. Her limbs trembled, and tears tumbled over her cheeks.

His head was bowed, and she remembered the passionate conversations they had once shared, remembered the perfect moment of melding she felt with him that day outside of Helga’s cottage.

And all these bleak, long, lonely months without him, all these months she had dreamed of him, hungered for his touch—

“Solomon!” she cried on a sob.

He returned to her with a roar, his strong arms gathering her up so tightly she could scarce breathe. She flung her arms around his neck, weeping as he kissed her hair and her cheek and clasped her again, rocking her close in the cold. “Oh, Rica,” he whispered, “I thought you were dead. I missed you so violently I wished to die myself.”

She lifted her head, and before she could speak, he kissed her mouth with all that pent-up longing, with all the power of the months each had spent alone. Rica still could not halt her trembling or her tears. She felt as if she had come unfastened and would fall apart like a badly made gown. “Solomon,” she said, grabbing to his arms in sheer emotion. “Sit with me. I… am…”

“Shhh.” He sat and settled her over his knees. “My love, my love,” he said against her neck. She felt his nose and eyelashes against her cheek, and his breath soughed over the hollow of her throat. “How could I have left you?”

She nestled her face into his shoulder, drawing strength from his solidness and the beloved feel of him against her. After a moment, her trembling eased and she trusted herself to speak. He dried her tears gently, and smiled. “You missed me a little, too, I think.”

She smiled tremulously and shook her head, touching the wild disarray of his hair. “I felt I had lost my soul, Solomon. Truly.”

He kissed her, intimately, passionately. Rica felt the swelling hunger rise up within her until her breath was gone.

Urgently, he released her. “Not this way,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers.

“But—”

He touched her mouth. “I will be your husband,” he said softly, and looked at her with a vulnerable expression in his dark eyes, “if you will be my wife.” He tenderly tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Surely God will find it meet to grant us this small thing.”

Rica’s eyes filled with tears.

“So sad,” he said with a smile.

“No,” she whispered. “This is joy you see. For I can think of no greater joy than that. None.” She moved her head. “But how?”

“We can only go forward one day, one hour, as we are able, Rica. Thinking too far ahead parted us. Let us just say we will marry, quickly, and once that is done, we will do the next thing.”

Soberly, she nodded.

“I know we will have to flee this place. Will it frighten you?”

With a sure, simple smile, she said, “Where you go, I follow gladly.”

“Good.” He gently moved her to stand up. “I must go back to my father. He needs me now—the rest have gone to Mainz, and he will follow soon. But I will send to you when I find a place for us, and a time.” It was his hand that trembled now. “And we will consummate this union, so forever we will be joined.”

At the thought, so long forbidden, her hips went weak, and she pressed her lips to his palm.

He kissed her and made to go, then came back. “I am afraid to leave you,” he said and caught her close. “I could not bear to lose you again, sweet Rica. I love you. I did not know how much.”

Rica buried her face in his shoulder, breathing of the frankincense and heat of him. She squeezed him close, as if to pull him inside of her. “We do not have to wait,” she suggested, thinking they could spread their cloaks on the ground.

He chuckled. “Ah,
mein herz
, do not tempt me.” He bent and took her chin in his hand. “I have had enough of snatched moments with you.” He bent over and touched his lips to hers reverently. “I will have you unhurried and without fear.”

“You have changed,” she said, struck less by his words than by his air of infinite patience. “The boy is gone. Now you are a man.”

A wisp of sadness crossed his face. “So it is.

And the girl who was so joyful is gone, too.“

“It seems many years since the summer.” He touched her cheek. “Now we will look forward to the spring.”

“I love you, Solomon,” she said, and tiptoed up to kiss him once more. Then she turned and flew through the trees, her feet light with joy and anticipation.

The conference was to take place on Monday in Ben-feld, and Charles, despite protests, rode out early Sunday morning. The weather was cold but clear, and Rica, watching him ride through the castle gates with his entourage, prayed the weather would hold. As it was, she had seen to his dressing herself, making sure his neck was well covered and his head, and that he wore two pairs of stockings beneath his long jupon.

She had to admit, as she walked back toward the hall, his mood was high today. “With God as my witness,” he said, “this is a battle worthy of my best.” Then he kissed her. “Take care, daughter, and do not forget to pray well.”

“That I will do.”

Gathering her cloak about her, she climbed to the walk to watch them ride away until they were out of sight. Up so high, she could feel the new warmth of the sun, as if it could not wait for spring. A soft gray haze clung to the horizons.

In spite of the grimness of her father’s journey, and the threat of plague hanging over them like a scythe poised to swing and cut them down, she felt a swell of hope and joy in her heart. As if to mirror the emotion, a trio of magpies swooped by, chasing each other on the wind, making all manner of noises. She laughed.

It was selfish to be so happy—but she could not stop it. Her beloved was safe and well, and he loved her. Soon, he would send word.

Late that day, Helga appeared in the great hall, a strange smile on her face. “My lady,” she said, “I have news.”

Rica grabbed her hands eagerly and glanced about to be sure no one lingered too close. “What?” she whispered urgently.

“Go you tomorrow to my cottage, before supper, and you will find a kind and handsome man.”

“You are our helper?” Tears sprung to Rica’s eyes and she hugged Helga close. “Thank you.”

Helga chuckled. “I will stay here, and make the castle ready for the closing your father wishes when he returns.”

Puzzled but too filled with light to question, Rica nodded. She stood up, then bent and kissed Helga soundly. “I will forever be in your debt.”

Helga swatted her bottom.

When she completed her chores the next day, Rica went to the chapel. There she laid a special offering for Mary and lit a candle for her father, then knelt in the confessional.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she said.

The priest heard her confession sleepily and absolved her. Thus cleansed spiritually, Rica went to bathe in water scented with a special packet of herbs she had been saving. She washed her hair and rinsed it with chamomile, then combed it dry by the fire. On her nude body, she rubbed lavender-scented oil, to give her skin sheen and softness.

Her hands shook as she dressed. First her best and newest kirtle, made of snowy linen, then a close-fitting cotehardie of soft green, patterned with paisleys in peach and gold. Over this, she donned a forest-green velvet surcoat, open at the sides and lined with miniver. Into her hair she wove dried lavender flowers.