Dark Maiden (5 page)

And Geraint mouthed, “It is for the best. I have words to say to him too.”

I have been set upon by the two living men who matter to me.
Even as Yolande stiffened at the realization, she was marching to the door.

I will not stay to be humiliated more. But I will listen, oh yes.

She slammed shut the iron-studded door to vent her anger and to be sure they believed she was leaving, then put her ear to the keyhole.

Geraint grinned. He knew he grinned when he was very angry as well as pleased, and right now he was furious.

“You think I am no good for her.” He attacked the abbot just as the man was drawing breath to rant. He stepped up and jabbed at him with stiff fingers, loathing the high Norman-Frenchman’s fair, elegant looks, his Latin, his assumptions, his arrogance, the way Yolande had deferred to him. “What have you done for her?”

“Yolande needs no ruffian like you as her champion.” Abbot Simon stepped back and began pacing, his black robes swinging and slapping against the pillars as he walked. “She is a learned, spiritual creature performing difficult tasks for lost and possessed souls.” He looked down his long nose again. “What can you possibly offer her? The dubious, fleeting delights of carnality?”

“I would never sin with her as you put it,” Geraint snapped. “I know she must remain a maid and I govern myself. I will never drink in her company so I may govern myself. I will never touch her thighs or breasts. Yes, master abbot, she has those. But your exorcist needs more than prayers. She is weary, can you not see that?”

The abbot touched the golden cross hung around his throat. “And you help her how, minstrel? By carrying her things?”

“By that! By exactly that!” Geraint shouted, fuming, knowing he should make a more rational, logical argument and unable to do so. The words spouted from him like boiling water in an alchemist’s workshop. “By linking her to herself, to her body and family and to the rest of humankind. I amuse her, divert her, give her ease, make her meals, make her happy! Is that not better than having her dwell forever on the last days?”

The abbot snapped his fingers, the sharp sound echoing in the circular chamber. “This is a time of prayer and self-purgation and doubt. We should all be dwelling on the final days and reflecting on our sins.”

Geraint shook his head. “And when dealing with a demon, such doubts help in what way?”

“We will not agree on this matter,” Abbot Simon responded crisply. “You do not understand.” He sighed deeply as if in profound disappointment. “I should have known at once, when she allowed you to bear the cross. That is one of our most sacred relics, a cross made from the staff of the Magdalene. Kings have prayed before it. Even the holy are reluctant to handle it, for its power is immense and dangerous. Such a rare and priceless thing is not to be hawked from place to place by a common juggler.”

“No more common than the pardoner who gave it to me,” retorted Geraint, astonishment and wonder raging through him as he appreciated afresh how Yolande had trusted him with the cross, how she had seen his wariness around it as a good sign and one in his favor. “But if it is so great, why not keep it in its reliquary? Even I know of such things, Father. And why send only one cleric with it and a pardoner at that, a man she despises?”

For an instant the abbot looked older, his face misted with memories and pain. “It had to be swift and secret. I knew I could cow the pardoner and that Yolande could deal with him also, even if she dislikes him.”

“Ah, that is what you hate about me, is it not? I do not bend my knee to your authority.”

“You have no respect.”

“And is a bit of carved wood, however sacred, more precious to you than Yolande?”

The abbot shifted, making a fist as if he wanted to strike him. “It is the very cross of the Magdalene!”

Out of temper, although aware he had been deliberately provocative, Geraint swung his pack off his shoulders and recovered the cross in a few brisk movements. He set it upright in the center of the chapter house and stepped back.

If the abbot loves it so much, he can bend for it.

“Do you love her?” he asked abruptly. “Yolande. Do you?”

“It is Christ’s wish that we love all God’s creatures, including man.” The abbot licked the white flecks of spit from the corners of his thin mouth and moved to the crucifix, bearing it aloft and tucking it safely into the crook of one arm.

Will he sing it a lullaby too?

Geraint folded his arms across his chest like an angry fish-seller’s wife. It was that or punch an abbot. “And what do you love about Yolande? How her eyelashes curl at the ends? How she puts herself into danger first to protect others? How she never abandons a friend? How she walks all day without a complaint? How she sometimes talks in her sleep because she is so beset? How she laughs and sheds ten years each time she does? Or are such human reasons too earthy for you?”

He stopped, mainly because he had run out of English words for the moment and his mind was filled with indignant, furious phrases in Welsh. He also wanted to see whether Abbot Simon would answer.

“These human trifles, as you call them, are irrelevant. It is her soul—”

“Yes, her soul, hers alone, and unique. Created in the image of God. What do you love about that? Or is the soul of one female exorcist too mean to consider?”

“Stay away from her!” thundered the abbot. “What do you know of her trials and torments, of what she might need to encounter? If you love her, you should not trouble her. Or would you act upon this love and then abandon her—as is the habit of fleshy, sinful men?”

“Sorry, no.” Geraint counted off on his fingers. “I will not leave her, no. I will not act upon anything and abandon her, no. I will not trouble her, no. Do I know the trials she has? No, I do not, but then neither do you, my lord abbot, neither do you.”

Abbot Simon stared at him for so long that Geraint wondered if he had been speaking in Welsh after all, but the fellow crossed and roused himself. “If you dare to interrupt her work, you shall answer to me.”

Still gripping the cross, he stalked from the chapter house, leaving Geraint cursing under his breath.
That did not go well, not at all. Fool—when will I learn to play humble with the great? Pray God he does not take it out on Yolande.

Her ears burning, Yolande hurried away from the door and down a flight of steps to the cloisters. When a monk sped past carrying a steaming poultice on a shovel, en route from the kitchen to the infirmary, she backed into deeper shadows.

I did hear right last night when Geraint said he cared for me. He admitted it to the abbot.

She was sorry and glad together—sorry to hear it through listening at a door and glad he had said it. He had fought for her with the proud and haughty Abbot Simon. No one had ever done that for her before.

And are you not indulging in the sin of vanity? Are you not thinking of Geraint instead of what ails this place and the reason why you have been summoned? The reason why Abbot Simon sent on the cross of the Magdalene to you? Is this not frivolous and uxorious behavior of the very kind the abbot warned against?

“But he loves me,” she said aloud. “And of his own free will.” Abbot Simon cared for her, she knew, in a Christian way, and her parents had loved her because she had been theirs. Geraint was the first to love her for herself.

Even though I talk sometimes in my sleep.
She was only mildly disconcerted to learn that, for as soon as she had heard it another thought followed—
Geraint will never betray me by anything I say then.

He had his darkness, her honeyman, but he strove for others, raged against unfairness and accepted her as she was.

As radiant and joyous as an angel, she lengthened her stride so she would reach the monastery church before the abbot.

* * * * *

It was not the time for a holy office and the church was deserted. Yolande stood quietly at the back, against the north wall, and slowly inhaled.

She smelled stale robes, stale sweat, candle wax and incense.

She knelt where she was and prayed to the Magdalene, companion of Christ. Why Saint Michael and the Magdalene? She did not understand it any more than Geraint. The abbot had not explained either and was probably unlikely to do so now.

She rose and watched the door open. Abbot Simon strode across the nave to her.

“I sense no restless dead here but I cannot pray,” she said.

“None of us can pray here.”

She stared at him. Part of her had feared it was her thoughts and feelings about Geraint that had made her unable to focus on prayer.

“And during holy services?” she asked, hoping the abbot did not see the relief shining in her face.

He beckoned her to follow and approached the high altar. “Candles go out,” he admitted in a low monotone. “Singing is flat. There are errors in the responses, tiny pauses, the wrong words. Monks claim forgetfulness, lack of sleep, indigestion…”

Are these mistakes or sins?
Yolande wondered.

“There is less charity and consideration among the brothers.”

And to others.
Yolande, inwardly ashamed, recalled the all-too-recent quarrel between Abbot Simon, herself and Geraint.

“Some things I cannot speak of, for they are under the seal of confession.” Abbot Simon stopped and bowed before the altar. “There has been an erosion, almost a breach, by unkind forces.”

The candles flickered and she sensed a change in the air. She whipped ’round, took the bow off her shoulder and readied an arrow, her body, bow and arrow together making the sign of a cross.

“
Pax
, my Yolande.” Geraint entered the nave. “Is it always so cold in here?”

It was not, of course, Yolande recollected. Cold was another sign that things were amiss.

“Come.” Abbot Simon replaced the crucifix within its ornate silver reliquary upon the altar, bowed again to the sacred marble table and its relic and stepped to one side. “Both of you.”

Yolande dared not glance at Geraint, lest the abbot be irritated afresh, and sent up an urgent prayer that her honeyman show restraint.

He simply gave the abbot a nod. “Lead on, Father.”

The abbot gave a pallid smile in return. “Let us speak more fully on the way to the Tower.”

The abbot and Yolande both had long legs and Geraint was glad he was supple as they stalked away, serious and tall together. Then, before he felt reduced to no more than a sideshow, Yolande glanced ’round at him, haunted and anxious, and he swore again to protect her.

Good
, said a new voice in his mind, a woman’s.
I like that in a man.

Geraint knew there was only one person it could be. “I carried your cross here,” he whispered in Welsh. The abbot and Yolande gave no signs of hearing his latest companion.

I know. No tests for me, juggler? Should I say the Creed to prove who I am?

“No, Magdalene.” The presence of her, the risk of it, exhilarated him. There was a challenge in her that reminded him of Yolande. She was still a little ahead of him, tilting her head up like a flower seeking the sun as they emerged into the twilight.

A prickle at the base of his neck recalled him to the other presence inside his skull. Even saints hate being kept waiting for an answer. “No, I know you Marys have a soft spot for jugglers.”

Very good, Geraint. Indeed, I am Mary the Magdalene and this is in part my church. Now fall back a little as those two holy warriors rush on to the Tower. Michael can speak to them, if he chooses.

He sighed. “Tempting as your offer is, I cannot accept it. Speak to all of us or none.”

The presence within his mind withdrew. One instant it was there, the next he was alone and lonely inside his skull.

Yolande turned. “I can smell violets.”

Geraint groaned—he could smell them too. The saint had truly been with him and he had spurned her.

Outside, strolling to the Tower by way of the abbey orchard, Yolande felt less oppressed. Abbot Simon was also less haughty. He even approved when Geraint recounted an amazing story concerning the female saint of the monastery. The Magdalene had spoken directly to him.

“’Tis true, jugglers have held a special place in the favors of the Virgin and the Magdalene,” Abbot Simon said, looking the wiry Welshman up and down as if seeing him afresh. “Let us pray she will return to guide us.”

“Or Saint Michael,” remarked Yolande. She did not want to meet Geraint’s knowing eye.
I am not jealous, not really, and if I were, I would never admit it. He already thinks a good deal of himself.

“Why those two saints?” Geraint seized the mood as he so often did as a performer.

The abbot cupped a green apple on one of the trees. “No one knows. Our founder left no record, only the instruction that both should be honored.”

“I have one thought,” Yolande began softly, unwilling to tell the holy father his business.