Dark Maiden (7 page)

There will be many restless dead and they and others may be drawn to this place. The message in the Tower appeared only this year. Why there? What else is there? Writings? A relic of evil? A foul and secret sacrifice?

The idea appalled her but she knew what she must do.
I must return to the Tower. That is the root of this present evil.

She crossed herself and looked directly at the abbot. “Will you and the brothers pray within the abbey church today, Holy Father?” she asked. “Through today until dawn tomorrow? That is how you may best help me.”

“A vigil of prayer,” Abbot Simon said. “We shall do so.”

“Prayer and offerings before the reliquary of the Magdalene, before her cross,” Yolande went on. “Prayer and more offerings for Saint Michael too. Both saints ask this.”

In her dream, they had demanded these things, but Yolande decided not to admit it. The Magdalene had also insisted that her most sacred relic should remain within the monastery church, lest the enemy win the upcoming battle in the Tower and she and Michael must make a stand. Yolande thought it wisest not to admit that either.

“It shall be done, my daughter.”

“May I have some herbs from the gardens? If they could be blessed by you, Father, and drenched in holy water.”

“Tell me what you need, Yolande. It shall be brought to you within the church.”

She hurriedly recited a list of sacred and magical herbs, relieved when Abbot Simon asked no questions and made no comment, not even when she mentioned roses and lilies and Solomon’s seal, flowers grown for their beauty and perfume as much as their virtues.

“You said you would need fresh milk, also, and honeycomb,” Geraint reminded her.

“You, Geraint, can collect them from the kitchen,” the abbot responded with a flash of his earlier arrogance.

“I will that.” Geraint was smiling. He smiled a lot, especially when he was angry or nervous.

Yolande waited for the abbot to leave and then asked quietly, “Will you sit with me for breakfast?”

Geraint settled on her cot, patting the thin mattress next to him. She was glad to see the familiar gesture, for he seemed careful of her this morning.

“Would you prefer—” she began, but he interrupted her.

“I am staying with you. I want to stay with you.”

She was happier than she could say but still felt compelled to warn him. “Once I begin, there will be no going back.” She took the pitcher of ale from him and forced a swig down her dry throat. “It may be strange.”

“As queer as the burning oak branch?”

“Stranger than that, maybe.”

He chuckled and plucked a ribbon from her hair, one she knew had not been there an instant earlier. “I like strange.” He flicked the red ribbon up into the air, where it became two then three, flashing and coiling up and down like fiery tongues as he juggled them. “Strange is part of my trade.”

“It will be terrible.” Yolande hid her burning face behind the pitcher, longing to say more but nervous of doing so in case Geraint thought she believed he could not cope.

Instead, he frowned at her like a Jack-in-the-Green, making her smile. “Better, much better. Do not be anxious over me, Yolande. I have worked with and trusted others. You cannot last long as a tumbler if you do not. And I shall work with and trust you.”

“That is it, do you not see?” she broke in, ashamed to be admitting this but knowing she must. “I have always worked alone.”

He raised a black, bushy eyebrow at her. “By choice?”

“Well, there was no one else.”

He caught her up suddenly and whirled her about the chamber as if at a midsummer revel, her bare feet resting on his as he danced with her up and down the room.

“Give me a drink, girl. I am parched.” He took the jug from her and downed the rest of the ale in one long swallow. He balanced the empty vessel on his forehead and walked with it and her back to the cot.

“It will be different with me,” he said.

“How do you prepare?” he asked, setting her down beside the cot and her bow.

She watched him whisk the jug away, in the blink of an eye, somewhere into the shadows. “Usually by meditation and prayer.”

“But you have been too weary and distracted,” he supplied.

“Not because of you,” she said quickly, and he chuckled.

“Bless you,
cariad
, but I do know that. You dread the test will be too great, yes? That you may fail yourself and others, yes?” He smacked his thighs. “All honest nerves before a performance.”

“It is more than that!” she flared, and he showed his white teeth.

“Excellent. We shall have you a haughty black cat before the day is out and you can scratch these enemies to hell.”

“I am no beast but I cannot be gentle or show womanly mercy.” She dreaded what he might think of her by the end of this day. “I may have to do things that are dreadful to customary sight.”

She stopped as he put his hand out, palm upward. In the center of it was a dainty cross.

“Made from the cross here,” Geraint explained. “Taken with permission of the abbot. Do your best and certainly do not be gentle. I shall not think badly of you, Yolande. You will be the scourge. I shall carry your whips.”

Unable to help herself, she threw back her head and laughed. “You delight in saying things to me that suggest other things.”

He shrugged, utterly unabashed. “I desire you greatly so I pay court to you in any way I can. Do you dislike it?”

I would be lying if I said I did.
“I must remain chaste—”

“And words alone do not breach your chastity,
cariad
. Did your mother never tell you that?”

“But am I holy enough?”
How can I be holy when I also desire him?
She looked at him. He was all fire and sinews, standing one foot on top of the other like a child, but with the strength and power of the acrobat sparking in his rangy limbs. Helplessly, her loins tingled in response.

“Ah, and now we come to it.” He wrapped her fingers about the new cross. “With God, all is possible. You could be as mighty as Saint Benedict himself, but if God is not with you, your charisma and chastity are nothing.”

Is God with me?
She dared not ask but Geraint was already answering.

“You dreamed of the two saints, did you not?”

She poked him in the chest. “What made you so wise?”

He winked at her. “I am a tumbler, remember? Beloved of the Marys.”

“Come,
beloved
. We should make haste.”

He held out the quiver of arrows. “I am at your service.”

“You are incorrigible.”

“And I am still your servant today. Shall we meet in the orchard? I have some stuff to pick up from the kitchen, I believe, and you from the church.” Amazingly, considering the cramped space in the cell, he threw off a backflip, coming up with a grin as bright as a torch. “Perhaps, while you are in there, a few more prayers to our two saints might be in order?”

“Go on.” Yolande tried to be stern as the coming fight demanded but could not stop herself from smiling as she spoke.

* * * * *

Yolande had withdrawn inside herself. Geraint could tell it by the fluid way she strode around the apple trees toward him, moving as if the world around her had become insubstantial, not quite solid. She looked at him coolly, already at a distance.

He was the same, he knew, before he attempted a particularly difficult trick, so he merely fell into step alongside her.

She did not speak or glance at him to see if he had the honey and bread and milk. It heartened him that she trusted him enough not to ask or look.

Yolande had combed her hair and flicked it with water, brushed down her clothes. Her boots were freshly cleaned. He fell back a step or two and licked his fingers to smear through his own messy hair, patting off his tunic and leggings. When he lengthened his stride and caught up, she nodded her approval.

Perhaps the dead like the living to be tidy.

“Put this next to your heart.” Her voice was low and thoughtful.

He took the parchment packet and tucked it into his tunic. He wondered what it contained but did not speak.

“The abbot has written protective signs on the parchment and there are salt and hyssop and other good herbs within,” she said.

“Then you should have it.” He made to return the packet but she pressed his hand hard against his heart, her eyes wide as she looked only at him.

“Abbot Simon blessed me and sprinkled me with holy water. Please take it, Geraint. I will work better if I know you are safe.”

He could hear her quickened breathing and saw the strain on her face. To ease her, he juggled three small hard apples to prove he had left the package where she wanted. Its sharp parchment edges dug at his chest and snagged his chest hairs but that was nothing.

They were climbing by now and the Tower’s shadow captured theirs. He turned to walk backward, keeping an eye on her. Three crows hovered close, an evil omen.

He did not drop the apples but it was a near thing.

“They know something is wrong,” said Yolande. Her knuckles were white around the cross he had given her.

Still they climbed and the air became hotter, although there was no obvious sun. Yolande licked her lips and he offered her his ale flask.

“No, I do not drink or eat upon the hill or within the Tower. Nor should you.”

“The day is very drying,” he said.

“Because we are getting nearer,” she answered. “It may be cold too. Dealing with the restless dead, I have known extreme heat, bitter cold and biting winds. We should pity them. They dwell in a hard limbo.”

“And demons?” he croaked.

“They are always for comfort and ease. They would offer the most dazzling wine and dainties. If you take one, you are bound for hell.”

What, straightaway, or do you have a delicious life first?

He was startled when she took his hand. “Walk where I walk, step where I step and do not stop.” She kissed his cheek. “Do not listen to any but me.”

“Still trying to persuade me,
cariad
, that you are no terror?”

“Something like, but you will do as I ask?”

“I have walked plenty of tightropes in my time, so lead on.” Before they went farther, he planned to chuck the apples at the crows but the stench of a charnel house began to fill his nostrils and he retched.

Yolande was beside him in the blink of an eye, pressing the tiny cross against his arm. “You can stay here. I will come back.”

He spat the rising filth from his mouth. “Lead, Yolande, and I follow. Lead.”

It may get worse
, her expression said.

“Go on.” He might have given her a push had he not felt as weak as a mouse. Shamed at his own weakness, he watched her stalk ahead and swore that, whatever he witnessed, he would not be unmanned again.

She sensed his grim determination and was glad he was with her. Better, perhaps, if he had not come, if he had remained with the brothers in the church. Facing the Tower, its key on a cord around her neck choking her, she was shamefully relieved not to be alone. Because of his protection she could keep walking forward, step after step, while the hill weighed on the backs of her legs and her head throbbed with the oppressive silence.

“Damnable crows, still following on,” Geraint said and she was glad of the human contact, although she had to warn him.

“No cursing, please, my honeyman. Cursing brings too many other things.”

“You scold with one side of your tongue and caress with the other,” he countered. A gentle prod in the middle of her back was, she hoped, from her living companion.

The smell was a kind of putrid, yeasty stink like eggs and ale gone bad together. She longed simply to sprint away from it but instead gripped the key to the Tower and lifted its chain from her throat. Spirits could choke the unwary with unblessed necklaces of any kind.

She dropped the cross into the front of her man’s tunic, where it slid between her breasts in a featherlike caress that made her think too much of Geraint. His touch would be like that. Again, she was aware of her warm, soft breasts and the tingling space between her legs.

You are too wanton for spiritual work
, whispered something inside her mind, sounding like Abbot Simon but drier and older as if it had not uttered a word for years.

Take your Welshman’s hand
, said Mary Magdalene in her head, the mellow tones a counter to the first speaker.
Love that is carnal and corporal is still love and a way into the light.

She stretched backward and there, reaching for her even as she reached for him was Geraint, his strong warm fingers a link to all that was good in humankind.

Wanton
, crowed the dry voice but she ignored it.

You are bringing him to danger
, whined the voice and that was a harder charge to dismiss but she began the chant of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate under her breath and prayed to Saint Michael, the angel warrior of heaven.