A Bed of Spices (14 page)

“I see you’ve amused yourselves this day.” Helga’s face glowed red with perspiration as she settled herself on the bench. Baldly, she hiked her skirts up over her knees.

Solomon shot an amused glance toward Rica. “Do you think she tries to seduce me?”

“Of course I do!” Helga cried. “More fool I, if I did not!” With a great heaving sigh, she leaned back. “Tis the right of a woman of my years.”

Rica settled next to her on the bench, plucking the heads from a basket of dried chamomile stalks. “I will see, one day. I will flirt with peddlers and aging knights”—she nudged Helga ribaldly—“dreaming of bed sport no longer mine.”

The midwife closed her eyes, a smile hovering about her mouth. “I would not be so quick to dismiss the pastimes of an old woman.”

“Oooh!” Rica returned mockingly. “Do you hear her?” she said to Solomon.

“Aye.” He grinned easily and a loose bevy of curls fell on his forehead. “Bawdy old thing.”

“You will see, my tender young ones. Inside does not change.”

Rica grinned at Solomon. “Perhaps you’ll prey on sickly young girls.”

He laughed, showing his white teeth. “Nay. I will be rich and fat and will no longer care for nubile young figures.”

Helga snorted. “Pah!” Abruptly, she sat up and slapped Rica’s thigh. “How fares your sister, my girl?”

Rica frowned and she glanced through her lashes at Solomon. “It is she I came to speak of today.”

With good grace, Solomon fetched his jupon. “There are tasks I must tend for my father,” he said and dipped his head in a courtly, mocking gesture. “Another time we will laugh again.”

“Good day,” Rica said, grinning.

“Ah, lad, I will teach you proper birthings if you show yourself by Saint Peter’s and Paul’s Day,” Helga said.

“A birthing,
fräu
?” His tone was clearly shocked. “I am no midwife!”

“So be it.” She waved him out of her yard. “Be gone then if ye have no use for midwifery.”

Quizzically, he looked at her. “I see no point, but I will come if it will take that tone from your voice. You see I am your humble student and I will do as I am bid.”

“Saint Peter’s and Paul’s Day,” she repeated and gazed at the sky.

The notion of teaching a man the art of midwifery shocked Rica, and she nearly questioned the old woman. Then she thought better of it. Helga was wise. Whatever her reasoning, Rica knew she had given the matter considered thought and found need to give Solomon some lesson related to her legendary skill at midwifery.

Solomon walked off toward a hidden path in the forest that led to Strassburg. Rica forced herself to look at the basket of apple-scented chamomile in her lap rather than at his retreating back, but it took all the control she owned.

“So, my pretty, tell me about it.”

Thinking at first Helga meant the secret longing she felt for Solomon, Rica started guiltily. For a long moment, she simply stared at the old woman, dumbstruck, her mind a whirl.

“Well, girl? What worries have you over your sister?”

“Oh.” Rica breathed out softly. “That.”

“That. What
that
?”

Absently, Rica put a small round blossom in her mouth to suck on. “It is less a matter of Etta than it is of Rudolf, my father’s vassal. You know of him?”

Helga pursed her lips, her eyes unreadable. “What of him? Does he chase her?”

With relief, Rica spilled the whole story, from the moments in the forest when she’d tempted him, to Etta’s longing for the knight, to the sense she had that Rudolf might be dangerous somehow, in ways she could not always pinpoint. “Now my father speaks of Hugh, the squire’s son, for Etta and I know not what to tell him.”

An odd, shuttered expression bled the animation from Helga’s ruddy face. “Let it lie.”

She stood up, as if ending the subject, and picked through a basket with an air of dismissal. Rica, frowning, jumped up. “I come and spill my heart to you and all you can say is, ‘Let it lie’?”

“I have not the answers you wish, Rica.”

“What answers do I wish?” she asked in frustration, taking hold of one fleshy arm. “I am frightened, Helga. Think you that Etta is well and truly healed? Think you she can make a wife to Rudolf if I teach her the duties of a goodwife? Think you he is dangerous and I should not let him seduce her?” In her agitation, she shook the arm minutely. “What?”

Helga lifted one work-roughed hand to Rica’s cheek. “You have been blessed, child. More than you know. Your papa dotes on you, the times have been peaceful—you have beauty and youth and laughter.”

A ripple of foreboding whispered over Rica’s flesh.

“But now you’ve grown to a woman strong and must take your place.”

“What has that to do with my sister?”

“You will be parted soon or late, sweet. You must let her make her own way.” She took her hand away and pushed a basket into Rica’s arms. “Help me carry these inside. I smell a storm brewing.”

With a small noise of irritation, Rica hurried after her. Inside the cottage, filled with its perfume of herbs, she spoke sharply. “Helga!”

Abruptly, Helga turned. Her face in the dim light looked suddenly old. Her pale eyes showed bleakness. “The portents are ill for the coming year. Ask me no more, girl.”

Then as if regretting her words, she kissed Rica’s forehead gently. “You are a worry, sweet, and I would spare you suffering, were I able, but I cannot. You must marry and take your place and there is naught I can do. Enjoy the last days of your girlhood, for they are numbered.”

Rica wanted to weep. Instead, she straightened, knowing the midwife echoed her own thoughts of this morning. Changes were afoot—she had felt them herself.

“I will teach Etta as well as I can, then.” She reached out and took Helga’s hand. “Pray for us all.”

Then, afraid she would disgrace herself with weeping for the ephemeral pleasures of childhood, she fled.

In the evening
, Rica climbed the circular tower stairs to her father’s solar, her heart heavy. She did not go to unburden herself, but to seek the rote security she found in his presence.

It was no surprise to find him abed, his hawk hooded and sleeping on a perch nearby the embrasure. Charles’s cheeks were an unhealthy red and his breath came in labored weights, as if he were very fat.

At his side sat Humphrey, speaking in his booming voice. He was a little drunk, Rica thought with a frown.

“Mark my words, Charles,” he said and belched. “There will be nary a Jew left when this pestilence is spent. Those overlooked by the plague will be hanged or worse.”

Fighting the terror his words struck through her, Rica hurried forward with a frown. “Uncle, are you blind? Can you not see you weary him?” She plucked the wooden cup from his fingers and slammed it on the table. “Off with you! Go join the merriment in the hall and leave my father to his rest.”

Chuckling, Humphrey tugged his beard, his dark eyes shining with laughter. “What a fine woman you’ve grown to be, Rica! Charles, why is she yet a maid?”

“Off, I said.” With a swish of her skirts, Rica nudged his shoulder none too gently. Laughing, he bid Charles farewell and took his leave.

“Ah, Pappi,” she said, dipping a cloth in cool water. “You have been overburdened these last days.”

“I need only a little rest,
liebling
.”

“Why do you let him stay and weary you so?”

He only shook his head.

Rica pressed the cloth to his brow, leaving it there to cool the feverish look of his face. Settling at his side, she hummed a soft tune for his pleasure, a soothing melody meant for babes.

After a few moments, when his color seemed more to her liking, she took his hand in her own. “Is it true, what Humphrey says about the Jews?”

“Yes,” he said with a sad grimace. “You are too young to recall the
Judenschlägen
.” He took the cloth away and shifted restlessly in his bed. “We found a boy, only ten or eleven, beaten to death by their number. ‘Twas only a week after your mother died. It sickened me.” He closed his eyes. “He was only a child, and what could he have done to them? Like Etta.”

Rica frowned in concern at this odd trail of conversation, although she thought she understood it. The two events were tangled together in his mind.

He roused himself. “Tis their ilk—the
Judenschld-gen
—that stalk Europe now, killing the innocent the pestilence leaves behind.”

Again an icy finger snaked through her. “Is there no protection from the Church? Surely the emperor—?”

His eyes were grave when he looked at her, and weary beyond measure. “There is no force that can stop fear,
liebling
. Remember that.”

Seeing he was tired, Rica said no more. But as she sat beside his bed, humming to quiet him until he slept, she stared at the fire, sick with fear.

How long? How long until the pestilence swept in from France? How long till it was borne to Strass-burg on an ill wind and the madness descended?

She tried to tell herself that Solomon could be right, that perhaps the city would be untouched, but daily the reports grew longer and grimmer. She heard the gossip of the servants, saw the fear in her cousins’ eyes when they spoke of it.

And when it came, it would bring with it the madness of fear and hatred. A voice deep in her soul gave up a little cry:
Solomon
!

Tomorrow she would meet him in the glade by the river and tell him what she had heard. Perhaps there was something he could do if he were warned in time.

Solomon gathered food stealthily from his mother’s kitchen while she quarreled with a serving girl in the courtyard over the placement of summer vegetables. Into a large pouch went a skin of wine, a Sabbath cake freshly baked for the next day, a round of cheese, and a new loaf of bread.

Frowning, he stood back, wondering if his theft would be noticed—then he smiled to himself. Yes, his mother would notice, but she would only groan over the appetites of her sons, an exasperated edge of love in her words.

Quickly, he wrapped the food and tied it to his belt. Trying to recall how he exited the house when he was only innocently heading toward Helga’s, he passed through his father’s shop.

Jacob was bent over a table with an abacus and his books. “Off to the midwife again?” he said.

“Yes.”

Jacob settled back in his chair, his dark jupon falling open to show a silk lining. His eyes were sharp as he raised a knowing brow. “She saves you from the trouble of idle hands?”

Solomon felt a guilty start in his chest, but with effort he smiled. “She is no youthful wench, Papa— but round and wise.”

“Well, it is to that very boredom I have given much thought these past days. My traders tell me the pestilence is spent southward—it rages now to the north.” He picked up his quill. “In the autumn you will return to your studies at Montpellier.”

“As you wish.” Solomon, relieved the conversation seemed at an end, moved toward the door.

“See that you mind yourself between now and then,” Jacob said, beginning to write.

For a moment, Solomon paused, wondering what his father knew. Jacob’s black eyes were too sharp.

Solomon turned and hurried out, disturbed. But for all of that, his feet could not carry him quickly enough to the meadow by the Ill.

Finding it empty, he sat on a rock by the water, tossing pebbles absently. In the autumn, his father would send him away, back to his studies. A part of him embraced the notion with gladness. Although he had learned much at Helga’s hands, he knew he’d nearly reached the limits of her knowledge. He was a quick and eager student, a fact he accepted without undue modesty or arrogance, and he had missed serious study these many months away. He longed for the exhilaration of intense instruction that filled his days at Montpellier.

And yet, the thought of leaving Rica pierced him. It made this day seem all the more precious.

But the afternoon heated and the sun moved inexorably toward the mountains in the west and Rica did not appear. Restlessly, Solomon began to pace. Perhaps she’d been unable to find leave at all. Helga had told him there were guests at the castle; perhaps her duties bound her to the castle for the day.

His waiting would likely prove futile, but neither could he make himself go. With longing he gazed toward the path down which she would come, then he walked toward the river again. Each little noise caused him to whirl, then settle again in disappointment.

Finally he heard the bells for Nones ring out through the hazy air. He bent to gather the food he had not eaten, then thought better of it.

Rica had not come, but the river still ran. There was something to be salvaged from the day. He stripped and dove into the cold water, taking pleasure through his acute disappointment in the sharp fingers of the water in his hair and on his shoulders. They cooled the ache of his hunger.

It was good to remember there were things in life he cared about. Good to remember he had a life beyond the strange, sharp attraction he had conceived for Rica.

For in the end, there was no hope for them.

The bells for Nones were already ringing by the time Rica found leave to go to the meadow. Her father, on some whim, had ordered a lavish meal prepared for their supper. He wanted dancing and drink and a feast, he said in a querulous tone from his bed. Rica, exasperated with trying to dissuade him, com-plied. To appease her sister, she also took Etta with her to the kitchens, and the instruction had cost her precious time.

Now she hurried through the forest, praying Solomon was not yet gone from the glade. Breathing hard from her rush, she paused on a hill overlooking the bend in the river. The glade was empty.

Her heart plummeted. She had told herself she wanted only to warn him of the trouble on the continent, but as she stood by an ancient pine, clutching her skirts in frustration, she knew it was not true. She had wished to look upon his face, to listen to his voice and glimpse the respect that lived in his eyes. She wanted to hear a story, to speak of ideas and thoughts to which no one else would allow her to give voice.

Feeling near tears, she began to turn away. A loud splash sounded on the water and she spun around, just in time to see his dark head break the water.