A Bed of Spices (17 page)

“I swear it.”

As he caught sight of Minna asleep on the pallet, a gentleness came on his face. “Ah, she is a young one,” he said quietly and looked at Rica with a rueful smile. “I would that she were older so I had not so long to wait.” He sighed and touched Rica’s arm. “Good night.”

As she closed the door, Etta cried out, then burst into tears. Rica rushed to her and took her in her arms, as she had done with Minna only minutes before. “Shhh, little one,” she murmured. “All is well.”

Etta wept as if her heart would burst, but in a little while, she seemed calmer. There was no damage Rica could see—only a small cut on her lip, as if she’d been kissed brutally. Etta quietly allowed the ministrations, clutching her cloak about her.

At last she said, “I would go to my own chamber now.”

“You will not tell me what happened, sister?”

Etta shook the hair from her eyes. “‘Twas nothing— naught but a drunken soldier. I was only frightened, not hurt.”

“You must tell me who it was—so that he may be disciplined.”

Etta got to her feet, studiously avoiding Rica’s eyes. “I didn’t see him. ‘Twas dark on the stairs.” She reached for the door and her cloak fell open, showing the torn bodice of her gown and a bruise purpling on her breast. Dismayed, she quickly grabbed it closed again, but not before Rica could take her arm.

“Let me see,” she said.

Head lowered, Etta let the fabric fall away. The elegant embroidered tunic was torn, the silk frayed. The imprints of a man’s fingers showed dark against her pale skin, and it was plain she had been roughly treated.

Rica looked from the bruises to her sister’s miserable face. “Why did you not tell me?”

“I did not wish to be so humiliated,” she whispered, her eyes closed tight.

“Etta, you did not do this. You have no need to be ashamed.” Gently she closed the cloak. “Men are often beasts, as now you have learned. I will not say more unless you ask it.”

Etta nodded. The movement set the ruby in the hollow of her throat afire with light, a deep glowing red that looked like blood.

A terrible thought crossed Rica’s mind. “Etta,” she said. “It was not Rudolf who did this?”

“Nay!” Etta protested, her eyes flashing. “Nay! How can you say such things? He would never handle me so.”

There was such shock in her expression that Rica believed her. Still, as her sister left and made for her own chamber, Rica was filled with a deep uneasiness.

From behind her, Minna spoke quietly. “Your sister is mad.”

Rica turned, head inclined, a protest on her lips. But Minna leaned soberly on one elbow, her intelligent young face quite serious, and the protest died. “Go to sleep, little Minna.”

“You do not believe me because she’s clever, but her mind is unhinged.”

“Minna, why would you say that?”

The girl slumped to the mattress, her shiny dark hair spilling over her thin shift. “She speaks to those who are not there, like a witch. I hear her sometimes when I pass, giggling and chatting there in her chamber.”

Gooseflesh rose on Rica’s arms. In fear, she spoke sharply. “Tis only the imagination of a solitary girl, Minna. It is unkind of you to call her mad.” Roughly she doused the rushlight and climbed in next to her cousin. “Go to sleep.”

Exhausted, Rica pushed away all thoughts of Etta and the plague and her father’s illness. In the private darkness behind her closed eyes, she reached for visions of Solomon—Solomon laughing and kissing her and quoting poems. Thus were her worries purged, and she slept.

Through the unshuttered
window of his chamber, Solomon could hear the patter of rain on the streets below. The fresh scent of it washed through the opening on a cool wind.

He hunched over a table, quill in hand. A single tallow spluttered and flickered, and the uncertain light cast shadows over his work on precious parchment. In his careful hand, he translated a poem into Latin, taking pleasure in the bitter words:

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays

Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,

And one by one back in the closet lays.

For ten days he had faithfully gone to Helga’s each afternoon, aside from Sabbath and Sunday. For ten days, he’d awakened each morning hopeful, his step light, his heart yearning. Each morning he thought, perhaps today, she would come.

But each afternoon he walked home in disappointment, his mood dark, his only solace in the harsh and lovely poems of Omar Khayyam. In the evenings, as soon as he was able, he escaped to his chamber, where he laboriously copied the poems. He decorated the margins of the pages with drawings of the herbs with which he’d grown so intimate these past months—borage and lungwort, tansy and foxglove and pennyroyal.

He longed, as he mixed potions and cured herbs and ground rootstock for Helga, to ask the midwife how Rica fared. Of course he could not, and as if to thwart him further, she who had once babbled about the girl with pride and love at every chance, now fell silent and spoke of her not at all.

He sketched the graceful round heads of chamomile and remembered Rica nibbling them as she sat on a bench below the tree in Helga’s garden. He thought of her laughter and teasing that day, and of the strange entrancing power of her smile the next afternoon by the river.

As if to underscore his imaginings, muted noises floated into his room. First, squeals and giggling and the low chuckle of his brother, then Raizel’s soft womanly cries and the hoarseness of completion from his brother.

Solomon set his jaw and dipped his quill, trying vainly to ignore them. Was it not cruel enough that he had conceived a forbidden passion? Now he was forced to listen to the cooing sounds of his brother and new wife next door, had to see the shy, sly glances they exchanged with each other over meals. He saw them in the courtyard, sneaking kisses when they thought themselves unobserved.

Jacob, seeing Solomon’s mood this evening and the glowering looks he shot toward his brother, had remarked with a grin, “They do make marriage look an appealing state, do they not? Tis as it should be— love and duty mixed together.”

“They are rare.”

“She has a sister,” Jacob commented good-naturedly, moving a pawn on the chessboard.

Solomon caught the teasing gleam in his father’s eye, but the suggestion irritated him nonetheless. “I do not wish to marry yet.”

“Aye. I have begun to wonder if you ever will,
beneleh
. Maybe you think you’re too good for the girls around here, eh?”

“Ah, who wants a silly maid with nothing in her head?” Solomon scowled and rashly moved his queen. “When it’s time, I’ll take a wife, and she’ll be wise as well as beautiful.”

Jacob laughed outright and took the queen. “That’s why I like to play chess with you! You lose your temper so easily that I can win if I tease you.”

Ruefully, Solomon shook his head. “Tata, one day—”

“One day—ha!” Soberly, Jacob raised his eyes and slowly stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. “One day you will grow up, Solomon. One day, you’ll see passion is a small and fleeting thing.”

“I have already learned that, Papa, at your hands. It is not passion I seek.”

“Ah, I forgot. You want a
wise
woman.”

Earnestly, Solomon leaned forward. “My life has been devoted to learning. How am I to find any contentment with a woman who cannot even read? What will we talk about when the passion fades?”

“A woman is not for talking. You will find that companionship with the men in the community—not your wife.”

Solomon said nothing, but over his father’s shoulder, he caught his mother’s eye, and she smiled gently at him, shaking her head. All at once, he was grateful to her, for her fine, sharp intelligence, even though unschooled. She had been fascinated this summer with his talk of herbs and cures and the lore of the midwife.

Taking her cue, he told his father, “Perhaps you are right. There will be a woman for me here, but first I must finish my studies.”

Hours later, in his chamber, alone but for the sleeping presence of his brother, with the spluttering candle casting a yellow light over his neatly written words, Solomon admitted to himself that he’d never dreamed a woman could be his equal intellectually. And yet Rica, whose schooling had been uncertain and unfocused, was certainly as hungry for knowledge as any man he’d ever known.

And whatever his father said, she was a woman who would talk with him in the evenings once their passion was spent. The cruelty was, now that he’d found a woman he would gladly take to wife, she was denied him—forever unattainable.

The next morning, he set out toward Helga’s once again, but he’d lost his cheerfulness. He had no faith she would come to the cottage as she had promised. His mood was as thick as the mist. He wondered if Rica had gained her senses, had realized how dangerous their meetings were, and thus chosen to forget him. Had fear perhaps stolen the pleasure?

Abruptly he turned from the path that led to Helga’s and struck out through the trees toward the castle. There was less than a mile between the cottage and the great stone fortress with its ancient keep. Once before, Solomon had hidden in the orchards on the chance Rica might go there.

Beneath his feet, twigs snapped and his soft boots slipped on the wet leaves. His cloak caught on a branch, but in agitation, he did not care and ripped it free. At the edge of the thick trees, he paused, gazing toward the castle. In the mist, all that was visible were the walls of the bailey. It looked deserted.

His mind raced as he stared at those walls, raced with a tumble of wild plans—he would present himself as a pilgrim and beg food. Nay, a physician on a journey, bearing tidings of the pestilence and cures. Or—

In misery, he bowed his head. Madness.

Two months ago, he’d never seen the woman who now obsessed him. All the years of discipline, all the prudence and resistance he had practiced had come to naught in the face of his longing for Rica. He was ready to storm the castle to carry her away, ready to make a fool of himself to gain a glimpse of her in the bailey.

For what? The most he could hope for was a month or two of stolen afternoons, a kiss here and there, and a laugh in a glade. He could never lie with her, sleep next to her, walk in a public square. He could never sit with her over a meal and talk of the day’s work, or take her hand in old age.

With a hard set of his jaw, he turned away. Nature and fate had made him a fool. His chest ached with it as he stumbled blindly toward the comfort of Helga’s cottage, where at least there was work for his hands and a feeling of some purpose to his life.

A town official rode out to talk with Charles. Rica hovered nervously in the solar, having won her stay by glaring at the official and clucking about her father’s health. Charles, rather than argue with her, allowed her to linger.

Now, as the men talked, she tended the fire, listening with concern to the tales the burgher related. He had come on behalf of the council of Strassburg, to talk with Charles about the rumblings they had heard about the Jews.

The tales he told made her hands shake. In Carcassonne and Narbonne, Jews had been dragged from their houses and thrown onto raging bonfires. It stunned and terrified her.

“We do not wish to see such madness in the streets of Strassburg,” the judge said in a prim tone of voice.

“No man of any common sense would wish such violence,” answered Charles, dipping bread crusts into clear wine. “But our new emperor has vowed fines to cities who allow such violence.” He wiped his face with his palm. “I know nothing else we can do right now.”

Seeing the gesture of weariness, Rica bustled forward. “Papa, do not continue if it tires you.” Over her shoulder, she glared at the judge. “Is there some assistance you would ask of him, or some purpose to your visit? If that be, state it and go. He has not been well.”

The judge rose. “I meant only to warn you, my lord, of the concerns of the council. We wish to protect our citizens—”

“And their taxes,” Charles said cynically.

“None will benefit from such a slaughter.”

Charles lifted a hand. “There is truth enough in that. I thank you for coming out to tell me.”

As the man left, Rica tucked her father’s robe more closely about him. “I must go to Helga’s today, Papa. I’ll see if she has some remedy to speed your health.”

“Time, child,” he said, and settled under her ministrations. “Time and sleep are all I lack. Go you to Helga’s for rest, but not for my sake.” He closed his eyes. “Give her my regards.”

Rica smiled, for she knew Helga often slipped in and out of the castle. Only two days before, Rica had seen her riding away from the castle at first light, on a mule given her by Charles. “That I will do.”

She fetched her cloak and basket from her chamber, and paused there for a moment, cursing as a rumble of thunder sounded from afar. Hurrying, she found Etta in the kitchens and drew her into the bailey. “Think you can be mistress over the evening meal if I have not returned?”

Etta, recovered from her encounter on the stairs, smiled slyly. “I thought we were not to switch parts again till our cousins went away?”

“I am weary and wish to escape. The weather may prevent my early return, and I thought you might—”

“Etta is unwell today,” she said, and kissed Rica’s cheek. “You may stay as long as you like.”

Rica smiled. Minna thought Etta mad, but it was only love and new awakening that made her seem so. Had she not ordered the meal for the evening herself? Nonetheless, she paused. “Take care in dark passages, sister.”

A quick, shuttered look passed over Etta’s face, then was gone. “That I will do.”

Then Rica was through the gates, on the road, with Leo in her stead. She nearly flew along the path, aching to see her Solomon, to escape the confines of the castle, to be young and free, one more time.

It was a shock when a figure slipped from the trees, only a shadow in the mist at first. There was a stealthiness about him that frightened her, a kind of grim purpose to the steps. Next to her, Leo paused, alert. His tail began to move slowly back and forth, and the figure moved from the mist.