A Bed of Spices (23 page)

A fragment of poetry wafted through her. “‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved,’” she whispered aloud, shifting to look up to the sky. To the stars, she murmured, “‘I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.’”

Leaning her arms on the embrasure, she laughed. Tomorrow they would meet again, and the day after and the day after. Until—

No. She would think only of what was, not what was to come.

Humming under her breath, she touched her cheek with the hand that smelled of frankincense, hearing in her mind the sound of his voice and seeing the sparkle of his eyes. “Oh, love!” she whispered.

The knock at her door startled her. Snatching her hand from her face as if someone might guess her thoughts, she made a small sound of dismay.

It was Olga who entered. “Your father would see you in his chamber, my lady.”

“Is he ill?”

“Not that I see.”

Rica nodded. “I will go to him in a moment.”

The servant departed and Rica combed her hair, braiding it quickly. She brushed her surcoat and splashed her face with water, rubbing hard to give it a rosy gleam when she was done.

Her father. Guilt flooded back through her. Her
pappi
would be deeply wounded if he learned of her times with Solomon. She did not think she could bear to see the disappointment in his eyes. Nor did she like to think of the beating he would no doubt administer.

Taking up an iron candlestick, she headed through the narrow passageways to his solar in the highest part of the castle. Just before she reached the door, she suddenly thought of the rough play of the afternoon and wondered if her skin showed signs of it.

With nervous fingers, she loosened the braid only just woven. Candlelight cast her shadow on the wall, making a mockery of her duplicity, and pricklings of shame bred in a thousand lectures and sermons arose in her breast. By all the laws of Church and state, she had sinned mortally.

But what choice had she?

Forcing a smile to her lips, she entered the solar. “Papa, you wished to see me?”

He was not abed, as she had half expected, but sat instead by his table, a tankard of ale at his elbow. “‘Twas not so urgent you needed to rush,
liebling
,” he said. “I have seen little of you these last days and thought to visit awhile is all.”

A distinct rippling of relief passed through her limbs, and weakly she sank to a stool nearby him. “You know I am always glad of your company.” Orange-tinted light from the candles set in iron sconces flickered over his cheeks, lending him a good color. “You look well tonight, Papa. The absence of our guests improved your health quickly.”

He grinned. “Indeed.” He plucked a piece of parchment from the table and passed it to her. “Your cousin writes that all is well with them. A messenger brought it this afternoon.”

Rica read the short note quickly, taking pleasure in Minna’s neat hand and precise German. “I will have to write to her soon,” she said. “I fear I miss her a great deal.”

“A sweet child.”

“Not so long a child, Papa,” Rica said with a laugh. “Your own vassal, Lewis, thinks to take her to wife before much time has passed.”

His mouth turned down in surprise. “She is a beauty,” he said, nodding. “‘Tis not a bad match.”

“I think he would be kind to her.”

A small silence fell and Rica watched as her father fed bits of bread to the hawk on his perch. “I had news from other quarters today as well.”

A demon of guilt screamed in her heart. She could not speak.

As if he did not notice, Charles spoke again after a moment, his voice grim. “Some of the shopkeepers in Strassburg have refused to serve the Jews there. I worry there will be trouble. It seems they will not wait for this pestilence.”

Rica stared at the edging of gold around her sleeve, a rush of blood pounding in her ears. Had he guessed that she might harbor love for the Jew who came to Helga? Was he warning her?

She sat very quietly, afraid even to look at him.

But his silence stretched so long she was forced to look up. He still stared toward the darkness, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. Only his profile was visible, and it showed a tightness about the mouth, nothing else. “Papa?”

“It never changes,” he said, his voice grim. “We make war for this lord or that king, plunder the land and the people, fight for new order.” He turned slightly. “And always it is everyone but the knights who pays.” He looked at her. “I am weary of it all.”

“You are not God, Papa. You cannot make pure a sinful world.” She smiled and coaxed him back to his bench. “You are not a prophet, sent to change the terrors of a thousand years.”

He clutched her hand. “A single man affects little, when all is said. I look back over the years I have been given and wonder what God had for me to do.”

Dropping the bantering tone of a moment before, Rica shook her head. “I have no wisdom, but surely all thinking people must ask themselves much the same questions?”

“Do you, daughter?”

Rica frowned. “Perhaps not those very ones,” she said after a moment. Ruefully she lifted her brows. “I think I’d quarrel with God’s choice of sex for me. Do you not think I would have been better born a man?”

He chuckled. “Nay. To cheat the men of the world of your beauty and light would have been tragedy indeed.” Cocking his head, he asked, “Do you mind so much?”

She lowered her gaze to the aging hand that clasped hers so firmly. It was a powerful hand, broad and strong with stubby, fierce fingers and thick veins risen in the flesh. Her own was slim and white, the nails round, the fingers very long. One seemed strong, the other weak. “It is not being a woman I mind so much,” she said slowly. “‘Tis the way men seem to always order my life.”

She leaned earnestly toward him. “Your hand, Papa, has wielded a sword and cradled a child and held power over hundreds of men.” She held up her own hand. “This one has far fewer adventures before it.”

In his gray eyes, there was a flicker of understanding, then swift regret. “I should not have given you so much freedom,
liebling
. It has led to unhappiness for you.”

“Oh, no! I am not unhappy—”

“I see your restlessness, Rica. I feel it stirring you up, have felt it all summer. I see you staring off with your head in your hands when the troubadours sing. I see you pacing the walk and drifting through the baileys. I am not blind.”

“So I am restless—there are many changes afoot. Is it so strange?”

He stared at her, as if to peer through her skull to see her thoughts. “Is it only the restless wish for adventure you seek, my little one? Some dream of grand romance?”

Rica began to answer, found no words, and shrugged.

“There are no grand passions in life like your poems, Rica. A man and a woman can find peace with each other, but there is nothing like what you dream of.”

She wanted to protest,
but I have found it
! Instead she asked quietly, “Did you not love my mother so?”

Charles swallowed and did not answer for a moment. “I did,” he said roughly. “And she was taken. That’s what I mean, daughter—better the peace of a comfortable match than the loss of a great love to mourn all the rest of your days.”

Rica smiled with the bitterness so new and yet so familiar to her now. “Not for me, Papa. I would rather love with all my heart and soul and mind for one hour than to suffer all my life with the lack.”

As she spoke, she felt the power of her union with Solomon move through her, growing and gathering fire, so that her words were passionate with knowledge, not curiosity or hope. And she felt him moving in her, as if he were with her.

Her father stared at her with a strange expression on his face, as if he saw her in some new way. Rica lowered her eyes, suddenly afraid he might guess at her secret.

“Perhaps,” he said at last, and touched her hair. “Now play dice with me. I am weary of the world and all its problems. I would forget them for a time.”

Rica smiled. “That we can do.”

The next day, she went to the glade by the Ill and waited there for two hours. Solomon did not come.

Again she went the next day and the next, sure he had been somehow detained, that he could not find leave, that soon he would come to her.

The fourth day, she went to Helga’s, hoping to find him there, working. The yard was empty—and Helga had been called to some birth. Only the cat came to greet Rica.

She bent to lift the soft, sturdy creature into her arms, ignoring the low whine of Leo beside her. Holding the warm body close, she wandered toward the back of the cottage, where she had sat with her love so often these last weeks.

“Where is he?” she murmured to the cat.

Each day, her hopes fell a little more. Each day her doubt grew. From the tangle of yearning and guilt rose a new fear—what if he had only seduced her for his amusement?

She buried her face in the plush fur of the cat.

Helga had tried to warn her. “It only takes one man to make a woman a fool,” she’d said. And how many times had Rica heard that refrain in her mind since?

She had never behaved with him in a seemly manner—from the first day she had been frank with him, and flirted. Even her repeated warnings to him could be seen as the ruse they had become—a teasing request for more vigorous pursuit.

Embarrassed heat crawled up her cheeks. A vision of him walking in the streets of Strassburg filled her mind. The gaze of women had followed him that day as if he were some magnificent king, as if there were more promises arrayed in the air about him than in all the knights in Christendom.

Rica, who had resisted with sophisticated banter the wiles of many a man, had fallen like a rotten tree at his first glance. Now he’d had his way with her and would come no more.

In her arms, the cat purred and bumped his head against her chin, oblivious to the torturous thoughts whirling in her mind. Rica rubbed her cheek in the soft fur. “I think I’d like better being a cat,” she said. “You do what you like, catch mice for your supper, take love where you find it.” She sighed. “It would be easier to be anything but a woman.”

The sound of running steps reached her ears. Alarmed, Rica clutched the cat to her breast, gentling the low growl of Leo next to her. Quietly, she waited.

And then, there was Solomon, his hair mussed, his jupon unbuttoned and askew, his breath coming in great gulps, as if he’d run all the way from Strassburg. “Rica!”

In that fleeting frame of seconds, as she took in the beloved face and the worry in his eyes, she knew her story of willful seduction was false. With a little cry, she jumped up and ran to him.

He caught her close and urgently, raining kisses upon her face. Then he enveloped her and pressed his face into her shoulder and held her so tightly she could scarce breathe. “Ah, Rica,” he whispered.

“I thought you would not come again,” she said. “I thought it was only seduction and—”

He lifted his head. There was misery in his dark eyes as he touched her face. “My father has forbidden me to come here.”

“But why?”

“I think he might have followed me the last time.”

Horrified, she gripped his coat. “But wouldn’t he have done something to stop us?”

“I don’t think he followed all the way. He has not accused me of anything—he would not do so without proof.” Solomon shook his head. “It is the only reason I can find. I thought I heard someone behind me that day, but in my rush to be with you…”

She let her head fall forward, pressing her forehead to his chest. “Oh, Solomon, I cannot bear to think it is already ended.”

“Nor can I, love, but I am here today only through deceit, and must quickly return. Can you find leave to come to Strassburg at all?”

“It is not so simple to go to the city—I must take my servant, Olga.” She frowned, afraid and yet unwilling to believe the joy they had found together could be so suddenly snatched away. Not yet. “If I am able, how will I leave word for you when I come?”

He glanced toward the trees, his eyes narrowing in thought. “I can think of no one I trust.”

She clutched his tunic. “But it is not so long before you leave—I would have one more day, at least.”

“Know you where the Jewish shops stand?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

“When you find leave, walk there as long as you dare. Linger and shop if you may. I will see you if you stay long. We are not far from the temple. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“When you have walked as long as you dare, go to the square by the astrologer’s house and wait. I will come to you there.” He took a breath and pressed his forehead to hers. “It is not what I wished for us, Rica. But it is all I can think of.”

“I will not complain, my lord.” With all the hunger built from the last four days, she kissed him, tasting the shape of his mouth and the silkiness of his tongue. She pressed against his dear and familiar form. “In truth,” she whispered, “it will be hard to wait. I so wished to practice pleasing you.”

With a fierce sound, he kissed her passionately, caressing her jaw and hair and shoulder. After a moment, as if dragging himself, he pulled away. “I must go, Rica.”

She nodded and stepped away a little, but his hand snagged hers. He pulled her close again and kissed her cheek. “Be well, my love.”

Then he was gone, into the forest, running again as if for his life. As he disappeared, Rica realized their idyll was gone. Except for one day—perhaps two if fortune smiled—their time had fled.

Once he left her, she did not know how she would go on with her life.

The day before Assumption
, Etta fell ill. There was no fever or spotting, to Rica’s great relief, but Etta could keep nothing but a little water in her belly. It was sudden and violent, but by the time for the evening meal, she had settled into a deep sleep and Rica felt confident she could leave the girl in the care of a servant. “If she worsens, send word,” Rica said.

“
Ja, fräulein
.” The servant was calm. “There was a lot of it last week—she’ll sleep now till morning, and waken fresh and new. You’ll see.”