Dark Maiden (25 page)

“I excuse pregnant ladies.” He frowned at her, an astonishingly grim expression. “Joan said you carried the water this morning, that you insisted on doing so. You might have hurt yourself.”

“What was that?” Geraint crouched beside them, his frown even grimmer.

“You did not stay,” Theodore said, returning the conversation to whatever was going on behind them in the clearing.

“No man orders me about, not even a holy one. What was that about this morning?”

“Nothing,” Yolande snapped, keen to avoid her honeyman’s sometimes acid tongue.

“Is that right?” When he raised his black brows, she gave him the glare she had last used on a devil trapped in a circle of salt. The demon had chosen to return to hell. Geraint merely thumbed toward the clearing. “What is this ‘purify’ business?”

Theodore sat among the leaf litter and stroked at his neck as if imagining an unwelcome silver collar there. He shuddered and hung his head.

Yolande, rising to her knees and sipping the flask Geraint had thrust at her, said softly, “Have you touched the bow Geraint carries? You are interested in the way of things, Theodore, the making of things. I think you would find it interesting.”

Geraint swung the bow from his shoulders and draped it across Theodore’s legs, sprawling alongside as if the woodland floor were a sumptuous couch.

“Gold and fashioning gold would suit you, Theodore,” he said, picking up on her comment. “You would know the fashions too.”

“I have no gold,” Theodore replied but as if of their own choosing his hands skimmed along the curved stock. “This is well-balanced, very strong.”

Geraint winked at Yolande.

I recognize the moment to speak as well as you, husband.

“It is mine,” she said.

Theodore caressed the supple yew, the bowstring. “Yes, the draw for your husband would be heavier.”

Surprise made her clumsy and Yolande sat down heavily. “You approve?”

Theodore looked up. “I am pleased to startle you, but yes. Why not? When I first came to the forest and found others, other runaways like Joan, we lived and worked together as equals.”

“What changed?” Yolande offered him the flask and almost cheered when he took it.

Geraint, curious and clearly deciding the little man might speak more freely if he were not close, darted to his feet.

“If you go looking for purification, be careful you are not seen,” Yolande warned.

“Geraint knows better than that,” said Theodore, surprising her afresh, and her Welshman’s eyes glowed with amusement.

“I like you, Master Theo, indeed I do. I shall heed your advice.” Geraint swept a bow so low his black curls ruffled the leaf litter then he moved off toward the main clearing as stealthily as a cat.

Theodore gripped the bow. “It answers to you.” He added, almost in an undertone, “Geraint will not like what he sees. I do not like it and he has a more generous spirit still.”

It pierced Yolande that Theodore was ashamed. She noticed his fingers trembling on the bow and realized he could not look at her. “In this purification, do women and men take part?”

Theodore nodded.

“As a group?”

He sighed. “The men kneel in a circle in the clearing. The women kneel facing the men, with their cloths.” Theodore’s ears were scarlet. “The women touch the men, with their hands and then their cloths. There is purification and the women wash the cloths and return to the men to join in a circle of prayer.”

Yolande’s fingers were bunched into fists in her lap and she tried to relax. The mental picture whispered
fleshly raptures
but only for the men. “And you do not take part?”

“It is not fair,” said Theodore. “It is like the work. Why must the women do the planting and weeding, sweeping, washing and the men pray? When we were cutting wood this morning it was a prayer, it was helping others. And Joan, my sweet girl who loves to help, she does not even recognize that she is abused.”

Yolande touched her bow and Theodore seized her hand, his knuckles white. “But you understand,” she said.

Theodore scowled, his grip tightening so much that Yolande almost yelped. “She said she was happy to serve the men, who were becoming angels, and she would serve me too if I wished it.”

“And?” Yolande prompted, relieved Theodore had never taken part in this
purification
.

“I told her I had done similar before in the world beyond the forest, for my lady. A lady who would have me pleasure her then scorned my need. Joan did not understand what I was trying to tell her.”

“The selfishness.”

He stared at the ground and said nothing.

“Do others feel as you do?”

“Some. Peter says we need not take part but the others…perhaps they believe they must.” He did not say why and she decided not to ask.

“Does that dispensation extend to women?”

He stilled and said nothing for a moment, which was its own answer. “Yolande, am I wrong to see it as wrong?”

“No, you are not wrong.”
For how long has this good man had doubts? Poor Theo.

He took a deep breath. “Do you think she likes me?”

“Theodore.” Yolande waited until he looked at her. “I think you should take Joan and walk with her right out of the forest. Make your new life outside.” She delved into her tunic and brought out her bag of coins. Since she married Geraint he had insisted on paying for everything, when he chose to pay at all. “Please take this,” she said.

A shadow fell across Yolande. Grim-faced, Geraint was back from the purification. He added another pouch. “With our blessing,” he said. “And I think you should go soon, Master Theo.”

Theodore stared at the money bags then at Geraint. “But does she like me?”

“Ask her and see.” Geraint cracked his knuckles together. “I do not think you will be disappointed.”

A moment later Theodore reached a decision. With a solemn “thank-you” he started to his feet and strode forward.

Yolande called to him and reminded him to take his coins. “And Theodore, please be discreet. Peter may not like people to—to leave.”

“I understand.”

Geraint watched him go. “A wee man with a great heart.”

“Pray God he is careful.”
Maybe this is how I will be as a mother, always anxious, with my heart hammering in my chest.

“There are strong wits in that small skull. To see Joan safe he will sneak them smartly away.”

“If Joan will go.”

“She will, for sure. I have seen how she looks at him.” Geraint’s mouth tilted briefly at the corners. He shook himself like a wet dog. “But the rest? This New Jerusalem? It needs to be stopped. We need to kill it, Yolande, you and I.” He reached out and sprang her to her feet. “I need to clean my mind. Can we run?”

Yolande ran ahead of him, her hair floating ’round her like a cape except when he stepped too close and it whipped across his face. Geraint ignored both that and his empty belly. Speeding with his wife through a grove of beech trees, he forced his melting legs and lungs to work.

Finally he panted, “Stop, please, God Almighty.” And she flung herself onto a bank of violets, dropping her bow. Spread-eagled on her back, her chest heaving, she did not protest even when he tickled under her arms.

He coiled about her, tucking his head against her shoulder.

“Better?” she asked.

“Yes.” Images of what he had witnessed played against his eyelids and he imagined them flowing down his arm into his wife.

She sighed. “You do not need to tell me, Geraint. Theodore said enough. The women pleasure the men with their hands and catch their seed in cloth. That is why there are no children.”

Geraint snorted. “Peter has them convinced it’s a meditation. ‘Every time, they rise closer to angels.’ I heard him say that.”

She pressed her thumbs gently over his brows and down the sides of his nose. A deep sense of well-being overcame him as if he were a babe again, wrapped in swaddling. Her thumbs circled his cheekbones and warmth bloomed in his body.

As if from a great distance, he heard Yolande ask, “They did this more than once?”

“They were still at it when I left.”

“Which is lucky, for they are so busy with themselves they do not watch or follow us. Yet as a method to keep the men content and the women feeling needed, Peter has been clever.” She kissed him.

“Peter did not take part, arrogant bastard.”

“That does not surprise me.” Yolande wrapped her arms about him and he smelled her lavender, rosemary and spices and knew he was home.

“Yolande?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Love me, Geraint.”

Watching the strange orgy in the clearing, he had been aroused and at the same time desperate to rid himself of his erection, running to flee his body’s weakness. Now her words evoked a fuller, wedded response.

Beautiful on her couch of sweet-scented violets, his queen beckoned. Her wedding ring sparkled in the light and she welcomed him. They joined in the sunshine, delighting each other, and after there was no rapture but a wordless comfort.

Yolande slid into slumber, not caring if she talked in her sleep. Her dreams showed Theodore teaching Joan to swim in a secret woodland pool, then her mother baking honey cakes, her father playing cat’s cradle with her and Geraint scaling castle walls.

“I am a marvelous thief,” he shouted down to her and the scene changed. She walked into a village she had passed through three springtimes ago and plastered her palms across her stomach, desperate to protect the spark of life within.

“They are all dead here,” she whimpered. As if released by her pity, the corpses rose from the street and emerged from the huts and the church. Rotting, flesh dripping from their bones as they pointed at her, the restless dead engulfed her with their stench and greed.

“Holy Mother, protect me!” Yolande cried, dragging the bow from her shoulder and hitting one shrouded corpse with an arrow. The dead man shrieked in rage, sulfur pouring from him in a vile yellow fog. His wrappings dropped away and his jaw lolled open, revealing a bloody mouth and teeth.

“Out, vampire!” She plucked part of a shattered gravestone off the ground, made the sign of the cross with her bow arm and launched herself. “Be gone from him!”

She sheared off his head with the stone and buried the tip of her bow in his heart, twisting…

“Yolande, there are no dead here. Come away!”

Still she struggled, overpowered by a welter of thrashing limbs as the restless dead bludgeoned her to the ground, to make her one of theirs.

“Safe. With Geraint. Safe with me.”

She bucked again, could not shift the heavy weight, and forced tear-streamed eyes open, determined to meet her fate.

“Safe,
cariad
.” Geraint mopped her sweating face. “You were never there.”

“I was once. Three years ago before we met.” She shivered and he let her up, sitting with her shoulder to shoulder. Daylight and his strong body returned her to herself.

“The village where all were dead of the pestilence?” he asked.

She remembered now that she had spoken of it.
I can tell Geraint anything.
“I did not leave them without rites,” she went on.

He hugged her tightly. “No, you would never do that.”

“I sprinkled dust and salt on each poor body and said a prayer for the whole village.”

“But they were restless dead?”

“Vampires.”

She blinked when Geraint tapped his front teeth with a finger and declared, “Your work has made you fearful, my heart. You laid that sad village to rest, no ghosts there and no forest vampires here.”

“But Joan said there were no dead here. What if there are no graves because they are undead?”

“And have you seen blood in pools about the woodland? Have you heard creatures shuffling and hunting in the night? Are there corpses wandering that avoid the daylight and cannot speak?” He grinned and jerked his stubbled chin to the right. “Found any empty graves?”

“No.”

He jerked his chin to the left. “Any broken coffins or torn shrouds?”

“No.”

“Any necromancers with salt circles?”

“No, and I miss salt here. The pottage is ghastly without it.”

“See? There are no vampires, demons or restless dead in this forest any more than there were at High Woodhead.”

“Then why do I feel I need to stay?”

He leaned forward and kissed her. “Even I sense that, my exorcist.” He nibbled her top lip, embracing her softly, teasing her until she longed to shout at him.

Yolande pursed her mouth. “Kiss me.”

A chuckle greeted her command. “In a moment, my Bathsheba, but first, remind me again. What is this Masada young Sorrel mentioned?”

Yolande blinked, astonished she had forgotten.
Or is it rather that something in this place has encouraged me to forget?
“It is a story my father told. Long ago, when the Romans ruled the world, a group of holy Jews lived out in the desert at a place called Masada. The Romans attacked them there.”