Dark Maiden (28 page)

Walter dropped to his knees. Men close to him flinched but Peter never stirred.

“For pity’s sake, man, do something!” Geraint shouted but Peter kept still, as pitiless as stone.

“Do not fear.” Yolande made the sign of the cross on Walter’s back and began the great psalm,
The Lord is my Shepherd
, in Latin. She stroked his hair, praying for him to be well.

Please, Holy Mother, whatever happens let me be a channel of healing for Walter.

She sensed it flowing through her, a clear, sweet charity, and about her feet the yellow fog broke up and was dispelled. Walter’s breathing steadied and his color returned to normal. In the woodland—for the first time in an age—she scented bluebells and heard birdsong.

“Be healed in Christ,” she said.

Theodore answered, “Amen.”

“What are you, woman?” Peter snarled, at last losing control. “Aping men, your betters.”

With Walter sitting on his heels and breathing sweetly, Yolande reckoned it was time to reveal herself. “You do not like women, do you, Peter? Yet we are the vessels of life, bearers of the holy miracle that God and the Virgin grant to us. What are you but a cleric of death?” Geraint, understanding without her needing to speak, gave her the bow. “You have no church here, no New Jerusalem, only a nest of vipers. I am the exorcist sent to cleanse it.”

Reveal the evil
, she called in Latin in her mind and fired a second arrow deep into the middle of the labyrinth.

“Come out,” she cried. “Get back whence you came!”

In a cloud of yellow sulfur, the demon roared, writhing against a second sacred pinning, and a child screamed, “Look, a snake. There’s a snake in the maze!”

Everyone turned. A huge adder basked in the center of the sunlit labyrinth. It whipped away and vanished into the undergrowth. The demon was gone, the yellow fog melting to nothing.

Yolande lowered her bow, desperate to sit down or quench her thirst or kiss Geraint, or all three. Out of nowhere, while her weariness warred with relief, she had a sudden craving for strawberries and fell to her knees, praying thanks.

My trial, my final trial, is near complete and this sweet craving a sign that all is well. We are still three, Geraint, the babe and I.

But there was still the matter of Peter and Jehan.

It is not over yet.

Standing over his exhausted wife as she sank to her knees, Geraint fixed on the human side of this strange New Jerusalem. Peter and his ally would keep. If the pair had no followers, everything here at this labyrinth would stop.

“Are you cows or men?” he demanded, staring at the circle of men and daring them to stare back. “Becoming angels with a few words and a little drink? Purifying yourselves by making the women do all the work and playing you off like whores in the stews? Are you so mad as to believe it to be so easy? Would Richard Rolle have done that? Think for yourselves!”

“Commander?” Theodore wove gently past Joan and out of the circle. Approaching Peter, he looked to the hermit for an answer but the man was silent.

“Commander, nothing!” bawled Geraint, slamming a fist against his thigh in blazing frustration. “They were going to make you drink, Master Theodore, then sidle off when you were dead.”

“You and all the women and children, Theo,” Yolande said, speaking with an unnatural calm. “They plotted to murder every one of you, including your Joan.”

Joan jerked ’round, her mouth forming a wondering, “Me?” When Theodore, blushing like a sunset, held out his arms, Joan nudged Sorrel aside and broke from the women’s circle. She stumbled as she came and Theodore hurried to meet her. Their fingers locked together and they were one.

Yolande tugged on Geraint’s arm and he helped her to her feet. Only he sensed how tired she was as he braced her, but she addressed Theodore like a knight rallying his troops. “Be as you were before, Mister Theodore, here in your greenwood. Be equals, men and women, plan for your winter, build your church. I know a priest who would come here once a month or two and a mystic who would help you and there would be no tithes or titles, no peasants or lords.”

“Why a church?” asked Joan, frowning prettily.

Geraint jumped into the moment. “A church for your weddings, of course.”

Theodore tightened his grip on Joan. “If it suits you, my heart, it does me,” he said gently and Joan hugged him.

They will have interesting youngsters
, Geraint reflected but the love was there, right enough. Theodore wrapped both arms about Joan’s middle, luxuriating in nestling against her bosom, and Joan kissed his hair.

Geraint watched the circle carefully. “Decide now,” he said. “Those who want, go with Peter and Jehan deeper into the forest. Take what Jehan brought with him.”

A sharp nudge made him break off. “You gamble with lives,” said Yolande in her father’s tongue but Geraint smiled.

“I do not think so,” he replied in Welsh. “You understand spirits and souls,
cariad
, but I know people. Look you, no one is hurrying to join them.” Possibly Sorrel, blind to the last, would creep after Peter, but even Walter remained where he was, settled on the leaf-litter, hugging his knees.

Hard to worship a man who leaves you to die as a lesson.

“But Peter would have murdered them and—”

“And he did not and could not because of you.” Geraint looked into Yolande’s face, saw the craving for justice there and knew he must take care.

Her strongest trial will be against herself
, Katherine had warned and here it was.

“Would you leave almighty God nothing to do?” he challenged.

Yolande’s fist clenched around her bow. It would be the work of a prayer’s length to finish them off. She wanted so much to stuff Peter full of arrows, turn him into a human hedgehog. Her belly ached with it. Why not? He had threatened her. Jehan had insulted her. They had meant Geraint evil and over a hundred people ill.

They would have killed my baby.

Anger gave her energy. She lifted the bow, brought an arrow from her quiver, notched it, aimed it at Peter.

“Look,” she spat through clenched teeth. “He does nothing. Sits there, surly as a cuckoo chick. He does not even try to pray.”

“What God or saint would heed him?” breathed Geraint into her ear. “He guesses he is finished, even if you do not. At least not yet.” He closed his hand over hers on the bow grip and the bow of Saint Sebastian shook in her arms.

“For what, though, husband? Why follow such practices as would attract a marauding demon? The murder of his followers would have been an inevitable sacrifice to it.” Peter’s plan bewildered her. Even the devil in hell did not do that.

“Some judges like to hang men for the thrill, I have heard it said.”

Vengeance sang in her head, its siren voice so tempting and so right. “If I let him go, he will do it again.” She could picture the arrows piercing Peter, savored the idea of knocking that blank expression off him.

“Word of him shall go ’round. I will make sure of it.”

“Jugglers’ chatter?” The gossip of the roads and the traveling men flew everywhere. If Geraint promised, it would be done, and well done.

“Leave them to the Marys,” Geraint said. “Would that not be fitting?”

He released her and stood back, giving her the choice.

Yolande drew on the bowstring. At this short distance she could drive an arrow right through Peter, venomous heart and all. She searched his green eyes, seeking any scrap of remorse.

“Liar!” It was not Yolande screaming but Sorrel, who had broken out of the circle and was running toward the walnut tree. Lightning flamed, sunlight flashing from a dagger blade.

Peter finally spoke, gasping, “No!” He sprawled beneath the tree, Sorrel crouching on his twitching legs.

“You said there was no marriage here!” Sorrel thrust her dagger into Peter’s chest again. “You said we would be joined in heaven!”

Others closed on her before she struck a third time but Peter was already dead.

Geraint looked up from his gathering and waved at Katherine sitting in the doorway of her woodland hut. She beckoned to him and he left the strawberry picking and wandered over.

“Yolande?” she asked.

He gave her his basket of strawberries. “Busy with Father Eudo and a bishop’s scribe. Jehan is claiming benefit of clergy, although the king’s coroner wants the man to stand trial in his court.”

Katherine ate a strawberry. “Although he accused you, Jehan was the one who stole the gold crucifix at the fair?”

Geraint devoured a strawberry himself. “The idiot was seen too. Father Eudo recognized him from his villagers’ account and I helped him haul Jehan away to the local reeve, Master Pernod.”

“That must have been pleasing.”

“Yes, indeed.” Sweeter than the strawberry he was eating.

“And the young woman? Sorrel?”

“Slipped away in the night. No one will hunt her.”

“Good.” Katherine stretched until her shoulders cracked. “You say Yolande has buried the labyrinth in the forest?”

“That and pruned the walnut tree. ’Tis so short these days only an imp could nest in it. The birds and animals are returning too.” They had sensed the evil lurking beneath the labyrinth even if Peter’s followers had not.

“And the hermit?”

Geraint hesitated but Katherine saw everything. “Father Eudo had him buried,” he admitted.

“Yolande is still angry then?”

“Can you blame her? Turns out that Peter was a cleric and the church wants to hide what he did.”

“But the church’s Father Eudo has been helpful. I heard he preached forgiveness and generosity.”

Good for Father Eudo. ’Tis a pity I like the fellow now, even trust him, for all his courtesy to my wife. I certainly always trust Yolande.

“The new village in the forest will not go hungry this winter because of him,” said Katherine.

“And Mister Theo, who turns out to be a born bargainer.” Thinking of the newly wed little man, Geraint gave himself some credit. Theodore was beginning to work gold too and, according to the smith of High Woodhead, already showing promise.

Katherine ate three strawberries at once, giggling as if she had stolen a fortune. “Very good. What of your plans?”

Used to her sudden questions, Geraint rubbed his palms together. “Building well.”

“The smith’s wife tells me it is fine work, ready in a day or so. For May Day. For the bearing of life, not the bringing of death.”

Geraint gave up. He could not be more cryptic or informed than a mystic. “I hope Yolande will like it.”

Katherine patted his hand and ate another strawberry.

* * * * *

Yolande checked her gown, her plaits and bare feet. Since venturing out of the forest and returning to High Woodhead two days earlier, she and Geraint had come together at the end of each day only to cuddle and snuggle down in Father Eudo’s barn. Geraint had told her she was no longer talking in her sleep, and since she had no memory of any kind of nightmares or dreams, she believed him and was glad of that progress. This evening, she hoped to make progress of a different kind.

She glanced at her boots, tucked behind her on top of the stocks. That morning, after giving her strawberries for breakfast, Geraint had asked her to wait by the church when she returned from Katherine’s. He had been very mysterious about what he was doing, saying only that she should spend the day with the female mystic and stroll back at sunset.

Katherine had been equally foggy about what Yolande’s husband was about. “Let him surprise you, Yolande. It will be good practice for when your child comes,” she had said.

Yolande touched her wedding ring and glanced along the village track in case Geraint was coming. She felt strangely naked without her bow and quiver. She had left them, with both Geraint’s and Katherine’s strict instructions, safely in the side chapel of High Woodhead’s church, propped beside the new, chained grave.

“Lay them by there for later, if need be,” Geraint had said.

Katherine had agreed. “Let them lie, my daughter, at least for now. You have passed your final trial.”

I am not sure of that, holy one, not passed at least. What Sorrel did I wished to do.

The rest was good, she could agree with Katherine on that. She could see Theo and Joan happy, the new wooden church of the forest rising up, Walter discovering he could plough with oxen loaned from High Woodhead, the children playing where the labyrinth had been. The men and women of the former forest Jerusalem strolled arm in arm of a spring evening, their faces brimming with joy. They had not picked a name for the revitalized settlement yet, calling it merely “the place”, but she had no doubt they would in time.

And Geraint and I will be welcomed whenever we go there.
The thought warmed her like the setting sun.