Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment (2 page)

“I am and proud of it. But see, you helped with the sheep shearing today. Washing sheets and stuff is nothing I have not done before. And now you and Mark and the rest are always clad in clean linen and woolens. Do you remember the stinking heap of filthy clothes I discovered at your manor when we first arrived?”

Magnus knew he was losing this. “Let me pay a laundress in gold.”

She tugged on his chest hairs, a tingling reproof. “And then our woman cook would be offended, and my own spinning maid. They would demand more, and so would the male head cook and the farrier.”

He kissed her before she named every servant in the place. “Can you not give me a philter to make me less ugly?” he teased.

“Hush, you.” She wormed a soft hand through his tunic laces and touched his strongly beating heart, flesh against flesh. “As I have said before, you are most handsome, especially from the back.”

She laughed up at him, her amber eyes bright with mischief.

“Have a care, or I might say the same—and do more.” Cupping her backside again, he savored how her lashes trembled and her face flushed in response to his caress. He spanked her lightly on her nether curves and she wrapped her arms tight about his neck.

“Magnus,” she breathed, snuggling into the crook of his arm, clinging as he drew her scarlet skirt up her legs and tucked it round her slender middle.

He could wait no longer. Aching, hard and more than ready for her, he sank his fingers into her, finding her warm and open and more than ready for him.

“Sir,” she whispered, as he rolled her off his lap and onto her back, taking care her head was pillowed by the sheepskins. Sinking into her was the greatest luxury in Christendom and having her move with him an infinite pleasure. Feeling like a pagan storm god, he rode and gloried in her, savoring her moans, her blushes, her growing heat and that final long, harp-string-tight shudder of delight. Dimly he heard his own wild shout as he plunged after her into a heart-hammering, thunderous release.

“We should move,” Elfrida managed to say, some uncounted time later. Languid, almost sinfully relaxed, she lounged on top of her husband, wishing they could stay as they were.

“Not yet,” grunted Magnus, trapping her legs with one of his and hugging her. Matching her mood, he only opened his eyes when she leaned up on him. “Watch those needle elbows, wife.”

“I need more of those.”

“Elbows?”

“Needles. Christina wants me to make her some clothes.”

“For her and her coming babe, no doubt.” Magnus yawned and kissed her elbow. “Your sister and Walter are still visiting for the midsummer?”

Elfrida nodded. “Just after Saint John’s day. Unless you do not wish it?”

He shook his head, showing his crooked smile. “Christina and her husband are always welcome at our house, elfling.”

Even though she chatters endlessly of babies, as she once used to gossip about her wedding-day
. Magnus was too gracious a host to admit that. For an instant he did seem about to say more, but then he tipped her off him and rolled swiftly to his feet.

“Get behind me,” he whispered. “We are no longer alone.”

How did Magnus hear and sense that when I did not? True, he is a warrior and these are his woods, yet I am the witch! Am I so transported and undone by our lovemaking as to be half blind after? Should I be? Is that a fault? Has my marriage diminished my powers of magic?

Faster than quicksilver the questions rushed through her as Magnus stood and straightened, standing before her as a shield. She reached out beyond him with her mind, seeing Mark dashing along the track, the low sun glinting on his ginger hair. She heard his panting breath, caught glimpses of his thoughts and understood his alarm.

She touched Magnus’s shoulder. “Mark comes with news of strangers. Not knights or crusaders, pilgrims or travelers, some others. One is a woman.”

“A laundress?”

“A lady, I think,” Elfrida replied, feeling as nervous as Mark looked.
A lady! How do I greet her? Is the hall swept and clean? Is there enough food, enough fine bread?
“She and her companion want your help. They will ask you for it soon.”

She tried to smile, but Magnus knew her too well to be fooled by her calm words. Without taking his eyes from the careering Mark, he reached behind himself and took her hand in his.

“Our help, Lady Elfrida. Ask for one of us and they will have the pair of us, yes?”

“If the cause is just, for sure, yes.”

As she spoke, a sweet-sour taste filled her mouth, as if she had bitten on a crab apple. Elfrida swallowed the bitterness and checked her skirts, smoothing her clothes and ensuring her mass of red hair was hidden beneath her veil. Wishing she was wearing something better than her faded scarlet, she prepared to hear more.

The lady was a golden blonde, Elfrida guessed, glancing at the woman’s pale eyebrows and flawless, freckle-free skin. She was taller than many, lissome and shapely, and moved in her dark blue gown as if accustomed to praise and attention. Her light-blue veil matched her eyes and her belt also was blue, tipped at each end by a tinkling fragile silver bell.

Her laugh, when she chose to laugh, was deep and mellow, like her voice. Elfrida envied her that, and the way she gripped every man in the great hall, including her husband.

Magnus is paying attention to a strange tale, as you should be
, but must the lady smile so freely?
Elfrida was annoyed. The woman had not even blinked when meeting her fierce warrior for the first time, which told Elfrida that the lady had heard of her famous, questing knight and his sword-scarred face.

Of course she knows of him. That is why she has come.

And Magnus was listening, still as a stone gargoyle. Mark and the rest of his men stared at the woman sitting on the guest chair on the dais, tracking her every move. She toyed with her cup of ale and dish of strawberries and cream.

Strawberries I picked for her from our garden
,
and ale I made.

Elfrida frowned, disliking such petty thoughts. Thus far, the lady had not directly addressed her. The lady had been escorted into the hall by two richly-gowned young women and she had pointedly not hidden her surprise at Elfrida’s lack of attendants. The lady had introduced herself in French and Elfrida did not know her name. She could not warm to the woman.

“You speak the native tongue?” the lady had remarked in the local dialect of Norton Mayfield when Magnus replied in English. She gave another of her pretty laughs and the silver bells on her belt trembled. “Now I know I am not in Winchester or London.”

See if London or Winchester can help you with your problem, lady
. Smiling behind her cup, Elfrida had drunk deeply to hide her distaste.

Now she hastened to recollect as Magnus turned to her on the bench. “What do you think, wife?”

“Wife? I thought her your mistress or leman…” The lady leaned forward on her seat and granted Elfrida a swift, assessing glance, her gaze lingering below the belt of Elfrida’s shabby scarlet gown.

To check if I breed yet
,
which to her is all my kind can do. She must think I captured Magnus by becoming pregnant.

“I introduced Elfrida as my lady,” Magnus continued steadily, his brown eyes gleaming. “She is deep in my confidence. What thoughts have you, Elfrida, on the Lady Astrid’s dilemma?”

Bless him for telling me her name!
Names were important, a name always gave her more. Meeting Astrid’s hastily composed face, Elfrida remained calm as a piercing sense of certainty flashed through her, followed by anger.

“You need my lord’s help?” she asked the woman directly.

Lady Astrid nodded, but her clenched hands showed her dislike of admitting this.

“His help to trace and recover kidnapped children and infants?” Elfrida persisted.

“Not infants,” corrected Lady Astrid stiffly. “Six young maids, aged between eleven and fourteen. Six small, pretty peasant girls.”

“And you believe they have been kidnapped?”

“I know they have been taken from their families and villages by a stranger, an evil stealer away of innocents. I cannot find them. Your husband is a famous hunter and tracker, so I have come to him.”

“So what do you think, Elfrida?” repeated Magnus.

Mainly that Lady Astrid does not want to ask for aid. She is a noble chatelaine, once married beneath her rank, now widowed. She seeks to recover power, not children
.

“Only that this stealer of innocents has charmed or stolen away more than the half-dozen village and country girls whom the lady has mentioned.” Elfrida noted the widow’s expression never changed but her youngest maid, hovering behind her chair, stopped breathing for an instant, and the handsome priest seated beside her looked away.

“There is one more missing child, is there not?” Elfrida asked, prompted by intuition. She saw Lady Astrid’s slight, unconscious nod of agreement and knew she was right. She now drove home her point. “The stranger to the lady’s lands and villages has also kidnapped a child of great fortune, a special child, whom Lady Astrid must find.” Lady Astrid wiped her mouth and sighed. “That may be true… Elfrida, but if you and your lord find the other lost little ones, then you will also discover her. I told of the many to show the urgency of this matter.”

“No, you heard my lord is kind and generous and you strove to touch him by an appeal to his heart, rather than to his head. You did not want to mention the special one, because a secret is power and you have much to lose here, I think.”

She does not want to admit it.
Braced for the woman’s dismissal of her, Elfrida saw the icy flash in Lady Astrid’s speedwell blue eyes, the tightening of her pink lips. She had just made an enemy.
No matter, there are still the missing innocents, the six young maids, stolen from their families
.

“One or six, a lost child hauls on the heart-strings.” Magnus drained his cup, signaled for another. He glanced at Elfrida, a question stark in his face, and she nodded. “We shall help you,” he promised.

Elfrida pushed aside her cup and plate and leaned her elbows on the trestle, careless of the lady’s raised brows. “I may be breaching good manners, but you still need me,” she said bluntly. “Tell us how the special one came to be taken.”

“Why her alone, Elfrida, if you claim to care for the other girls?” the lady flared, not troubling to be amiable now she had Magnus’s promise. The priest muttered a reproof in French. Lady Astrid drummed her fingers on the trestle.

That sign of irritation made Elfrida like Astrid a little more, but she did not soften her reply. “She is the one you need, the one you and yours paid great attention to. I am sure you cannot swear to how the others were stolen away, but you will know about her. Tell us again, beginning with her name.”

Lady Astrid said nothing. It was the priest who had come with her who answered. “She is the only daughter of my lady’s cousin, who has estates in England and France. Rowena is eleven years old, small for her age, with dark hair and blue eyes. She is a bold child, curious and sanguine.”

“A good lass,” Magnus remarked, “and in your care, Lady Astrid?”

Poor child, if that were so
. Struck by the image of a dark, wide-eyed little girl, trying to be brave because she knew she was not wanted, Elfrida hid her fingers beneath the table lest they tremble.

“In mine also,” the priest answered. “Rowena is destined for the church. Her father swore her postulancy for her as payment of a tithe.”

“Should the father not have waited to see if Rowena has a vocation?” Magnus was asking what Elfrida wanted to know.

“Is that relevant, my lord?” Lady Astrid countered, favoring Magnus with a sweet smile.

“It could be very important if the girl hated the idea and ran away,” Magnus went on mildly. “She may be missing to you, but not kidnapped.”

“Or if Rowena went willingly with the child stealer,” Elfrida dropped in.

Magnus felt the sudden silence in the hall scrape against the back of his neck and knew his little witch had hit the target. Waiting for the priest to respond, he regretted that Elfrida and Lady Astrid had clashed. His wife missed female company and rather more stimulating companionship than her sister’s, but Astrid was an aristocrat. Despite her winning ways, pride and making a show of status was bred into her. Even though haste was needed in this matter of the kidnapped youngsters, he should have thought to warn Elfrida to change her gown, to wear the jewels he had given her, before she rushed into the great hall.

Splendor in Christendom, admit it, man! Astrid irked you with that stare at Elfrida’s belly.
Foolish his wife’s sister might be, but she was already pregnant. The family was fertile, so what did that make him?
Can I give her a child? Are my war wounds affecting that?

Worse, Elfrida was a wise-woman as well as a witch, so if he should speak to anyone on this delicate matter it should be her, yet pride made it impossible. He knew that he had not been struck in his parts—and by God they worked well for him—but he had been badly injured, so perhaps his seed was damaged.