Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment (20 page)

“I loosened her hair,” said Susannah, rolling back on the pallet to face Silvester.

For an instant Silvester’s eyes and jaw hardened and the cane trembled in his fist. Crossed, he looked like Tancred and the Lady Astrid.
One of the Percivals for sure.
“Susannah-Rose, you should not be doing that.”

The girl said nothing but her expression was stormy. “Any word of Rowena or Ruth?” she demanded.

“Not yet, but then you know these things take time, Susannah-Rose.”

“Why did we have to rush out of the Broad Street house this morning?”

“I told you before, my dear, because of the rats. I need to return later and clear them.”

The kind of rat that walks on two legs and squeaks warnings
. Elfrida consciously relaxed her tightened fists as she absorbed the news that they were not in the house in Broad Street, that Silvester was rich enough to have two, or even more houses, in Bittesby.
How will Magnus find me?
And hard on the heels of that thought,
After spotting Magnus this morning and hearing from his spies, Silvester decided that it was prudent to move. But still he feels no threat. He feels no true danger. He is so sure of his allies in this town.

She was staggered by his arrogance, but the rest of his audience appeared convinced.

“Take care!” cried one of the younger girls.

Silvester smiled, his eyes shining like polished stones. “Of course.”

“Where do you think Rowena and Ruth are?” persisted Susannah. “Do you think they are safe?”

“My wives-to-be and former wives are always safe. I would know, otherwise.”

“How? How would you know?”

Silvester waved aside Susannah’s question. Throughout their entire exchange he had spoken without concern for anyone, Elfrida noticed.
The girls he stole or beguiled away who are now lost to him. He does not really care where they are or what has happened to them. I was mistaken—to this man they are less than pets. To him, a tiny wreath of valerian is sufficient payment in exchange for kidnapping them from their families. Even Rowena, his own kindred, whom he took on orders and kept on a whim, means little or nothing to him. I do not need to pity him for the loss of his nurse. I doubt that he loved even her, not love as Magnus loves me.

And I am most glad he does not know how close Rowena is.

It was time to show these giddy girls how slight his “caring” was. “I feel sick,” she whispered, in the same tone Christina had used in the early stages of her pregnancy.

At once Silvester drew back and rose to his feet. “Susannah-Rose, Rosalind, find her a bucket,” he said, all business. “We shall be next door.” Quick as a kingfisher, he darted about and, with the cane, tapped the smallest girl on her polished, new shoes. “’Tis time for your lute lesson, Regina.”

Regina glowed and giggled as he took her hand in his, as he escorted her from the room. Following on, the two other girls trailed after the pretty pair like the streamers on a colorful cloak.

“See, Mary?” demanded Susannah, once the door was shut. “He does not care if Ruth and Rowena are lost. ‘Tis all novelty to him.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Rosalind shook her head. “But you should not make him angry.”

Elfrida rolled off the pallet and climbed to her feet, still drugged. Her vision danced for an instant and she feared to lose her breakfast but then she steadied. “Ruth is back with her family,” she said quietly. “So can you be, with your families. They love you still and do not change toward you.”

Go to the window
, her intuition prompted, as the girls stared at her. Without questioning it, she slid her feet across the wooden floor. In truth she did feel queasy, light-headed, but what she had to say next was important, just as being by the window was vital.

She took a deep breath, hearing a faint creaking of the house timbers and the soft, plinking notes of a lute, hesitantly played. “And Rowena is with us,” she added.

Susannah laughed and clicked her tongue, but Rosalind paled. “So you say,” she began.

A shadow fell across the room. “My wife is right,” said Magnus, looming at the window.

Terrified of him tumbling into the filthy pit below them, Elfrida snatched for him. He gripped her hands strongly, saying, “Nay, my lovely, never fret! I have climbed worse siege engines than this strong English wood. The rooftops here are easy and your veil a fine banner.”

He hooked himself through the open shutters, landing softly in a tiny patch of sunshine within the chamber, and smiled at the girls. “Good morrow, damsels.”

His tunic has a new tear in it, Elfrida thought tenderly as she rapidly looked him over.
I will need to repair it.
Her heart lifted as
his brown eyes lit again on her, warm as the summer sun. “You are unharmed?” he asked.

Susannah slumped back onto a pallet in a faint. Rosalind gawped at his tall, muscular, scarred figure and burst into tears.

Elfrida was safe. At that moment Magnus cared for nothing else. She was pale and unsteady on her feet, but she was safe. To be sure, he took her hand in his.

“When I learned from the spy that you had been taken, that Silvester had signaled with his pipes that you should be taken, my world stopped,” he told her.
Now she is here and I am whole again.

“A drugged dart got me,” she answered, with a faint smile. “I felt no warning because the woman who shot me, Rebecca, did not intend to hurt me.”

“Even your magic cannot stop everything, elfling.”

She glanced at the girl weeping in the corner and said something in her own dialect. At once the girl sat down in the corner and rested her head on her arms. She looked calm enough to fall asleep.

“I must tend Susannah.” Slipping her hand from his, Elfrida crossed to the maid who had fainted. “Is Rowena—?”

“Still with our friend from this morning? She had better be.”

He wanted to open his arms and have Elfrida run to him but now, from deeper within this house, he heard new voices and footsteps.
Not hurrying, because Silvester does not know he has been found.
None of his spies think to watch the rooftops
.

Which in itself made a kind of sense. Magnus himself had almost missed the fluttering veil, swinging in that dark well. Its movement had alerted him as, intent on the spy’s confession, he scrambled from roof to roof, climbing almost as fast and nimbly as he had done as a boy. There had been one nasty instant when he had to shin down to the window and hang one-handed over the black, stinking, closed-in yard, but that was over.
I do not need to do it again, that is for sure.

Savoring that thought, not hurrying, Magnus turned to face his enemy.

The man was a surprise in only one thing—his height.
He is even taller than me
. For the rest, Silvester was exactly as Magnus had imagined, a slim, handsome, dapper adversary, strolling arm in arm with three pretty girls. The girls screamed the instant they clapped eyes on Magnus, who shut out their dreadful caterwauling and called out, “Give them up and go free.”

“No!” screamed the girls.

“No!” cried Elfrida.

Silvester—who else would it be, as haughty as a cat and with a young maid hung on each arm?—flung back his head to glower down his nose. “How came you?”

Magnus was already weary of the fellow. “Step away, Silvester,” he warned. “My quarrel is with you. Release them.”

“No!” shouted the girls a second time. One even stepped in front of her captor, spreading her arms wide to defend him. Over her tiny head and fluttering hands, Silvester met his eyes and smirked.

Arrogant Percival bastard
. “Hiding behind girls, are we?”

Silvester widened his smile and continued to let the girl stand between them. “You are not welcome here, knightling. Are you from my foolish cousins? They will not have Rowena.”

“Prove it,” said Magnus. “Fight me.”
Knightling, eh? We shall see.

Silvester shrugged. “How does that prove anything?”

“That you care enough?” said Magnus, amazed by what the fellow had already done and said, or rather not done.

“Here!” cried Elfrida suddenly. Leaving the girl she called Susannah, she scrambled over pallets to join him. As she came, she flung up a hand, showing her wedding ring. “Here is proof of caring, of true love! This ring is a public sign of our love! Magnus is my husband! My real husband. We were married by a priest, at the door of the church!”

Silvester glanced at her, not in the least disconcerted it seemed by this new information. “So he is yours and these are mine,” he said, utterly shameless. “We marry at the midsummer.”

“For how long?” demanded Elfrida.

Magnus sensed a movement from the girl sitting down in the corner. He glanced at her and she flinched but then she stared at Elfrida’s raised hand, at the bright ring of gold on her finger.

“When Regina and the others are as old and wise as Susannah, will you be tired of them as well?” Elfrida went on.

The smallest of the younger girls, possibly Regina, began to bite her fingernails.

Do not draw your sword.
Elfrida’s silent warning sounded like a bell in Magnus’s head. He scowled, but only because his wife had no need to tell him his business.
As if I would in this cramped little room, with these fretful lasses.

He tapped his sword belt instead.

Moving with graceful slowness, Silvester put aside the cane he had been carrying and rested it against a wall. “I do not have to fight you,” he said.

“No, he is a beast!” whimpered another girl. “He will never fight fair.”

She is young. She thinks she loves Silvester.
Despite his brave thoughts, Magnus died a little inside. He looked across to Elfrida, the one who knew him, who loved him.

Silvester moved then, but he did not charge. He grabbed a girl, yanked her back against him, put a knife to her throat.

“Easy, easy there.” Magnus lowered his hands. Around him the room seemed brighter as he focused in on that sharp blade, the twitching, white-faced child, Silvester’s cold eyes.

“Holy Mother,” breathed Elfrida. “This is no marriage. Silvester, please. Let her go. She never hurt you. She is like Rosamund, your nurse. None of your girls, your wives, have hurt you. They have done you nothing but good. Is this how you repay your maidens?”

Magnus watched the glitter of the blade, stared into Silvester’s face. “Only one right way to end this,” he said quietly. “You know. You know.”

“The townsfolk love me,” said Silvester, blinking wildly.

“Aye, maybe they do for now,” Magnus agreed. “But they are out there. I am here.”

“As am I.” Elfrida snapped her fingers and the scent of valerian filled the room. “The wisdom that your nurse Rosamund told you, I know it too. And I know more.”

Silvester looked at her. What he saw in her slight, contained figure, in her warm eyes and implacable mouth, Magnus could not guess, but the air between them shimmered. The scent of valerian grew stronger. Still he watched the knife.
Let Elfrida work her way and I will work mine
.

The glitter flashed and Magnus lunged, catching the girl, wrapping his arms tight about her, ignoring her screams, turning so she would not see.

Silvester ran toward the open window, lashing out as Elfrida tried to stop him, leapt through it and fell into the darkness without a sound.

Crossing the silent room, Magnus looked out. He knew no one could survive such a drop but he wanted to be sure. Peering down into the gloom he spotted Silvester far below. He lay sprawled and broken, on his back, his head twisted to an impossible angle. The pigs rooting in the muck were already showing interest and closing in.

Magnus crossed himself. “Silvester is dead.” What else could he say? There was no way to soften it. Gently he closed the shutters.

Shocked beyond screaming or tears, the girls followed Elfrida’s rapid prompts now without protest. Gather their things. Follow her down the stairs. Wait with her while Magnus looked out.

The wagon Silvester used was outside the house—no luck was involved, merely there was no space else to leave it but the street. Magnus wanted to drag the pallets into it, but Elfrida knew they had to make haste. She shepherded Susannah and the others into the wagon and closed its covers.

“I will fetch Rowena and our horses,” Magnus said, and he went off, striding away in the hazy sunlight.

Elfrida waited inside the wagon, her mind buzzing like a hive of bees. Silvester had no real magic, but that final clash of wills between them, where he had drawn on his memories of the old wisdom, that had surprised and drained her.

Though it is still before noon I could lie down and sleep.

But of course that was impossible. She, Magnus, even the girls, they were all in danger. Before tottering outside into the street and drawing out the girls she had cast a hiding spell, but still she was not certain whether their hasty leaving had been spotted by one of Silvester’s spies. She did not know for how long the girls’ shock would keep them quiet. She did not know if the girls would ever forgive her Magnus, whether they would always blame them for Silvester’s death. She did not know how to drive the wagon.