Lindsay Townsend (12 page)

I have some time before the knights arrive and clamor
for favors. I could take our bed linen to the river to wash. With my work-rough
hands and my hair over my face no tourney man will know me. Yet if any lusty
serving man detains me and he is charming and comely, then why not? If we are
all due to die soon of the pestilence, why not indeed?

She smiled and began to strip the pallets.

She was walking with the bundled sheets to the
shallow, slow-moving stream when she realized that another was there before
her. A man, big and muscled enough for a knight but not in armor, was sitting
on the river-bank with his boots off, dangling his bare feet in the clear
water.

Large, fine feet they were, too, and very clean. She
stood in the shade of a young beech tree, shielded by its fresh leaves, and
watched him; this nameless knight. He was new to her, and a pleasure to look
upon, with a trim waist and good shoulders. He slowly kicked his legs in the
water and she noticed the dark swirls of down on his calves, less lustrous and
straighter than his fair-going-to-russet shaggy, badly-clipped hair. She
wondered if the tiny dark fish were nibbling his ankles and laughed softly at
the foolish idea. He was handsome, she conceded, if long, clean-shaven features
as regular as a mason's new carving of a king were to one's taste —and they
were to hers. On his feet, standing proudly on the daisy and speedwell studded
grass, he would be tall as a castle keep, but wiry, with a rangy strength she
admired when he skimmed a pebble across the river.

He had a paring knife on the grass beside him, on his
left side: a left-handed fighter, then. In a flash, she imagined him cutting
her toe-nails, using his long, supple fingers to cradle her feet. She drew him
in her mind, long arms reaching for her, rolling her tight into his arms. His
strong, full mouth would taste of peppermint, she decided, and she would feed
him mint tisane and sweet, sweet dates. He would sweep her off into an uncut
field of wheat and there, with the poppies glowing round them, he would make
love to her. His hands would be supple, gentle and powerful together, and he
would be generous with pleasure: shielding her, caressing her, teasing her,
filling her....

 Such vivid thoughts brought a wave of heat pounding
into her face, but she kept staring, tense as a harp string, waiting for
something, some sign as to whether she should be bold. It would be a foolish
risk, but then, would he know her again?

"Probably not, for he is but a man,” she
murmured. And it was a glorious gold and blue morning. A kingfisher flashed by,
bright as a rainbow, and her knight looked both comely and charming.

Choosing for herself, she lowered the bundle of
bedding and took a step closer. Ahead, her nameless knight  splashed in the
stream like a young lad and she chuckled to see him so simply happy, but then,
perhaps hearing her unguarded laugh, he turned his head.

His lean, narrow face was bleak, with a haunted look
of grief about his dark brown eyes: a strained, weary face of many lost and
lonely days. Sorry to see such pain and now shy of intruding, she moved sharply
back, into deeper cover and shadow, but he called out to her.

"Little maid?” The unguarded, stricken look dropped
from his face as he smiled—to reassure her, she realized. “The bank is large
enough for two. I shall not trouble you."

When she did not stir, he patted the ground beside
him. "The sun is warm and the water very pleasant. We may sit together in
peace." He smiled again, his teeth white against his tanned face—good,
strong teeth, she noticed, and none missing —"You have my word."

Tempted, she almost moved forward, but then caught
herself in time: he was being kind, but such grief as his should be respected.
To make all sure, to stop herself from yielding, she called back, "I must
go. My lady awaits."

"Your lady? No lord, then?"

She did not answer his questions. It was time to go,
more than time. A tumble in field might be a consolation, as a plucked flower
may be a delight, but both would quickly fade.

And if we are all to die of the pestilence, what
matter? Did you not hope and plan for exactly this kind of encounter? Stop this
foolish shyness! Seize this brawny, beautiful brute and make him yours for the
morning!

She shook her head against herself, her loins and lips
tingling at the lascivious notion. That glimpse of his heart, and his kindness,
made him real to her: a person, not a day-dream of desire, and she would not
treat him so. Thus, when he rolled to his feet in a swift, powerful arc of
movement, she skittered sideways, away from his likely approach. Plucking the
heap of sheets off the beech mast, she gathered them tight and then pelted off,
the sun burning on her head and face. Torn between going and staying, even as
she fled, she made for the tall, multi-colored tent at the eastern side of the
tourney ground, her mind in as much turmoil as a kicked beehive.

We could have this morning, and then? Do not look
back!

Do you want to lie with him and then yearn after him
for weeks? Do you want him to regret our union?

Do not look back! He may take it as a signal to
follow!

Do you want to watch him flirt with others, and
realize that grief of his, that seeming care, is as shallow as a dew pond?
Worse, do you want to see him with another lady and know for sure our time
meant nothing?

"I would be his equal and mean all of it,"
she panted, her calves and thighs aching as she ran past a startled group of
pages, who instantly began to point and to make lewd remarks on her bouncing
breasts. "I am his equal." Against the jeering of the tousle-headed,
gawping lads, her voice sounded false in her ears, too light.

Ranulf knelt beneath the spreading branches of the
beech tree where the maid had sheltered. Offa was still in the bushes
somewhere, struggling with his bowels. His poor steward had been sweating with
fear, though he had tried to convince the hapless Offa that it was likely
nothing more than the sudden, unfortunate results of eating a bad meat pie, and
not the pestilence.

He rose off his knees into a crouch. She had been
about this height, as brown and nimble as a sparrow, with a mass and maze of
hair. She had carefully hidden her face and eyes. Perhaps her mistress had not
known she had ventured to the stream; perhaps she was playing truant, like a
school-boy. A mystery maid, much as the Lady of Lilies was a mystery princess.

"I wonder who she belongs to?" he said, idly
patting the narrow trunk of the beech where the lass had leaned and not really
caring at that moment if he meant maid or princess.

"Offa!" he bawled, pitching his shout above
the stirring camp, "Have you died in that hedge?"

There was a cracking of twigs and his steward burst
out into the water-meadow from a stand of hawthorn and guelder rose, his mouth
already busy with excuses.

"Peace, Master Steward, and lead on." Ranulf
waved off the rest, only half-listening as Offa apologized again. All of
this—stream, maid and princess—were pretty diversions. They would pass the
morning until it was time to fight again.

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She is Beauty, but is he the Beast?

Elfrida, spirited, caring and beautiful, is also
alone. She is the witch of the woods and no man dares to ask for her hand in
marriage until a beast comes stalking brides and steals away her sister.
Desperate, the lovely Elfrida offers herself as a sacrifice, as bridal bait,
and she is seized by a man with fearful scars. Is he the beast?

In the depths of a frozen midwinter, in the heart of
the woodland, Sir Magnus, battle-hardened knight of the Crusades, searches
ceaselessly for three missing brides, pitting his wits and weapons against a
nameless stalker of the snowy forest. Disfigured and hideously scarred, Magnus
has finished with love, he thinks, until he rescues a fourth 'bride', the
beautiful, red-haired Elfrida, whose innocent touch ignites in him a fierce
passion that satisfies his deepest yearnings and darkest desires.

Chapter  One

England,
winter 1131

Magnus forced his aching legs to move and dismounted
stiffly from his horse. The still, freezing cold made his teeth ache, and as he
tethered his mount, he wondered yet again what he was doing here. It was less
than a month to Christmas, and he could have been with Peter and Alice at
Castle Pleasant, preparing for feasting and singing and watching his
godchildren.

And then a deep, abiding ache, bedding down in the
great hall alone. He would never force a woman to lie with him—he had seen too
much of that in the crusades.

He limped forward through the pristine snow. Peter had
his Alice now, a clever, black-haired wench who feared nothing and no one,
including him. Had his friend and fellow crusader not known her first, he might
have had a chance with Alice. She saw through the outer armor and shell of a
man to what lay beneath.

But she loves her crusader knight, Peter of the Mount,
and I have no chance or right there.

As the palfrey snorted and jangled its harness behind
him, he knelt in a white heap of pitted frost and reached out with his good arm
to brush snow off the small, cracked statue of a saint. This was an old,
wayside shrine on a track to nowhere of note, and the wooden figure huddled in
its stone niche was old, its paint peeling. This battered saint would
understand him, one ugly brute to another.

“Holy one, grant me my prayer.”

He stopped, aware of the chill silence around him—the
bare trees, the white landscape, the empty road. He had nothing to offer the
saint, no flower or trinket to sweeten his request.

As his knees began to smart, then burn, then freeze on
the unyielding, icy ground, Magnus tried to marshal his thoughts. What did he
want?

A woman of my own. Someone to return to
.

Alice cared and had urged him most ardently to stay
with her and Peter, but pride had made him refuse them both with a smile. He
did not begrudge the handsome couple their joy, not after their many trials.
But the dark of winter and Christmas especially brought his own desolation home
to him most keenly, sharper than an assassin’s blade. He was nine and twenty, a
grizzled warrior, battle-scarred and wounded.

Feeling sorry for yourself, Magnus? Brace up, man! Be
a Viking, as your granddad was. You have your wits and your balls, all working.
The lasses in the stews make no complaint and do not charge so much. You have
land, a strong house, good fellowship, and two hearty godchildren
.

“Splendor in Christendom, let me have my own family! A
lass who loves me!”

His voice rang out, startling a lone magpie into
taking flight from a solitary elm in a blur of wings, but the drab and
well-worn saint gave no sign of hearing. Peering into the calm, carved face,
Magnus wondered if the saint was smiling, and then he spotted his own reflection,
clear in a frozen mirror of ice by the shrine.

He scowled, knowing very well what he looked like, and
spat to the left for luck. With his knees creaking, he staggered to his feet
and remounted his eager horse. When he passed this way again he would leave
gold, he vowed, but for now he wished only to slink away. He needed to find the
village before nightfall and speak to the council of old men—it was always old
men—who had sent word to his manor of Norton Mayfield, begging for help, any
help, to track and to defeat a monster.

“Are you a witch?”

Elfrida, sewing on the sleeves to her younger sister’s
best dress as they sat together on the bench outside her hut, felt fear coil in
her belly like hunger pangs. Keeping her eyes fixed on her needle, she answered
steadily, between stitches, “I am my own master, ’tis all, without a husband.
Have any in the village been troubling you?”

“Oh no, Elfrida, but I was thinking.”

Elfrida tugged another stitch tight, her needle
flashing like a small sword in the bright evening light. “Does your Walter call
me so?” she asked carefully.

She glanced up. Christina was blushing very prettily,
her light-blue eyes brighter than cornflowers when set against her pale-blue
veil, white skin, and primrose hair. Lost in admiration, and quite still for a
moment, she heard Christina admit, “We do not talk much. Well, I do not. Walter
calls me kitten and we kiss.”

Christina and her betrothed could be found kissing all
over the village, so that was no surprise.

“Yet still.” Christina pressed a well-bitten
fingernail to her rose-petal lips. “Our dam was a witch.”

“She was a wisewoman, Christina.”

“Our father was a wizard.”

“A healer and dowser,” Elfrida patiently corrected.

“And you are all of that, of those things, I mean.”

Elfrida fastened the final stitch and knelt beside her
sister, crouching back on her heels in the snow. Christina was not usually so
fretful.

“Walter loves you very much,” she said after a space,
“and you have a good dowry.”

A good dowry it was, of cloth she had spun and ale she
had brewed, cheeses she had made, and silver pennies she had earned by her
healing and dowsing. Since her earliest childhood, Christina had longed to be
married, with a hearth and children of her own, and Elfrida had striven to keep
her safe and happy. She was the eldest, so it was her duty, and she had
promised their parents, on their deathbeds, that she would do so.

“But will the priest marry us?” Christina was biting
another fingernail.

“Today is the very eve of your wedding, little one.”
Elfrida tugged gently on her sister’s dress. “This is your wedding gown.”

“He has preached against redheads.”

“You are no redhead, and Father John’s sermon was on
modesty for women,” Elfrida replied. Her sister was not a redhead, but she was,
and redheads were rumored to be witches. “He said that for a girl to be
unveiled was to be as brazen as a redhead. He took my healing ointment, too.”
She tugged gently a second time on Christina’s dress. “Walter will be here to
see you after sunset. Would you have him see you in your gown?”

Her sister ignored her question and pouted. “He will
be late. He is coming here only after a meeting with his old men, and you know
how they go on!”

“Did he say what the council was about?”

Christina shrugged. “He may have done, but I was not
listening then.” She colored prettily. “Will you comb my hair again?”

Elfrida silently rose, kicking the snow from her
faded, red gown—one that had belonged to their mother—and eased the wooden
combs from Christina’s pale, shimmering hair. As she gently teased and tugged
and Christina’s breathing slowed, Elfrida thought of the council. Yester
evening, when he swept into their hut and whirled Christina into his meaty
arms, Walter’s shrewd gray eyes had glanced everywhere. He had asked twice if
their door was well secured and poked the roof-thatch as if seeking rats’
nests. He had promised them one of his dogs this very evening, as a gift, he
claimed, then blushed when Christina clapped her hands and kissed him.

Elfrida frowned, worrying a comb over a small knot in
her sister’s tresses. Walter and the rest of the village men knew something,
and none of her gossips in the bakehouse or the wash rocks by the stream knew
anything. Christina, dreaming of wedding flowers for her hair and of babies to
come, was not concerned, but Elfrida was not satisfied. Why had Walter promised
the gift of a dog—to warn and guard them from what? She had spotted no boar or
wolf tracks in the nearby woods. Was a man-wolf—an outlaw—abroad and making
havoc? Were disgruntled men-at-arms from a wretched Norman lord foraging close
to their village? But why did the village men, her village men, not explain?

Granted, I would not say much to Christina, who is
easily wary and will not linger even in the widest paths of the forest, but I
am wisewoman here! These village elders turn to me when they have lost things
and for cures when their bodies pain them. They should tell me everything. When
Walter comes tonight I will leave the lovebirds in peace and safety together
and call on the headman myself.

Magnus listened to the high, excited chatter of the
council and watched the old men as they argued on their long bench in front of
a poor, smoking fire. Their bread was moldy and their cheese worm-ridden, so
under cover of the vast shadows in the great hut, he dropped both into the
rushes for the rats to find. The ale was good, though. He took another drink,
then asked idly, “Who brewed the ale?”

Silence greeted his question. In this council, only he
and the headman understood each other as the village dialect was utterly
incomprehensible to him. He waited as the old man translated his question to
the group and waited again as the headman made a slow, careful reply.

“The drink was made by Elfrida, the herb-woman in the
next village.”

The headman, a wrinkled fellow as gnarled and stubby
as the old olive trees Magnus had seen while away on crusade, muttered
something else. Magnus, sitting on a low stool that made his backside go numb
and his long legs ache, leaned toward him.

“She is a witch, you say, as well as a healer?”
Seizing a branch, he stirred the fire and studied his huddled companions by its
brighter flames. “Is she a good witch, a pious one? Can she help us?”

His questions, once translated, brought a mass shaking
of heads and twitchy strokings of ragged beards. One or two elders said more,
leading to a furious, whispered debate. Magnus finished his ale and thought
about cutting thorns and scrub for defense and digging ditches and repairing
and strengthening walls and roofs—all work which must wait until daylight.

“So you have not told your womenfolk of this threat,
not even your wisewoman,” he said, once the whispers had died down.

“She is not our wisewoman! She is good, yes, pious,
but of the next village!”

“But a woman, all the same. And why do your two
villages not work together? Why not bring all your young women into this hut
and have them sleep by the fire, with your men sleeping in a circle round
them?”

He saw a look of shame flicker across the headman’s
wrinkled face and added more gently, “Would that not keep them safe?”

“For how long? This month, one of our maids went
missing. Last month, this monster struck in another neighbor village, snatched
a maiden, and returned into the forest. No one can track him, no one. He may
return tonight or tomorrow or at the next full moon, or in the next three
months. He should return to the other village or our neighbors and leave ours
in peace!”

“And that is your hope.” Magnus nodded at the spate of
words, marking that the old man was too agitated to translate for his
companions. Three villages, three settlements, made this search harder, for the
beast had many targets.

“We need your help,” the headman continued doggedly.
“Our women are not fine ladies. They work. They spin at home, or weave at home,
or brew, or cook, or gather harvest or plant or weed, or wash, or make butter
or cheese—all at home.”

“But in the evenings, can they not come here?” Magnus
prompted.

“The Forest Grendel strikes at any time, night or day.
We cannot guard them all the time. We have told them nothing.”

“That is what you call the beast?” Magnus was struck
by the aptness. In the old tale of Beowulf, Grendel was the creature who preyed
upon the warriors, striking in the night and carrying them away from the golden
hall, unopposed and unstoppable until the hero fought him.

“How else should we name the creature? He is in very
truth the monster of this woodland, a Forest Grendel!”

Magnus nodded agreement. “When the girls were
kidnapped from here and the other village, how was this hidden from your
womenfolk?”

“The one here was only an orphan and disliked by all
but her lover. It was rumored she had run off to some town. We did not tell
anything of the other maiden.”

Magnus said nothing, but the headman sensed his
disapproval. “What else would you have us say? They are women, after all. If
they knew the danger, their wits would not stand it.”