Dark Maiden Page 10

  Are my flowers still in my belt? Yes.

  Geraint lengthened his stride and surged ahead. Still determined to protect me, honeyman?

  She could see the great wooden door of the church closed tight against the creatures of the night. Through a round window above the entrance came the flickering light of braziers and candles inside. Around the door, the dogs pranced and howled, their feet slipping and pattering on the trodden earth, their ears laid back, their teeth bared.

  Beasts trying to reach their masters or are they after something else? Or escaping something else? And where is Father William?

  Somewhere behind Yolande, a blackbird caroled an alarm, but her senses were already fully alert.

  “Something comes,” whispered Geraint.

  Darkness flicked along the edge of her sight and she blinked. A tall shadow oozed across the door of the church, silent and slow as an adder in winter. Blacker than any other shadow in Halme, it spread across the great timbers, steadily and completely.

  As if it seeks a way in.

  The dogs redoubled their yelping and their muzzles drooled as they flung themselves at the door, desperate to flee the shadow. The thud, thud, thud of the hounds striking the wood was like an off-key drum.

  “Go!” Yolande shouted, loosening an arrow as the pack of dogs whimpered, turned tail and fled. “Get back to your master in hell and leave the good folk here in peace!”

  Her arrow found its target, sinking into the heart of the shadow in a blinding flash of light. There was a final howl, perhaps from one of the dogs, and the shadow dropped away.

  “What in God’s sight was that?” hissed Geraint.

  “I have been asking the wrong questions,” Yolande answered. Furious at herself for being so slow in understanding, she did not care if the revenant reappeared or not. She strode up to the door, pulled her arrow free and hammered on the wood. “I have been wrong but now I will have answers.”

  Someone in the church would know.

  The scent of crushed Christmas roses swirled about her as the church door opened and she stepped through into the light.

  * * * * *

  “It is not a vampire,” Yolande said again. Geraint marveled at her patience but recognized the need for it. The womenfolk and few men huddled ’round the flaming braziers in the nave of the church were already frightened enough.

  So far, her questions—who has died here of late, which men? What are their names? Where are they buried?—had created a tumult of chattering but no clear answers. Villagers jabbed each other in the ribs and rocked from foot to foot, clearly embarrassed but stubbornly silent.

  “We know what happens to a vampire,” shouted a woman, her children gathered ’round her like warriors around a great lord, their faces turned to Yolande and taut with fear and loathing.

  “Alive or dead, no one will be harmed,” Geraint said aloud, raising his hands as a priest raises the bread and wine before the altar. “No one will be mutilated.”

  His words, or his gesture, calmed the tight little group for an instant before the grumbling began again.

  “But they cut the heads off vampires and carve out their hearts.”

  “Godith, I have said it already. This is no vampire,” Yolande repeated for the third time.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because there is no plague, pestilence or disease here. There is a restless soul, a revenant, yes, but one drawn by love and desire, not by hate.” Her lips quivered slightly, the only sign of tension in her. “I will write a letter of absolution and the soul will find his rest.”

  “Does that mean the dreams—”

  “Another matter altogether. I will work on that when I have finished with the revenant.”

  “Yet how can that be, and so simple? A letter?”

  “Being a sacred scribe is not simple,” Geraint put in. He wanted to wag a finger at the noisy goodwife but confined himself to folding his arms across his chest. “Can you write, Mistress Reeve?”

  Even in the dim orange flames, he could see Godith blush. “We heard his dogs outside,” she exclaimed, as indignant as a hen pushed off its nest and determined to have her say. “They come because they dread him and how is that good? How can he be good?”

  “Whose dogs?” Yolande stepped forward into the heart of the nave and bore down on Godith. “Was he a huntsman, a forester? I promise I will harm nothing, do no injury to any of your kin, be they living or passed on.”

  She stood tall and slim as a lily, a gentle dark Madonna. The drooping garland of Christmas roses hung from her belt like a perfumed cloud, the candle and brazier flames surrounded her like a halo. “Please, let me help you. Let me help this poor soul to his final, honored rest.”

  “He was a huntsman for our lord. Martin, his name was,” remarked a quiet, weary voice. “He was my husband. He owned the dogs though they come to me now, and often not only them… We buried him last month by the church gate so he can see our house.”

  A squat ball of a woman pushed through the reluctant villagers, a son and daughter trailing behind like ducklings. When she looked up at Yolande, Geraint saw the grooved shadows under the woman’s eyes and could not help but notice how her homespun dress bagged on her.

  Martin liked his woman very plump but she has lost much flesh of late.

  “Perhaps we buried him too close,” she was saying. “He can find us—find me—so easily. Father William said he would rest.”

  Father William knows little of rest himself these days. Geraint disliked the clergy but even he could find a little pity for this less-than-holy father.

  “Daughter, I can give him peace,” Yolande said gently. “He loved you greatly, yes?” And more gently still, “He seeks to remain with you? By day and by night? Does he come as himself or as shadow?”

  “Shadow. Ah God!” The woman shuddered and fresh tears burst from her. Yolande swiftly drew her aside to the south wall of the nave, talking to her and her children in a low, urgent way. Geraint could tell it by the set of her shoulders and by the way she lifted and stretched out both arms as if to shield the stricken family.

  “She yours?”

  Geraint deigned to glance at the smith, disliking the fellow already, the more so because the fellow was still looming in church. “My lady is her own.”

  “Bitten off more than she can chew here, I wager.”

  Geraint shrugged it off but the gleam in the dirty-handed smith’s piggy eyes warned him the man had something to say. “The dead should stay dead,” he observed, seeking to provoke.

  “Not Martin. He was a randy brute when breathing and his dogs were exactly the same. They got one of my bitches in pup and she was never right afterward. When he died at the start of winter, we should have drowned the lot, I say. Now they paw after his widow and his ghost rides with them.”

  “My lady’s letter will see all is quiet and holy. The widow can then give the pack to her lord if she wishes.”

  The smith scratched his stubble and broke wind. “Godith is right. A few words on parchment will not see this end.”

  “Sacred words and blessed parchment,” Geraint countered. “All will be well by Christmas.”

  “She has a day then. Good day.”

  Good night, master smith, and may the next horse you shoe kick you through your stable roof. “All will be well,” he repeated through tight lips at the smith’s broad, retreating back.

  All would be very well indeed, if Yolande could write.

  * * * * *

  “I have parchment in my pack. You can write the letter. I will bless and sign it. I can sign my name.” Yolande stared at Geraint with a confidence she did not feel. “I know you can write. All those years as a novice, you must have learned.”

  Geraint said something she did not hear. They were out of the church again, striding through the silent village to the reeve’s house. Taking advantage of their moment of peace, she cradled her Christmas flowers again. Several, sad to say, were missing their blooms. But still
I have them, my first love-flowers.

  “What of ink and stylus?” Geraint’s voice lay deep in his chest, a sign she recognized as disapproval or disquiet, or both.

  She had to make her answer calm and easy. “The reeve will have all we need. This is a rich place. The reeve will keep tallies and records for his lord.”

  “The priest’s house will have ink.”

  “You think?” Yolande asked lightly, convinced everything in that house was doubtless tainted. Father William was a problem she did not want to deal with tonight.

  Did the revenant’s wanderings inspire the carnal dreams in the maids and womenfolk here? Let Geraint write a letter to this restless soul and I shall sign it and place it on Martin’s coffin. Then we shall see.

  “The dogs have gone,” Geraint said.

  “Following their master to his earthly home.”

  “But by the church they sought to escape him.”

  “They fear and yearn for him together.” Yolande glanced at her companion, saw the stark tension in him.

  Her memory returned to that astonishing rush of heat, of ecstasy, she and Geraint had shared in the wood. Such piercing sweetness and him smiling at her, and the amazing vigor and length of his member. His body was seasoned and supple as a whip, and his manhood blazing warm, strong as a poker and yet with that curved, tender tip. What would it be like to touch it again? To explore the lovely contradictions of his loins?

  Geraint had his head turned away from her, seeking the hounds, and she could view him at leisure. Were these stolen moments of memory part of marriage too? Or was this the dangerous, beguiling influence of the incubus that haunted Halme?

  No, I do not believe that. These thoughts make me happy, not fevered. I am refreshed, not craving. No wonder my father was content with my mother. Yet truly, I did not know the sacrifice of the clergy, with their sacred chastity, until now.

  And honeyman said there was more.

  “Foul female!”

  She could not see the new speaker but she smelled it—the ripe, fleshy, bad-egg stink of the restless dead and the possessed. The force of evil knocked her off her feet, bouncing her head onto the frosted dirt. A storm of words erupted in her mind, the whirling rage of the restless dead.

  “Black bitch! Whore!”

  This enemy knows me as the exorcist at least. Releasing her flowers—it was lose them now or maybe lose her soul later—she rolled, scrambled to her knees and made the sign of the cross with her arms. Geraint followed her lead, making a cross of his powerful, tanned arms, though with considerably more grace and style. Ever the performer.

  Then the close, hot mind of the spirit choked her again. “Black whore!”

  “Scant variety in his insults, has he?” Geraint observed, which meant he could hear them clearly too. This rabid bawling must be coming from the priest’s mouth.

  “Father William, I summon you with a bell.” She stretched and shook one of the tiny, tinkling bells on Geraint’s costume, praying Christ would not be offended. “Please, Holy Mother. As you love tumblers, help us,” she chanted, her throat as dry as old sin. She cleared her throat as Geraint spat to the right for extra luck. “I summon thee,” she called in Latin.

  “Bitch!”

  “By the word of God, by the power of Christ, by my mercy in the Virgin, I summon thee, William of Halme.”

  A pebble struck against her thigh but she ignored the smart.

  “Are you afraid to face me, Father William?” She said his name as a goad to the soul possessing him, and to the wretched man to remind him of himself and to inspire him to hope.

  Hope is a kind of fighting, so hope, Father William. Hope I can rid you of this evil parasite.

  “The fellow is like all clerks,” drawled Geraint, his head bobbing like an apple suspended on a string as he scoured the darkness for the priest. “A poor thing, scared of women.”

  A roar that was also a rising scream echoed down the slippery cobbled street, bouncing off the houses. Yolande ducked as a cascade of rubbish, dung and more stones peppered her shoulders and upraised arms.

  The restless spirit fights. So can I.

  “I abjure thee, spirit!” she yelled in Latin and then in the tongue of her father, standing tall against her unseen attacker.

  “Faugh, he stinks.” Geraint grabbed her arm and tweaked it. “Get down. Do you want another barrage of garbage?”

  She wrenched her wrist free and stepped into the swirl of muck and stones. One grazed the side of her face, burning her skin, but she would not bend. Understanding filled her soul, and a deeper sense of pity. I know something of you now, spirit, and how to draw you out too. At least I hope I do.

  “You scratch like a young girl, madam spirit, but should you not leave your host?” she said aloud. “He cannot be comfortable for you.” Her cheek smarting, a smear of blood trickling down from her temple, Yolande made herself smile. “Surely I would do better?”

  “No,” yelled Geraint as she opened her arms and invited the spirit inside her.

  He rushed and collided with her just as Yolande drew the sparkling chill of the restless dead into her bones. Before she could protest, Geraint brought his mouth onto hers and kissed her.

  The spirit seeking to enter her heart reached for his embrace instead. Yolande tried to close her lips, tried not to embrace Geraint as he wound his arms about her.

  He was too strong, his kiss too tasty and hot. His lips nibbled hers and his tongue flicked against her teeth and the lush, manly scent of him filled her. In that instant she knew herself possessed by him.

  No! The spirit writhing inside her still sought to claw up her throat to join Geraint. She twisted and he released his iron grip. She spat. Geraint dragged her back, flinging something onto the frozen earth from his tunic.

  “Salt,” he panted, catching her glaring question. “I knew you could not reach your holy water or cross.”

  “Salt you just happened to have on you.” Her tone was dry while the rest of her felt weak as water. She did not glance at the ground where she had spat. The spirit had gone and so had its angry waves of sulfur.

  Geraint shrugged a wiry shoulder. “I have kept some salt on me for these past few months. You lead a busy life, cariad. You cannot be carrying everything.”

  Laughter bubbled abruptly but she suppressed it. Geraint was watching her closely and she knew she must be careful.

  “Is the spirit gone?” he asked.

  “It will no longer possess Father William.” The restless soul had left the priest of its own free will but, having been expelled from Geraint and herself, would be wandering in search of a new host.

  “I must do more for that poor soul, and by the Mother I shall, believe me,” she went on. She must find the priest or talk to his sister again to discover who this female spirit had been in life.

  “After I write the letter and you sign it,” Geraint said flatly.

  She said nothing, wary of what was coming next.

  Two unblinking blue eyes stared at her. “You knew I would not stand to have you possessed.”

  She said nothing, hoping the cold night would quell her rising blush.

  Geraint gently brushed her unwounded cheek with his fingers. “How did you know the soul within Father William was female?”

  “I did not at first. Then I knew it by the way the priest would not show himself to me and by that shriek and those whirling rocks. No male would throw so badly.”

  “And I was your tasty bait to tempt the creature from you to me and fall between us, you hoped? You thought this restless female has entered one male so why not another?”

  “Of course. You would tempt any woman.” He is quick, my honeyman, and nicely aggrieved.

  “Is that right, by Saint David?” He was closing on her and she backed away rapidly, heels skidding on the cold earth, until her rump and shoulders pressed hard against a wall of wattle and daub.

  “The parchment, we should do it,” she got out then his lips possessed hers afres
h.

  He was as potent as strong wine and though they were of a height, he was faster, stronger, more determined. He whirled her away from the wall and into the hut itself—empty as they all were that night while many of the folk clustered in the church.

  “I have not cleansed here,” she warned, but if he heard her, he was past caring.

  He scooped her off her feet and flung her onto the bed platform, launching himself on top of her so she was pinned.

  “Shall I show you temptation, cariad?” he breathed against her neck. “Shall I?”

  Chapter Ten

  He was tempted to sling her over his knees and smack her backside until she howled. He was tempted to strip her bare and have her for all the rest of the night and the day besides. But even as he nuzzled her throat and fondled her breasts until she panted, the part of Geraint not annoyed at her using him was astonished and amused.

  She considers me tempting! Geraint the player has caught a queen, one who finds me so luscious she believes I am fine enough for the spirits.

  A giddy idea, this was a pride saver and one that saved them both, for how could he abuse such enchanted innocence?

  I will not take her now, though I could, but she shall smart and burn a little, yes indeed.

  Yolande floated in a sky or sea of pleasure. Geraint moved above her, pinning her wrists with one hand and stroking with the other, tracing the lines of her body with kisses. Each time she brushed an arm or leg against him, he leaned into her touch as if he too reveled in it.

  “Bathsheba,” he murmured at one point, which she did not understand but that did not matter. He had unlaced her tunic and leggings again, teasing and easing his fingers between her thighs.

  “My flowers, gone,” she whispered, sorry for that even as she raised her body to give him more intimate passage.

  “You are a flower,” he answered, sweetly caressing her. “And I shall give you more.”