Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment Read online

  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.

  I will look to my book, he told himself, and instantly felt heartened. The bestiary was full of marvelous things and useful scraps of knowledge. He would look there and take heed of any suggestions of Greek and Arab learning.

  Those folk bred lots of youngsters, after all.

  The problem was, this talk of children did not help, but he should attend. The priest was speaking more of Rowena and the strange minstrel who had appeared at his church on the evening that Rowena went missing. He did so in flawless English, giving his name without being prodded, which, Magnus conceded, was a mark in his favor.

  “I am Father Jerome, priest of Warren Bruer and my lady Astrid.”

  A Norman settlement, Magnus reflected, sensing Elfrida’s speculation concerning the bearded, unmarked priest. Was this suave, tall man rather more than Lady Astrid’s spiritual advisor?

  “Five days ago, at sunset, a traveling player came begging at my church door.”

  “He is a Jew,” announced Lady Astrid. “A solitary, ragged creature carrying a pipe and tabor.”

  Elfrida shot Magnus a glance. Guessing what she wanted and, like her, knowing that Astrid would answer him more readily, he said, “You have seen him, too, my lady?”

  “He is that kind,” the lady responded, which plainly meant she had not.

  “Was he tall, fair, straight-limbed? What color was his motley? What language did he speak? Did he give you his name?” Elfrida asked, leaning forward again.

  “He asked for alms, in a doggerel kind of Latin, alms by the grace of the most holy lady. He did not tell me his name and I never asked for it. The day was waning and I wanted him off my land before he begged for a bed for the nigh
t. For the rest, he was as dark and tall as you, Lord Magnus, dressed like you in a plain cloak and a green tunic, no motley, rather most neat and serviceable, though he was leaner and less…hacked about.”

  Father Jerome addressed only Magnus, but Elfrida would not be ignored. “Was the stranger without blemish of any kind? No pox scars? And did Rowena open the door to him, Father Jerome?” she prompted.

  “She did, though to tell truth, Rowena was not interested in the man. Rowena was sawing through the hawthorn branches we had brought in to decorate the church and she soon returned to that. I sent the fellow off smartly and thought no more of him until I looked for Rowena to bring her to supper and found her gone.

  “The man was young, beardless, some would say handsome,” Father Jerome added. “He wore a sprig of rosemary on his cloak and a rabbit’s or hare’s foot pinned to—”

  “Father Jerome looked for Rowena most carefully,” Lady Astrid broke in. “As did I.”

  “Around and about, all the hiding places a lass might choose?” Magnus demanded, thinking they had heard enough of the handsome stranger.

  The priest nodded. From his shame-faced expression, Magnus guessed he had scoured the church, his home, and the area, seeking the girl. From Lady Astrid’s glower he knew she had set her servants looking widely and had been furious when Rowena remained unaccounted for.

  “Did the stranger take anything, leave anything?” Elfrida asked.

  “Apart from my ward, you mean?” Lady Astrid flared. “Stole off with her to serve their filthy Jewish rites…”

  Magnus blocked out the rest of her complaint and listened to the priest.

  “I thought not, at first, but then when I was looking for Rowena I found this, pinned to the church door. Other households where daughters went missing of late found the same token fastened to their doors.”

  “Valerian,” Elfrida breathed. She did not touch the little withered wreath that Father Jerome had laid on the table but sniffed at it, then sat back.

  “Have you something of Rowena’s for my lord to take as scent for his hounds?” she asked.

  “Any trail will be old by now,” argued Astrid, but Father Jerome snapped his fingers and whispered an order to one of the hovering maids.

  “I will come with you,” Elfrida said quickly, as the maid was about to hasten outside the great hall to their baggage. “I must ready our solar for you, Lady Astrid. We cannot begin a fresh search for Rowena and the other children in darkness.”

  “I did not expect you to hunt or track tonight,” came the cool reply from the lady. “Have you a bath-house here? My ladies and I would bathe, then eat whatever supper we can in this solar.”

  She spoke as if she expected the chamber to be a pig-sty and the food swill.

  “Of course.” Her stiff back revealing her indignation, Elfrida rose and sped off with the maid.

  “Get Mark and Piers to help you with the hot water,” Magnus called after her, amazed at Lady Astrid’s visible arrogance and lack of concern. She may not care for her ward, but if she wanted her back the lady was going about matters in a queer way and not gaining allies. I know Normans are ruthless, but even so. Dismissing her for the moment, he determined to ask the priest more about Rowena.

  Elfrida knows something more, too, and when we are bedded down in the great hall tonight and can talk together, I will know it, or sooner yet.

  Yes, sooner yet…

  Stuffing fresh hay and sleeping herbs into the great bed in the solar, Elfrida considered what she had learned from Father Jerome and the youngest maid, Githa. An elegant, pale young woman sporting many bracelets, Githa had spoken freely of her noble mistress Lady Astrid and the child Rowena.

  “She lived with my lady and we visited Father Jerome’s house in Warren Bruer every week,” Githa was saying, while Elfrida helped her carry the lady’s jewel boxes into the solar. “A happy girl, always cheerful and kind. Last week, when she heard that the son of a friend of my lady’s was sick, Rowena sent the boy her own pet finch.”

  Elfrida heard the lie in Githa’s breathless voice and wondered who the “friend” and “son of a friend” were. “Did you see this traveling player?” she asked.

  Githa shook her head, carefully clutching a jewel case under her arm. “He is unknown to me.”

  That is a strange answer. If Githa had not seen him at all, she would have simply said no. Something is very odd here. Elfrida cast about for something that might spark the maid’s particular interest. Marking Githa’s careful dress, she remarked, “His tunic sounds very fine. I am fond of my lord wearing dark green, for it looks well on him.”

  Githa was too polite to disagree and she filled up the silence with, “The color is very rich. I know the dyers of London produce it, and those of York and Bittesby. I can do this by myself, mistress—”

  “We are going to the same chamber. I am happy to help,” Elfrida replied, wondering if her willingness to do so was a further dark mark against her. As needed, Magnus shifted and carried furniture and chests throughout the manor and pitched in with the harvest and shearing, but was it different for ladies? Her husband, bless him, neither knew nor cared.

  Elfrida was alone now, Githa having slipped back to tend her mistress in the great hall. As she eased the final bundle of lady’s bedstraw and hay into the straining mattress, she felt ashamed and worse, humbled.

  I am uneasy and I cannot understand why. I am a witch, a mistress of magic. I know Magnus loves me, that he is as proud of me as I am of him. I am not a chatelaine, but this manor is not a castle. Trifles of costume and manners, even maids and laundry and baths, should not matter. Lady Astrid, for all her fine birth, cannot find Rowena and the other missing girls, but I can and I will. Magnus and I have done it before.

  Those girls were older, all brides, my sister Christina among them. Last winter we won them back. Pray the Holy Virgin we can do the same for these poor innocents.

  Anger coiled like a dragon in her belly. Rowena and six other young maids were missing and all that Lady Astrid seemed concerned with was her own comforts. Yet what of the other families of the other missing girls, those who were not Rowena? Had Lady Astrid and her priest searched for them? Had any of the families searched? So far as she knew, Warren Bruer was not so many leagues away from here. Why had none of those fathers, mothers, brothers, or sisters come to Norton Mayfield to ask Magnus for help? To ask her?

  My magic may be changing since my marriage, but I will surely find these girls. I must.

  Swiftly, feeling better in action, she made up the bed with fresh linen, swept out the chamber, then sat on her shallow clothes chest. Trying not to look at the larger chest that Piers and Mark had brought in for the Lady Astrid, she counted up what she knew of the missing girls and the stranger, using her fingers and speaking aloud.

  “One and six girls lost, seduced away or taken, always at sunset. Every maid no younger than eleven nor older than ten and four. No girl maimed, crippled or marked. Eldest daughters, younger daughters, middle daughters. All trades, rich and poor, from village or remote country. Fair lasses, brown girls, black maids, redheaded youngsters, thin or stocky, curly haired, straight haired. But all small.” Like me.

  So many. Briefly she quailed, then rallied.

  “A tall, dark stranger, a young man without flaw. A man in green. A man Lady Astrid and her maid may know. He speaks Latin and calls to the Holy Mother. He knows the old wisdom and has some magic. How does he steal the girls away? By music and charm. They have no fear of him. But he must have a place. Neat and clean as he is, he must have a dwelling spot, away from people, and a servant or help-mate.”

  “Why apart and a help-mate?” Magnus asked from the doorway.

  How does he steal up on me with his wooden foot? However he managed it, she was glad he had come. He smiled and nodded at the bed, his ugly-handsome scarred face a tapestry of light and shade.

  “Good enough for a queen,” he observed.

  “Or a troll king?”

&n
bsp; A moment, sweeter and more luscious than mead, flowed between them, then Elfrida returned to the task. “He needs privacy and secrecy and help to hide and keep seven girls.”

  “You think he keeps them?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then we shall find his den.” Magnus threw her a shimmering, slippery scrap of yellow cloth. “Rowena’s head-rail. After some urging of Lady Astrid, I also have Rowena’s under-shift in my keeping, also.”

  The shift would give stronger scent for the hounds, but this scrap revealed more of the child. Tracing the simple daisy-chain embroidery around the tiny, tender crown of the cloth—done by Rowena herself, Elfrida guessed—she fought to remain calm. “I must work with this tonight, and the wreath he left,” she said.

  “I thought you would need to,” Magnus replied, holding the withered wreath aloft in his great hand. “Do I escort you to our church, as an echo of the other church where she was taken?”

  Elfrida shook her head. “A good thought, Magnus, but tonight I must work sky-clad, within a hazel copse, and alone, for the length of a mass.”

  “Alone save for me. No.” As she drew breath to argue, his fist closed round the wreath. “Your work your magic by yourself, yes. I understand you must seek these sad lasses and their captor by your means and give me a lead to search by mine tomorrow, but the moon will be high and bright tonight. And I know what sky-clad means. You told me.”

  “I cannot be distracted,” she warned.

  “Never fret, wife! You shall do your rites and I will not watch. I shall be looking out for peeping toms and other knaves and then I shall squire you back to the great hall. Pray God, we shall catch some sleep there before Lady Astrid calls for her morning rose-water.”

  Elfrida laughed, as he had intended, and the tension in her face eased, but she still looked solemn. “Here we are again,” she said.

  “Seeking more missing girls,” he agreed. “Perhaps if there is a third time, it will be babies.”

  “Hush!” She made a sign against evil and rose off her clothes chest. “I must see to the supper first, or I shall be a poor host.” As well as a poor lady, she clearly thought, but did not say.