Dark Maiden Page 4

  For an instant the abbot looked older, his face misted with memories and pain. “It had to be swift and secret. I knew I could cow the pardoner and that Yolande could deal with him also, even if she dislikes him.”

  “Ah, that is what you hate about me, is it not? I do not bend my knee to your authority.”

  “You have no respect.”

  “And is a bit of carved wood, however sacred, more precious to you than Yolande?”

  The abbot shifted, making a fist as if he wanted to strike him. “It is the very cross of the Magdalene!”

  Out of temper, although aware he had been deliberately provocative, Geraint swung his pack off his shoulders and recovered the cross in a few brisk movements. He set it upright in the center of the chapter house and stepped back.

  If the abbot loves it so much, he can bend for it.

  “Do you love her?” he asked abruptly. “Yolande. Do you?”

  “It is Christ’s wish that we love all God’s creatures, including man.” The abbot licked the white flecks of spit from the corners of his thin mouth and moved to the crucifix, bearing it aloft and tucking it safely into the crook of one arm.

  Will he sing it a lullaby too?

  Geraint folded his arms across his chest like an angry fish-seller’s wife. It was that or punch an abbot. “And what do you love about Yolande? How her eyelashes curl at the ends? How she puts herself into danger first to protect others? How she never abandons a friend? How she walks all day without a complaint? How she sometimes talks in her sleep because she is so beset? How she laughs and sheds ten years each time she does? Or are such human reasons too earthy for you?”

  He stopped, mainly because he had run out of English words for the moment and his mind was filled with indignant, furious phrases in Welsh. He also wanted to see whether Abbot Simon would answer.

  “These human trifles, as you call them, are irrelevant. It is her soul—”

  “Yes, her soul, hers alone, and unique. Created in the image of God. What do you love about that? Or is the soul of one female exorcist too mean to consider?”

  “Stay away from her!” thundered the abbot. “What do you know of her trials and torments, of what she might need to encounter? If you love her, you should not trouble her. Or would you act upon this love and then abandon her—as is the habit of fleshy, sinful men?”

  “Sorry, no.” Geraint counted off on his fingers. “I will not leave her, no. I will not act upon anything and abandon her, no. I will not trouble her, no. Do I know the trials she has? No, I do not, but then neither do you, my lord abbot, neither do you.”

  Abbot Simon stared at him for so long that Geraint wondered if he had been speaking in Welsh after all, but the fellow crossed and roused himself. “If you dare to interrupt her work, you shall answer to me.”

  Still gripping the cross, he stalked from the chapter house, leaving Geraint cursing under his breath. That did not go well, not at all. Fool—when will I learn to play humble with the great? Pray God he does not take it out on Yolande.

  Her ears burning, Yolande hurried away from the door and down a flight of steps to the cloisters. When a monk sped past carrying a steaming poultice on a shovel, en route from the kitchen to the infirmary, she backed into deeper shadows.

  I did hear right last night when Geraint said he cared for me. He admitted it to the abbot.

  She was sorry and glad together—sorry to hear it through listening at a door and glad he had said it. He had fought for her with the proud and haughty Abbot Simon. No one had ever done that for her before.

  And are you not indulging in the sin of vanity? Are you not thinking of Geraint instead of what ails this place and the reason why you have been summoned? The reason why Abbot Simon sent on the cross of the Magdalene to you? Is this not frivolous and uxorious behavior of the very kind the abbot warned against?

  “But he loves me,” she said aloud. “And of his own free will.” Abbot Simon cared for her, she knew, in a Christian way, and her parents had loved her because she had been theirs. Geraint was the first to love her for herself.

  Even though I talk sometimes in my sleep. She was only mildly disconcerted to learn that, for as soon as she had heard it another thought followed—Geraint will never betray me by anything I say then.

  He had his darkness, her honeyman, but he strove for others, raged against unfairness and accepted her as she was.

  As radiant and joyous as an angel, she lengthened her stride so she would reach the monastery church before the abbot.

  * * * * *

  It was not the time for a holy office and the church was deserted. Yolande stood quietly at the back, against the north wall, and slowly inhaled.

  She smelled stale robes, stale sweat, candle wax and incense.

  She knelt where she was and prayed to the Magdalene, companion of Christ. Why Saint Michael and the Magdalene? She did not understand it any more than Geraint. The abbot had not explained either and was probably unlikely to do so now.

  She rose and watched the door open. Abbot Simon strode across the nave to her.

  “I sense no restless dead here but I cannot pray,” she said.

  “None of us can pray here.”

  She stared at him. Part of her had feared it was her thoughts and feelings about Geraint that had made her unable to focus on prayer.

  “And during holy services?” she asked, hoping the abbot did not see the relief shining in her face.

  He beckoned her to follow and approached the high altar. “Candles go out,” he admitted in a low monotone. “Singing is flat. There are errors in the responses, tiny pauses, the wrong words. Monks claim forgetfulness, lack of sleep, indigestion…”

  Are these mistakes or sins? Yolande wondered.

  “There is less charity and consideration among the brothers.”

  And to others. Yolande, inwardly ashamed, recalled the all-too-recent quarrel between Abbot Simon, herself and Geraint.

  “Some things I cannot speak of, for they are under the seal of confession.” Abbot Simon stopped and bowed before the altar. “There has been an erosion, almost a breach, by unkind forces.”

  The candles flickered and she sensed a change in the air. She whipped ’round, took the bow off her shoulder and readied an arrow, her body, bow and arrow together making the sign of a cross.

  “Pax, my Yolande.” Geraint entered the nave. “Is it always so cold in here?”

  It was not, of course, Yolande recollected. Cold was another sign that things were amiss.

  “Come.” Abbot Simon replaced the crucifix within its ornate silver reliquary upon the altar, bowed again to the sacred marble table and its relic and stepped to one side. “Both of you.”

  Yolande dared not glance at Geraint, lest the abbot be irritated afresh, and sent up an urgent prayer that her honeyman show restraint.

  He simply gave the abbot a nod. “Lead on, Father.”

  The abbot gave a pallid smile in return. “Let us speak more fully on the way to the Tower.”

  Chapter Four

  The abbot and Yolande both had long legs and Geraint was glad he was supple as they stalked away, serious and tall together. Then, before he felt reduced to no more than a sideshow, Yolande glanced ’round at him, haunted and anxious, and he swore again to protect her.

  Good, said a new voice in his mind, a woman’s. I like that in a man.

  Geraint knew there was only one person it could be. “I carried your cross here,” he whispered in Welsh. The abbot and Yolande gave no signs of hearing his latest companion.

  I know. No tests for me, juggler? Should I say the Creed to prove who I am?

  “No, Magdalene.” The presence of her, the risk of it, exhilarated him. There was a challenge in her that reminded him of Yolande. She was still a little ahead of him, tilting her head up like a flower seeking the sun as they emerged into the twilight.

  A prickle at the base of his neck recalled him to the other presence inside his skull. Even saints hate being kept waiting
for an answer. “No, I know you Marys have a soft spot for jugglers.”

  Very good, Geraint. Indeed, I am Mary the Magdalene and this is in part my church. Now fall back a little as those two holy warriors rush on to the Tower. Michael can speak to them, if he chooses.

  He sighed. “Tempting as your offer is, I cannot accept it. Speak to all of us or none.”

  The presence within his mind withdrew. One instant it was there, the next he was alone and lonely inside his skull.

  Yolande turned. “I can smell violets.”

  Geraint groaned—he could smell them too. The saint had truly been with him and he had spurned her.

  Outside, strolling to the Tower by way of the abbey orchard, Yolande felt less oppressed. Abbot Simon was also less haughty. He even approved when Geraint recounted an amazing story concerning the female saint of the monastery. The Magdalene had spoken directly to him.

  “’Tis true, jugglers have held a special place in the favors of the Virgin and the Magdalene,” Abbot Simon said, looking the wiry Welshman up and down as if seeing him afresh. “Let us pray she will return to guide us.”

  “Or Saint Michael,” remarked Yolande. She did not want to meet Geraint’s knowing eye. I am not jealous, not really, and if I were, I would never admit it. He already thinks a good deal of himself.

  “Why those two saints?” Geraint seized the mood as he so often did as a performer.

  The abbot cupped a green apple on one of the trees. “No one knows. Our founder left no record, only the instruction that both should be honored.”

  “I have one thought,” Yolande began softly, unwilling to tell the holy father his business.

  Abbot Simon nodded encouragement and Geraint said, “So have I.”

  “You first,” said Yolande instantly, curious and exasperated together.

  “One a warrior for fighting, one a redeemer for sinners. Both apt, I would say, in a place that needs more guarding than most against the rise of evil.” He cocked a black eyebrow at her as if to say, I have shared, now it is your turn.

  “They are both beloved,” Yolande said at once, stung into explaining and no longer reticent. “Saint Michael is beloved of God. Mary Magdalene is beloved of Christ.” She knew she was blushing and hoped it did not show too much.

  Geraint smacked his thighs with a noisy, eye-catching slap. “I think you have something there, my girl, to be sure. Two favorites, working together to protect.”

  And perhaps that is a sign for me, too, that Geraint and I should work together, Yolande thought.

  Abbot Simon agreed. “There may be truth in that.”

  The three of them left the orchard and began a winding climb up a steep, circular hill, the abbot leading, chanting psalms, Yolande next and Geraint last—to keep my back safe, she admitted, comforted by it. The hill itself rose out of the fens, visible for miles around, and the straight, needlelike tower at its summit made the whole even more striking.

  Striding behind her, Geraint stepped where her shadow would have been had there been more light. “This reminds me of Glastonbury Tor,” he whispered against her shoulder. “Do we totter up here to look down on the abbey?”

  “Perhaps,” Yolande agreed, sensing his unease and understanding it. “How long, Father, before it goes fully dark here?” she called ahead to the psalm-chanting abbot.

  He answered between psalms. “We have time enough for several prayers and we shall return before nightfall. There is something I need you to see inside the Tower. It is only visible at this hour.” He resumed his chants.

  “I would prefer to do my work in full daylight,” she reminded him.

  Abbot Simon, walking with his head bowed, merely stopped his final chant and uttered a gusty sigh. “Bear with me,” he said after a space. “It will be instructive.”

  “Want a push up this slope?” murmured Geraint behind her, his fingers stretching toward her rump. She hissed a “no thank you” at him and hurried on, caught between imagining what Geraint’s hand might have felt like and worrying what she was about to discover.

  * * * * *

  “Look.” The abbot unlocked the door to the Tower and stood back. “This appeared only this year.” Geraint made to enter first but the holy father barred the way with his arm. “You can look from the threshold,” he said.

  Yolande might have grinned at the cockfighting of the two men had she not been overwhelmed.

  A sticky wave of despair strangled her throat. Unknown shapes danced before her, mocking and cursing, sucking at her, raking at her face with what might have been claws or teeth. Beginning at her feet and spreading to her thighs and belly, something hideous and greedy was chewing her flesh. Her skin tightened on her bones, her body froze. She longed to fight but remained helpless, crucified by what she had seen, heard, experienced, smelled. The stink was as vicious as a blow. She staggered, dimly aware of Geraint catching and supporting her.

  More curses, more bickering and now she was lying on the hillside.

  “Back with us, eh?” Geraint’s voice.

  “What did you see or hear, my daughter?” And the abbot.

  “Let her catch her wits, man.”

  “I am recovered.” Yolande sat up to prove it and the hill spun around her. When the world had steadied again, she was glad to accept Geraint’s flask of water and take a drink. She gave him a grateful glance then looked at the abbot. “I saw it.”

  She had only had a glimpse before the stench drove her back but it was enough.

  Scored into the stones of the Tower, written in so deeply that the last rays of the sun illuminated them like pools of blood, were the words, “They gather and begin here.”

  That was it for the night. Geraint knew Yolande was in no state to fight or exorcise anything and the night was closing so fast they would probably break their necks teetering down the hill. She insisted on walking nonetheless, which thwarted the pleasant idea of his carrying her and slowed them to the shuffle of lamed jugglers.

  The moon was high by the time they returned to the abbey but to his surprise and relief, Abbot Simon guided them to the guest rooms. “I will see you at dawn. You are welcome to join the services tonight.”

  “Thank you, Holy Father. I will,” said Yolande before Geraint could say no.

  Which meant he would need to go to the services as well, but that was no bad thing, he admitted. Some additional spiritual indulgence was always good. Abbot Simon had left them at the doorway to the guest rooms, which meant he could coax Yolande to his room, just for a little while.

  “I must pray and prepare,” she said, divining his plan before he even spoke.

  “I will join you for the services,” he answered, resigned.

  But it did not happen that way.

  * * * * *

  Yolande started awake, horrified to discover she had been asleep. Seeing by the grayness about her modest chamber that it was close to sunrise, she limped to the door with burning kneecaps. She was stiff and crookbacked from having slept on her knees with her face resting against her cot.

  When she opened the door to her chamber, Geraint was standing outside in the cramped corridor and juggling. He tossed three pebbles in a swift, spiraling arc and let them fall one by one at his feet.

  “At last! Another few moments and I would have broken down the door. It was only because I could hear you snoring that I did not break in earlier.”

  Her mouth tasted as if something had died in it. “Have you been standing out here all night?”

  “Yes, and glad to, while you took some rest.” He stepped up to her and stroked her cheek. “What are those lines?”

  Yolande traced the cot marks with a finger. They reminded her of what she had seen last evening. “They gather and begin here,” she repeated. “Who are they?”

  “The abbot tells me he does not know. He also told me that he and the prior have searched the monastery and that tower for any token or toy of the devil and found nothing.”

  Yolande, trying to ease the tendons
in her neck, looked hard at Geraint. “You two are suddenly very friendly.”

  “When you did not go to matins, he came to see why.”

  “I did not hear him.” Mortified, she tried to straighten and her knees and calves screamed within her. She wanted to scream out loud.

  “We fell to talking.” Suddenly he scooped her off her feet and began to massage the back of her neck. “You have some rare knots here,” he observed, working with one hand as he cradled her with the other. “Back to the cot or some demon will tie you in a bow and be done.”

  “I cannot be wasting time,” she protested, but then the thin pallet met her lips and she was facedown on the bed with Geraint pinning her.

  Not how I imagined any embrace between us.

  “Hush now, cariad, and let me free your limbs. Did you fall asleep praying?”

  She groaned as his supple hands swept over her back and legs and arms, kneading sensation into her body.

  “Good?” he asked, stroking and circling.

  “Uh…” Her shoulders clicked as the ease of a hot bath seeped through her. He ran something—a finger, a knuckle—down her calves and her legs relaxed, flopping outward. He took off her boots and rubbed her aching insteps and toes and she basked in the simple pleasure.

  Only I should not be doing so—

  “Easy, there.” Geraint firmly pressed her down as she reared up. “Even Christ had his feet washed and oiled and tended. I could oil your bow and bowstring too if you wish. How is it you carry that? For protection?”

  “My mentor, the abbot, gave it to me.” Yolande heard her own drowsy voice and sighed as Geraint’s powerful fingers worked their calming charms across her back. “He said it would give me time.”

  “Time and distance against mortal attacks, for sure, but do spirits move in time?”

  “He said it is the bow of Saint Sebastian.”