Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Read online

  “I dream true, and I dreamed this.” She was blushing, though not, he realized quickly, from shyness.

  “Why burn so wildly?” she burst out, clearly furious. “You have wasted it! All that good wood gone to ash!”

  “My men know my sign and will come now the storm has gone.” He had not expected thanks or soft words, but he was not about to be scolded by this red-haired nag.

  “That is your plan, Sir Magnus? To burn half the forest to alert your troops?”

  “A wiser plan than yours, madam, setting yourself as bait. Or had your village left you hanging there, perhaps to nag the beast to death?”

  Her face turned as scarlet as the fire. “So says any witless fool! ’Tis too easy a charge men make against women, any woman who thinks and acts for herself. And no man orders me!”

  Magnus swallowed the snort of laughter filling up his throat. He doubted she saw any amusement in their finally being able to speak to each other only to quarrel. Had she been a man or a lad, he would have knocked her into the snow, then offered a drink of mead, but such rough fellowship was beyond him here.

  “And how would you have fought off any knave, or worse, that found you?” he asked patiently. “You did not succeed with me.”

  “There are better ways to vanquish a male than brute force. I knew what I was about!”

  “Truly? You were biding your time? And the pox makes you alluring?”

  “Says master gargoyle! My spots will pass!”

  “Or did you plan to scatter a few herbs, perhaps?”

  He thought he heard her clash her teeth together. “I did not plan my sickness, and I do not share my secrets! Had you not snatched me away, had you not interfered, I would know where the monster lives. I would have found my sister! I would be with her!” Her voice hitched, and a look of pain and dread crossed her face. “We would be together. Whatever happens, I would be with her.”

  “This was Christina?”

  “Is Christina, not was, never was! I know she lives!”

  Magnus merely nodded, his temper cooling rapidly as he marked how her color had changed and her body shook. A desperate trap to recover a much-loved sister excused everything, to his way of thinking.

  She called you a gargoyle! This piqued his vanity and pride.

  But she does not think you the monster, Magnus reminded himself in a dazzled, shocked wonder, embracing that knowledge like a lover.

  Elfrida was unaware of the impact of her words. He wondered if she even knew what she had admitted as she continued to speak in a torrent of fear. “She will be so frightened, and Christina is so young, so delicate. She was getting married, but what if her betrothed says no to the wedding after this? To marry and to be loved were always her greatest hopes!” Elfrida lurched to her feet, growing paler still. “I must find her!”

  She stumbled off the pallet, losing her footing, and collapsed in a puddle of clothes. She lay still, her long hair streaked across her limp form like a trail of blood.

  Cursing, Magnus reached for her. “Should have kept to love potions and spinning,” he muttered, tossing her over his shoulder. He knew a girlish faint when he saw one, but Elfrida would have to come to on the back of his horse. At long last he could hear the drumming of approaching riders and, from the shouts and catcalls, knew they were his men.

  Chapter 3

  Her dreams were dark and strange, full of loud noises and storm. She called, in her dreams, on the saints and the old ones to protect her, while at times she was in a land of white, then red and green. When the space about her turned blue, she woke.

  Magnus was sitting beside her, playing chess with another man. As he moved the queen, he lifted his familiar, ugly head and smiled at her.

  “How are you now?”

  “Better, becoming better,” she said. “But how long and where—”

  He smiled. “Never fret, Elfrida! My men and hounds are searching the forest even now, and Christina’s betrothed is with them. They will find the track of the monster even in this snow.”

  Elfrida looked about, recognizing the hut and the charred remains of Magnus’s huge bonfire.

  “You were too ill to move,” Magnus said simply. “I did not realize at first, but when the fit-demon came over you, I reckoned we must stay here.” With a quickness that astonished her, he took her face in his hand. “The demon has gone from you. Your eyes are as clear as amber again, and very sweet.”

  Elfrida flushed, unused to anything of hers being called sweet. She was conscious, too, of the steady warmth of Magnus’s fingers against her cheek even as she anguished, wondering what the fit-demon had made her do. For the first time in an age she wondered how she looked. Were the itching-pox spots very bad?

  I fret for a mirror when Christina is still missing! That is more sinful than witchcraft.

  The man beside Magnus spoke, and Magnus laughed, releasing her.

  “Mark is a simple soul. He thinks you are not pretty enough to bother with. He says he would have rolled you in the snow and left you.”

  Elfrida rubbed her finger and thumb together, murmuring a charm to bring fleas to the ungracious Mark, a wiry russet-and-gray fellow with a red nose. She smiled when he clapped a hand onto the back of his neck, and cursed.

  “How long have your men been searching?” she asked, wondering if the helmet full of hot water was still about and if she might have some.

  “Since dawn today,” Magnus replied, holding out a flask. “We must do it quickly. More snow is coming.”

  Elfrida glanced at the cloudless sky and wondered how he thought that. “Where are you looking?” she demanded, taking the mead with a nod of thanks. In this sacred time before Christmas, such honey drinks and small luxuries were forbidden, but God would understand a gesture of peace and fellowship.

  Mark glowered and said something more, which Magnus waved away with the stump of his right hand.

  “What did he say?”

  “That an ugly woman is an affront to God and that you ask too many questions.”

  “Mark is a fool. When I am well, I will be acceptable, and Mark will still be a fool.” She glanced at the fellow, who slapped at another biting flea on the back of his neck. “That one will say that all women talk too much. He steals brides, do you know?”

  “I think you mean the monster rather than my soldier.”

  “I hope he fights better than he reasons.”

  “He does. As for the monster, Walter told me through an interpreter.”

  “What else has Walter said?” Loathing the way the men of her own village had kept secrets from her, Elfrida forced herself to swallow her resentment—it would only waste time now. Biting her tongue, she took a huge gulp of mead, which made her eyes water and had her half choking.

  Magnus did not grin or clap her on the back. He waited until her coughing had subsided and gave her a slow, considering look. Whatever he saw must have satisfied him. He spoke again to Mark, a clear order, and waited until the man had risen and kicked through the snow to a covered wagon.

  “How are the spots? Itching yet?”

  Elfrida gave a faint shudder. “Do not remind me.” Since stirring, she had been aware of her whole body tickling and burning. Mark’s idea of rolling in the snow might not be so bad.

  “Walter told me that the village of Great Yarr has a bathhouse. Bathing in oatmeal will help you.”

  She did not say that the village could afford to spare no foodstuffs and would not be distracted. She had tried to rush off in pursuit of the monster before and gained nothing, so now she would gather her strength and learn before she moved. “What did you call the beast? Forest Grendel? Is it known he lives in the forest?”

  Magnus shook his head. “It is not known, but I do not think so now, or at least not outdoors. I have hunted wolf’s heads who have been outlawed and fled into woodland, and they always have camps and dens and food caches within the forest. I have found none of those hereabouts.”

  “My dowsing caught no sign of any la
ir of his,” Elfrida agreed.

  Magnus leaned forward, bracing himself with his injured arm. Elfrida forced herself not to stare at his stump, but to listen to him.

  “Do you sense anything?” he asked softly.

  “The night you came, I felt something approach.” She frowned, trying to put into words feelings and impressions that were as elusive as smoke. “A great purpose,” she said. “A need and urgent desire.”

  Now Magnus was frowning. “Have you a charm or magic that will help?”

  “Do you think I have not tried magic, charms, and incantations? My craft is not like a sword fight, where the blades are always true. If God does not will it—”

  “I have been in enough fights where swords break.”

  “Are your men good trackers?”

  “They would not be with me, else.” If Magnus was startled by her determination to talk only of the beast, he gave no sign. “Tell me of your sister and her habits. Did she keep to the same paths and same tasks each day?”

  “Yes and yes, but what else did Walter say? The old men have told me nothing!”

  “No, they do not want the womenfolk to know anything, even you, I fear.” His kind eyes gleamed, as if he enjoyed her discomfiture. He had a small golden cross in his right eye, she noticed, shining amidst the warm brown.

  A sparkle for the lasses, eh, Magnus?

  To her further discomfiture, she realized he had asked her something. “Say again, please?”

  “Would you like some food to go with your mead? There are the remains of mutton, dates and ginger, wine and mead and honey.” His brown eyes gleamed. “My men found it in the clearing where I found you. The mutton has been a bit chewed, but the rest is palatable, I think.”

  “It is drugged!” Elfrida burst out. “I put”—she could not think of the old word and used her own language instead—“I put a sleeping draft in the wedding cakes and all.” She seized his arm, not caring that it was the one with the missing hand. “Do not eat it!”

  “Sleeping draft?” He used her own words.

  She yawned and feigned sleep, startled when he started to laugh.

  “A wedding feast to send the groom to sleep! I like it!” He chuckled again and opened his left hand, where, to Elfrida’s horror, there was one of her own small wedding cakes.

  “Do not eat it!” she cried.

  With surprising speed, Magnus rose and flung the cake straight into the forest. Elfrida watched it tumbling through the trees, going leagues and leagues, it seemed to her.

  “Now we must shift with what I have.” Magnus settled back again, rumbles of laughter still shaking in his huge chest. “Do not look so troubled, Elfrida. I am too greedy to put anything on my food but salt, when there is some.”

  With Christina still missing, Elfrida could not smile at the irony, but her belly growled, reminding her that she had not eaten for days.

  “I am hungry, too,” she admitted. “Thank you.” They could still talk while they ate.

  Sharing roasted chestnuts, acorns, toasted bread from the stores of Magnus’s men, cheese and apples and dates, she and Magnus shared their knowledge, too.

  “Walter called him a spider?” Magnus repeated when she had told her sorry tale. “One who comes and goes without sound?”

  “And without breaking twigs. You say he has struck at all three villages? A maid from each one, perhaps?”

  Magnus nodded. “I was told that the orphan lass was taken from Great Yarr and another maid from Selton, with your Christina being carried off from Top Yarr.”

  “So it may be that the beast knows the area well.” Elfrida chewed on a date, guiltily enjoying its sweetness even as she wondered if Christina had eaten yet. “You think he will touch Lower Yarr?”

  Magnus sighed and stretched, cracking the joints in his shoulders and his good hand one by one. “I have sent men to all these places, including Lower Yarr, to get the villagers digging out ditches round their homes and gathering thorns to put round their houses. I wish the menfolk would let the maids come to my manor, but they refuse.”

  “They refuse? They?” Elfrida felt as if she had turned into a dragon and might breathe fire, she was so angry. Rage burst through her, and she clutched her wooden cup so fiercely she heard it crack. “By what right do they choose and not say a word?”

  Magnus scratched at one of his deeper scars. “It is the way of the world. You are freer here than in Outremer, where women are kept indoors.”

  “Thank you. That is such a comfort,” snapped Elfrida. She could feel mead trickling down between her fingers, and her anger tightened another notch. “Christina would be safe now, if they had told us!”

  “Would she have left her betrothed, especially so close to her wedding?” Magnus asked patiently.

  Elfrida closed her eyes and said nothing.

  “Once my men begin work on the ditches, your villagers will have some explaining to do.”

  “Good!” Elfrida ground the fingers of her free hand into her aching eyes. Her limbs itched and flamed, and she no longer had any appetite.

  “Do you know anything of this orphan girl?”

  “Why her particularly?”

  “Because it was obvious from what the headman told me that she had no one to stand for her.”

  Elfrida took a deep breath. “I would have spoken for her, but I knew nothing!” In a fury, she dashed her hand against her forehead, forgetting she was gripping the wooden cup, and immediately saw a host of green lights.

  “I have something of hers,” Magnus remarked quietly. “Part of a blue veil found inside the lean-to. The place where she lived,” he added.

  “The beast came inside her home? Did she let him in? Did he force the door?”

  “From what I was told, I think the creature slipped in through the roof.”

  Which explained Walter’s prodding of the thatch when he had last visited Christina, Elfrida thought, abruptly chilled as she imagined a shadowy, hulking form bursting into a hut from above.

  Was the monster as big as Magnus?

  She glanced at him, her fingers absently scratching at the spots in her hair. He looked at her steadily.

  “I am not him,” he said, “and you should not do that.”

  Elfrida’s hand flew down to her lap. “Blue veil, you say?” she croaked, snatching at the first thing she could to cover her embarrassment. “My sister’s wedding veil is blue.”

  “One of the doors in my dream of the creature was blue.”

  Elfrida’s interest sharpened, even as she realized that Magnus had mentioned his dream to purposely divert her. But then, she worked in dreams. Dreams were important. “Tell me all.”

  She listened carefully to Magnus’s halting account, not shaming him by asking what he was leaving out in his tale of the river and the doors. Men did not feel easy discussing dreams.

  “Who are Alice and Peter?”

  “The true friends of my heart and hearth. Hellsbane—Peter of the Mount—was a fellow crusader, fighting with me in Outremer. He has carried me off the field of battle more than once.”

  “And you him,” Elfrida guessed.

  Magnus waved this off. “His fight name is Hellsbane. Alice gave him that name.”

  “And what is she?”

  “His wife.” Magnus puffed out his cheeks, making himself an ugly, jolly demon. “Like you, she is a healer, a maker of potions. But a lady.”

  Shrugging off the but, Elfrida wondered what Alice the lady looked like, then found her thought answered.

  “She is small, like you, and pretty, with long, black hair and bright, blue eyes. She wears blue, also. The Forest Grendel would have stolen her away had she lived hereabouts and Peter been dead and in his grave.”

  “The monster has his dark-haired bride,” Elfrida reminded him, feeling a pang of envy at the warm way Magnus described the lady Alice, “but no auburn yet.”

  “You cannot put yourself up as bait again.”

  “No one will stop me.”

&n
bsp; Magnus shook his head. “You have some days before you can even entertain such foolishness.”

  “Men like the outward show. I know that all too well. I have never seen a handsome man with an ugly wife.”

  Magnus’s brown eyes twinkled. “You would at court and in kingly circles. A handsome dowry can work marvels for a plain girl.”

  “Plain yes, but no worse than that.” Why do I pursue this? I know men are shallow as dew ponds!

  Anger at herself and mankind made her blaze out with another fresh rage of itching, all over her body. She glanced longingly at the snow and then at the necklace of bear’s teeth and claws slung around Magnus’s thick neck.

  “Those are the claws I saw the night you found me!” she burst out, reaching out to touch the necklace. Pleased to have one mystery understood, she smiled in turn and bent her head eagerly as he dropped a small parcel onto her lap. “What is this?”

  “His token, dropped into the girl’s rush pallet when he stole away with the orphan. I am most interested to know what you make of it.” He cleared his throat. “What you sense from it,” he added, glancing at the charms around her neck.

  Why did he not show me this earlier? Elfrida unwrapped the rough cloth with trembling fingers. She did not want to think of the girl, waking in her bed and finding a monster where she should have been safe within her home.

  She did not want to touch the object, not at first, and studied it a moment. “Have you handled this?”

  “I did exactly as you did, Elfrida. I untied it and looked. I cannot say for the village headman or the rest.”

  She lifted it, still wrapped in the cloth, and sniffed.

  “I did that, too,” Magnus said quietly. “The scent is cloves and frankincense.”

  “Cloves, frankincense with a whiff of pepper and ginger. All foreign and expensive. So the monster has money and servants.”

  “Ah, to buy them for him! Unless he steals those, too, from peddlers and the like, as they pass through the forest.”

  “It has a blue base,” Elfrida observed, turning the cloth on which the object was laid.

  “Ancient glass, Roman, I think, cut to shape and set into the wood. Is it a cup, as seems? Or was it fashioned for other uses?” As he spoke, Magnus lifted his left hand and made the sign to ward away the evil eye.