Dark Maiden Read online

  Aware that once she sank she would never rise, she raised her bow high and yelled, “Come out! Challenge me or be forever damned!”

  The taut string of her bow hummed and her scalp burned as if scorching claws had raked across it. Crying, “Saint Michael, protect Geraint!” she leaped sideways and fired off an arrow against the north wall of the Tower, the north being the devil’s place. The arrow clattered against the stones and spiraled down to the fetid earth at the Tower’s base.

  “What’s that stink?” Geraint roared behind her.

  “Evil air,” she coughed. Holding the cross aloft, she cleared her throat, chanted the creed within her mind and called out, “By the power of Saint Michael and Saint Magdalene, I command you to leave this place. Go to your final rest and judgment, trusting in Christ’s compassion. Leave the living in peace.”

  Foul replies roosted like crows in her skull, insults against her color and race and sex that shamed her ears and made her stomach boil.

  “I thought the abbot had searched this place,” Geraint complained, unaware that his grumble was a distraction inspired by whatever haunted the Tower.

  “Things return, things reside, things are summoned,” she answered in a fast chant. She ran into the middle of the Tower and stared at the long grooves of the inscription. “Come out!” she shouted in Latin.

  The circular walls around her flickered and a bat flew straight at her face. “Down!” she screamed and tossed herself to the ground. Rolling free and up again, she saw her brave Welsh tumbler sway as the squeaking pipistrelle launched itself for the threshold—exactly against its instinct and nature.

  “Julian the accursed, come out!” The Latin sounded false in her ears but she fired a second arrow, deep into the inscription itself.

  Sparks punched into the backs of her eyes. Through the sooty blackness she felt Geraint grab her tunic, keeping her firmly in this world.

  “Fight me, bastard!” he yelled.

  “No!” ordered Yolande, dreading that Geraint would ignore her, lunge in and be lost.

  Three balls of light burst from his fingers, hitting the word “gather” in the middle of the inscription and obscuring it.

  We shall be denied no longer, boomed in her mind. Around her, the Tower seemed to shift on its foundation as the restless dead screamed their frustration.

  “I can free you,” she called in Latin. “I can help.”

  The smell of sulfur increased.

  Our rites are not yours.

  “I will bury you with honor and salt and with grave goods,” she countered. She did not mention holy water or prayers, which might be too much.

  Some need more, a whisper warned, coiling like a worm in her skull. She clamped down hard on her inward shudder as the alien presence, colder than ice, touched her mind. Trusting in her dream and the saints, she allowed it, breathing slowly like a swimmer before undertaking a deep dive, and let the pictures overwhelm her.

  Geraint heard her gasp and stiffen as if absorbing a blow. He stood more closely behind her, his back to her back, and scanned the gathering shadows for any possible threat. She was as cold as a statue and murmuring in Latin, her voice so low and fast he could not understand what she was saying.

  Again, her bow sang as she loosed another arrow. She was firing at something he could not see but his skin still crawled with fear. A wave of sickness passed over him then his vision cleared again.

  “Yolande?”

  “Almost there, almost at the root,” she answered, resuming her chanting, now in another language, neither Latin nor Greek. The tongue of her father and used rarely, for she stumbled on it at times and he could hear the stops and breaks. His pounding heart swelled with pity.

  Let me help, let me help, please, he pleaded with the saints, thinking of the Magdalene especially, who liked tumblers.

  And then he saw it, a mound of earth so low as to be almost unnoticeable, piled against the eastern part of the circular tower wall. Easily missed, it looked for all the world like a rough, mossy stone jutting from the tower wall, part of the fabric of the building.

  “Should that be there?” He pointed.

  She was off, hunting like a keen hound, diving across the earth and bits of ancient paving stone. As he sped toward her, she pounced and shoveled the earth away with her bare hands.

  “Abbot Simon has fading eyesight,” she gasped, working away, crossing herself and saying more in that queer tongue of her father’s and then adding phrases in Greek that Geraint knew he should understand but had forgotten. “H-he must have missed this.”

  She stopped as a skein of earth tumbled away and the bodies were revealed. Two figures coiled in on themselves and sprawled one over the other as if tipped into this shallow grave. One, by the length of its hair, was surely a woman, although the clothes had rotted away and most of the flesh.

  Geraint covered his mouth to stifle his exclamation. Yolande said quietly, “We must lay them properly to rest.”

  “These were surely victims of some great illness or evil but who buried them?”

  “We may never know,” replied Yolande, “but we should be quick.” She stopped him with her bow. “Do not touch them.”

  She stripped off her cloak and ripped it with her dagger then laid one half of the cloak on the bare ground and, with her boot, pushed the first corpse onto the cloth. Next she covered the woman’s body with the other half of the cloak.

  Swiftly, she dropped some coins and a comb beside the woman’s head. For the second body she offered an arrow and a dagger. She scraped a mark above their heads then began to cover them with fresh earth.

  “Go to your rest,” she said aloud, and in an undertone to Geraint, “I need more earth.”

  He was glad to break away from the pitiful remains and dig, praying there were no others in this place. He dug with his knife, crumbling the hard-packed soil and pushing it toward Yolande. She placed it, handful after handful, over the sad pair, shaping the earth over each while singing softly—a lullaby. Geraint suppressed a second shudder.

  It was a slow and painful labor but at last it was done. Yolande raised herself from her crouch and sprinkled salt on the fresh graves. She gave a stiff bow and backed up several paces.

  Is it over? He longed to ask but a rancid taste in his mouth warned him that it was not.

  Yolande said a final prayer for the dead. It was one of her father’s prayers, so old that all souls and gods would respect it. Her knees cracked as she straightened but the swirl of sulfur in the air was fading. She blinked and the faint yellow haze vanished.

  Geraint squeezed her shoulder. “What now?”

  Kiss her. The idea made sense. He gathered her nimbly into his arms and leaned toward her.

  Their lips met, hers as soft as flower petals, his as warm as the sun. Arousal stroked through him in a thrusting animal need. She was so hard and soft together, her skin so smooth and flawless…

  “Not here.” She was trying feebly to thrust aside his exploring fingers but still arched her back so he could cup her breast more fully. “Please, God, this is not us, not fully us, not here!”

  Her plea undid him. His grip relaxed and she hurled herself carelessly away from him, falling and landing badly on the hard-packed earth. As he moved to help her to her feet, she said, “No, can you not see? This is not us!”

  He spat on his fingers, intending to show her very much that this was them, yes indeed, and then the cool voice of the Magdalene came to him like an unwelcome confessor.

  Should you desire this much, Geraint? Are you a man or a Priapus?

  He did not understand what a Priapus was but he recognized the question. When Yolande gained her feet and said quietly, “This is me, alone,” he understood and pressed her fingers. Her hand was cool again, delicately strong.

  “A demon is here,” she said quietly. “It tries to use our desires against us. It has lost those two poor souls.”

  “Were they sacrifices?”

  “I do not know and it does
not matter now, not in the greater scheme of things.” She spoke quickly as though girding herself for the next fight. “I am glad there was no vampire.”

  “Vampire?”

  She sighed. “I would have needed to bury them with a boulder jammed between their jaws, to pin them to the earth.” Quickly, apparently ashamed of her admission, she turned to the inscription again. “What were those spheres you threw?”

  “Three apples from the orchard.”

  “Ha! I suppose they were blessed, being abbey apples.” As she searched for something in her tunic, she motioned for him to keep chattering.

  “And thrown by a juggler, do not forget,” he quipped. He did not want to cut a caper inside the Tower so he added in Welsh, “Peace and blessings to all those who are within this place.” Just as he might when entering a house.

  Forget your blessings, rasped a new thought. We spit on your blessings, you disgusting little Briton.

  “I know you now,” Yolande called in Latin. She had heard the challenge too and sensed the presence of the approaching demons, more ominous than a building thunderstorm. “Proud as the Romans of old and as cruel. You should go back whence you came, Julian the accursed and others of your kind. Your sacrifice has failed.”

  The pressure in her brain was such she felt as if her eyes stood out on stalks, but she drove her order home. “I have buried those two, woman and man, and they are beyond your vile touch. Get back to hell!”

  We are not yours to command. None of yours, darkie, woman-whore—

  The voices cut off with a shriek as she pinned the cross and a packet of her most sacred and magical herbs into the very middle of the inscription, driving it home and fixing it fast with an arrow point.

  “Begone!” she screamed in Latin and felt the whole tower shift in response to her command as the strength of Saint Michael and the Magdalene flowed through her.

  The world around her went white and then all was silence.

  * * * * *

  Sometime later, she blinked.

  “Back with me, cariad? That is good.” Geraint lay sprawled beside her on the Tower hillside. He ran a flower of grass down her cheek, tickling her. “I thought it better for you to stir out here with the skylarks than in there.”

  “Larks? There are no birds above the Tower.”

  “There are now,” he replied simply. He waved the key in front of her. “Shall I keep this to give to the abbot? It is locked again so you need not fret.”

  Yolande sat up, grateful her vision did not spin. “Have you anything to drink?”

  “A girl after my own. Here we go.” He gave her a flask.

  “What next?” she wondered, not realizing she had spoken aloud until he answered.

  “Next we stroll back to the abbey, you refresh yourself in the guesthouse for a day or so and then we move on.”

  Yolande hid her expression behind the flask. She liked the “we” but wanted to be clear about it.

  “I go where I am called,” she said, pulling distractedly at a clump of speedwell. “Somehow those who need me find me, but it is a wandering life.”

  “Excellent.” His teeth gleamed against his tan. “That suits me.”

  “I must remain as I am.”

  He rolled onto his stomach. “For now, certainly, but not forever. For this time of seven. Did you know Jacob labored for seven years for his wife?”

  She laughed, amused at one idea. “You intend to work?”

  “Not me. Not honest, sweating toil. But waiting I can do very well.”

  He would wait for me for seven years. The thought was beguiling and terrifying in equal measures.

  “I think you should ask this mentor of yours who laid this on you. Did he mean seven years or seven months? Was it Abbot Simon?”

  “No, another.”

  “When you next meet him, ask.”

  “I will.” In her mind, her words were already a vow.

  “What kind of man is he? No, let that keep.” Geraint wrapped a chain of speedwells around her wrist. “I love being with you, Yolande. I love you, my dark maid.”

  “I love you.” I love you, honeyman, she corrected silently, but she knew Geraint understood. Truly, it was enough for both of them for now.

  “Should we go tell Abbot Simon his tower is clean?” he asked sometime later.

  “He will know already.”

  Finally at peace, she lay with Geraint amongst the grasses, content to watch the blue sky and listen to the skylarks.

  Chapter Six: Dark Desires

  England, the North, six months later

  It was the day before Christmas Eve and a whole night past the danger of the winter solstice. The place should have been filled with a happy tumble of baking, spitting and roasting. Women and children should have been gathering green stuff to hang from the beams of their cottage roofs. The men ought to have been in a holiday mood, checking the beer and ale and wandering from house to house to exchange greetings. Instead, the place was still, as silent as a grave and about as welcoming.

  And where was the priest? Why had he not appeared to welcome her?

  Yolande glided down the stone track that wound through the cluster of houses to the church. Halme was certainly rich but the whole village had a gray, beaten look. The cottage doors were pointedly closed against her as she passed.

  Perhaps it is because of my color or because I wear man’s clothes, she reflected, but she sensed it was more. These folk were afraid.

  But why? The great pestilence appeared to have left them untouched. There were no empty homes, no untended fields or fences. The reeve here, Michael Steward, clearly kept all tidy, with the lord’s lands as well-tended as the villagers’ and the sturdy cows and sheep free of pests and blight. Still, fear crept around them like a low fog.

  Does the priest here sense this? If he does not, he is a poor creature, but if he does, why does he do nothing?

  She breathed in slowly, seeking to catch any scent of sulfur, any whiff of the restless dead. She caught no such stink, but russet-cheeked Michael Steward, shorter and stockier than she was and stamping along beside her, tightened his grip on his staff. He wants to ask me what I sense.

  “How long has it been this way?” she asked, gesturing to a closed door.

  “What?”

  He was not a stupid man. Yolande asked again, more bluntly. “For how long has Halme been afflicted with night terrors that turn people against honest travelers and strangers? And your priest—”

  His full lips quivered and a torrent burst from him as he interrupted. “Night terrors! No, madam, those would be a blessing compared to what my girls and the other maids here presently endure. Filthy dreams of carnal couplings and handsome demons fondling them!”

  “Alms,” called a new voice, issuing like the voice of God himself from the churchyard. “Alms for a poor, misjudged soul who never did any harm…”

  What has he done now? Yolande quickened her pace and vaulted over the low stone wall bordering the churchyard, leaving the reeve to go the long way ’round by way of the church gate.

  “In thought or deed,” the voice went on.

  Behind her, Michael Steward finished his complaint with, “And my youngest daughter is but twelve years old.”

  “They are dreams and dreams can be fought,” Yolande countered with firm reassurance, striding across the grass. Halme’s priest was still absent but a handsome, tanned fellow sat in the churchyard stocks, batting away pebbles and rotten fruit as if he made great sport with the crowd. Geraint loved working an audience.

  “Gentle lady,” he addressed her, sweeping his tasseled cap off his riot of black curls. “Pity, I pray you, and tell these good folk I am no thief.”

  “You know this man?” Michael Steward forgot the plight of his three daughters in his doughty disapproval of her companion, who grinned and clapped his bare feet together like a pair of hands.

  “Geraint Welshman is my servant.”

  That was the lie she and Geraint had decided
upon so she could spend last night at the reeve’s house and Geraint could spend it watching the graveyard and church for any sign of revenants.

  So what is he doing in the stocks? Look at him, winking at me and juggling pebbles for the crowd. He may be a strolling player but does he have to turn every occasion into a show? He can be out of those stocks in a moment. Why isn’t he?

  A buxom matron pushed to the front of the tightly knit group. “He stole a loaf of my bread and put his hand up my dress.”

  Geraint answered roundly, “I paid for the bread, goodwife, with my tumbling and kept my hands to myself.” Iron bit into his next words. “This I swear, especially the last.”

  “You call me a liar to my face?”

  “I say you are mistaken. No more, no less.”

  Yolande knew he was aggrieved. Geraint might filch a king’s deer or a lord’s trout but he did not thieve from the people and he never made free with his fingers. Glancing at the blush on the older woman’s neck, she understood the desire—did she not feel it herself, every day? But even so, matters had gone far enough.

  “I have two good silver pennies here to see my servant set free before his feet rot off,” she intervened, hoping she sounded tart and disinterested.

  Sprawling in the stocks as if on the most comfortable of thrones, Geraint rolled her another bow. “Lady, you are all grace but I wish to prove my innocence.”

  Stubborn man. “I thought you were keeping guard over this place,” Yolande said in Welsh, a language he had patiently taught her these last six months.

  Six months traveling together, close enough to touch, to lie side by side each night and yet never to join… Why have I heard no reply to my message yet? For how long must we wait?

  “I was, until ‘Goodwife Bosom’ took a fancy to me.”

  Yolande translated Geraint’s answer in her head and fought to pay closer attention. “You have been in the stocks all night?” she demanded in English.

  “That I have, and with no sign of any fresh snow, ghosts, revenants or succubi,” he replied in the same tongue before switching seamlessly back to Welsh. “Although you are tempting enough for any man.”