A Bed of Spices (13 page)

Next to her sat her sister, who nibbled delicately at her portion and sipped lightly from the cup. She seemed oblivious to the chaos around her, and her bearing was straight and noble as a queen’s.

Now he saw a small difference in them, something hard to pinpoint; not a single detail, but a dozen tiny things. The slight tilt of an eye, the slight difference in the breadth of their shoulders, the graceful movements of one’s hand. As he looked at the more delicate twin, she happened to look at him. Catching his gaze upon her, she blushed with sudden, painful intensity. He smiled.

The memory of her warm lips whispered through him. Her passion, though hidden under maidenly ways, was wide and deep and promised earthly delights so great he could barely wait till their marriage.

He thought broodingly upon their encounter this afternoon in the orchard, and his confusion returned. She had seemed to almost hate him in those moments. Perhaps she had regretted kissing him last night in the dark hall, and her shame had led to anger with him—a seemly emotion for a well-bred maid.

He frowned, still uncertain. Perhaps, he thought, lifting his cup, he would test them each. In that way, he would finally learn which was which.

The tables were dismantled, the shreds of the feast cleared away, and fresh tankards of ale were brought as the minstrels strummed to life in the gallery. They started with light tunes, meant for easy dancing, and Rica gave a smile and a nod to the vassal who’d arranged for the musicians to come from Strassburg. With a grin, he crossed the rushes and held out his hand. “Seems I’ve beat the teeming hordes to your side, my lady.”

Laughing, Rica stood up to dance with him, taking pleasure in the cheery light in his black eyes and the easy humor with which he treated her.

Lewis had come to the castle as a child and now had worked through page to squire to vassal. He had been part of the scenery of her childhood.

But as Rica danced with him now, she realized with a start that he was of a size and coloring of Solomon. His hair was thick and glossy, although it did not curl. His eyes were dark, though not quite black. His face was handsome, though perhaps not quite as strongly carved as Solomon’s, and tanned from working outside.

And yet as he held her loosely, his broad hands warm on her back, his laughing mouth only a small space from her own, she felt no tingling, no rush of hunger, no aching need to tumble with him in naked passion.

It pierced her. Had her heart been snared by the curve of this man’s lip, she might have wed him freely, might have borne him sons and laughed late into her old age with him.

Catching some glimpse of her thoughts on her face, Lewis smiled gently. “Come now, my lady. Am I so clumsy as that?”

“Nay. You are as graceful as a young stag.”

He inclined his head with mock arrogance. “There are those who have made their comparisons.”

Rica laughed, as she was meant to.

“Tell me, lady,” he said in a more sober tone. “What know you of the young lass your uncle brought today? Is she his daughter?”

“Lorraine?”

He glanced at her, grinning. “I am no fool. The other one.”

Rica looked toward Minna, who sat on the sidelines with her hands clasped in her lap, a longing expression on her clear young features. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders and pooled on the bench beside her. “She is not yet thirteen summers.”

“That is plain.” He lifted a dark brow. “‘Tis also plain she will bloom into rare beauty—if I wait to speak my suit, someone with more to offer will claim her first.”

“She is no more than a sweet child,” Rica protested. “Would you bed her so soon and steal that child’s innocence from her?”

He laughed outright. “Ah, my sweet maid, are you jealous? Perhaps I should be seeking your hand instead!”

She gave him a rueful smile. “I seek only to keep her protected a bit longer—fathers have been known to throw their daughters into the clutches of the first man to ask.”

“I would not take her so young, my lady. And I am not an old wrinkled man looking to warm my bed with the pleasures of a child—but I like the strength of her. She would make me a good wife.”

“And you would make her a fine husband.”

He grinned and released her as the music stopped. “Thank you.”

As she turned to leave him, Rudolf appeared at her side. “Will you do me the honor?” he asked.

Rica glanced toward Etta, who stared miserably toward them, then toward her father, who was also looking at her.

She nodded, but vowed to keep her distance henceforth.

“I sought you in the city yesterday, Rica,” he said softly as he took her into his embrace.

Startled, she looked at him. A flush of guilt heated her face. “I did not see you,” she said. A roughness marked her voice.

“Nay. Nor did I find you.” There was a dangerous silk in his words and Rica saw belatedly the brightness of drink in his eyes. “Where did you go?”

She lifted one shoulder as if in disdain, but her heart beat a painful tattoo. What if his luck had not been so thin and he had seen her leave the gates with Solomon?

Worse, what if he had seen them kissing in the grass?

In a moment of weak terror, she closed her eyes. She had no doubt how Rudolf would have reacted to such a scene. He would have raged and screamed and dragged them both to the square of Strassburg to be publicly beheaded for their crime.

With a calm she did not feel, she forced herself to speak. “I tarried with Olga at her sister’s house, and saw an astrologer and found a belt for Etta. Nothing so wild as you seem to imagine.”

“Oh, I imagined nothing untoward. I only wished to find you so that we might spend an hour or two alone.” His eyes swept over her lips and he pressed a little closer. His voice softened, became a gentle whisper. “Perhaps we might have shared a quiet kiss or two.”

Rica lowered her eyes, assailed with sharp visions of Solomon, whose mouth had tasted of things she’d only dreamt of, Solomon who was so beautiful and was forever denied her. With a sharp, plucking pain she wished it was he who held her and spoke to her now. Feeling weak with the longing, she clutched without thought at Rudolf’s arms.

“Ah, my sweet, you are too much a lady to say it, but you wish it, too. Tonight, I will walk with you to your chamber if you wish.”

“No!” Her answer was so vehement, she saw him blink and flush as if embarrassed. “I mean we should not, with so many about. Tis not seemly.”

“We are—” he began, and broke off. Stiffly, he released her. “As you wish.”

Rica nearly sagged with relief. Her head suddenly ached with the smell of the fire and the lingering odors of the food and the stale scent of so many bodies. It had been a long day and she wished only for her bed.

But she could not retreat. Instead, she took her place next to her sister, relieved that at least her promise to Etta had been kept.

Together they sat and listened to ballads of lost love and thwarted dreams. Rica glanced once at Etta and saw the same haunted emotion of her heart reflected there in her sister’s eyes.

Etta reached for Rica’s hand and gently squeezed her fingers. “All will be well, sister,” she said.

Rica nodded, but she knew it was a lie. Nothing would be well, not ever again.

By the fourth day, Rica could not bear another instant of Lorraine’s boasting, Etta’s misery, or the preening superiority of her aunt. When the men went out to hunt, Rica seized her chance.

Leaving Etta and their cousins to their stitchery in the fine early summer light of the lower bailey, Rica took Leo and set out for Helga’s, claiming a need for herbs.

The day was clear and mild. Barges moved on the Rhine and a soft wind blew freshness into the heavy summer air. It was good to be free of the castle, to be alone with only Leo, to gaze toward the splendid beauty of the blue Vosges and listen to the monks singing their dirgeful prayers. The sound hung thin and melancholy on the breeze.

It disturbed her vaguely. This morning she had been shriven in the small confessional and done her penance, but it had not cleansed her soul as it ought. Even if she had been able to confess kissing Solomon, she could not have truly repented. It had been too joyful a moment to regret.

For a moment, she wished she had never set eyes upon him, that she could turn back the days to before their encounter and return to her innocent ways. Her greatest sins had once been a dream of avenging her mother and taking off her hat in the sunshine of a late spring day.

From the moment of her meeting with Solomon, it seemed everything in her life had shifted. Was it only the demand of the stars? Was there nothing she could do to halt the forward spin of events?

As she approached the cottage, she saw Helga laughing with the peddler in the yard. “Round back, my pretty,” Helga called. “I will join you anon.”

Rica smiled. At least one thing would remain as it had been. Helga and the peddler would flirt over cups of ale and tease each other and pass an idle hour in harmless play.

Rounding the cottage, she tugged off her hat and shook her hair loose, smelling dill and thyme as her skirts brushed the plants. The scent, so married to the peace this cottage had brought to her life, gave her surcease.

As she came around the corner of the cottage, that peace was abruptly shattered. For there she saw the source of her restless discontent. Solomon stood by a waist-high tree stump, his jupon shed in the thick heat of the day, his tunic loose at his throat to show his neck and chest. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows; his hair tumbled loose around his sensual face. The details flooded through her as she stared at him, frozen in fear and longing.

But as she drank in the sight of him, her body seemed to swell. She felt at once pained and yearning and overly full, as if she would burst. Dreamlike, she moved forward, drawn against her will to the shining lure of him.

He’d been absorbed in his task, but at the sound of the bells on her wrists, he glanced up. He dropped a bundle of herbs, glanced at them where they fell by his foot, then back to Rica.

He did not speak. There was no need, for in his eyes there leapt a blaze of joy. Rica’s careful control dissolved in the heat of it like melting honeycomb.

Crossing the grassy space between them, she bent to retrieve the bundle of herbs he had dropped, and held it out toward him.

For a long, silent moment, he only stared at her hungrily. Slowly, then, he reached out and took the tied bundle from her, his fingers lingering over the heart of her palm, caressing softly before they closed around the bundle. All the while, his dark eyes burned into hers.

And though Rica tried, she could not stop the response of her own fingers, which curled to touch his knuckles as they withdrew.

They moved apart, by unspoken agreement putting the broad stump between them. Solomon glanced toward the back door of the cottage. “I could not remember whether I was to come mornings or afternoons,” he said.

“Nor could I.”

His hands stilled and he looked at her. “Ah, Rica, you’ve bewitched me. I think of naught but you.”

She wanted to weep. How much her life had shifted! “Solomon!” she whispered, but whether in supplication or protest, she did not know.

Over the rings of the stump’s surface, he touched her hand. “Rica—I mean you no pain. Forgive me.”

He moved away and snatched his jupon from a bench nearby the oak tree. Rica stared at him. “Oh, do not go!” she cried softly. “You give more pleasure than sorrow, though I should not say it.”

Still he stood there, his coat clutched in his fist. All at once, he moved forward. “I have been taught a man should be always moral, Rica. We study this—we are taught from childhood.” He shook his head slowly, regretfully. “And I know it is my nature to be weak in this way, but I do not know how to keep you from my thoughts.”

His words were uttered in a fierce low voice, and he leaned intently over the stump toward her. “In truth,” he said at last, “I have lost my wish to resist you.”

It seemed he would kiss her, there in the dappled light falling through the branches of the oak, with the scents of Helga’s garden filling the air with spice. “I know not how to manage this untoward passion!” she said quietly.

His features were harsh and closed for a moment. “It is forbidden,” he agreed. “Yet I know a little of the world—it is not so strange.” Again he glanced at the cottage. “Will you trust me?”

“I should say nay,” she said, and sighed.

A gentle, teasing smile touched his lips. “Is it so terrible to tell me yes?”

“No,” she whispered, her eyes snared in his. She had the strangest feeling of being drawn close, drawn into him somehow. Not against her will, but with it. “I thought of nothing but you these past days, Solomon. I have begun to care little whether it is good or right.”

“Then meet me tomorrow,” he said, and touched her fingers discreetly. “By the Ill, where before we met. Can you find leave to do so?”

She swallowed. “I’ll try.”

A soft, glad sound came from his throat. “I’ll wait from Sext to Nones, and if you have not come, then I will know you have not found leave.”

Her throat was too dry for words. Slowly, feeling as if her head were bobbing on a string, she nodded.

His fingers traced the tops of her fingernails. “You need fear nothing, Rica. I will be mindful of our places.”

By which he meant he would leave her a virgin. Rica solemnly gazed at him. “I wish it were not so,” she whispered, and touched his fingers in return.

For a long, quiet minute they stood thus, only their eyes and fingertips touching in anticipation and a certain sweet sorrow. He smiled. Rica smiled in return.

He straightened. “Now, my lady,” he said with a somehow rakish grin, “allow me to give you a lesson in the fine art of medicine.”

By the time Helga joined them, Rica was laughing at his jests, his easy storytelling. He had a gift for mimicry that he used to imitate the physicians at his school and the customers and merchants in his father’s shop.

Somehow laughing eased the swollen longing in her body. By the time Helga joined them, guffawing over the end of Solomon’s story, Rica felt more herself.