A Bed of Spices (18 page)

“Solomon!” she said with a glad cry, and rushed forward, eager to hurl herself into his arms, to taste his lips and feel the power of his well-made form against her.

A harshness in his face halted her. His lips were set in an unsmiling line. The hood of his cloak hid his curls, reminding her once more that he was no youth, but a knowing man. Rica gazed at him in some fear.

He closed his eyes, then opened them and moved his head once side to side, as if to deny that she stood there. He lifted his hand toward her. “Rica,” he said in a lost and ragged voice.

She stumbled to him and he caught her close. She buried her nose in the wool over his chest, smelling the exotic essence of his flesh. His chest was a warm, broad wall and his arms circled her so tightly she thought she would burst. “Oh, I have missed you.”

Pressing his lips to her temple, he whispered, “I did not know if you would ever come to me again.”

“My father is ill and there are guests and—”

“Shhh.” He rested his cheek on her hair. “It matters not. For now, you are here and I am glad of it.”

Encircled by the mist, in the holy silence of the day, Rica did not care so much now for kissing him and feeling his naked flesh against her own. All those sensual visions paled in comparison to the solidity of his arms wrapped around her, to the simple glory of being next to him. She felt dizzy, as if she were standing in the center of the world and all else would slip into harmony as long as Solomon held her.

He rocked her silently, holding her almost painfully close. “It does not seem an evil thing,” he said with quiet wonder. “It seems as if I have held you thus for all of time, that I should go on doing so forever.”

She pressed her cheek to his chest more tightly, closing her eyes to shut out all but the perfection of him warm against her and the richness of his voice in her ear.

Very gently, he lifted her chin with one finger. For a moment, he held her face on a level with his and his fathomless eyes glowed with passion. A soft smile curved his mouth. “I am so glad to see you, my love.”

He bent his head and pressed his lips to hers. Her dizziness trebled. She swayed, her fingers curling to clutch at the fabric of his cloak.

As if to chide them for their indiscretion, the fog began suddenly to part, and from far off, a rumble of thunder rolled through the mountains.

Rica grinned up at him. “Is it chastisement, do you think?”

He laughed. “No doubt there are angels even now readying arrows of lightning to pierce us.”

“Then we must hurry to the shelter of Helga’s cottage.”

“As long as I am with you,” he said, taking her hand, “I care not where we go.”

She met his gaze. “Nor do I.”

He could not hold her hand on the road, but they walked closely together, and Rica took pleasure in the brush of his fingers from time to time.

|ust out of sight from the cottage, she paused. “Helga is a wise woman. She’ll guess what we are about if we do not take great care.”

His expression sobered. “Yes. You go now. I will follow in a little.” He touched her hand and melted into the forest.

At Helga’s door, Rica rapped twice, then pushed inside to the sweetly scented gloom of the cottage. A pot boiled on the hearth, sending up a cloud of fragrant steam. “Helga! I ran away today… Are you here?”

From a dark corner by her store of herbs, Helga emerged, her face shiny. “Oh-ho!” Her smile was broad and happy. “I’ve missed you, my pretty—but now you’ll be stuck here, for there’s a terrible storm brewing and I won’t let you go.”

Rica hugged her, taking a fierce gladness in the round, soft contours of the woman who had filled the motherless places in her life. “What a pity,” she said, smiling. “Perhaps it will rage all night and all my father’s silly guests will have to fend for themselves.”

Helga waved her toward a bench nearby the wall. “Sit. I’ve got stew boiling and some fresh milk. We’ll have a nice chat.” As she bustled toward the hearth, she asked, “How is your sister?”

“She is well,” Rica said, shedding her cloak. “I have been teaching her the kitchen arts and even a little of the books.”

Helga turned, her cornflower eyes showing surprise. “Can she read?”

“A little. Not as much as she will need.”

A knock sounded at the back door of the neat little cottage and a giddy shiver made Rica’s hands shake. She folded them together so Helga would not see.

Wiping her fingers on her apron, Helga muttered about the inconvenience of babies and opened the door. Seeing Solomon, she made a noise of surprise. “I did not think to see you on so foul a day.”

Solomon ducked under the threshold. In the small room, with its low rafters hung with herbs, he seemed a giant. He did not look at Rica, but instead smiled at Helga. “I could not stay away. There is much to learn and so little time left.”

“Pah!” Helga returned. “You know all I have to teach. Tis a mystery why you still come to me each day.”

Rica stared at him greedily. At Helga’s words, it was as if he could not help himself—he turned and looked at Rica. Her heart leapt as he gave her a slow, seductive smile. “Why, it is your young friend that I long to see, old woman.” He threw back his hood, freeing the riot of curls that graced his head. His voice lowered, sweetened. “And today I am rewarded.”

Rica blushed and glanced at her hands, delighted at his open flirtation. Much better by far than attempting to hide the raging attraction between them. At least this way, there was some outlet for play.

“How weary I am of men who see only this fleshly shell,” Rica said airily. “You are all a boring lot.”

He laughed. “That we are.”

A great crack of thunder shattered the sky overhead and Rica jumped, squealing a little over the suddenness.

Helga cackled. “There’s a punishment for your boldness, lass.”

“What about his?” Rica asked in protest.

“The heavens only punish women,” she said, bending over her pot.

Rica heard a note in the words that jarred in the teasing light of their conversation. Helga straightened and gave Rica a direct, penetrating stare. As loudly as if she had spoken, Rica heard Helga’s warning from early in the summer:
It only takes one man to make a woman a fool
.

Sneaking a glance
at Solomon, Rica realized he, too, felt chastened at Helga’s subtle warning. Without looking toward Rica, he sank down next to her.

It wasn’t long before the usual light-heartedness returned, however. It was as if Helga, having issued her warning, felt free to relax. She was full of gossip gleaned while tending the birth of a noble’s child in the city. She entertained her guests with speculations and rumors, and had both Solomon and Rica laughing in no time.

She had brought out dice for them when yet another knock sounded into the cottage, this one pounding and frantic. “Mistress! Midwife!”

Helga glanced at Solomon. “Tis the birthing I spoke of.” She flung open the door. “I’m here, son,” she said, touching the shoulder of the peasant man kindly. “I only need fetch my cloak.”

“Hurry!” the man said. “She’s screaming like a demon.”

Rica saw the tightening of Helga’s jaw. A hard birth, then. Suddenly she knew that the very difficulty of it was why Helga had chosen it for Solomon’s education.

He stood up. “It is unseemly,” he said, “but I am willing to learn whatever you have to teach.”

Helga, rushing to don her cloak and gather her mysterious potions and herbs, stopped long enough to give him a measured look, one of pride. “A fine physician you’ll be one day, Solomon.” Pursing her lips, she reached out to the badge of Jewry on his cloak. “Tear that off. I will sew it back later.”

He frowned, but did as he was told.

Rica, watching, felt bereft. For so many days, she had longed to see Solomon, to escape the castle confines and be free, and now not only Solomon, but Helga, too, would be swept away. She felt an unreasonable irritation toward the laboring woman.

Helga bent to kiss her head before she left. “We may not return for many hours. Do not go until you must, and do not leave while the storm yet rages. I will send to your father, if you wish.”

Rica nodded sadly. As they left, Solomon turned at the door to give her a single, wistful glance. But even in the wistfulness, she saw his eagerness to tend the birth, and smiled at him.

His eyes blazed, then he was gone, and Rica was alone amid the herbs as rain began to fall.

In the dark storm, Solomon made his way back to the cottage. His mind whirled with images—the screams of the mother as her body convulsed grue-somely, the violent ripping of her flesh, the patience of Helga as she used her hands to take the babe when the mother could no longer work to free her body of its burden.

And more, as if that weren’t enough—the tears of joy on the mother’s white face as her babe was laid at her breast; the endless bleeding that left her dead in an hour; the lonely whimpering of the babe, as if he knew his mother was gone.

The healer within him had always sensed Helga’s latent power. Tonight he had seen it. Her hands, so veined and old, moved with surety and strength. Her voice, so rough and bawdy, held a thousand notes for encouragement and sympathy and command.

He understood why she had insisted he go with her to this birth.

Now she had sent him back to her cottage, and though his father would worry, he could not go without letting her finish her lesson. For that was what it had been—a cruel and illuminating lesson in the challenges of treating women. A sorrowful gladness touched him. He was blessed indeed to have found her as a teacher.

Wearily, he pushed open the door of the cottage, his cloak sodden, his face and hair wet.

A fire burned low in the hearth, and the smell of the mutton stew still lingered, reminding him it had been many hours since his last meal. In a fog of exhaustion and loss, he sank on a bench, dropping his cloak on the floor to bury his face in his hands. At the warmth of the room and the sudden release of his muscles, his body tingled from feet to shoulders.

And then, there was Rica, soft around him. Her arms circled his shoulders as she knelt before him, and he smelled gillyflowers in her hair. With a noise of anguish and pain, he grabbed her close, burying his face against her breasts. There was comfort in her warmth and silent sympathy. She pressed her cheek into his hair and stroked his back.

Solomon wept.

It was a release, an aching kind of grief for the peasant woman who had died, for all the women in the world who must endure such travail to give men their sons. He wept for his ignorance and his helplessness, his uselessness as a healer in the face of all that violence.

Rica said nothing. And he could not have found words for the pulsing new knowledge he’d gained of a woman’s lot. He was too moved and too exhausted.

He lifted his head. Pulling her into his lap, he wrapped her close against him and kissed her. Deeply, holding her head between his hands, needing to feel the pulsing of life in her veins and the heat of her cheeks against his palms.

After a moment, she stood up to take a kettle from the stove. She poured hot liquid into a cup, then handed it to him. “Drink this before you take a chill.” She smiled.

He found a small answering peace as he took the wooden cup from her fingers, to drink gratefully of the pungent mulled wine.

It slipped inside of him, warming his throat and belly. Rica took a length of linen and dried his hair, her hands efficient and ungentle. Her vigorous scrubbing sent blood rushing to his scalp.

“Where is Helga?” she asked, at last, pausing in her ministrations.

“She stayed to see to the babe. I know not why she sent me back.”

Rica laughed gently and tugged at his hair, playing in the curls as if he were a beloved child. “You would not wonder if you had seen your face.” Her tone sobered as she leaned over to look at him, her hands on his shoulders. “Was it so terrible?”

“Yes.” He put his cup down and took her hand. “Sit with me.”

Moving aside a little, he drew her down next to him on the bench. As she sat, he drank in the contours of her face once again, memorizing it for the days when he’d no longer have the face and only his sweet dreams of these days.

Rica stroked his fingers. “Do you wish to speak of what you saw?”

He closed his eyes. “Not yet.”

“Then I will tell you what I have learned these days away from you,” she said with a smile.

He raised his eyebrows. “Have you been studying?”

“Yes.” She brushed a heavy hank of hair over her shoulder, still holding his hand. “I found the story of David and Bathsheba.”

“Ahh. And what did you think?”

“It was beautiful,” she said softly. “As lovely as any of the troubadours’ stories, or the poems of the knights.” She laughed. “And poor Father Goddard could hardly deny me a story contained within that holy writ, though I know he wished to.”

He smiled, and moved his thumb over her palm, a palm callused with the hard work of her days. “I always believed a lady would have hands as delicate as spider webs.”

“Perhaps they do,” she said, and he could see he injured her. “I seem to not be much of a great lady.”

“I like these calluses, Rica. You are not idle.” To prove it, he lifted the palm to his lips and kissed it. “They are strong, like you.”

“You are the most unusual man I have ever met, Solomon. Men don’t talk this way to me.” She inclined her head and asked shyly, “Are other Jews like you?”

At this, Solomon remembered his conversation with his father the night before and laughed. “I wish I

could tell you yes, but I cannot. Not even I have ever spoken to a woman as I speak with you, Rica.“ He looked at her hand, cradled in his own. ”I never wished to.“

“And yet,” she said quietly, “perhaps there are dozens of women all around you who have longed to have someone listen as if they had some thought in their minds besides coupling and cleaning and standing like a queen in perfect shining beauty.”

“But,” he responded with a grin, “had I given one of them my ear, perhaps I would not be here now, listening to you.”