A Bed of Spices (34 page)

The last things were a bracelet and girdle with bells, for the old times, for music.

At last she bent over her trunk and withdrew the present she had found for Solomon on Friday in Strassburg. It was a bound copy of Maimonides’
Aphorismen Mosis
, one the bookseller had been pleased to sell at a good price. He had bought it before the current hatred toward Jews had risen again, and had not been able to find a buyer.

It had been carefully copied and illuminated, and as Rica wrapped it now in a length of blue linen, she imagined the pleasure it would give Solomon. She set it down and lifted her heaviest cloak, wrapping it about herself closely to hide her finery. The book she slipped beneath the engulfing wool.

Then, almost aching with excitement, she hurried from her room, into the bailey, and beyond, just as the sun slipped behind the mountains and the world was plunged into the pale, magical gloaming.

For two days, Solomon had been gathering things. He bought candied fruits and marzipan and two precious oranges at an outrageous price. There was good wine and fresh bread and hard-boiled eggs. He had taken Helga a kosher chicken and asked her to prepare it for him. She chuckled over the task, but agreed to it.

Outwardly, he behaved as if nothing were amiss. He and his father settled accounts and made an inventory of his goods. Some were boxed and shipped to Mainz, others distributed among the neighbors. Jacob grumbled over the losses he was forced to take, but when reminded of the alternatives, moved ahead with due haste.

The boy Solomon had secretly paid to deliver his urgent message came to the door just past Nones on Monday. He was a rough little peasant, but bright and quick; Solomon saw he wore new shoes when he breathlessly repeated the message Solomon had rehearsed with him. The midwife needed him for a most dire birth.

He rose, frowning, and told his father he would return when he was able.

He found Helga’s cottage empty but swept clean. Through the windows spilled the last of the day’s light, and a fire had been laid, awaiting a flint. On the hearth was a stew, rich with the scents of garlic and onion, and over the table Helga had spread a washed linen cloth, very old and very beautiful.

From the pouch he carried, he took a pair of silver candlesticks and put them on the table and fitted precious white wax candles into them. Helga had put out knives and spoons. Wrapped in cloth were trenchers and a loaf of new bread.

And there, set apart from everything, was a beautiful silver chalice, carved around the bowl with figures of women and men, bowing together and kissing and holding hands. Touched, Solomon settled it in the place of honor, next to the candlesticks. The gift he had brought for his bride—his bride!—he placed before the chalice.

Only then did he slip out of his plain clothes and brush smooth his black jupon and put on his good hat after combing his unruly hair into some sort of order.

Then, excited as a boy, he sat down by the fire to wait. It seemed hours before he heard a noise at the door, a scratching. He ran to it and flung it open.

And stopped, his heart soaring wildly through his breast, his stomach leaping out of control. She looked at him shyly from beneath her hood, her cheeks flushed from her walk. “Hello, my love,” she said. Her voice was breathy.

“Rica,” he said, drawing her inside.

She ducked in and put a package on the bench nearby the door, then looked around her as she loosened the ties to her cloak. “It looks beautiful,” she said softly, and shed the cloak.

He took it from her as she turned, and stood holding it as he stared. “You are far more so.” He stepped close and touched the velvet of her gown, brushed the miniver along the edges with his palm. “I have never seen you in such finery.”

She took a step back and turned around slowly, her arms out to her sides, a teasing look in her eye. “Tis all for you.”

He lifted her hand and kissed it.

With a quizzical glance, she smiled at him. In her green gown, with her hair tumbling free and silky over her body, she made him think of the legends that a goddess of spring wandered through the valley. awakening the sleeping earth with kisses.

She stepped close and pressed her mouth to his. Her hands wound around his neck, and her breasts nestled softly against his chest. A rocking sense of Tightness swelled in him, and he held her close for a moment, kissing her in return.

In a moment, he lifted his head. “First we shall make our blessing. I do not know your customs, only my own.”

“Marriage is marriage in God’s eyes.”

He nodded soberly. “God will know our vows are true. Later, we will ask a rabbi to say it officially.”

“I am willing,” Rica said.

“Then, come, my love. Let us stand by the fire.”

Rica followed him
. He took her hand, his face sober and serious. “Rica, I must ask you a question.”

She waited silently.

“The only thing I will ask of you in this is when we have children, I must know they will be raised as Jews. There are laws that say a woman who is not a Jew, if she be a good wife to her husband, she must be accepted. It will be this, more than anything, that will be necessary. Can you do this for our marriage?”

She did not need to think—the same thoughts had been in her mind. “Yes.”

“In truth there will be no other place for us.”

“I know.”

He nodded, and she saw his throat move. Finally he lifted his eyes. “Are you sure you wish to marry me, Rica? It is not easy, living as a Jew.”

She looked at him, at his black hair, grown a little long and unruly; at his broad shoulders; at his clean hands, holding hers so gently. Then she looked into his black eyes, where the soul of him shone, and she saw the intelligence and love and respect there, the respect she had never seen in another man’s eyes in all of her life.

All at once, she was overcome. “If you were a beggar, I would tear my clothes and dirty my face to follow you.”

As if in relief, he let go of a breath. “So be it.”

He poured wine into a pottery cup, then put Rica on his right and turned them so they faced the south. Taking from his finger a silver ring carved with trees, he held it up. “My custom requires me to tell you this ring is made of silver, not gold. Do you see it?” He smiled, a little mockingly.

Rica smiled, too. “Yes, I see it.”

He took her hand, and in a sober voice, said, “‘Behold thou art consecrated unto me by this ring, according to the Law of Moses and of Israel.’”

He pushed it on her index finger. Looking into her eyes, holding both her hands, he said, “I must say these things in Hebrew, in God’s language, but I will tell you after what they are.”

She nodded, clasping his hands more tightly. Solomon closed his eyes and sang out in a strong voice, in a language unlike any she had ever heard. Rica stared at him, amazed at how tall he seemed when he spoke the strange words, how much his skin seemed to glow.

And as the words filled the room, the glow seemed to rise and shimmer between them, until Rica could feel it in her own body, as if a thousand candles were alight and shining.

Then he paused, and looking deeply into her eyes, he began to recite softly, “‘O make the loved companions greatly to rejoice, even as of old Thou didst gladden Thy creature in the Garden of Eden.’”

Rica’s heart ached with wonder. Tears of joy filled her eyes.

“Thou didst create joy and gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth and exultation, pleasure and delight, love and comradeship, peace and fellowship.‘” A quaver moved through his voice. He swallowed, and Rica saw the bright sheen of emotion in his eyes. His next words were husky. “’Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makest the bridegroom to rejoice with the bride.”

He took the cup of wine and gave it to Rica, urging her to drink. He then drank of it himself, and with a smile, turned and threw it at the wall. It shattered and fell to the floor. He grinned. “Good luck,” he explained.

“Am I your wife, then?”

Solomon took her hand. “Yes.”

New tears gushed forth from her eyes, and she smiled through the blur. “I am so thankful!”

He bent close, and her vision was filled with his dark brows, so elegantly shaped against his high intelligent forehead, and his long-lashed eyes, starry now with firelight. Ever so slowly, his lips moved closer, until the moist warmth of them, tasting of wine, settled on hers.

She sighed and leaned into him, her hands falling on the broad expanse of his shoulders beneath the soft, expensive velvet. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, his tongue swirling against her lips and then inside them.

He tugged her a little closer and lifted his head. “You cannot know, Rica, how I have longed for you these past months.” He lifted the circlet from around her forehead and smoothed her hair down after. “I would remember your hair or your lips or your eyes”—he touched each in turn—“and it seemed I would never recover from the grief of your death.”

Rica lowered her eyes and touched the new weight of the ring on her finger. “All the joy left my life the day you rode away. I thought—” she struggled for words, “I thought I could let you go and make my life again, but I could not.”

“I love you,” he murmured and bent to kiss her again. This time, his hands roved over her arms and slipped beneath her surcoat to trace the curve of her back. “It would be more proper for us to eat and drink, but I have waited too long for you. Do you mind if we partake of our marriage bed before our wedding meal?”

Rica laughed and caught his face in her hands. “Oh, no,” she said. “I do not mind at all.”

To illustrate, she reached up for the small round hat on his head and set it aside, then reached for the buttons of his jupon. He stood still, letting her skim the velvet from his arms until he stood only in his flowing white shirt sleeves, as beautiful as a fallen god.

Then it was his turn. He stepped close. “Lift your arms.” When she complied, he lifted the surcoat over her head and gently settled it aside. Turning back, he reached out and smoothed a line from her shoulders, forward over her breasts, and down to her waist and hips. “You are so beautifully made,” he breathed.

No more could Rica be patient. She swayed toward him, and touched the broad expanse of his chest, untying the laces at his throat to place her palms flat on his skin. Dark curls of hair spread over his torso, and she bent her head to press her mouth against the alluring sight. She tasted heat and crisp hair and supple skin.

In return, he spread his fingers over her back and traced the curves of her hips.

And little by little, in this way, they shed their ornaments and shields until they stood, face-to-face, in bare gleaming skin and firelight.

Rica stared at him, forgetting her own nakedness in her hunger. He was thinner than he had been, but still uncommonly virile and beautiful. He drew her close to him, until her breasts, so heavy with hunger, pressed against the silkiness of his flesh. He did not kiss her, but his eyes held hers as if he had cast some spell, and in his face, she saw the fever of his need. “For this, I have been waiting,” he said in a low, raw voice. “For this, I would die.”

And at last, he kissed her, and his hand touched her breast, and they tumbled together to the bed. Rica felt the strange, shimmering light of the ceremony return. It flooded the room, flooded her, as his hands sought the secret heat between her legs, and his mouth settled over her breasts. She slid her hands over his back, feeling each precious rise of bone in his spine as if it were something newly made.

At last, when she felt she could wait no more, he poised himself above her. In the firelight, his hair shone as it fell around his sensual face, and his eyes were burning and somehow tender at once. “I did not know I could feel this way, Rica.” His voice was hoarse. “Now you will always be mine.”

All of time gathered there—past and future mingled, and Rica felt a singular and shattering sense of harmony. His thighs, hard and strong, brushed her own, and then there was a nudging in that deep, secret place. His belly brushed hers, and his chest swept over hers, and then there was a wild filling, and a quick sharp pain, and then—

Rica cried out, lost in the slow, deep wonder of the feeling that coursed through her as he moved over her and with her and inside of her. He sought and found her mouth, and they were doubly joined, triply, for his hands tangled in her hair, and her arms were flung around his neck.

And still he moved, slow and strong, until Rica could bear no more, and met his movements with thrusts of her hips until there were soft groans coming from his mouth, a rumbling through his chest into hers. A rocking, swollen tide built in her limbs and low in her belly, and she clutched him tighter.

A wide, bright shock moved through her, shattering her into a thousand shards. As if Solomon had been waiting, he grasped her hips in his hands and thrust deeply. He cried out and shivered within her and she kissed his neck, feeling him shudder as forcefully as she had. He made a noise, ragged and low. The muscles of his arms were rigid below her hands.

For a long time, they simply lay together, tangled and sweaty. The pulsing, shimmering light faded to a soft glow within her veins, and she slipped her fingers through his hair absently, over and over.

At last, he shifted his weight, groaning a little as her body gave him up. He tugged the blanket over them and pulled her close again.

Rica shifted to lean on her elbow. “Tis lucky I did not learn how much more there was that day in the forest, or I would not have settled for so little.”

“So now you must know it was not easy for me to walk away.” He leaned forward to kiss her. His hand lingered on her face. “You are so beautiful, my Rica.”

She slid near, until their bodies met chest to chest, hip to hip, and she slipped one leg between his. Lifting her face, she kissed his chin, reveling in the warmth of him, the scent, the glory that was Solomon. “I cannot think of anything I would rather do than lie here with you forever,” she whispered, and stroked his side.

His hand moved on her shoulder, and he pressed his cheek to her hair. “Nor can I, my love. And for now, we need not do anything else.”