Dark Maiden (23 page)

The hut was fetid, oppressive, windowless. Rats rustled in one corner and Walter curled on a rough pallet beside him, twitching in a dream. Geraint grinned. If the former squire was posted there to keep watch on him, he was not doing so good a job. There was a bulky youngster sleeping across the door but he knew how to counter that.

He shouldered Yolande’s bow, scrambled stealthily off the pallet and climbed into the roof. With crook beams and struts to brace the walls, it had plenty of hand and toeholds. The spring night made the light inside murky but he could see well enough to climb.

Up in the rafters, he crawled rapidly over the main portion of the hut using a crossbeam, listening always to the sleepers snoring below. He spotted a slight gap in the roof where a winter gale had shifted the thatch and worked his way around to it.

So tempting it was, as he caught his breath, to punch through, breathe the clean night air. His shoulder muscles aching, complaining, he forced himself to listen again then prodded out through the gap with the bow.

Before he could react, the bow continued gliding, free and easy, and with a faint hiss, it disappeared.

No!
Geraint bellowed in his mind, flapping wildly after it.

An elegant fist wielding a knife hacked at the thatch, vanished then reappeared, beckoning.

He pushed through the gap. Yolande kissed him lightly.

“We are in much danger,” she whispered, crouching on the roof with him. “We must talk.”

She vaulted down into the darkness and he followed her.

They fell onto packed earth, a jolting landing, but this bare ground would show no tracks and he guessed Yolande had chosen it for that reason. Her bow over her shoulder, she led them into the forest, straight to a holly then under its low branches and into the heart of the tree.

She motioned for him to settle in the dry “nest” the spreading branches gave them and he leaned back on his elbows, the better to look at her.

A queen tonight, for sure you are, Yolande, and I your most loyal follower.

“I love you,” he croaked, the words flooding out in a race of Welsh and English. “I love you and am sorry,
cariad
, so sorry.”

Silent, dangerous, she came at him. Dropping her bow, kicking aside his pack, she straddled him, tearing at his tunic.

So much for talk. And is she trying to beat me or make love?

Her mouth kissed his and he knew—hot, sweet love.

“Love me,” Yolande said in her father’s tongue. “Love me and need me.”

Need reared in her again, harsh as fire and ice together so that her loins burned. Her lips were so parched they cracked and her breasts and legs were cold. Geraint begged forgiveness, offering his love, trying to explain, and she cradled his unhappy mouth with another kiss.

We both need comfort here and I am the one to give it.

She ran her fingers through his chest hair. In this late spring, he was tanned to the shade of old oak wood. Abruptly, as if he could sit quivering under her sweeping caress no longer, he brought his arms up her spine and tongued her ear.

Heat scorched her, a lightning strike from her nipples to her groin. Still he tongued and nibbled, praising her breasts, their slight increase and softness.

How is it he has noticed and I have not?

What did that matter anyway? She wrestled with his braies, won the match and dragged them down, exulting in his rampant desire for her. She boosted herself up and plunged down hard onto him, sheathing him.

Geraint’s expression was almost comical as it finally dawned on him that she was wearing a dress. She might have laughed had she not been so filled yet so wanting. Rocking, trying to peel off her gown so he could touch her naked, she rode him.

“My turn,” he said in Welsh. He hooked her over and lay on top of her, then eased his manhood inside her and slid in and out so slowly, so deeply, that she mewled with mingled pleasure and frustration.

“Bathsheba mine.” He sucked her breasts as he joined with her, going slow where she had intended to be fast. Ruthless in his lovemaking, he snared her, every full, gentle movement and thorough grinding of his hips a rippling joy.

Somewhere in this tapestry of limbs and kisses, of his “I love you” and her gasped response, the night gave way to blistering light and she screamed her release.

Lolling on her side as Geraint nuzzled her neck, she was only half wearing her dress, just the sleeves and shoulders. The rest had rolled up under her armpits and should have been mighty uncomfortable, but not when Geraint was knuckling her spine.

Ah, a juggler’s hands, both equally deft, equally firm. How delicious.

“Last summer, how did we travel for so long together without this?” Geraint spoke her thought.

“We did what we must for the time,” Yolande said firmly. “As you did with this.” She touched her belly.

Geraint covered her palm and stomach with his spread fingers. “Katherine told me,” he confessed, trailing little kisses of peace down her neck. “As a test, I think.”

“To see if you would run off or panic?” Yolande snorted. “She does not know you.” Even deep in the heart of the holly, she could tell Geraint was blushing. “You would never do either,” she said stoutly.

He blew on her eyelids. “But you were so shocked to learn it and then so disappointed in me, rightly disappointed.”

Yolande shrugged and yawned. Her breasts, which had been sore for days, were now warm and tender. “I was hot as hellfire for about a prayer’s length, mad at you and myself, but you looked so humble and penitent, I forgave you.” He scowled and she caught his lower lip between her teeth. “You wear humility as a leper carries his bell.” She chuckled as his scowl deepened.

“Can we move on from this?” he demanded.

Thoroughly enjoying herself, Yolande nonetheless decided she had teased enough. “Do you mind?”

“Only at having to share you, my Yolande, but then our child, it will be ours, yours and mine. We may not be able to travel quite so much, mind, nor you take on all the restless dead.”

And how do I feel about that? Content.
Yolande looked down at her flat belly.
It is a price I am happy to pay. If I survive this final test, of course…

“I am glad you do not ask.” Geraint leaned over and kissed her.

“Ask what?”

“If I will miss traveling.”

Yolande shrugged, completely unconcerned. “We shall always move from place to place, just more slowly.”

“Much more slowly in a few months, when you are nice and fat.”

“Fat, eh? Then I shall be too heavy.” She twisted and pinned him, wallowing in his warm body. “I will be able to do this and you will just have to put up with it.”

“Is that right?” Somehow he eeled away from her, slithering out from under her in that boneless way he had, and then she was beneath him.

“Now you have me, what are you going to do?” She chuckled.

“Guess as I go,” he said.

Again he made love to her, and a little less carefully than before, which she was glad of. She liked her lusty pairings with Geraint. Later, as she grew larger, she might have to remind him she was pregnant, not made of parchment.

For now she lay in their holly bower, replete and satisfied.

“I suppose we should go back before the others wake,” she said.

“We can stay out, for all I care.” Geraint had found a comb from somewhere and he advanced on her. “Sit up.”

She stuck out her tongue but did as he asked, shuffling into her dress.

“That was a pleasing surprise.” He tapped her gown with the comb.

“Easier than braies for what I had in mind.”

“You had in mind, eh? Wanton wench.”

“Less of the wanton. It was on your mind as well—or if not exactly your mind then other parts.” Yolande yawned. He was running the comb through her hair, another comfort for them both. “I should go back soon, whatever you do. Will you keep my bow?”

“Always.” As solemn as a stone angel, he concentrated on teasing out a knot. “How did you guess to come to the roof?”

“I saw the shadow of the sleeper by the door. In the maids’ hut we have no spies or watchers and I could walk out over the threshold. He does not see women as a threat.”

“More jest on him.” Geraint carried on combing and Yolande stretched her arms above her, luxuriating a little more.

As a spiritual warrior, should I be this sensual? Why not? I am of the world and being a wife and a mother I understand very clearly what is at stake.

Geraint was part of her personal stake.

“He does not like you,” she remarked. “Perhaps he fears you will steal his thunder.”

“I have no desire to play prophet.”

“No, but that will not matter to Peter. I sense malice in him, husband. He means to do you ill in some way.”

“Certainly he does. And lots of men like him have tried and failed.”

It was excellent that he was confident but love made her determined to warn him fully. “Watch him, Geraint. Watch your things and his people. One of his followers may place something into your pack and claim you stole it. And we do not know yet how they deal with a supposed crime here.”

“Perhaps Peter will say I am a demon and that will be enough.”

“Geraint—”

He laid a palm on her head as if in blessing. “I will treat Peter and his ilk like a pit of snakes. Rest as easy as you can or you will make the babe within you ill.”

“Truly?” She had not considered that possibility but what did she understand of childbearing and rearing? Her mother had never spoken of either. She knew women were often sickly during pregnancy, or indulged strange food cravings, but so far she had developed neither. To be sure—as Geraint might say—she was a little less sure of herself of late but she had assumed such doubts to be healthy and spiritual, to do with her coming battle with evil.

I never guessed this new softness in myself was because I was with child. Yet I cannot be gentle or unsure when I fight.

One fear she no longer entertained was the dread of a malign spirit or demon possessing her womb. Somehow she knew, and she did not question it, that this wee infant was hers and Geraint’s.

The mystic Katherine thought the same too, if more proof were needed.

“Why did Katherine not want to tell me I was pregnant? Why did she ask you to say nothing?”

Geraint tucked the comb into the mass of hair at the nape of her neck and gathered her so she was sitting on his lap. “She warned me that you had other trials and must find out in your own time. ‘It will be instructive for her,’ was what she said. Mystics never explain, least of all to tumblers.”

Yolande removed the comb and started to use it on Geraint’s shaggy mop, ignoring his extravagant flinches. “Peter is not possessed, nor are his followers, yet I cannot quite trust him.”

“Never trust a cleric.” Geraint twitched like a nervous horse beneath her ministrations.

“Hold, I am not so bad. He has the bearing of a priest, certainly.” Struggling with a tangle of black curls that she guessed she would simply have to cut away, Yolande recollected how Peter had welcomed them. “Maybe I am wrong but I sense he told me I am with child to drive a wedge between us.”

“Oh yes.”

“Why should he want to do that?”

“I have no notion, Yolande. So…apart from less-than-holy Peter, do you think there is evil here?”

Yolande thought of the good things in this forest community—the freed serfs, Theodore, the way everyone seemed healthy and well fed, Peter healing Walter. But there were no children or old folks and the young men watched each other and over everything hung a sense of
waiting
.

“Evil comes,” she said.
And will I be sure enough to best it? Will fighting with this child in me, fighting for this child as well as for my man and for mankind, make me more of a warrior?

She was tempted to ask Geraint then scolded herself for her weakness.

“We have seen no walnut trees,” Geraint reminded her, on a different track. He never really wanted her closing on devilry, rather going away from it.

To comfort him, she answered, “Nor the labyrinth.”

“And so we stay,” sighed Geraint. “A pity, that, a pity.”

Yolande could only agree.

* * * * *

A long time before dawn, Yolande returned to the maids’ hut. Much as he could see the wisdom in gulling Peter into believing that she was being converted, Geraint did not like it. As for his returning, he flatly refused.

“I’d rather be in the stocks,” he said. Even his wife’s melting, understanding glance would not shift him. He waited alone until he could be sure Yolande was safely asleep with the girls before he crawled from the holly.

It was going to be another hot day, possibly even hotter than yesterday. He loved the sun, as did Yolande. He stood a moment, enjoying the fresh stillness in the air, glancing up at the faintly pink and deep-blue, cloudless sky, smelling the soft, dry earth and wild herbs and bluebells.