Dark Maiden (24 page)

To wander for once in these forests without a care, how would that be?

Excellent for a day then dull unless Yolande were with me.

Geraint threw himself into a somersault to stretch the stiffness from his back then picked up Yolande’s bow and quiver again. “Let me go after that maze,” he said in Welsh, wondering, as he moved on, why his antics had disturbed no animals or birds.

Where are the woodland beasts? Hunted out or hiding? Has Peter really driven them away?
It was a thing he intended to mention to Yolande when he saw her again.

Forests were of no particular lure to him, for he liked people, entertaining people, and there was little chance of that in this place of oak, ash, towering limes and beeches, budding elder bushes, leaf litter and drying grass. Kicking his way through fallen branches, he crossed here and there, weaving a pattern and remembering the paths he made as he would a complex juggle.

Moving is not so hard here as Katherine has been told, nor is finding the place again. Perhaps those who spoke to her were determined not to return so they said it was impossible.

Climbing, he turned and glimpsed the pale roofs of the settlement, the kitchen plots bursting with peas and beans, the slender coil of smoke as an early riser kindled a fire.

Watching with him, perched on a straggly elder bush, was a black bird. The bird looked at him and he stared at the bird. The back of his neck did not prickle but it was a near matter.

“Spy on another,” he ordered and the bird began to preen instead.

He studied the place again, deciding that if this truly was the Jerusalem of the forest then it was lacking. “Where are the craftsmen?” he asked aloud, thinking of the smith and carpenter in High Woodhead and wondering how they fared, building what he had asked them to make for him—and paid for up front in gold.

He grinned, looking forward to seeing his wife’s face when she saw it, then shielded his eyes to cut the early morning glimmer. Down in the hollow, flitting from shadow to shadow, was a rabbit.

The rabbit began nibbling at a dandelion.
Not a hare, at least, only a bunny. Yolande does not have a witch in animal form to deal with here.

“But where is the stock, the sheep, the pigs? Where do they gather their water? What will they live on through the winter?”

It half alarmed, half disgusted him that he should be so aware of such settled things. He remembered Yolande in one village, plaiting chicory, garlic and rosemary leaves through a pony’s bridle so the nervous beast would not be witch-ridden at night. He had helped her mend a fence at another hamlet and wind honeysuckle ’round it. This would keep the pigs inside the pen and encourage them to mate more readily.

He had a skim of knowledge and Yolande had more. As she understood spiritual malice, so he appreciated the malice of humans.

They grow no sickness herbs here and I must be seeking fresh marshmallow and garlic for myself, for that Peter will be accusing me soon and I must be ready.

He moved on, wondering if he would recognize a walnut tree if he saw one.

I recognize that though.

Through a gap in some oak branches, his first sight of the labyrinth.

Cut out of the forest floor with spades and paved with round river pebbles, the maze was a plain thing, about the size of a great hall but circular. It had many branches through to its center but, as Yolande had seen in her dream, every true pathway was to the left, the sinister side.

Is there something else in there too? I am not sure.

Geraint stared, unblinking, wishing he could see as clearly in the spirit world as his wife but finding nothing more than a sense of wrongness. In the end, deciding he was wasting time, he spat to the right for luck and set off deeper into the forest in search of a stream and marshmallow, Yolande’s bow bouncing jauntily across his back.

* * * * *

Water lapping her ankles, Yolande filled the second water barrel in the little river and prepared to haul it up by its leather straps. Carrying an armload of green stuff, Joan chattered beside her and another, silent, woman called Sorrel was off farther along the bank, digging for pignuts.

No man had joined them in their chores.

“You have no well?” she asked, puffing as she lifted the barrel. For an instant, her loins burned and she worried about her baby but told herself not to be soft.

“Peter says God will provide.” Joan launched into a paean of praise for Peter and she and Sorrel scrambled up the woodland path to the settlement. Trailing behind, desperate not to take a tumble with the heavy weight on her back, Yolande let Joan’s words drift past her.

If this place is the setting of my final trial, I cannot see it or sense it. That, perhaps, is my greatest danger, for how can I strive?

Sometimes, my daughter, evil is the everyday work of man. You and your father forget that too often.
Her mother’s old warning was so clear Yolande backed up a step and looked ’round, anxious that Joan or Sorrel might also have heard. The shorthaired, pale Sorrel was peering into her gathering bag and Joan strolled ahead, darting off the track to pull more strewing herbs.

“Do the menfolk pray?” Yolande called up to her. So far, in the gathering of water, firewood and plants, only women were involved.
Perhaps the maids and girls here are like the lay brothers in a monastery, serving and preserving the mundane while Peter and his male followers are the monks.

“They meditate and sometimes they walk the labyrinth,” said Joan, in a singsong, dreamy way. “Each time they are purified, heaven on earth comes closer.”

“Where is your labyrinth?” Yolande asked.

“Away…” Joan waved her free arm, indicating a possible direction.

“We are freed through labor.” Sorrel spoke for the first time, her voice surprisingly deep. “This is the end of days. We keep our chastity and serve the men, for they are created in the form of God and we are not.” She glowered at Yolande.

She disapproves of my pregnancy.
For the first time since learning she was with child, nausea overcame her. Swallowing, Yolande quickened her steps.

“You all seem happy,” she remarked, aware of how feeble her words must sound. “Happy and healthy and in good spirits.”

“Oh, there is no death here,” said Joan. “We need no graveyards. When we have made the New Jerusalem complete, we shall walk together into heaven.”

“When will that be?” Yolande asked, falling into the same singsong way of speech.

“When the men have walked the labyrinth for seven times on May Day.”

An old holiday, May Day, scarcely a Christian festival at all. And seven times? Parsley seed is said to go seven times to the devil and back before it sprouts.

“They will walk?” Yolande asked, wondering whether to add that in the Christian labyrinths she had seen, the penitent traveled into the sacred maze on their knees.

“They will walk and Peter will pray.”

Yolande tasted a bitter salt sweat on her upper lip. The womenfolk, she noted, were merely witnesses, not allowed to take part. She dared not close her eyes in case she saw the labyrinth in her mind, with its sickly oak trees and walnut tree. “What then?” she croaked.

“We shall be our own divine Masada,” said Sorrel.

“With our men made angels to bring us to paradise,” breathed Joan, kissing her fronds of meadowsweet, cleavers, campion and iris.

Yolande shuffled the straps of her water barrel and transferred it into her arms. It was clutch the barrel for a brutal, homely comfort, or scream.

I may be wrong, but Great Maria! What if I am right?

* * * * *

“A blessing there are no children.”

Geraint heard Yolande’s heartfelt statement deep within his head, sounding like the bell to prayer. His tunic bulging with plants, he twisted right around, expecting to see his wife. When he did not, he knew it was time to run.

He sprinted, weaving ’round trees, speeding up hillsides, half rolling down slopes with his pack and Yolande’s bow on his other side so as not to squash the plants or her armor. Remembering his way back as he would a complex pattern of tumbling, he hurried almost a mile before he saw filmy puffs of smoke and guessed he had returned to New Jerusalem.

Has Yolande seen the labyrinth yet? No matter, we have much to discuss.

His heartbeat, already racing, jumped when he saw her shining amidst the oak trees and the huts. She was chopping wood with Theodore, he holding the wood, she wielding the axe. Geraint admired the way her body moved as she worked.

“Geraint!”

He had done nothing but pant to grab his breath but she had sensed him there. As Theodore glanced up, glowing with effort, Yolande pointed so he could greet Geraint too.

They waved and Joan, sleek as a seal and with a black waterfall of hair, glanced up from a stone where she knelt grinding dried peas and raised an arm too. Farther off, between the trees, other women were busy tending fires and what smelled like great cauldrons of pottage.

“All the women are working,” Geraint said as he kissed Yolande in greeting, “but none of the men except Theodore. So where are they?”

“
Meditating.” The briskness of her answer made Geraint stifle laughter.

“I have not the spiritual skill.” Theodore was shamefaced. “And I like to be doing.”

“You do very well, Master Theo,” called Joan.

Yolande gave a knowing look first to Joan and then to Theodore.
To be sure, when she deals with the living, my Bathsheba likes those about her to be in love and happy, and maybe these two would make a match.

Delighted with his married state, he was glad to help others into the same. “Hey, Theodore, Joan, will you show me where to take victuals? I have fresh green stuff in my pack, enough for everyone.”

“I will come too.” Yolande buried the axe deep into the log she was chopping and stretched. Where Geraint would have made a show of it, she did so quite unconsciously, simply, he was sure, to stretch her back. As Theodore hurried to help Joan to her feet, Yolande smiled after him. “Need talk,” she said softly in her father’s tongue.

Geraint tossed his pack to Theodore. “Can you take this, man? I think I have a flea and Yolande has nimble fingers.”

Theodore caught the pack very neatly and he and Joan peered eagerly inside. While the others were distracted, Geraint swiftly told Yolande what he had seen.

As she played at exploring Geraint’s hair, Yolande recounted what she had learned. “I do not know when they will count this place a New Jerusalem and finished, but it bodes ill. There!” Continuing their feint, she squeezed her thumbs together.

“We have some time,” Geraint reminded her. “Surely enough for you to be sure and then plan. Have I been missed, by the by? Has
Peter
said anything?”

She did not comment playfully on his tunic full of plants and made no move to pat his faintly bulging “belly” of marshmallow stems and leaves, a bad sign. “I missed you, Geraint,” she said. “I do not care for the others. No one has complained but perhaps—”

Whatever else she was about to add was lost amidst the noisy clatter of a handbell. In a swirl of green robes, green as the forest, Peter stepped from one of the huts and approached, ringing the bell.

The fellow knows how to make an entrance, for sure.

Between each ring of the bell, Peter intoned, “We are close, my friends. Today Jerusalem shines in the woodland of England and is almost ready to manifest upon our earth.”

Yolande glanced at the bow on Geraint’s shoulders, crossed herself and stepped forward. Then she relaxed a little.

No
, cariad,
you are right. You do not need your bow yet, but soon, maybe.

Peter sighed. “Today, I have seen the dragon that seeks to devour our sacred city.”

Wait for it, he will surely look at me… Yes!

“We must prepare.” Step by step, drawing the other men with him like beads on a string, Peter glided to the clearing. “We must purge ourselves of sin.”

That was clearly a signal, for the women stopped their work and moved to join the men. All strode closer to Peter apart from Theodore, who had dropped Geraint’s pack and backed away. He was staring at Joan with a look of painful longing.

Yolande mouthed “go” at Geraint in her father’s tongue and grabbed at her belly.

“No,” she gasped in English. “I am sick.” Ignoring Peter’s narrowed mouth, she turned and tottered away. Geraint moved to follow but Peter snatched his arm.

“You stay,” he ordered. “Be purified.”

Stocks could not hold him and Peter was as feeble as frayed string. Geraint twitched free and set off, hurrying after his wife.

Yolande fell to her knees close to a bramble patch and dry-heaved through sheer stress rather than any dramatic intention. She became aware of a palm on the back of her hot neck. “Sorry, Theodore,” she whispered.