Dark Maiden (17 page)

Her bow arm tightened. “One mistake? One?”

He did not flinch as Yolande brought her arm up and her bow quivered at him, its string humming as if alive. He knew she was not quite herself.
Somehow that incubus has sneaked through her defenses.

His throat was as dry as a desert but the performer in him was excited, his mind quick and clear.
One wrong step, one poor answer and we all go down, but I have not fallen yet.

“An error of fatal curiosity, leading to sin,” he replied quietly. “But can we judge him? Are we the Almighty, to judge?”

“Always so glib.” Yolande frowned and he crossed his fingers tightly behind his back, sweating a little in case she guessed his lie. The priest could go to the devil for him but if she killed Father William now, the act would haunt her forever.

One false step…
The back of his neck prickled but he was sure, very sure—almost sure—of what he was doing.
Here goes.

“I challenge you to show otherwise,” he answered.

Yolande, high and blood buzzing in her anger, answered without thinking, “Yes, yes, I take your challenge.”

“Good lass.” Swaying his hips like a prostitute, he strolled up to her.

What is he doing?
asked a cool,
perfumed
voice in her head, but she did not really care because Geraint was so pretty, so entertaining to watch. And she trusted him. Ignoring the clamor in her blood, she waited, intrigued.
What will he do next?

Geraint spun a ribbon out of the air to land like a butterfly on his reaching fingers—and planted it plumb on top of her bow.

A pink and pretty ribbon perched on a deadly weapon against sin. The notion, the image, was so incongruous, so
him
, that she began to chuckle.

“More, my Bathsheba. You are a woman made for laughter.” He took her bow and draped it over his shoulder then swept her into his arms and kissed her.

He was warm and tender, his mouth soft and as sensual as sweet wine pouring, his tongue tickling. In a nice—and deliberate—contrast, he coiled his arms around her like vines, pressing her against him, enfolding, cradling and pinning her. So snug they were together, she felt his arousal, his passion, but still his kiss was as warm as sunshine.

Somewhere during their kissing, her anger vanished.

From inside the hut she heard a broken sobbing. Father William, she hoped, finally poleaxed with remorse.

The rowans shook with a sudden wind and the rooks cawed. She kissed Geraint again. Sensing the chill air trembling around them, she turned.

A sour-faced, beautiful being, neither male nor female, appeared immediately in front of them in the clearing beside the priest’s house.

“I cannot stand against you both.” With this complaint, the incubus scowled and pouted like a young virgin of either sex. The winter light shimmered on the demon’s flawless skin, lit hair that at times looked golden, at times black, and revealed a lissome body clothed in a white robe. Or was the long, sweeping tunic red?

“Too much work by far to drive a wedge between you, far too much. I prefer easier tasks and more simply seduced victims. I leave this place to you instead.”

“You leave Halme in peace? Forever?” Yolande asked, her spirits soaring.

“For long enough. The place no longer interests me. Farewell.” Haughty and indifferent in defeat, the presence disappeared.

Geraint grinned, tucked her bow more securely onto his shoulder and offered her his arm. “We should go,
cariad
.”

He had not mentioned the presence, so had he sensed it or seen it? Had the incubus appeared to her alone?

Geraint interrupted her scramble of thoughts. “We should go,” he repeated.

“But the villagers—”

“They should do well enough, do you not think? ’Tis Christmas and all and these villagers and their weeping priest must do their best, as must we. The two ghosts are settled and Father William begins to know what he has done. As for the maids and their dreams…” He grinned and snapped his fingers. “With all the cleansing and church visiting that has gone on through this village, I should think they will sleep like babies for years.”

She had only cleansed one or two houses but she knew what he meant. She breathed in slowly. Halme village was indeed lighter and more open.
The folk here appear happy and one just waved to me.

“We should be on our way,” he said.

“To where?”

“The place I know. The place I spoke of, Yolande, where all wishes are granted.” He patted her fingers and smiled. “Will you come?”

A week later, Yolande was still puzzling her easy acceptance, but not too much. There had been no urgent calls for her, no messages, no pleas for her to exorcise this place or that person.

“Even spirits know it is Christmastime and take a holiday,” Geraint answered when she remarked on the unusual calm. “Try this roasted fruit. It is still warm and extra sweet.”

Traveling with a carter westward, always west, such exotic treats and dainties often came her way. Since Geraint merely shrugged at her questions of providence, she had stopped asking and simply enjoyed.

In many ways, lurching along the muddy, frosted roads beside Geraint, both of them lolling on a cart filled with warm bales of wool, it was a holiday for her too.

“I have not idled so much since Christmastime with my parents,” she admitted, swallowing the final morsel of fruit.

“Since you were fourteen.” Geraint knew she had lost her parents then. “You have worked as an exorcist ever after?”

“But it is not a time of seven. I am nineteen, not twenty-one.”

“I am one and twenty,” Geraint answered, “and these last six months we have both labored a year’s worth each, and with our joint work and your own earlier stuff, that makes seven to me.”

Yolande yawned in reply and settled more comfortably onto her side.

She slept her way into Wales and dozed while Geraint haggled at a farmstead for stores. Woodland, farmland, even the overweening castles of the English king who had tried to tame this land, were no more than fleeting smudges in the landscape to her as she slumbered on. Days turned to nights then days again and she could do nothing but rest.

“’Tis the good Welsh air. Suck it deep into your lungs and let it work,” Geraint said, strumming the bells on his motley in sheer good humor. Tousled and gleaming-eyed, endlessly stretching and balancing about the cart or tumbling along the track, he looked like a man plotting something—and succeeding.

“I do nothing,” he exclaimed. “I am, that is all.” As the carter’s mules ambled up a steep switchback road, he juggled and called out greetings in Welsh to men working three fields away.

“You are happy to be in Wales,” Yolande said.

Geraint shook his head. “I am a bridegroom,” he said, giving her a smile that made her forget sleep. He reached across and gently smoothed the fleeces he had earlier tucked around her. “Not far now.”

Geraint brought her to the place where, according to his blessed mam, all wishes and prayers were granted. As a boy he had believed without question. As a man he was less sure but he wanted very badly for his mam to have been right.

The carter waved and wished them both good times as he left them and Yolande raised her eyebrows at the collection of parcels scattered by her feet.

“They are for us,
cariad
, for we must prepare.”

She glanced at the beach, the sparkling sea, the grassy mound.

Does she sense the holiness of the spot?

“So old.” She gazed at the mound across the beach from where the carter had left them. “So many sacred earth and sky spirits. So many offerings and prayers.”

She does. Oh, indeed she does.

She turned to him, startled, looking younger than her nineteen years. “A sacred marriage,” she whispered.

She understands
. His body was already ablaze with what was to pass between them.

They bathed in the sea, dressing after in the new clothes he had paid for along the way. Yolande stood on the beach, an elegant figure, combing her loosened hair.

“It feels strange to wear a dress,” she said, hastily tucking the comb into a pocket somewhere in the manner of all maids getting ready for their men. “I have not owned one for years.”

“I had them model the length from me,” Geraint admitted, his breath catching in his throat as she beamed. “You like it?”

“The color, it’s so bright.” She stroked the sleek scarlet gown, running her fingers down the softly flaring long skirts. She looked up at him and gave an endearing, shy nod. “I love it. Thank you.”

“You are worthy of no less.” The scarlet showed off the sheen on her skin. The gold trim picked up the gold in her eyes and the silver belt reflected the shine in them. “You are truly beautiful, Yolande.”

She ducked a second time. “I have no gifts for you.”

He wagged a finger at her. “The custom is for the bridegroom to do the gifting. You have gifted yourself and that is way more than enough, my bride.”

A relieved, quizzical look came over her and she strolled toward him across the sands. She was still wearing her boots but he said nothing.

“Green and blue for you, I see.” She brushed a fleck of sand from his shoulder. “I miss the coins and bells of your costume.”

“Perhaps this will make amends.” Suddenly, tinglingly, dry-throatedly nervous, Geraint made himself keep looking at her as he fumbled in his tunic and brought out the gold ring he had hidden there. He had bought it months ago and at times wondered if he would ever produce it. “My marriage ring, for you.”

Yolande could see the bright gold glittering in his palm. His fingers trembled faintly, and his lips, and her heart swelled inside her, knowing she caused this tension. Hating to cause him pain by keeping him in suspense, she asked gently, “Will you put it on?” And transferred her mother’s ring deftly onto her other hand.

Geraint held up the new ring and kissed it. “I give you this ring to show my love and my promise.” His deep voice was as warm as summer, the light in his eyes as intense as prayer. “I give it freely, with all my heart.”

“You have mine,” she said. “For all time.” A surge of relief, of emotion, of thankfulness, welled up in her and she could say no more.
I love you, Geraint. Do you know how much I love you?

“With this ring, I thee wed,” he said formally in Welsh then English. He slipped the ring onto her finger and she swallowed a gasp at the dazed, fresh sweetness on his face.

“You look so sweet,” he murmured, which revealed she must look the same to him. They both admired the ring then each other.

“I love you,” they said together, coming down to earth from their brief, shared paradise.

“We are wed,” Yolande said, kissing him.
Finally we are wed.

“Amen to that, my Bathsheba, and we must be off to our marriage bed.” He lifted her, boots and all, into his arms, bearing her away to the green mound, the sacred place where all wishes are granted.

He laid her on the soft grass, a spot out of the prevailing wind, where the gentle winter sun shone as a blessing. He pointed to the beach, where they had left their cloaks and other intriguing bundles. “We do not eat or drink on the mound,” he said. “It would not be polite.”

Yolande sensed the dead close by, within the burial mound they lay on. “Do we leave an offering?” she asked.

His grin flared brighter than the sun. “That we shall, but later, much later.”

“Shall we be…undisturbed?” she asked in a lower voice.

“Couples who come here… They are left in peace.”

Briefly, Yolande wondered who had told him that. She sat up, admiring the sweep of the bay the mound overlooked and the empty golden beach and deep-blue sky. Old spirits, older than the mistletoe spirits clustered in the ancient oak wood behind the mound, lingered here. She prayed to them and to the Holy Virgin Mother, sensing their interest.

The dead and the spirits here are content, well content. They are for life too, most interested in life. Great Maria, that is good, but I do not want them as an audience any more than I want a passing traveler to see us.

Disconcerted afresh by the whole idea of being on view, of being spied on, she shuffled slightly away from Geraint. He merely sat upright, put out an arm and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“I can promise no man or maid will come by today, especially not today. It is the final day of Christmastime,” he remarked, squeezing her elbow. “Of course the old spirits hereabouts may have never seen a dark maid before—”

“But they have!” The answer burst from her in a flash of past insight, a brief vision of another maid, dark as herself, and a man with fiery red hair, joining in a sacred marriage on the side of the mound when it was new.

Geraint whistled low in surprise and gave her a fresh look of admiration—it seemed today she need only breathe in and out and he was admiring—but she felt the spirits, or the dead, withdraw. She sensed their approval as a glaze of warmth across her body as they departed.