Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment (19 page)

“The dart leaves a foul taste,” said Rosalind. “Get her some ale.”

“Get it yourself,” snapped the second girl. “I am not your brother.”

Rosalind sighed and hauled herself off the floor to a sideboard, returning with cups and a jug of ale. She settled again on the floor with her legs straight out in front of her, poured three cups and pushed one toward Elfrida.

“My thanks.” Elfrida drank thirstily, assessing the room about her. They were in an upper chamber. The sun streamed in through half-open shutters. There were other pallets on the wooden floor, a sideboard by the door, and nothing else. “Are the other girls with him?”

“What do you know?” demanded the second girl. “Do you understand Silvester’s pipes?”

I knew that snatch of pipe music was a signal of sorts!
“We have been searching for you, for all of you,” Elfrida said. She did not care if Silvester received this news.
Let him fear a little and sweat. Let him wonder who “we” are.

“Why?”

“To be sure you are safe. To return you to your families, should you wish it.”

Rosalind nodded. “We are out of favor today. Silvester told us to stay with you, within the back room, instead of remaining with him.”

“You do not seem upset,” Elfrida remarked.

The second girl said, “Ruth was the favorite until Silvester found Rowena and brought her to live with us. Now Ruth has vanished and so has Rowena. We are not keen to be favored.”

“Silvester is looking for Ruth and Rowena,” protested Rosalind.

“He
says
he is sending out his former wives to look,” shot back the second girl. “Even now, with Rowena gone only this morning, he does not search himself.”

“Former wives?” prompted Elfrida. This was twice that the girls had mentioned them.

“When they become too old, or pregnant, Silvester sets them up here in Bittesby. They live as widows,” explained Rosalind. “He takes care of us and them and his children. His former wives and bastards are respected in the town. No one troubles them, not even the priests.”

“I see.” Heart-sick at the idea that the priests of Bittesby colluded with Silvester, Elfrida found herself thankful that the appalling treatment of the girls was not, in fact, even more deadly.
Thank the Mother that Silvester had no worse fate in mind for them, as Magnus and I had feared. Thank the Holy Mother, too, that we did not go to a widow’s house last night.
“They do not re-marry?” Elfrida asked.

“Roxanne and Richmal have remarried,” said the second girl. “He gave them a good dowry. Rametta married a tailor. She and Herbert live a few doors away. It was those two who likely spotted you and passed word about you to Silvester.”

Rosalind finished her ale and, leaving the cup, jumped to her feet. “I should tell Silvester you are awake.”

She clattered out of the room. At once the second girl pointed to the pallet.

“Lie down again, pretend you are still groggy,” she ordered. “Be quick! I do not have much time.”

Elfrida lay sideways on the lumpy pallet. “What is your name?”

“Susannah, Susannah-Rose to Silvester, for I would not give up my name, but listen to me. I am becoming too old, do you understand? When we question him and lose our enchantment with him, Silvester does not like it. We become too old for him. And if we fall pregnant, he hates that. Mary, Rosalind as he calls her, is the same as me, beginning to doubt him, but she is more agreeable.”

“You sound beyond doubt.”

“I am. I cannot pretend for him anymore, but you should.” Susannah began to loosen Elfrida’s hair, muttering, “He likes unbound hair. Widen your eyes when he speaks, he likes that. Speak softly, blush if you can.”

“Please fasten my veil on the outside of the shutter,” begged Elfrida.
Magnus will be going wild, wondering where I am
. She would have done it herself but suspected that Susannah would be quicker and her own limbs still felt sluggish.

“Why? The window here looks down into nothing, believe me. We are lucky today to have the sun, usually we do not even have that.”

Elfrida crawled up the pallet to the wall and, inch by inch, hauled herself to her feet. When the world around her had stopped swaying a little, she tottered to the window.

“Watch out!” cried Susannah, gripping her shoulders as Elfrida felt herself toppling. She stared down, drawn by the drop, and felt despair, hot and sticky, rise in her throat.

This window did not look out over any street. When she glanced up, the sun shone over the roof tops but looking down took her into a different world. Here the houses were crowded cheek by jowl, with sagging, overlapping roofs and gutters. Taken as a whole these made a rough, enclosed circle about what had once been a yard. Down at the bottom of the circle there was a dim twilight of slime and dank, rotting refuse. As she peered deeper into the murk and caught the graveyard stench, Elfrida saw shapes rooting in the foul rubbish.

“Pigs sometimes break in,” said Susannah quietly. “The dung wagon has not been here in years. People board up their lower windows and doors. No one goes in if they can help it.

“The pretty window, the good view, is out at the front,” Susannah continued. “Where Silvester sleeps. We are not allowed there today.”

Would any signal be seen from here?
I have to try.
“Please,” she said, holding out her veil, Rowena’s veil.

Without further word or question, Susannah stepped lightly to the window and pinned the veil outside.

“How old are you Susannah?”

“Almost fifteen. I know you are older, too, but Silvester does not know yet.” She nodded to Elfrida’s hands. “I put your wedding ring onto your other hand after Silvester carried you inside and left you here. I do not think he has seen it. Men rarely notice details.”

“Thank you,” said Elfrida faintly, appalled at herself for not noticing the switch with the ring. She was rarely totally astonished, but Susannah was as self-possessed in her way as Rowena was in hers.
Is this girl a witch or healer? She is quick and sensible enough.
“How did he catch you?” she asked.

“Not by any drugged dart!” Susannah snorted and flopped down on the pallet beside her. “I am the eldest of seven, with six younger brothers. Silvester saw me washing my brothers’ clothes in the stream, then fetching and carrying for them. He offered me more. It was good for the last two months, less good for the last two weeks.”

“Since Ruth and Rowena?”

Susannah threw her a scathing glance. “I am not jealous, if that is what you think.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Silvester is another boy. I want a man. I want a man as a lover.”

“Are you all untouched?” Elfrida asked carefully.

“We are all virgin,” said Susannah bluntly. “He says we shall be wed on midsummer’s eve. The younger ones cannot wait, though how he will bed us all on one night I do not know.” She clicked her tongue. “After midsummer I doubt he will keep me long.”

“Will you come away with me?” Elfrida asked, whispering as she heard voices drawing closer.

“Need you ask?” Susannah rolled over and began to pretend to snore.

Elfrida closed her eyes. She heard the door open and a tap, tap, tap of a cane.
Is Silvester lame, or does he walk with a stick for another reason?

“Sleepy still,” said a male voice. “Little sleepy head. Mistress Rebecca always tips her darts with a little too much poppy.”

“She was awake when I left her, Silvester. They were both awake,” protested Rosalind. “I think Susannah-Rose sleeps too much.”

Rosalind might be in doubt of her tender feelings, but she was still seeking approval from Silvester, Elfrida thought. She felt a narrow stick prod gently at her stomach. She yawned and brushed at it as if she were still half-asleep.

“She is a redhead,” remarked a young girl, standing somewhere behind Silvester and Rosalind. “Is that auburn, Silvester? Have I the word right?”

“She is as pretty as Ruth,” said another. “Comely. Silvester, I think her gown looks like Rowena’s. Yes, it does.”

“Prettier than Ruth and Rowena,” said a third. “Did I sleep for as long, Silvester?”

“Not half so pretty as you, my dears,” said Silvester now, chuckling when his adoring chorus giggled, “but certainly as pretty as I was told this morning. I am right glad I whistled to Mistress Rebecca to watch out for her. Yes, Mistress Rebecca has done well, catching this maid after only one pipe signal. Ah, see, she wakes.”

Slim, dark, handsome, and with a winning smile—Silvester was all that. He looked young, but Elfrida sensed he was in his late twenties, like Magnus. He was not in purple and white, or at least not yet. Dressed in a rich, dark green tunic and a short, swirling cloak he wore his new clothes like a summer array. His three youngest girls surrounded him in a halo of nubile flesh, frowning when Elfrida widened her eyes and tried to look as appealing as possible
. How do I do it? Please, Holy Mother, let me gull him until I know more. He was told of me this morning. Was that when I returned to his house, or earlier? Has his network of spies learned where Rowena is, and told him? Does he know about Magnus?

Silvester was dangerous, certainly, because he seemed so kind, so ordinary, concerned with new clothes and other trifles. But the knuckles that gripped the cane were hard and white and his eyes watchful.

“Sir? My ladies?” She was careful to include everyone and make her voice very low.

Silvester knelt by her pallet, leaning in. “Do not be afraid,” he said gently. “You are free of that bestial owner of yours.”

He means Magnus! So Silvester has seen him, or been told about him.
Elfrida forced herself to remain still, apart from lowering her head so that he would not see the sudden anger in her face. His eyes, already no longer wary, followed her slight movement. Praying that she looked calm now, Elfrida locked her gaze with his and reached out carefully with her mind.

To her surprise she sensed no magic in him at all.

This handsome monster is a contradiction. His clothes are new, this house is new but he clings to the old ways of worship. He seeks a kind of midsummer marriage to these girls, though I doubt he understands why such a marriage is sacred.

And why must all the girls have names beginning with
R
?
Again she silently reached out and found Silvester’s thoughts, his inward voice as high-pitched as a bat’s.

“She looks like my old nurse Rosamund, and even more beautiful. I shall call her Rosamund.”

You loved Rosamund?
Elfrida asked him with her mind.

“She was my nurse. She cared for me, healed me when I was sick and gave me flowers,” came back the light, tinkling answer.

In that instant, Elfrida glimpsed Silvester’s former nurse. Dressed in white and purple, Rosamund had been a brown-haired, tiny, delicate young woman, one who followed the old ways. She had given Silvester his first hare’s foot, his first posy of valerian and marigold and had danced with him at midsummer beneath an elder tree.

That is where Silvester got the idea for the wreath of valerian! Rosamund was a healer, almost a witch. She was like me… almost like me.

The realization startled Elfrida so much that she fell away from Silvester’s mind and memories and returned in a rush to the present. Looking at him again, she saw the old ways honored in the hare’s foot he had pinned to his bright cloak, in the sprig of rosemary he had tucked into his tunic. In spite of her earlier resolution, she felt a pang of pity for him.

Clearly sure of himself, of his charm, or charms, Silvester smiled at her. “You are safe, little one. You do not need to be ashamed any more.”

His girlish chorus sighed, as if this were the most romantic speech they had ever heard. Elfrida felt a hopeful excitement.
Perhaps
Silvester really does not know we are hunting him. Yes, of course he does not. He has taken young girls before and no one has stopped him. As Magnus and I suspected, he does have a help-mate, or help-mates, his former wives. Creatures like this Mistress Rebecca even do his hunting for him.

Silvester brushed her gown. She forced herself not to react.

“Her gown is similar to Rowena’s, but she wears a different belt to Rowena’s, an old thing, far less elegant,” he remarked to the room at large. “I gave Rowena a new belt.”

Elfrida half-expected the three younger girls to applaud these crashingly obvious observations—they looked desperate to applaud something.
He does not even recognize Rowena’s gown, the gown he gave her. Of course, gowns and jewels are unimportant to him except as trinkets for his pets. He is rich enough for them to mean nothing.

“You always buy us new clothes,” said one of the girls now.

“And jewels,” said a second.

“I worship the Holy Mother in ancient ways, but I also like the new,” said Silvester.

“Like your walking stick!” said the third, beaming when Silvester gave her a little bow and twirled the cane.

Poor, deluded girls. So crazed for his approval…

Using his cane, Silvester lifted a tress of Elfrida’s hair. “Did your owner make you wear your hair loose? You may choose how you wear it with me.”