THE SNOW BRIDE

LINDSAY TOWNSEND Copyright © 2011

Chapter 1

England, winter, 1131

Magnus forced his aching legs to move and dismounted stiffly from his horse. The still, freezing cold made his teeth ache, and as he tethered his mount, he wondered yet again what he was doing here. It was less than a month to Christmas, and he could have been with Peter and Alice at Castle Pleasant, preparing for feasting and singing and watching his godchildren. And then a deep, abiding ache, bedding down in the great hall alone. He would never force a woman to lie with him—he had seen too much of that in the crusades. He limped forward through the pristine snow. Peter had his Alice now, a clever, black-haired wench who feared nothing and no one, including him. Had his friend and fellow crusader not known her first, he might have had a chance with Alice. She saw through the outer armor and shell of a man to what lay beneath. But she loves her crusader knight, Peter of the Mount, and I have no chance or right there. As the palfrey snorted and jangled its harness behind him, he knelt in a white heap of pitted frost and reached out with his good arm to brush snow off the small, cracked statue of a saint. This was an old, wayside shrine on a track to nowhere of note, and the wooden figure huddled in its stone niche was old, its paint peeling. This battered saint would understand him, one ugly brute to another. “Holy one, grant me my prayer.” He stopped, aware of the chill silence around him—the bare trees, the white landscape, the empty road. He had nothing to offer the saint, no flower or trinket to sweeten his request. As his knees began to smart, then burn, then freeze on the unyielding, icy ground, Magnus tried to marshal his thoughts. What did he want? A woman of my own. Someone to return to. Alice cared and had urged him most ardently to stay with her and Peter, but pride had made him refuse them both with a smile. He did not begrudge the handsome couple their joy, not after their many trials. But the dark of winter and Christmas especially brought his own desolation home to him most keenly, sharper than an assassin’s blade. He was nine and twenty, a grizzled warrior, battle-scarred and wounded. Feeling sorry for yourself, Magnus? Brace up, man! Be a Viking, as your granddad was. You have your wits and your balls, all working. The lasses in the stews make no complaint and do not charge so much. You have land, a strong house, good fellowship, and two hearty godchildren. “Splendor in Christendom, let me have my own family! A lass who loves me!” His voice rang out, startling a lone magpie into taking flight from a solitary elm in a blur of wings, but the drab and well-worn saint gave no sign of hearing. Peering into the calm, carved face, Magnus wondered if the saint was smiling, and then he spotted his own reflection, clear in a frozen mirror of ice by the shrine. He scowled, knowing very well what he looked like, and spat to the left for luck. With his knees creaking, he staggered to his feet and remounted his eager horse. When he passed this way again he would leave gold, he vowed, but for now he wished only to slink away. He needed to find the village before nightfall and speak to the council of old men—it was always old men— who had sent word to his manor of Norton Mayfield, begging for help, any help, to track and to defeat a monster.

* * * *

“Are you a witch?” Elfrida, sewing on the sleeves to her younger sister’s best dress as they sat together on the bench outside her hut, felt fear coil in her belly like hunger pangs. Keeping her eyes fixed on her needle, she answered steadily, between stitches, “I am my own master, ’tis all, without a husband. Have any in the village been troubling you?” “Oh no, Elfrida, but I was thinking.” Elfrida tugged another stitch tight, her needle flashing like a small sword in the bright evening light. “Does your Walter call me so?” she asked carefully. She glanced up. Christina was blushing very prettily, her light-blue eyes brighter than cornflowers when set against her pale-blue veil, white skin, and primrose hair. Lost in admiration, and quite still for a moment, she heard Christina admit, “We do not talk much. Well, I do not. Walter calls me kitten and we kiss.” Christina and her betrothed could be found kissing all over the village, so that was no surprise. “Yet still.” Christina pressed a well-bitten fingernail to her rose-petal lips. “Our dam was a witch.” “She was a wisewoman, Christina.” “Our father was a wizard.” “A healer and dowser,” Elfrida patiently corrected. “And you are all of that, of those things, I mean.” Elfrida fastened the final stitch and knelt beside her sister, crouching back on her heels in the snow. Christina was not usually so fretful. “Walter loves you very much,” she said after a space, “and you have a good dowry.” A good dowry it was, of cloth she had spun and ale she had brewed, cheeses she had made, and silver pennies she had earned by her healing and dowsing. Since her earliest childhood, Christina had longed to be married, with a hearth and children of her own, and Elfrida had striven to keep her safe and happy. She was the eldest, so it was her duty, and she had promised their parents, on their deathbeds, that she would do so. “But will the priest marry us?” Christina was biting another fingernail. “Today is the very eve of your wedding, little one.” Elfrida tugged gently on her sister’s dress. “This is your wedding gown.” “He has preached against redheads.” “You are no redhead, and Father John’s sermon was on modesty for women,” Elfrida replied. Her sister was not a redhead, but she was, and redheads were rumored to be witches. “He said that for a girl to be unveiled was to be as brazen as a redhead. He took my healing ointment, too.” She tugged gently a second time on Christina’s dress. “Walter will be here to see you after sunset. Would you have him see you in your gown?” Her sister ignored her question and pouted. “He will be late. He is coming here only after a meeting with his old men, and you know how they go on!” “Did he say what the council was about?” Christina shrugged. “He may have done, but I was not listening then.” She colored prettily. “Will you comb my hair again?” Elfrida silently rose, kicking the snow from her faded, red gown—one that had belonged to their mother—and eased the wooden combs from Christina’s pale, shimmering hair. As she gently teased and tugged and Christina’s breathing slowed, Elfrida thought of the council. Yester evening, when he swept into their hut and whirled Christina into his meaty arms, Walter’s shrewd gray eyes had glanced everywhere. He had asked twice if their door was well secured and poked the roof-thatch as if seeking rats’ nests. He had promised them one of his dogs this very evening, as a gift, he claimed, then blushed when Christina clapped her hands and kissed him. Elfrida frowned, worrying a comb over a small knot in her sister’s tresses. Walter and the rest of the village men knew something, and none of her gossips in the bakehouse or the wash rocks by the stream knew anything. Christina, dreaming of wedding flowers for her hair and of babies to come, was not concerned, but Elfrida was not satisfied. Why had Walter promised the gift of a dog—to warn and guard them from what? She had spotted no boar or wolf tracks in the nearby woods. Was a man-wolf—an outlaw—abroad and making havoc? Were disgruntled men-at-arms from a wretched Norman lord foraging close to their village? But why did the village men, her village men, not explain? Granted, I would not say much to Christina, who is easily wary and will not linger even in the widest paths of the forest, but I am wisewoman here! These village elders turn to me when they have lost things and for cures when their bodies pain them. They should tell me everything. When Walter comes tonight I will leave the lovebirds in peace and safety together and call on the headman myself.

* * * *

Magnus listened to the high, excited chatter of the council and watched the old men as they argued on their long bench in front of a poor, smoking fire. Their bread was moldy and their cheese worm-ridden, so under cover of the vast shadows in the great hut, he dropped both into the rushes for the rats to find. The ale was good, though. He took another drink, then asked idly, “Who brewed the ale?” Silence greeted his question. In this council, only he and the headman understood each other as the village dialect was utterly incomprehensible to him. He waited as the old man translated his question to the group and waited again as the headman made a slow, careful reply. “The drink was made by Elfrida, the herb-woman in the next village.” The headman, a wrinkled fellow as gnarled and stubby as the old olive trees Magnus had seen while away on crusade, muttered something else. Magnus, sitting on a low stool that made his backside go numb and his long legs ache, leaned toward him. “She is a witch, you say, as well as a healer?” Seizing a branch, he stirred the fire and studied his huddled companions by its brighter flames. “Is she a good witch, a pious one? Can she help us?” His questions, once translated, brought a mass shaking of heads and twitchy strokings of ragged beards. One or two elders said more, leading to a furious, whispered debate. Magnus finished his ale and thought about cutting thorns and scrub for defense and digging ditches and repairing and strengthening walls and roofs—all work which must wait until daylight. “So you have not told your womenfolk of this threat, not even your wisewoman,” he said, once the whispers had died down. “She is not our wisewoman! She is good, yes, pious, but of the next village!” “But a woman, all the same. And why do your two villages not work together? Why not bring all your young women into this hut and have them sleep by the fire, with your men sleeping in a circle round them?” He saw a look of shame flicker across the headman’s wrinkled face and added more gently, “Would that not keep them safe?” “For how long? This month, one of our maids went missing. Last month, this monster struck in another neighbor village, snatched a maiden, and returned into the forest. No one can track him, no one. He may return tonight or tomorrow or at the next full moon, or in the next three months. He should return to the other village or our neighbors and leave ours in peace!” “And that is your hope.” Magnus nodded at the spate of words, marking that the old man was too agitated to translate for his companions. Three villages, three settlements, made this search harder, for the beast had many targets. “We need your help,” the headman continued doggedly. “Our women are not fine ladies. They work. They spin at home, or weave at home, or brew, or cook, or gather harvest or plant or weed, or wash, or make butter or cheese—all at home.” “But in the evenings, can they not come here?” Magnus prompted. “The Forest Grendel strikes at any time, night or day. We cannot guard them all the time. We have told them nothing.” “That is what you call the beast?” Magnus was struck by the aptness. In the old tale of Beowulf, Grendel was the creature who preyed upon the warriors, striking in the night and carrying them away from the golden hall, unopposed and unstoppable until the hero fought him. “How else should we name the creature? He is in very truth the monster of this woodland, a Forest Grendel!” Magnus nodded agreement. “When the girls were kidnapped from here and the other village, how was this hidden from your womenfolk?” “The one here was only an orphan and disliked by all but her lover. It was rumored she had run off to some town. We did not tell anything of the other maiden.” Magnus said nothing, but the headman sensed his disapproval. “What else would you have us say? They are women, after all. If they knew the danger, their wits would not stand it.” Magnus nodded, thinking of Alice’s likely response to that statement as he smelled the man’s shame and frustration. In essence, however, what the fellow admitted was the stark truth. The men had to work in the fields or forest and the women at home. It was how they survived. “Move from these villages—” he began, but the headman interrupted. “We will not be driven from our homes!” “Move the young women,” Magnus continued steadily. “They can come to my manor, and my people will guard them.” “They will not go.” You do not want them to go, Magnus translated in his mind. The headman glowered at him across the fire. “You said you would find the beast! You are Sir Magnus, the famed warrior of the East! We had heard of your exploits in arms even here, and when we sent the messenger we could scarcely hope that you would come. I know we cannot offer much gold, but for the renown of such a chase, we thought it would be enough.” “Renown feeds no bellies,” Magnus answered dryly, “but you need not fret. I have never yet turned away from helping a maid, be she free or bond.” “So you will find the beast?” “I will, but it will take me time and many of my men. You say the monster is hard to track.” Magnus stirred the fire again. He wanted more light to give these old men heart. “I will catch it,” he vowed. “The more you tell me, the better. Have you anything of the creature’s?” A sturdy peasant, straighter and more lithe than the huddled group by the fire, stepped from the wall shadows and tossed him a bundle. Fumbling in the dark, Magnus accidentally dropped the rough cloth parcel into the rushes and heard the peasant mutter something that the headman chose not to translate. Magnus guessed it would be about his scars and missing hand and ignored it, too. He did not have to justify his fighting skills to any low-born farmer. He scrabbled for and retrieved the parcel as the old men burst into squalls of chatter, hard and urgent as showers of hail. Guessing that he was in for more long-winded exclamations, he shifted on the stool, then warned himself sternly to listen. I will look tonight, too. For as long as there is light, and I can see any kind of trail, I will look. But for the trouble to afflict this village and two more! It is worse than I realized.

* * * *

Returning from the beehives at the end of her garden, Elfrida was about to walk through the village to the hut of the headman when she saw Walter stumbling toward her. His homely face was stark with horror, and as soon as he spotted her, he began to shout. “He has her! I cannot find them! I have looked everywhere!” He slumped to his knees in the slush and dropped further, his breath spurting in choking gasps. Elfrida reached him as he rolled onto his back, still wheezing. Her own breath stopped as she saw the claw marks on his arms and throat. She swung the lantern round but saw nothing that should not be there in the garden. “Christina?” she croaked, her throat closing with dread. “Alive, I swear it! I heard her crying as she was carried off.” Elfrida found she could breathe again. “Have you roused the men?” she demanded, hearing now, too late, the wail of horns and of many voices. Already in the nearby woodland she saw the bobbing flares of torches and prayed they did not search in vain. Let her be alive, oh Lord. Let her be safe! Walter clutched her, dragging her down into the snow with him. “He came from nowhere, like a great spider. I heard nothing.” Why did I not hear? Christina taken, and I heard nothing! “Had he a horse? Was he alone?” Walter shook his head. He had begun to shake. “He was dark as a spider...ugly... moved quicker than lightning. Had her snatched and gone.... I went after them.... He slashed at me.” Elfrida knocked off Walter’s trembling arms and sprinted to the house, leaving him prone in the snow. “Christina! Christina!” she shrieked, her voice higher than anyone’s, but her sister was not safe at home. Only a scrap of her blue veil remained in their hut, caught on one of the roof struts. She must have rushed out to greet Walter, as she thought, and run straight into—what? Elfrida dashed into the yard, screaming her sister’s name. She flung the lantern into a stack of hay and screamed again as the precious winter hay burned up in towering, crackling flames, giving much-needed light. “Christina!” The hay blazed, and she could see the other villagers, the other houses and gardens, the paths through the hamlet and the trees beyond, but there was no sign or shape of Christina. She was gone, as Walter said, carried off into the wilderness by a monster.

* * * *

Elfrida dropped the twigs she had been using as divining rods into the snow. This clearing was the place. Here was where she would make her stand. After two days without sleep or food, she was drained of all feeling, dry from crying. Day and night she had sought everywhere for Christina. Walter had been constantly at her side, calling, praying, and urging the dog he had meant to give Christina, to seek her out. At sunset on the second day, the village headman had compelled Walter to go to church, to leave offerings to the local saint for Christina’s safe recovery. He had tried to order Elfrida, but she had pleaded “woman’s trouble” as an excuse not to enter the church and finally she was alone. Her head ached and buzzed as if filled with bees, but the thudding panic was gone. Swiftly, as the sinking sun bled into darkness in the west, she began to search for Christina by witch ways. She had done this from the start, but now, without Walter’s anxious, hovering presence, she felt her power growing. She chanted to the wood elves, promising them a year and a day of ale if she they helped her. She tossed Christina’s veil high into the cold, still air, calling on the old gods Gog and Magog to point out the track of the beast. She thought of her sister, her long blonde hair, blue eyes, and sweet face and whispered, Where now, where now? She drew a picture in her mind of the great forest and the villages she knew: Great Yarr, Top Yarr, where she lived, Lower Yarr and Selton, the new place. She imagined the cat’s cradle of paths to and fro from settlement to settlement. Christina was light to carry, but even a child was too heavy to bear away on such narrow woodland tracks, and surely smashed twigs would have marked the beast’s passage? Had he flown away, then? “Be he a demon in flight, or be he as nimble as a squirrel in the treetops, I will have him!” she shouted, striking an oak tree to seal her promise. She found two branches beneath the tree and took them as the oak’s gift, using them to divine where in these woods Christina had been taken. Here in this clearing lay a clear sign, a long strand of blonde hair trailing across the snow in a golden thread. Gold but no red, praise God, so she could hope her sister still lived. Elfrida turned slowly in this small circle, glimpsing the path of the sun and the rising new moon through a screen of holly and oak trees. About her the woods seemed deathly quiet, and yet she felt she was being watched by something with a mind—that, or something was coming. She knew it from the raised hairs on the back of her neck. Coming, not watching. It cannot see me yet, I vow, so I have time. Had she time enough? She must return to the village, to change her clothes, and to make ready. She listened intently, reaching out with all her senses, but again her first instinct remained compelling. The beast was in this forest, and he would be drawn closer by the right inducements. “And I know what those are,” she said aloud, turning to hurry back to the home that was not a home, now that Christina was gone. Walter had not admitted anything to her, not directly, but from his muttered remarks and fractured exclamations as he feverishly searched alongside her for his betrothed, Elfrida had learned a great deal. “She is the third!” Walter had cried out, beating his fists against the walls of their empty hut. “The third in her wedding garb, and the most beautiful: one black-haired, one brown, and my Christina!” He had refused to say more, even when Elfrida had threatened to curse him, but his outburst told her what he and the elders had been hiding from the village women. The brute who had carried off Christina had kidnapped other pretty young girls, also dressed in their wedding gowns. He stole brides. I will dress myself as a bride and return here with my own wedding feast, with food and drink in abundance. Let him think me a bridal sacrifice, his red-haired bride, left for him by the village. And, by Christ and all his saints, this time I will be ready for him! It is a blessing I am a healer and have so many potions ready prepared. If I put sleeping draughts in the wine, food, and sweets, surely I can tempt the beast to take some? I can smear tinctures of poppy on my skin and clothes, so any taste will induce sleep. Sleep, not death, for she had to know where he had taken Christina. I will coax the truth from the groggy monster, and then the village men can have him. Part of her knew she was being wild, unreasonable, that she should talk to Walter, tell the villagers, but she did not care. Talk would waste more precious hours, and they might even try to stop her. For her sister she would do anything, risk anything. But she must hurry, she must do something, and she had little time. It was full dark before Elfrida was finished, midnight on the day after the start of Advent, two days after Christina should have been married. She shivered in the glinting snow, her breath suspended between the frosted, white ground and the black, star-clad sky. She glanced over the long boulder she had used as an offering table for her wine and food, not allowing herself to think too closely about what she had done. She had lit a small fire and banked it so that it would burn until morning, to stop her freezing and to keep wolves at bay, and now by its tumbling flames she saw her own small, tethered shadow writhing on the forest floor. She would not dwell on what could go wrong, and she fought down her night terrors over Christina, lest they become real through her thoughts. She lifted up her head and stared above the webbing of treetops to the bright stars beyond, reciting a praise chant to herself. She was a warrior of magic, ready to ensnare and defeat the beast. “I have loosened my hair as a virgin. I am dressed in a green gown, unworn before today. My shoes are made of the softest fur, my veil and sleeves are edged with gold, and my waist is belted in silver. There is mutton for my feast, and dates and ginger, wine and mead and honey. I am a willing sacrifice. I am the forest bride, waiting for my lord—” Her voice broke. Advent was meant to be a time of fasting, and she had no lord. None of the menfolk of Yarr would dare to take Elfrida the wisewoman and witch to be his wife. She knew the rumors—men always gossiped more than women—and all were depressing in their petty spitefulness. They called her a scold because she answered back. “I need no man,” she said aloud, but the hurt remained. Was she not young enough, fertile enough, pretty enough? Keep to your task, Elfrida reminded herself. You are the forest bride, a willing virgin sacrifice. She had tied herself between two tall lime trees, sometimes struggling against her loose bonds as if she could not break free. She could, of course, but any approaching monster would not know that, and she wanted to bait the creature to come close—close enough to drink her drugged flask of wine and eat her drugged “wedding” cakes. Let him come near so she could prick him with her knife and tell him, in exquisite detail, how she could bewitch him. He would fear her, oh yes, he would... She heard a blackbird caroling alarms and knew that something was coming, closing steadily, with the stealth of a hunter. She strained on her false bonds, peering into the semidarkness, aware that the fire would keep wild creatures away. Her back chilled as she sensed an approach from downwind, behind her, and as she listened to a tumble of snow from a nearby birch tree, she heard a second fall of snow from a pine closer by. Whoever, whatever, was creeping up was somehow shaking the trees, using the snowfalls as cover to disguise its own movement. A cunning brute, then, but she was bold. In one hand she clutched her small dagger, ready. In her other, she had the tiny packet of inflammables that she now hurled into the fire. “Come, husband!” she challenged, as the fire erupted into white-hot dragon tongues of leaping flame, illuminating half the clearing like a noonday sun. “Come now!” She thrust her breasts and then her hips forward, aping the actions that wives had sometimes described to her when they visited her to ask for a love philter. She shook her long, red hair and kissed the sooty, icy air. “Come to me!” She saw it at the very edge of her sight—black, huge, a shadow against the flames, off to her side, and now a real form, swooping around from the tree line to her left to face her directly. She stared across the crackling fire at the shape and bit down on the shriek rising up her throat. The beast stepped through the fire, and she saw its claw reaching for her. She heard a click, off to her right, but still kept watching the claw, even as the fire was suddenly gutted and dead, all light extinguished. Darkness, absolute and terrifying, smothered her, and she was lost.

Chapter 2

Elfrida stirred sluggishly, unable to remember where she was. Her back ached, and the rest of her body burned. She opened her eyes and sat up with a jerk, thinking of Christina. Her head felt to be bobbing like an acorn cup in a stream, and her vision swam. As she tried to swing her legs, her sense of dizzy falling increased, becoming worse as she closed her eyes. She lashed out in the darkness, her flailing hands and feet connecting with straw, dusty hay, and ancient pelts. “Christina?” she hissed, listening intently and praying now that the monster had brought her to the same place it had taken her sister. She heard nothing but her own breath, and when she held that, nothing at all. “Christina?” Fearing to reach out in this blackness that was more than night and dreading what she might find, Elfrida forced herself to stretch her arms. She trailed her fingers out into the ghastly void, tracing the unseen world with trembling hands. Her body shook more than her hands, but she ignored the shuddering of her limbs, closed her eyes like a blind man, and searched. She lay on a pallet, she realized, full of crackling, dry grass. When she scented and tasted the air, there was no blood. She did not share the space with grisly corpses. I am alone and unfettered. Now her heart had stopped thudding in her ears, she listened again, hearing no one else. Chanting a charm to see in the dark, she tried again to shift her feet. Light spilled into her eyes like scalding milk as a door opened and a massive figure lurched across the threshold. Elfrida launched herself at freedom, hurling a fistful of straw at the looming beast and ducking out for the light. She fell instead, her legs buckling, her last sight that of softly falling snow.

* * * *

Magnus gathered the woman before she pitched facedown into the snow, returning her swiftly to the rough bed within the hut. Her tiny, bird-boned form terrified him. Clutching her was like ripping a fragile wood anemone up from its roots. And she had fought him, wind-flower or not. She had charged at him. “I wish, lass, that you would listen to me. I am not the Forest Grendel, nor have wish to be, nor ever have been.” Just as earlier, in the clearing where he had first come upon her, a brilliant shock of life and color in a white, dead world, the woman gave no sign of hearing. She was cold again, freezing, while in his arms she had steamed with fever. He tugged off his cloak and bundled her into it, then piled his firewood and kindling onto the bare hearth. A few strikes of his flints and he had a fire. He set snow to melt in the helmet he was using as a cauldron. He swept more dusty hay up from the floor and, sneezing, packed it round the still little figure. No beast on two or four legs would hunt tonight, so that was one worry less. Finding this lean-to hut in the forest had been a godsend, but it would be cold. Magnus went back out into the snow and led his horse into the hut, spreading what feed he had brought with him. He kept the door shut with his saddle, rubbed the palfrey down with the bay’s own horse blanket, and looked about for a lantern. There was none, just as there were no buckets, nor wooden bowls hanging from the eaves. But, abandoned as it surely had been, the place was well roofed, and no snow swirled in through the wood and wattle walls. Whistling, Magnus dug through his pack and found a flask of ale, some hard cheese, two wizened apples, and a chunk of dark rye bread. He spoke softly to his horse, then looked again at the woman. She was breathing steadily now, and her lips and cheeks had more color. By the glittering, rising fire he saw her as he had first in the forest clearing, an elf-child of beauty and grace, a willing sacrifice to the monster. Kneeling beside her, he longed to stroke her vivid red hair and kiss the small dimple in her chin. In sleep she had the calm, flawless face of a Madonna of Outremer and the bright locks of a Magdalene. He had guessed who she was—the witch of the three villages, the good witch driven to desperation. Coming upon her in that snowfield, tied between two trees like a crucified child of fairy, his temper had been a black storm against the villagers for sparing their skins by flaying hers. Then he had seen her face, recognized that wild, stark, sunken-cheeked grief, seen the loose bonds and the terrible “feast,” and had understood. Another young woman has been taken by the beast, someone you love. She—Elfrida, that was her name, he remembered it now—Elfrida was either very foolish or very powerful, to offer herself as bait. Why work alone, though? Had Elfrida no one, no man to help her? Rage and a rush of hot protectiveness burst through him in a black wave, and he broke sticks for the fire to stop himself rushing out into the dark with his dagger, seeking a quarry who tonight at least would have wit enough to stay out of the snow. It was falling rapidly, the snow. He could tell it by the soft silence and by the way the door had begun to sag against his saddle. All tracks will be buried, but ours will be covered, too, so that is not all poor news. He unclipped the small cup and spoon from his belt and dipped the cup into the murky water of his helmet. Taking a drink, he found it warm, putting a good heat in his belly, and that was the best that could be said for it. The girl, when she woke, would find it warming, too. “And when you stir again, my beauty, you will see me.” Swiftly he crossed himself and placed his rough wood crucifix beside her small, warm fingers. If she had learning, they might speak together in Latin, or he could try London speech, French, or Arabic. He would recite the creed as she came to, and she would see the cross, so, please God, she would know he was a Christian and that she was safe with him. He must be milder than a dove and as calm as the stone saint, because he knew very well what he looked like. If she was a Madonna, he was a gargoyle. His red-haired Madonna stretched out on the pallet like a basking grass snake, slowly, sinuously, and a tiny sigh escaped her mouth. Watching, staring, he was stunned again by her beauty, by the wonder of a woman sleeping in his presence. It was so wonderful he forgot to swallow a final sip of water. As he felt it trickling down his scars and mottled beard, he desperately smacked his good hand across his face, veiling himself in case the first thing she saw, looming in the firelight, was him, too close. But she did not wake. She turned on her side and curled into a ball, and he tracked her movement with helpless pleasure. Her languor and the gently snorting horse beguiled him. Telling himself he would rest for a moment, only a moment, he eased himself onto the pallet beside her. Facing the fire, he watched the whispering flames and daydreamed of summer in the heart of winter. Later he dreamed in truth. In the dream, as ever, he was hale and whole, unmarked by the blades that had hacked off his hand and foot and scarred his face so deeply. He and fair-haired Peter were boating on a river with Alice and Elfrida. Alice was learning how to scull from her husband, straining on her oar and calling to her children on the grassy bank. Elfrida dropped pine cones into the water, where each cone became a door. In the dream, when she spoke to him, he understood. “Damsels live behind these doors, and a beast visits them.” “Where does he live?” She smiled. “You are a good student. That is for us to find out.” She reached across the ribs of the rowing boat and took his unblemished right hand in hers. “You are handsome. I like your curly black hair and beard.” She leaned forward, brushing her cheek against his beard. Her touch and the scent of her, spices and poppy, mingled with sweet, warm flesh, aroused him instantly. “What is your name?” she whispered, stealing a swift kiss from his whole, unscarred mouth. “Magnus,” he said aloud and woke, his head throbbing. Light glared into his eyes, and he shielded them with his arm, sighing as he saw the stump where his hand had once been. His missing foot itched and ached as he remembered afresh his old war wounds. In Outremer, his scars had been badges of honor and courage, but in England he was ugly, a beast. A monster to catch a monster. Is that not apt? He heard Elfrida’s breath, fast and hard, and knew she was awake. She had not screamed yet, which was a blessing. He flinched, surprised as she thrust a firebrand up to his face, then he held still, tormenting her and himself with his looks. A pair of bright, amber eyes scanned his ruined face. Elfrida crouched by the fire, glancing at him, the door, and the horse. “If you try riding him, he will kick you off into a snowdrift,” Magnus remarked. Keeping his voice low and even, he said, “Elfrida, my name is Magnus. I am here to help.” Her eyes narrowed at his use of her name, but she shook her head as he repeated what he had said in every language he knew. When he had finished, she held up her arm and pointed at his. Baffled, he raised his left hand, and she brought the burning brand close, studying the limb as if looking for cloven hooves. “I am a man,” he said quietly. “I know I may not look it.” She lifted her left hand, turning the palm to him. When he pointed at the red spots that now marred her previously flawless skin, she nodded to him, then to his horse. He was stunned when he realized what she was suggesting and violently shook his head. “So you have a pox, which is one reason why you have swooned. But I am still not leaving.” He shrugged and risked a smile. His missing teeth were no worse than those of many others. “I had poxes as a child, and in the East.” She jabbered something, tossing the brand onto the fire and snatching up the cross he had made. When he began to recite the creed, she joined in, then lifted her other arm, where faint spots were already beginning to emerge, and pointed a second time to his horse. “Even if I could, I would not leave,” he said. She backed away to the door and, rising, peered through a small gap between roof and doorway, her lips moving as she seemed to count the falling ribbons of snow. Suddenly, shockingly, she dropped to her knees and pleaded. He understood her name and thought he heard another name, but he shook his head at the rest. “I am no Forest Grendel,” he said, sounding as calm as the snow outside while within he boiled with shame. He had thought her anxious for him not of him, a rare indulgence, but now it seemed this scrap of a girl did think him a monster. But she tapped her chest. “Elfrida.” She pointed to the fire. “Are you cold?” He wrapped arms about himself and pretended to shiver. A single, powerful negative was her response. “Hot?” She replied with a name, “Christina.” “Is she your child?” Magnus picked up a branch and cradled it, as if rocking a baby. Elfrida frowned. “Magnus?” She too rocked a branch. “No,” he said and shook his head. “Forest Grendel?” She ran the words together. “No!” His own shout shocked him, and her. She paled and wiped her eyes. He was shamed to have made her cry. “I am sorry.”

* * * *

Elfrida felt more tears trickle down her face and prayed that her strange companion, whoever, whatever, he was, would not see them. Dizzy again, she slid down the door of the hut and sat on the saddle, blinking to clear her blurred vision and wishing she was either hot or cold, not both at once. Questions pounded in her aching head. Where was Christina? What pox had struck her? Who was Magnus, a Viking without a ship? He was fussing with a small wooden cup and a pail—no, it was a metal helm of some kind, used as a pail—and drinking some kind of milky substance from within it. He showed her the cup, smacked his ragged lips, and offered her a drink. She accepted, deciding he had no need to drug or poison her, not with her limbs already feeling so heavy and the small of her back aching as it did usually only after harvest. The warm water was curiously soothing, and she sipped it gratefully, wondering for a wild instant if she should dash it into his eyes instead and flee the hut. But Magnus had very kind, crinkled eyes for a Viking, or a beast. And even if she could scald him and could escape him and lumber out into the woods, what then? She dared not travel in this snowstorm, and if her pox was the great one, she would soon be too sick to move. She drained the cup, surprised to find she had finished her water. Magnus gestured with his battered right arm. She nodded, allowing him to take the cup in his whole hand while she studied the stump of his right. No claws there, so had she imagined them? And those deep grooves across his face—surely those could not be the result of nature? So why had this man not died of his wounds? Elfrida remembered a tinker who had stayed at her house and spoken of distant lands beyond the forest, beyond even the sea. “Jerusalem?” she asked, jerking her eyes at his missing hand. The holy city was the one place she had heard of, outside England. Magnus grinned, turning his already ugly looks into a devil’s face, as she fought down a rush of fear. “Azaz,” he replied, waving his stump and his foot—a missing foot, replaced by a wooden stump, Elfrida realized with a jolt of pity. With his good hand he was tracing a deep groove from his jaw to his nose, where the tip of his nose was also missing, and now he drew a half-moon in the air, saying more. He had a deep, pleasing voice, and she guessed he was sensible, but she had no idea still what he was saying. He grinned again and moved. “Do not!” She snatched at his hand as he seemed about to hack at his face with his eating knife. She caught his wrist, and it was like gripping a bar of iron. She could not budge his arm. Again he said something, very slowly. “Wounds in battle, I understand,” she said, sagging with relief as he relaxed, holding the dagger out to her, hilt first. Trust me, his kind, crinkled eyes seem to plead. It was a good dagger, very finely wrought, well-balanced in her hand as she took it. She glanced again at his scars, his wide shoulders, the hard, well-developed muscles of his arms and thighs. Ploughmen had a wiry strength and blacksmiths the same, but this Magnus was different from those. “You are a knight?” she ventured, motioning to the horse. “Sir Magnus?” He said something with the name Magnus in it, adding “Elfrida, Christina?” “My sister, who is missing, taken by a monster.” Did he understand? Was he a knight or the monster she sought? Was he still a knight, with those wounds? He lay down again on the pallet and patted the sparse straw beside him, then rolled over. This took some time, and Elfrida contrasted his awkward, clumsy movement with the lethal grace of the monster, who had taken Christina and the other young women without being seen by any in the villages. She helped herself to more water, listening as Magnus’s breathing slowed. When she was certain he slept, she went through his pack.

* * * *

Naughty scrap! Feigning sleep, Magnus heard her soft, stealing ways and guessed what she was about. Had he been whole, unscarred, he might have snatched her up and rolled her in the snow, but he was uglier than sin and the little witch was sick. He could smell the sickness on her. He longed to have the words to reassure her that it was not the smallpox, which he had seen and endured in the East. He stifled a snort, recalling how proud he had been of surviving the pox, and so unmarked. A Saracen sword had marked him so much better... The door creaked as she tried it. Was she senseless enough to go out in a snowstorm? Why not? She had been wild enough to offer herself as bait, a tasty morsel for a monster. Scraping his peg leg on the wall, he caught her foot as she fell over his saddle, her head cracking against the door. She did not waste breath or effort shrieking but kicked out, squirming like a landed fish. When she lunged toward the fire, he wrestled her into his arms, desperate to stop her scorching them both. “Enough!” he roared, grappling for her, terrified she would be burnt. He scooped her away from the flames and rolled with her, striking the saddle, wrapping his good leg around hers to stop her writhing free. “By all that’s holy, I will not harm you!” Her fist rammed into his eye, and he saw green lights for an instant, then she said something in a hard, clear voice, and he froze, afraid she had put a curse on him. She lifted his arm off her and showed her own arm. There were more spots, some looking close to bursting. He saw her arm and her face clearly in the firelight and snorted, caught at that moment between amusement and pity. Her narrow, heart-shaped face, slender nose, and shapely chin were all smothered in spots. “Forgive me!” he said, as her eyes narrowed. “I do not mean to tease or mock, but it is funny. You are near as ugly as me, I vow, but it will pass.” He cupped her cheek tenderly, understanding her restlessness, relieved, too, that it was the childish itching pox and no worse. It would pass, and she would be beautiful again. “You itch, too, I should think, but you must not scratch.” He scratched his arm and shook his head, then touched an angry blister on her arm and said, “No.” She shrugged, her amber eyes showing more sparks than the fire, her whole body a denial. She said something, and he nodded. “I know you are no fool, Elfrida. Though to venture out in snow and give yourself as a sacrifice to a beast, is that not folly?” She did not answer, of course, but he guessed that had she understood his every word, she would have folded her arms as she did now and glower. “Did you annoy a fellow witch? Is that how you have been cursed with the itching pox?” Elfrida tossed her loose hair back over her shoulder and abruptly hammered on the door. When she turned to him her face was scarlet, and he swore against his own slow wits. “Here.” He hauled on the door, shoving the saddle out of the way and watched her pitch into a white world. The powdery drifts were still tumbling into the hut and the horse whickering with irritation when she stumbled back. She was shivering, and not because of him. Magnus pointed to the pallet, and she dropped onto it without a murmur, allowing him to pile his cloak and the horse’s saddle blanket on her. She refused the cheese he offered her but took another long drink of melted snow water. “Last winter I saw Alice tend her twins through the itching pox. She bathed them in water with oatmeal. Sadly, even with the horse’s meal bag, I have none here with me.” He was speaking to her quite easily, as he might to Peter or Alice, Magnus realized, and he was shamed to recognize the reason. She looked less like a tempting angel, a high damsel, and more like a molting hawk to be tended and pampered. He did not feel so ugly now she was in his care.

* * * *

Elfrida watched Magnus carefully moving firewood so that he could lie down on the floor. He had put the saddle back by the door, but only to stop the snow pushing in. He had already proved he would let her come and go as she pleased, nor had he abandoned her. If only we could understand each other, she thought, frustrated by that and the weakness of her body. She must return to her village, rouse the men again, threaten them all if need be, and find Christina. Tomorrow I will go. I cannot see in this snow and dark, but tomorrow I must set out and my ugly knight, or monster, or whatever Magnus is, will not stop me. Magnus was burning every scrap of dry moss, hay, wood, and cloth that he could find in or near the hut. Elfrida stirred to find herself and her pallet dragged out of the doors, with the horse tethered close beside her and both of them draped with blankets. In a sheltered hollow before the hut, standing in a puddle of melted slush and snow, Magnus worked furiously, in a sweat, wielding a small wood axe with determined ease. A bonfire blazed up in a huge column of flames, sparks, and smoke, setting fire to the branches overhead, but he was clearly delighted in the spectacle. As he limped briskly to the fire with another newly cut log, flinging it into the heart of the flames, Elfrida thought of devils in hell, and shivered. Her back, close to the snow, was chilled, but her breasts and face were hot. “Hola!” Magnus saw she was awake and waved. He was even more of a gargoyle in the bright sunlight and the glare of the snow, but she had learned not to flinch. He chopped wood by bracing a log with his good leg and hacking away, scooping up a “killed” branch with his handless arm and tossing it into the greedy flames. If he is not the monster—and all my wit and magic tell me he is not—then Magnus still does not fear the creature. The smoke alone here must be visible for miles and draw who knows what to us—king’s foresters, villagers, wandering tinkers, brigands—and he fears none. She feared none, either, but she was a witch. Fully awake, she fumbled in her green gown and clutched at one of the protective amulets around her neck, drawing on its power. “Christina,” she whispered, wishing her sister love, health, vigor, and life. She tried to rise, disgusted to find herself still weak, her body trembling as if she had a fever. She kicked at the snow, scowling as a tiny flurry of flakes tumbled away, though she had used all her strength. A second kick had her flopping sideways, sprawling like a rag doll. It seemed simpler to gather her cloak around her ears and listen. Who will come? she wondered, as her eyes closed and were too heavy to reopen. Who is Magnus hoping will come? Am I bait again? She yawned and dismissed the idea. Her instincts told her she was safe with Magnus, even if he was a Viking. But where was Christina? She thought of the forest and its many paths, all snow-covered and snowbound. Was her sister in another forest hut nearby? Where were the tracks of the beast, and what did they look like? Why was Magnus here in the forest? Elfrida imagined the village headman and Magnus together, a picture that came easily to her mind. Magnus was at ease in the forest—she saw that in how he gathered wood and checked for deer and boar droppings and set traps for birds. He knew where to sweep aside the snow to find paths and then fallen sweet chestnuts, crab apples, and frozen blackberries. Chestnuts were already roasting, and their savor reminded her that she had not eaten for days. Had the village men sent a messenger to Magnus, pleading for his help against the beast? Or was she mistaken? Was Magnus as evil as he looked? Again she tried to rise, but the slow spinning in her head increased. She turned onto her back and stared upwards. A yellow sun blinked at her through the branches, and her breath was the only cloud in a wide sky the shade of cornflowers. From her clothes she brought out a dried, fragile sprig of rosemary, an amulet that she had given to Christina last winter, when her sister had nightmares and she wanted to protect her from evil spirits. Tucking the sprig between her breasts, she covered her eyes with her cloak and willed herself to sleep. Dream of Christina. Dream of where she is. “See” where she is. Elfrida knew she was dreaming, in the place between spirits and earth, even before the lion came out of the forest and spoke to her. It was a gold beast with a shaggy coat like a wolfhound and kind, crinkled eyes. “Do you remember the speech of your grandfather?” the lion asked. “I do.” And she knew what she would say to Magnus, once she was awake.

* * * *

Magnus was worried. The fire he had made should have brought his people. It was an old signal, well-known between them. His men should have reached the village by now—that had been the arrangement. They were bringing traps and provisions, in covered wagons, and hunting dogs and horses. He had been impatient to start his pursuit of the Forest Grendel and so rode ahead, returning with the messenger until that final stretch when the man turned off to his home. He had ridden on alone, finding the wayside shrine. But from then, all had gone awry. Instead of the monster, he had found an ailing witch, and the snowstorm had lost him more tracks and time. Magnus shook his head, turning indulgent eyes to the small, still figure on the rough pallet. At least the little witch had slept through the night and day, snug and safe, and he had been able to make her a litter from woven branches. He would give his fire signal a little longer and then return Elfrida to her village. There he might find someone who could translate between them. Perhaps she did have power, for even as he looked at her, she sat up, the hood of her cloak falling away, and stared at him in return. She said something, then repeated it, and he drew in a great gulp of cold air in sheer astonishment, then laughed. “I know what you said!” He wanted to kiss her, spots and all. He burst into a clumsy canter, dragging his peg leg a little and almost tumbling onto her bed. She caught him by the shoulders and tried to steady him but collapsed under his weight. They finished in an untidy heap on the pallet, with Elfrida hissing by his ear, “Why you have done such a foolish thing as to burn all our fuel?” He rolled off her, knocked snow off his front and beard and said in return, “How did you know I would know the old speech, the old English?” “I dream true, and I dreamed this.” She was blushing, though not, he realized quickly, from shyness. “Why burn so wildly?” she burst out, clearly furious. “You have wasted it! All that good wood gone to ash!” “My men know my sign and will come now the storm has gone.” He had not expected thanks or soft words, but he was not about to be scolded by this red-haired nag. “That is your plan, Sir Magnus? To burn half the forest to alert your troops?” “A wiser plan than yours, madam, setting yourself as bait. Or had your village left you hanging there, perhaps to nag the beast to death?” Her face turned as scarlet as the fire. “So says any witless fool! ’Tis too easy a charge men make against women, any woman who thinks and acts for herself. And no man orders me!” Magnus swallowed the snort of laughter filling up his throat. He doubted she saw any amusement in their finally being able to speak to each other only to quarrel. Had she been a man or a lad, he would have knocked her into the snow, then offered a drink of mead, but such rough fellowship was beyond him here. “And how would you have fought off any knave, or worse, that found you?” he asked patiently. “You did not succeed with me.” “There are better ways to vanquish a male than brute force. I knew what I was about!” “Truly? You were biding your time? And the pox makes you alluring?” “Says master gargoyle! My spots will pass!” “Or did you plan to scatter a few herbs, perhaps?” He thought he heard her clash her teeth together. “I did not plan my sickness, and I do not share my secrets! Had you not snatched me away, had you not interfered, I would know where the monster lives. I would have found my sister! I would be with her!” Her voice hitched, and a look of pain and dread crossed her face. “We would be together. Whatever happens, I would be with her.” “This was Christina?” “Is Christina, not was, never was! I know she lives!” Magnus merely nodded, his temper cooling rapidly as he marked how her color had changed and her body shook. A desperate trap to recover a much-loved sister excused everything, to his way of thinking. She called you a gargoyle! This piqued his vanity and pride. But she does not think you the monster, Magnus reminded himself in a dazzled, shocked wonder, embracing that knowledge like a lover. Elfrida was unaware of the impact of her words. He wondered if she even knew what she had admitted as she continued to speak in a torrent of fear. “She will be so frightened, and Christina is so young, so delicate. She was getting married, but what if her betrothed says no to the wedding after this? To marry and to be loved were always her greatest hopes!” Elfrida lurched to her feet, growing paler still. “I must find her!” She stumbled off the pallet, losing her footing, and collapsed in a puddle of clothes. She lay still, her long hair streaked across her limp form like a trail of blood. Cursing, Magnus reached for her. “Should have kept to love potions and spinning,” he muttered, tossing her over his shoulder. He knew a girlish faint when he saw one, but Elfrida would have to come to on the back of his horse. At long last he could hear the drumming of approaching riders and, from the shouts and catcalls, knew they were his men.

Chapter 3

Her dreams were dark and strange, full of loud noises and storm. She called, in her dreams, on the saints and the old ones to protect her, while at times she was in a land of white, then red and green. When the space about her turned blue, she woke. Magnus was sitting beside her, playing chess with another man. As he moved the queen, he lifted his familiar, ugly head and smiled at her. “How are you now?” “Better, becoming better,” she said. “But how long and where—” He smiled. “Never fret, Elfrida! My men and hounds are searching the forest even now, and Christina’s betrothed is with them. They will find the track of the monster even in this snow.” Elfrida looked about, recognizing the hut and the charred remains of Magnus’s huge bonfire. “You were too ill to move,” Magnus said simply. “I did not realize at first, but when the fit- demon came over you, I reckoned we must stay here.” With a quickness that astonished her, he took her face in his hand. “The demon has gone from you. Your eyes are as clear as amber again, and very sweet.” Elfrida flushed, unused to anything of hers being called sweet. She was conscious, too, of the steady warmth of Magnus’s fingers against her cheek even as she anguished, wondering what the fit-demon had made her do. For the first time in an age she wondered how she looked. Were the itching-pox spots very bad? I fret for a mirror when Christina is still missing! That is more sinful than witchcraft. The man beside Magnus spoke, and Magnus laughed, releasing her. “Mark is a simple soul. He thinks you are not pretty enough to bother with. He says he would have rolled you in the snow and left you.” Elfrida rubbed her finger and thumb together, murmuring a charm to bring fleas to the ungracious Mark, a wiry russet-and-gray fellow with a red nose. She smiled when he clapped a hand onto the back of his neck, and cursed. “How long have your men been searching?” she asked, wondering if the helmet full of hot water was still about and if she might have some. “Since dawn today,” Magnus replied, holding out a flask. “We must do it quickly. More snow is coming.” Elfrida glanced at the cloudless sky and wondered how he thought that. “Where are you looking?” she demanded, taking the mead with a nod of thanks. In this sacred time before Christmas, such honey drinks and small luxuries were forbidden, but God would understand a gesture of peace and fellowship. Mark glowered and said something more, which Magnus waved away with the stump of his right hand. “What did he say?” “That an ugly woman is an affront to God and that you ask too many questions.” “Mark is a fool. When I am well, I will be acceptable, and Mark will still be a fool.” She glanced at the fellow, who slapped at another biting flea on the back of his neck. “That one will say that all women talk too much. He steals brides, do you know?” “I think you mean the monster rather than my soldier.” “I hope he fights better than he reasons.” “He does. As for the monster, Walter told me through an interpreter.” “What else has Walter said?” Loathing the way the men of her own village had kept secrets from her, Elfrida forced herself to swallow her resentment—it would only waste time now. Biting her tongue, she took a huge gulp of mead, which made her eyes water and had her half choking. Magnus did not grin or clap her on the back. He waited until her coughing had subsided and gave her a slow, considering look. Whatever he saw must have satisfied him. He spoke again to Mark, a clear order, and waited until the man had risen and kicked through the snow to a covered wagon. “How are the spots? Itching yet?” Elfrida gave a faint shudder. “Do not remind me.” Since stirring, she had been aware of her whole body tickling and burning. Mark’s idea of rolling in the snow might not be so bad. “Walter told me that the village of Great Yarr has a bathhouse. Bathing in oatmeal will help you.” She did not say that the village could afford to spare no foodstuffs and would not be distracted. She had tried to rush off in pursuit of the monster before and gained nothing, so now she would gather her strength and learn before she moved. “What did you call the beast? Forest Grendel? Is it known he lives in the forest?” Magnus shook his head. “It is not known, but I do not think so now, or at least not outdoors. I have hunted wolf’s heads who have been outlawed and fled into woodland, and they always have camps and dens and food caches within the forest. I have found none of those hereabouts.” “My dowsing caught no sign of any lair of his,” Elfrida agreed. Magnus leaned forward, bracing himself with his injured arm. Elfrida forced herself not to stare at his stump, but to listen to him. “Do you sense anything?” he asked softly. “The night you came, I felt something approach.” She frowned, trying to put into words feelings and impressions that were as elusive as smoke. “A great purpose,” she said. “A need and urgent desire.” Now Magnus was frowning. “Have you a charm or magic that will help?” “Do you think I have not tried magic, charms, and incantations? My craft is not like a sword fight, where the blades are always true. If God does not will it—” “I have been in enough fights where swords break.” “Are your men good trackers?” “They would not be with me, else.” If Magnus was startled by her determination to talk only of the beast, he gave no sign. “Tell me of your sister and her habits. Did she keep to the same paths and same tasks each day?” “Yes and yes, but what else did Walter say? The old men have told me nothing!” “No, they do not want the womenfolk to know anything, even you, I fear.” His kind eyes gleamed, as if he enjoyed her discomfiture. He had a small golden cross in his right eye, she noticed, shining amidst the warm brown. A sparkle for the lasses, eh, Magnus? To her further discomfiture, she realized he had asked her something. “Say again, please?” “Would you like some food to go with your mead? There are the remains of mutton, dates and ginger, wine and mead and honey.” His brown eyes gleamed. “My men found it in the clearing where I found you. The mutton has been a bit chewed, but the rest is palatable, I think.” “It is drugged!” Elfrida burst out. “I put”—she could not think of the old word and used her own language instead—“I put a sleeping draft in the wedding cakes and all.” She seized his arm, not caring that it was the one with the missing hand. “Do not eat it!” “Sleeping draft?” He used her own words. She yawned and feigned sleep, startled when he started to laugh. “A wedding feast to send the groom to sleep! I like it!” He chuckled again and opened his left hand, where, to Elfrida’s horror, there was one of her own small wedding cakes. “Do not eat it!” she cried. With surprising speed, Magnus rose and flung the cake straight into the forest. Elfrida watched it tumbling through the trees, going leagues and leagues, it seemed to her. “Now we must shift with what I have.” Magnus settled back again, rumbles of laughter still shaking in his huge chest. “Do not look so troubled, Elfrida. I am too greedy to put anything on my food but salt, when there is some.” With Christina still missing, Elfrida could not smile at the irony, but her belly growled, reminding her that she had not eaten for days. “I am hungry, too,” she admitted. “Thank you.” They could still talk while they ate. Sharing roasted chestnuts, acorns, toasted bread from the stores of Magnus’s men, cheese and apples and dates, she and Magnus shared their knowledge, too. “Walter called him a spider?” Magnus repeated when she had told her sorry tale. “One who comes and goes without sound?” “And without breaking twigs. You say he has struck at all three villages? A maid from each one, perhaps?” Magnus nodded. “I was told that the orphan lass was taken from Great Yarr and another maid from Selton, with your Christina being carried off from Top Yarr.” “So it may be that the beast knows the area well.” Elfrida chewed on a date, guiltily enjoying its sweetness even as she wondered if Christina had eaten yet. “You think he will touch Lower Yarr?” Magnus sighed and stretched, cracking the joints in his shoulders and his good hand one by one. “I have sent men to all these places, including Lower Yarr, to get the villagers digging out ditches round their homes and gathering thorns to put round their houses. I wish the menfolk would let the maids come to my manor, but they refuse.” “They refuse? They?” Elfrida felt as if she had turned into a dragon and might breathe fire, she was so angry. Rage burst through her, and she clutched her wooden cup so fiercely she heard it crack. “By what right do they choose and not say a word?” Magnus scratched at one of his deeper scars. “It is the way of the world. You are freer here than in Outremer, where women are kept indoors.” “Thank you. That is such a comfort,” snapped Elfrida. She could feel mead trickling down between her fingers, and her anger tightened another notch. “Christina would be safe now, if they had told us!” “Would she have left her betrothed, especially so close to her wedding?” Magnus asked patiently. Elfrida closed her eyes and said nothing. “Once my men begin work on the ditches, your villagers will have some explaining to do.” “Good!” Elfrida ground the fingers of her free hand into her aching eyes. Her limbs itched and flamed, and she no longer had any appetite. “Do you know anything of this orphan girl?” “Why her particularly?” “Because it was obvious from what the headman told me that she had no one to stand for her.” Elfrida took a deep breath. “I would have spoken for her, but I knew nothing!” In a fury, she dashed her hand against her forehead, forgetting she was gripping the wooden cup, and immediately saw a host of green lights. “I have something of hers,” Magnus remarked quietly. “Part of a blue veil found inside the lean-to. The place where she lived,” he added. “The beast came inside her home? Did she let him in? Did he force the door?” “From what I was told, I think the creature slipped in through the roof.” Which explained Walter’s prodding of the thatch when he had last visited Christina, Elfrida thought, abruptly chilled as she imagined a shadowy, hulking form bursting into a hut from above. Was the monster as big as Magnus? She glanced at him, her fingers absently scratching at the spots in her hair. He looked at her steadily. “I am not him,” he said, “and you should not do that.” Elfrida’s hand flew down to her lap. “Blue veil, you say?” she croaked, snatching at the first thing she could to cover her embarrassment. “My sister’s wedding veil is blue.” “One of the doors in my dream of the creature was blue.” Elfrida’s interest sharpened, even as she realized that Magnus had mentioned his dream to purposely divert her. But then, she worked in dreams. Dreams were important. “Tell me all.” She listened carefully to Magnus’s halting account, not shaming him by asking what he was leaving out in his tale of the river and the doors. Men did not feel easy discussing dreams. “Who are Alice and Peter?” “The true friends of my heart and hearth. Hellsbane—Peter of the Mount—was a fellow crusader, fighting with me in Outremer. He has carried me off the field of battle more than once.” “And you him,” Elfrida guessed. Magnus waved this off. “His fight name is Hellsbane. Alice gave him that name.” “And what is she?” “His wife.” Magnus puffed out his cheeks, making himself an ugly, jolly demon. “Like you, she is a healer, a maker of potions. But a lady.” Shrugging off the but, Elfrida wondered what Alice the lady looked like, then found her thought answered. “She is small, like you, and pretty, with long, black hair and bright, blue eyes. She wears blue, also. The Forest Grendel would have stolen her away had she lived hereabouts and Peter been dead and in his grave.” “The monster has his dark-haired bride,” Elfrida reminded him, feeling a pang of envy at the warm way Magnus described the lady Alice, “but no auburn yet.” “You cannot put yourself up as bait again.” “No one will stop me.” Magnus shook his head. “You have some days before you can even entertain such foolishness.” “Men like the outward show. I know that all too well. I have never seen a handsome man with an ugly wife.” Magnus’s brown eyes twinkled. “You would at court and in kingly circles. A handsome dowry can work marvels for a plain girl.” “Plain yes, but no worse than that.” Why do I pursue this? I know men are shallow as dew ponds! Anger at herself and mankind made her blaze out with another fresh rage of itching, all over her body. She glanced longingly at the snow and then at the necklace of bear’s teeth and claws slung around Magnus’s thick neck. “Those are the claws I saw the night you found me!” she burst out, reaching out to touch the necklace. Pleased to have one mystery understood, she smiled in turn and bent her head eagerly as he dropped a small parcel onto her lap. “What is this?” “His token, dropped into the girl’s rush pallet when he stole away with the orphan. I am most interested to know what you make of it.” He cleared his throat. “What you sense from it,” he added, glancing at the charms around her neck. Why did he not show me this earlier? Elfrida unwrapped the rough cloth with trembling fingers. She did not want to think of the girl, waking in her bed and finding a monster where she should have been safe within her home. She did not want to touch the object, not at first, and studied it a moment. “Have you handled this?” “I did exactly as you did, Elfrida. I untied it and looked. I cannot say for the village headman or the rest.” She lifted it, still wrapped in the cloth, and sniffed. “I did that, too,” Magnus said quietly. “The scent is cloves and frankincense.” “Cloves, frankincense with a whiff of pepper and ginger. All foreign and expensive. So the monster has money and servants.” “Ah, to buy them for him! Unless he steals those, too, from peddlers and the like, as they pass through the forest.” “It has a blue base,” Elfrida observed, turning the cloth on which the object was laid. “Ancient glass, Roman, I think, cut to shape and set into the wood. Is it a cup, as seems? Or was it fashioned for other uses?” As he spoke, Magnus lifted his left hand and made the sign to ward away the evil eye. “There are no runes or magic signs cut into the goblet, no gems or magic stones inset within it.” Elfrida closed her eyes and breathed in deeply through her nose. “It is old, made in the time of our grandfathers. It has held hot things.” “Blood?” “Tisane.” Elfrida smiled at Magnus’s wary question, amused and saddened in equal parts at the way nonwitches thought all magic dark and terrible. “See where the inside is stained dark? That is with tisane. I would say a blackberry tisane.” “Not blood and not beer either, like your own good ale.” “No.” Absurdly touched by Magnus’s praise, she found herself wishing, for a moment, that she could give him more ale. “What?” Magnus asked, altogether too sharp and all seeing. “Nothing, eager one! Now let me work.” Confident of her own magic, she took another deep breath and lifted the small bowl-shaped cup with both hands. Images rose out of the snow and played across her startled eyes. There was Christina, laughing with her head thrown back, and a dark-haired girl dancing on the spot, blowing into a small pipe. A shadow fell across them both, but they did not shrink back. Rather they stepped forward eagerly, their hands outstretched like beggars at a fair. “Christina!” she called in her mind, but the vision faded even as she strained to reach for her sister and for an instant felt as if she flew, as she could when she ate the secret mushroom of the birchwood. She blinked and was looking down from the treetops, east into a gray sky at a hillside of oak trees, and within the oak trees were three strong towers. She lunged forward like a hawk, dropping to the tower with the blue door... “Elfrida? Elfrida! Are you with us again?” She sighed, pinching the top of her nose, forcing her spirit back within herself. It was mildly disconcerting to discover that she was half on Magnus’s lap, her body propped against his barrel chest and her head snug in the crook of his arm—his arm with the stump, she realized. “Are you well?” he asked again, touching her forehead with his good hand. “Your eyes rolled back into your head, and you were twitching like a hunting dog on the scent.” “I was hunting,” she replied. Deciding she was too comfortable to stir from where she was, she talked quickly as the scene vanished into the whiteness of the snow. “He has them bewitched in some way, perhaps with a love philter, perhaps with a handsome, pleasing familiar.” “Have you a familiar?” She scowled at the interruption, conscious again of the itching in her hair and across her face and arms. “I do not need one,” she said sharply. “But listen to me now, for once the sight leaves me, I do not always remember it well.” Magnus nodded and brought a finger to his lips, his promise of silence. “To the east of here, within the forest, there is an oak wood set on a high hill. His lair is there, within three strong towers, three towers, one with a painted blue door.” She heard Magnus’s breath catch, but he did not interrupt. “I saw my sister, laughing, and another girl, playing a pipe. They were dancing. I do not know if they were together, or if they danced alone, for the beast. They seemed unharmed. I did not see the third, but they were safe and even happy.” She felt Magnus’s gasp of relief, and his reaction inspired hers. Overwhelmed to know that Christina was safe, she sobbed aloud as tears burst out of her. “Aye, aye, I wondered when it would come to this.” Magnus gathered her closer still, ignoring her fever and spots. When her weeping subsided, he gave her a clean rag to wipe her face.

* * * *

He believed her. He had seen magic in Outremer, where men had put themselves into trances and driven nails into hands without pain or blood. He shouted to Mark, a single order, “Stop!” and listened as Mark blew his horn to signal to the rest of his men. “Does the monster hunt alone?” he asked Elfrida. She was rubbing at her forehead with the rag, and he took it from her to stop her bursting her spots. She frowned but not because of the itching pox. “I do not know,” she admitted. “No matter,” he said easily, glad she had sense enough not to claim more than she did and not wanting her to blame herself. That was the failing and limit of magic, he knew—it never showed everything. She squirmed on his lap and rolled off him into the snow. “I must set a charm to find this oak hill.” She rose to her feet, seemingly unaware of how she swayed in the still, crisp air like a sapling in bad weather. “All oaks, and very ancient, with lichens hanging from them. And mistletoe!” She brightened at remembering, the glow in her small, narrow face showing how pretty she was, without spots. She checked the position of the sun and began to walk southeast, tramping stiffly through the snow. Then she turned back. “Your men know to let me pass?” “They would not dare delay a witch.” She smiled. “No, only you would.” She turned, took another step, and stopped. Magnus did not want her to leave, either. He told himself it was because his men were even now calling back through the trees, “Nothing!” “No track!” “Nothing here!” I need her skills, and though she will not admit it, she needs mine. He limped toward her and offered her his good arm. “May I escort you? I have seen a mage’s house in the East, but never a witch’s home.” He caught a glitter of interest in her eyes, quickly suppressed as she jerked her head at his horse and gathering men. “Do they come, too?” “It will be quicker,” Magnus said easily. “Once we know where to seek your sister, we can set out on horseback.” “I do not have a bathhouse nearby.” “A barrel of water and hot stones will do as well.” “And food and hay? I cannot magic those.” “My men have brought both, even oats.” She glanced at the gray skies and shook her head. “There will be more snow tonight. More! I have no spells against that amount of evil weather!” “And your sister is indoors.” He waited a moment, for her to see the good in that, then added, “If we cannot hunt in more snow, neither can the beast.” She nodded and took his arm, saying quietly, “Thank you.” They walked forward together.