Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment by Lindsay Townsend Page A

name of the cheese, the place where it is made, I shall know where to search next.
    He hoped the parley would give him some new insights, but in truth he had little hope. If this encounter at least confirmed his and Elfrida’s suspicions concerning Silvester, that would be a start.
    “Why is Lady Astrid riding with us?”
    His wife’s very direct question broke into his welter of thoughts. Magnus tightened his grip on the reins, staring at the straight-backed woman cantering directly in front of them, handling her fiery mount with ease. “She feigns a sudden illness well, does she not? And recovers in a miraculous fashion. But to say truth, I am glad she came with us rather than remaining behind and beguiling my men. As for being a hostage short, Mark has the relic and Lord Richard will want that returned with all its gems.”
    “The relic returned but not Tancred? His own brother?”
    He sensed her bewildered indignation and agreed with her. “’Tis a grim business, I know, but Richard and Tancred are rivals for Rowena.”
    “Yet surely Lord Richard is already surrounded by lands and goods!”
    Magnus said nothing. After a moment, Elfrida murmured, “Rowena is very beautiful.”
    “So her present captor will not want to relinquish her, whatever the original plan.” Speaking in the old tongue in order to share frankly and plan ahead before they reached Lord Richard’s manor, both of them were careful not to mention Silvester’s name.
    “That is what happened, is it not?” said Elfrida quietly. “There is your hasty plan. Rowena’s close kin die suddenly, she becomes an heiress and former secret betrothals look too small. But if she is spirited away to some place where neither Tancred nor the church can find her, she can emerge later as already betrothed, almost married.”
    She squeezed his arms. “He should have given her up by now. They, whoever plotted this”—Elfrida nodded to the riding Lady Astrid—“must have expected him to pass her over to them.”
    “A risky plan, since they knew what the fellow was like and his liking for young maids. They did not even arrange that he would see her first. Or if they did, they did not mark his excitement.”
    Elfrida stiffened and he felt the rage boiling in her, anger as heat. When she spoke it was in a low, cold voice. “Six others taken, also. Six. They did nothing. They promised and cajoled so their people would work, they took trace from the families of the missing maids so it would seem that they cared and still they did nothing.”
    “The kidnapper is one of theirs, a nobleman, no doubt a Percival.”
    “Tancred, as bad as the rest…”
    That, he knew, hurt her. “We do not abandon them,” he said. “I promise you, we shall find these other girls.”
    She crossed herself. “Soon,” she agreed, clearly making her wish a prayer.
     

     
    After that brief exchange the column accelerated and Elfrida had to concentrate on riding. She listened to the earth spitting and hissing beneath the horses’ hooves and sensed the rolling tension in Magnus’s big bay. This was a place of spiteful spirits and secrets, of sweet cicely bursting from rank ditches, of raptors preying out of cloudless blue skies. Was it any wonder the Percivals flourished here?
    Gripping the bay’s stiff mane, leaning back against Magnus as he brought his arms ever tighter about her, she allowed the passing country to seep into her.
    Silvester knows every brook and tree of this land, as I know mine. He worships the white lady, the sacred Virgin and mother, and gathers corncockle, cicely and meadowsweet in her honor. Purple and white are her colors. He will want to have his maids arrayed in the same shades, perhaps for the coming midsummer revels.
    Magnus and I must seek out dyers and flax workers and question them. Something else nagged at her, something she had known or been told and had forgotten. Even as she tried to remember, the memory slipped away.
    There were the jewels