An excerpt from my medieval historical romance, '
The Snow Bride.' The hero Magnus and heroine Elfrida are searching for missing brides in a snowy winter landscape.
Excerpt.
He found the holly bush and
not a moment too soon—limping beside him, Elfrida was already half frozen.
Again, Magnus regretted having to bring her, but he knew she would never
consent to remain behind and, most important, her sister did not know him. He
had tried to learn some of her dialect but not enough to explain to a strange,
frightened girl that he was a rescuer, not a beast. A token of Elfrida’s might be interpreted the wrong way, so for now, it
must be Elfrida herself.
“Sit down.”
He drew his shivering witch into the heart of the huge holly where it was dry,
and he unpacked the bundle as swiftly as his numb fingers would allow. The fact
that she did not shove him aside to do the task herself he took as a poor sign,
but he kept his words cheerful. “Fresh
clothes here, so we shall soon be warmer. I have mead, too.”
He had no women’s things in
the pack but had filched two sets of woolen tunics and linen braies from a
stripling squire called Hugh, who fancied himself a person of good taste.
Elfrida stared at the braies and shook her head. “I cannot wear those.”
“You will move more freely,”
said Magnus cunningly, “and it will be a good disguise. We shall seem two
packmen.”
“Ripe for bandits, then,”
came the tart response, but she peeled off her less-than-perfect gown and did
not protest when he rubbed her down smartly with it, seeking to dry her before
she re-dressed. She tied the braies as she might a girl’s belt, which made him
grin, and the green wool tunic was too long in the sleeves, but she had more
color.
More fight, too, when she
launched herself at the living circle of holly as he was rolling his shoulders
in his dry tunic and retightening his belt. He caught her round the middle.
“Shoes?” he reminded her.
“But she comes, she is coming
now! I can sense her!”
“And we shall pick up her
tracks.” He buffeted her lightly away from the holly thorns and waved two
bag-like socks in her face. “Put these on first.”
She stroked the cloth and wrinkled
her nose. “This is not wool.”
“It is woolen felt, from my
manor. We know how to make it there.”
“It is warm,” she said in
wonder and began to pull them on. He handed her a leather shoe next and showed
her how to wrap pieces of wool about her feet and legs.
It took longer than for
himself, but he did not care. The laundress would not be hurrying in this fine,
bright, windless day, and he wanted Elfrida to be warm.
He handed her a short leather
cloak, a riding cloak truly, but it would be long enough on her. “Tuck your
hair under this cap, also.”
She widened her eyes at the
dull, russet hood but did as he asked. Packing their damp things into the old,
gray cloak he had brought the changes of clothes in, she looked puzzled when he
tucked two more pairs of socks and lengths of wool down the front of his new
tunic. “For later, if we need them,” he explained and kissed her, briefly. “You
make a pretty lad. The hat shows off your freckles.”
She had been taking a
mouthful of mead, and she choked, her mouth quivering in amusement. “You should
see me in summer for freckles.”
“Oh, I will,” said Magnus. He
parted the holly branches for them to set out in pursuit of the trudging
laundress, who had passed by their hiding place with no sign of noticing them.
****
Her feet were beautifully
warm. The snow was crisp and fresh, not damp or gray or slippery, sparkling in
the sunlight and a joy to walk on. Her tunic and leggings were far easier to
manage than trailing a dress. Indeed, she would be sorry to give them up and was
already bargaining in her mind with Magnus to keep them.
Magnus was tracking the
laundress, staying back so she could not hear them and would not see them
easily while he traced the woman’s clear, single trail. Elfrida sped behind
him, admiring his serviceable leather cloak, his working shoulders and hips,
his smooth, long-legged stride. How had she ever thought him clumsy?
About them, adding to her
feeling of a festive day, a day where surely Christina would be discovered,
safe and well, the woods thronged with life. A tiny wren beaked amidst some
still-brown leaf litter. A squirrel ran up a pine tree in a blur of red tail.
Deer slots showed up clearly on her left side. She shook Magnus’s arm, and he
turned and nodded.
“Aye, the hunt have missed
those. They are a long ways off. I heard their horns, very faint, off over that
hill of beeches. Better for us that they did not spot them.”
He smiled and, stretching out
his hand, rumpled her cap, as if she was a lad. She grinned, feeling very
young, as if the world and everything in it was made new for them. “Happy?” he
asked, grinning like a lad himself. “So am I.”
They kicked on, a blackbird
complaining about them out of another holly, and a small, unseen animal rustled
at them behind frosted bracken. Elfrida paused to bow in respect to an ancient
elder then had to scamper to catch Magnus as he crouched and slid down a steep
slope, sitting on his behind.
“Easier than pegging my way
down this,” he explained. “Your woman did the same.” He pointed to a set of
parallel tracks.
“But she will see our tracks and know we are
following.”
“Only on the way back. She will not know who
we are, and even if she guessed, whom would she tell?”
Elfrida tried to imagine the
timid, broken-skinned, chapped-lipped laundress braving the havoc of the great
hall to speak to the wiry, weapon-laden Gregory Denzil, trying no doubt not to
stare at the red wart on his forehead. She failed in her attempt. “You are right.”
She saw the flash of his grin
before he turned about and marched on.
They approached another
slope, and now the trees were all oak and lime and then solely oak, ancient and
wide girthed, with spreading branches hung about with frosted lichens. Here the
laundress had shortened her already slow stride and kept stopping for rests. Elfrida
touched a place where a circle of flattened snow showed where the woman had
rested her pack. She sensed fear. “We
are getting close,” she murmured, straightening and listening
intently, reaching out with her mind beyond the trailing lichen and sprays of
mistletoe.
Mistletoe. Now she had seen one green-and-white
plant she saw more, clumps and clusters of them, swinging from the oak
branches, tucked within the oak trunks, trailing above Magnus’s head. Their white berries looked like milky, dead
eyes, and she shuddered. He watches through these.
Magnus, blind in that sense,
too honest, too much of the middle earth of this world, was already climbing,
butting through the thin snow here like a Viking ship on a raid. Speeding up,
he was already touching his dagger, checking his tunic for other knives. She
hurried to catch him, slipping once in her haste.
“We must take care,” she warned. “We
are close.”
In answer, Magnus pulled a
sprig of mistletoe off the fork of a tree and dangled it in his fingers. “I should rush and catch that woman before she screams
the wood down.”
He turned, and she grabbed at
his hand, crushing the mistletoe between their fingers. The waxy insides of the
berries stuck slickly to her thumb, reminding her again of death. “He does not need that kind of alarm. Listen to me!”
Elfrida stopped, struck again
by the strangeness of the place. No birds sang here, no animals lingered, and
the sun cast misshapen shadows. She flinched, a picture forming in her mind of
a small wooden watchtower with a single blue door. The wings and bones of
ravens were pinned to the timbers of the tower.
“Things are very wrong here, very amiss.” She seized her own strongest amulet for protection
and tore it over her head. “Please, wear this for
me.”
He submitted as she slung it
quickly around his neck but then was off again, striding forward. He crested
part of the hillside and instantly dropped to his hands and knees, motioning to
her to do the same.
“Look.” He pointed to the
wooden watchtower on the hilltop, surrounded by oak trees and mistletoe. “That
was once a hunting tower for our Norman lords, I warrant, and with a blue door
besides.” He chuckled, his eyes and face alight with victory. “And there she
goes, our washerwoman.” Speaking, he gathered himself to leap forward and
snatch the laundress before or as she reached the tower.
“Magnus! What do we do with
her?”
“Why fret?” He waved off her
question, seeming amazed by it. “You worry overmuch. We must get on, finish
here, and get back. Even those Denzil guard lads will get suspicious in time,
so we cannot linger.”
“But can you not feel it?”
She had felt this expectant, tense, terrible sense once before, in the woods
close to her home, on the night Magnus had snatched her. “Something is very
close, coming fast.” Something terrible.
