“The priest?” Geraint mouthed in the same tongue. He knew enough not to look ’round.
“I think so,” she answered quietly. “I do not see who else it could be.”
She cut a spray of holly from the tree for the grieving mother and laid it over the grave. “I will be here for a while yet,” she said in English then changed to Welsh. “Can you—”
“Find and follow him? Nothing easier,
cariad
.”
Yolande bit down on a plea that Geraint take care in following—in case he considered her too mothering. Then she put all thought of her honey Welshman aside to kneel again by the tiny mound of freshly piled earth. She began another prayer in Latin, sending her wishes and hopes for Hilda’s everlasting safe repose up to God.
Geraint left her to it. He could offer comfort and had done so plenty of times during this past year of pestilence but hunting the earthly Father William was far more to his taste.
Lead on, priest, and let me run you to your den.
He cut away first, striding through the trees as if returning to Halme, and then doubled back. In moments, the watcher had become the watched. He stole up behind the figure he and Yolande knew must be Father William. The priest’s thin body shuddered with suppressed emotion.
Grief or self-pity? I do not care, priest. You showed no tenderness to your former lover. If you suffer then good, say I.
But was the fellow suffering? Experienced in reading performers’ pain from how they moved and held themselves, Geraint studied the huddled, dark-robed figure. The priest’s shoulders drooped but Geraint was certain the priest was still not crying.
Even with his lover in the ground, he will not weep.
And why had Father William cast Hilda off? Had she been with child? Had he denied it was his?
“Yes, that kind of filthy betrayal would fit you,” said Geraint, willing the clergyman to stir. “Turn about at least. Show yourself.”
As if he had heard, the man did exactly that. Catching the flicker of movement, Geraint slid behind the trunk of a beech tree, praying he had shifted in time before the priest turned about completely. He waited until his heart stopped hammering before peeping ’round the tree to look again.
Father William, staring blankly into the distance, had not seen him.
Geraint felt the air sucked from his lungs as it sometimes did when he took a bad tumble. The priest was a surprise—stooping and gray haired, yes, but of middle years and with an acne-reddened, mulish face.
No vision of beauty, no vision at all, in fact, and still he treated his lover badly.
Aggrieved for Hilda afresh, Geraint itched to hit something—one of the acne scars on the priest’s pouting upper lip maybe.
Of course, he must remember that this particular apology for a priest had a spiritual ally, if an incubus could be called such.
Now walk, will you, mister priest, and let me follow.
For the second time, it was as though the man had heard his wish. Slipping on the frozen leaves, Father William set off, blundering forward, rushing away from the kneeling Yolande and her prayers. Padding softly after him, Geraint took care to leave Yolande a clear trail of his wanderings. He did not fear for himself, but his maid—and pray God she would not be that for much longer—was the exorcist. Yolande would want to be present when the demon finally showed itself by daylight.
And I intend to call you out, mister demon. No more creeping into maids’ dreams and beds for you.
The gloomy words of the miserable smith—
bitten off more than she can chew
—rattled in his head like a warning. Geraint rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles together. The smith was a wretched fool and he would think no more of anything but trailing Father William.
* * * * *
Yolande had never been wearier. In a fog of bitter exhaustion, she coaxed Hilda’s mother away from her daughter’s resting place and back to her house. She made up the fire there, gave the older woman a warm tisane to help her sleep and changed and shook out the bedding. After cleansing the cottage with the last remaining sacred herbs she had on her, she left the widow bedded down by the fire, with more tisane at hand and some pottage gently bubbling in a crock set amidst the ashes.
Slowly she wandered through the village. It was a little after noon, she reckoned, glancing at the position of the shrouded winter sun in the corpse-gray skies. Some hardy souls had already quit the church and returned to their homes, to keep Christmastime as best they could without a decent priest. Several waved and one even called out good day as she passed.
No dreams for them last night I assume, and so progress, but I take no pleasure in it.
She wished Geraint were with her but at the same time she was heartily relieved he was not. “I am fit company for no one,” she whispered. This was the true reason she had suggested he follow Father William. The priest was no longer possessed so no spiritual danger. For the rest, Yolande knew Geraint could more than take care of himself.
Besides, if Geraint squired her now she would be tempted to share with him, to moan, and her honeyman would act on her complaints.
He would certainly kill the priest for me in a passion and we should both be guilty of murder.
“Is that why you dropped your bow somewhere and part of you is determined not to remember where you left it?” The new voice in her head was cool and elegant, perfumed. Her scalp tingled and her mind suddenly filled with bees.
“Are you a strange fancy in my mind, created by sleeplessness?” she asked above the buzzing.
The sense of pressure against the crown of her skull increased. Stepping away from a nearby hut lest the demon bring the hovel’s roof thatch and a wall down on her, she took care not to clutch at the pouch of sacred herbs ’round her neck. Fallen angels as they once were, demons wallowed in courtesy. Any spiritual act on her part, such as invoking Christ or the Virgin, might be considered unfriendly by her new companion.
And I am very glad my Welsh companion is not here with me. Sacred Mother, please keep Geraint safe, wherever he is.
“Will you show yourself, sir?”
“Why should I do that, when you are rushing off hither and thither? What do you seek, child?”
The “child” from an immortal was probably apt but she did not like it. Yolande slowed and stopped. She was within sight of Halme church, standing on a rough plot of bare earth that had been used to grow winter greens. A few onions and cabbage remained, their odor rank in her nostrils.
Thank the saints it is winter and folk are safe indoors. And I am still not certain if I talk to a demon or to my own weariness.
“I am at leisure,” she remarked, sitting amidst the greens while resisting an impulse to look to her left, the traditional, sinister side of the devil.
Where did I leave my bow?
She still could not remember.
“The exorcist at rest in a cabbage patch.” The perfumed voice was amused. “Christians always make sanctity so grubby.”
“Are you the incubus, sir?” A naïve question, perhaps, but demons loved to brag and sheer vanity would compel the creature to admit information that could be useful in the pinch.
“Would you not be more comfortable lying down?”
How like a demon to answer a question with a question.
“Resting, perhaps, on a beautiful bed?”
A great couch manifested close by, visible just in the corner of her left eye. Yolande knew that if she turned toward it, more cushions and rich hangings would appear on the bed. She would be tempted, oh so tempted, to slide between those silken sheets.
“To sleep and then to dream. And dream of what, sweet one?” the perfumed voice persisted. “
Cariad
?”
This was not Geraint. Yolande did not have to remind herself of that. He had never called her “sweet one” in his life.
She chuckled. “I will not be tricked so easily.”
“Not like Father William.”
There. Finally, a real temptation.
Questions burned in her gut and on her tongue but she said nothing.
An exorcist does not gossip with demons.
“I had to work ever so hard to make him look remotely handsome. Not like your man.”
Yolande recalled the impossible charisma the incubus had cast over Geraint. He had been perfect. Not daring to close her eyes in case she fell asleep and dreamed what the incubus wanted her to dream, she concentrated on the rank, real scent of the winter cabbages and the hard, dry soil beneath her bottom and legs.
The earth God made for us, real and imperfect because we are real and imperfect. Our free choices make us so.
“He escaped you,” she said through tight lips.
“Surprised me, yes, but he was not so much of a challenge, not in his appearance, at least.”
Surface and appearance mattered to demons. Yolande’s left leg twitched as her booted foot went numb. She clung to the discomfort to keep her fixed, to remember she did not float on a great, cushion-strewn bed, surrounded by sweet wax candles and caressed by a loving Geraint. She was sitting in Halme village in a garden plot, beside frost-withered cabbage.
“Human females are earthier than their menfolk, much easier to seduce in the ways of the flesh but harder to win in the realms of ideas.”
“You like flesh too,” Yolande pointed out.
“Very much, sweet one. Those fresh, pretty things and their randy dreams, and ripe, well-used wives fancying other carnal delights…quite delicious. I want to lose myself in them every night until the day of judgment.”
Pig.
Geraint’s face drifted before her as her mind annoyingly dredged up the mud of their last quarrel. She chewed her lip, fighting the urge to argue with both Geraint and the demon.
The demon incubus for sure, since he has admitted how much he enjoys women’s flesh and dreams.
“William liked ideas,” the incubus droned on. “Our dear Father William loved the idea of secret knowledge and for a time he loved the idea of sex. He wanted to know what it was like. I helped him find out. He liked it very much for a time and then he got bored with the same female.”
Hilda had been seduced and discarded by her own priest to satisfy his fleeting curiosity. The pain of such casual cruelty twisted in Yolande’s chest and a raging anger launched her to her feet. She leaped out of the garden patch, screaming at the heavens, “He murdered her! By what he did, he murdered her!”
“And the babe within her, sweet one. Two for one, just for good measure.”
This time, grief almost knocked her off her feet but anger kept her up and moving.
“Remember where you left your bow?” the incubus tongued in her ear, sticky as rancid honey. “Why not pick it up and seek out the priest?”
“I will,” she vowed, running. “I will.”
* * * * *
Geraint followed Father William to the priest’s cottage. The man entered and crashed about inside, smashing pots and overturning the trestle, spoiling all that Geraint and Yolande had done.
Time passed, he grew colder waiting and watching, and still Father William lumbered about indoors.
How many places has the fellow left to search? What is he seeking?
“Bertha!” the priest yelled suddenly and the rooks in the stand of rowans took flight in a burst of flapping wings. “Bertha, you slattern, where are you hiding?”
“Anywhere away from you, I should think.” Yolande strode to the cottage and hammered on the door.
“Just ignore me.” Geraint wondered if she had even noticed him but then she turned and he saw the bow in her clenched fist.
“Come out, you!” she shouted, jerking ’round again to kick the door with her boot. “Destroyer!” One kick and the door shook. “Rapist!” And again, a hefty kick. “Murderer!”
A piece of wood flew out from the groaning timbers but Yolande merely swatted it aside. More than that, she had not seen him. In her fury she could see nothing but the closed door, and with that knowledge a worm of fear slithered along Geraint’s spine. In all their time together he had never seen her in such a steaming rage.
“Come out, coward. I am a woman like Hilda, a woman like the blessed Virgin. Open the door!”
“And get an arrow in your groin.” Stealing closer, Geraint picked his way carefully through the stand of rowans. He did not want to be shot by mistake.
“Yolande,” he called, before she kicked and hammered afresh. “Yolande, is he worth this?”
She spun about, her mouth agape, her eyes glittering. Rage and more was in her. “Geraint, he killed her just as if he had dashed her brains out with a stone.”
“I know,
cariad
, but if he dies by your arrow now,
cui bono
?” His question, the Latin, was a tug to her learning and training, a reminder of who and what she was and one, he prayed, that would give her pause. “What will it do to your soul?” he went on softly.
She snorted. “Who benefits? The folk here would get a better priest at least.”
“But would they?” Geraint stepped out completely from the final, closest rowan and stood utterly still for a moment, letting Yolande see him. “So many priests have died in the pestilence. Father William in there, with his single error—”