Dark Maiden by Lindsay Townsend Page B

what it contained but did not speak.
    “The abbot has written protective signs on the parchment and there are salt and hyssop and other good herbs within,” she said.
    “Then you should have it.” He made to return the packet but she pressed his hand hard against his heart, her eyes wide as she looked only at him.
    “Abbot Simon blessed me and sprinkled me with holy water. Please take it, Geraint. I will work better if I know you are safe.”
    He could hear her quickened breathing and saw the strain on her face. To ease her, he juggled three small hard apples to prove he had left the package where she wanted. Its sharp parchment edges dug at his chest and snagged his chest hairs but that was nothing.
    They were climbing by now and the Tower’s shadow captured theirs. He turned to walk backward, keeping an eye on her. Three crows hovered close, an evil omen.
    He did not drop the apples but it was a near thing.
    “They know something is wrong,” said Yolande. Her knuckles were white around the cross he had given her.
    Still they climbed and the air became hotter, although there was no obvious sun. Yolande licked her lips and he offered her his ale flask.
    “No, I do not drink or eat upon the hill or within the Tower. Nor should you.”
    “The day is very drying,” he said.
    “Because we are getting nearer,” she answered. “It may be cold too. Dealing with the restless dead, I have known extreme heat, bitter cold and biting winds. We should pity them. They dwell in a hard limbo.”
    “And demons?” he croaked.
    “They are always for comfort and ease. They would offer the most dazzling wine and dainties. If you take one, you are bound for hell.”
    What, straightaway, or do you have a delicious life first?
    He was startled when she took his hand. “Walk where I walk, step where I step and do not stop.” She kissed his cheek. “Do not listen to any but me.”
    “Still trying to persuade me, cariad , that you are no terror?”
    “Something like, but you will do as I ask?”
    “I have walked plenty of tightropes in my time, so lead on.” Before they went farther, he planned to chuck the apples at the crows but the stench of a charnel house began to fill his nostrils and he retched.
    Yolande was beside him in the blink of an eye, pressing the tiny cross against his arm. “You can stay here. I will come back.”
    He spat the rising filth from his mouth. “Lead, Yolande, and I follow. Lead.”
    It may get worse , her expression said.
    “Go on.” He might have given her a push had he not felt as weak as a mouse. Shamed at his own weakness, he watched her stalk ahead and swore that, whatever he witnessed, he would not be unmanned again.
     
    She sensed his grim determination and was glad he was with her. Better, perhaps, if he had not come, if he had remained with the brothers in the church. Facing the Tower, its key on a cord around her neck choking her, she was shamefully relieved not to be alone. Because of his protection she could keep walking forward, step after step, while the hill weighed on the backs of her legs and her head throbbed with the oppressive silence.
    “Damnable crows, still following on,” Geraint said and she was glad of the human contact, although she had to warn him.
    “No cursing, please, my honeyman. Cursing brings too many other things.”
    “You scold with one side of your tongue and caress with the other,” he countered. A gentle prod in the middle of her back was, she hoped, from her living companion.
    The smell was a kind of putrid, yeasty stink like eggs and ale gone bad together. She longed simply to sprint away from it but instead gripped the key to the Tower and lifted its chain from her throat. Spirits could choke the unwary with unblessed necklaces of any kind.
    She dropped the cross into the front of her man’s tunic, where it slid between her breasts in a featherlike caress that made her think too much of Geraint. His touch would be like that. Again, she was aware