Knight and the Witch 02 - A Summer Bewitchment Read Online Free

willingness to do so was a further dark mark against her. As needed, Magnus shifted and carried furniture and chests throughout the manor and pitched in with the harvest and shearing, but was it different for ladies? Her husband, bless him, neither knew nor cared.
    Elfrida was alone now, Githa having slipped back to tend her mistress in the great hall. As she eased the final bundle of lady’s bedstraw and hay into the straining mattress, she felt ashamed and worse, humbled.
    I am uneasy and I cannot understand why. I am a witch, a mistress of magic. I know Magnus loves me, that he is as proud of me as I am of him. I am not a chatelaine, but this manor is not a castle. Trifles of costume and manners, even maids and laundry and baths, should not matter. Lady Astrid, for all her fine birth, cannot find Rowena and the other missing girls, but I can and I will. Magnus and I have done it before.
    Those girls were older, all brides, my sister Christina among them. Last winter we won them back. Pray the Holy Virgin we can do the same for these poor innocents.
    Anger coiled like a dragon in her belly. Rowena and six other young maids were missing and all that Lady Astrid seemed concerned with was her own comforts. Yet what of the other families of the other missing girls, those who were not Rowena? Had Lady Astrid and her priest searched for them? Had any of the families searched? So far as she knew, Warren Bruer was not so many leagues away from here. Why had none of those fathers, mothers, brothers, or sisters come to Norton Mayfield to ask Magnus for help? To ask her?
    My magic may be changing since my marriage, but I will surely find these girls. I must.
    Swiftly, feeling better in action, she made up the bed with fresh linen, swept out the chamber, then sat on her shallow clothes chest. Trying not to look at the larger chest that Piers and Mark had brought in for the Lady Astrid, she counted up what she knew of the missing girls and the stranger, using her fingers and speaking aloud.
    “One and six girls lost, seduced away or taken, always at sunset. Every maid no younger than eleven nor older than ten and four. No girl maimed, crippled or marked. Eldest daughters, younger daughters, middle daughters. All trades, rich and poor, from village or remote country. Fair lasses, brown girls, black maids, red-headed youngsters, thin or stocky, curly haired, straight haired. But all small.” Like me.
    So many. Briefly she quailed, then rallied.
    “A tall, dark stranger, a young man without flaw. A man in green. A man Lady Astrid and her maid may know. He speaks Latin and calls to the Holy Mother. He knows the old wisdom and has some magic. How does he steal the girls away? By music and charm. They have no fear of him. But he must have a place. Neat and clean as he is, he must have a dwelling spot, away from people, and a servant or help-mate.”
    “Why apart and a help-mate?” Magnus asked from the doorway.
    How does he steal up on me with his wooden foot? However he managed it, she was glad he had come. He smiled and nodded at the bed, his ugly-handsome scarred face a tapestry of light and shade.
    “Good enough for a queen,” he observed.
    “Or a troll king?”
    A moment, sweeter and more luscious than mead, flowed between them, then Elfrida returned to the task. “He needs privacy and secrecy and help to hide and keep seven girls.”
    “You think he keeps them?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Then we shall find his den.” Magnus threw her a shimmering, slippery scrap of yellow cloth. “Rowena’s head-rail. After some urging of Lady Astrid, I also have Rowena’s under-shift in my keeping, also.”
    The shift would give stronger scent for the hounds, but this scrap revealed more of the child. Tracing the simple daisy-chain embroidery around the tiny, tender crown of the cloth—done by Rowena herself, Elfrida guessed—she fought to remain calm. “I must work with this tonight, and the wreath he left,” she said.
    “I thought you