Free Dark Maiden by Lindsay Townsend

again so you need not fret.”
    Yolande sat up, grateful her vision did not spin. “Have you anything to drink?”
    “A girl after my own. Here we go.” He gave her a flask.
    “What next?” she wondered, not realizing she had spoken aloud until he answered.
    “Next we stroll back to the abbey, you refresh yourself in the guesthouse for a day or so and then we move on.”
    Yolande hid her expression behind the flask. She liked the “we” but wanted to be clear about it.
    “I go where I am called,” she said, pulling distractedly at a clump of speedwell. “Somehow those who need me find me, but it is a wandering life.”
    “Excellent.” His teeth gleamed against his tan. “That suits me.”
    “I must remain as I am.”
    He rolled onto his stomach. “For now, certainly, but not forever. For this time of seven. Did you know Jacob labored for seven years for his wife?”
    She laughed, amused at one idea. “You intend to work?”
    “Not me. Not honest, sweating toil. But waiting I can do very well.”
    He would wait for me for seven years. The thought was beguiling and terrifying in equal measures.
    “I think you should ask this mentor of yours who laid this on you. Did he mean seven years or seven months? Was it Abbot Simon?”
    “No, another.”
    “When you next meet him, ask.”
    “I will.” In her mind, her words were already a vow.
    “What kind of man is he? No, let that keep.” Geraint wrapped a chain of speedwells around her wrist. “I love being with you, Yolande. I love you, my dark maid.”
    “I love you.” I love you, honeyman , she corrected silently, but she knew Geraint understood. Truly, it was enough for both of them for now.
    “Should we go tell Abbot Simon his tower is clean?” he asked sometime later.
    “He will know already.”
    Finally at peace, she lay with Geraint amongst the grasses, content to watch the blue sky and listen to the skylarks.

Chapter Six: Dark Desires
    England, the North, six months later
     
    It was the day before Christmas Eve and a whole night past the danger of the winter solstice. The place should have been filled with a happy tumble of baking, spitting and roasting. Women and children should have been gathering green stuff to hang from the beams of their cottage roofs. The men ought to have been in a holiday mood, checking the beer and ale and wandering from house to house to exchange greetings. Instead, the place was still, as silent as a grave and about as welcoming.
    And where was the priest? Why had he not appeared to welcome her?
    Yolande glided down the stone track that wound through the cluster of houses to the church. Halme was certainly rich but the whole village had a gray, beaten look. The cottage doors were pointedly closed against her as she passed.
    Perhaps it is because of my color or because I wear man’s clothes , she reflected, but she sensed it was more. These folk were afraid.
    But why? The great pestilence appeared to have left them untouched. There were no empty homes, no untended fields or fences. The reeve here, Michael Steward, clearly kept all tidy, with the lord’s lands as well-tended as the villagers’ and the sturdy cows and sheep free of pests and blight. Still, fear crept around them like a low fog.
    Does the priest here sense this? If he does not, he is a poor creature, but if he does, why does he do nothing?
    She breathed in slowly, seeking to catch any scent of sulfur, any whiff of the restless dead. She caught no such stink, but russet-cheeked Michael Steward, shorter and stockier than she was and stamping along beside her, tightened his grip on his staff. He wants to ask me what I sense.
    “How long has it been this way?” she asked, gesturing to a closed door.
    “What?”
    He was not a stupid man. Yolande asked again, more bluntly. “For how long has Halme been afflicted with night terrors that turn people against honest travelers and strangers? And your priest—”
    His full lips quivered and a torrent burst