A Bed of Spices Read online

  "With her unique and lyrical style, Barbara Samuel touches every emotion. The quiet brilliance of her story lingered in my mind long after the book was closed."

  ~ Susan Wiggs

  Table of Contents

  Cover Image

  Beginning

  Bonus Excerpts

  About the Author

  More Books by Barbara

  Copyright © 2010 Barbara Samuel

  Cover Design/eBook Conversion Sharon Schlicht LittleBytesDesign.com

  Image: Woman in Corset ©Ksenia Kozlovskaya

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This is a republication in ebook format of an earlier work. Every effort has been made to reproduce the original as accurately as possible. If you find an error, please let us know at [email protected]

  BLAZING TORCHES OF PASSION

  "Are we mad?" Rica asked with a tremulous smile.

  "Utterly," Solomon said in a raw whisper. A need welled up within him, rising until it broke the threads of restraint he'd held over himself. Moving slowly and deliberately, he pushed gently at her shoulders until Rica lay amid the grass and buttercups, her hair spread out below her like an Arabian carpet.

  "I am mad," he murmured. "But I care not—for if madness brings such visions as these, I willingly leave the world."

  Closer and closer Solomon moved, until their bodies touched from ankle to shoulder.

  "Rica," he said and could think of no more. He touched her cheek only for a moment. One moment, stolen from all time, was little enough to ask.

  "Please," she whispered hoarsely. "Please kiss me, Solomon, or I shall die of wanting."

  Authors Note

  Two thousand Jews perished in the Strassburg fire of February 14, 1349, but the sacrifice did not, of course, halt the advance of the plague. Within a few weeks, the city fell prey to the Black Death.

  Throughout that summer, plague and pogroms raged through Germany. Some Jewish refugees fled to the east, some were successfully protected by the ruling princes of their territories, some converted to escape the flames.

  In Mainz, a curious thing occurred. Throughout the summer of 1349, the Jews of that city secretly collected arms with which to protect themselves. When the killing mob descended in August, two hundred of them died over several days of fighting. The Jews, at last defeated by the greater numbers, retreated to their homes and set fire to them.

  Within twenty years, Jews settled in nearly all the communities once more, but they were under much stronger restrictions. Thus did the era of the ghetto begin.

  Part One

  Strassburg—Summer 1348

  I should like to hold my knight

  Naked in my arms at eve

  That he might be in ecstasy

  As I cushioned his head against my breast.

  ~ Countess of Dia

  My poor heart she has caught

  With magic spells and wiles

  I do not sigh for gold

  But for her mouth that smiles;

  Her hue it is so bright She half makes blind my sight.

  ~ Judah ha-Levi

  Prologue

  Charles der Esslingen stood near the embrasure of his chamber and looked to the courtyard below. His solar filled the top floor in the keep of the old castle, and the builders had been generous with light so high, where arrow slits and protection were no longer necessities. Buttery May sunshine splashed into the room, warming the sweet herbs in the rushes beneath his feet.

  It was a glorious view, and all he surveyed belonged to him; all had been won with his sword in his youth. There was the keep and the manor, the upper and lower baileys with their whitewashed walls. Beyond was a meadow dotted with sheep, their newly shorn bodies oddly naked. There was a forest, thick with game birds and animals, a vineyard where grew some of the finest Rhenish grapes in the empire, and an orchard where apple and pear trees flourished. In the distance, beyond his eye's reach, was a smattering of peasant dwellings and the fields with their new crops.

  In the greening baileys, the morning bustle had begun. Scullery maids washed pots in a tub nearby the open kitchen door. Another girl gathered herbs in her apron from the garden close to the wall. A vassal paced the walk in obvious boredom.

  As Charles lifted his cup, his daughter Frederica bustled from the kitchen, headed with purpose across the grass. Taking in the busy swish of her skirts, he half smiled, feeding his hawk a crust of bread. "On her morning rounds," he commented to the bird, who cocked an eye toward the yard.

  The vassal on the walk called out to Rica in some jest Charles could not hear. She paused to laugh over her shoulder, and the sound rang through the hazy morning, teasing and ripe, like the girl herself.

  Charles stepped closer to the embrasure to watch her progress. Chickens scurried in alarm before her, squawking in protest of the flying skirts. Within the confines of the bailey, she was bareheaded, and her hair glistened in the morning sun as if laced with silver and gold, the tresses flowing well past her waist. The dark woolen cotehardie she wore clung to the curves of breast and hip that had been so long in coming, and even the billowing surcoat hid little of the final result of her long wait for a woman's body.

  The vassal on the walk had kept pace with her, calling out. Ignored, he finally stopped, but looked after the girl with such wistfulness and frustration that even her father had to laugh.

  Rica slipped into the brewhouse. Charles turned from his post, still smiling softly at the besotted youth on the walk. Poor fool was hardly alone.

  He sipped from the cup of wine his servants had brought him, along with a dry bit of stale bread from last night's supper. Rica teased him over his indulgence in early morning food—she teased everyone about something—but Charles grappled with weakness enough as it was. Without food in the morning, he sometimes shook like an old woman.

  A soft sigh came from the corner. Charles eyed his second daughter over the rim of his wooden cup. Head bent over her needlework—her endless, endless needlework—she was utterly still but for the flying fingers.

  Etta. Her hair, too, streamed over slender shoulders and a fine, lush woman's form. The face was oval, as pale and flawless as a field of fresh snow at evening, her lips red and tender. As if she sensed his gaze, she lifted her eyes to her father. Fringed with almost unnaturally long lashes, the irises were a deep purplish blue.

  His daughters. Twins. So utterly identical that no one would have been able to tell them apart but for the tragedy that made the physical similarities almost a parody. The tragedy that was, perhaps, his judgment from God for the violence of his youth.

  Etta, for all her shining loveliness, had no besotted youths trailing in her wake. She rarely went abroad. She never spoke to anyone except Rica, who swore that Etta was not simple-minded, only deeply wounded somewhere in the darkest heart of her.

  Without a smile or any acknowledgment, she lowered her gaze back to the tapestry on her lap. A familiar pluck of grief touched his heart. To have lost his beloved and beautiful wife so violently ten years before was sorrow enough. That his six-year-old daughter had been so brutalized was beyond his imagination.

  The dark thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of a vassal at the door of his chamber.

  "Ah, Rudolf," Charles said in greeting. "Come in. Tell me what you have learned."

&n
bsp; The young man settled on a bench nearby the wall and rubbed his hands to warm them by the fire. "The pestilence is widespread, my lord. They say there has never been such as this."

  Charles grunted, chewing his hard crust of bread.

  "They say that India is gone, so littered with bodies the stench travels for a hundred miles. Italy has suffered the same fate for nearly a year. France is in chaos . . . now the pestilence moves north."

  "And what, pray tell, have the famed doctors and astrologers to say?"

  "A demon in the air and an alignment of planets," Rudolf said in disgust. "It should be plainly obvious it is a punishment from—"

  Charles raised a weary hand and pressed with the heel of his palm to his chest, trying to ease the ache there. Thin rumors had wound through the countryside for many months, telling of the disease. With the rumors came grim prophecies of death for all mankind. "Heard you a tale of its look?"

  "Yes, the sufferers—"

  "I need no more gruesome stories. Tell the guards to watch for it in travelers along the river. We will admit no such victims here."

  "Yes, my lord." Rudolf stood, and he cleared his throat. His nerves were betrayed by the clutch of his fists at his side. "Have you given thought to my suit?"

  "I have." Settling himself upon a stool, Charles waved toward a bench and Rudolf sat, back straight. Against the sunlight, his hair took on a glorious blaze of yellow, the ends curled at his shoulders, his handsome face earnest. Rudolf had served him well. The link to his powerful family would help erase the less noble blood running through Charles's own veins. Beyond that, Rudolf was the most besotted of the field of Rica's admirers. He would make a good husband to her. "I will agree to the betrothal—"

  Rudolf jumped to his feet in exuberance. "Oh, thank you, my lord!"

  Charles forestalled any further display. "There is a condition."

  "Anything."

  "She is headstrong," he warned.

  Rudolf gave him a rueful smile. "Of that, my lord, I am all too aware."

  Charles walked to the embrasure. Rica stood now in the gardens, conversing with a servant. He gestured to Rudolf, who joined him.

  "She is also a romantic girl," Charles said slowly. "Her head is filled with the tragic poems written by the ladies and knights of the courts." He paused. "I want you to take the summer to woo her, so I am not forced to wed her against her will."

  "And if I cannot capture that wild heart?"

  "I think I know a little of the romantic dreams of young girls." Charles inclined his head. "You are not without your gifts ... I watch the eyes of the women here."

  Rudolf flushed darkly. "Foolish wenches with only coupling to fill their brains."

  "Seemed a lovely pastime when I was a youth," Charles said mildly, but raised a hand once again to forestall Rudolf's protestations. This was the only flaw of the young man—a certain grim piety that manifested itself at odd times. "Speak not to Rica of religion and God," he cautioned. "She is not concerned with matters of the spirit at this point in her life. Women grow more serious when their bellies swell."

  "She is all I wish as she is," Rudolf murmured, leaning out to watch her, his eyes glowing. "Whatever I must do to win her—" He straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. "You need not worry. For the summer I will be a model of courtly love."

  "Good." Charles turned away. "If summer's end finds her still reluctant, I will tell her of the betrothal and you will be wed. By All Saint's Day, you will have a wife—willing or no."

  From the corner, the ordinarily silent Etta cried out, and Charles started. Both men stared at her, but she ignored them, her gaze fixed on a cut on her palm. She whimpered in terror as blood trickled over her hand and began to run down her arm.

  Charles sprang forward, for once not annoyed with the girl. Her aversion to blood was well known and understandable given the trauma of her childhood.

  "There, my sweet," he murmured, taking her arm. He plucked a length of fabric from the basket beside her and twisted it around her hand. "Your scissors slipped, that's all."

  But as the blood soaked through the cloth, Charles felt a tremor of foreboding pass through his belly. As Etta fixed terrified eyes on his face, he felt as if there were something he should be seeing, something just beyond his reach.

  He dismissed it. "Rudolf, fetch Olga." To Etta, he added, "She will attend you quickly. All will be well."

  One

  Rica knelt in the confessional, smelling the sour, sharp scent of beeswax that had been rubbed into the wood. Stone flags met her knees. Beyond the screen, blocked with sheer white linen, the old priest wheezed, as he always did in the spring.

  She clasped her hands together. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," she murmured. "It has been six days since my last confession."

  Pursing her lips, she tried to remember the pockets of wickedness that riddled those six days. She had nearly forgotten to be shriven at all, and now, breathless with the run across the courtyard, she found her mind a blank. "I borrowed my sister's scarf without telling her, the good one she embroidered for Assumption."

  "Mmmm." The priest coughed, the sound shallow but wheezing.

  Beginning was difficult, but once reminded, she seemed to recall an avalanche of transgressions to confess each time—there were so many ways to err! "I spoke sharply to Cook this morning and disobeyed my father's order to wear my hat when I leave the castle grounds. It was too hot."

  A murmur came through the screen. Rica shifted on the flags, uncomfortable with the need to confess the next sin. It had been told and repented a hundred times—and would be told a hundred more, for she could not overcome it. Her voice dropped. "I dreamed I slew my mother's murderer."

  A short pause marked the air. He was supposed to be anonymous, a figure of shadowy authority, although he was the chapel priest and everyone knew it.

  "Is there nothing else you would tell me?" the priest prodded. Obviously, he had some concern she might have omitted something.

  Swallowing a smile, Rica realized what it would be. She did not help him. The priest had been in her father's chapel for most of her life. He had given her instruction in the catechism and taught her to read Latin. It was the gentle old priest who supplied Rica with her beloved texts, and although he disapproved of the path her thoughts took at times, she knew he was fond of her. Now he was worried that the poems of the courts, those passionate avowals of tragic love, would corrupt her completely.

  More worried, she thought with a frown, about her reading those stories of illicit love than he was about her repeated dreams of revenge.

  Bloody dreams they were, in which she was armed with only a dagger and her hatred. In light of such, the romances in which she so delighted carried little weight. "I have read no more of the literature you forbade me," she said quietly.

  "Ahhh." Relief soughed through the word. He gave her prayers of penance. "God bless you, child. Pray for me, who sins as you do."

  He coughed and Rica promised herself she would prepare a tea to soothe that ticklish hacking. Her father, too, needed a fresh batch of his medicine. She would go see Helga this afternoon. Perhaps even Etta could be persuaded to go along.

  Her spirits rose in anticipation. She hurried from the chapel into the warmth of the spring day, her limbs lightened with confession and the promised break in routine.

  But in spite of her eagerness to be away, it was the middle of the afternoon before her duties allowed her to set out for Helga's cottage. Her sister, Etta, walked silently alongside her, a serene expression on her beautiful face. Although they were said to be identical twins, Rica knew Etta was far more beautiful than she. Her heart was pure, and that virtue shone in her complexion, in her eyes, in her almost unbearably sweet smile.

  Their dog, a monstrous wolfhound, knew it, too. Leo trotted steadfastly at Etta's side, licking her fingers every few steps as if to assure himself of her continued presence. He loved Rica, and always came with her as protection when she walked alone
to the cottage for herbs, but it was to Etta he was devoted.

  Rica slipped her hand into the bend of her sister's elbow. "The day is beautiful, is it not?" she said, gesturing toward the Vosges Mountains standing blue to the west. The river 111 rose from a secret spring in those hills, its path lined with thick trees.

  To the east wound the great Rhine. Nestled against a bend in the waterway spilled the city of Strassburg, its rooftops piled one atop the other like a tumble of chess pieces. At some times of day, the city glowed with a magical, rosy wash, but this afternoon the walls wavered in a haze of heat.

  Faintly from the monastery on the river came the echo of monks at prayer, a melancholy song Rica loved in spite of its sadness. "Listen," she said to Etta. "Do you hear them?"

  Etta cocked her head toward the sound and smiled softly, but she made no reply. Rica had not really expected one. Etta was not mute—nor simple-minded—as the servants and her father were wont to believe. She spoke to Rica, usually about God, if the truth were known, when Rica would much rather have discussed a new fabric she had purchased from a wandering peddler, or a bangled belt she'd found in the city. God and embroidery proved Etta's only topics, however, and Rica had learned to live with that.

  Her vivid, bloody dream flitted through her mind again. Gone now was the contrition she felt in the confessional. She always told the priest it was her mother she was avenging in her dream, and perhaps it was in some small way. But when she lifted her hand, dagger shining in the moonlight of her dream, it was Etta who was in her mind; Etta who was avenged in the murder of the man who had brutally handled Rica's twin. One day, she promised herself grimly. Perhaps then, the wounded spirit of Etta would be freed.

  Rica led them around a muddy hole in the road, lifting her skirts. It made little difference, for the hems dragged the ground as fashion insisted. For the hundredth time, Rica swore to shorten her tunics and coats.