“I will have to make a pilgrimage to one shrine or another, first to the nearest and then to those of the greater saints, and as far as the Holy Sepulchre if necessary.”

“That will be difficult for a woman traveling alone,” he said.

---

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---

After the meal, Rodric went out to work in his fields, leaving Melisande with his mother. When he returned to the house that evening, his mother said to him, in a voice she thought was a whisper but was quite loud enough for Melisande to hear,

“The girl has forgotten not only where she came from, but how to cook and clean, if she ever knew how. When I am gone, you may regret choosing the prettiest girl who would have you over one of those who know how to keep a home!”

That night, Rodric slept on the floor, leaving the bed for his mother and Melisande. He said he would start building another bed the next day after he and Melisande returned from the rectory.

The next morning, after breakfast, Rodric and Melisande left the house and walked several miles to the village. They spoke to everyone they met, of course, but Rodric tried to keep his explanations brief, to save further explanations later. At last they reached the church, and entered the front door.

Nothing happened.

Melisande walked through the vestibule into the sanctuary, Rodric following her.

Nothing happened.

Melisande walked to the altar rail and knelt. Rodric joined her there. They prayed for a long while.

Nothing happened.

Melisande rose, crossed herself, and left the church. Rodric followed her.

“I’m sorry,” Rodric said.

“I did not entirely expect your parish church to be holy enough to break the enchantment,” she replied. “I will have to make a pilgrimage to one shrine or another, first to the nearest and then to those of the greater saints, and as far as the Holy Sepulchre if necessary.”

“That will be difficult for a woman traveling alone,” he said, “for my duties to my mother, and the farm, make it impossible for me to join you. And perhaps it is unnecessary. Why not stay a few days here, under my protection, and make your confession and receive communion this Sunday? The holy sacraments may break the enchantment when simply entering the church, or praying before the altar, does not.”

“I shall do so,” Melisande said. She looked thoughtfully back at the church. “What now?”

“Well, my mother will want to know the date of our wedding. So we must go see the priest now, and keep up the pretense until you can break the enchantment or leave the village quietly without being noticed. I suppose the market day, nine days hence, will be a good time to leave without being noticed, if receiving the sacraments does not break the enchantment; there will be strangers about, and perhaps you can travel with one of them.”

“Very well.” She followed him to the door of the rectory, a small wooden house next door to the church. As he knocked at the door, he glanced at her; she was nervously twisting a lock of her long brown hair between her fingers.

The priest opened the door after less than a minute. Father Jehan was younger than Rodric, though not by much. He was a local man, having been the old priest’s acolyte, and ordained just three years ago after the old man became too feeble to say Mass.

“Rodric,” Father Jehan said, “it’s good to see you. And who is this?”

“This is Melisande, Father,” Rodric said. He felt a sudden scruple about lying to the priest, so when he related the story about Melisande being found lost in the forest, he was careful to say, “the wizard told me this,” rather than “this is so.”

“So you intend to marry?” the priest asked. “Well, we can publish the banns next Sunday, and you may marry sometime in the following week. It is best if you each make your confession between now and then. But I must be sure that Melisande understands what she is doing.”

“Why not now?”

“I’ll get my cope,” Father Jehan said. Moments later they returned to the church with him.

Rodric entered the confessional first. He had suspected that the wizard might overhear what they said to Father Jehan in the vicarage, but he was sure that the wizard couldn’t hear what was said here on consecrated ground and in the sacrament. So after confessing several things he’d done since Easter which are none of the reader’s business, and his misleading of the priest himself mere moments before, he told him plainly everything he knew about Sir Hugh, now Melisande, and about their plan to use the proposed wedding as a ruse to free her from the wizard.

“The wizard will probably be watching and listening,” he said, “so you’d better publish the banns as though we really are going to be married.”

“I’m not sure this is right,” Father Jehan said, “though at the moment I can’t think of anything else to do, if the sacraments do not break the enchantment. As soon as I’ve heard her confession, I will celebrate a private mass for the two of you and, God willing, the wizard’s enchantment will be broken. If not — then I suppose I must help you with your ruse, and help Melisande — or Sir Hugh? — to depart on next market-day. I’ll hear her confession now.”

“Remember, she’s under that enchantment — she may not be able to confess anything she did before the wizard transformed her.”

“Let me deal with that. If she tries to confess and is unable, due to malign magic, God will take the will for the deed — if indeed he does not break or suspend the enchantment by the power of the sacrament.”

Father Jehan assigned Rodric his penance (the details of which, again, are none of the reader’s business) and absolved him; then asked him to go over to the rectory and summon his acolyte while Melisande was making her confession.

He returned a few minutes later with Father Jehan’s acolyte, a pimply-faced boy of twelve or thirteen summers, then knelt near the front of the church to pray. A while later, Melisande knelt beside him. She whispered to him:

“I still couldn’t say anything about — what happened to me before. Even in the confessional. It’s a very powerful enchantment.”

“I’m sorry,” Rodric said. “Perhaps...”

He fell silent as Father Jehan and his acolyte approached the altar. “Introibo ad altare Dei,” the priest said.

* * *

An hour later they returned to the house, very subdued. As they left the church, Melisande had said “I suppose I’ll go on a pilgrimage, then,” and Rodric had said, “Yes, I suppose you’d better.” They remained silent the rest of the way home.

“Well?” Rodric’s mother asked.

“Father Jehan will publish the banns this next Sunday,” Rodric said, “and we can marry the Saturday after that.” The market-day, when Melisande would depart, would be the following Thursday.

“Good,” she said. “You’d better start building another bed, for you to sleep in until the wedding and me to sleep in afterward. I’ll take Melisande around to meet your sisters and brothers-in-law, shall I?”

Melisande didn’t object, but followed the older woman out of the house with a curious glance back at Rodric. He looked around, found some suitable materials, begged others from neighbors, and spent the hottest part of the day building the bed; then went out to work in the field when it was getting cooler.

His mother and Melisande returned not long before sunset. Rodric saw them approach the house and enter, and waved to them; a little later, as the sun was setting, he returned to the house to find the women cooking supper, his mother frequently scolding Melisande, who scarcely knew one end of the saucepan from the other.

After they sat down to supper, Melisande said: “Your sisters seem to think highly of the wizard.”

“Yes.”

“Especially Evaine —”

“She worked for him, as you did.”

“Perhaps not exactly as I did.” Melisande could not say more than that, but she seemed pleased with herself for being able to say that much.

They ate a few bites in silence, then Melisande asked: “How long has it been since this wizard cursed or blighted anyone?”

Rodric chewed thoughtfully for a moment and said, “Well, there were a few knights and such like who tried to kill him. But other than that... I don’t know. Mother?”

“It was when I was a girl,” she said, “not half your age; when Giles’s father died and he got the farm, he refused to pay the wizard’s tax —”

“It’s an illegal tribute,” Melisande said, and Rodric’s mother slapped her.

“Don’t interrupt. Giles refused to pay the tax, and his crops failed. It was a dry year outside this neighborhood, we heard — Giles’s wasn’t the only farm in the country to suffer, but he was the only one within a league of the wizard’s palace whose farm didn’t get the extra rain the wizard made for the rest of us. I don’t know if you’d call that a curse, exactly, unless you blame the wizard for the drought in the rest of the country that year too.”

Melisande was clearly angry, Rodric saw, but she didn’t interrupt again, or speak much at all during the remainder of supper.

The next four days passed uneventfully. Rodric worked in the field, and Melisande helped his mother in the house, learning housekeeping and cooking. Rodric slept in the new bed, while his mother and Melisande shared the larger one. Rodric and Melisande had scarcely any time to talk privately; when they occasionally did, they reiterated their plan for her to leave town on the next market day.

Sunday, Father Jehan read the banns for their marriage before Mass; after Mass, everyone wanted to meet Melisande and congratulate Rodric and Melisande on their betrothal. Many of the congratulations sounded reasonably sincere. Rodric overheard a few people talking in low tones (but not low enough) about Melisande’s mysterious past; but they seemed evenly divided over whether this made her sinister or pleasantly exotic.

Cedric, the wizard’s servant, hung back talking with some other young men until nearly everyone else had gone home. When Rodric bade Gervase goodbye and began to look around for his mother and Melisande, spotting them amid a cluster of women some distance away, Cedric approached him.

“So you’re to wed Melisande,” he said. “When the wizard told us she’d left, and why, we could scarcely believe it.”

“I suppose she remained in the wizard’s service for a shorter time than most.”

“Yes, but that’s not why we were surprised... Do you know of her past?”

“She cannot speak of it.”

“I see that you do,” Cedric said. He must have read something in Rodric’s expression, for he was sure he’d kept his voice level. “Well, that’s your business; I only wanted to be sure you knew what kind of woman you were marrying...”

“Who else knows?”

“The other servants, and perhaps others they have told; I have told no one.”

“I thank you for not spreading gossip about my betrothed.”

“But I can’t speak for the others.”

“You might mention to them that if they gossip about her, they will displease me, and probably the wizard as well; this may be bad for them.”

As they returned home, Rodric asked Melisande, “While you were in the wizard’s service, did you become friends with any of his other servants?”

“No,” she said, “I passed a lot of time with Maud, who taught me my business — where to find things and what I must clean and what I must never touch, and so forth... but we didn’t become friends. And the other servants didn’t speak much to me at all.”

“I see,” Rodric said.

* * *

On Thursday, Rodric and Melisande left early to go to the market. His mother was feeling poorly, and said she’d stay at home.

It was a fine day. The market wasn’t as busy as it would be in harvest season, but it was much busier than the last couple of market days, which had been rainy. They spoke as they walked to the village of their plans.

“We’ll find a group of women talking and looking at the traders' goods, and I’ll leave you with them. Then you can slip away and ask various traders for a ride toward the capital. I won’t notice you’re gone until after most of the traders have left, and I’ll tell people I last saw you with the women... Does that make sense?”

“I think so,” she said. “Thank you for your help.”

All proceeded according to plan. Rodric and Melisande paused by a cloth merchant’s wagon, as Melisande and several other women looked over and fingered the man’s wares; Melisande listened for a few moments' to the other women’s conversation, and then joined in — a little awkwardly, Rodric thought, but not suspiciously. He said: “I’ll go along and look at this other fellow’s tools, my dear,” and moved along.

He saw her for the next few hours speaking with different merchants when no other customers were in earshot; several shook their heads vehemently, but as sunset neared and the merchants began to hitch up their horses and secure their loads, he saw her talking at length with a tinker. When he glanced that way again a little later, the tinker’s cart was gone and so was she.

He waited another hour until he began asking folk whether they’d seen her. “I saw her with some women by the cloth merchant’s wagon,” he said, but didn’t mention how many hours ago that had been.

When Daniel said he had seen her with the tinker not long before he left, and that he suspected she’d run off with him, Rodric feigned numb astonishment. Some of the men were for chasing them down, but he shook his head and spat on the ground.

“No,” he said, “let her go. She is not the woman I thought her. I will marry a local girl, as I should have done years ago.”

* * *

After explanations to his mother, and recriminations from her, Rodric went to bed. He lay awake long after his mother began to snore, thinking of Melisande, of Sir Hugh, and how dangerous it was for her to travel with no protector... What payment might the tinker demand for giving her a ride? And if she escaped him with her honor intact, how far could she get on the way to Rome or Jerusalem without first finding a protector?

Well, it would have to be someone other than him. He had done all he could; he had a filial duty to his mother, and no particular duty towards her.

He was still thinking uneasily about what he might have done otherwise when there came a soft scratching at the door, and quiet voices. He got up, put on his tabard, and went to the door, saying quietly so as not to wake his mother: “Who’s there?”

“It is I, the wizard, and another you know.”

Rodric opened the door. The moonlight revealed the wizard, and beside him, bedraggled and miserable, Melisande.

“I found her wandering the roads north of the village,” the wizard said. “I am afraid you will have to keep a close watch on your bride for a while longer; she may be subject to relapses of the fit which left her wandering in the forest with no memories.”

Rodric was speechless for a moment. “Has she lost her memories again?” he asked.

“No,” the wizard said; “she only grew confused for a few hours, it seems... Speak up, girl. Tell him.”

“I was trying to find my way back,” she said in a whisper, her eyes downcast, “but it was dark and cold and I didn’t know the roads... The wizard found me and led me here.”

“Thank you,” Rodric said. “I will take care of her.”

“See that you do. Good night.”

When the wizard was gone, Melisande bundled up in the blankets from Rodric’s bed, and the fire stoked, Rodric asked: “What happened?”

“All went well at first,” she said. “The tinker agreed to take me as far as Villette; I returned to his cart when he was near ready to leave, and he hid me among his things. I found tools I could use as weapons if he tried to have his way with me when we stopped for the night, and settled down to wait; but the further the cart got from your village, the more uneasy I got. I tried to make plans for my pilgrimage, how to find someone I knew in Villette and prove to him who I am and ask him to accompany me to a powerful shrine... but I couldn’t think clearly. I found myself thinking of... of this place. I wanted to come back, though I also wanted to go as far as possible and never return... At last, the first desire became so strong that I leapt out of the cart and began running down the road to the south, scarcely knowing why but desperate to return here. The tinker cried out, but I ignored him; if he tried to pursue me, he didn’t follow for long.

“Before long it was dark, the moon wasn’t up yet. I lost my way. The desire to return here became a little weaker, but I still couldn’t make myself think of the pilgrimage. Just as the moon rose, I saw a man approach, and I was afraid, and hid behind some trees; but he called me by name — it was the wizard.

“He told me he had put another spell on me to keep me from leaving you. If I get too far from you, a few miles, I’ll become frantic, unable to think of anything but returning. Nearer, and I can think clearly again, but still want to return to you.”

“That’s terrible,” Rodric said. “There’s no way you can get to a shrine, then.”

“Unless you come with me?” she asked shyly.

“No,” he said. “I can’t leave my mother.”

“She could come too —”

“And how would we pay our way? We have scarcely any money, and will have no more until the harvest; and soon after that it will be too cold and wet for pilgrimage... And this Saturday, we are to marry.”

She shrank back from him.

“Do not fear; I will not force you. The wizard has tricked us into going through with the wedding we feigned we intended; well, he can’t make me lie with you. But we’ll have to playact as man and wife until we find a way for you to return to yourself.”

“You are a good man,” she said. “I have asked much of you.”

“Indeed,” he said. “Well, God is good; sooner or later he will free you from this enchantment. Perhaps the friars will come to preach a mission, and bring with them a powerful relic; perhaps we can save money for two or three harvests and go on pilgrimage together.” He thought, but did not say: By then my mother will be dead, and two can travel easier and cheaper than three.

* * *

By the time Rodric woke, his mother and Melisande had been speaking in low tones for some time. When she saw he was awake, his mother said: “So, you will take her back?”

“Yes,” he said. “The wizard told me: she was not unfaithful, she merely became confused and lost her way. It was my fault for not keeping her with me all during the market.”

“Well,” she said. “She seems penitent enough, and she’s still a virgin, and I’m getting too old to wait any longer for grandchildren.”

Rodric felt a pang; his mother would almost certainly be dead by the time he was free of this impending feigned marriage and could truly marry some suitable local woman. She would see none of his children, if God ever blessed him with any.

After working in the fields for a few hours, Rodric walked to the village to speak with Father Jehan. He met a few people on the way, who had heard about Melisande’s disappearance; he told them a suitably circumspect story about her return. “We will wed tomorrow,” he said. “I hope to see you there.”

To Father Jehan he confided their hasty change of plans.

The priest listened silently, then mused for a while before replying.

“I am not sure this is licit,” he said. “I was willing to announce a wedding that I did not expect to take place, though even that seemed morally doubtful, as it seemed necessary to help break a wicked enchantment... But now, to perform a wedding for a couple where the woman is actually a man under an enchantment: I am nearly sure it is not licit. I will go to Villette and consult the bishop.”

“But as I said, we do not intend to lie together,” Rodric said. “There can be no sin in it, surely?”

“It is deception,” Father Jehan replied.

“No more so than Our Lady and Saint Joseph, perhaps — was it deception for them to call themselves man and wife when they did not lie together?”

“That’s not fair,” Father Jehan said with a smile; “you’ve been paying attention to my sermons.”

“That is a special case,” Father Jehan said, “but perhaps...”

“And if the small deception when you published the banns last Sunday was allowed to help her break the enchantment, this lesser deception, if it is deception at all, can surely be allowed for the same reason? The wizard has her in his power, and he seems to want us to marry; if we do not, he may torment her further. If we do marry, there will be opportunities to break the enchantment later — and perhaps this sacrament will break the enchantment, or protect her from any further black magic, where the others did not.”

“It is doubtful,” Father Jehan said, “and yet I think we must try it. To postpone the wedding without saying why may cause scandal... and our bishop perhaps does not understand the situation here in the neighborhood of the wizard’s palace; he might order me to confront the wizard and try to banish him or force him to break his enchantments; this course would soon leave the parish without a priest. Very well. We will proceed with the wedding.”

* * *

Rodric’s sister Evaine had loaned Melisande her best dress to wear on her wedding day, but early that morning, when Rodric went out to the privy, he found a sack on the doorstep, which proved to contain a much finer dress and veil, white with an iridescent train, and a new suit for Rodric as well; as fine a set of clothing as peasants could wear without arousing the ire of their lords. His sisters arrived soon afterward and exclaimed over it as they, supervised by their mother, helped Melisande dress.

The iridescence of the dress faded once Melisande crossed the threshold of the church, like most of the wizard’s smaller decorative enchantments; but it sparkled to life again when she and Rodric emerged into the sunlight after the rite.

They were accompanied by a cheering crowd all the way back to Rodric’s house. Once inside with the door shut, Melisande sank exhausted onto the bed, her eyes red. Rodric sat on the stool by the fireplace, nearly as far from her as he could get in the small house.

“Are you very disappointed that the sacrament did not break the enchantment?”

“I did not greatly hope for it,” she said. “If the Holy Mass did not, why would Matrimony...? But yes, a little disappointed.”

The cheering of the crowd outside faded into a low hubbub of conversation.

“They’ll stay there until they think we’ve done it, you know,” he said. “I’ll have to hang out a bloody sheet. Can you stand up for a moment?”

She did so, and he removed the coarse linen from the bed. “I hope this is enough blood,” he said, pricking his thumb with his knife and smearing it over a spot in the center. “Does that look about right to you?”

“Oh, peasants,” she said disgustedly.

“Fine folk like you don’t hang out their sheets after the wedding?”

“Not since my grandfather’s time.”

“Well, I’ll have to do without your advice, then. That looks about right to me, but I’ve never seen one of these up close, you know.”

He started toward the window and she said: “No, wait, it’s too soon.”

“Oh,” he said. “How long, then?” He thought back to the last few weddings he’d been to. Indeed, there was usually a bit of a wait before the bridegroom hung out the sheet.

“I’ll tell you when,” she said, and sat on the bed again with her back to him.

“Shouldn’t we make a bit of noise, too?” he asked. “I seem to recall they sometimes do that, other weddings I’ve seen.”

“You may cry out if you like,” she said, “if you think you can remember what a peasant bridegroom sounds like. Not now, but when I tell you.”

He tried to remember. When, a little while later, she said: “Now,” he gave a yell, hoping it sounded convincing. A little after that, she turned to him and said: “Now hang the sheet out. Oh, bother — the blood’s already mostly dry. You should have waited... Prick your thumb again.”

He smeared the sheet with fresh blood and hung it out, to renewed cheers and jeers from the crowd. Soon after, the voices outside subsided and they were truly alone. (His mother was to spend the night with Evaine and her husband and children.)

“Now that that’s done,” he said, “we might eat something.”

“We might,” she said. “I suppose you want me to cook it?”

“That was my intention, yes.”

“Turn your back; I want to change out of this fine dress first.”

He turned his face toward the hearth; a few moments later she approached his side, wearing her everyday dress. “Stoke the fire,” she said, “and put some water on...”