But a small doubt crept into her mind, because he had not answered her when she had said she might never leave. The two Williams would be out there—unlikely they were singing her praises to his ears, or urging him to prolong her stay. She opened her eyes.
She sat up and swept back the bedcoverings. Chill air touched her skin.
Fool. Fool! No woman held a man with bed-play alone, not with his favorites whispering poison in his ears.
She had felt safe. She was safe. But if there was one lesson greater than any other Ligurio had pressed upon her, it was that to give a man what he wanted was to lose all mastery of him. Ruck was so sweet and stirring when he came, she had not sensed the danger until this moment.
She thrust her feet from the bed. There was no maid, of course. She had to serve herself as he did, but in rooting through the chamber chests she found a linen smock, stiff and unworn. It smelled very faintly of herbs. There were robes too, but she refused to appear in the raiment of the former lady of the castle like some resurrected ghost. She put on her own faithful gown and azure houppelande over the clean linen.
Her hair she could only cover with a kerchief, with no one to dress it for her. She found one clustered with jasper and chalcedony. All of the clothing in the chests was richly adorned with embroidery and gems. No poor knight's hold, this Wolfscar.
She thought of the minstrels who sojourned here at their ease, and narrowed her eyes. But she would move carefully. A man's favorites could be delicate matters, not subject to common reasoning with his wit, as the history of any number of kings could attest.
The stairwell from the lord's presence chamber opened onto the high end of the great hall. Melanthe heard voices and music and laughter before she reached the floor, but in this castle there were no convenient spying peeks to oversee the hall, or none that she could find.
She stepped into the doorway, then hastily pulled back. Ruck was there, seated at the table on the dais, facing away from her. He had a child on his shoulders, a half-grown babe with feet balanced on either side of his head and hands planted in his black hair as he bent over rolls and counters spread across the table. In her brief moment of view, Melanthe had seen William Foolet counseling with him, and minstrels all around the hall, some of them congregated about the dais, some at work, and one pair juggling a great wheel of apples up toward the roof.
Melanthe sat down on the stair out of sight. The fantastic aspect of it struck her anew. She felt unsure of herself, a somber crow at the feast. It would not be wise, she thought, to go to him amidst their smiles and laughter. Later, when he came to her alone, she could try to reckon how the Williams might have damaged her.
But she did not want to go back to the empty bedchamber now. She sat in the stairwell, listening to the easy talk, the murmurs of mirth. They spoke of lambing and the fish in the lake, things she knew but little of. She could predict what would happen if she stepped through the door. They would all turn and stare, and she must be her lady's grace the princess then, for she knew nothing else to be.
Quick small footsteps sounded on the wooden dais, and a little girl in gaudy-green appeared through the door. She put her plump hands on Melanthe's knees and leaned forward, dark-eyed and rapt, her black locks flying free of any braid. "Why hide ye?" she demanded.
Melanthe drew back a little. "Ne do I hide."
"Ye does. I saw you. But I found you!" She turned and wedged herself into the space between Melanthe and the wall, taking a seat on the narrow stair. She put her arms about Melanthe's neck and kissed her cheek. "I love you."
"Thou dost not love me," Melanthe said. "Thou dost not even know me."
"Ye are the princess." She said it with an enraptured sigh. "I am Agnes." She laid her head on Melanthe's shoulder and took her hand, toying with the rings. "I play the tympan and the cymbals. I haf a white falcon and lots of jewels."
Melanthe watched the small fingers trifle with hers. "Thou art a great lady, then."
"Yea," Agnes said. "I shall sleepen all the day when I be grown. Ne likes me nought to nap now, though," she added scrupulously. "I shall marry Desmond."
"Desmond. The porter?"
"He will be the king then."
"Ah," Melanthe said. "A man of ambition."
"A man of what?" Agnes looked up at her. "Oh. Are you sad?"
Melanthe shook her head.
"You weep, my lady."
"Nay. I do not."
"I love you." Agnes climbed into her lap and put her face into Melanthe's throat. "Ne do nought weep."
"I do not."
"Why do you weep?" The girl's voice was muffled.
Melanthe held the small body close to her. "I'm afraid," she whispered. She drew a breath against fine black hair, as if she could drink it like some fragrant long-forgotten wine. "I'm afraid."
"Oh, my lady, be nought." Agnes hugged her. "All be well, so long as we bide us here as my lord commands, and go nought out beyond the wood."
NINETEEN
They had pleased Ruck, those days that she spent tumbled in his bed like a dozing kitten. He would have thought she was ill, but that he knew her for a master in the art of idle slumbering, and she awoke well enough when he came.
While she had stayed in his chamber, Wolfscar was his yet. He spent the days in ordinary work, in spring plans and lists of repairs, the most of which would never get done, but he did not have to make explanations or excuses to her. She had asked nothing, but only besought him in bed with her blunt and unhende wooing.
He did not dislike it. A'plight, he lived all through the day in thought and prospect of it. His clearest memories of Isabelle were of bedding her, and those were dim, overlaid with years of throttled desire and fantasy. But he did not think that any woman on Earth or in imagination could compare with Melanthe, her black hair and white body, her sleepy eyes like purple dusk, the feel of her as she used him, mounting atop him in her favored sin. To have seen her so was worth a thousand years of burning to him. If he went to Hell for it, he only prayed God would not take away the memory.
Still, nothing about her came as he expected it. When finally she had left the bed and appeared in the hall, he was girded for her queries and objections. He saw her look about. He had grown taut in readiness for her censure—saw dust and decay that he had never noticed before.
But he was forwondered once again by his liege lady. She did not speak of Wolfscar's unkept state at all. She smiled at him like a shamefast maid, looking up from beneath a kerchief. She became modest; at night she withdrew from him and eluded his kisses. In the day she went about with a crowd of small girls. It was as if she had arisen from her spelled sleep transformed, turned from a haughty princess into a nun's acolyte.
Will Foolet was terrified of her. Bassinger was not daunted to speak to any person alive—he would have sung his lays to the Fiend himself given the chance—but even he gave her a wide breach. All three of them, Ruck and Will and Bassinger, had heard her speak her mind about Wolfscar and its history.
The others gathered around her, enslaved as easily as she had vanquished Hew Dowl and Sir Harold. Will was complained of and called a hard taskmaster, only for directing that the ground-breaking begin in the fields. Performing before her lady's grace, their first new spectator in a decade of years, was much to be preferred.
Ruck and Will rode out alone to the shepherds and lambs, making rain-soaked notes of the fences and fodder, and lists of needed work. They ordered the labor by its importance, for never did they have enough bodies or skills to carry out all that cried to be done. Before there had been willingness and ready hands, at least. Now the fields and the bailey were empty, and Ruck walked into the hall to find it full of tumbling and singing before Melanthe.
He lost his temper. Flinging his wet mantle from his shoulders, he strode into the middle of the clear space, halting a pair of somersaults before they were begun. The music died.
"Is a feast day?" Ruck glared around him. He threw his cloak onto the floor, sending droplets fr
om it to spatter on the tile. "How be it that my gear is drenched and my rouncy in mud to his belly, while ye maken mirths and plays? Am I your lord or your servant?"
Everyone fell to their knees. A tympan tinkled in the stunned silence as a small girl crawled from Melanthe's lap and knelt, holding the belled drum before her.
"Thorlac," he snapped to one of the poised tumblers. "Stable my mount. Simon, take Will's. Stands he outside in the rain with the order of laboring. Nill no one be seen in this hall nor heard to singen or playen until Lent is passed. Eat in the low hall, and give ye thanks for it."
At once the great room emptied, light footsteps and shuffles and the odd note of a justled instrument. Only Melanthe was left, sitting on a settle drawn near the huge chimney. The gems on her kerchief gleamed as she bent her head, rubbing one hand over the back of the other.
"My lady mote forgive me for ending your sport," he said tautly, "but the work demands."
"I ask thy pardon," she said, without lifting her face. "Ne did I know it. I thought they were at leisure."
"Nought in this season, my lady. Spring comes."
"Yea," she said.
No more than that. He was damp, his hands still cold, though the fire beside her rumbled with more than enough wood and charcoal. "Haf I displeased you, lady," he said harshly, "that ye refuse my company?"
He had not meant to speak it out so abruptly. Her hands folded together in her lap, nunlike.
"I ne do not refuse thy company, my lord. I am with thee now."
"My embraces," he said.
She slanted a look up at him beneath the kerchief and her lashes, and then gazed down again, the picture of chastity.
He paced away. "Peraventure ye tire of this place and wish to go anon to Bowland."
"Nay, and risk the pestilence?" she asked quickly.
He turned. "Was little sign of it enow, my lady. Only at Lyerpool."
"Who speaks to thee of this—that I would go?"
"I think of your place, and your holdings. Ne cannought ye look to sojourn here long, to your lands' neglect."
She stood up. "Who spake thee so?"
"Is common wit, my lady. I should have seen you to Bowland, as we intended. N'is nought fitting I should have brought you here to detain you."
"Thy minstrels said thee so!" she exclaimed.
"My minstrels?" he repeated blankly. He stopped in the face of her vehemence. "Nay, they said no such."
"William Foolet has whispered in thy ears, and the Bassinger, to sayen thee of my lands' neglect, and plague is no danger to me!"
"Ne did they."
"Dost thou care less for me than for thy people? They are commanded to stay within your plessis wood for fear of pestilence!"
"Watz nought my meaning, forsooth!" He found himself near to shouting in response to her wild accusations. "Faithly—ne did I wist you feared the plague so much."
"I do."
Her violet eyes regarded him, shaded in black lashes. She had never seemed overconcerned to Ruck. She did not seem so now. With her head lifted, her kerchief sparkling with gems, she seemed more angry than alarmed.
"Ye does nought choose to make all haste to your lands, then," he said.
"I fear pestilence."
He shook his head with a slight laugh. "My lady—ne do I trow that you e'er speak me troth."
"I do! I fear to go out, for the pestilence."
Her lips made a strange pressing curve—an aspect there and gone, a shadow between her brows before she smoothed her face again to cool composure. Always she was a secret, impossible to read. It could have been a hidden smile or a hint of tears. But he thought it was not a smile.
She faced him wholly. "Thou said that I may stop here, where no ill could come, so long as I wished!" She made it a challenge, as if she expected him to deny it.
"Then do we nought go, my lady," he said, "until I know it to be safe for you."
"Oh," she said, and closed her eyes.
"I thought me that you would wish to depart anon."
She made a tiny shake of her head.
"Melanthe," he said, "will I ne'er understand thee?"
Her eyes opened. "When I wish it."
He bent and retrieved his wet mantle, throwing it across his shoulder as he stepped up onto the dais. "My lady," he said, giving her a brief, stiff bow before he went through the door and mounted the stairs.
He had stripped himself down for dry weeds when she came. She closed the door and looked at him with a look that made the blood run strong in his veins. He could not hide himself, though he turned away from her—but she came to him and touched him and put his hands at her waist.
He kissed her. He held her hard and laid her on the bed, knowing he had been befooled somehow, that she meant to wile him by her days of denying and now giving, heartless ramp that she was. But she had only wiled him into what he wanted anyway, to keep her here and love and overlie her until she gasped in frenzy beneath him, her hair escaped from the kerchief to spread all about the pillows.
He buried his face in the black silken strands, groaning his release through clenched teeth. He lay atop her and felt her breasts rise and fall against him, her sheath tight and delicious, faint throbs in her that ran through him like sweet kisses.
She turned her lips beside his ear. "Now," she said, "thou dost understand me."
He gave a laugh, his teeth still clenched. "No, Melanthe. Only you make me cease to care if I do or nay."
* * *
In a careful fold over her arm, Cara carried an altar-cloth and the vestments she was to mend. She crossed Bowland's dim and busy hall, jumping back from a woodman's bundle of fagots as he stopped suddenly in front of her and dropped the load. The wood thudded almost on her toes.
"Ware thee!" she exclaimed, one of the English expressions she was learning well among these savages.
The servant turned with a great show of surprise, but he was smirking beneath it. He did not even bow, but only leaned down to grab the roped bundle.
"Thou didst that on purpose!" she cried in outrage. "Disrespectful oaf, thou wouldst have broke my foot!"
He didn't understand her French, or pretended not to. She pressed her lips together. In less than a fortnight here, the small slights were mounting to open disdain. She hated this place, and these people. A hot sting threatened behind her eyes.
Someone stopped beside her. Still in his travel mud, the English squire Guy seized the woodman's collar and dragged him up close. He growled something in English. The servant's insolence vanished as he tried to choke out words and bow at the same time, his face turning red with effort.
Guy spoke again, short and fierce, and shoved the woodman back. He fell over his own pile of fagots, landing on the rush mat with a loud thud and yelp. Guy made a gesture toward Cara. When the servant was slow in heaving himself up, Guy stepped over the bundle and aimed a kick with his armored toe.
The man yelped again, scrambling into a kneel before Cara. He begged her pardon humbly, in perfectly adequate French.
Everyone in the hall had paused to watch. Guy swept a look over them. "Surely a noble house serves its ladies with good cheer," he said, his quiet voice carrying to the corners.
The hall was silent. Slowly, as Guy maintained his arrogant stare, one or two of them bowed, then more, until finally every servant in the hall had acknowledged him.
He gave Cara a curt nod and strode back toward the passage beyond the screens, his blue cloak flaring from his shoulders. She looked down at the still-kneeling woodman and the respectfully bowed heads around her, and hugged the vestments close, turning to go after him.
She caught up with him in the passage. "Sir!"
He stopped, looking over his shoulder. When he saw her, his face broke into a boyish grin.
"I must thank you, sir," she said, halting a few feet away from him and lowering her face.
"Did you see that?" he exclaimed. "It worked. I can't believe I did it."
The excitement in his voic
e made her look up. He was still grinning, with a streak of mud she hadn't noticed on his jaw. When she had first seen him, his blond hair had been damp and plastered to his head—she hadn't realized what a bright color it was, shining like a golden crown in the dismal passage. He didn't wear the flesh-colored hose now, but a soldier's armor. He did not appear silly at all.
"It's the manner," he said. "Soft and steady. Confidence."
"God grant you mercy, sir, for your aid," she repeated, taking a shy step backward.
He bowed. "It was an honor to serve you, my lady."
She almost retreated, and then paused. "You've been traveling."
He lowered his voice. "Seeking after news of your mistress. Navona and Lord Thomas have divided a few of us to search and report."
"You've found something?" Cara asked anxiously.
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, my lady. Nothing. But you must not fear that we will fail." He gestured toward the door. "I must give my account to them now, and so haste, if I don't offend you."
"Oh no—of course you must go." She moistened her lips. "Where do you lodge?"
"Over the postern gate, with the squires."
"I will see that a bath is made for you, and see that your robes are ready when you wish them." She wrapped the vestments close about her arm and went quickly toward the hall. She hesitated at the screen, glancing back.
He stood looking after her, his golden hair a faint gleam against the stone. She smiled, making a little courtesy, and hurried into the hall.
* * *
There were almost no other women in the castle—none at all of Cara's rank, and she had the upper rooms of the household range to herself except for the infrequent servants passing through. She had found herself a place by a window and sat in the embrasure, bending over the vestments in the rain-soaked light and picking the seam loose with her needle.
Allegreto came upon her before she knew he was there. She reached for scissors and looked up, starting to see him leaned against the stone chimney mantel with his arms crossed.
"Blessed Mary!" she exclaimed, her hand on her breast. "You're as sly as a stoat."
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