The destrier gathered himself for a lunge up onto the stony ledges. Pebbles skittered down from under his feet as he made the shelf and broke into a brief trot on easier ground. Ruck's hair whipped his cheek in the wind. Another ledge up, and another—and he guided Hawk into the stone fissure.
The sudden hush of the tarn was like a sound of its own. Beyond the moaning crevice, the pool was tranquil as it always was, black, still ice-skimmed in the cold shadow of the cliffs. As they entered, Hawk shied violently. Ruck grabbed for his sword as a figure rose from the bushes.
It was Hew, without the horses or Melanthe. Ruck controlled the destrier, spurring him forward. "Where is she?" His alarm echoed off the slate, mingling with the ring of Hawk's hooves.
Hew sank to one knee, his head bowed. He had no blood or look of a fight on him. Ruck threw himself from the saddle and grabbed the austringer's shoulders. "What happened?"
"My lord—a message, my lord. For you, my lord."
For an instant, sight and heart and lungs failed him. She was abducted. Blindly he grabbed for Hawk, to remount. "How long? How many of them?"
"My lord!" There was a hot strain in Hew's voice. "A message from my lady!"
Ruck paused, leashing his urge to throw Hawk into a pell-mell charge down the path. As soon as he turned, Hew stood up and closed his eyes. He looked miserable and scared, squeezing the wool mitts on his hands.
"My lord, my lady commanded me. I am to sayen you as if she herseluen spake, my lord, and her message to you be thusly—" He wet his chapped lips. "'I leave thee of my own desire. Desmond says that Al—Allegreto lives, and his father comes in this country to wed me. I love this man as my life, better than e'er I loved thee.'" He took a breath while Ruck stared at him. "'What was between thee and me is naught and nis,'" he recited with a nervous flick of his tongue. "'I sore repent it. Ne do nothing to abashen me, for henceforth nill I desire to beholden thee, ne'er again, for base shame and disgust of such a connection.'" He opened his eyes and flung himself down on his knees. "And so did she charge me to sayen exactly, my lord!" he cried. "I swear to you, for ne'er should I speaken such words else!"
"It is false!" Ruck shouted. "The horses are gone! They took her; they forced her!"
He gripped his hands together and bent his head down. "Nay, only Desmond watz here, my lord, and she went apart and spake to him within the sight of my eyes, lord! And she mounted him upon my horse, and said that he would haf it to carry him, and bade me on pain to stayen you from following her."
"Nay." Ruck took a step forward. "She did nought!"
"My lord, she instructed me to sayen you, if ye would nought abide her word"—Hew lifted wretched eyes—"to remember, my lord, that she warned you once, that always she deceived."
TWENTY-TWO
He had no memory of coming down from the mountain. Hawk was galloping, pounding down the road before the castle. The May pole stood in the meadow. He sent Hawk flying off the track, drawing his sword, careering down the slope with his arm outstretched.
The sword hit, slashing through the ribbons, a violent impact in his hand. The stave vibrated wildly as he swept past. He reined Hawk on his haunches and spurred the destrier at the pole. He was yelling as he rode it down, swinging his sword overhead. The bright silks flew in the wind. The blow rang through him, opening a white gash in the wood.
Ruck carried away strips of blue and yellow; they fluttered and curled around his gauntlet and the guard. He flung the weapon from him as he passed the lists, leaning down to catch the haft of the battle ax. His arm took the heavier weight. He swung upright in the saddle and charged the May pole howling fury in his throat.
The blade flashed and bit deep in the wood. With a crack the pole bent drunkenly. Hawk carried him by it as the upper half listed. He drove the horse around with his legs, hefting the length of the ax in both hands. He cut at the stave, spurring Hawk in ever smaller circles around the fractured pillar, swinging again and again as wood chips flew past his face, chopping until the log fell with a squealing groan.
He raised the ax over his head and brought it down, cleaving the standing wood down the center with a crack like a lightning bolt. He yanked the weapon free and dismounted amid trampled ribbons, assaulting the downed spar.
The wood splintered beneath the blade. He lifted the ax and swung it, lifted and swung, grunting, mangling the pieces, driving them into the muddy ground. He had no thoughts, no idea of time. He hewed until his hands went numb with the work, until he could not pull the blade from its seat but stumbled forward over it when he tried.
He fell on his knees amid mutilated silk and sundered wood. His breath burned his throat. With his dagger he stabbed at a scarred length of pole beside him, the only thing in reach, grinding the knife tip around, deepening and widening the wound, stabbing at it again.
He could hear nothing but his own heaving breath and the sound of the point impaling wood. Sweat trickled down into his eye, sharp salt. He wiped it with the back of his leather sleeve.
The cold wind bit his cheeks when he looked up. All of his people stood at the edge of the lists, a cluster of color and silence except for one little girl who was weeping. Their May stave and garlands lay maimed and dismembered about him.
He shook his head. He shifted the dagger and speared the mud beside his knee. He pulled it free and gored again, his fist rising and falling weakly. He shook his head once more.
"My lord." It was Will Foolet's voice, heavy with fear and question.
"I cannought speak of it." Ruck's throat was hoarse. He shoved himself to his feet. "I cannought speak of it. Ask Hew."
He took up the ax and walked toward the lists, wiping his muddy knife on his thigh. The tear-stained girl came up to meet him as he passed, reaching for the hem of his surcoat. "Won't we have a May then, m'lor, if you please?" Her large eyes fixed him. "My lady's grace said me that I might carry her flowers to the stave—" Her mother hurried up, trying to lift her away, but she clung stubbornly to him. "And ne can I now!" she cried.
"Beg grace, my lord!" her mother exclaimed, yanking the small fist free.
Ruck saw a lone figure walking toward them from far away down the track. Hew. Soon enough they would all know, and stare at him, and pity him for a wretched love-sot, more fool than they could invent in their best playing at fools.
"I'll fell another." He turned from them, hefting the ax onto his shoulder. "Ne do I desire company at it."
* * *
Desmond had told Melanthe nothing more, but that Allegreto's father had come to Bowland. She had not asked. He did not use his bandaged hand, and he moved like an old man, his young face unsmiling, his eyes bleak.
He brought her to her senses. She had looked on him, the boy who had left with a merry melody that knew nothing of pain, and she had known that she must go.
She could not let this come to Wolfscar. And it would come, if she stayed, if Gian was here. The world would come no matter the depth of the woven wood barrier. Gian would hunt her until he found her.
As dreams and vapor vanished, as a laughing youth came home a cripple, so would such things perish if she tried to hold on to what she could not possess. She had not forgotten who she was, but she had let herself forget what it demanded.
She had looked back once, halting the horse at a crossroad where a monk and a farmer worked to repair a harrow. Gryngolet sat on the saddlebow, asleep, her head tucked beneath one white wing. The wind blew warmer here, pushing fat low clouds and showers off the sea. The lowland was alive with the work of spring, with cleared fields and flowers, church bells and children chasing birds off the new seeds.
Behind her the mountains rose, catching the rain against their flanks—a dark watch, a malevolence that made the eye long to turn to the new foliage and fresh red soil. She stared at the boundary. High and impenetrable it seemed, and yet precious frail, vanishing at a glance for anyone with the key.
Her message to Ruck had been a more powerful kind of barrier, designed to kill all t
rust and love. He would have followed her—she made a pit of broken faith between them to prevent him.
Desmond did not halt or look back at her. His fat sluggish rouncy, taken from Hew, carried him step by step. She had seen him wrap his good hand in the mane, his mouth drawn hard against every jolt. Sometimes, when his face grew too white, she had told him they would rest, and gave him time to recover himself.
She wondered how many fingers he had left beneath the bandage. But someone had been kind to him—it was only his left hand, and he could still move his joints, if stiffly. He had not been racked for long.
So far from Gian, she had let herself drown in foolish visions. She had done a thing unforgivable and irreparable, disdaining the danger. She had loved, and let it command her.
If she had not, Desmond would be whole. He would still be in Wolfscar, playing his mirthful flute. But she had never thought Gian would come. She had thought Allegreto dead. She had thought she was free.
Free! Better she had obeyed Ligurio and gone into the nunnery. Better she had flung herself from the highest tower of Monteverde. Better that she had never, never known what she knew now—a man's faint smile and the depth of his heart and his faithfulness. She did not deserve it, she had never deserved such, she had mistaken herself for someone else. Ligurio had trained her, Gian would have her; it was beyond defying.
Even God Himself had stayed his hand. She had not conceived; she had seen the signs denying it each month with regret—but she understood now what mercy had been given her, that she was barren.
Fantasies and a lover she left behind. Only one thing did she do for herself, brutally cruel as she could do it, so that she might have a hope of sleeping. She made him hate her, so that he would not follow.
* * *
The moment that they rode within sight of the massive gatehouse and red sandstone walls that guarded the abbey, Allegreto came striding out. He did not keep to a walk—he began to run, avoiding puddles and a flock of peahens, coming to a halt before her horse. "My father," he said.
His face held no expression, his voice no panic, and yet he radiated a fear so deep that he seemed to breathe it in and out of him.
"Is he here?" She nodded toward the abbey.
"Depardeu, no!" He seemed to get a little hold of himself and shook his head. He bowed to her. "No, lady. At Bowland. We came away in secret."
"Let us go in, then. Desmond must have rest and food."
Allegreto looked toward her drooping companion. He walked to the horse and took its reins, reaching back to grip Desmond's good hand. "Well worth you," he said, "for bringing her lady's grace. You see I did not follow."
Desmond gave a hollow croak of a laugh. "Not for lack of trying."
Allegreto turned and clucked the rouncy into a slow walk. He looked back at Desmond. "How were you injured, when they ask?"
"A mishap," Desmond said weakly. "A mill wheel."
Allegreto nodded. "Clever enough," he said to the horse.
Melanthe saw Desmond smile feebly. He looked at Allegreto with bleared and worshiping eyes.
"I have said a lady doing penance is expected," Allegreto informed them. "A great lady traveling poorly, to atone for her pride and vainglory. A falcon brought the message to her in a dream."
Melanthe sighed. "Ah, Allegreto—and I thought thee dead." She pulled her hood about her face and lifted the bird who had delivered the unfortunate news of her pride and vainglory, pressing her horse toward the abbey gate.
* * *
She knelt beside Allegreto in the sanctuary, telling prayer beads with her fingers. While the monks sang compline in the candlelit church, he spoke softly to her, his voice a tight undertone to the motet and descant.
"I know not what you want, my lady. I don't know what you intended by fleeing. I have thought on it these three months, and still I cannot fathom your desire."
"It is not important," she said.
"Yea, my lady, it is important to me. I am yours. You won't believe me. I cannot prove it. But if I must choose between you and my father, I have chosen."
She looked aside at him, keeping her head bowed. He was staring intensely at her, the smooth curve of his cheek lit by gold, his eyes outlined in shadow as if by a finely skillful hand. "Thou hast chosen me?" she asked, with a soft incredulity.
"You do not want my father. That is all I can make of your move. Is that true?"
Such a blunt question. She forced her fingers to tell the beads, her mind to think. Was this Gian, trying to wrest words from her that he would use somehow? Allegreto was his father's creature; he had ever been, born and bred to his devotion. As frightened of Gian as all the rest of them, loving his father as a wolf cub loved its parent, in cringing adoration.
"You need not tell me," he said quickly. "I well know you cannot trust me. What can I do that you will trust me?"
"I cannot imagine," she said.
He was silent. The monks sang an alleluia and response, voices soaring up the dark roof. The straw beneath her knees made but a rough cushion; she was glad to stand when the rite allowed it.
"Lady," he said when they knelt again, "two years ago, my father wished me to journey with him to Milan. Do you remember?"
She made a slight nod, without taking her eyes from her fingers.
"We did not go to Milan. We spent the time in his palace, lady. He told me I must keep you from all harm. He taught me such further lessons as he thought I needed, and watched me spar and fight, and—tested me."
A tenor answered the treble song. Melanthe started the beads over again, her head bent.
"My lady, there was a man who had done my father a wrong. I know not what. He was loosed in the palace, and my father said I was to kill him, or he would kill me." Allegreto was unmoving next to her. "He was a master, this man. He was better than I. I was at the point of his dagger when my father delivered me." Amid the chants, Allegreto's voice seemed to become distant. "I failed. My father told me that because I was his son, he saved me, but I had to remember not to fail again. And so I was bound in a room with the man I should have killed, and they took his member and parts."
Melanthe shook her head. She put her hand on his arm to stop him, to silence him.
But he kept speaking, trembling beneath her hand. "And while they did it, my father came to me and said to remember I was his bastard, and he could sire more sons, but was better for Navona that I could not. He laid the blade on me, so I should feel it and bleed, but then—because he loved me, he stayed it. He made me know that if I failed him again, that should be my reward. I should not be reprieved." He looked up at her, breathing sharply. "And I have not failed, until this time."
Melanthe's hand loosened. She stared into his face.
"It has been deception, my lady, that I was gelded. He let me go and bid me play it well, or it would be done to me in truth. It was so that you would bear me to sleep near you, that I might keep you from your enemies. He knew—" Allegreto's mouth hardened. "He knew that he could trust me in all ways."
She closed her eyes and drew a shaky breath. "Christ's blood. And I am to trust thee?"
"My lady—" He put his hand over hers, gripping hard, desperate. "Lady, this time he will do it. He promised it."
She shook her head, as if she could deny all thoughts.
"I can't go back without you, my lady!"
"Ah," she said, pulling her hand from under his, "is that all thou wouldst have of me, for thy vast loyalty?"
"Not all," he said in a painful voice.
She looked sideways from under her hood. His hands were clenched together on his thighs as he knelt.
"My lady." He bent his head down over his fists. "Donna Cara is there. If you tell my father of what she tried to do to you—"
His words broke off, requiring no completion. Melanthe gazed at his hands and thought, Cara? Cara the bitch of Monteverde, whom he had scorned so savagely and strained so hard to have sent away?
Away, away, out of Monteverde, Riata, Navona. A
way, where she would have been safe.
In profile he looked older than she remembered, his mouth and jaw set, his beauty more solid. Growing. And a man, with passions in him that he had kept dark and silent.
"Oh, God pity thee," she whispered. "Allegreto."
"She is not for me. I know that. There is an Englishman." He took a long breath and spoke coldly. "I believe he will wed her. But if your lady's grace accuses her to my father—" He shrugged, and his elegant murdering hands twisted together.
She might have thought he was lying. He was player enough, verily, for any part.
He squeezed his eyes closed, lifting his face to the high arches. "I am yours. I'll act only for you. I will do whatever you ask to prove myself. Only—I cannot leave her there, and I cannot go back without you, my lady."
Three monks in procession came from the chancel down the nave toward them, singing, their faces underlit by the candles they carried. Melanthe watched them turn and leave the church by a side door,
"Listen to me, my lady. Your white falcon was there—when my father punished his enemy and forewarned me."
She looked toward him. "What?"
"My father fed it," he said. "He said that he had trained it to know me."
"That is impossible."
"The falcon hates me, my lady."
"Your father has never touched Gryngolet."
"He told me that if I betrayed him with you, that the falcon—" He looked at her imploringly. "My lady, he fed it."
He did not say more; he let her understand the monstrous thing he meant. Through her horror Melanthe bared her teeth. "If he had a gyrfalcon, it was not Gryngolet!"
"I will carry her." Allegreto gazed at Melanthe with a straight and terrified intensity. "To prove my fidelity—that I do not lie to you."
She suddenly realized that the church was silent, the prayers completed, the sanctuary dimmer. What candlelight was left hardened the sweet curves and comeliness of his face, erased the last hint of childhood, revealed the untenable compass of his fear.
For My Lady's Heart Page 38