He lifted his head at the sound of a horse coming fast in the road. Two days had he waited for Navona's agent. He turned eagerly, to hear if the rider came to a halt, but the hoofbeats did not slow. The horse rushed beneath the window.
A pale object flew through the open glass, startling him. It thumped on the floor, a small white sack, while the horse passed on without a pause.
He swept it up, yanked open the string, and poured pebbles from inside. A folded paper fell after them into his hand.
For an instant his whole heart changed—he pressed open the folds with a hope that lasted only long enough to see that it was French. She would not write him in French, not if she meant well. Neither her name nor her sign marked the paper.
"On guard," it said only. "The wine."
He held the paper, rubbing it between his fingers. There was no hint—but it must be her, to warn him of this wine. Who else...
Comprehension came to him. He had seen Desmond here, at a distance, loitering with Allegreto and a crowd of honey-fly gallants and laughing ladies, dressed in a short hamselin coat with delicate embroidery and fur tips. Desmond, too, she had perverted, but this much faith the boy must have left, to forewarn Ruck—in French no less—that his wife or her lover tried to poison him.
He made a small laugh, tearing the parchment and flicking the pieces away. And when Navona's agent came at last, bearing a flask of wine and news that Dan Gian, his ankle broken in the fall beneath his horse, would have a champion in his place rather than delay their reckoning, Ruck did not drink to seal the arrangement.
A champion. But let him cower behind tainted wine and champions, the fisting cur. He would not have her.
Ruck gave the wine flask to the landlady and told her to poison rats with it—for which she thanked him in the morning and said that it had done very well.
* * *
The champion was to be imported from Flanders. Ruck learned of it when he went to the jousting ground in search of exercise, and found no dearth of offers.
He fought in the lists all morning. He did not usually encounter so many who wished to trade spars with him, but he was glad enough for the fierce activity. The betrothal feast had not been set aside; it went forward at Merlesden after a promise on the church porch—the canon lawyer assured him that the priest's words would include "if the Holy Church consents," a caution Ruck could depend upon to protect his interest, but he knocked a squire clear from his saddle with a wooden waster when he thought of Navona's face.
It came now to forbidding the banns. He would not have to stand up in church and object; his clerk already worked to present his case, and at least until it had been investigated, the betrothal could be carried no further. Ruck chafed at these bishops and clerks, but it was a rite that had to be observed. He expected no success; she would deny him to the bishop as she had denied Ruck to his face, and so it was his word against hers. He had but one way to prove himself, with a sword.
He dismounted, starting to take a ladle of water from a page who ran up to offer it—and then hesitated. He let the water pour onto the ground and called another waterboy from outside the lists.
"Wary bastard!" A knight halted beside him, some foreigner with an accent of the south. He said in a loud voice, "These stinking coquins must watch their backs."
Ruck ignored him, squatting down to cup his hands and drink from the bucket.
"Miserable wretch, how much money dost thou think to get for renouncing your foul tale? Tell me, and I'll take the message to Dan Gian, to save thee the toil."
Ruck stood up. "If thou hast come from Navona," he said, calm and clear, "then advise him to save his silver, for to hire the man who dies in his place." Ruck wiped his face with a towel. "Since he's too much a woman to fight himself."
"He's injured, caitiff."
Ruck smiled up at the knight. "I'd be pleased to wait, but I think his ankle won't be so brave as to knit soon."
The foreigner looked about at the crowd that gathered and deliberately spit on him. "Fight me. Now."
Ruck wiped his cuir bouilli with the towel and threw it down. "With the greatest delight, thou son of a mongrel bitch." He turned to Hawk and tightened his girth. Immediately the spectators split, pages and squires pressing up to serve him with helm and a steel sword instead of the wooden wasters for practice. The blunt-fingered squire who held out the helmet dropped it an inch from Ruck's hand.
As they both bent to retrieve it, the squire hissed, "Your friend says beware the sword."
Ruck looked up at him. He was a stranger, backing away with a quick bow. A quick scan of the spectators lined along lists revealed no Desmond, nor any other friend.
They were sympathetic to him, though, halloing him vigorously as he mounted. He turned the sword he'd been given, running his glove along the edge. Light flashed up and down it. He could see no flaw, but he was not fool enough to chance it. He called for another—and as he handed down the first blade, he saw it: a ghost across the metal, the faintest flaw of color.
"Who gave me this?" he shouted in English. He held it overhead, reining his horse in a circle, spurring toward the quintain. "Who gives me a sword nought worth ambs-ace?" With a violent sweep he brought it flat against the stout practice post.
The blade broke, the sundered half flying through the air to land with a skidding puff of dust.
"Witness this, that I was goaded into combat by no will of my own, and given that to fighten with." He glared around at the staring faces. "I am in health and whole today—if I die afore I prove my truth against Navona's slander, then I pray you, for your honor, to search into the cause." He threw away the broken hilt and turned his mount toward the gate. "I ne do nought fight with a foul nithing."
They jeered; he supposed it was at him, until he reached the rail and they started to duck under it and run into the lists. His challenger did not make it to the gate, surrounded by an angry swarm. They pulled him from his horse, tearing his helmet and weapon away the better to beat him.
Ruck watched for a moment, with a habitual urge to stop the disorder. He was not certain that the man had been behind the flawed sword. But there were boys taking hold of Hawk's bridle, excited squires and pages escorting him out the gate. He remembered that foreign voice and deliberate spit, and turned his back.
He realized that the bull-shouldered squire who had given him the warning was walking beside him, hand on his stirrup.
When he dismounted, the man took his shield and helmet with a seasoned efficiency.
"Who does thou serve?" Ruck asked in English.
He made a smart bow. "My good lord Sir Henry of Grazely died at Pentecost, may Lord Jesus grant him grace. I be withouten place since."
Ruck frowned. "Who spake thee as my friend?"
"Ne do I not know, sir, but will I try out the creature and find him, an you liketh." He looked at Ruck with a sober expression that did not quite disguise the glint of hope. "John Marking is my name. My lady Grazely will write a letter to attest me, should it fall out that you be in need of a humble squire, God save you, sire."
"Then let her write anon," Ruck said, and handed John his gloves.
* * *
At the archbishop's pleasure, Ruck knelt with his canon in the inner closet where the prelate was lodged at Windsor. He listened to the canon review his case, as he had listened to it laid before priest and archdeacon and bishop. When the clerk had finished, the archbishop sat in silence for a few moments, and then said he wished to speak to Ruck alone.
"Sit there." The prelate waved him to a bench, holding the papers, all in Latin, and spreading them out on the table before him. "This is not a cause in which I would intervene," the prelate said, "but that since I came here I have heard of nothing but the marvelous case of this unknown knight, who would have it that he's married to the Countess of Bowland—who would have it that he's not."
Ruck said nothing. He sat straight, looking at the archbishop's peaked and embellished mitre that he'd taken off and set upon
the table. The churchman sorted through papers.
"You press your cause ardently, with nothing to make proof," he murmured, reading. "But of course, I'm told that the widow is an heiress of great fortune."
"Your grace," Ruck said, "I do not want her fortune, nor will have it."
The prelate ran his finger across a line. "I see that you have so testified, that you quit all right in her estate. And yet such a marriage cannot be a disadvantage to you, for you have no property or place that you name. Sir who? Of where? What county?"
"Honorable father—I am under solemn vow, that I will not undertake my right name before the world until I prove worthy. But I have written it, and lies it sealed there." He nodded toward the parchments on the table. "The Duke of Lancaster is my liege lord. Six gentlemen and knights of good character vouch upon me, that I am no felon nor outlaw, but a true Christian man ready to keep the peace."
The archbishop made an irritated flick of his hand. "The Lord would be better pleased if young knights were not so hasty to swear such extravagant and profitless vows. But you must keep to your sworn word. Still—this want of conformity and open truth seems sufficient to arouse suspicion that you make your claim with worldly and wicked motive."
"My lord, I make claim for cause the Princess Melanthe is my wife, before God, and no other man may marry her while I live."
The archbishop tapped on the papers. Strong light shafted across the table from a lancet window, making a long shadow from his finger. "You testify that the Princess Melanthe took you to husband by your right name and knows your place."
"Yea, my lord. She lay at my hold, from February to May."
The churchman frowned at him thoughtfully. "Say me, in your own words, what passed."
Ruck had told the story often now; he related everything from his dismissal by Lancaster to the bed at Torbec. The archbishop did not break in to question him as the others had. He simply listened, shifting the papers on occasion. At the end he said, "My son, I fear that you have been wiled by a wicked and lewd woman. If those at Torbec could have testified to witness of the vows, the case might be different. I do not say that you have lied, but you have no proof."
"If I do not lie, then she is my wife," Ruck said. "She cannot marry another."
"I have seen her. I spoke to her right plainly, and put her in remembrance that her soul is at stake in this matter. She denies the words, and that you had company of each other, with great vehemence."
Ruck lifted his eyes in shock. He had not known she had already spoken her story.
But he did not trouble to repeat to the archbishop the foolish claim that she spoke under duress. Thrice in as many weeks Ruck had received warnings from his "friend"—and thrice had he lived to value them. He wrestled between believing that his wife was attempting to murder him and hoping that she was behind the warnings that spared him.
He shook his head. "My lord, she is my wife, and she cannot marry another. I do not lie in this, on my soul and any other oath required of me, though for saying it Dan Gian Navona accuses me of deceit and falsehood. I defend my words by arms against him, with leave of the king's justices in the court of chivalry, honorable father, if by God's will you accord."
The archbishop scratched his forehead and read the paper before him again. "He does not fight himself, but sends a champion."
"His ankle is broken, my lord."
The prelate gave a slight laugh. "I see. God in his wisdom prevents a direct meeting, that you may not be charged with a killing to clear your way to his betrothed."
"She is not his betrothed, but my wife, my lord."
"You are zealous," the archbishop said. "So too was the princess in her denial. But—if you speak true, then she married without the king's license and now has a great lord for a suitor. Many a man and woman, rightly wed, has made mock of their vows for less than this." He leaned back on the settle and rubbed his nose. "And when I asked of her where she lay for the months of February to May, in her impudence she told me she had spent the time so deep in prayer that she did not recall the place." He lifted his brows. "I be little convinced that such a female can benefit your spiritual welfare, my son in Christ."
Ruck knew that she could not. His spiritual welfare was in bloody shreds. But he bowed his head and said, "Good father, I wish to honor the bonds of holy matrimony."
He did not dare raise his eyes, for fear the man of God would see the depth and heat of gall in him. He listened to the scratch of the quill as the archbishop made a note in the margin of the document.
"I will forbid the banns and delay sitting of the canonical court on this matter until the outcome of the combat," the churchman said. "If God sends that you are successful in your defense against the charge of falsehood, then follows it that between you and Dan Gian, the weight of truth is yours. The court will take fitting account of the point. If you fail—and live, by God's mercy—then I forbid you as a proved deceiver to make further cause before the church. In absence of any earthly witness, let the Holy Spirit direct."
* * *
They left the archbishop's lodgings, Ruck's canon triumphant with success and John Marking striding ahead, clearing a path through the orderly confusion of the courtyard with ox-like resolution. Even John had to pause for a moment as the horns rang out and an opulent procession came through the gate.
Ruck felt his elation grow cold. Behind a scarlet vaunt-guard, Melanthe rode beside Navona, who did not appear much discommoded by his ankle. She was robed in red and gold; he all in white. A tall knight trailed them, armed and horsed and squired—the Flemish champion, without doubt, looking about himself with a keen interest.
The rest of their company came behind, faces shocking in their strange familiarity in this surrounding—Allegreto, the gentlewomen—and Desmond in the scarlet livery, wearing gloves in high summer and sitting a delicate palfrey with bored arrogance.
"There he is!" John suddenly leaned close to Ruck. "Your friend, my lord, who gave warning of the sword."
Ruck looked at Desmond, so unfamiliar and familiar in his finery.
"Rides he the fourth," John said under the rising sound of halloes and grumbles, "the first in the white surcoats. Young and comely."
"Nay—" As the company halted, Ruck's gaze shifted from scarlet Desmond to the first rider in the milk-white livery of the Italian. It was Allegreto. "Nought in white?"
But at that moment Allegreto's lazy glance passed along the crowd. He looked directly at Ruck. His dark eyes took note, expressionless. With a deliberate move he pulled his light sword from its sheath and examined the blade.
Ruck found the area around himself opening. Someone pressed him forward from behind. The Flemish knight had dismounted; the space between them was suddenly empty—a confrontation, and the voices around rose in shouts of "Saint George! Saint George!"
The champion was a tall man, younger than Ruck by years. He skimmed the cheering English with a smile of delight and made a bow that held just the right touch of mockery, as if they were hailing him. It brought the shouts to a peak.
Ruck stood alone but for John. The Fleming examined him and then made a courteous nod. Ruck acknowledged it. He looked past the knight to where Melanthe sat her black palfrey. Though every eye in the courtyard was fixed on him and the man he would fight, she dismounted as if neither of them existed.
Her path lay away from Ruck. Her Italian lover took her arm, showing only a slight hesitation in his walk as he led her toward the great double tower entrance of the royal lodgings. The Flemish knight saluted Ruck and turned to follow.
Ruck had been prepared for their first encounter by the ford, armored in hate and determination. He had wanted witnesses. This time he wanted witness as he would have wanted staring eyes on him while a lion tore his heart from his chest.
She denied him. To his face, to the church, before the court. And Desmond—who did not look at Ruck, who did not pause or speak—Desmond saw it, and that was worst of all.
* * *
"The madman haunts me," Melanthe murmured, before Gian could mention it.
He smiled, patting her arm. "Put him from your mind."
She paused in the echoing gate passage, lowering her voice below the sound of talk and movement, speaking Italian. "Avoi, Gian, I pray you not to have him killed before this cursed duel! Or after, if you please, for they'll never let you leave this misbegot country then!"
"You upset yourself for no cause, sweet." His eyes went briefly to Allegreto. "Put your faith in me, and say no more."
"Gian! You do not understand the English! If he dies by any way but in this combat, you'll not go unscathed. Let the lawyers pay him off. Or the—"
"I have told you not to speak of him." His fingers closed cruelly on her arm. He made her walk slowly on.
"I only—"
"My dear princess, if you add another word, I shall be forced to think you plead for his life because you love the poor devil."
She bore his painful grip without wincing. "My dear Gian," she said, "if you do not heed me, I shall be forced to think you are a great fool."
"Shall you?" He slanted a look down at her. "But in truth, Melanthe—I do not think I am."
TWENTY-FOUR
Inside the tent the sound of the spectators was a steady mutter embroidered by music, the king's favorite airs. John knelt at Ruck's feet, fastening on spurs. His green plate was polished and restored, the dents beaten smooth and the silver bosses renewed.
Ruck wore her colors, but he went to the fight not knowing her. She was the argent and green of Monteverde, or the red and gold of Bowland. She was his murderess, or she was trying to save him. She kept Wolfscar a secret to preserve it, or to discount him as a nameless adventurer. She had sent Allegreto with the warnings, or her lapdog betrayed her.
He did not know if she wished for Ruck to win and free her, or if she hoped that he would die and free her. He did not know.
But he shook his head to clear away fantasy. He knew. If she wanted him, all she had to do was speak what was true.
For My Lady's Heart Page 41