* * *
Ruck walked to the hostel as if in a dream. His steps took him first to the stable, to make certain at least of his horse and his sword when everything else seemed a daze.
"Already gone," the hosteler said.
The haze vanished. Ruck grabbed him by the throat, sending his broom flying. "I paid you, by God!" He threw the man against the wall. "Where are they?"
"The priest!" The hosteler scooted hastily out of reach. "The priest came to collect them, gentle sire! Your good wife—" He stumbled to his feet, ducking. "Is she not to go for a nun? He had a bishop's seal! An offering to the church—on her behalf, he said—he told me you'd willed it so. A bishop's seal, my lord. I'd not have let them go for less, on my life!"
Ruck felt like a man hit by a pole-ax, still on his feet, but reeling.
"They took my horse?" he asked numbly.
"My lord's arms, too." From a safe distance the hosteler made a sympathetic grunt. "They had me climb upstairs after your mail and helm. Bloodsuckers, the lot of them."
Isabelle had made him leave his armor. She had made a great ado of it.
Thirty-seven gold florins. Exactly what she had known was in his purse. And his horse. His sword. His armor.
He locked his hands over his head and tilted his face to the sky. A howl burst from him, a long bellow that reverberated from the stones like a beast's dumb roar. Impotent tears and fury blurred his vision. He leaned back against the wall and slid down it, sitting in the dirt with his head in his arms.
"You might sue to have the horse back, if it was a mistake, gentle sire," the hosteler offered kindly.
Ruck gave a miserable laugh from the hollow of his arms. "How long would that take?"
"Ah. Who could know? Two years, perhaps."
"And cost the price of a dozen horse," he muttered.
"True enough," the hosteler agreed morbidly.
Ruck sat curled, staring into the darkness of his arms, his back against the stone wall. He heard the hosteler go away, heard people talking and passing. Grief and rage spun him. He couldn't move; he had nowhere to go, no wife, no money. Nothing. He couldn't seem to get his mind around the full dimension of it.
A smart prod at his shoulder pushed him half off his balance. He looked up, with no notion of what time had passed, except that the shadows lay longer and deeper on the street.
The prod came again and Ruck grabbed at the staff with an angry oath. Before him stood the hunchbacked mute he'd gifted with a denier—and his first thought was that he wished he had the money back again.
The beggar held out a little pouch. Ruck scowled. The hunchback wriggled the pouch and offered it closer. He waited, staring at Ruck expectantly as he accepted it.
The bag contained a folded paper and a small coin. The beggar was still waiting. Ruck held onto the coin for a moment, but futile pride overcame him and he tossed it to the beggar with bad grace. The man grinned and saluted, shuffling away.
Ruck watched his dinner and bed disappear up the narrow street. He unfolded the paper—and jerked, catching at the green glitter that fell from inside.
I charge you, get yourself far away before night falls. Do not fail in this.
He gazed at the English words, and the two emeralds in his palm. One was small, no bigger than the lens of a dragonfly. The other was of a size to buy full armor and mount, and pay a squire for a year. A size to adorn a falcon's arrogant crest.
He held the emeralds, watched them wink and catch the light.
He knew what he ought to do. A good man, a virtuous man, would stand up and stride to the palace and throw them in her face. A godly man would not let himself be bound to such a one as she.
He'd given up his wife to God.
And his horse, and his armor, and his money.
Ruck closed his hand on the jewels she sent and swore himself to the Arch-Fiend's daughter.
* * *
A year turns full turn and yields never like;
The first to the finish conform full seldom.
Forbye, this Yule over, and the year after,
And each season separately ensued after other:
And thus yields the year in yesterdays many,
And winter wendes again.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
ONE
"Year's gifts!"
The cry rose with squeals and laughter as the ladies of Bordeaux craned, reaching for the prizes held tauntingly overhead by their tormentors. Veils and belts came askew in the tussle as each gentleman went down in willing defeat, yielding his New Year's keepsake for the price of a kiss.
The Great Plague was twenty-two years past, but such dire thoughts were blown to oblivion when the trumpets gave forth a great shout, sounding the arrival of pastries to the hall, fantastic shapes of ships and castles and a stag that bled claret wine when the gilt arrow was plucked from its side.
The Duke of Lancaster himself sat with languid elegance at the high table of Aquitaine, watching critically as kettledrums and the wild high notes of warbling flutes heralded the first course. At the duke's right hand, his most high and honored guest, the Princess Melanthe di Monteverde, overlooked the hall with cold indifference. Her white falcon, equally impassive, gripped its carved and painted block with talons dipped in silver.
Lancaster smiled, leaning very near Princess Melanthe. "My lady doesn't care for mirth and marvels?"
She gave him a cool glance. "Marvels?" she murmured in a bored tone. "I expect nothing less than a unicorn before the sweetmeats."
Lancaster grinned, allowing his shoulder to touch hers as he reached to refill the wine cup they shared. 'Too commonplace. Give us a more difficult task, Princess."
Melanthe hid her annoyance. Lancaster was courting her. He would not be snubbed and he would not be forestalled. He took her coldness as challenge; her reluctance as mere dalliance.
"Then, sir—I will have it green," she said smoothly, and to her vexation he laughed aloud.
"Green it shall be." He signaled to an attendant and leaned back to speak in the servant's ear, then gave Melanthe a sidelong smile. "Before sweetmeats, my lady, a green unicorn."
The heavy red-and-blue cloth of his sleeve brushed her arm as he lifted the cup toward her lips, but the bishop on his other side sought him. In his distraction Melanthe took her opportunity to capture the goblet from his hand. She could already see the assembly's reaction to his attentions. Swift as metheglin could intoxicate a man, another horrified report began to spread among the tables below.
It would be a subdued mumble, Melanthe knew, passed over a shared sliver of meat or a finger full of sweet jelly, whispered under laughter tinged with fear. Lancaster was thirty, handsome and vigorous in the full strength of manhood. While his brother the Black Prince lay swollen and confined to his bed with dropsy, it was Lancaster who kept court as Lieutenant of Aquitaine. But who could blame a younger son of the King of England—especially one of such energy and pride as Lancaster—if his ambitions were for greater things than service to his brother? Everyone knew he would take another highborn heiress after losing his good Duchess Blanche last year, and no one expected him to dally long about it.
But Mary, Mother of God, even for the gain it would bring him, did he truly contemplate the Princess Melanthe?
She could almost hear the whispers as she sat next to him upon the dais and surveyed the company. There—the two knights inclining so near to the pretty fair-haired girl between them—Melanthe could see the relish in their faces. Widowed of her Italian prince, the men would say, heiress to all her father's vast English lands...and the girl would whisper that Princess Melanthe had caused a maiden to be drowned in her bath for dropping a cake of Castile soap.
Melanthe gave the girl a long dispassionate stare and had the pleasure of watching her victim turn white with dismay at the attention.
Her reputation preceded her.
From her late husband, someone else would murmur—the income of an Italian city-state; from her E
nglish father, lord of Bowland, holdings as large as Lancaster's; she'd taken fifteen lovers and murdered all of them; for a man to smile at her was certain death—here the knights would smirk and grin—certain, but exquisite, the final price for the paradise he could savor for as long as it pleased her to dally with him.
Melanthe had heard it all, knew what they spoke as well as if she sat among them. But still Lancaster paid her court with polish and wolf's glances, smiles and covetous stares, barely concerned to keep his desire in check.
Melanthe knew what they were saying of that, too. She had entrapped him. Ensorcelled him. He'd left off his black mourning; all trace of lingering grief for his beloved Blanche had vanished. He looked at the Princess Melanthe as he looked at her falcon, with the look of a man who has determined what he will have and damn the price.
She only wished she might ensorcell him, and turn him to a toad.
Tonight she must act—this public gallantry of his could not be allowed to go on without check. Before the banquet ended, she must spurn him so that he and no one else could doubt it. When she looked out upon the trestles, she saw the assassin who watched her, tame and plump in her own green-and-silver livery, but in truth another spawn of the Riata family, one of the secret wardens set upon her. Only by the mastery of long practice did she maintain her cold serenity against the hard beat of her heart.
The food arrived with full pomp and glitter, loaded onto cloths of purest linen, the procession winding endlessly among the tables. Lancaster offered her the choice dainties from his own fingers. She brought herself to the point of rudeness in response to him—by God's self, must he be so open about it, this determined public pursuit in the face of her expressed displeasure, when he might have had the sense to send his envoy by night and secrecy to measure her willingness?
But he thought it agreeable sport, she saw, a lovers' game of disinterest and affectation. He fully expected that she would have him. She had told him more than once that she would have no man, but no one here would blame him for his confidence. It was a brilliant match. Their lands marched together in the north of England: the sum of their possessions would rival the king's. By this alliance the duke could make her the greatest lady in Britain—and she could make him greater yet than that.
It was not passion alone that drove him to these smiles and hot looks.
She touched him lightly when he leaned too close, to remind him that they were in the court's view. He grinned, sitting back in obedience, but a moment later he had leaned near again, grasping her hand possessively, holding it in his upon the table in a gesture as clear as a proclamation. The Riata assassin stood up from his seat, mingling with the servants as they passed up and down the hall.
Melanthe made no move to disengage herself. It was a game of hints and inklings between her and the Riata's man—a language of act and counteract. He moved closer, warning her, reminding her of her agreement with Riata and her peril if she thought to wed any man, especially such a one as Lancaster.
She merely looked at the duke's fingers entwined with hers on the white cloth, refusing to show fear. Her heart was beating too hard, but she held to her aloof composure, asking Lancaster for a loaf of trimmed white bread from the golden platter just set down before them, so that he must let go her hand to serve her properly.
When she looked up, she saw the Riata lingered in a closer place even though the duke had released her. Truly, Lancaster's hopes must be crushed, or she would not see the light of another morning.
Noble stewards clustered and moved around the dais, attending the duke and his guests, trimming bread, carving quail: knives and poison and color— she could not keep them all in her eye at once, as adept as she had made herself at such things. The Riata could kill her just as well before the entire hall as in some dark passage. It was too dangerous and open a position. She had tried to avoid it, but Lancaster's ambitions had overwhelmed her subtleties. She must sit at his high table and deny him to his face.
She had misjudged. These reckless English—she saw that she had been too accustomed to the feints and lethal shadows of the Italian courts to recall the power of plain English boldness. She would be fortunate to find her way to her chambers alive in this castle of unfamiliar corners and hidden places.
Only ill luck had brought her here at all on her way home to England. She'd foreseen this disaster with Lancaster well enough to avoid the place by intention, but still had not cared to chance her French welcome and take the most northern route. She'd skirted Bordeaux, choosing the road to Limoges—only to meet the English army there, just done with razing the town to ashes.
Lancaster wielded his courtesy with the same skill he handled a sword. She must not rush on her way home to Bowland, he had insisted graciously—there was to be a New Year's tournament—she must come to Bordeaux and honor him with her presence at the celebration. He had the ear of his father the king, he'd told her with his elegant hungry smile. He would write his recommendation that Princess Melanthe be put in possession of her English inheritance immediately and without prejudice. That he might, if he chose, equally well jeopardize her prospects with King Edward needed no such blunt hinting.
Wherefore, she was here. And Lancaster continued on his fatal determination, courting her through the service of the cheeses and meats. She lost sight of the Riata, and then found him again, closer.
The moment approached. Lancaster would ask for her favor to carry in the tournament tomorrow. He'd already told her that he would fight within the lists. In this public place, damn the man, Lancaster would beg her for a certain token of her regard and force her to a public answer.
There was no eluding it, no hope that he would not. His intention toward her was in his every compliment and sidelong glance. She'd thought of becoming faint and retiring, but that could only put the thing off until tomorrow— another night on guard against the Riata—and set off a round of further solicitude from the duke.
Beyond that, the Princess Melanthe did not become faint. It was a weakness. Melanthe did not choose to show weakness.
She would end with Lancaster a powerful enemy, his lands bordering hers in bitterness instead of friendship. A man such as he would not soon forget a woman's public refusal. Among these northerners, chivalry and honor counted for all...but the Riata must be shown that she would not have the duke, and must be shown it soon and well.
She suffered Lancaster's attentions to grow more and more direct. She began to encourage him, though he needed no encouragement from her to lead himself to his own humiliation. He plucked a sweetmeat in the shape of a rosebud and offered it to her with a glance more of affection than desire. Melanthe looked at him smiling softly upon her and felt a twinge of regret for his spare, comely figure—for women's fancies—things she had heard about him, of the love he bore still for his first wife, things that could not now nor ever be between her and a man.
In exchange for her life—his pride. It seemed a fair enough bargain to Melanthe.
She regretted him, but she was ruthless, laughing at his wit, complimenting his banquet. It was no sweet love that drove Lancaster now, but ambition and a man's lust. She could not save him if he would not save himself.
As he prepared their shared trencher with his own hands, she glimpsed a slim figure in blue-and-yellow hose in the throng below. Allegreto Navona lounged at the edge of the hall, near the great hearth, his black hair and bright hues almost blending into the shapes and figures in the huge tapestry on the wall behind him. The youth was looking toward the dais. As Melanthe accepted the duke's tidbit, Allegreto smiled directly at her.
It was his sweet smirk; charming and sly. She stared at him a moment.
He had succeeded at something. She looked again quickly for the assassin wearing her own green-and-silver livery—there he was, the one Riata watchdog she knew of certainly, still holding checked, still only observing from a distance—Allegreto had not slain or expelled him. Which didn't mean that the youth hadn't bloodied his hands in some oth
er way.
She was torn between anger and relief. She had her own agreement with the Riata. In spite of the unceasing threat of the watchers they had placed on her, she wanted no Riata lives spent, not now. But she could not disclose that to a son of the house of Navona. She only gave him a brief look, reserving her pleasure. He made a face of mock disappointment, then lifted his chin in silent mirth. A pair of servants bore huge platters past him. When they had moved beyond, he was gone.
The trumpets sounded.
Melanthe looked up in startlement. They couldn't yet herald the last course. Over the hum of gossip and feasting came the shouts of men outside the hall. Her hand dropped instinctively to her dagger as the clatter of iron hooves rang against the walls. People gasped; servers scattered out of the great entry doors, spilling platters of sweets and pies. Melanthe reached for Gryngolet's leash.
An apparition burst into the hall. A green-armored knight on a green horse hurdled the stairs, galloping up the center aisle, the ring of hooves suddenly muffled by the woven rushes, so that the pair seemed to fly above the earth as ladies screamed and dogs scrambled beneath the tables.
Nothing hampered his drive to the high dais. Not a single knight rose to his lord's defense. Melanthe found herself on her feet alone, gripping her small dagger as Gryngolet roused her feathers and spread her wings in wild alarm.
The horse reached the dais and whirled, half rearing, showing emerald hooves and green legs, the twisting silver horn on its forehead slashing upward. The destrier's braided mane flew out like dyed silk as light sent green reflections from the lustrous armor. Silver bells chimed and jangled from the bridle and caparisons. At the peak of the knight's closed helm flourished a crest of verdant feathers, bound by silver at the base, set with an emerald that sent one bright green flash into her eyes before he brought the horse to a standstill.
For My Lady's Heart Page 51