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'lord, 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 I can't 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. "I don't desire company at it."
* * *
Desmond had told Melanthe nothing more, but that Allegreto's father had come to Bowland. She hadn't 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 preciously 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 trust and love. He would have followed her—she made a pit of broken faith between them to prevent him.
Desmond didn't 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 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'd 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'd 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.
"In God's name, 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 done," he said, "for bringing her lady's grace. You see I didn't 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 boy.
Melanthe saw Desmond smile feebly. He looked at Allegreto with bleared and worshiping eyes.
"I've 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 you 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 don't know what you want, my lady. I don't know what you intended by fleeing. I've thought on it these three months, and still I cannot fathom your desire."
"It's not important," she said.
"Yes, 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've 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. "You've chosen me?" she asked, with a soft incredulity.
"You don't want my father. That's 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 didn't 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's 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 you?"
"My lady—" He put his hand over hers, gripping hard, desperate. "Lady, this time he'll 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 you'd have of me, for your 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. Away, 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 you," she whispered. "Allegreto."
"She's 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'll 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.
He should have tried to appeal to Melanthe's welfare if he wished to entrap her. Her desires, her ambitions. But he had admitted that he did not know them.
He asked her what he could do, as clumsy and open as Cara in her folly.
It did not seem a great thing, this offer to carry a falcon, for a manslayer, a lovely boy with the soul of a demon. If he was lying, and she trusted him—then she walked open-eyed and helpless into Gian's clasp.
Three things Allegreto dreaded. Plague and his father, and Gryngolet. He knelt in the church and offered to defy two of them. For lying.
Or for love.
"You need not carry her," Melanthe said. "I trust you."
His lips parted; that was the only sign he gave of elation or relief.
"If you're mine," she said, "then attend close to me now. Your father did not have Gryngolet, nor ever has. I flew her at Saronno, all that week that I supposed you in Milan. She wasn't in Monteverde for him to use in such vice. It was another bird obtained to daunt you, we must assume—and contemptible abuse of a noble beast."
His jaw twitched. She deliberately disdained his father's horror as a mere offense against a falcon's dignity, to shrink it to a thing that he could manage.
"Gryngolet has hated you because I haven't been over fond of you, I think." She shrugged. "Or perhaps she dislikes your perfume. Change it."
He closed his dark eyes. He drew a deep breath into his chest, the sound of it uneven.
Melanthe stood up, the beads sliding through her fingers. She turned and left the church, pausing after she had made her obeisance. "Allegreto," she said quietly as he rose beside her from his knee, "if we fear him to a frenzy, we are done."
He nodded. "Yes, my lady. I know it well, my lady."
* * *
She had not seen Bowland for eighteen years. Against spring thunderclouds, the towers did not seem as monstrous huge as she remembered, and yet they were formidable, the length of the wall running a half-mile along the cliff edge to the old donjon at the summit. Its massive height stared with slitted eyes to the north, defying Scots and rebels as it had for a hundred years and more.
Strength and shield—her haven—and Gian held it of her. She had not sent word. She arrived at the head of a guard provided by the abbot when she'd revealed herself to him. Their approach had been sighted five miles back, of that she could be sure, for Bowland overlooked all the country around, with signal towers to extend the view. He would know by now a party came.
And he had surmised who it was. A half-mile from the gatehouse, a pair of riders sped out to them, bringing breathless welcome, and a few moments later an escort of twenty lances showing signs of hasty organization trotted to meet them, wheeling to form proud flanks.
A few drops of rain spattered her shoulders, but she did not raise her hood. She rode over the bridge and into the immense shadow of the barbican with her face lifted and her head bare but for a golden net.
Woodsmoke and cheering shouts greeted her as her rouncy jogged into the open yard. The lower bailey swarmed with people and animals, as if every member of the hold had dropped his task to come. They wished to see her, she knew, their mistress returned.
Among the English she recognized no one, but that was beyond reason to expect. All her old servants, her parents' men, they would all be changed beyond knowing. But a babble of Italian and French equaled or outpaced the native tongue, and she saw some of Gian's knaves whom she knew better than she cared to, and her own familiar retinue awaiting—and yes...Cara, smiling, with a trapped rabbit's fright in her eyes.
Melanthe ignored her. As she di
smounted, Gian came striding from the donjon.
He was grinning, his arms open. His houppelande of crimson flared behind him, guards of gold embroidery skimming the ground, and his spiked shoes impaling the air elegantly with each step.
He went low to his knee, lifting the hem of her gown. "God be thanked for His might. God be thanked." He made the cross and touched his lips to the cloth.
"Your Grace," she said. "Give you greeting."
He sought her hands as he rose, kissing her eagerly on cheeks and mouth. "Princess, you don't know what I've endured."
He tasted of perfumed oil, his beard dressed neat, blackened by dyes of cypre and indigo. She offered her hand.
"I was the one lost in desert," she said lightly. "Ask what I've endured. I've not heard a word but in English these three months."
"Torture indeed!" He took her arm and led her up the stairs into the donjon. "You'll tell me all, when your ladies have done with you. Come—oh, come, my sweet." His fingers tightened on her suddenly. He halted, gathering her hands in his and kissing them.
"Gian," she said softly.
He straightened. "Christ, I'm undone, to treat you so." He released her. "Go to your women. Call me when you will."
With a swift turn he walked away from her. At the screen he passed Allegreto, who bowed down with his forehead to the very floor tile. Gian did not glance at him. He crossed the hall and disappeared into a stair.
* * *
It was not until she was in her bath, with the silk sheets hung about and Cara setting a tray of malvoisie wine on the trestle, that the full scope of Melanthe's defeat came upon her. She had held herself insensible to what she did; refused to think backward instead of forward, to move in weakness rather than strength.
But she had lost, and lost beyond all her worst imagining.
Gian held her. And Bowland that was to have been her security, her refuge where every servant was safe and known and no alien countenance could be concealed. She had thrown away the quitclaim to draw him off, she had rid herself of Allegreto and Cara only to have them back, she had played bishop and queen and king—and lost. Bowland. Her safety, her freedom. And more—but she could not think of him; she would break if she thought of him, and Gian would see.
For My Lady's Heart Page 84