She thought of laughing. She thought of screaming. She thought of disclaiming any knowledge of him; all those things came to her at once, but she said, "Don't approach him. He's gone mad."
In her dismay the words held utter conviction. She felt Gian's eyes shift.
Ruck did not move. "It may please you to claim so, my lady," he said coldly. "But you know as well I that it's not true. I bid you now to honor your word and obey me. Leave this place, and this company, and come with me."
"He is mad," Melanthe repeated stupidly.
"Make way, fool," Gian said.
He started to press his horse forward, but she seized his sleeve. "Gian! He's dangerous."
She thought it sounded convincing: Gian paused, and Ruck's mouth lifted in contempt.
"Only in defense of your virtue, madam." Sunlight slipped down his bare blade. "I will not endure you to whore with him."
One of the ladies behind her gasped. Gian pulled his sleeve from Melanthe's hand. "You harlot, I'll kill you for that, mad or no."
"Gladly I'll fight," Ruck said.
Gian spit on the ground. "Baseborn churl," he said with deadly softness, "I would not soil my hands. You were born upon a dung heap. Out of the way, madman, and run far."
The destrier turned on its haunches, making room in the road between the thick hedgerows. "You may pass, if you will. And the rest, but for my wife."
Gian reached out and caught the bridle of her horse. He spurred into the stream, pulling her along. At the sloped bank, the white courser moved before them, blocking passage. Ruck's sword came down between their horses, the blade suspended over Gian's arm.
"Unhand her," he said quietly.
Gian made a move to go around. Hawk kicked out with a vicious force that sent Gian's mount shying back. He lost his hold on her bridle as his horse slipped and stumbled at the edge of the stream. His sparrowhawk fluttered free. At the same moment the Earl of Pembroke came splashing through the water.
"My lady!" he shouted, slapping her horse's rump. "Go now!"
Her rouncy jumped forward, colliding with Pembroke's as he passed, but the destrier held the narrow road. Ruck fended off the young earl's dagger with an armored elbow, keeping his own sword clear. The war-horse backed hard against Pembroke's bewildered mount, shoving him beyond knife reach.
"Pass." Ruck swept his blade point upward, allowing a slim opening to the earl. "I've no quarrel with you, but you may not take my wife."
"You staring madman, she's no such thing!" Pembroke exclaimed. "How dare you say it?"
"Ask her," Ruck said.
Melanthe felt their all attention fix. It was high sport, this; a play to them—except for Gian, who had silent savagery in his eyes. He had suspected; she knew he had suspected, but she'd lulled him and beguiled him, and now he knew. Jealousy burned behind his calculating stare. He would not bear it.
"Am I your true husband?" Ruck held the destrier in taut check, staring at Melanthe. "Tell them, my lady."
She looked up into his eyes, his green cold eyes, and saw the last slender flame of trust still there. He asked her for the truth, because he did not conceive of dishonor. He did not know the depths of treachery—standing armed and armored, and defenseless against it.
She shook her head, with a small disbelieving laugh. "You're a silly simpleton," she said. "You're not even a man, I think, save in your dreams!"
In the slight flicker of his lashes it died, the last tattered rag of faith. He smiled, a baring of his teeth. "You don't answer my question, lady."
"Then let me make my words clear to your fevered brain!" she exclaimed. "I am not your wife!"
"I say that you are, but that you dare not speak according to conscience or the pleasure of God, for fear evil might be done you." He spoke with an even force. "I say that we were in the manor of Torbec at the end of Hilarytide, in the solar chamber above the hall, and you said you took me there and then as your wedded husband if I willed it, to have and to hold, at bed and at board, for better and for worse, in sickness and health, till death us depart—and of this you gave me your faith. And I said that I willed it, and plighted you my troth the same, and more, for I endowed you with all that is mine, which you did not do for me in return, nor did I ask or wish for it. I had no ring nor garland for you, but swore all this by my right hand. And we had company and use of each other in the same bed where we spoke, to seal our vows, and afterward I wept."
"A vivid dream indeed!" Melanthe said.
"No dream," Ruck answered her, "but what passed between us in truth. We lived as man and wife, and the last time lay together before you left me for Bowland on the day before the May."
It was working upon their witnesses as he meant it to, a detailed and rational list of circumstances, no madman's vision. She saw Pembroke's expression change from disbelief to wonder—saw him look at Gian to measure his response.
"You lie!" Gian's shout rocked off the water and the trees. "Whoreson, who paid you to say this?"
Ruck's gaze went instantly to him, like a wolf that had sighted its prey at last. His sword made a singing sweep into guard. "I do not lie, nor speak for gain. I am no son of a whore, but I'll be pleased to kill you for your slander.
"No." The earl held out his arm. "No, sir—Dan Gian isn't armed."
Without hesitation Ruck reversed his sword, offering it to Pembroke. As the earl grasped the hilt, Hawk lifted his great hooves, treading sideways, shouldering into Gian's horse. Gian didn't flinch—he made a murderous stab toward Ruck's eye with his poison-dagger. For an instant they grappled together, and then Ruck had Gian's wrist in his grip, the horses splashing and circling.
Hawk sidestepped against Gian's mount, shoving, his bulk compelling the other horse to scramble for footing as Ruck forced Gian's arm overhead. Like a slow ram, the destrier impelled the lighter horse to move, to lurch and falter in the stream. Gian wrenched free and threw himself toward Ruck, driving the dagger at his face as the rouncy went down with a floundering splash.
Heavy drops sprayed over Melanthe as her mount shied back. The ladies screamed, clinging to their reins and their bating hawks. Amid a flail of hooves and water Gian was half-trapped, his leg beneath the horse, but the animal rolled and heaved forward, struggling upright in a glistening sheet.
Frantically Melanthe scanned Ruck's face, dreading to see a poisoned scratch within the shadow of his helmet. But there was no blood, only the forbidding set of his mouth as he met her eyes.
It was this he had wanted from the start, she saw. Not his command to her to go with him—but Gian, dripping and humiliated beyond human bearing, shamed into challenge and combat.
"She is my wife," he said, looking on Gian as the downed man groped to his feet in the middle of the stream. "You will not touch her or see her again."
"You're an open liar and false knave." Gian's leg gave beneath him, and he went to one knee, but even his soaked velvet did not diminish the proud savagery of his response. "I'll have your contemptible life."
"Name the occasion. And come armed."
Gian drove himself to his feet. "You'll receive my messenger."
"I await him. The Ospridge at Colnbrook." Ruck tossed Gian's dagger into the water. He turned Hawk, reining the destrier up onto the bank, and halted beside Melanthe. "For courtesy, I do not compel my lady's grace to attend me at a common inn."
"Mary, I would not attend you at Westminster Palace, you poor deluded churl." Her rouncy pirouetted. "Begone. Gian, your little sperverhawk has taken a stand in that oak—" She spurred her horse, gesturing urgently at the sparviters who had held the spaniels and gaped all through the scene. "Come quickly, we must retrieve her before she escapes!"
* * *
He hated her, with a fine relentless hate, a cold will down to his heart and sinew.
For a fortnight Ruck had sat in taverns and listened to the talk of clerks and squires, of knights in waiting at Windsor. He'd heard it all—how this Italian lord would wed her, what terms he bought and how he bo
ught them in his dealings with the king's ravenous mistress and her favorites, where he resorted, and how often he attended the Lady Melanthe at her bury hall of Merlesden.
Warm air, smelling of dust off the street, flowed into the upstairs window of the inn. Ruck sat with his feet propped on the sill. He could see Merlesden from his chamber, an admirable court hall of pale stone on a wooded hillside across the water meadows, the sun sparkling from its many windows.
He hated it, too.
Navona kept his own lodging three miles off, in the town hard by the castle. If he'd not, Ruck thought, he would already be dead.
Ruck would not endure her to make mock of him. To discount him, as if he did not exist. How long she must have planned it, he couldn't fathom—she had deceived and wiled, and he'd been so besotted and glad that he hadn't pressed her. Or perhaps she'd never planned it, but only heard that her great love had come for her, this Dan Gian, this Italian lord—father of her lap-dog lover; vice beyond conjecture—and she forgot all else but to warn Ruck not to presume on her for shame of him.
He swung his legs down and stood, pacing the width of the private bedchamber as he had walked the towers of Wolfscar. She'd called him mad, and he had gone near mad in truth, silent ferocity, a violence locked up inside himself, so that he could not speak even when he heard common voices talking to him.
He was out of his right mind yet, he knew. She would have her way, he didn't doubt: he wouldn't have her back—nor wanted her. She hadn't even looked as he remembered. Ever the witch, she had changed herself again: thinner, delicate and narrow like a phantom spirit clothed in richness, her eyes deep and dead when she gazed upon him. Her flowers were a jesting mock, virgin's blossoms to adorn a whore.
He leaned his hands on the painted boards and put his forehead to the wall. He listened to the sound of his own breathing.
Ruck wanted to slay her as she slayed him, but he could only kill the oiled and painted carpet knight. By the church or by the challenge, he would deprive her of that connection. In his madness to prevent her, he was blessed with detached reason, as if he were two men, one who burned and one who was ice.
He had hired counsel in canon law. He made his case to the bishop, giving solemn oath of his truth—so perhaps her foreign lord's great preparations for a feast would be gone to waste. Ruck had even found his green tournament plate, stolen in the Wyrale and ransomed back from an armorer in Chester, missing the emerald, yes, but fit for use. He'd chosen his place and time with perfect care—to speak before witnesses who would put the word about court and countryside swift as gossip's wing could carry it.
If they dared to carry on with their betrothal, Ruck intended to sour the wine in their mouths.
The canon clerk had advised him to assert that she could not speak freely for fear of someone near her, a trick to counter her foregone denial. That Melanthe had ever feared anything, even unto Hell itself, Ruck greatly doubted, but he could see the usefulness of the pretense. He had also given a hoard to the clerk's safekeeping, in case they should try to have him arrested on charges of deceit and falsehood, and set down names of men who would give bond for his surety. He trusted her as he would trust a viper in his bed.
He lifted his head at the sound of a horse coming fast in the road. Two days he'd 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.
"Be 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 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. He knocked a squire clear from his saddle with a wooden waster sword when he thought of Navona's face.
It came now to forbidding the banns. He wouldn't 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 rogues must watch their backs."
Ruck ignored him, squatting down to cup his hands and drink from the bucket.
"Miserable wretch, how much money do you think to get for renouncing your foul tale? Tell me, and I'll take the message to Dan Gian, to save you the toil."
Ruck stood up. "If you've come from Navona," he said, calm and clear, "then advise him to save his silver 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, wretch."
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 himself with the towel and threw it down. "With the greatest delight, you 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. A 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, cheering 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 wasn't 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 he
ld it overhead, reining his horse in a circle, spurring toward the quintain. "Who gives me a cheating sword?" 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 fight with." He glared around at the staring faces. "I'm in health and whole today—if I die before 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 don't fight with a foul nothing."
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 didn't 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 wasn't 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 do you serve?" Ruck asked in English.
He made a smart bow. "My lord died at Pentecost, may Lord Jesus grant him grace. I be without place since."
Ruck frowned. "Who spoke to you as my friend?"
"I don't know, sir, but I'll try out the creature and find him, if you like." He looked at Ruck with a sober expression that didn't quite disguise the glint of hope. "John Marking is my name. My late sire's lady will write a letter to attest me, should it fall out that you be in need of a humble squire, God save you."
For My Lady's Heart Page 86