The Medieval Hearts Series

by Laura Kinsale

  He strode to the position. The slender youth who had conveyed her command to Ruck, that he challenge for her favor, showed no such respect. The boy lounged against a carpet-covered chest, decked in hose of one leg yellow and one leg blue. From the extreme edge of his vision, Ruck could see the puppy staring at him. Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he had nothing to look at but his liege lady, and she was a vision like ebony hammered into gold.

  She had changed her gown. It was not now the low-cut kirtle of green samite that she had worn in the hall: it was a golden brocade cote-hardi, long-sleeved, tight-fitting, trimmed in black, cut open and laced all the way down both sides—and it took him a long moment to realize that she wore nothing beneath it. He could see her white, bared skin all the way from her torso to her ankle.

  He strove to keep his face expressionless. He dared not even blink. The sultry room made him hot beneath his ermine mantle. As she chose a necklace and belt of copper gilt and black enamel, the youth at his side moved, sliding a grin at Ruck, lolling across the bed to pluck the jewelry from her hands.

  She bent her head as he clasped the necklace at her nape and smoothed his fingers down her throat. He was sixteen, mayhap less, scarce half her age or Ruck’s, with black hair and skin as soft as hers. He stroked her as a lover would, bending to fasten the belt about her waist, kissing her shoulder as he did it.

  She tilted her head, refusing to look into a mirror held up by one of the ladies. The youth watched Ruck beneath his lashes.

  "Let me take down your hair, lady," he said, moving to do it. His fingers worked amid the crown of braids, unpinning them, spreading them. He held a curling lock up to his lips, laughing silently through it at Ruck. "Look you, my love," he said, speaking clear while pretending to whisper in her ear. "The green man wants you."

  "So much the worse for him," she said indifferently.

  "Only look at him, lady!" The youth was grinning in delight at Ruck. "He wishes that he might embrace you as I do. Just so—" He slipped his fingers around her waist, never taking his black eyes from Ruck.

  She brushed his hands away. "Come, leave thy mischief. Dost thou wish to sharpen thy claws on him, Allegreto? Play, then—but recall that he is of use to me." She turned for one instant and met the youth’s eyes. "See that thou dost not kill him, or I shall set Gryngolet upon thee."

  This threat had a salutary effect upon her young courtier. He glanced at the falcon perched on a high stand at the foot of her bed. "Lady," he said submissively, drawing back from her.

  "Do up my hair," she bid him. "The crespin net, I think."

  In silence he took the comb and sparkling net from her lady-in-waiting and began to comb out the length of her hair, coiling it deftly.

  As he worked, Princess Melanthe lifted her hand, beckoning to Ruck. He moved to the foot of the bed, lowering himself to one knee.

  She laughed. "Truly, thou art the most courteous knight! Up with thee. I prefer to see the faces of my servants better than the tops of their heads."

  He stood up.

  "I will lead thy destrier into the lists tomorrow," she informed him. "See that the heralds know it. And thou must wear my favor upon thy lance for the entry—then I wish it brought to me for the nonce."

  He bowed.

  "Thou speakest English," she said suddenly.

  "Yea, madam."

  "Excellent. I will from time to time speak to thee in English. I wish to recall it from my childhood. A lesson for thee, Allegreto—always have a care to understand a little of the language of thy servants and dependants, that they may not take undue advantage of thee."

  Allegreto pinned her hair, placing the net over it with care. In a subdued tone he said, "You are the source of all light and wisdom, Your Highness."

  "Sweet boy, I would not let Gryngolet have thee for aught."

  The shadow left his face. He began to knead her shoulders. Ruck lowered his eyes to the foot of the bed. He took a step back, withdrawing.

  "Green Sire," she said imperiously, rejecting the youth’s attention with an impatient flick of her wrist. "Word has come to my ear that thou art merciless in combat and tourney."

  Ruck stood silent. She looked at him full for the first time, scanned him from foot to chest to shoulders in the manner a hosteler might assess a horse. A very faint smile played at her lips as she looked into his eyes, holding him with blue-purple dusk and mystery.

  "Excellent," she murmured. "Savagery amuses me. And what glorious feats of arms shall I expect to see executed for my favor?"

  That answer he’d considered long and well, knowing the number who were sure to challenge him. "Ten courses with the lance," he said evenly, "five with the ax, and five courses with the sword will be my offer to any knight who strikes my shield. What glory that it please God I may gain is my lady’s."

  "Well for that." Her smile took on a hint of humor. "My public esteem always stands in some want of luster."

  The moment of self-mockery glittered in her eyes and vanished, lost in a graceful lithe motion as she lay back upon the cushions, beckoning for the wine cup held by one of her ladies. He wanted to look away, but it was impossible: the irony and obscurity and dark radiance of her held him.

  Lancaster commanded Ruck as his prince and liege, but if she thought of that she gave no sign. She set Ruck square in the sorest dilemma a man could be placed—vassal and servant to opposing masters—though not for war or any great thing did she command him to declare a challenge for her on his own prince, not that Ruck could tell.

  Yet he would serve. She was his sworn lady. Beyond doubt or motive he would obey her. It was not his place to ask for reasons, even if she did not remember him.

  And she did not. When she looked at him so negligently, he was certain—almost certain—that she did not.

  Two emeralds and thirteen years. But emeralds must be naught to such as she, as he would have been naught so long ago, a ridiculous boy, no one and nothing.

  He wore the green jewel on his helmet. He carried her falcon on his shield. Why had she asked for him, if she did not remember?

  She bent her head to take a sip from the hammered goblet—and then paused before she tasted it. She stared into the wine for a long moment, her lashes black against skin of down and rose. When she looked up, it was toward the little group of ladies-in-waiting beside her bed, an emotionless sweep that remarked each one of them—and Ruck saw each of them in turn respond with the stone-silent terror of cornered rabbits.

  She lowered her eyes to the goblet again, without drinking. "Thou wilt be valiant in my name on the morrow, Green Sire?" she murmured, glancing up at him over the rim.

  He gave a slight nod.

  "See that it is so." With a gesture she dismissed him. Ruck turned from the sight of Allegreto trifling with a ring on her finger.

  At the door he stopped, looking back. "Your Highness," he said quietly.

  She glanced up, lifting her brows.

  He nodded toward Allegreto and spoke in English. "Ne such as that could nought kill me."

  "What did he say?" the youth demanded instantly. "He was looking at me!"

  Princess Melanthe turned. "Why, he said that in his devotion to me, Allegreto, he could defeat any man. A most handy green knight, think thee not?"

  * * *

  As the knight departed, Allegreto turned the amethyst over and over on her finger. He leaned near her shoulder, laying his head next to hers. Melanthe lifted the cup of wine to his mouth and said, "Share with me."

  He drew in a light breath—and she felt the barely perceptible withdrawal in his muscles. "My lady," he murmured, "I prefer the sweetness of your lips."

  She tilted her head back, allowing him to trace his mouth down her throat. With a languid move she held out the cup of wine and lay full back on the pillows. Cara lifted it from her hand with a deep courtesy, smiling that soft smile of hers, serene as a painting of the Virgin Mary. Though Melanthe closed her eyes, she could hear the light rustling and whispers as her gentlewomen
retreated, well-trained to recognize her inclinations.

  Allegreto put his mouth against her ear even before the ladies had quit the solar. "Donna Cara," he said. "I told you to be rid of her. Send her away tonight."

  Melanthe lay with her eyes closed. She bore his hands on her, her senses refined to catch the last instant that she must suffer his touch. The moment she could be certain they were alone, she flung his arm away and sat up.

  "And I told thee to kill no one. Tomorrow thy back will feel the worse for it."

  He hiked himself up to sprawl against the heap of pillows, impudent. "Nay, lady, you know none of your men will touch me. They love my father too well."

  "Will please the duke to lend me his guardsmen for the task, I vow." She left the bed and stood by the chest, gazing down into the goblet of scented wine. The candle beside it shuddered, reflecting a sinuous half-moon in the dark liquid. "It is a warning."

  "It can be aught else, Your Highness." He rolled to his side and lay propped on his elbow, only daunted enough to give her a deferential address. "Bitter almond." He drank a deep breath. "From here I can descry it."

  She gave a humorless smile. "Thou art not so perceptive. I could not detect it myself but from within the cup."

  "It must have been Donna Cara. She’s sold herself to Riata and betrayed you. Mayhap no warning was meant, but a bungle. Stupid Monteverde bitch, she would blunder such work. Send her away, I tell you."

  "Cara!" Melanthe laughed, scorning that. "Thy mind is occupied past reason with the girl. By thy notion, one moment she is subtle as a viper and the next so stupid as to poison me with bane in my wine, as if I could not smell it there!"

  "An idiot, she is. Give her to me, and I will teach her to be sorry for her treachery, so that she will not forget the lesson. She’s not even worth the killing."

  "Not worth killing? Why, Allegreto, thou must be feeling unwell."

  He grinned. "Nay, only languishing in tedium. I should like to torment a Monteverde. It would make a change from these tiresome Riatas who die so easily."

  "Thy malice masters thy wit. Recall that she is my cousin."

  He turned onto his back and crossed his leg, looking up at the canopy. "My malice is bred in me. A Navona must hate anyone of Monteverde." He glanced toward her with a wry smile. "Excepting you, my lady, of course."

  Melanthe gazed again into the poisoned wine. She moved her head to bid him rise. "Take it to the garderobe. The cup will sink. I want no use of it again."

  "Yea, my lady." With youthful agility he rolled to his feet and made a flourishing bow. "A Riata to Hell and a few fish to Heaven—I call that a fine day’s work for one garderobe."

  * * *

  Amid the call of heralds’ trumpets echoing high in the clear cold air, the Black Prince in his litter took the head of the procession, too ill to ride—barely able to attend at all, Melanthe had heard. She held her place among the ladies, carrying Gryngolet in an emerald hood and a new set of bells and jesses, watching the chaos in the courtyard become order as the parade formed.

  The duke had overcome his scowls: he held back, greeting Melanthe with every evidence of high good humor as he drew rein beside her palfrey. "Good morn, my lady." He glittered in azure and scarlet, his shield emblazoned by the lions of England quartered with the fleur-de-lis of France. At his side a Moorish soldier with a white turban wrapped about his head walked a real lion on a leash of silk. "The day promises fine for our entertainments. A place of comfort is prepared for you upon the escafaut, if you will honor us."

  "God grant you mercy for your kindness," she said. "I shall come there when I will."

  "I pray it be soon, for my pleasure in your company."

  "When I will," she repeated mildly.

  He bared his teeth in a grin, "I look forward with delight to that moment, madam. And to these contests."

  Melanthe contained her palfrey’s restless attempt to touch noses to his bay war-horse. "You’re armed to take a part in the combat, my lord." She nodded in approval. "Never yet have I seen a prince of the blood enter the lists. I commend your valor."

  "I shall break a lance or two, God willing. My lady’s grace will recall that there is a challenge in her honor."

  Melanthe smiled serenely. "I recall it."

  "Your champion is well-renowned for his skill." He shook his head, careless. "I shall attempt him, but I hold small hope of winning any prize in a joust with the celebrated Green Sire."

  His casual tone was meant to give her surprise, she saw, for he looked at her with a glance that did not quite match his jocular indifference.

  "But my lord is his liege, are you not?" she said. "I am amazed that you undertake to meet him at all."

  "A short match only. A plaisance, for your amusement. With blunted weapons, he need not fear to fight his master." He turned his horse, saluting her. "I shall open the jousts and return to your side as soon as I may, my dear Princess!" With a swirl of bright color, he circled and rode rapidly forward, his men and squires and even the lion running behind him to keep up.

  At the proper sedate pace, led by a young page, Melanthe’s horse moved out at the head of the ladies, passing through the shadow of the gatehouse and the city streets. Townsfolk and spectators lined all the distance, shouting and running along beside the procession. Melanthe eyed them, wary of the high windows with their waving banners, the milling crowds—wary most of all of Cara and her other gentlewomen just behind her.

  She could not trust Allegreto’s malicious counsel, but neither could she wholly trust Cara, as comely and credulous as her gentlewoman’s dark eyes and soft, simple features might be. Any member of her retinue could succumb at any time to treachery or cajolery—the Riata were masters of both.

  The assassin’s body had been pulled from the river this morning and hauled away to be buried nameless in a paupers’ graveyard. Allegreto spent the day in the public stocks for his trouble, dragged bodily out of her bedchamber by Lancaster’s men, a small instructive exercise that Melanthe had arranged for him.

  The murder had brought no more than a brief respite anyway—a moment’s reprieve and then the poisoned wine, to remind her. She was still watched by some creature of the Riata, and with a sharper threat, for now she did not know who it was.

  All she knew certainly was that they would see her dead before they saw her married again, carrying her rights with her to a man who would assert her claim to Monteverde. Such a one as Lancaster, ambitious and powerful—or, worse for the Riata by a thousand times—Gian Navona.

  It was the imminent threat of Gian that Melanthe had used to bargain with them. She would not marry him, she swore; she would go home to England and enter a nunnery if they would allow her to leave unmolested. Once there, she would resign all right in Monteverde to the Riata—giving over her widow’s perilous claim and a further birthright descended four generations through her Monteverde mother—too strong to defeat in a man’s hand, too weak to prevail in a woman’s.

  Beyond Allegreto’s dagger, the yet-unwritten quitclaim was all that preserved her life. It perfected the Riata’s entitlement, giving them the advantage over Navona. The Riata wanted their paper precedence, but Melanthe was not fool enough to think they would not kill her and forego it if they suspected her treachery.

  The true house of Monteverde had already died with Ligurio. She had not given him an heir, only a black-haired daughter, and even that poor hope was lost, smothered in the nursery. He had done what he could to protect Melanthe. He had taught her what she knew: subtlety and corruption, Greek and Latin and astrology, charisma and cunning, strength—he had taught her the lion and the fox; the chameleon of all colors.

  All colors but white. Ligurio had trained her to trust no one and nothing, to lie of everything to everyone. And so at the end she had lied to him, too. He had died in the belief that she would take refuge in the veil, retiring to the abbey he had founded in the hills of Tuscany, safe in a comfortable retreat with Monteverde’s lands and fortune rendered
up to the mother church, invoking all the heavenly power and earthly greed of the men of God. She knew the bitter gall it had been to him to see his house die, but better passed to Heaven than into the hands of his enemies.

  Her last gift to Ligurio had been her promise to do as he wished. Gift and lie. She had loved him like a father, but he was gone. She betrayed both Heaven and her husband. The church would not have Monteverde, or Melanthe—but neither would Navona or Riata have them, either.

  She could not live a nun. She could not spend her days praying for her dead. They were too many—be likely she would not be able to remember all their names, and would get into a great argument with God over the matter, and expire of black melancholy.

  Nay, if she must live inside walls for her protection, then let them be walls of her own choosing, this one time.

  * * *

  The tournament procession poured out into the great level meadow where a field of color lined the entry to the lists: vivid tents, some orange, some blue and scarlet, some formed like small castles flying pennants from their multitude of peaks. Each bore the owner’s arms upon a shield hung at the entrance. In the wake of the heralds’ trumpets the parade moved past weapons and armor, caparisoned horses, and squires bowing deep in honor of Prince Edward and his brother.

  Melanthe received her homage also, but the cheers dulled as she passed. When she halted before a tent of green trimmed in silver, the voices nearby suspended entirely, creating a void, a space of silence within the music and the throng.

  Her green knight stood beside his war-horse, outfitted in full armor, sending silver sparks into the sunshine from the green metal. As she drew up, he bowed on one knee, his bared head bent so that she saw only the tousle of black hair, his mail habergeon and the tan leather-padded edge of his gambeson against his neck. "My liege lady," he said.

  "Rise ye, beloved knight," she murmured formally.