The Medieval Hearts Series

by Laura Kinsale

  TEN

  The bird must be fed. That demand went unspoken. All the gems on the princess’s gauntlet and lure, all the books left behind in her chests, all her furs and pearl-encrusted gowns were not worth the price of the white gyrfalcon. Ruck’s empty stomach, the question of where safety lay, the awareness and awkwardness between the two of them—all of that diminished before the first necessity of properly keeping the falcon.

  She had not been fed for two days; she was in highest flying condition, restless, showing herself ready to hunt by her roused feathers and fretful talons. Ruck had some hope of what was left, after the falcon had taken its reward, although by now he thought that the princess must be hungry again, too. He waited silently while she prepared, changing the jesses and examining the leash and hood.

  The huge flocks that had floated so close early in the dawn had vanished but for a few stragglers. In spite of her command of the falcon’s lure, he was not certain what sort of hunter the princess might be in a true quest for food—her morning indolence did not promise great skill or experience of more than ladies’ crossbows and deer-parks. But he was no master falconer himself. He looked on their situation beside the wide estuary with misgiving—it seemed to him that the fowl must flush away from shore, and the strike be made inevitably over water.

  He had once been in the courtyard when Lancaster and his brother the prince had returned from a day of flying a score of high-bred falcons at crane and heron. Among the large and colorful party, there had been dripping servants, damp courtiers, wet dogs, and great good humor—on a temperate day with the castle and a warm fire at hand.

  Here they had no dogs or servants to retrieve if the gyrfalcon lost its prey over the depths. And as the only courtier present, Ruck felt he would be exceedingly fortunate if he did not have to swim.

  Perhaps she had witchcraft to enchant the quarry. She seemed confident enough as she swerved and bent ahead of him through the reeds and coppice, carrying the hooded falcon. The hawking-pouch hung over her shoulder, gems shining under her cloak as it flared, so that as she moved she seemed some Valkyrie of ancient dreams, a silent war-maiden striding to battle. Ruck moved quietly behind. He had taken off his spurs and stripped himself of plate and mail for stealth, wearing only his leather gambeson and sword.

  Beside a brushy bank she paused, staring out through a dense clump of leafless alders. Ruck saw the pair of mallards floating fifty feet from shore. What he did not see was any hope that they would flush in the desirable direction.

  "These will do," she murmured, so low he could barely hear. She slanted a glance at him. "Look thee to biden there, in the farthest reeds, for to await my sign. We will not delayen till she towers up so high this time.

  He inspected the stand of reeds, gauging a hidden path to it. "What sign?"

  "A blackbird’s call."

  "Lady"—he squinted through the branches and whispered barely above the sound of his own breath—"hatz ye a sorcery to direct them?"

  She gave him such a look askance that he felt chagrined and added in haste, "Were I to swimmen, I may sink or take ill and leave my lady without protector."

  Her lilac gaze seemed to cut a hole through him. "Or get thee wet!" she mocked.

  It did not seem such a jest to him. He muttered tautly, "The weeds I wear be all I haf, my lady."

  Her lip curled. "So I will not watch thee strip, monkish man, dost thou dislike it."

  She had not the modesty of a stoat. He set his jaw, feeling the burn of mortification—worse, feeling his own body’s instant reaction to such words. Even she seemed to feel it; her eyes sliding abruptly away from his.

  She nodded toward a layer of cobbles and gravel in the sand bank. "Thou art master stone-hurler of our little company. Cast one up so comes it down beyond the ducks. Mayhap it hies them toward us."

  Ruck thought even a mild charm had a better chance than that. "Lady—only a natural magic. A small one. God will forgive us."

  She lifted her fine eyebrows. "I perceive thou art monkish only when it agrees thee."

  "I am no monk," Ruck muttered, having rapidly tired of that neke-name.

  "No more am I witch." She stared at him, her eyes level. "I await thy readiness."

  Ruck set his jaw and squatted by the bank, prying out two cobbles that filled his hand, round and heavy to land with a generous splash. Bent low, he moved out of the coppice and down amongst the reeds, parting them slowly as he passed through. His feet sank into sandy mud; he had to lift each one carefully to avoid a loud sucking. Cold water quickly began to seep into his boots.

  * * *

  Melanthe had a secret sympathy for his disinclination to enter the cold river—though she would have smothered herself in a hair shirt before she would have said so aloud. But she had no magic beyond her wits and Gryngolet’s to please him. The falcon had experience enough to wait until her quarry was over land to strike. The ducks, though, would likely flush into the wind which came down the wide length of the river, and, if they were wary and wise, fly within its compass, never leaving the safety of water below them. Lady Fortune had provided mallards, big fowl confident of their own size and speed, furnishing the only hope that the quarry might chance an overland passage to escape. They belonged to Gryngolet then, for in level flight she could outfly any other bird under God’s Heaven.

  Impossible to guess how far away the kill might occur in that case. In more common circumstance—a well-mounted party with falconers, beaters, servants, and hounds—following the gyrfalcon on such a cross-country chase was a joy. But that was sport; the catch less to be admired than the elegance of the flight, the valor of the bird. They hunted in earnest now. Gryngolet must make a quick slaying, or there would be no dinner and haps no falcon, either, once she was beyond sight and sound of the lure.

  Melanthe kept a divided watch between the mallards that still fed peacefully off the bank and the faint sway of reeds that marked the knight’s passage. It was a delicate moment: if she dallied too long, the ducks might flush and be lost before the falcon was ready, but if she unhooded Gryngolet and cast her off too soon, the anxious and hungry falcon might lose patience with waiting for her quarry to be served and rake off on her own hunt.

  The reeds had ceased swaying. Melanthe saw the mallard drake glance alertly toward shore and begin to paddle away. She caught Gryngolet’s brace in her teeth and struck the hood. Lifting her arm a little, she faced the wind and gently plucked the hood free by its green feathered plume.

  The gyrfalcon slowly roused, expanding herself. She muted. Melanthe did not take her eyes from the ducks, but from the edge of her vision she could see Gryngolet survey the horizon deliberately. Her feathers tightened, and she roused again. Melanthe opened her glove, losing her hold on the jesses.

  Gryngolet spread her wings and bounded upward.

  The ducks began to paddle faster, making wide V’s in their wakes. They would be soon out of reach of stone or yell; already they were almost too far from the bank to fear it more than the white shadow of death overhead. Melanthe glanced up, saw Gryngolet circling out wide and returning at a few hundred feet. She gave a low blackbird’s whistle.

  The knight should have exploded into motion, shouting and waving, throwing stones or any other maneuver that would frighten the ducks into flight.

  "Go!" she whispered under her breath.

  Instead, that light sway in the reeds was silent, moving, paralleling the bank until it was directly before her and she lost sight of the subtle movement through the interlacing of coppice twigs and branches.

  "God’s bones!" she hissed between her teeth. She whistled again.

  Gryngolet circled idly; falling downwind as she waited, losing position. The ducks still paddled, gliding farther and farther beyond flushing. Melanthe made a faint whimper of dismay in her throat. She reached for the lure at her belt, preparing to call the falcon down before she raked away.

  A boom of feathers erupted from the reeds. Like a huge ghost, a gray heron—king o
f river quarry—leapt into the air with a shriek, the knight hallowing and waving as the bird lumbered along the edge of the reeds, running with wings outstretched, trying to regain the safety of the thick cover. The knight drew back his arm and hurled a stone, fired the second one after it with a powerful heave of his arm, sending the heron clawing upward, gaining the sky in great ringing circles.

  Gryngolet snapped to business; she instantly began a kindred spiral. For a hundred beats of Melanthe’s heart the two birds circled for advantage, their flights arcing over the bank and then back above the river as they gyrated upward, Gryngolet ever gaining, passing the desperate heron, mounting aloft.

  Suddenly the gyrfalcon seemed to capsize, overturning, empowering her downward plunge with three mighty strokes of her wings before she fell into her stoop. She hit the heron like Vulcan’s lightning hammer; threw upward, rolled over, smashed a daring mallard that had risen before Melanthe even perceived it, and then drove straight back up and turned head-on into the second duck as it pumped for the horizon. They met with a crack like solid stones colliding. The mallard exploded in feathers.

  The two ducks dropped dead well out in the river, but the big heron tumbled and listed, shedding feathers, collapsing into the reeds as Gryngolet wheeled and followed it down. The falcon and the huge wildfowl disappeared, battling, Gryngolet shrieking defiance of her quarry’s superior size and strength. Melanthe heard a great splash as she broke out of the coppice running.

  She pulled her skirts up, elbowing branches and reeds aside, racing for Gryngolet’s life. Wild plashing and screeching came from the reeds. She saw stalks fall, swept aside as if by a scythe, and despaired of the falcon’s survival of such a combat. "Towe-towe-towe, hawk!" She cried Gryngolet to her as if she could save her that way.

  She stumbled on the long toes of her boots and slid in thick mud, gained her feet, trying to run, ignoring the water that poured in at her ankles. The reeds ahead swayed violently. Suddenly the splashing ceased, an instant of silence that stopped her heart. Then Gryngolet screamed again with lunatic frenzy. Melanthe whipped the stems aside and came upon the battleground.

  The gyrfalcon was mantled, her wings arched in a white canopy as she stood shrieking atop the heron’s body. The knight lay full length, facedown in three inches of water, with one arm over the heron and its broken neck between his fists.

  Gryngolet had footed his elbow, seizing it with a savage shrill of anger, one claw buried in her quarry and the other in his leather-covered arm as if to fend him off. Ruck had his face turned away from her, hiding it in the crook of his other arm as he yelled muffled curses in answer to the falcon’s screams.

  Melanthe pressed her fingers over her mouth. She suffocated an appalling urge to burst out laughing.

  "Stand up," she said unsteadily. "Get off her dinner, and she will let thee go."

  Slowly, shielding his face, he humped himself to his knees while Gryngolet screamed. Water poured off the front of him and dripped on the gyrfalcon, startling her into a moment of confounded silence. Then she bated ferociously, attacking him with both feet. He stood up with her hanging upside down off his elbow, shrieking and flapping as if she were demented. Melanthe jammed her fingers harder over her mouth to contain herself, holding back hilarity with fierce resolution.

  The knight gave her a look as malevolent as the falcon’s rage. He appeared to know there was nothing to be done until Gryngolet decided to let go—which she did, with startling suddenness, dropping in a delicate sweep onto her prize. She mantled over the dead heron’s body again, staring suspiciously at the knight.

  He moved back promptly, shoving aside the reeds and slogging away without a word. Melanthe slipped her knife from her belt and lifted her skirt. She made in quietly, sliding her bare hand into the cold water to lift the heron’s head and cut it off. Gryngolet, recalling her manners, accepted that as her rightful due, stepping onto the gauntlet like a high-born lady.

  With the falcon busy tearing feathers and skin, Melanthe stood. She dragged the heron by its feet, It was the largest she had ever seen, a weight that felt well over a full stone as she pulled it up on the dry bank.

  She dressed it there, giving Gryngolet bone marrow and the heart. The falcon ate eagerly, then paused, mantling covetously over the spoils again as it stared behind Melanthe.

  She turned. The knight stalked barefooted up through the reeds, soaked, wearing only linen that molded to him so perfectly he might have had on nothing at all. Every muscle showed as he moved, every feature, his ribs and chest, his waist, his thick calves and thighs, even tarse and stones. His shoulders gleamed wetly, big and straight beneath the dripping tails of his rough black locks.

  She was accustomed to men who diminished by a third when they shed their armor, but he almost seemed larger, looming up over her as she knelt beside Gryngolet. He dangled the mallards by the neck in one hand, his sword and leather gambeson wadded together under the other arm. His small amulet pouch swung from his wrist, the leather darkened with wet. He did not appear mirthful.

  He cast the ducks down beside her and stood dripping. Melanthe looked at his bare muddy feet and saw a shudder run up through his whole body. She raised her face warily.

  He squatted beside her, his eyes for a moment on Gryngolet, who was rending her food with renewed energy, glancing frequently at the knight as if she were determined to consume it before he could steal it from her.

  A slow grin lifted his mouth. "Little warrior," he said, smiling his rare smile. "Three in one flight!"

  Melanthe watched him, feeling things in her heart that frightened her, emotion that all her instinct and experience warned her against.

  She looked from his face to his body, stifling sentiment in cold observation of muck and clammy wet—and not even that could rescue her from folly. He was a pleasure for a woman to look upon, as elegant and fine in his body as a great horse was elegant, without padding or puff, startling in his grace and muscle. She had been married at twelve to a prince thirty years older and courted in halls of the highest fashion—she had not until this moment understood the plain, powerful comeliness of a dripping and muddy man.

  He seemed at ease, as if he thought the linen clothed him as well wet as dry. He had only to look down at himself to find his mistake—but with a rueful inner smile, Melanthe thought that even the evidence of his eyes might not convince him, if he would put his faith in such flimsy things as honor and courtesy and linen, principles as liable to evaporate under the force of reality as the cloth was prone to become transparent in water.

  Another shudder passed through him. She stood, unpinning her cloak, and thrust it at him. "There—wrap thyself. And do not dispute and debate me!" she added. "Thy bones rattle from the chill."

  He rose, sweeping the mantle around his shoulders. "Nay, lady," he said meekly.

  She hesitated, and then said, "She did not hurt thee?"

  He turned a thumb toward the pile of stiffened leather. "Before I won my spurs, I used that for armor. Good cuir bouilli will turn off hard steel."

  "N’will it turn off a catarrh," she said. "Come back to dry at the fire, ere thou begin to cough and croak."

  * * *

  She could slit the wing-bone of a heron for the marrow, but she did not know that green wood wouldn’t burn. She had cut the hearts out of all the fowl, but could not clean them without direction, ending with duck down clinging to her nose, sneezing and struggling to bat it away. The necessity of a spit for roasting did not occur to her until she had already plucked both mallards.

  Ruck sat with his mantle and hers both wrapped about him, squinting against the smoky fire she had built, offering advice when she applied to him. By the time they had reached their camp, he had not been able to control his shaking—he had to remove his wet linen. While he was encumbered by the need to hold both mantles close about him to cover himself, she became housewifely in her waywardness—if any housewife could be so inept at some of the tasks as she was.

  Reasoning
that she would soon tire of such an arduous game, he silenced his objections. But as the ducks roasted amid billowing smoke, burning on one side and raw on the other, she seemed in high humor, binding the heron’s feet to an alder branch, undaunted by the fact that she could not reach high enough to prevent its severed neck from dragging the ground. She held another branch curved down, trying to bend the bird’s knees over it.

  Ruck watched her struggle for a few moments. "My lady—" he began.

  She turned her head. The twig she was holding broke off in her hand and the branch snapped aloft, the heron’s wings smacking her face as it passed. It hit the top of its arc, bounced off the branch, and fell into the sand.

  Ruck kept his expression sedate, as if he had not even noticed.

  She sighed, bending down to pick it up by the neck. "For to be tender, I thought to hengen the bird a day or two."

  "Is a witty idea," he acknowledged, "but we wenden us today. I’ll tie it to the baggage."

  She dropped the bird on the ground, as if someone else would pick it up, and came to sit down beside him. Ruck shifted his weight, withdrawing as well as he could without standing up to move. He was wary of her, that she might make love to him again. He did not wish to be teased and tempted. He could not endure it. She was a rich and gentle lady; she might be delighted by the amusements and pleasures that men made with women in the court, but Ruck had never partaken of those pastimes. He knew his own limits.

  As she settled cross-legged beside him like a lad, he realized that she herself had always been his armor against seduction. His true lady.

  "Where go we?" she asked, turning up her eyes to him, pretty flower eyes, witching eyes.

  "A safe place."

  "How can we knowen where is safety? Even mine own castle at Bowland—" She frowned. "Pestilence may be there, too, or in the country between. How can we knowen?"