The Medieval Hearts Series

by Laura Kinsale

  He pushed the clasp into Ruck’s hands and strode from the dais before Ruck could even say his thanks. Alice and the royal attendants hurried after—he might be wavering in his mind, but the king’s body was in no wise impaired.

  Ruck made a belated bow. He stepped down from the dais. In a maze of joy he walked toward John and the gate as noble spectators flooded down from the stands, crowding about him offering compliments and cheer. John gave him a towel to dry himself. Someone thrust a cool goblet into his hand. He glanced and saw it was Allegreto, with a triumphant grin and wink—Ruck’s dark and strange savior, her envoy.

  Beyond the crowd around him, beyond the knot of men still on the grass beside the Fleming champion, a chariot was drawn up beside the lists. Ruck stopped, lifting the goblet to his mouth. She was still there, beside her treacherous lover—watching him with a faint smile. He drank, washing exertion and passion down his dry throat in one great swallow, taking boldness in with the wine. He started toward her, to demand that she come to him, his wife, the wine a bitter sourness on his tongue.

  Her smile widened. She touched Navona’s arm and nodded toward Ruck.

  The moment that she did it, the cold enveloped him. His fingers numbed, his feet and his legs. As he took a step, his knee collapsed, cold rising to his waist, poisonous cold.

  The wine killed him. He felt it stop his heart. Like a murderous hand, it strangled his throat. His lungs froze; his limbs seized.

  His mind failed him. He felt himself die, the ground hurling upward to meet him.

  * * *

  Princess Melanthe sat on the window seat that curved within the oriel recess. She leaned her elbow on a pillow, looking out an open glass, staring down into the garden. Cara stood in attendance, gazing at the painted window glass where two angels held the message "Love God and dread shame."

  "My dear one," Gian said, bending before the princess, "I beg your pardon for my delay." When she only lifted her hand for a kiss without turning from the window, he left her in the sunset glare and went to pour himself wine. "But entertaining it was, you may be certain."

  "What have they decided?" Princess Melanthe asked idly.

  He set down the brass ewer. "For two hours did they debate over whether this green fellow had upheld his word after all. It turned on a fine point, my dear. A fine point. Did he leave the lists before he died or after? Had it been after, the case might have been different!" He put on a mock solemn face, imitating a justice. "For then no one could assert that he had been killed by the Fleming, without a mark on him. But he was still in the lists when he expired, so it could be argued that the Fleming killed him with one of those blows to the head, but the effect was belated. You’ll delight in the verdict, my love."

  "Will I?" the princess asked. She turned her face to him. Cara thought her cold—so cold that there was not a shred of living feeling in her.

  "Since the green fellow did not lose, his cause was just and true. So he did not lie." Gian shrugged and smiled at her over his cup. "I suppose it must follow that you did, then, but we will pass over that lightly in the circumstances, as our clever justices of chivalry chose to do. They have determined that God could not allow the green churl to lose, precisely—but clearly He did not think it a satisfactory match, and so put period to your late husband with a flourish, rather in the style of striking him with lighting. Be it a lesson to all abductors and rapists of innocent females."

  The princess narrowed her eyes. "I will not remain here another day. We leave tomorrow, Gian. No more of this!"

  He did not answer her, but roamed the solar, his white velvet turned to rose by the late burn of the sun through the tall open windows. "So, my betrothed—you are a married woman and a widow in the space of a few moments. With all thanks to my precious boy—" He stopped beside Allegreto, who lounged against the bedstead. Gian stroked his son’s cheek lovingly. "Ah, Allegreto, thou art forgiven everything. Thou didst so well. I saw his face as he died—and he knew it. He went to Hell knowing, and he’ll burn there knowing. I could not have asked for more, my sweet son. I do love thee beyond words."

  He took Allegreto in his arms, a long and hard embrace. Allegreto’s hands curled into the rich flowing cloth of his father’s houppelande. He gripped the velvet as if he would not let go, near as tall now as Gian but holding to him like a child. He pressed his cheek against Gian’s shoulder, his face squeezed into a grimace of passion, a terrible thing to see.

  "How can I reward thee?" Gian murmured, stroking his son’s black hair. "Wilt thou have Donna Cara? I see thine eyes when she enters the hall. She is not worthy of thee, Allegreto—I would have better for thee, but if it would please?"

  "I am betrothed, my lord," Cara said sharply. Allegreto’s face was hidden in his father’s shoulder. Gian made him lift his head, "Wilt thou have her?"

  Cara began to tremble. She knew that she should not; it was the worst thing she could do, show her thoughts and feelings. No one else showed his heart.

  "I will have what you want for me, my lord," Allegreto said. "I am ever yours in obedience."

  Gian smiled. "And in love," he said, touching Allegreto’s cheek.

  He looked into his father’s eyes. "And in love, my lord."

  Gian’s thumb moved over his cheek. "Thou hast thy mother’s comeliness," he murmured. "And my wit. We’ll look far higher for thee, sweet son. Let her have her English clod, or take her as thy mistress. But nay—" He grinned, tilting his head back. "Nay, I forget, thou art a virgin still, poor Allegreto, on account of playing the role I gave thee. And didst well at that, too, as Lady Melanthe informed me with some wrath. Let me find a woman to teach thee pleasure first, lovely boy. Then canst thou decide if this sour little milkmaid will satisfy thee." He stepped back, disengaging himself gently from Allegreto’s still clinging hold, and gave him another kiss.

  "So touching!" the princess said viciously. She stood up. In the last shafts of light from the window, she was only a black device against it, her hair haloed, sunset sparkling on the golden net and the besants lined down her sleeves. "Where have they taken the body?"

  Allegreto shrugged. "The charnel house, I suppose."

  "Fool! Thou shouldst have found out!"

  "My lady, I made sure he was dead and left him with the doctor and one weeping squire. I was not required to follow him to the grave!"

  "Thou art certain of this poison," she said.

  Allegreto lifted his brows. "I put a misericorde in his heart, my lady," he said. "He did not bleed."

  She made a faint sound in her throat. Cara was afraid for her mistress suddenly; afraid she would swoon, afraid Gian would see and kill them all in his jealousy.

  But Princess Melanthe only stared for a long moment at Allegreto. Then she said, "I will not have him thrown in a pauper’s grave. He will be buried properly, by a priest, in a church. There will be a stone made, marked by that name the king called him. I wish a chantry endowed for his soul." She moved toward the door. "Find him, Allegreto, and see to it. Tonight."

  Gian caught her arm. "My lady," he said coldly, "you pay him such respect?"

  "He prayed too much," she said. "I do not wish some tedious ghost haunting me with aves and hosannas." She pulled her arm from his hand. "And I do not care for restraint, from you or any man, Gian. Do not touch me so again."

  He smiled down at her. "You’re an unruly little dragon. I would not have you slip your couple."

  "Hold me with love, Gian," she said smoothly. "That works best."

  "Nay, my dear," he murmured. "The fear that comes of love works best."

  "Then am I on a long leash," she said, sweeping from the chamber. "Come, Cara—why stand there like a gaping trout? See that Allegreto does my bidding." She paused at the door. "And pay no mind to this talk of looking higher for him. Marry thy English squire—and if thou art clever, thou wilt still have Allegreto panting after thee as Gian does me. And then we may rule the world, I promise thee."

  TWENTY-FIVE

  There wer
e voices. It was a great well of stone, its compass lost in darkness, echoing, with shadows that moved and hulked across the curving wall.

  He had no body. He could see and hear, but the voices made no sense. It had been only an instant’s shift, a blink between crowds and color and the poison cup in his hand, then strangling death and this place. A deep horror possessed him. He was in Purgatory; demon-haunted; he had died without shrive or absolution of killing a man.

  One of the demons counted. It was invisible, but he could hear the clink of its claws with each tally. "Two and fifty hundreds," it said with a lurid satisfaction.

  Was that his sentence? So many years? Fear drowned him. He tried to speak, to plead that Isabelle had prayed for his soul, but he could not speak. He had no tongue. He remembered that there had been no prayers. Isabelle was dead, as dead as he, burned for heresy.

  The well echoed with fearful murmurs, with scrapes and footsteps, and then a great crash that thundered and rolled about him. He heard something come toward him plashing and dripping, and wanted to scream with fear of what monster it would be to gnaw and tear at his flesh for two hundred fifty years.

  "He does look dead," the monster said in bad French. "A merry poison, this. I could make good use of it in my art."

  "What, to physic thy patients to death and bring them out again! Dream, thou mountebank—thou couldst not buy it in a thousand years."

  Allegreto’s reverberating voice shocked him. Like a demon-angel, the youth floated in the air, appearing and vanishing. He had not expected Allegreto to be here.

  "I would have him wake." Now it was his squire John Marking. "Never did I contract to be party to murder."

  Had they all died? Their voices and faces kept slipping away from him. His nose hurt. He was dimly surprised to have a nose. He tried to open his eyes to see if the monster was gnawing on it, but he only had eyes sometimes, and other times not.

  They were demons, he thought. Demons with voices and faces that he knew. He refused to answer them when they demanded that he wake. It was the Devil calling him. If it called in Melanthe’s voice, then he would be sure it was the Devil.

  The monster touched him, cold and wet. He tried to jerk back, his head hitting stone—he had a head suddenly, because it hurt. He had never thought of this. He knew that his dead soul would be like a body so that it might be tortured for his sins, but he had not imagined it would be by single parts, with the rest still gone.

  The wet thing licked over his face, a loathsome cold tongue, water in his eyes and on his chest. He had a chest. And a heart. The Devil spoke in the voice of a maid.

  "Wake now, my lord." It was the gentlewoman who had served Melanthe. He could see her through slitted and dripping eyes, and felt sorry that she had died, too. Wolves, he thought. Wolves had eaten her. "Try to wake," she said. "Drink this."

  He turned his head away. "De’il," he mumbled, the word barely passing his throat. "Deviel."

  "He’s alive," Allegreto said. "Art thou satisfied?"

  He could not make sense of it. Alive. Dead. Purgatory, and these were his demons. He did not think the worst could have begun yet, for Melanthe was not among them, but he had no doubt that she would come and take delight to torture him. She had smiled as he drank her poison, knowing that she killed him.

  * * *

  Allegreto returned from the river, beckoning to Cara from the door at the top of the stairs. She was glad to leave this awful place, abandoned as it seemed to be by the monks who had built it, indeed, by God Himself. The great round cellar still held a few ale-kegs, but the water well dominated the brewery, a black pit as wide across as a castle turret.

  She hurried up the arch of stone steps, leaving the water bucket full and one candle burning for their prisoner. Allegreto closed the heavy door, barred and locked it.

  "I’ll walk with you to the lodge," he said. "There is a horse, and a guide to take you back."

  She followed him up the wide, sloped passage. At the outer door he opened the wicket and doused the candle. They both ducked through the small door.

  A half-moon was rising, shedding light on the empty monastery. Buildings rose about them in black and gray bulks, shapes without colors. She pulled her hood over her head and lifted her skirt as he led her across a grassy plot. Her footsteps echoed softly as they passed onto the paved cloister.

  A half-year past she would have been terrified out of her mind to walk here in the silence and emptiness. But Allegreto was with her, and not even the ghosts of dead men could frighten her. An old monastery on a summer night, only abandoned because the monks had preferred some better place, held nothing so fearsome as he was.

  He walked ahead of her, noiseless, turning through another passage where the moonlight shone in a pale arch at the other end. They followed the overgrown road to the gatehouse, and Allegreto gave her his hand to help her over the slanted timbers of the half-fallen door.

  He let go of her instantly. But he stopped, facing Cara in the starlight. "Is it true—or did you say it for my father?"

  She could not look into his face. Since they had left Bowland, she in Princess Melanthe’s household and he in Gian’s, there had been naught but the briefest dealings between them, messages passed for her mistress and no more. She was safe with him, she knew; she did not even fear ghosts with him beside her, but Guy had been given a place with the princess as a yeoman of horse. He was well within Allegreto’s reach.

  "No," she lied. "No, I just said it, so that—" She stopped.

  "So that my father would not force you." Mortification hovered in his voice. "I wouldn’t have—I didn’t, did I? I could have said yes to him."

  "Let us not speak of this." She started past, suddenly fearing him as she had not before, fearing that they were alone here in the empty dark.

  "Are you betrothed to him?"

  "No." She said it too quickly, too breathlessly. That was to protect Guy, but she had no lie to protect herself if Allegreto chose to constrain her by strength.

  "Do you think I’ll kill him?" he said. "I won’t kill him."

  She stopped and looked back across a distance of a yard. He propped his foot on the warped and canted door, the moonlight on his shoulders. "I only wondered if you would go home with us."

  "Of course. My sister."

  In a silken tone he asked, "Will Guy save and keep your sister?"

  "You sound like your father."

  "How not? I am his son. And Navona alone can steal your sister safe from the Riata."

  "What does that mean? Will you make me choose between Guy and my sister?"

  He lifted his head. "Then you are betrothed."

  "You swore Navona would keep my sister safe."

  "You are betrothed. You are. You are. Monteverde bitch." It was not an execration; it was like an endearment with him. He swung away and walked on, passing her, a moonlit shadow.

  Cara went behind him, keeping distance. The faint path led across a water meadow and up onto higher ground, where she could look back and see the sheen of the river beyond the dark priory. Night dew made her shiver.

  "So—will your Englishman remain with the princess, that you may go home with us?" Allegreto asked.

  She did not answer, but walked on behind him. He hiked himself over a stile and waited on the other side until she climbed it.

  "You should see that he asks her for a place soon." Allegreto wove around a black patch of bushes. "You heard her say tomorrow she leaves—it won’t be that swift, but as soon as she can have my father upon a ship without his suspicion, she will. We can’t hold the green man long."

  "Who is to set him free?" Cara had a sudden ghastly thought. "Mary, what if some mistake is made, and he’s left down there after we’re gone?"

  Allegreto turned to face her, so suddenly that she almost fell over her skirt. "I would not let that happen!" he said fiercely. "And if you care so much, then stay here with your precious Guy and see to it yourself!" He snorted. "But I wouldn’t put it beyond the two of you
to drop the key down some gong-pit, so I guess I’d better do the thing."

  He pivoted and strode on along the path, ducking a branch.

  "You’ll stay here?" she asked, trailing him.

  "I’m to miss the departure and catch up in Calais. I think I’ll let my father give me a good whore," he said bitterly, "and have her teach me about pleasure until I can’t crawl out of the bed to travel." He took Cara’s arm and propelled her in front of him. "There’s the lodge. Her father had all this enclosed for a hunting chase, and there’s none but a parker who likes good Bordeaux. The princess gifted him with a tun of it, so you need not expect he will ask questions." He pushed Cara ahead. "The guide will see you back to her. Farewell."

  He was walking away before she realized the finality of his tone. She turned and gazed after him.

  "Farewell, Allegreto," she called softly.

  He did not pause. He vanished in the dark.

  * * *

  "I know you can hear me."

  It was Allegreto’s voice again. Ruck had all of his body now. His stomach walmed, and he shook in every limb. It was a Purgatory he had never conceived, but no less appalling for that. He thirsted. He could not get his breath, and these insistent demons plagued him. He swallowed, trying to lift his hands, but one was weighted down with iron and the other would not do as he expected, moving aimlessly at the end of his arm.

  "Open your eyes, green man, if you can hear me," the Allegreto-demon said.

  He remembered that he had a name. "Ruadrik," he muttered. He stared bleakly at Allegreto, trying to see the shade of a monstrosity behind his comely face.

  The demon smiled a wicked smile. "Ruadrik, then, if you’ll have it so. Listen to me, Ruadrik. Try to remember this. You have food and drink here. There’s a pail, if you need it. I’ll return in the morning. Remember. Don’t lose your head. Do you hear me?"