The Medieval Hearts Series

by Laura Kinsale

  "Where is the proof of this, I ask you once again," the justice said evenly.

  "Will you not look to find another witness? Will you take the word of this lying baseborn?"

  "He has spoken under oath," Langley said. "All this day I have conducted a search for other witnesses, and found none to deny his story."

  "My lord would not fall from a boat!" the man said fiercely. "He was no such fool."

  "Verily, any man might lose his balance, I think. And he wears weight enough in gold to drag him under."

  "Pah!" The Italian made a motion as if to spit at Allegreto, though he did not do it. "You know nothing! Ask him what he gains, this bastard! A fortune for himself, instead of a lawful born brother to take his place!"

  "I did not kill my father," Allegreto said in a fragile voice. "Morello, you know I love him."

  "Such love!" Morello snapped. "When he lies dead at thy feet!"

  "I love him!" Allegreto cried, his anguish echoing back from the roof.

  Melanthe’s hand tightened for an instant on Ruck’s arm. The whole hall was silent as the sound of the youth’s grief died away. Ruck watched, afraid that Allegreto would break in his misery, losing his wits and his tale. But he only closed his eyes, and then opened them, with a long and unblinking gaze at Morello.

  The man looked away. He muttered something viciously in Italian.

  "And still I hear no credible proofs, to say the boy speaks false," Langley said. The justice turned to his clerk, requiring Bible and Cross. "Lord Ruadrik, will you take oath to your innocence in the matter?"

  "Verily," Ruck said. He placed his hand on the holy book and swore by his soul that he had not killed Gian Navona. He kissed the rood and crossed himself. As he stepped back, the spectators murmured approvingly.

  "My lady?"

  Melanthe made a courtesy as they brought the Bible to her. In a clear, quiet voice she swore the same.

  The justice leaned over and spoke in his clerk’s ear. The man nodded, and nodded again. Ruck put his hand on Melanthe’s elbow, holding lightly. The onlookers were so still that they seemed to hold in their breath.

  "I find no cause to convene a jury," the justice said.

  A hail burst from the English, and a shout of anger from the Italians, quickly subdued when Langley gave them a furious scowl and his clerk demanded silence.

  "In the case of murder, we are advised never to judge by likelihoods and presumptions, or no life would be secure. Therefore, without a witness who is willing to step forward and swear otherwise, the accusation of murder appears unfounded. I have no material reason to doubt the drowning of Gian Navona was accidental, may God pardon his soul."

  He had to pause once again until order was restored, with two of the Italians bodily restraining Morello. The justice looked on him with raised brows.

  "My lord Ruadrik has said that he will uphold his sworn word by his sword, as he has done before. Do we understand then that you wish to fight him?"

  Morello jerked himself free of his companions, glowering. He cast a glance at Ruck and said nothing.

  "If not," Langley said, "then I declare that the king’s peace be best served by the swift dispersal of those who have no business here—and by the absence of some two-score foreigners of Italy from my county on the morrow."

  * * *

  All the villagers had wanted to touch Ruck. In spite of the justice’s command, they managed to crowd near him, until Langley shouted that they profaned the corpse with their disrespect and used his staff smartly against a few rumps.

  Navona lay enshrouded in scarlet cloth and silence now, awaiting a lead coffin to take him back for burial to his own country. The priest and Allegreto kept vigil, Navona’s men banished to uneasy, torchlit waiting by the river with Melanthe’s retinue. She did not even keep a maid from among the Italians, but commanded them all to depart. Only the gyrfalcon and some chests had been brought back from the barks, and the bed, set up again in her chamber without its hangings. The boats were to leave as soon as the coffin could be placed aboard.

  Ruck watched her face as she moved about giving direction and order to her distracted retinue. She was so much more slender than he remembered, brittle pale beneath her jeweled net, her rings and the golden buttons lined down her sleeves the only flash of life about her.

  When the gray friars came with a coffin of lead, she turned away and went upstairs. Ruck would have followed her, but he looked back and saw Allegreto standing alone, gazing at the friars as they began their work of washing the body and sewing it up in its shroud.

  Ruck did not go to him, but stood by the screen until Allegreto saw him there. Ruck made a curl of his fingers to beckon. The youth seemed lost; he hesitated and then came quickly, like an uncertain dog that overcame its doubt, following Ruck into the shadowed passage. He put his hand on Allegreto’s shoulder. "Thou art still wet. Hast thou dry clothes?"

  "On the boats." The boy looked up at him, his cloak of mastery vanished—strangely young, as if they had all forgotten that he was hardly yet more man than child. "Should I change now?"

  "Yea. I’ll have something brought up from the wharf for thee."

  Allegreto caught Ruck’s arm as he turned. "Cara?" he asked, the name a whisper.

  Ruck paused. The youth looked off toward the pool of light falling into the passage from the hall, where the friars did their work with quiet words and soft plashings. In the set mouth and proud chin, Ruck saw that it was no fear for the girl’s telling tales that concerned him. "I took Donna Cara to her betrothed, as she asked me. They have left now with the horses."

  The youth glanced at him coolly. "Where?"

  "My lady’s castle by the forest of Savernake, so they said me."

  Allegreto’s eyes narrowed. He nodded. Then a shiver passed through him, and he leaned his shoulders back against the wall, crossing his arms. "Depardeu, I wish they would be done with him, so that we might leave."

  "Thou wilt return with the others?"

  "Navona is mine, green man. So I will take it. And Monteverde and the Riata with it."

  The names were no more than names to Ruck, castles or kin or cities, he knew not. But it might have been Gian Navona himself standing in the half-light. Ruck only said, "’Ware your friend Morello, then."

  "Morello!" Allegreto shrugged, with a faint sneer.

  "The rest of them will follow thee if thou art swift to move," Ruck said. "Choose a captain tonight and divide their stations where they cannot whisper among themselves."

  The dark eyes flicked to him. Allegreto wet his lips and nodded.

  "Make them carry pikes," Ruck murmured. "It will slow them from freeing their sword hands."

  Allegreto raised his brows. His mouth curled in a slight smile. "I did not know you were so sly, green man."

  "I think me thou art too sly. It will take more than guile and poison to rule, my fine pup. Before they can love thee, they must know thee beyond a shadow and a comely face."

  The priest’s bell began to toll. Something happened to the mocking curve of Allegreto’s lips. He stared at the dim-lit door to the hall, his mouth trembling.

  Ruck turned, watching as the gray friars carried the coffin from the hall, eight of them, bent down by the weight of it. Allegreto took a step back into the stairwell, looking down on his father’s bier.

  The priest walked behind, swinging his censer. Allegreto came down as if to follow, then held back with his hand on the corner of the stair. He stood looking out the door at the end of the passage. Cool air flowed in, ruffling his dark hair.

  He slanted a glance over his shoulder to Ruck, as if he had some question that had not been answered. But he did not speak.

  "’Ware Morello," Ruck said, "and put on dry clothes."

  "Morello will be dead before we reach Calais." Allegreto let go of the wall and strode toward the door.

  "Dry clothes," Ruck said after him.

  The youth paused, turning. "Are you my mother, green man?"

  "Life han
gs on the small things, whelp. Why die of a fever ague and make it easy for Morello?"

  Allegreto stood in the doorway, the breeze blowing in past him. He gave a brief nod, then turned into the darkness, following his father.

  * * *

  No tears greeted Ruck when he went to Melanthe’s chamber. She stood waiting in her linen smock, her hair loose, a phantom in the light of a single candle, dry-eyed as the white falcon that stood motionless on its block.

  "Ne do not tarry away from me," she said angrily. "Where hast thou been?"

  "Below, my lady. They have carried the coffin out."

  "Witterly, that could not come too soon." She held herself straight and distant, without advancing to him. Ruck closed the door and stood with his back to it. She was ever difficult in such a mood; he recognized it, but did not know the remedy.

  "Say me what happened in troth," she demanded. "Who killed him?"

  "No man. Donna Cara was with him on the wharf at thy brewery place. She bolted away, she said me, and he caught her sleeve. The cloth parted. She heard the plash." Ruck gave a slight shrug. "And we returned to finden him."

  Melanthe stared at him. Then she laughed and closed her eyes. "It is too witless."

  "Too witless it was that thou chained me to a wall, my lady," he said tautly, "but God or the Fiend has him now, and is too late for my vengeance."

  She lifted her lashes. "Wouldst thou have tortured him, green sire?" she asked in a scoffing tone. "Tom him limb-meal in pieces? Only for me?"

  "Melanthe," he said, "ne do nought be so this way tonight."

  "What way?’’ she demanded, turning from him. She went to the bed and flung back the sheets, sitting down on the edge of it, her bare feet on the board.

  "His."

  She pressed her toes downward, her feet curving until they showed white. Her eyes seemed too large and dark to be human. She was like an elven, elegant and sheer, as if light would pass through her.

  "How wouldst thou have me, then?" she asked. "Disporting? Meek? A worthy goodwife, or a whore? I can be any—or all, if thou likes."

  "Readily I would haf thee in a sweeter temper, my lady."

  She threw herself backward onto the bed, lying among the sheets. ’"Tis all? How simple." She made a web of her hands and flung them wide. "There. I am sweet. I am honey. Come and taste me."

  Ruck unbuttoned his surcoat and dropped it with his belt and sword over a chest. At the harsh clatter of the gold links, she sat up again.

  "A’plight, a man of swift reply," she said mockingly.

  Ruck continued to divest himself. When he was naked he went to the bed and took her down with him on it. He could not speak to her, or he would shout. He opened his mouth over hers, kissing deep. She arched her body up beneath him, her hands greedily about his loins to pull him into her.

  Delicious lust possessed him, compounding with his anger. He used her without indulgence, taking no time but for himself. Still she inhaled and dug her nails into him and spread her legs to twine them about his. She pulled frantically at him, her hands gripped in his hair so hard that it hurt.

  The pain brought him back from blind hunger, caught him sharply from his own passion. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her face a mask of ferocity, as if she fought with him instead of straining to him.

  He slowed, gentling his moves, but she would not have it. She made a bitter cry, forcing their union as hard as her strength could force it. Even though he stilled, she clung to him and strove to reach her pleasure.

  Ruck let her use him, his own wrath sliding away. He brushed his lips over her hair as she shuddered and seized in his arms, her skin dewed with moisture.

  She fell back, panting, her fingers digging into his shoulders. The blunt pain eased as she slowly released him. Her palms explored, sweeping up and down his arms, touching his hair and his face.

  She never opened her eyes as her labored breathing slackened. She skimmed her hands down his body, then spread her arms out wide on the bedsheets. All her limbs softened.

  He bent his forehead to the base of her throat, resting there, drunk on the scent and mystery of her. He felt her twitch, drowsing. As he lay atop her, in her, still full and hard, the last of waking tension drifted from her limbs. Her breath became a steady feather at his ear.

  He began to move again, finding his own pleasure deep in her body. But though he came to the height of his lust and discharge with a heavy tremor and a sound of ecstasy, she did not wake. His lost and bespelled princess, beyond his reach even as he possessed her.

  * * *

  In the early morning, in a manor house empty of all but a few servants, he left her sleeping hard and deep. He bathed and shaved in the kitchen and walked outside, where a little huddle of villagers surprised him in the yard, eager hands reaching out to touch him. He was, he discovered, a miracle arisen from the dead—a notion he found repellent. He dismissed them with the trenchant suggestion to seek out his excellent doctor instead of miracles, which produced an efficient clearing of the courtyard.

  Fog lay on the river surface, shading to mist and clear air. He stood looking down through it toward the shore, where trampled grass and the black clods of burned-out torches were all that remained of the departed barks.

  He had not expected this morning, this moment. He had never since the day she left Wolfscar believed in his heart that he would have her to wive again. Even before, it had never seemed perfectly real, but a thing of fantasy with no tie to the earth. They had not spoken of the future, because they had both known that in truth there was to be none.

  But abruptly, he was in it—future and present, anchored by his own battle to prove their vows and her public words of acceptance in the hall.

  Amid birdsong and wet flowers, he walked aimlessly toward the empty stables. He heard someone behind him and turned, half expecting Melanthe, but it was not.

  It was Desmond. He wore his court clothes, her fine scarlet livery, limp with the mist.

  "My lord," he said, and went to his knee. "My lord!" His face crumpled into tears. "Will ye letten me go home?"

  Ruck reached for him, and the boy came into his embrace, holding on as if to life.

  "My lord," Desmond sobbed against his cote, "ne’er did I break my word! Ne did I say aught of Wolfscar, nor that ye kept wedlock with my lady, e’en did they rack me! But Allegreto said me nought to comen to you, that I mote nought, for my life and yours. And I saw you die, my lord—I—"

  He lost his voice in weeping. Ruck crossed his arms over Desmond’s neck, rocking him fiercely.

  "My lord, can I go home? Oh, my lord, I made blunder and wrongs and failed you, but I beg you."

  "Desmond." Ruck put his face down in the boy’s shoulder. "I will taken thee home if I bear thee on my back in penance. God forgive me, that e’er I sent thee out alone."

  * * *

  Carrying wine in a blue-and-white jug and waster bread from the pantry, Ruck mounted the stairs to her chamber. A thin mist of daylight fell from the open door above, painting a faint golden stripe in a curve down the stone wall.

  He had expected to find her still asleep, but instead she was up, kneeling in her linen beside an open chest. Her head was bent over something in her hand.

  He saw that it was a mirror, fine and rare, made of glass instead of polished steel. She held her loose hair on her shoulder, looking at the carving on the ivory back. As he came into the room, she held up the glass, reflecting his image onto him.

  "What dost thou see, monk-man?"

  "Myseluen, my lady. Wilt thou break fast?"

  She rose as Ruck laid the napkin over a chest and set the food and tankards on it. He shut the door.

  "Here." She held out the mirror to him, turning casually toward the window seat, as if he were one of her maids meant to place the thing away.

  He stood holding the glass. She did it by design, he knew, to bedevil him, and it succeeded. He felt the difference in their stations sharply; he thought that if he let it pass now, her small dis
dain, he would have to live like a servant evermore.

  "My lady wife," he said, pouring wine and handing it to her along with the mirror, "ne do I require this glass for looking."

  "Hast thou no vanity?" She laid it facedown in her lap. "But I forget—thy choice of sin is lust."

  He poured for himself. "If I mote choose," he said, "yea."

  "But verily, thou art a comely man. Thou might be vain with some justice. Look." She held up the glass again.

  "Is aught amiss with my face, lady, that thou wilt bid me stare in this mirror so oft?"

  She gazed at him, still holding it. Then she smiled slightly, bringing the glass up so that her face was half-hidden behind it, like a shamefast girl. "Nay. Aught amiss, best-loved."

  The mirrored surface gleamed and flashed at him, her eyes above it unreadable. But she pierced him through when she smiled.

  "I saw Desmond below," he said.

  The mirth vanished from her. She lowered the mirror and stretched out her bare feet on the window seat.

  "I take him to Wolfscar as soon as I can," Ruck said.

  "Nay, thou dost not leave me. I send a courier to deliver him, if he mote go."

  "I take him, my lady." Ruck drained his wine.

  "No."

  "Dost thou poison me and chain me to prevent it?"

  She sat up. "Does that wrathe thee? By God’s rood, thou wouldst be dead, had I not!"

  "God a’mercy that I am alive, for is none of thy doing, Melanthe! What demon was in thy head, that thou didst nought say me true of that hell-hound Navona, that I could serve thee?"

  She turned her head, looking out the window with a lift of her shoulder. "I could not."

  "I well know that troth is like bitter wine on thy lips, but thy falsehood is beyond absolve for this."

  "I could not!"