The Medieval Hearts Series

by Laura Kinsale

  "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 didn’t 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’ll 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 didn’t 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’re 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, you’re forgiven everything. You did 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 couldn’t have asked for more, my sweet son. I do love you 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 robe. He gripped the velvet as if he would not let go, near as tall now as Gian. He pressed his cheek against his father’s shoulder, his face squeezed into a grimace of passion, a terrible thing to see.

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

  "I’m betrothed, my lord," Cara said sharply. Allegreto’s face was hidden in his father’s shoulder. Gian made him lift his head, "Will you 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’ll 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. "You have your mother’s comeliness," he murmured. "And my wit. We’ll look far higher for you, sweet son. Let her have her English clod, or take her as your mistress. But no—" He grinned, tilting his head back. "No, I forget, you’re a virgin still, poor Allegreto, on account of playing the role I gave you. And did well at that, too, as Lady Melanthe informed me with some wrath. Let me find a woman to teach you pleasure first, lovely boy. Then you can decide if this sour little milkmaid will satisfy you." 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 silhouette against it, her hair haloed, sunset sparkling on the golden net and buttons lined down her sleeves. "Where have they taken the body?"

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

  "Fool! You should have found out!"

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

  "You’re 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’ll 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 don’t 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 wouldn’t have you slip your couple."

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

  "No, my dear," he murmured. "The fear that comes of love works best."

  "Then I’m 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 your English squire—and if you’re clever, you’ll still have Allegreto panting after you as Gian does me. And then we may rule the world, I promise you."

  TWENTY-FIVE

  There were 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 hundred and fifty," 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 splashing 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 your patients to death and bring them out again! Dream, you mountebank—you couldn’t 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 hadn’t expected Allegreto to be here.

  "I’d 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’d 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 tho
ught. 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. "Are you satisfied?"

  He could not make sense of it. Alive. Dead. Purgatory, and these were his demons. He didn’t 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’s 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. 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 couldn’t look into his face. Since they had left Bowland, she in Princess Melanthe’s household and he in Gian’s, there had been nothing 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 didn’t 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 past 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’ll 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 revolted, 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?"

  Ruck tried to lift his hand, to catch and strangle him, but he could not.

  "Wink your eyes if you hear me," the fiend ordered. Ruck closed his eyes. When he had eyes to open again, the demon was gone.

  * * *

  "He was waking, my lady," Cara said very softly.

  Melanthe laid her forehead down on the pillow. She had been waiting at the window, waiting and waiting. She had not thought Cara would ever come.

  It might have killed him, the poison they had used, a grain too much, a drop of wine too little—but Gian’s would have done it with mortal certainty.

  "He spoke, but made no sense, my lady," Cara said. "Allegreto sent word to you that he’s weak, but will be well by morning."

  Melanthe lifted her head. The night air flowed in the open window. She put her hands on her cheeks to cool them.

  "My lady—" Cara said. "I wish to tell you—when I spoke—when I said I
was betrothed. I had no right to make a contract without your leave. Forgive me!"

  Her words seemed distant to Melanthe. She flicked her hand in dismissal. "Later. I cannot think of that now."

  "My lady. Please! I have no wish to marry Allegreto."

  Melanthe made an effort to turn her mind to Cara’s distress. "After all he’s done for you? Poor Allegreto. You do have your claws in his heart."

  "I never meant to do so, my lady! He frightens me. And—I fear for Guy."

  "Such a tragic face. Guy? That Englishman from Torbec, I suppose. He’s beneath you. He hasn’t a florin to his name. Silly girl, his lord lives in a pigsty. You may believe me, for I saw it."

  "My lady—I love him."

  Melanthe gave one short laugh. "Truly, this is what comes of letting foolish female creatures sit at windows and look out upon the street, is it not? We dream stupid dreams, and fall in love with any unsuitable man who walks past."

  Cara bowed her head. "Yes, my lady."

  "I spoke to you once of love."

  "Yes, my lady."

  Melanthe pulled the window closed. She could see the reflection of candles in the glass, and a wavering darkness that was herself. "What did I say of it?" she whispered. "I have forgotten what I said."

  "My lady, you said to me that great love is ruinous, my lady."

  "And so it is." She put her hands over her hot cheeks again, watching the obscure movement in the glass. "So it is."

  "My lady—if it would please you—if Guy might find a place in your retinue when we return—"

  "God’s death, do you care no more for your betrothed than to lead him into the viper’s nest?" Melanthe turned angrily on the girl’s brown-eyed innocence. "And what of Allegreto? Is he to sing a gleeful carol at your wedding?"