He woke up. Under the circumstances, that rated as an accomplishment.
He woke up and looked around carefully. The manticore was curled up cat-style right next to him, the stinger on its scorpion tail sticking out of the ball of fur. Asleep or not, Manny was a guardian to give would-be assassins second thoughts.
Matt started to sit up...
The stinger whipped around and poised above him. Matt froze as Manny uncoiled enough to reveal wide-open eyes filmed with sleep. "Who stirs?"
Matt had moved barely eighteen inches, and that pretty slowly. "Light sleeper, are you?"
"Deep, but I waken quickly nonetheless. It is only you, then?"
"Just me." Matt swallowed. "I was, uh, thinking about getting up."
"Go, then. You can defend yourself when you are awake—if you do not let females of your kind hold your attention."
"That wasn't what you think."
"No, it was—for I think she pursued, and you sought to retreat. I confess I cannot understand your species."
"It's called 'morality.' "
"As I said," the manticore growled, "I understand it not."
And that, Matt mused as he plodded down toward the little stream, was the manticore in a nutshell. Not that he was all that different from any other member of the feline family—it was just that, having a human face, Matt had sort of expected some other human attributes, such as a conscience. He should have known better—the double set of teeth should have tipped him off.
It seemed that the manticore wasn't the only one lacking an understanding. Everywhere Matt went, he heard isolated sobbing. Some of the girls were curled up weeping quietly next to their snoring mates; others were sitting up alone. Not all of them, no—not even a quarter—but too many. His heart twisted with the urge to comfort, but he knew better than to intrude.
He found a copse of trees for his morning ablutions, knelt by the stream to wash his hands and face and shave with his dagger, then turned back toward the camp just as the girl in the homemade noose jumped off the stump.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Matt took in the rope snaking up from the noose to pass over the limb overhead and down again to where it was tied around a lower branch, but by that time he was already running, yanking his sword out, and he managed to slash through the rope just before the girl hit the top of her arc.
She crashed to the ground with a cry of anger and despair, then rolled up to her knees, huddled and sobbing.
Matt sheathed the sword and went to her slowly, wondering what to do, what to say. "Do" was obvious enough—comfort her—but what to say while he did it?
The girl solved the problem for him. As he knelt down beside her, she moaned, "Go away! Is not my shame enough, but that you must see it, too? Gooooo!"
"I don't see any shame," Matt said firmly. "I only see a pretty girl, who could have a wonderful life, giving up when she doesn't have to."
"Does not have to!" The girl whipped about, glaring up at him. "What do you know about it? Losing your virginity is cause for a man to boast! For a woman, it is always cause for shame, even if she has gained a lover who will be true to her forever... And if he will not stay true..." Her face puckered, and she turned away as the tears flowed with renewed vigor. Matt held out his arms, but she ignored him, curled into a ball of misery.
"Bess!" cried another girl's voice, accompanied by a lot of thrashing and rustling of underbrush. "Bess! Where have you gone?" There was anxiety in the voice, even fear.
"Here," Matt called, then asked, "Is your name Bess?"
His only answer was a wail of grief.
The thrashing stopped, and the other girl pushed the branches aside to stare in shock. "What have you done to her!"
"Only cut her down before she could stay up." Matt climbed to his feet and went toward the new arrival. "She won't take any comfort from me. See what you can do."
The older girl stared at him as he went by. "You are too old for her!"
"I know," Matt said over his shoulder, "but somebody else didn't." And he went on his way, resisting the temptation to look back, but hearing the soothing murmuring and the awful tearing cry as Bess threw herself into her friend's arms.
Matt hoped he would never learn the rest of the story. Had she only wakened to find her seducer gone? Or had he gone off after some other girl while Bess was still awake? Or something worse? No, all in all, Matt hoped he never found out—and if he met the man, he hoped he wouldn't know it.
As he went back toward Manny, he saw most of the people beginning to stir, sitting up with hands pressed to their heads and moaning, or crying as Bess had been crying. Here and there a couple sat up beaming into one another's faces, but there were definitely very few of them.
"I have brought the magistrate! You will stand up and take your oath like a man, or you will go to the Devil!"
Matt turned, staring. Half a dozen hard-faced men were standing around a disheveled teenage couple with pitchforks poised to stab.
"But I do not wish to marry!" the boy cried, and the girl's head snapped up with a look of dismay that transformed into aching hurt.
"You should have thought of that before you took her to bed," a grizzled man said grimly. "But take her to bed you did, and you will marry her or die!"
"In front of a magistrate?" the boy wailed.
A squire in a robe stepped up. "Aye, in front of me! I shall testify that it was justified! Up and swear, or die with my blessing!"
"You will marry, come back to the village, and settle down like the good husbandman you will become," the grim old man snapped.
"But I do not want to go home!" the girl wailed. "I want to go to Venarra!"
"The only way you will go there is if he goes ahead of you and finds work enough to support you both in decency! What, my lass, did you think there would be better than this for you in Venarra? You shall swear, too, or we'll spit him like a pig!"
Alarm in her face, the girl scrambled to her feet. "Come, Williken! I would not see you dead!"
The boy climbed to his feet, face thunderous.
Matt decided not to linger. As he went away, he heard the magistrate beginning to intone the ritual. He did notice that there was no mention of God—but at least there was no mention of the Devil, either.
He looked about the field, noticing a few other groups of men carrying scythes and pitchforks. Some of them had found their quarry and were holding them while they waited for the magistrate; some of them were still hunting. Matt wondered what kind of a life two kids could have if it began like this. Well, at least it would be legal...
But there were no priests on hand, and he saw at least two parties digging graves. Some of the fights over women had gotten out of hand. Matt shuddered as he realized he could very easily have been one of the bodies being lowered into the ground, in hasty, improvised graves with nothing to mark them. He turned away from the sight, to look down at the sound of sobbing coming from nearby...
And almost tripped over Pascal.
Pascal looked like the eked-out remains of a secondhand illness. His face was battered and bruised—either several small fights or one humdinger. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands trembled, and his face was the color of melted beeswax. He winced at the sound of Matt's footsteps, and Matt could imagine the headache that produced such oversensitivity. Pascal was hung over so far that he was about to fall in. His face was a container for misery, but even so, he sat with his arms about a young woman whose body was racked with sobs. His face was a study in consternation; he obviously didn't have the faintest idea what to do, but felt the need to do something. "I know, Flaminia, I know," he was murmuring. "It is the greatest of pains, to be scorned by one you love... Only two days ago—"
"Did she promise you marriage and bed you, then steal away when she thought you slept?" the young woman flared. "But no, if she had you would have rejoiced! It is different for men!"
"I would not," Pascal said with full conviction. "But we did not share a bed, only a few minutes in
a garden."
"Ah, but if she had taken you to her bed, you would have found your ardor remarkably cooled in the morning!" At least the heat of the girl's anger was drying her tears.
"I did not think so then," Pascal said slowly, looking directly into her eyes. "No, I still think bedding her would not have changed me—but meeting you, hearing your voice, your mirth, your wit... It is strange, but Panegyra seems less than she did..."
Flaminia froze, staring at him. Then she recovered herself enough to snap, "So you would desert her!"
"I cannot," Pascal said simply, "for she would not exchange promises with me, no matter how many I offered. No, she is to marry a man old enough to be her father, and has no interest in breaking off with him. She enjoyed flirting with me, aye..." His gaze strayed. "Yes, I see it now! She was toying with me, enjoying the game, tantalizing me! Why did I not see that before?"
"Why indeed?" the girl said, but her tone had lost its steel. "Do not be too hard on her—every woman enjoys that sort of play. But did she give you reason to think she might return your ardor some day?"
"Now that I think of it, Flaminia, no," Pascal said slowly. "She told me that if I were a knight, and wealthy... Ah, friend Matthew," he said, blushing.
Flaminia looked up, horror-stricken. "Another who knows my shame," the girl said bitterly, and scowled back down at the ground. "I could never go back to my village now, not in such disgrace."
"None need know save yourself!" Pascal assured her.
"Two boys in three days? Be sure that one of them will tell, if the other does not! Gossip will travel back to my village, Pascal, and if you know it not, you have never lived in so small a place. Of course you have not, squire's son," she said with even more bitterness, "and you cannot know the petty cruelties of peasant women! But believe me, I do, and I shall not open myself to them! No, I cannot go home. I must go on to Venarra—but Heaven knows what the men there will make of me!" The tears overflowed again.
Pascal reached out again to gather her in. She resisted for a second, then tumbled into his arms. "There, there, sweet chuck," he soothed. "You may yet marry."
"Marry!" she wailed. "What tailor would buy soiled goods? What groom would be wanting a wanton?"
"You are only a wanton if you choose to be," Pascal said slowly. "There are men who can understand that a woman has made a mistake, has let herself believe gilded lies, but will never do so again."
"I will not, be sure of it! Lies have been my undoing—I shall never heed them again!" She pushed him away, tears still streaming down her face. "So do not tell me any more of them! Where is the man who would wed a lass who is no virgin? Where could I find such a fool?"
"I cannot be sure," Pascal said, looking straight into her eyes, "but I might be such a fool—if I were in love with the woman."
Flaminia froze, staring at him.
" 'Wise fool, brave fool,' " Matt quoted softly.
"May be," Flaminia said in a flat tone.
"May." Pascal nodded. "I have only known you one evening, Flaminia, and an hour this morning. But if I were to come to know such a woman as yourself, I might find myself in love, and—"
"To wed a wanton would be foolishness indeed!"
" 'Motley's the only color,' " Matt quoted, "for fools wear motley, and I realized long ago that every man is a fool in some way. The only choice any of us poor males really has is to choose which kind of fool we'll be."
Flaminia looked up at him, as if startled to realize he was still there. "Do not bear word of my folly, I beg you!"
"I wouldn't dream of it," Matt assured her, "and word just might not spread, because there's so much of this sort of thing going on. You're not exactly going to stand out in this crowd."
Flaminia lowered her eyes. "I am scarcely one to speak about foolishness, am I?"
"You are," Matt contradicted, "and so am I. Only those of us who have really been guilty of folly can know what we're talking about when we say the word."
Flaminia caught the trace of humor in his words and looked up with the ghost of a smile—sardonic, but a smile. "Then you, too, have been a fool?"
"Many times," Matt assured her, "and worse, I was foolish enough to keep taking one more chance on being a fool again."
He studied her face, wondering what Pascal saw in her. The nose was a little too thin, the cheeks gaunt, the eyes a little too closely set—but they were huge, those eyes, and the lashes swept across them like curtains! She certainly was not a beautiful woman, not even pretty. Handsome, maybe. It must have been her mind, her wit, and the fact that Pascal's wizard grandfather still moved in his veins enough to make him appreciate words and honor the one who could craft them into sharpness.
"Have you ever been a fool for a woman?" she went on.
"Many times," Matt assured her. "That was the chance I kept taking. The last chance was the biggest folly ever, for I fell in love with a woman far too good for me."
Flaminia stiffened. "What did she do to you?"
"Married me," Matt said, "finally—and that was her greatest folly. But maybe it will turn out to be as wise for her as mine was for me."
She smiled, thawing a bit. "If you are wed, what are you doing so far from her?"
"Trying to find her something she asked for," Matt told her. "Foolish of me, isn't it?"
"Perhaps," Flaminia said, with a smile that held back amusement. "But there is a point at which foolishness becomes wisdom." She turned to Pascal. "Your friend has wit."
The look Pascal returned was so blank that she laughed and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek—and Matt noticed once again that her figure was nothing short of spectacular. Certainly enough to cloud a young man's judgment—or attract the wrong sort. "I think you'd better come along and take care of him, damsel," Matt said. "Pascal, you do need taking care of, don't you?"
"Oh, without doubt!" For once, Pascal picked up a cue. "If no one watches over me, I am apt to do very foolish things indeed!"
"Why, so am I." Flaminia climbed to her feet, pulling him up with her. "So perhaps you should stay near me and guard me from my own foolishness, too. Do you think I should let you?"
"Without question!"
"No, not without question," she said with a roguish smile. "I am apt to ask you very many questions indeed, for I have an enormous curiosity about the world around me, most especially the things I have never seen—and woe to you if you answer me falsely!"
"I shall be careful to be honest," Pascal assured her, "and if my honesty is not always truthful, it shall be no fault of mine."
Flaminia frowned at him, then glanced at Matt. "Can you tell me what he means? How can honesty not be truthful?"
"Why," Matt said, "because he'll honestly tell you everything he knows and believes, but he might be wrong. After all, if you ask him about the queen's capital of Bordestang, I'm sure he'll tell you every rumor he has heard about it—but he hasn't seen it himself, so some of the rumors may be false."
Flaminia laughed—a sound with the beauty of song—and pressed Pascal's arm close. "I think you may have some ghost of wit yourself, friend Pascal! Come, let us put this tiresome crowd behind us and find the road to the south by ourselves!"
"They shall catch up with us," Pascal warned, falling into step beside her.
"Perhaps," Flaminia said, "but I think they will be better company by that time. We can wait for them in the shade when the sun grows hot."
"Better listen to her," Matt advised. "She's no fool."
But as they started to pick their way through the litter of unconscious bodies, a beefy young man came reeling up with a lopsided grin. "Ah, there you are, my betrothed! Come, kiss me good morning, then!"
He was nicely calculated to inspire ardor in the most finicky of women—muscles like melons, guileless blue eyes in a handsome ruddy face, blond hair, and a devil-may-care jauntiness. Unfortunately, those blue eyes were bloodshot, and he was also unshaven, smelled like a brewery that had been converted into a cockroach-haven hotel, and wa
s weaving and stumbling in what he no doubt thought was a straight line.
Flaminia froze, the color draining from her face. Pascal stared in alarm as the big young man reached out for her, chuckling.
She slapped his hand aside, her color returning and flaming high. "Nay, Volio! Do you think you can seduce me, then leave me to bed one doxie after another and come back to take me again?"
"Aye." The grin turned nasty. "For you are mine, are you not? We are betrothed!"
"No longer! Oh, if only you had given me a ring, so that I might throw it back in your face!" Flaminia blazed. "I shall not be your doxie, neither wed nor unwed!"
"But you must." The nasty grin widened to gloating, and he reached out again. "For if you do not wed me, then you shall be a slut. Come, chick."
"Go!" she cried. "Go, and never come near me again! For I had rather be a fallen woman than a betrayed wife!"
"Why, then, a fallen woman you are," he said, "and shall fall to me again."
Flaminia caught the reaching hand, twisted it sharply, and bit.
Volio howled, eyes staring in shock. Flaminia leaped back with a cry of triumph, letting go of the hand. "You shall not touch me again!"
"Oh, but I shall!" Volio shouted, and the bleeding hand slapped the side of her head, hard. Flaminia fell back with a cry of pain; Matt just barely caught her. But Pascal howled with outrage and leaped in, slamming a fist into Volio's face.
Volio fell back, staring in utter stupefaction, pressing his hand to the fresh new pain. Then he brought his hand away, saw the blood on it that streamed from his nose, and came for Pascal with a snarl, swinging a haymaker.
Pascal blocked with his left as if he were parrying a rapier cut and slammed a hard right into Volio's belly. The big young man staggered back with a grunt of surprise, and Pascal followed it up, whirling his right fist like a rapier, then slamming it into the side of Volio's head.
But Volio blocked, as if he was catching a sword blow on a buckler, then riposted with his right and caught Pascal a blow that sent him reeling back a few paces. Volio followed hard, but Pascal ducked just in time, his shoulder slamming into Volio's belly. Pascal straightened up, staggered, but held Volio on his shoulder just long enough to dump him in a heap from five feet up. Then he stepped back, shaking his head to clear it as Volio caught his breath then scrambled up, snarling, "None of your peasant's wrestling tricks!"
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