Melanthe allowed herself to be escorted. The birds’ quarters were not as much a shambles as she had expected, with clean sand on the floor and high barred windows for air and light. Hew Dowl was introduced to her, with some pomp, as "the son of the late lord’s falconer who died in the pestilence." Hew himself was no more than an austringer, it appeared, flying only two big goshawks—kitchen birds, but hardy and practical, a meet pair to keep the larder filled. The close sight of Gryngolet was almost enough to unman him. He was struck mute and could only indicate the facilities that he kept by dumbshow and mumbles so thick with northern speech as to be unintelligible.
Still, Melanthe liked the fit look of his birds, their plumage full-summed and their weathering blocks positioned out of the wind. Gryngolet went to him without protest, and Melanthe had no nonsense out of Hew Dowl about his own opinions when she gave orders for the falcon’s care. Gryngolet preened contentedly—her ancestors had flown the snows and ice rivers of the northman’s country, and this chill mountain air was well to her taste.
With Gryngolet comfortably disposed, Melanthe went next to the kitchen, where she met the cook and his sister assisting him, whose parents had perished in the Great Death at Wolfscar. Likewise with the bottler, and a girl peeling onions, and the smith, all honorably descended from the castle, though they wore the gaudy livery of minstrels, and some of them she recalled with instruments from the procession outside. Forebears in the former lord’s household appeared to be the only parentage worth the telling.
William the Foolet clearly acted constable, marshal, and seneschal at once, such as the offices were. William Bassinger appeared to have no tasks beyond the lending of his rich low voice to noble and gracious talking, and tasting of the stew. After she had overlooked the pantry stores and buttery, they led her to the ladies’ bower.
It was a chamber like the others, frigid cold, rich in hangings and carved cupboards and carpets. For the mistress there was a bright oriel bay overlooking the court, with its own hearth and three large windows that sent shafts of light through the dust. Melanthe lifted her hand, dismissing her curious retinue. "Only the Williams," she said, and the rest had sense enough to find urgent business elsewhere.
She walked slowly across to the bay, glancing at the ceiling, where painted vines bloomed with golden flowers against a ground of stars and sky. With the hem of her mantle she brushed off a chair by the window. An embroidery rack had been left with the work still upon it. She turned and sat, fixing a straight gaze upon the two Williams, ignoring the cold.
"Now, my men," she said in French, "we will have some honest talking."
William Bassinger bowed, and Foolet knelt on one knee. "Your Highness," he said with flawless humility.
"Rise, and look at me."
She waited until they obeyed, and waited still longer, a sustained and steady observation. Bassinger’s brows slowly rose and his lashes lifted, his face growing more and more roundly innocent above the white beard, until a babe could not have appeared as blameless. William the little Fool only stood without expression, a light color in his cheeks the single flaw in his calm.
"Tell me what has happened here," she said.
Bassinger bowed. "Your Highness, as God maintains me, may I bend my poor talent to the task you set?"
"With all dispatch!"
"Your Highness, I beseech the Saviour of the world to fill me with such ardor and excellence as to give you great delight and pleasure in my tale—"
"Not a tale, but a history," she said impatiently. "Not one word but true."
He gave her a hurt look, then lifted his chin and filled his chest with air. "Then I begin forthwith, to tell Your Highness of the glorious and stirring history of my Lord Ruadrik, the grandsire of the father of the father of our present lord."
Melanthe lifted a forefinger from the arm of the chair. "Nay, let us drop a father or two. Begin with your lord."
"Ah, but Your Highness, his father the Lord Ruadrik was a great man, very great of heart and body, so I have heard tell."
Melanthe saw that it was useless to press him faster than he would go. "Very well, but say me nothing false."
Bassinger puffed up in mild indignation. "My knowledge is exact, Your Highness, from sources of faultless authority, being my lord your husband and Sir Harold."
"And who is Sir Harold?"
The Foolet spoke. "A knight of the old lord’s. Our present lord’s tutor in arms. Lives he in the postern tower. He waxes a little—mad, sometimes. Your Highness will have a care of him, I pray."
Melanthe raised her brows. "A most interesting household. Recommence, William Bassinger."
"Your Highness, I tell you of how our lord’s father Ruadrik of Wolfscar was in his youth among the companions of our noble King Edward of England, may God protect him. It was in the king’s minority, when his unwise mother the queen and that vile traitor Mortimer held sway in the land, such that any man of honor and understanding deplored the state of affairs, even to fearing for the life of our young king himself. For all know that the traitor murdered most foully the former king his father."
He paused, to see that she was attentive. Melanthe nodded at old history and urged him on with her fingers.
"But by the grace of God," Bassinger intoned, "our king had good friends and true, and Ruadrik of Wolfscar was one. Under the advice of Lord Montagu and others, the king laid a trap for—"
"Yea, at Nottingham, they went in by a secret passage and took Mortimer by surprise," she said, to cut short what was like to be a long adventure. "Wolfscar was one of the king’s party?"
Bassinger appeared to have a good deal of trouble swallowing her rude interruption, but after a moment of offended silence, he agreed. "Your Highness, Ruadrik of Wolfscar led the way."
"Well, I think I would have heard of him, had he led the way, but I can believe that he was in the company. And for this service, I presume he was rewarded?"
"He was made a knight of the Bath, and his lands extended from here to the abbey in the south, and the lakes in the east, and the coast on the west, and two miles north."
"Knowest thee who held these lands before him?"
"Your Highness, I be no lawyer," Bassinger pronounced solemnly.
"They were escheated of a part of Lancaster that had no heir, my lady, and held by the abbey," the younger William said, "but the king suspended the escheat and gave them to Wolfscar for reward."
"And the license to fortify? These lands appear not rich enough for such a castle."
William Bassinger would have spun out another tale, of Scots and battle heroics, but William Foolet cut him short. "There be a mine for iron in the hills, Your Highness. The king gave my lord’s father the income without encumbrance for the building of the castle, for there was no northern defense."
"Iron?" Melanthe looked about her at the silk and cushions with skepticism. "A full rich iron mine must it be," she said.
The fool’s unfoolish eyes regarded her. She waited. "Gold there be in it, too, my lady, and silver," he said at last, reluctantly.
Melanthe steepled her fingers and rested her chin on the tips. For a long while she watched the slow fall of dust motes through a shaft of light.
"Why," she demanded softly of Foolet, "did the abbot not ward him as Lord Ruadrik told me should have been?"
"It were evil days, my lady. I think many monks died. None came here."
"He should have gone to them!" She looked to Bassinger, for Foolet could have been no more than a child. "After the death passed. Thou shouldst have taken him!"
"My lady, you may be assured that had I known of the arrangement, I would have moved both Heaven and Earth to see my lord Ruadrik into the hands of those who would guard and care for him, for I loved him as my own son. I was not made mindful of this warding. I think he did not apperceive the will of his father, whom God absolve, for some time."
"What time?"
"I found his father’s testament, my lady," Foolet said, "among the manor rolls.
My lord Ruadrik had ten and five years then, and we went to the abbey, my lady."
"And?"
Bassinger made an apologetic gesture. "The clerks had no record of the king’s grant of the land to my lord’s father. There was a fire, it seems. They were short with us, my lady. We left them."
"Left them! Without seeing the abbot?"
"My lady, with such a rude welcome, I advised my lord to withdraw, ere he let news abroad that might be harmful to him. It is a very covetous abbey, my lady."
"Thou half-wits, there would be record among the king’s rolls, if the abbey’s was lost!"
"I am no lawyer, my lady," Bassinger murmured. "We carried out his honored father’s will."
"My lady," Foolet said anxiously, "we did try. But we were afraid then; we realized that he could not prove himself—"
"None knew him from the font? No retainer? No villein?"
"Only Sir Harold," William Foolet said in a hollow tone.
"One is enough, if he is a man of good standing."
"I think not, my lady. His mind is—uncertain."
"The priest, then."
"My lady, our chaplain came into the valley after the pestilence. There were a few such who came from outside, in the first years, and we made a place and welcome."
She frowned at him. "Come, they did not all perish, those who knew him. What of these you’ve named to me as in this valley at their birth?"
"Yea, my lady. But you saw them; they are younger than my lord. It is their parents who could have said, and they have died since." He shrugged helplessly.
"I am no lawyer, my lady," Bassinger repeated, "but I think that to make a claim stick against that abbot, a hundred peasants who could name my lord Ruadrik would not suffice. And so I counseled my lord." He drew air into his chest expansively. "He saw the wisdom of my words, and being a young man of great heart and spirit, he betook him to prove himself worthy of his lands by his own exertion. He eschewed these ink-stained clerks and lawyers and went out into the world in search of adventures and glory—as is proper to one of his knightly lineage, my lady, I’m sure you will agree. I have recorded his ordeals and victories in a poem, and will be pleased to delight my lady’s grace with the singing of it. It is not finished yet, for we still await the great deed by which he will prove himself, and take his due reward, but God willing comes it soon."
Melanthe gazed at him. At first she thought that he was making a mirth. But he looked back at her with a pleased expression.
"By hap my lady would care to hear the prologue?" he asked.
"God confound you!" she breathed. "Have you made him go ragged and nameless about the world, as if he is of no account but what he wins by his strength of arms?"
"My lord does no thing but what he chooses of his own self." Foolet’s voice was stout, but his gaze wavered almost imperceptibly.
She leaned forward. "The abbey should have warded him! Or better yet the king!"
The two stood silent before her vehemence.
"But if they had," she said fiercely, "they would have made short work of thy troop of minstrels sojourning here!" She swept her hand wide. "Lord Ruadrik would have held the land of his own right long since—but instead you have made him surrender his real claim, and try to win it back by foolish errantry, for fear his wards would cast you out!"
"My lady, be it nought in our power to make His Lordship do anything!"
She stood up. "Nay, you have some unholy clutch upon him! What is it? Why should he withhold his name from those who could help him, if not to hide something? He is a baron, by God’s bones, and he married a burgher’s daughter as if he could do no better! You have battened upon this place somehow, a troop of worthless common minstrels, and he protects you by his foolishness, and you care not that you drag him down!"
"Madam." Ruck’s voice arrested them all, cold and soft. "I asked you for love of me to esteem my people." He stood in the doorway, dressed in a black doublet and hose, a golden belt about his hips, his hair uncovered and his face angry and tired. "Ne do I demand obedience as your husband," he said in English, "but I expect of a princess the honor of your word that ye gave me nought a few hours since."
Melanthe felt a fire of mortification rush into her cheeks. She had promised—but the state of this place outraged her.
In the silence he said, "Ye does nought know what clutch they haf upon me, in troth, nor can knowen, did ye ne’er come on your home to finden it a charnel house. The death annihiled in this country, my lady; took it nought one in five or one in three, but nine in ten—of every living thing down to the sheep and the rats, for what sins I know nought." His breath frosted in the cold room. "Came I home from the household where I was fostered as a page, but the pestilence met us on the road." He gave an ugly laugh. "Ye speaks of warding. Oh, I was well warded. I had me full eight years of life and wisdom, lady, and dead men all about me. Ne did no passerby, ne friar nor knight, halt or linger, but stoned me for fear of my contagion if I approached them, but until I met this troop of worthless common minstrels."
"Then in faith," she answered coolly, turning to the window, "I wish thy minstrels as well as any men under God, for their great charity to thee."
The jealousy was there again, the envy of his loyalties to anyone but her. Her hands were freezing, but she refused to clasp or warm them, only holding them at her sides. She wished to explain, to tell him that it was his welfare and his rightful place that she would defend, but pride held her tongue, and the apprehension that if she made herself offensive to his men, it was she who might be sent away.
She was not accustomed to making herself agreeable to servants. To turn a smile and wiles on them to win affection...well, she had performed more difficult counterfeits for less, but already the need to deceive seemed a distress, an old and fatal misery. She could not, at that moment, even summon the will to begin it. She said no more. Instead she found herself turning to walk quickly to the door. She did not look up at her husband as she passed him. Lifting her skirts, she ran down the spiraling stairs, seeking the courtyard.
* * *
Ruck watched her from an arrowslit in the gate tower that commanded the whole of the meadow and the lake. His first foolish thought had been that she was leaving—but of course she would not, could not, alone. She would not have been able to find her way from the valley even if she had commanded a horse.
Knowing that, he had not followed her. He was hotly aware of Bassinger and Little Will; of how this impossible marriage must appear. Since his first warning of plague, he had thought of bringing her here for security, though more in his fantasy than in seriousness. Not once had it ever entered his head that he would bring her to Wolfscar as his wife.
But in the crisis, trapped between the hounds and the sea, he had gone by his secret way for the one place he could be certain of. He knew the decision now to be as witless as their exchange of vows—had realized it in full when he saw his castle and his people as they must look to her. Already she disdained them.
Nodding stiffly to Will and Bassinger, Ruck had left the ladies’ chamber with its cobwebs and echoes, acting the lord just as if he had not cleared ditches and drunk ale and planted palisades shoulder to shoulder with the Foolet while Bassinger gave advice and complained of his back. Ruck did not wish to seem to chase her, but he could not face his old friends, either, or justify what he had done. Standing now in the empty garret, he felt utterly alone, as if he had executed his own banishment.
He leaned his forearms against the angled cut of the arrow embrasure, resting his head in the crook of his elbow so that he could keep her in his sight as she carried the gyrfalcon into the sheep pasture. She strode across the snow-crusted grass. A train of children followed, tramping behind with their arms swinging, until Hew Dowl chased them off to a proper distance. She was a hooded sweep of emerald green in the dirt-gray landscape, leaving the motley colors of the children and the austringer behind her. She stopped, and Ruck saw her beckon.
Hew ran to
her, his shoulders stooped in reverent submission and his eyes fixed on the ground. As Ruck watched, she spoke to the austringer. Hew’s head came up. His face was too distant to see clearly, but his whole body seemed to expand. He donned his glove and held out his arm to take the falcon. They talked for a moment, Hew raptly attentive as she handed him the jeweled lure.
As the princess stood back, Hew hid the lure and struck the hood, removing it. For a few moments the gyrfalcon sat motionless on the man’s upraised arm; then it bounded free.
Ruck lost sight of the bird. From his arrowslit he could only gaze at Melanthe as she shaded her eyes and followed the flight. It felt mockingly suitable that he stand hidden, staring out at a narrow view from this crack in stone-thick walls. He grew angry at his own cowardice as he thought of it. Afraid of her contempt, afraid of his own friends—ashamed of his home.
He thrust back from the embrasure and paced across the garret, the bare planks reverberating beneath his feet. For twenty years the haunted frith-wood and fate had protected Wolfscar; there had been no need of a garrison or armed watch and none to man the towers anyway. He had not reopened the mine, he had not reclaimed the road; he had done nothing that might draw attention, waiting for the day when Lancaster his prince would call for the Green Knight and ask him what reward he would have for some marvelous deed—and then, Ruck had dreamed, he would reveal himself, and say his claim, and Wolfscar would be his without dispute, without abbots or haughty monks or any question of right.
It was all a boy’s fine fantasy, built of the songs the minstrels sang, of Gawain and Lancelot, adventure and glory, of troth and loyalty between a man and his master.
He had long ago learned the way of the world. But he had been committed by then, and making a name with Lancaster, and there were tournaments and war—if not as glorious as the adventure of his imagination, at least opportunity for advancement and future, until Lancaster had dismissed him. Because of her.
Princess Melanthe could purchase Wolfscar ten times over. Ruck would have been more of a saint than he was, he reckoned, if the thought had not crossed his mind. But he could hardly stay apace with his own feelings. Outside, he had been bewildered and humbled by her vow to be his wife, but here—here, he did not want to give up his sole mastery, he did not want to explain himself and his life, he did not want to submit to her authority, he did not want everything he was to depend on her, he did not want to give her up, he did not want to deny her anything, he did not want to sleep alone again— and he did not, did not want her to leave him.
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