Shadowheart

by Laura Kinsale

  "Don’t!" she cried. "Don’t taunt me!"

  "You’re with us," he said.

  "Nay, I’ll kill you if I can!" The fear possessed her. She heard herself, long past reason to mindless, witless, hopeless defiance. "I’ll work for the Riata; I spit on the name of Navona; I’ll wipe it from the face of the earth!"

  He pressed the knife to her, and her tears spilled over. It stung violently; she imagined the blade sliding in, a thousand times greater pain. She waited for it. She had a panicked thought that she would be unshriven; but she could not even confess in her heart; she kept saying farewell to Elena, over and over, until it took up all of her perception.

  When he let go of her, it happened so suddenly that she fell backward against the trestle table. It rocked beneath her weight as she clutched the edge.

  A shadow passed the window. She heard a horse, its feet squelching mud. A voice hailed from outside.

  The alewife ran forward. Allegreto stopped her, pressing his fist hard to her mouth and jerking his knife in her face. He freed her slowly. She shrank back and slunk into her corner again.

  "Ave!" The door swung open, rain splattering on the sill. A young man walked through, pushing his hood back, showing blond hair. "Ave, godday!" He carried his own drinking vessel. He plunged it into the cask himself, dropping the cover back with a bang, and asked something of the alewife. It was English, but the word Bowland at the end of his question was roundly clear.

  The wife ducked a nod, her glance flicking to Cara and Allegreto. The newcomer turned.

  "God bless," he said in a friendly way, and waved toward the door, whooshing another English comment through his teeth, obviously a complaint on the weather.

  "May God protect you," Cara said boldly in French, seeing a savior in him. She held her fingers pressed over her side, staunching her stinging cut.

  He bowed. "Grant merci, and God smile on you, lovely lady," he replied, his French accent ungraceful but his words distinct enough. He nodded at Allegreto. "Good sir."

  Allegreto bowed, indicating the table. "Honor us."

  "Gladly." The young man smiled, doffing his cloak and shaking the drops from it before he hung it on a peg. He wore flesh-colored hose with dirty wool bandages wrapped up to the knees for protection. They were an absurd color, but after a week with Allegreto, an open face and easy smile were enough to please Cara. "I’m Guy of Torbec," he said. "But I think—you aren’t English, sir?"

  "We serve the Princess of Monteverde," Allegreto said.

  "Ha! Mont-verde? Then Bowland it was, by God! I guessed it." Guy straddled the bench. "I am on the right road at last. Has he got your lady safe back, praise God?"

  Allegreto grew very still. "Back?"

  Guy seemed suddenly to realize that he might have been indiscreet and set the pot down, glancing over his shoulder. "The lady of Mont-verde and Bowland," he whispered. "She was not—away?"

  Cara put her hand over Allegreto’s arm. "She was attacked," she murmured. "We were in the party. Do you say she is safe?"

  "Or bring a ransom demand?" Allegreto asked sharply.

  "Nay, nay—by God’s love, I had no part of any such notion!" Guy leaned forward. "I only bring news. I wish to help."

  "What news?" Allegreto murmured.

  Guy chewed his lip, eyeing them warily. "I was bound for the castle. I thought the green knight might give me a place in his company."

  Allegreto’s arm relaxed beneath her hand. "If it’s reward you want, then tell me. I’ll see you get a place if you deserve it."

  In spite of his peasant clothes, Allegreto had that easy arrogance about him that bespoke authority. She could see the Englishman puzzling over it.

  Guy tapped his fist rapidly against his knee. Then he sighed through his teeth. "Can you? But I don’t have much news, I fear. Only that I saw her, with a knight who named himself by his color green, at Torbec Manor, in Lancashire." He nodded in a direction that meant nothing to Cara. "But they fled west, with my—with the man who holds Torbec Manor at their heels. He lost them at the coast. We—he thought they must have gone south along the shore, but I thought the green knight clever enough to come back through the pursuit. And I remembered Bowland, on the falcon’s varvel, and that the old earl’s daughter was wed to a foreign prince. So I came here, because I couldn’t stay at Torbec." He wet his lips. "I hoped they would have come by now. I—did him a little good, the green knight, I think, so I reckoned he might look well on me."

  "When was this?" Allegreto demanded.

  "Four days past."

  "And she was with the green man alone?"

  Guy nodded.

  Allegreto smiled at him. "Well done," he said. "Well done, Guy of Torbec. Come with us. We’re for the castle. I think you’ll find a place."

  * * *

  It was the finest bed to sleep in that Melanthe could imagine. She did not leave it for three days, but lay enveloped in warmth, enfolded in slumber and safety while the rain slid down the windows. Ruck leaned over her, already garbed, and kissed her beneath her ear.

  "Thou moste be in some witch’s thrall," he murmured. "The alder-most slothful witch in the world."

  She flipped the sheet over her nose, languid in the aftermath of their morning love. "Send drink and bread. And return to me full soon."

  "I wen well where to finden thee, at the least."

  She smiled with her eyes closed. "Melikes thy mattress, my lord. By hap will I never leave it."

  He did not answer, but pushed away from the bed. She heard him cross the chamber. The door opened and closed. Before, each morning as he left, she had settled into the bed, satisfied and sated with their coupling, sustained on the wheaten bread and ale someone left on a trestle beside her, drowsing until he came again. She had not thought of where he went; she had not thought of anything at all with more than a torpid interest that passed into pleasing dreams.

  But a small doubt crept into her mind, because he had not answered her when she had said she might never leave. The two Williams would be out there—unlikely they were singing her praises to his ears, or urging him to prolong her stay. She opened her eyes.

  She sat up and swept back the bedcoverings. Chill air touched her skin.

  Fool. Fool! No woman held a man with bed-play alone, not with his favorites whispering poison in his ears.

  She had felt safe. She was safe. But if there was one lesson greater than any other Ligurio had pressed upon her, it was that to give a man what he wanted was to lose all mastery of him. Ruck was so sweet and stirring when he came, she had not sensed the danger until this moment.

  She thrust her feet from the bed. There was no maid, of course. She had to serve herself as he did, but in rooting through the chamber chests she found a linen smock, stiff and unworn. It smelled very faintly of herbs. There were robes too, but she refused to appear in the raiment of the former lady of the castle like some resurrected ghost. She put on her own faithful gown and azure houppelande over the clean linen.

  Her hair she could only cover with a kerchief, with no one to dress it for her. She found one clustered with jasper and chalcedony. All of the clothing in the chests was richly adorned with embroidery and gems. No poor knight’s hold, this Wolfscar.

  She thought of the minstrels who sojourned here at their ease, and narrowed her eyes. But she would move carefully. A man’s favorites could be delicate matters, not subject to common reasoning with his wit, as the history of any number of kings could attest.

  The stairwell from the lord’s presence chamber opened onto the high end of the great hall. Melanthe heard voices and music and laughter before she reached the floor, but in this castle there were no convenient spying peeks to oversee the hall, or none that she could find.

  She stepped into the doorway, then hastily pulled back. Ruck was there, seated at the table on the dais, facing away from her. He had a child on his shoulders, a half-grown babe with feet balanced on either side of his head and hands planted in his black hair as he bent over rolls a
nd counters spread across the table. In her brief moment of view, Melanthe had seen William Foolet counseling with him, and minstrels all around the hall, some of them congregated about the dais, some at work, and one pair juggling a great wheel of apples up toward the roof.

  Melanthe sat down on the stair out of sight. The fantastic aspect of it struck her anew. She felt unsure of herself, a somber crow at the feast. It would not be wise, she thought, to go to him amidst their smiles and laughter. Later, when he came to her alone, she could try to reckon how the Williams might have damaged her.

  But she did not want to go back to the empty bedchamber now. She sat in the stairwell, listening to the easy talk, the murmurs of mirth. They spoke of lambing and the fish in the lake, things she knew but little of. She could predict what would happen if she stepped through the door. They would all turn and stare, and she must be her lady’s grace the princess then, for she knew nothing else to be.

  Quick small footsteps sounded on the wooden dais, and a little girl in gaudy-green appeared through the door. She put her plump hands on Melanthe’s knees and leaned forward, dark-eyed and rapt, her black locks flying free of any braid. "Why hide ye?" she demanded.

  Melanthe drew back a little. "Ne do I hide."

  "Ye does. I saw you. But I found you!" She turned and wedged herself into the space between Melanthe and the wall, taking a seat on the narrow stair. She put her arms about Melanthe’s neck and kissed her cheek. "I love you."

  "Thou dost not love me," Melanthe said. "Thou dost not even know me."

  "Ye are the princess." She said it with an enraptured sigh. "I am Agnes." She laid her head on Melanthe’s shoulder and took her hand, toying with the rings. "I play the tympan and the cymbals. I haf a white falcon and lots of jewels."

  Melanthe watched the small fingers trifle with hers. "Thou art a great lady, then."

  "Yea," Agnes said. "I shall sleepen all the day when I be grown. Ne likes me nought to nap now, though," she added scrupulously. "I shall marry Desmond."

  "Desmond. The porter?"

  "He will be the king then."

  "Ah," Melanthe said. "A man of ambition."

  "A man of what?" Agnes looked up at her. "Oh. Are you sad?"

  Melanthe shook her head.

  "You weep, my lady."

  "Nay. I do not."

  "I love you." Agnes climbed into her lap and put her face into Melanthe’s throat. "Ne do nought weep."

  "I do not."

  "Why do you weep?" The girl’s voice was muffled.

  Melanthe held the small body close to her. "I’m afraid," she whispered. She drew a breath against fine black hair, as if she could drink it like some fragrant long-forgotten wine. "I’m afraid."

  "Oh, my lady, be nought." Agnes hugged her. "All be well, so long as we bide us here as my lord commands, and go nought out beyond the wood."

  NINETEEN

  They had pleased Ruck, those days that she spent tumbled in his bed like a dozing kitten. He would have thought she was ill, but that he knew her for a master in the art of idle slumbering, and she awoke well enough when he came.

  While she had stayed in his chamber, Wolfscar was his yet. He spent the days in ordinary work, in spring plans and lists of repairs, the most of which would never get done, but he did not have to make explanations or excuses to her. She had asked nothing, but only besought him in bed with her blunt and unhende wooing.

  He did not dislike it. A’plight, he lived all through the day in thought and prospect of it. His clearest memories of Isabelle were of bedding her, and those were dim, overlaid with years of throttled desire and fantasy. But he did not think that any woman on Earth or in imagination could compare with Melanthe, her black hair and white body, her sleepy eyes like purple dusk, the feel of her as she used him, mounting atop him in her favored sin. To have seen her so was worth a thousand years of burning to him. If he went to Hell for it, he only prayed God would not take away the memory.

  Still, nothing about her came as he expected it. When finally she had left the bed and appeared in the hall, he was girded for her queries and objections. He saw her look about. He had grown taut in readiness for her censure—saw dust and decay that he had never noticed before.

  But he was forwondered once again by his liege lady. She did not speak of Wolfscar’s unkept state at all. She smiled at him like a shamefast maid, looking up from beneath a kerchief. She became modest; at night she withdrew from him and eluded his kisses. In the day she went about with a crowd of small girls. It was as if she had arisen from her spelled sleep transformed, turned from a haughty princess into a nun’s acolyte.

  Will Foolet was terrified of her. Bassinger was not daunted to speak to any person alive—he would have sung his lays to the Fiend himself given the chance—but even he gave her a wide breach. All three of them, Ruck and Will and Bassinger, had heard her speak her mind about Wolfscar and its history.

  The others gathered around her, enslaved as easily as she had vanquished Hew Dowl and Sir Harold. Will was complained of and called a hard taskmaster, only for directing that the ground-breaking begin in the fields. Performing before her lady’s grace, their first new spectator in a decade of years, was much to be preferred.

  Ruck and Will rode out alone to the shepherds and lambs, making rain-soaked notes of the fences and fodder, and lists of needed work. They ordered the labor by its importance, for never did they have enough bodies or skills to carry out all that cried to be done. Before there had been willingness and ready hands, at least. Now the fields and the bailey were empty, and Ruck walked into the hall to find it full of tumbling and singing before Melanthe.

  He lost his temper. Flinging his wet mantle from his shoulders, he strode into the middle of the clear space, halting a pair of somersaults before they were begun. The music died.

  "Is a feast day?" Ruck glared around him. He threw his cloak onto the floor, sending droplets from it to spatter on the tile. "How be it that my gear is drenched and my rouncy in mud to his belly, while ye maken mirths and plays? Am I your lord or your servant?"

  Everyone fell to their knees. A tympan tinkled in the stunned silence as a small girl crawled from Melanthe’s lap and knelt, holding the belled drum before her.

  "Thorlac," he snapped to one of the poised tumblers. "Stable my mount. Simon, take Will’s. Stands he outside in the rain with the order of laboring. Nill no one be seen in this hall nor heard to singen or playen until Lent is passed. Eat in the low hall, and give ye thanks for it."

  At once the great room emptied, light footsteps and shuffles and the odd note of a justled instrument. Only Melanthe was left, sitting on a settle drawn near the huge chimney. The gems on her kerchief gleamed as she bent her head, rubbing one hand over the back of the other.

  "My lady mote forgive me for ending your sport," he said tautly, "but the work demands."

  "I ask thy pardon," she said, without lifting her face. "Ne did I know it. I thought they were at leisure."

  "Nought in this season, my lady. Spring comes."

  "Yea," she said.

  No more than that. He was damp, his hands still cold, though the fire beside her rumbled with more than enough wood and charcoal. "Haf I displeased you, lady," he said harshly, "that ye refuse my company?"

  He had not meant to speak it out so abruptly. Her hands folded together in her lap, nunlike.

  "I ne do not refuse thy company, my lord. I am with thee now."

  "My embraces," he said.

  She slanted a look up at him beneath the kerchief and her lashes, and then gazed down again, the picture of chastity.

  He paced away. "Peraventure ye tire of this place and wish to go anon to Bowland."

  "Nay, and risk the pestilence?" she asked quickly.

  He turned. "Was little sign of it enow, my lady. Only at Lyerpool."

  "Who speaks to thee of this—that I would go?"

  "I think of your place, and your holdings. Ne cannought ye look to sojourn here long, to your lands’ neglect."
/>   She stood up. "Who spake thee so?"

  "Is common wit, my lady. I should have seen you to Bowland, as we intended. N’is nought fitting I should have brought you here to detain you."

  "Thy minstrels said thee so!" she exclaimed.

  "My minstrels?" he repeated blankly. He stopped in the face of her vehemence. "Nay, they said no such."

  "William Foolet has whispered in thy ears, and the Bassinger, to sayen thee of my lands’ neglect, and plague is no danger to me!"

  "Ne did they."

  "Dost thou care less for me than for thy people? They are commanded to stay within your plessis wood for fear of pestilence!"

  "Watz nought my meaning, forsooth!" He found himself near to shouting in response to her wild accusations. "Faithly—ne did I wist you feared the plague so much."

  "I do."

  Her violet eyes regarded him, shaded in black lashes. She had never seemed overconcerned to Ruck. She did not seem so now. With her head lifted, her kerchief sparkling with gems, she seemed more angry than alarmed.

  "Ye does nought choose to make all haste to your lands, then," he said.

  "I fear pestilence."

  He shook his head with a slight laugh. "My lady—ne do I trow that you e’er speak me troth."

  "I do! I fear to go out, for the pestilence."

  Her lips made a strange pressing curve—an aspect there and gone, a shadow between her brows before she smoothed her face again to cool composure. Always she was a secret, impossible to read. It could have been a hidden smile or a hint of tears. But he thought it was not a smile.

  She faced him wholly. "Thou said that I may stop here, where no ill could come, so long as I wished!" She made it a challenge, as if she expected him to deny it.

  "Then do we nought go, my lady," he said, "until I know it to be safe for you."

  "Oh," she said, and closed her eyes.

  "I thought me that you would wish to depart anon."

  She made a tiny shake of her head.

  "Melanthe," he said, "will I ne’er understand thee?"

  Her eyes opened. "When I wish it."