Shadowheart

by Laura Kinsale

  The rod took the golden knight flat across his belly. In a crash of plated metal he seemed to fly, bent double for a suspended instant across the lance as the green destrier sat down on its haunches, scrambling against the force of the butt end jammed between the Green Sire’s thigh and the pommel.

  Melanthe found herself on her feet with everyone else. She stared at the fallen knight stretched on his back on the ground. When he moved, rising drunkenly, his golden armor dimmed by dust, she sat down. The green destrier wheeled and galloped after the loose horse, scattering the attendants as if they were colorful leaves.

  Leaning to catch the reins, her champion flipped them over the black’s head just as his mount danced away from a vicious kick. The squire led the captured horse out of the gate. Melanthe looked away from the dirty golden challenger as he swayed to his feet, shaking off his attendants’ aid.

  The Green Sire sat fixed upon his horse, gazing toward her.

  The nameless challenger drew his sword, shouting within his helm. Still her knight did not move, but stared toward Melanthe. The great helm showed only menace, its eyeslits black and empty, but she saw beyond, saw a man on his knees in the great hall, looking up at her with intense entreaty. She allowed herself no change of expression, gazing steadily back.

  The red-gold challenger shouted again. Her knight turned and swung down from his horse, jerking his sword from its sheath. His squire ran up to him with his shield and bascinet helm, but the challenger was already running forward, aiming a great swing with a sword that took the sun to its tip, shining murderous steel.

  The hunchback ducked away, dragging the destrier with him. Her knight met the blow with an upward cut; the weapons rang and the crowd cheered. Neither man gave way as the blows fell, denting helmets and armor. They fought as barbarians fought, without mercy.

  The golden knight slashed at her champion’s neck, killing blows, pivoting and swinging back again. He landed a strike that made the Green Sire stumble sideways, but her knight seemed better at mischance even than advantage, turning his swordhand down and slicing sideways, beneath his adversary’s arm, cutting through the vambrace strap. The challenger’s plate flapped loose, exposing vulnerable chain mail above his elbow.

  He didn’t appear to realize it, whipping his sword again toward his opponent’s helmet. Under the force of the blow, the green knight’s sword seemed to fly from his hand, but then it was in his left as if he’d snatched it from the air. He brought it overhead, striking an arc downward, the sharpened edge aimed for his adversary’s outstretched arm with a force that would slice through chain mail and bone alike.

  Sunlight flashed on the broad side of the blade. Melanthe closed her eyes. She heard it hit—and the golden knight’s grunt of pain was audible an instant before the throng burst into noisy reaction.

  She blinked her eyes open. The challenger was hauling himself up off the ground, but he couldn’t seem to gain any purchase on his sword. The Green Sire stood over him, looking up again at Melanthe. She had expected to see the blood-gold arm severed and covered in real gore. But it was still attached to its owner—only rendered useless. The golden knight was groping for his sword with his left hand, his other hanging ineffectually at his side.

  The marshal had stepped forward, poised with his white arrow, but the fallen challenger shouted furiously at him. The official hesitated, his hand wavering, and then bowed and stepped back.

  The red-gold knight rolled, pushing himself to his feet with his good arm. Melanthe’s champion took a step toward her, the black eyeslits in his helm still focused in her direction. She could see his heavy breathing at the edges of his hauberk.

  He lifted his hand, palm up in petition.

  Melanthe saw the red-gold opponent achieve his feet. He shouted, his words obscured and echoing within the helm, and raised his sword with his left arm.

  She ignored her champion’s appeal, staring at him coldly.

  The challenger ran forward. The Green Sire turned, met the sword, and threw it off. He thrust the tip of his weapon at the golden knight’s helm, catching the visor’s edge, shoving the whole helmet upward, half off. Blinded, the other man ducked away, flailing his wounded arm and his sword to reset the helm, but another blow took it completely off.

  It rolled across the ground. A great roar swelled from the crowd. Lancaster stood swaying in the middle of the dusty list. One of his attendants grabbed the helmet and ran toward him to replace it.

  Her green knight turned yet again to Melanthe. He lifted his sword and shoved his helmet off his head with both hands; throwing the armor away from him. He pushed back his mail coif. Sweat streaked his face, stained with rust from inside the helm, marking the edge of his curling, plastered black hair. He didn’t look toward Lancaster, but still to her, breathing in great deep gusts.

  She met her champion’s silent plea with calm indifference. He closed his eyes and turned his face upward, like a man under torture.

  The duke rushed at him. Without helm, the Green Sire came on guard. He ducked his liege’s left-handed swing and pressed close inside the other man’s reach, nullifying the lack of a helmet. Lancaster tried to grapple him with both arms. The duke’s sword cut awkwardly across the back of the Green Sire’s head, spreading crimson on black curls and mail. The blades locked at their hilts, crossed, pointing at the sky, shaking with the force of each man’s strength.

  Lancaster made a hard shove, turning his sword inward between them, trying to slash it into the green knight’s unprotected face. The tip sliced her champion’s cheek, but he used the sudden motion to thrust his elbow back and up in one vicious lunge, ramming the guard against Lancaster’s fist, breaking the duke’s hold on his weapon. The duke made a desperate recovery, trying to retain his blade. The sword dropped, the tip lodging for an instant against the earth just as Lancaster caught it. As he stumbled, the Green Knight’s blade came up broadside against his helmet.

  He fell sideways over the lodged sword, his exclamation of agony audible above the noise as he hit the ground on his injured side. He rolled onto his back.

  The Green Sire stood above his liege, sword point at his throat. Lancaster lay weaponless, injured, felled—and still made no surrender. The crowd held its breath so still that the panting of the two knights seemed the loudest sound.

  Her champion looked up at her, holding the sword steady. The blood on his face and hair was darkening, gathering dust; he looked like a devil risen from some pit, imploring her to save him.

  "My lady!" The words were an exhalation of despair.

  Melanthe lifted her plume and fanned herself. She laughed aloud in the silence, so they could all hear.

  "Yes, you may have pity on him," she said, with a mocking bow of her head.

  Her knight pulled his sword from the duke’s throat and flung it half across the list. As Lancaster sat up, the Green Sire fell on his knees before his prince, head bowed. He pressed his gauntleted hands over his eyes. Slowly, like a tree falling, he leaned lower and lower, until his hands and forehead touched the ground.

  "Pax, my dread lord." His muffled voice was agonized. "Peace unto you."

  Painfully Lancaster hauled himself to his feet, standing against the support of one of his attendants. Still in his helmet, he seemed to overlook the man in the dirt at his feet. He searched out Melanthe on the scaffold and then turned his back to her, walking unsteadily out of the lists with his attendants clustering about him.

  Melanthe rose and descended the steps. As she walked toward the gate, youths and men-at-arms and onlookers parted, gazing at her. She moved to the center of the dusty lists, where the green knight still knelt with his face to the ground, blood matting his hair and staining his neck.

  "Green Sire," she said mildly.

  He sat back, staring for a long moment at the hem of her gown. Then he wiped his gauntlet across his eyes, smearing blood with rust. He turned his face up to her.

  All light of worship and chivalry was gone from his look. He was still
breathing hard, his teeth pressed together to contain it.

  She knelt and reached for his right arm, tying the jesses about the vambrace and mail. The heat of his body radiated from metal armor. Gryngolet’s varvels made a silvery plink against his arm, the precious stones casting tiny sprays of light that played over steel, coalescing green and white as the rings came to rest.

  On a level with him, she looked up from her task into his eyes. She could not have said what she saw there—hatred or misery or bewilderment—but it was surely not love that stared back at her from under his begrimed black lashes.

  From the persistent tickle of recollection, memory sprang sudden and full blown into her mind.

  Once, long ago, for a whim, she had pulled a thorn from this lion’s paw. She remembered him, she remembered when and where, an image stirred more by his height and bearing and the baffled agony in his face than by his features. Just so he had submitted, disarmed of all defense, as they took away his wife and money from him.

  He repaid her today, then, for that emerald on his helm. Whatever precarious place he had striven to gain in Lancaster’s heart, with his fighting skills and command of men and vow to find glory, was vanished now. He knelt before her like a man dazed.

  Apology sprang to her lips, regret for his maimed honor, his lost prince. It hovered on her tongue.

  "You’re a fool," she murmured instead, "to think a man can serve two masters." She lifted a varvel and let it fall against his armor, smiling. "A splendid fool. Come into my service to stay, if you desire."

  He stared at her. A sound like a sob escaped him, a deeper breath, harsh through his teeth.

  Melanthe rose. She extended her hand, touching his shoulder to make a gesture for the crowd. "Rise."

  His squire brought the destrier forward. They smelled of sweat and dust and hot steel, the knight and his mount, perfumed with blood and combat. When he had mounted, she looked up at him.

  "If you’re vassal to me," she said, "I’ll love and value you as Lancaster never could." And with that snare set, she turned before he answered, leaving his hunchbacked squire to lead him from the lists.

  * * *

  Her greyhound strained against its leash as Melanthe felt her heart strain for the open country. She’d seen herons and ducks by the river; yesterday Lancaster had given her leave to take what she could—and if he regretted it now, she was beyond having to care. She turned her palfrey in the castle’s empty courtyard, watched only by her own retinue and a few dumbstruck servants. Outside the walls the sound of the tournament was a distant rise and fall of temper, the tensions between soldiers and squires and townsmen flaring. Melanthe cared nothing for that—she only wanted escape from the tumult, releasing her own tensions in a flying gallop over the countryside with Gryngolet aloft before her.

  "Away!" She held Gryngolet on her wrist, urging the flustered falconers to haste. Across the bridge and through the barbican—and she could turn away from tournaments and courts and crowds and pretend she was alone with the open sky. Alone, as Gryngolet flew, but for the escort of hunters and falconers that chased the bird’s wild courses.

  Melanthe, too, was followed. Allegreto and Cara and a Riata rode behind her; Lancaster and Gian Navona and the ghost of Ligurio hounded her; and another hunted her now—the image of a man in green armor, bending slowly to the ground with his hands covering his eyes.

  All of them her constant companions, ever in pursuit, never lost to sight. Spur her horse as she might, she was only free as the falcon flew free—until she killed, or was called back again to the brilliant jewels and feathers of her lure.

  FOUR

  A witch, she was.

  Ruck stood beside one of the shadowed columns in the cathedral, staring blindly at the scaffolding beneath a newly installed stained glass window.

  He felt robbed. He felt utterly pillaged.

  Where was his lady, his bright unblemished lady, loveliest of all, who made the blood and boredom and solitary days worth bearing? He hadn’t asked that she be with him. He’d never thought he was that worthy, but he had held himself to her standard—when they laughed at him, when he hurt for a woman’s body to the point of despair, he cleaved to the impossible measure that she set by her own perfection.

  He had dreamed about her in his bed or on the cold ground; he saw her beside the Virgin in the churches. He even imagined her with Isabelle in the nunnery, praying for his soul, both of them together, both of them the same, fair blue eyes and fair blond tresses and a face too lovely for any woman on earth...

  He turned his head and rested his bandaged temple against the pillar. The cut across his skull burned. His cheek stung and throbbed in spite of Pierre’s salve.

  The reality of Princess Melanthe had been like a bucket of ice-cold water thrown in his face. He was angry at himself, but he reserved his deepest fury and disgust for her—the witch—she probably had ensorcelled him. How else could he have managed to forget what she was?

  The Arch-Fiend’s whore, that was what she was, curling like a silken tiger on the bed with her Satan’s cub caressing her. He could not even find the image of fairness anymore. It had vanished from his soul, blasted by the sight of sable hair and eyes the color of unearthly twilight, the deep strange inner hue of hellish flowers. He recognized them now—but he had not remembered them so vivid-dark, or her coldness so numbing.

  She had laughed. He could hear it still, like an echo in the empty cold air of the cathedral, floating above the endless murmur of the priests’ chantries. The sound was branded on him. He had stood with swordpoint to the throat of his gallant liege, who had fought on wounded, unbowed, with no thought of submission—and she had laughed.

  The windows glowed with the last faint light of day, spreading colored radiance over the floors and columns, subtle warmth in the soaring blackness. Beyond the cathedral walls he could hear faint sounds of celebration. Ruck stayed to himself, using the pillar for a prop when his cushion grew too uncomfortable for his knees.

  Outside of duty and the exercise yard, he spent most of his waking hours in chapels or cathedrals or churches of one sort or another. At first it had been the hardest effort of his knighthood—tedious to the point of screaming agony—but after thirteen years he’d come to peace with the cold stone spaces and the fact that his knees could not support hours on the cushion. He stood now more than he knelt, sparing his frame for the field and fighting, sparing his soul with a regular confession of this small sin. He never even got a real penance, the priests being sympathetic in the matter.

  He seldom prayed during his hours in church. Isabelle, he’d thought, would be doing that for him better than he could for himself. He’d often imagined her at it, her face alight and the tears flowing, the other holy women ranged behind her. He felt closer to her in the churches and chapels, where he could banish the faint fear that she never thought about him at all. Sometimes he envisioned her in nun’s robes; more often in a sparkling gown of green and silver—and the lonelier the road, the bloodier the combat, the more beautifully and brilliantly she glowed, almost as real as if she stood in the shadows holding her falcon.

  It came as a sickening jolt to him now to realize just how often he had confused them in that way. His wife and his nameless liege lady—they had somehow across the years, within the stark isolation of his heart, melded together into a single female image—and he had spent his adult life in rigid devotion to her, celibate, devout, courteous, refusing to stoop to dishonor and bribes of money to win the favor of his prince.

  Never had he been invited into his lord’s inner chamber—yet he had waited patiently for God to send his chance. He had risen slowly in Lancaster’s service, earning his place in spite of the half-concealed amusement. He would lead men-at-arms and archers against the French, he would play at unicorn if he must; dragons he would hunt when his liege commanded. He knew the other knights preferred him safely away from court on such commissions. He was mad in action, so they claimed, dangerous, unreliable. By which
they meant that he gave no quarter, demanding surrender when surrender galled them—the only way he had been taught to fight. But he had never lost the certainty that he would find a means of proving himself and winning his lord’s boon.

  He ached with grief and anger. It appalled him to realize what he’d done, how the years had gone by, how he’d deluded himself and confused her with his pure sweet wife. Tainting his memory, his only connection to Isabelle, who even now must be devoting herself to solitary worship. He was sure that she must have taken vows of seclusion and silence in the convent, for even though he sent money and tender greetings every year to Saint Cloud, she never wrote him back. He only received an acknowledgment of his gift from the abbess, with no word from Isabelle even by proxy.

  Her loss seemed a fresh wound now, stinging as sharp as the cuts on his cheek and head. He missed her—and he could hardly recall her face. All he saw clearly were purple hell-flower eyes and a white flash of skin; all he felt plainly were wrath and anguish and the degrading burn of his body’s appetite in spite of everything. He struggled to remember Isabelle, to rededicate himself to the purer image, and could not. She was lost now, by his own folly, as lost as the bright illusion that had sustained him.

  Outside the bell rang to signal curfew. Ruck leaned down and retrieved his cushion, scowling at the worn white threads of the embroidered falcon that adorned it. He thought of having it ripped out and replaced with the azure ground and black wolf of Wolfscar, but to take up his own true arms now, in disillusionment instead of honor, seemed the final defilement of his dreams.

  He left the falcon be. He left all of his green-and-silver as it was, determined to wear it as a constant reminder to himself of how a woman—this woman—could twist a man’s mind into the Fiend’s knots.

  * * *

  As he pushed out the great wooden door onto the stone porch, his head aching, a hard hand cuffed his shoulder. Three guards in Lancaster’s livery stood just beside him. "You’re summoned, my lord," one of them said. His tone was curt, but not hostile.