"Sore weary I am," she murmured, leaning back against the fur-covered seat he’d made for her.
"I’ll lay you a place to bed, Your Highness." But he did not rise, unable to shake off the witching of her nearness. He was weary himself, and hungry. And when she closed her eyes, with her chin tucked down against the folds of the cloak, he could watch her without her knowing.
"You must be wondrous sleepy yourself, knight," she mumbled. "It’s my turn to stay waking."
"No," he said quietly. "I will keep you, lady."
A faint smile curved her lips. She let go a long, deep sigh.
* * *
Melanthe slept easy against the hard lump of the saddle as she had never slept in silk and featherbeds. She was vaguely aware of awakening sometime in the dark, with the knight arranging furs and a softer cushion for her head. She knew him by the light chink of his armor and the scent of orange and leather and metal as he tucked something soft beneath her cheek—Ruck, she thought with cloudy fondness, and felt pleased and secure.
"Thank you," she said, but if he heard her he did not answer. For a few instants she saw him through leaden eyes, down beside her on his heels, with one knee pressed into the sand, the firelight gleaming on the curved metal of his armor.
You will keep me...She dreamed of his dark silhouetted figure beside her all night, and slept sound in the wilderness.
* * *
There was no start or dread in waking. The first thing she saw was Gryngolet, and the next was her knight, squatting at the river edge bare-chested, splashing water against his face. With his back to her, he shuddered in the cold like a wet dog, flinging droplets from his fingers as he whooshed a harsh breath of air between his teeth. The steam made a frosty curl against the bright river and vanished.
He held a razor to his face, and then cursed softly. Melanthe saw a scarlet welling of blood mingle with the wetness at the edge of his jaw.
She sat up. "What are you about?"
He startled and grabbed up his tunic, pulling it over his head as he turned. The linen clung to his chest, showing damp through it, and the dark lump of some amulet he wore. Blood from the place he had nicked himself trickled down to a pale band of reddish-orange that ringed his throat, where sweat had rusted his mail and stained the linen and his skin.
"My lady—your pardon—I thought you heedless in slumber."
She squinted at the sun overhead, surprised at the height of it. "Have I slept so long!"
He turned, gathering up his surcoat and armor. "Now I’ll go a way off, my lady, and groom my horse."
She realized that he was offering her a discreet spell of privacy. As he turned and walked away, he wiped at the nick on his jaw and smeared bloody fingerprints on the hem of his linen shirt.
"What you’re dire in need of, Sir Ruck," Melanthe murmured into the furs, "is a neat, goodly housewife to love you." She smiled, sinking down in her warm coverings. "I’ll arrange it for you."
From the river she heard the dim conversation of ducks and geese. She pushed her nose out of the furs, welcoming the chill morning air. It made the moment real, an awakening from deep nightmare into life: this was sure fact, this cold morning, this river and woods and this muddy sand, the small smoking flame in a circle of gray and black ash, the curling rinds of oranges on a cloth spread on the ground—no servants to distrust, no Allegreto, nor slim daggers or poison, no Navona or Riata or Monteverde. Only her knight nearby to keep her from all harm.
In the warm security of it she flipped the fur back over her cold nose and closed her eyes. Her body relaxed in the soft haven. She lay slipping, half dreaming, letting the silent river take her safely again.
* * *
Ruck donned his armor, watered Hawk, checked the horse’s hooves and curried his coat. He took his time, yawning, lingering until he was certain that he could not possibly shame either of them by returning while she was still in the midst of her dressing.
As he led the horse back, he made sure that they raised a noise, rattling dead reeds as they passed through. He called softly, not caring to advertise their presence too much abroad, neither to outlaws nor to the great flocks of ducks that floated and fed near shore. He was looking forward to breaking his fast.
On the sandy bank where they had made camp between the water and the coppice-alders, there was no sign of her. A spark of alarm flared in him. He dropped Hawk’s lead and strode forward.
Just as he drew a breath to shout for her, he glanced down. He froze half a step from treading on where she lay, still wrapped about in furs and cushions.
He gazed at her, incredulous. She had gone back to sleep! Here in this desolate place, on a saddle, as if at any moment they might not be set upon by perils human or inhuman.
He sat down hard on a hummock. He had never in his life known man nor woman to sleep so much as the Princess Melanthe.
He put his jaw on his fists. He waited. As the shadows grew shorter, the ducks floated past and flew on, at first a few pairs, and then covies, and then whole flocks, as if at some soundless call to the distance. The noise of their wings resounded across the water, feathered thunder. The gyrfalcon roused eagerly, standing first on one foot and then the other upon the bowed stave, but its mistress did not wake.
After a long time Ruck picked up a pebble and aimed it for a point a few feet away from her head.
It hit the sand with a light plop. She didn’t move.
His belly growled. He tried a slightly larger pebble, a little closer.
* * *
Melanthe dreamed it was beginning to rain. She heard the single drops and felt their airy impact on her coverings. A faint stinging drop struck her hair and she jerked awake.
She sat up, scrambling to pull her hood over her head, looking about for shelter.
On a grassy tussock a little distance from her, she saw the knight hastily lower his hand. He stood up, flashing her a look as guilty as a thieving boy caught up a pear tree, before he fell to one knee and lowered his face in formal respect.
There was not a cloud in the cold sky. The tanned folds of the fur overtop her were littered with tiny pebbles, as if it had rained stones.
"Knave!" she gasped in laughing outrage. "You think to cower behind this meek bow?" She threw off the furs and scooped up a handful of sand, sending it toward him in an extravagant spray.
He flinched back, lifting his arm against the shower. She sat up on her knees and dug both hands into the ground. Her second discharge spewed over him, making him duck his head. Melanthe took advantage, laughing and scooting forward, kicking up a relentless cloud of sand with her hands as he tried to rise and step back, his arms raised to defend himself. Awkward in his armor, he tripped over his spurs, falling on his seat with a surprised grunt.
She gave a hoot of victory and tried to stand in preparation to launch a triumphant volley from both hands. Her cloak tangled underfoot and she lunged forward, saving herself and losing her balance, catching on the cloak in half steps as she tottered wildly. She loosed the sand, sprawling atop him with a cry of merriment, grit in her mouth and under her palms, a bruising impact against hard metal. The jar knocked him back against the tussock as they fell together.
It took the breath from her. She blinked her eyes open, pushing herself up against his shoulders.
He lay with a look of utter consternation, his face close to hers. No humor answered her amusement. He was frozen still beneath her hands.
She felt the short rise and fall of his breath under her. Dirty sand dusted his cheek and brow. His green eyes, so close to hers, refused to see her. He stared past her and tightened his mouth, as if she were some enemy set to slay him.
A terrible abandon seized her. She could do anything here in the empty wilderness; she did not have to lie—
She bent and kissed his mouth, fierce as Gryngolet, senseless and violent as Allegreto in a temper, forcing herself on him. He made a despairing sound, half turning; but she followed, letting her weight fall against the rigid cur
ve of his breastplate beneath the tunic, sliding her hands up beside his head.
He was breathing hard into her mouth, kissing her and pulling back at the same time, opposing his own action. He might have pushed her off with a fraction of his strength, but Melanthe held him with only her fingers spread in his hair.
She softened her touch, brushing her lips featherlight where she had pressed ruthlessly a moment before, exploring his jaw, tasting grit and dirt and the faint, rusty note of blood. He held motionless, arrested in a straining tension.
She pulled back a little. His mouth was drawn into tautness. His eyes glittered with water, the black lashes spiking together. He brought his hand up and pushed back her hood. He touched her hair, lightly, and curled his fist and dropped it.
"I beseech you," he uttered from deep in his throat. He closed his eyes, "I beseech you. Lady—I cry peace."
"A bargain," she said. "One kiss of you—and I’ll let you go."
"No." He moistened his lips. "I can’t play a courtier’s game." He would not look at her. "I can’t, lady, for God’s love."
"Why, monkish man? Because you’re my servant? One kiss. I command you."
"One!" He gave a bitter laugh and laid his head back. He squeezed his eyes hard, baring his teeth like a man in pain. A drop rolled from the corner of his lashes down his temple. "Kill me now, my lady, and let me live in Hell, and you will be kinder."
She pushed herself from him and sat back. Immediately he rolled away, shoving to his feet. Without looking at her he walked to the furs and hauled his saddle from beneath them. He shouldered it, carrying it to his horse.
Melanthe looked down at her palms. Sand clung there, the same sand that seasoned her tongue with the taste of him and cleaved in ragged arcs to the back of his tunic where he’d lain pressed against the ground. She blushed hot.
To fling sand at him—to press her mouth against his as if she could be part of him by doing it—to force herself upon him—the clumsiness appalled her.
The wilderness abruptly seemed a strange surrounding, and herself stranger yet.
She had known that he wanted her. A hundred men had wanted her. She trifled gracefully with them. In smooth gallantries she had heard her beauty praised, her hair adored and her lips cherished, her eyes compared to jewels and stars. Every gift and finery had been proffered, extravagant self-destruction threatened if she withheld her favors. She toyed and smiled and refused, binding them on a velvet leash.
But she dared not look in mirrors; she had never been certain if she was truly so tempting in herself, or only the irresistible symbol of her power and position.
And she had not known that she wanted him.
Until now, when she had gazed down at his face, into another kind of mirror—and thought that all before had been the mere shadow of this desire.
She stood, shaken and mortified. He didn’t look at her, but went about his work with grim concentration, as if absorbed in it beyond thought.
She brushed sand from her cloak and strode toward the high reeds and blessed privacy.
Ruck stilled as he heard her go, sitting on his heels above the soft furs where she’d slept. He bent his head.
His soul seemed near to shattering within him. With laughter she smashed his shield to splinters. She lay upon him, careless as a child—reckless as a whore.
He touched his jaw where she had touched it, drew his fist down his own skin where her mouth had brushed him, and then stared at his knuckles.
As long as she held aloof and disdained him, he was safe. Her tempers and arrogance defended him; her station was a wall between them even in this desert; if he felt himself weakening, he had only to recall that she liked not rough, crude men.
But nothing could save him if she was to cast this spell of laughter. That was where her power lay, he thought, not in charms and incantations—she had laughed at Lancaster and brought a king’s son to his knees; she laughed now and Ruck was lost, helpless as one of Circe’s beasts.
And he hungered for his downfall. The ache in his belly was nothing to the tension of waiting, to the hot pain of love’s appetite. A lance through his body was nothing to it.
He closed his eyes. He’d sworn himself to the Devil’s daughter. Thirteen years—ill-omened number—and she came for him again.
TEN
The bird must be fed. That demand went unspoken. All the gems on the princess’s gauntlet and lure, all the books left behind in her chests, all her furs and pearl-encrusted gowns were not worth the price of the white gyrfalcon. Ruck’s empty stomach, the question of where safety lay, the awareness and awkwardness between the two of them—all of that diminished before the first necessity of properly keeping the falcon.
She had not been fed for two days; she was in highest flying condition, restless, showing herself ready to hunt by her roused feathers and fretful talons. Ruck had some hope of what was left, after the falcon had taken its reward, although by now he thought that the princess must be hungry again, too. He waited silently while she prepared, changing the jesses and examining the leash and hood.
The huge flocks that had floated so close early in the dawn had vanished but for a few stragglers. In spite of her command of the falcon’s lure, he was not certain what sort of hunter the princess might be in a true quest for food—her morning indolence did not promise great skill or experience of more than ladies’ crossbows and deer-parks. But he was no master falconer himself. He looked on their situation beside the wide estuary with misgiving—it seemed to him that the fowl must flush away from shore, and the strike be made inevitably over water.
He had once been in the courtyard when Lancaster and his brothers had returned from a day of flying a score of high-bred falcons at crane and heron. Among the large and colorful party, there had been dripping servants, damp courtiers, wet dogs, and great good humor—on a temperate day with the castle and a warm fire at hand.
Here they had no dogs or servants to retrieve if the gyrfalcon lost its prey over the depths. And as the only courtier present, Ruck felt he would be exceedingly fortunate if he didn’t have to swim.
Perhaps she had witchcraft to enchant the quarry. She seemed confident enough as she swerved and bent ahead of him through the reeds and coppice, carrying the hooded falcon. The hawking-pouch hung over her shoulder, gems shining under her cloak as it flared, so that as she moved she seemed some Valkyrie of ancient dreams, a silent war-maiden striding to battle. Ruck moved quietly behind. He had taken off his spurs and stripped himself of plate and mail for stealth, wearing only his leather gambeson and sword.
Beside a brushy bank she paused, staring out through a dense clump of leafless alders. Ruck saw the pair of mallards floating fifty feet from shore. What he did not see was any hope that they would flush in the desirable direction.
"These will do," she murmured, so low he could barely hear. She slanted a glance at him. "Look you to bide there, in the farthest reeds, for to await my sign. We won’t delay until she towers up so high this time.
He inspected the stand of reeds, gauging a hidden path to it. "What sign?"
"A blackbird’s call."
"Lady"—he squinted through the branches and whispered barely above the sound of his own breath—"have you a sorcery to direct them?"
She gave him such a look askance that he felt chagrined and added in haste, "Were I to swim, I may sink or take ill and leave my lady without protector."
Her lilac gaze seemed to cut a hole through him. "Or get you wet!" she mocked.
It didn’t seem such a jest to him. He muttered tautly, "The clothes I wear be all I have, my lady."
Her lip curled. "So I won’t watch you strip, monkish man, do you dislike it."
She had not the modesty of a stoat. He set his jaw, feeling the burn of mortification—worse, feeling his own body’s instant reaction to such words. Even she seemed to feel it; her eyes sliding abruptly away from his.
She nodded toward a layer of cobbles and gravel in the sand bank. "You’re
the master stone-hurler of our little company. Cast one up so it comes down beyond the ducks. Perhaps it hies them toward us."
Ruck thought even a mild charm had a better chance than that. "Lady—only a natural magic. A small one. God will forgive us."
She lifted her fine eyebrows. "I perceive you’re monkish only when it agrees with you."
"I am no monk," Ruck muttered, having rapidly tired of that nick-name.
"No more am I witch." She stared at him, her eyes level. "I await your readiness."
Ruck set his jaw and squatted by the bank, prying out two cobbles that filled his hand, round and heavy to land with a generous splash. Bent low, he moved out of the coppice and down amongst the reeds, parting them slowly as he passed through. His feet sank into sandy mud; he had to lift each one carefully to avoid a loud sucking. Cold water quickly began to seep into his boots.
* * *
Melanthe had a secret sympathy for his disinclination to enter the cold river—though she would have smothered herself in a hair shirt before she would have said so aloud. But she had no magic beyond her wits and Gryngolet’s to please him. The falcon had experience enough to wait until her quarry was over land to strike. The ducks, though, would likely flush into the wind which came down the wide length of the river, and, if they were wary and wise, fly within its compass, never leaving the safety of water below them. Fortune had provided mallards, big fowl confident of their own size and speed, furnishing the only hope that the quarry might chance an overland passage to escape. They belonged to Gryngolet then, for in level flight she could outfly any other bird under God’s Heaven.
Impossible to guess how far away the kill might occur in that case. In more common circumstance—a well-mounted party with falconers, beaters, servants, and hounds—following the gyrfalcon on such a cross-country chase was a joy. But that was sport; the catch less to be admired than the elegance of the flight, the valor of the bird. They hunted in earnest now. Gryngolet must make a quick slaying, or there would be no dinner and perhaps no falcon, either, once she was beyond sight and sound of the lure.
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