Claudia Dain (11 page)

At their dead silence, Edward added, "Or is it an incantation?"

"Ask her," came a voice. Avice.

Edward turned; she was at his back, her dark hair hanging down to tangle with her silver girdle. Her bliaut was blue, a light, clear blue, and her pelisse was the deep green of the wood. She looked a wood nymph, haughty and elusive. Her pale blue eyes seemed almost light green in the changing light of the setting sun. He stood to face her.

"She is not here," Edward said. "You are."

"Go and find her," Avice said, looking up at him.

"Ulrich has her," he said softly, only for her ears, though Roger chuckled.

Avice said only, "Has he?"

"No man has her," Lunete said. "Or will. She is Juliane le Gel, the Lady of Frost. It is who she will remain."

"Those are just tales," Roger countered.

"Are they?" Lunete said. It was not a question, and all at that table knew it.

Chapter 6

"You are not angry?" Ulrich asked.

"Should I be?" Juliane answered.

They were out beyond the curtain wall, beyond the ramparts, beyond the stone that held up Stanora to the sky. They stood on the plain, the four of them, Ulrich swinging the lure of blood and feather, as he had promised, while Baldric called to the skies for Morgause to return.

"I was hard upon you," Ulrich said, swinging the lure around his head in easy loops.

"You were," she said, sitting her horse. "Yet mayhap not so hard as you meant to be."

He turned to look at her then, uncertain if she was aware of the double meaning in her words. He looked. She returned the look.

She knew. She knew he had fallen, if but for a moment. A single moment that would not be repeated.

"Lady," he said, grinning, "I will not break upon you."

"My lord, any breaking that will be done between us, will be done by you."

He burst out laughing. He could not stop himself and had no will to try. She was a rare one, this lady of ice, rare and wonderful. In all his jousts against skirts, never had he met a woman who played the game by the same rules as governed a man. She was bold. She was proud. She was arrogant.

Wonderful rare.

"You are not frightened of me at all, are you?" he asked, swinging the lure with a harder, faster hand.

"Nay, I am not, but do not take it hard, my lord. I am frightened of no man."

"I would not have you frightened. 'Twas never my intent."

"Nay? Shall we wager on that?" she asked, the smile in her voice ringing out against the sky.

"A wager? Against your fear? 'Twould be most strange," he said easily. "Why would I want your fear?"

"Why does any man want a woman to fear him? How else to control her will and manage her heart? Yet 'tis not uncommon strange. What is uncommon is that I fear no man and will not."

"And why do you not?" he asked, looking up at the sky. Was that not a speck of black against the distant clouds?

"Why, my lord," she answered, following his look, searching clouds gone pink in a twilight sky, "because there is nothing to fear."

"There
is
nothing to fear with Ulrich," William said as he stood at Baldric's back, his small head tilted back to face the sky.

Juliane smiled and said softly to Ulrich, pointing to William, "He is your best and greatest champion, my lord. I hope you know it."

"I do," he mouthed to her, smiling fully.

"I sense an unfair advantage," she said quietly. "Your two to my one."

"I am a warrior, my lady. I take whate'er advantage I can, when I can."

She laughed silently, holding his gaze with her own. "Fair enough," she said.

Fair enough, she said. And she was.

She pushed old fears and dark whisperings out of his thoughts, banishing all to dust in the heat of her smile and the brilliance of her beauty. She was unlike any woman he had known—her strength, her warrior's heart, a meal to be savored with raw and wolfish bites in a world of cold broth. She called forth an ease in him that he'd thought long lost, while at the same instant, she made his blood run hot and fast.

They called her cold, but she was not. It was only that she was as hard and firm as a shield when every man she met wanted only to thrust against her like a sword seeking blood.

Not cold, then, but hard. And did any man want a woman to be hard?

Aye. He did.

"She comes!" Baldric called out, breaking the moment, clearing his head. Ulrich looked hard into the sky and saw the black dot of the merlin swinging down from her pride of place, the highest point of her upward flight. "Keep up with the lure, my lord," Baldric said.

He did, his arm swinging tirelessly in a circle over his head, calling down the merlin with the scent of blood and flesh. Juliane made ready with her handful of fresh pigeon, raw and bloody, to reward the hawk for returning to her mistress and her home.

Down she came in an effortless stoop of speed and grace. Down until they could see her feathers shining in the upthrusting rays of the submerging sun. Down until her beak and talons gleamed black against the pink-gold sky. Down until she was a merlin clear to their eyes, a merlin trailing jesses in the wind and looking to feast on pigeon meat.

She broke her stoop and circled once, then came down to land at Baldric's feet. He took her on his arm, taking hold of her jesses, and then walked slowly, murmuring words of encouragement and praise, to where Juliane sat with the flesh in her hand. With the warmth of a lover, she took the bird upon her wrist, cloaked in worn, brown leather gloves this time, and smiled her welcome. She gave the flesh to the hawk freely and without restraint. Her hawk was home again.

Ulrich slowed the lure and let it drop, watching the Lady of Frost. There was warmth in her, and welcome. If a bird of prey could find its way with the lady, then surely a man could. Ulrich smiled as he wound the string that tethered the tassel of feather and flesh. The hawk would teach him, one hunter to another.

* * *

He was wearing an odd sort of smile. She did not like it. When a man smiled that way it was because he thought he knew something no one else knew. Men often thought that, though they were seldom correct.

Still, Ulrich was not quite the same as other men. That was something she was coming to know.

That kiss. That kiss upon her throat. That full, hot kiss that had been all of power and anger and hunger still throbbed upon her skin and in her blood and in her memory. Unwelcome memory. Why should one man's kiss make a mark upon her memory when no other man's had?

She had been kissed before and had done her own kissing in her turn, but never with this effect, never with this throb, this ache, this... heat. She was the frost; there was no heat in her and could be none in him.

Why this kiss and why this man? It could not be that the tales of him were more truth than lie. She knew enough about tales to know that they were little beyond pretty words strung together by hungry troubadours thinking more of dinner than of chivalry. She knew better than any the truth about tales, for was her own tale, the legend of Juliane, not extraordinary?

Of course it was. It had served her well and would serve her still.

"She seems little the worse for it," Baldric said.
"I
am surprised she came to the lure; I would have thought that, with her freedom, she would hunt."

"I think she did," Juliane said, stroking her breast feathers, "yet she returned to the lure."

"When the lure is strong enough, even hunger is not necessary. Only desire," Ulrich said.

"Desire?" Juliane asked. She had known that his smile boded no good.

"To return," Ulrich said in explanation, his look mild. Too mild. "To the hand that strokes and pets. To succor. To pleasure," he said, adding innuendo upon innuendo.

"Aye, I take your meaning," she said sharply, cutting him off. "You seem to know the mind of my bird very well."

"I have a hawk of my own," he said lightly, coming to stand at her side. "I understand what desire will drive a hawk to do."

"To hunt," she said. "Hawks live to hunt."

"So they do," he said, laying a hand upon her foot.

"Ulrich's hawk is a goshawk," William said. "A most fine hawk and well mannered."

"I am certain she is," Juliane said. "A female?"

"Of course," Ulrich said. "I would have the most ferocious of the pair, and is not the female the better hunter?"

Juliane turned her foot within the stirrup and scraped mud on Ulrich's unwelcome hand.

"Always, I would say," she said with a cold smile. "Where is your hawk now?"

"In good keeping, some ways south and west of Stanora, in Greneforde."

"I have heard of it and its lord. How do you know him? His name is great within Henry's domain."

She knew he had heard her insult, for though he was stupidly bold, Ulrich was not stupid. Yet he only smiled and knelt in the grass, wiping the mud from his band.

"I was his squire," he said.

He could have said more, of that she was certain. William le Brouillard was a name that attracted legends like grass gathered dew; that Ulrich was intimate with him was a surprise. Yet, perhaps not. Had not Ulrich a legend of his own?

Baldric came and took Morgause from her hand and put her on the block, tying the jesses, muddy and wet, carefully. William, at a look from Ulrich, was at Baldric's side, helping with the bird, admiring her. Morgause looked well pleased with herself. She had defended her lady, flown free for a private hunt, returned to the lure, and could now look forward to a quiet sleep in the mews.

Ulrich looked at his squire and smiled.

"He loves birds of the hunt," he said, standing again at her side, his hand on the bridle this time, well away from her stirrup. "He misses Ela."

"Your goshawk?"

"Aye," Ulrich said, motioning for William to help Baldric in any way he could. "We trained her together from an eyas. He has a gentle hand."

"Did William of Greneforde train you with such… care?" she asked. She had almost wanted to say "affection" but had found a different, better word. A more impersonal word.

Ulrich looked away from his squire and up at her. The light was all but gone, the hour of Compline long past. In the dim light of distant stars and sinking sun, Ulrich's eyes were as dark as sapphires. And as beautiful.

"He did," Ulrich said. "And so will I do with my own squire, and pray daily that young William will be a better man than Ulrich was and is."

"You are a good man," she said without thought. Yet was it not the truth?

"I would be good. For you," he said, holding her gaze, and then, breaking the moment, he chuckled and said, "Can this be Juliane le Gel, Lady of Frost, who speaks such wondrous kind words to me? Nay, it must be a lady of the wood and glade, a nymph from the old days who speaks so to me by the light of stars and sun commingled. With such enchantment in the very air, what hope have I?" he finished, all laughter gone from him.

They stared at each other for a few moments more. The sun departed altogether, leaving them in starlight and in the shallow, white light of a rising moon. The green of the woods turned black and the night air was full of the thrum of insects. And in the darkness, they stared upon each other and stiffened themselves against a fall.

"Black as pitch," Baldric said, breaking the enchantment. "'Twill be God's good grace if we don't break both legs and lose this bird again in finding our way back to Stanora."

Juliane looked away from the shadow that marked Ulrich and, turning her horse, said, "I could find my way to Stanora in a blinding snow."

"What care I for snow? Can you find it in the dark, that is what I ask," Baldric grumbled.

Ulrich, mounted, said to her, "He is very familiar, is he not?"

"He is," Juliane answered stiffly, looking over her shoulder at the lump that was Baldric. It was too dark for him to see her censure, which was a pity.

"He has served you long?" Ulrich asked, checking behind him where William sat upon his small horse at his place behind Ulrich. He would likely have preferred to be behind Baldric, keeping an eye upon Morgause, but that was not his place. A very well-trained squire, by the look of things.