For My Lady's Heart (19 page)

Ruck picked up the fallen toll. Its feathers were battered, one broken.
The big diamond had fallen off, and emeralds hung loose by metallic threads.
He looked about him on the ground, searching for the lost gem. When he saw a
white glint in the sand, he pulled off his glove and reached down.

“Keep it. It is thine,” she said as he rose with the diamond between his
thumb and fingers. “A token.” She was smiling. Glowing, her eyes shining
with tears of elation. “So thou wilt not forget her flight.”

The gem lay in his palm, a gulf between them, a distance beyond
comprehension—so careless was she of such stones, to hazard them as
decoration for a falcon’s lure, to give them in casual remembrance—as
generous as the greatest lord Ruck could imagine. He did not know if the
king himself did such things.

“My lady, I need me no token to mind such a sight. As help me God on
high, I shall ne’er forgetten it.”

“Ne the less,” she said, “keep it.” She turned her attention to the
falcon, leaving him with his hand extended.

He felt vaguely insulted, though there was nothing slighting in her
manner, or in the gift itself. It was the first time she had given any sign
that he was due anything at all for his service.

Not that he served her for a reward. He did not expect or wish any
recompense for honor. But she did not endow him for his fidelity; she only
gave a token of remembrance as a gracious lady might—and that made him more
sullen yet, for she obviously expected nothing in exchange. Why should she,
when she would see that he had naught to his name that was worthy of a lady?

He watched her cherishing the gyrfalcon and remembered the tall fair
Northman who had given the bird to her. A man of sense would have felt
uneasy—that stupendous flight could have been sorcery—but instead all he
felt was churlish. He thought of what he had: his horse, his sword, the
jeweled bells and jesses that were her own present. The field armor that he
wore. His other set, the ornate tournament trappings that had cost him his
first five years of ransoms and jousts, and bore the emerald she had given
him .. . left behind for bandits to plunder.

He had nothing deserving of her notice that had not come to him at her
own hest, and so he was angry at her.

Holding himself stiffly courteous, he said, “I crave no gift of you,
before God, my lady—and naught will I taken. My whole care is for your well
faring. Go we on to a safe place tomorrow.”

She turned from the falcon, but did not lift her eyes to his. For a
moment she watched the long wind ripples on the river. Her face altered, the
warmth in her passing to an ivory stillness. “There was a castle,” she said.
“And a town.”

In the deep oppression of her spirit, he had not thought she had
perceived them.

“Lyerpool,” he said quietly.

“Will we go there?”

Below the river’s surface, beneath the sparkle of the sunlight, the
depths lay black and unplumbed, like old fears.

“Nay, my lady. Nought there, I think.”

“They died of pestilence, did they not?” Her voice made a queer upward
break. “The monks.”

“Yea, my lady.”

She sat down on a bank of sand, staring at the falcon. “I brought it,”
she said. “I have brought it back.”

All of his suspicions rushed over him again. The clinging mist, her
secrets, her dark hair and purple eyes—hellmarks, drawing and repelling him
at once. A changeling. A witch.

“I teased and beleaguered Allegreto with it so.” She held the falcon on
her fist, biting her lower lip, rocking faintly. “Now he’s dead, and
pestilence comes. It is God’s judgment on me.”

Ruck’s mouth flattened as his mistrust deflated into exasperation. “Your
Highness, I ne think me that God would bringen down plague on all mankind
only for your foolish wickedness.”

For a long moment she remained rocking, each sway a little greater than
the last, until she was nodding her head. She began to smile again. “Be my
sins so trifling? By hap I am not to blame for plague, but only for the
excess of lice this winter.”

“Certain it is that you are to blame for our present state,” he muttered.
“My liege lady.”

She stood, taking up the falcon. “Thou art impudent, knight.”

“If my lady japes at sin and pestilence, is her servant to be less bold?”

“Avoi, I wist thou art but a saucy knave, hid in a loyal servant’s
clothes!”

His moment of insurrection already mortified him. He became very
interested in putting the fetters on Hawk. “Lady, there be no humor in it.
We ne haf no escort, my lady, nor sufficient food to eaten, nor now’r safe
to go.”

“Why then,” she said, “I will call thee Ruck by name, sir, and thou wilt
call me Little Ned, thy varlet and squire. Gryngolet will be known as
‘Horse,’ and the horse will continue as Hawk, that we mayen have a pleasant
balance. And we will all hunt dragons together.”

His mouth tightened. He could not tell by her tone if she was making jest
of him. He held out the stone. “Nill I nought accept this. My lady should
stowen the thing safe away.”

She ignored it. “Yea, Ruck and Little Ned and Horse and Hawk.” She was
suddenly smiling, beautiful again, beautiful and ordinary at once with her
smile. He wondered if he would ever resolve on which.

“My lady’s brain is fevered,” he said.

“ ‘Ned,’ if thou please. Thou art to put a degree more of contempt in thy
voice. ‘Ned, thou worthless churl, thy witless brain is fevered!’”

“My lady—”

“Ned.”

“I ne cannought call you Ned, my lady!”

“Pray, why not?”

He lifted his eyes to Heaven, unable to compose an answer to such a
question. Retrieving the falcon-pouch, he dropped the stone and lure inside.

“Tom, then,” she said. “I will answer me to Tom, and on hunting of
dragons will we wenden. Thou art our master and guide, Ruck, for thy
experience of fiery worms and diverse other monsters.”

“We nill nought hunt dragons, my lady,” he said impatiently.

“We have nowhere safe to go. Nowhere but wilderness and wasteland empty
of people.” She paused with the gyrfalcon still on her fist, her body
shaking again with that tremor that was too deep for cold. But she smiled,
her eyes dry, fierce as the falcon in her spirit. “So say me true, Ruck—
what better business hast thou on the morrow than to fare with me for to
slayen dragons?”

Cara could not control the shivers. It was not the cold, though the air
in the abandoned smithy was cold enough. It was that she wore the clothes of
a dead woman, and that Gian Navona’s bastard son kept looking at her as if
he expected her to stop her shaking. She was terrified of Allegreto; she
wished he had left her with the bandits—no, she did not wish that— God save
her, she was going mad. She would wander the countryside, tearing her hair
and crying at the moon in grief. It was her penance, just vengeance upon her
for trying to poison her mistress.

She wept for herself and for Elena. Little Elena, mischievous and quiet
by turns, Elena with her ears too big and her chin too pointed and still
pretty—Cara loved her and she was doomed, as the princess had said, because
Cara had not succeeded at her task. But Allegreto told her that Princess
Melanthe was dead anyway, of plague. Would the Riata accept that?

No. It would not be enough. There would never be enough. She saw past it
now, saw what her mistress had meant—why should the Riata loose their grip
on her, when they could keep Elena, when they had such a hold as love upon
Cara to make her do their bidding?

“Cease this weeping,” Allegreto said tautly. He looked at her again and
stood up from the block of iron he had been resting upon. Even in the
bandit’s dull woolens, he had his father’s arrogant nobility and the grace
of a fallen angel. His legs were muddy to the knees from floundering in the
bogs.

“I’m sorry. I’m trying.” She held her fist hard against her mouth in the
attempt. Another sob escaped.

“Stupid Monteverde bitch,” he said.

“I’m sorry!” she cried. “I’m sorry I’m Monteverde! I’m sorry I can’t stop
weeping! I don’t know why you troubled to save anyone but yourself from
those thieving brutes!”

He stared at her sullenly. Then he lowered his dark lashes and looked
away. “Are you rested? I want to go on.”

Hunger gnawed at her, and her legs were cramped and aching. Her bare feet
bled in the dead woman’s rough shoes. “Go, then. It’s nothing to me.”

He leaned over her and jerked her chin up. “What is this— another puling,
weeping Monteverde? Christ, I wonder that your father found the vigor to get
you on your mother. By hap he didn’t, but let a Navona do the work.”

Cara tore her chin from his fingers, scrambling to her feet. “Don’t touch
me. And I would not brag so of Navona vigor were I you, gelding!”

In the half-light of the smithy, his teeth showed in a feral grin.
“Careful, Monteverde, or I’ll prove myself intact on you. How would you like
a Navona babe?”

“Idle threat!” she snapped.

“Shall I show you?” He reached as if to untie his hose.

Cara could not contain her breath of shock. “Liar! Cursed Navona, your
own father would never have let you near my mistress if you were whole. You
slept with her!”

His mouth hardened. “My father has reason enough to trust me.” He
shrugged, dropping his hand. “And the Princess Melanthe was as hard as this
anvil. Stupid girl, she was old! We did no more than mock at love, she and
I, to preserve her from Riata and the silly Monteverde geese who do their
bidding.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s not her I ever wanted.” He looked down at Cara, just a little
taller than she, his face smooth and youthful, but with cheekbones shaded by
the promise of maturity. “How many years do you think I have?”

She shrugged. “I know not, nor care. Enough for every evil.”

“Sixteen on Saint Agatha’s day,” he said.

“Nay,” she said. She had thought him twenty and more, caught forever at
the cusp of adulthood, his voice a young man’s, his body still a youth’s but
with a full-grown control, matured beyond the gawkiness of adolescence.

But when she looked at him, she could see it. Like a trick of the light,
his aspect altered before her eyes, and she saw a tall boy, a year younger
than herself, well-grown for his age, with his frame filling rapidly into
manhood.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, but her voice wavered.

He gave a short laugh. “Well, it matters not what you believe. If you are
alive in a year or two, Monteverde goose, which I doubt, you may see for
yourself. This play must have come to an end soon enough, for no eunuch
grows a beard. I see that I shall have to grow mine to my knees now, just to
prove my sex.”

“A beard will suit you ill,” she said caustically.

He gave her an odd look. He touched his jaw, drawing his fingers down it
as if he already felt the coarsening.

“Navona peacock! Of course you would not wish to cover up your beauty!”

His dark eyes searched hers for a moment. Then he smiled, sweetness
tinged with some strange melancholy of his own. “Nay,” he said slowly, “haps
I would not. Come, feeble Monteverde, I see you have made your feet. Walk
with me, and if I please, I may discover you something to eat.” He grinned,
a flash in the shadow. “Even if I have to kill another outlaw for you, and
his lady, too, for to take it.”

Ruck had brought only delicacies for food, oranges and nuts and spiced
sugar, having presumed that there would be refuge and keep at the priory. He
had intended the luxuries as gifts for the house—instead they were all that
was to be had for supper. The twilight was coining on too deep to hunt, and
his stomach was hollow with complaint.

He was unrelentingly formal in his manners with the princess, trying to
regain the proper distance between them, but she seemed to have taken a
capricious dislike to ceremony. In the sunset that lit the river gold and
turned the coppice along the shoreline to black lace, she would not sit as a
gentle lady and be served. After seeing her falcon established upon a bow
perch made of a green alder branch, its ends thrust into the ground, she
persisted in collecting deadwood for the fire and winter grass for the
horse.

“My lady soils her gloves,” he said in disapproval as she dumped handfuls
of greenery at Hawk’s nose. “I bid Your Highness sitten adown, if it please
you nought ill.”

The destrier lipped up her offering eagerly and lifted his head, pushing
at her shoulder. She stumbled a step under the hard nudge and dusted the
clinging stems from her gloves. “The horse mote eaten.”

“He’s fettered. A little distance he can wander, to finden the same
fodder you bring him, lady, and more.”

Hawk had already dropped his head and begun nosing and cropping at the
tender winter shoots around a sandy hummock. She looked at the horse and
said, “Oh,” as if such a novel notion had never occurred to her.

“Your Highness mote eaten, also,” he said. “If you be pleased to sitten
adown, so I may attend you.”

He opened his hand toward where he had made a seat from his saddle and
some furs and carefully positioned it upwind of the smoking fire. It was the
third time he had made the suggestion, but he managed, with some effort, to
keep his voice mild.

She smiled, with the golden light on her face. “I do not wish for thy
attendance, worthy knight, but for pleasure I will beg thee to bear me
company at table.”

He bowed stiffly. “Nought to your honor be it, to sup with your servant.
Do sit ye adown, if it please.”

“I will sit me down if thou wilt,” she said.

He held fast to form. “I think it nought seemly, my lady.”

Her lips tightened stubbornly. She stooped and began tugging at grass,
gathering more into her hands. Sand clung to the damp hem of her cloak and
skirt. Green stained her white gloves. She carried the fodder to Hawk, and
then picked up a stick from the kindle pile. She tossed that on the fire and
chose another, struggling to break a branch that was too thick for her to
snap.

“Iwysse—I will sit!” Ruck crossed his legs and dropped down onto the
ground. This newest vagary of hers, this acting as if she were no greater
than he, vexed and baffled him. Instead of feminine tears and terror, peril
seemed to make her foolish in her mind.

When she dropped the stick and sat beside him, he regretted his
capitulation, for she ignored the saddle and took up a place much too close,
so close that her folded knees almost touched his. Her cloak did, a
bedraggled ermine corner lying in a casual sweep over his knee poleyn.

“My lady, I made a fitter seat for you,” he protested.

“The sand is soft enough.” She picked up the knife. “Come, we will
counsel together. I pray thee, what best us to do?”

“Hunt dragons, I trove,” he muttered. “Wherefore should we nought, if
Your Highness will gaderen fodder and sitten upon the ground like unto a
bondman’s wife?”

She held out to him a segment of orange. “Yea, we will hunt us
firedrakes—wherefore not?”

“Because I’m nought doted in my head, even if you are so.” He bit into
the orange unthinking, and then realized that she was not yet served. He
lowered it hastily, appalled at himself and aggrieved at her for luring him
into it by taking no notice of his misdemeanor at all. She peeled the rind
and offered the whole fruit to him as if she full expected him to eat before
her.

He refused to do it, but sat sternly with the food in his hands, waiting.

“Tell me, art thou at my hest, knight?” she asked.

“By right I am yours, lady,” he said swiftly, “in high and in low.”

She smiled. “This is low.”

“What is your will?”

“That thou wilt eat till thou art sated and leave to me the remainder,
forwhy I do not wish thee to wax faint from hunger in this wild place. I
doubt not thou wouldst swoon just as a dragon fell upon us, which would be
inconvenient, as I am no master of a sword.”

He turned the orange in his hand. “I grant my lady that she is no
swordman”—he laid it back upon the cloth—“but I deem it no more convenient
that my lady be brought low of a fainting-fit herseluen, and I haf to carry
her.”

“For one avowed at my bidding”—she snatched up the fruit—“thou art as
obstinate as a wooden ox!”

Her white teeth sank into the orange. She ate it all. While he watched,
she finished the second orange and peeled the third, ate one segment of it
and threw the rest over her shoulder, where it plopped into the muddy
shallows of the river. Then she nibbled at the almonds until she had
consumed them. She tasted the sugar, made a face, and ground the remainder
into the sand.

Ruck looked down at the bare cloth. She had eaten or destroyed
everything.

“If thou wouldst have a forpampered princess, then thou shalt have one,
knight. I am mistress of that craft.”

Ruck said nothing. He stared grimly into the darkening woods that lined
the shore.

“If thou wouldst have a companion of sensible wits,” she said, “then save
this overweening indulgence for the court. It is thine to choose.”

He looked over his shoulder into the twilight shadows where she had
thrown the last orange. “My lady, I say you troth, I haf nought seen no such
thing as common wit in you yet.”

She drew in her breath at that. He expected temper, but instead the
silence expanded between them. Darkness had fallen enough that he could see
only the shape of her face, not the contours.

Her soft laugh surprised him. “Yea, so I imagine,” she murmured. “Poor
knight—thou must be sore dismayed to have ward of me in this desert.”

He could think of no answer that would combine truth and courtesy but to
say, “I am sworn to you, my lady.”

“Ne cannot I conceive how that came to be, but verily—I think it better
fortune than I deserve.” She made a faint sound of rue. “And how do I favor
thee, but to make thee go hungry in my temper? I am full sorry.”

Ruck scowled. He picked up the stick she had dropped and cracked it in
two. “I reck nought of it, lady.”

“Tomorrow, Gryngolet takes a duck. It is thine.”

“Less does my belly concern me than your safety.” He held the sticks
between his fists, frowning down at them. “We’re far out of the way to my
lady’s lands, or any dwelling that I know from my faring in this country. In
faith, is near forsaken since the Great Death, without souls enow to keepen
the weeds back.” He hesitated, and then broke the wood again over his knee
and tossed the staves on the fire. “Of fortified places, there’s aught but
Lyerpool, if any souls be left alive there. To sayen troth, Your Highness, I
fear pestilence more than any desert.”

“Allegreto said me that thou art exempt from it.”

“Yea, I am.” He looked up at her. “Can my lady sayen the same?”

Full dark had fallen. The firelight played on the curve of her face,
shadowing her lashes. “But thou wilt keepen me,” she said softly. “I place
my whole trust in thee.”

“Best to put your faith in God’s design, my lady,” he replied in a rough
tone.

She smiled, her skin kindled rose by the fire, her hair black shade.
“Forbye, monkish man, what art thou if not part of God’s design?”

He felt anything but monkish, sitting beside her, all semblance of
respectable reserve between them in ruins. It seemed to him that God’s
design must be to make him live a lifetime of temptation, the half of it
condensed into this moment, when it would be no more than a movement of his
hand to touch her.

“Haply I might be part of God’s scheme, too,” she mused, “though I’ve not
much odor of sanctity, I trow.”

He turned his face away from the firelight, unable to disagree with that
even for courtesy.

“Well, I have endowed an abbey, so let it be a secret betwix us,” she
said, as if he had assented aloud. “The nuns have made an eloquent record of
my faith and good works. We would not wish to casten doubt on such a
pleasant document.”

He tried to think of his empty belly, which was her perverse doing, and
failing that, of the danger that she was to his soul. He tried to hope that
she would move away from him, and instead could not stop gazing at her, at
any part of her that he could see while he turned his face away, even if it
was only the ermine fringe of her cloak.