For My Lady's Heart (3 page)

“Saint Cloud?” he repeated stupidly. He lifted his eyes to find the
bishop regarding him with an inquisitive look.

“Do you understand French?” the prelate asked.

“Yea, my lord,” Ruck said.

The bishop nodded in approval. “ ‘The wife hath not the power of her own
body, but the husband; likewise also the husband hath not power of his own
body, but the wife,’” he intoned. “As Saint Paul sayeth to the Corinthians.
She must receive your consent to do this. Is it your will, my son, that your
wife take these vows to be chaste?”

They were asking his permission. He could say no. He turned his head, and
Isabelle was standing wringing her hands, weeping as she had in the dawn,
pleading with him silently.

Isabelle. Luflych.

He imagined denying her, holding her by force—imagined saying yes and
losing her forever.

She made a deep moan in her throat, as if she were dying, and held out
her hands to him in supplication.

He turned his face away from her. He bent his head. “Yea, my lord,” he
said harshly to the slippers and the golden hem.

The bishop leaned forward. Ruck clasped his hands and put them in the
holy man’s cool grasp, sealing his consent. Now he had no wife. No true
wife. He didn’t know if he was married or not.

“You may rise, my son,” the bishop said.

Ruck stood. He started to bow and move back, but the prelate raised his
hand.

“Sire Ruadrik—do you believe this woman’s visions are given to her by
God?” he asked mildly.

“Yea, my lord.” Ruck knew well enough to answer that in a firm voice. Any
other reply, he felt, could be twisted to mean that they were Hell-inspired.

“You follow her in her preachings on that account?”

“She is my wife,” Ruck said, and then felt a flush of embarrassment rise
in his face. “She was. My lord—I—could not let her go so far alone.”

“You did not require her to stay modestly at home?”

He stood in shame, unable to admit that he’d found it impossible to
command his own wife. “Her visions enjoin her,” he said desperately. “She is
God’s own servant.”

His words died away into a profound silence. He felt they were laughing
at him, to offer that as an excuse.

“And you have given a solemn vow of chastity to her some five weeks past,
on the road from Reims?”

Ruck gazed helplessly at the bishop.

“In obedience to this woman’s visions,” the bishop repeated insistently,
“you lived chaste in your marriage?”

Ruck lowered his face. “Yea,” he mumbled, staring at the bright floor
tiles. “My lord.”

“Oh, I think not,” said a light female voice. “He is not chaste. Indeed,
he is an adulterer.”

Ruck stiffened at this astonishing accusation. “Nay, I am not—” His
fierce denial died on his tongue as he turned to find the lady with the
falcon standing not a rod behind him.

She strolled forward, sliding a glance at him over her shoulder while she
dropped a token reverence toward the bishop. Her eyes were light, not quite
perfect blue, but saturated with the lilac tinge of her dress and lined by
black lashes. She seemed ageless, as young as Isabelle and as old as
iniquity. The emeralds on the falcon’s hood glittered.

Ruck felt his face aflame. “I have not adultered!” he said hoarsely.

“Is not the thought as sinful as the deed, Father?” she asked, addressing
the bishop but looking at Ruck, her voice clear enough for her words to
resonate from the walls.

“That is true, my lady. But if you have no earthly evidence, it is a
matter of absolution between a man and his confessor.”

“Of course.” She smiled that serene and indifferent smile, lifting her
skirts, withdrawing. “I fear that I presumed too far. I wished only to spare
Your Holiness the mockery of hearing a solemn vow of chastity made by such a
man. He stared at me full bold yesterday in the Hall of Great Audience,
causing me much uneasiness of mind.”

A low sound of protest escaped Ruck’s throat. But he could not deny it.
He had stared. He had committed adultery in his heart. He had desired her
with an inordinate desire, a mortal passion—her eyes met his as she retired
gracefully to one side—he read absolute knowledge there; she laid him bare,
and she knew that he knew it.

“I am grieved to hear that you have had any cause for annoyance in the
house of God, my lady,” the prelate said, not sounding particularly
disturbed. “Modesty in manner and dress, daughter, will temper the boldness
of ungodly men toward you. But your point is well-taken with regard to the
vow. Sire Ruadrik—can you swear to your purity both in thought and in deed?”

Ruck thought God Himself must be subjecting him to this mortification,
holding him to a standard of truth beyond the strength of human flesh. Why
else should all these great people take up their time with him? He was
nobody, nothing to them.

He could not bring himself to answer, not here in front of everyone. In
front of
her.
She might be the agent of God’s truth, but he thought
no woman had ever appeared more as if she’d been sent by the Arch-Fiend to
enthrall a man.

The silence lengthened, condemning him. He looked at her, and at
Isabelle’s open tear-streaked face. His wife stared back at him.

Ruck closed his eyes. He shook his head no.

“Sire Ruadrik,” the archbishop said heavily, “with this admission of
impurity, and other considerations, the vow given to your wife must be
considered invalid.”

As the interpreter translated, Isabelle broke into a great wail.

“Silence!” the archbishop thundered, and even Isabelle drew in her breath
in shock at the suddenness of it. In the pause he said, “You must be heard
by your confessor, Sire Ruadrik. I leave your penance to him. For the other
matter—” He glanced at Isabelle, who had crawled forward and lay tugging at
his hem. “In the usual course, one spouse is prevented from taking such a
vow of chastity, if the other does not consent to it and vow also the same.
Consent alone is not sufficient, as without the consolation of a solemn
commitment to live celibate and close to God, the temptations of the flesh
may prove too great.” He looked at Ruck. “Lacking this true commitment, you
will see the wisdom in such requirement, Sire Ruadrik.”

Ruck could barely hold the man’s eyes. He nodded slightly, burning all
over.

The archbishop lifted his hand. “Nevertheless, this woman appears to me
to be a special case. With the proper provisions, I am willing to allow that
she may be attached to the convent and live in obedience to the rules of the
house without her husband’s concurrent vow. After I have examined her
further in the articles of the faith and found her response to be
satisfactory, and the provision for her support has been received, she may
be admitted to the order.”

When Isabelle heard the translation of this, she kissed the archbishop’s
hem and showed clear signs of working herself into an ecstasy. The
archbishop made a gesture of dismissal. Ruck found himself escorted toward
the door.

He wrenched his arm from the clerk’s hold and turned back, but people had
crowded in. From the corridor all he saw was the lady of the falcon, lifting
her hand to her ear with a look of pained sufferance as Isabelle’s voice
rose to a shriek. The door closed. A clerk accosted him, informing him that
an endowment of thirty-seven gold florins had been promised on behalf of
Isabelle and would be accepted at once.

Thirty-seven gold florins was all the money that Ruck had, the last of
the ransom from the two French knights he’d captured at Poitiers. The clerk
took it, counting carefully, biting each coin before he dropped it into the
holy purse.

Ruck walked to the hostel as if in a dream. His steps took him first to
the stable, to make certain at least of his horse and his sword when
everything else seemed a daze.

“Already gone,” the hosteler said.

The haze vanished. Ruck grabbed him by the throat, sending his broom
flying. “I paid thee, by God!” He threw the man against the wall.
“Where
are they?”

“The priest!” The hosteler scooted hastily out of reach. “The priest came
to collect them, gentle sire! Your good wife—” He stumbled to his feet,
ducking. “Is not she to go for a nun? He had a bishop’s seal! An offering to
the church—on her behalf, he said—he told me you had willed it so. A
bishop’s seal, my lord. I’d not have let them go for less, on my life!”

Ruck felt like a man hit by a pole-ax, still on his feet, but reeling.

“They took my horse?” he asked numbly.

“My lord’s arms, too.” From a safe distance the hosteler made a
sympathetic grunt. “They would fain have me climb upstairs after your mail
and helm. Bloodsuckers, the lot of them.”

Isabelle had made him leave his armor. She had made a great ado of it.

Thirty-seven gold florins. Exactly what she had known was in his purse.
And his horse. His sword. His armor.

He locked his hands over his head and tilted his face to the sky. A howl
burst from him, a long bellow that reverberated from the stones like a
beast’s dumb roar. Impotent tears and fury blurred his vision. He leaned
back against the wall and slid down it, sitting in the dirt with his head in
his arms.

“Ye might sue for to have the horse back, if it were a mistake, gentle
sire,” the hosteler offered kindly.

Ruck gave a miserable laugh from the hollow of his arms. “How long would
that take?”

“Ah. Who could know? Twain year, mayhap.”

“Yea—and cost the price of a dozen horse,” he muttered.

“True enough,” the hosteler agreed morbidly.

Ruck sat curled, staring into the darkness of his arms, his back against
the stone wall. He heard the hosteler go away, heard people talking and
passing. Grief and rage spun him. He couldn’t move; he had nowhere to go, no
wife, no money. Nothing. He couldn’t seem to get his mind around the full
dimension of it.

A smart prod at his shoulder pushed him half off his balance. He looked
up, with no notion of what time had passed, except that the shadows lay
longer and deeper on the street.

The prod came again and Ruck grabbed at the staff with an angry oath.
Before him stood the hunchbacked mute he’d gifted with a
denier
—and
his first thought was that he wished he had the money back again.

The beggar held out a little pouch. Ruck scowled. The hunchback wriggled
the pouch and offered it closer. He waited, staring at Ruck expectantly as
he accepted it.

The bag contained a folded paper and a small coin. The beggar was still
waiting. Ruck held on to the coin for a moment, but futile pride overcame
him and he tossed it to the beggar with no good grace. The man grinned and
saluted, shuffling away.

Ruck watched his dinner and bed disappear up the narrow street. He
unfolded the paper—and jerked, catching at the green glitter that fell from
inside.

I charge thee, get thee far hence ere nyt falleth. Fayle not in this.

He gazed at the English words, and the two emeralds in his palm. One was
small, no bigger than the lens of a dragonfly. The other was of a size to
buy full armor and mount, and pay a squire for a year. A size to adorn a
falcon’s arrogant crest.

He held the emeralds, watched them wink and catch the light.

He knew what he ought to do. A good man, a virtuous man, would stand up
and stride to the palace and throw them in her face. A godly man would not
let himself be bound to such a one as she.

He’d given up his wife to God.

And his horse, and his armor, and his money.

Ruck closed his hand on the jewels she sent and swore himself to the
Arch-Fiend’s daughter.

A
ere
ernes ful
erne and
elde
neuer
lyke;
ţe forme to ţe fynisment folde
ful selden.
Forţi, ţis
ol ouer
ede, and ţe
ere after,
And vche sesoun serlepes sued after oţer.