Such feminine uncertainty made him feel protective and suspicious at once. His own responses to her he did not trust; how so, when he could look at her and see that she was ordinary and yet think her comelych beyond telling?
He scowled at the ground before him. "I have heard me, madam, that there are some can go in the air at night—to far places, where they learn there what they please and return ere morning."
Her expression changed, drew stiff and harsh. "Why say thee so to me?"
"Oft have I thought me that you are a witch." He said it outright. He was determined to know, yea or nay, even if she should slay him for it. "How else could you hold me so long—and still yet? If be enchantment, I pray to God that you release me."
She pressed her lips together. Then she lifted her arms and cried, "White Paternoster, Saint Peter’s brother, open Heaven’s gates and strike Hell’s gates and let this crying child creep to its own mother, White Paternoster, Amen!" She spread her fingers. She clapped three times, and dropped her hands. "There, tiresome monkish man—thou art released from such spells as I have at my command."
With a shower of sand she stood up and stalked away. Ruck pulled the cloak up around him, leaning on his knees, watching her. She spun the spit—the first time she had done it—and looked with dismay on the blackened skin of the ducks.
"Mary and Joseph! Ruined!" She let go of the stick, and the awkwardly spitted fowls fell back with their burned sides to the fire. Then she cast Ruck a venomous look and held out her fingertips toward the fire, wriggling them and chanting some weird garble of sound.
She lifted the spit from the wobbly supports she’d made, and one carcass fell off into the flames.
"Well, it is no matter," she said lightly, fishing the duck from the coals and rolling it out onto the sand. She pushed it with a stick onto the cloth that they ate from and picked it up. She set the half-charred fowl before him, spreading out the cloth with great care and standing back with a flourish. "I have conjured three fiends and worked a great incantation, and enchanted it to be cooked to perfection."
He gazed down at it for a long moment. "Better to have turned the spit," he said wryly.
"Thou shouldst have said so. I could have ordered Beelzebub to do it."
He lifted his eyes. She looked straight at him, with no warding for speaking the Devil’s name, her mouth set, her eyes bright with challenge.
"Allegreto said my lady is a witch. And Lancaster’s counselors. All at court said so."
Her lips tightened dangerously. "And what sayest thou, knight?"
He stared at her, his imperious liege lady, beautiful and plain, with her jeweled gauntlets and her hair astray and a great black smudge of ash on her cheek. Her own cloak he wore about his shoulders, and the duck she had hunted lay before him. Her gyrfalcon held the soul of a dead lover, and her eyes, her eyes, they saw through him like a lance, and crinkled at the corners when she laughed.
"Ne do I know why I love you!" he exclaimed, sweeping the mantles around him as he rose. "Ne do I know why I swore to you; why I ne’er accepted any man’s challenge that might release me from it! Ne’er did I want to be released. Ne do I nought still, if it cost my soul. And I cannought say why, but that you have beguiled me with some hellish power."
"Flatterer!" she murmured, mocking, but her face was terrible and cold.
He turned away from her. "I know a place safe," he said. "Safe from pestilence and all hazard." He frowned at the river. "But ne will I taken a witch there."
"Iwysse, then there is no more to be said." Her voice was cool and haughty. "If a woman bewhile a man, a witch mote she be."
"If ye says me you are nought, my lady—" He paused. Ripples blew across the water, the cold wind stung his face. "I will believe you."
He waited, watching the water and the dark line of trees that marked the far shore of the Wyrale. The wind shifted, sending another sparkle of ripples at an angle to the first set, scenting the air about him with smoke.
He turned. She stood with her arms hugged about herself, her brows drawn together in icy disdain, black and arched, delicate as the tips of a nymph’s infernal wings.
"Haps I am a witch," she said. "I tell thee true, Green Sire—I have cheated demons, and still I am alive."
He could believe she had. He thought, were he some minor devil, that he would look on her and be afraid. She discharged power; he could dream that he saw it in a radiance about her, even here, even stripped of jewels and silver trappings, if he let his imagination run away with his sense.
"Is no sin to escheaten demons," he said gruffly. "Only to yielden service to them."
"My husband taught me many things. Readings from the Greek—astrology and alchemy and such, matters of natural philosophy, but never did we call on any power but God’s mercy that I know. Test me on my knowledge, if thou wilt."
"Ne haf I no command of such. Battle I know, and a sword. Naught of natural philosophy."
She lifted her chin. "I make no protection-spells."
He did not wish her to be a witch. In his heart he longed to prove her innocent. But he said stubbornly, "By logic, that is no more than evidence that ye desires nought to maken them."
She narrowed her eyes. "Then what proofs wilt thou have, if thou art so prudent? Wilt thou bind me and throw me in the river, or have me to clasp a red-hot staff?" She pointed at his sword. "Heat it in the fire, then, and test me! And then haps I will testen thee the same; Sir Ruck of No Place, for ne do I know why I took notice of thee and gave thee jewels in Avignon when thou wert but a shabby stranger to mine eyes! Haps thou worked a charm on me and stole my gems by magic craft!"
"Not I!" he uttered. "I’m no—" He stopped, his hands tightening in sudden realization.
She remembered. Embarrassed heat suffused him, thinking of the raw youth he had been, of how he had let Isabelle be taken from him—of the nameless lady of the falcon and her accusation of adulterous lust against him. "A strong memory, my lady hatz," he said grimly.
"I recall every evil deed I’ve done in my life," she said. "No great difficulty is it, to rememberen a good one."
"A good deed, lady? To shame me before the church? To name me adulterer in my thoughts?"
She paused. And then her lips curved upward gently, as if the recollection pleased her. "Yea...I remember that. I saved thee."
"Saved me!" With a harsh chuckle he pulled the woolens close about him. "My lady saved me of a wife and a family, so did she, and set me for to liven alone as I do." He swept a stilted bow. "May God grant you mercy for such a favor!"
"Wee loo, what a sad monkish man it is."
"I am no monk!" he exclaimed in irritation, turning his shoulder to her.
"In faith melikes to hear thee know it." Her tone had warmed. "If I caused thee aught such injury as to compel thee to liven alone, Sir Ruck—I will repair it and looken about me in my household for a suitable spouse to comfort thee."
He whirled back to face her. "Mock me nought, my lady, if it please you!"
Her brows lifted at his vehemence. "I mean no mockery. I bethought me just this morn that I would looken out a good-wife for to cherish thee."
"You have forgotten," he said shortly. "I haf me a wife, my lady."
For a clear instant her startlement was palpable. Then she gave him an accomplished smile, of the kind that court ladies excelled in. "But how is this? 1 had thought thee a single man."
It seemed impossible that she did not remember, if she recalled the rest. But her face was puzzled and attentive, a faint shadow of question in the tilt of her head.
"My wife tooken nun’s vows." Ruck inhaled cold air. His breath iced around him as he let it go. "She is—a sister of Saint Cloud." A little of the wonder and agony of it always crept into him when he spoke of Isabelle, thinking of the radiant image that forever knelt and prayed in his mind.
"Is she indeed?" Her voice became vague as she knelt beside the half-burned carcass of the duck. "And is she well there?"
"Yea,
" he said. "Very well."
"I am pleased that she writes good word of her health," she said in an idle way as she pulled the wing of the duck between her thumb and forefinger, examining the scorched area.
"She ne writes me nought," he added stiffly, "for her mind is fixed on God."
"Iwysse, I am sure thy wife is a most holy personage," she said, inspecting the duck with immoderate concentration. "She married thee, did she not?" she murmured.
His mouth grew hard. "I send money for her support each year. The abbess would advise me if aught were ill."
"For certes. There is no doubt of it." She looked up at him with a brilliant smile. "Now say me true, Sir Ruck—dost thou suppose this duck can be saved?"
He stalked away from her, leaning down to sweep up the heron from the sand as he passed it. "I’m dry now for to dress. I’ll wash this when I’m geared, and roast it, so that we may eaten ere we starve of hunger."
* * *
In the thin peasant clothes, without furs or camelot, Cara could barely move her fingers. All night she had lain on the bare ground, the cold seeping up through her. She had not been able to curl tight enough to warm herself. It seemed that she ought to have died, but it was worse to be alive in this horrible country, with this dreadful companion, in these hideous clothes, and no other choice that she could fathom. If Allegreto felt the cold as she did, he had some way to conceal it. He never shivered. She wondered if he was a demon.
The bare trees and spiky bushes reached out claws to tear her. They had yet to see a living soul, or a dead one either, only one village in deserted ruin, but the overgrown path out of it must lead somewhere, she told herself. What she would do when she arrived there, she had no notion, but the hope of food and warmth was enough to move her.
Yesterday she had wished to die, but the process seemed so endless and miserable that she had given up on it. At first light, too cold to sleep, she had heard Allegreto rise, and had stumbled to her feet and trudged behind him without a word, without even a prayer, until the suspicion that she might be following a real demon to the abyss made her recite aves with silent diligence.
He did not change shape or disappear, though he stopped and waited for her when she fell behind. She limped up to him, and he made a face at her. With renewed hate for him, she lifted her head and passed by.
He gripped her from behind. Before Cara could even scream, sure that this was the end, that he would transform to a fiend and rend her to bits, he stopped her mouth with his hand.
She felt his breath rise and fall against her back, but he made no sound. Only when the thump of her own heartbeat slowed did she hear the chinking creak of a harnessed animal.
A woman’s voice muttered, then gave a sharp command. The clear sound of a blade scraping against hard soil rang through the cold morning air.
Cara exhaled relief. No bandit, then, but an ordinary peasant. She waited for Allegreto to realize it and release her, but his body grew even more tense. He gripped her harder. She felt a tremor grow in him.
They stood there, frozen, for endless moments.
Finally she lifted her hand and pulled his away. He did not object; he freed her all at once, staring through the trees.
He was dazed by terror. She could see it. Like a rabbit panting beneath a circling hawk, he was arrested in place, only the white puffs of his breath showing life.
Cara began to laugh.
She could not help herself. The frenzied hilarity echoed about her, a sound halfway to weeping, an echo as if someone else answered.
He was afraid of the plague. She almost pitied him.
"I’ll go first," she said. "I don’t care how I die."
She hobbled on, but he caught her again. "No. Cara—wait."
He had such urgency about him that she halted. He held her hand, wrapping it between both of his, pressing a small bag into her fingers. "You stay here. Use this."
He left her standing alone with the herbal purse. With his silent ease and muddy leggings, he moved ahead. A thicket swallowed him, as this heavy English wood ate everything a few yards away.
Cara looked down at the bag. It was one of the perfumes against pestilence that he had about him always—he must have taken it back when he’d killed their bandit guard and his mistress. She threw it down. Even the thought repelled her, made her remember stumbling over the woman’s body in the dark as Allegreto had urged her with him, the sick shame of being stripped of everything she wore down to her shift; the dread of worse, but by God’s mercy the bandit’s drab had put a violent stop to that, boxing her man’s ears and covering Cara in her own filthy rags.
The woman had treated her with an uncouth kindness, talking in this ugly English speech, stroking the silk again and again as she paraded back and forth between lamplit bushes in Cara’s gown, almost pretty in her awe and pleasure in it. She must not have looked at Allegreto’s black eyes, Cara thought, or she would have seen death watching her.
With a half-mad chuckle, Cara picked up the perfumed bag again. How amusing, that death was afraid of the plague. How gallant of him, to leave his charm to protect her. How courageous, to approach some poor peasant woman only trying to plow the icy clods!
She would save this for him, his little shield. She carefully dusted off the bits of leaf. She chuckled again, baring her teeth. God’s corpus, any more of this reckless chivalry, and she would be like to think the Navona loved her.
"Monteverde!" His voice from the path ahead was triumphant. She limped quickly forward, favoring the worst of the blisters on both her heels. In a clearing the peasant plow and ox stood abandoned. Allegreto held up a food pouch with a grin.
"They ran before I showed myself," he said. "By hap your laughing sounded like some fiend out of the wood. Ghastly enough it was."
She ignored his mockery. "There must be a village nearby," she said. "We can buy shelter, if you thought to recover more than your plague apple from the thieves and got my silver, too."
"Silver enough," he said, looking into the pouch. "But we shan’t chance a village."
"Please yourself, wretched Navona, but give me my money. I don’t fear pestilence so much that I want to sleep on the ground again tonight, or steal food from churls. I’m going to the village."
He glanced up at her. "Nay—you would not."
"I will."
"I tell you, I won’t go in amongst people!"
"Then do not, for God’s grace. We shall part here, and gladly. As soon as you give me my coin."
He turned a sullen shoulder. "Monteverde goose! You would not last a day without me."
"What is that to you, Navona?" she snapped. "I don’t even owe you thanks for freeing me—you and yours have done me more mischief than you could ever repay!"
"Go then!" He dropped the food pouch and strode away over the frozen dirt. "It’s nothing to me. Nothing!"
"My silver!"
He stopped, slanting a look over his shoulder. "I don’t work for free, carissima. It’s mine now."
She held the herb bag behind her. "A fair exchange. Your plague perfume for my silver."
"I’ll buy another herbal."
"Without going in amongst people?"
He turned slowly to face her, a look upon him that sent a chill to her heart. "Monteverde goose," he said softly, "I can take it from you before you can draw breath."
"Then slit my throat if you must!" she cried defiantly. "And be damned for it! Plague or murder, it makes no mind to me. I am dead no matter what I do." Her voice began to quaver on the last words, and she shut her mouth, lifting her chin.
Allegreto was impossible to read, his black eyes watching her. "You work for the Riata, don’t you?" he asked slowly. Cara tried to stare him down. For a moment he only studied her—then something in his expression changed, grew more penetrating.
"I didn’t see you when we found the hunchback dead." He said it with a voice of discovery. His hand curled over his dagger. "You were already gone from the camp."
She man
aged to keep her breathing even. If her life was over, she should commit her soul to God, but in the moment of peril all she could do was think that he was too young and comely to be what he was.
"And you took money with you—you knew you were leaving. You were already running. Oh, Mary, Mother of God—" He took a step. "Why?"
She did not answer him. She only closed her eyes and waited for him to kill her.
"What did you do? Was it poison?" A note of panic hovered in his question. "Did you try to poison her?"
His concern for his evil mistress sent a spurt of wild rage flooding through her. "Yea, you harlot—I tried to poison her. And if she hadn’t sickened for death of plague as you tell me, I would try again, God forgive me, to save my sister!"
In three steps he had her: "Was it the cockles?"
She tried to jerk free, and could not. He shook her until her teeth rattled and her head rang, and stopped with a jerk.
"Was it the cockles?" he asked, in a voice so quiet and soft that it turned her limbs into water.
She nodded, trembling. He stared down at her with horror, with that same frenzy that he had of plague.
"God save me." He let her go and turned, breathing like a winded stag. "She’s not dead. Oh, Mary; oh, God and Jesus, she contrived it. She isn’t dead." He dropped to his knees, his fists pressed to the side of his head. As Cara watched in shock, he tore his fingers down his face, drawing blood. "I let her fly, she’s not dead, she’s not dead, she’s not dead! My father!" With a mortal groan he lifted his face to Heaven. "Lord God have mercy on me!"
ELEVEN
Thin golden chains fastened to her garters held up the long muddy toes of Melanthe’s boots. They were not intended for the march; she could feel every pebble and twig through the soft soles, but she barely noticed that. It was too good to be free.
She had no fear. That was not quite rational, she knew—her knight was plainly of the opinion that there was much to cause alarm, but such was the disposition of any worthy watchdog. She enjoyed treading along beside him, skirting grass tussocks and pushing branches aside, hiking her skirt to leap little puddles and rivulets. In spite of her gown, she was not much more encumbered than he in his armor. She guessed it must weigh half a hundred pounds and surely affected his stride, checking him to a speed she had no trouble to maintain.
The Medieval Hearts Series Page 20
