The Medieval Hearts Series

by Laura Kinsale

  * * *

  She knelt beside Allegreto in the sanctuary, telling prayer beads with her fingers. While the monks sang compline in the candlelit church, he spoke softly to her, his voice a tight undertone to the motet and descant.

  "I know not what you want, my lady. I don’t know what you intended by fleeing. I have thought on it these three months, and still I cannot fathom your desire."

  "It is not important," she said.

  "Yea, my lady, it is important to me. I am yours. You won’t believe me. I cannot prove it. But if I must choose between you and my father, I have chosen."

  She looked aside at him, keeping her head bowed. He was staring intensely at her, the smooth curve of his cheek lit by gold, his eyes outlined in shadow as if by a finely skillful hand. "Thou hast chosen me?" she asked, with a soft incredulity.

  "You do not want my father. That is all I can make of your move. Is that true?"

  Such a blunt question. She forced her fingers to tell the beads, her mind to think. Was this Gian, trying to wrest words from her that he would use somehow? Allegreto was his father’s creature; he had ever been, born and bred to his devotion. As frightened of Gian as all the rest of them, loving his father as a wolf cub loved its parent, in cringing adoration.

  "You need not tell me," he said quickly. "I well know you cannot trust me. What can I do that you will trust me?"

  "I cannot imagine," she said.

  He was silent. The monks sang an alleluia and response, voices soaring up the dark roof. The straw beneath her knees made but a rough cushion; she was glad to stand when the rite allowed it.

  "Lady," he said when they knelt again, "two years ago, my father wished me to journey with him to Milan. Do you remember?"

  She made a slight nod, without taking her eyes from her fingers.

  "We did not go to Milan. We spent the time in his palace, lady. He told me I must keep you from all harm. He taught me such further lessons as he thought I needed, and watched me spar and fight, and—tested me."

  A tenor answered the treble song. Melanthe started the beads over again, her head bent.

  "My lady, there was a man who had done my father a wrong. I know not what. He was loosed in the palace, and my father said I was to kill him, or he would kill me." Allegreto was unmoving next to her. "He was a master, this man. He was better than I. I was at the point of his dagger when my father delivered me." Amid the chants, Allegreto’s voice seemed to become distant. "I failed. My father told me that because I was his son, he saved me, but I had to remember not to fail again. And so I was bound in a room with the man I should have killed, and they took his member and parts."

  Melanthe shook her head. She put her hand on his arm to stop him, to silence him.

  But he kept speaking, trembling beneath her hand. "And while they did it, my father came to me and said to remember I was his bastard, and he could sire more sons, but was better for Navona that I could not. He laid the blade on me, so I should feel it and bleed, but then—because he loved me, he stayed it. He made me know that if I failed him again, that should be my reward. I should not be reprieved." He looked up at her, breathing sharply. "And I have not failed, until this time."

  Melanthe’s hand loosened. She stared into his face.

  "It has been deception, my lady, that I was gelded. He let me go and bid me play it well, or it would be done to me in truth. It was so that you would bear me to sleep near you, that I might keep you from your enemies. He knew—" Allegreto’s mouth hardened. "He knew that he could trust me in all ways."

  She closed her eyes and drew a shaky breath. "Christ’s blood. And I am to trust thee?"

  "My lady—" He put his hand over hers, gripping hard, desperate. "Lady, this time he will do it. He promised it."

  She shook her head, as if she could deny all thoughts.

  "I can’t go back without you, my lady!"

  "Ah," she said, pulling her hand from under his, "is that all thou wouldst have of me, for thy vast loyalty?"

  "Not all," he said in a painful voice.

  She looked sideways from under her hood. His hands were clenched together on his thighs as he knelt.

  "My lady." He bent his head down over his fists. "Donna Cara is there. If you tell my father of what she tried to do to you—"

  His words broke off, requiring no completion. Melanthe gazed at his hands and thought, Cara? Cara the bitch of Monteverde, whom he had scorned so savagely and strained so hard to have sent away?

  Away, away, out of Monteverde, Riata, Navona. Away, where she would have been safe.

  In profile he looked older than she remembered, his mouth and jaw set, his beauty more solid. Growing. And a man, with passions in him that he had kept dark and silent.

  "Oh, God pity thee," she whispered. "Allegreto."

  "She is not for me. I know that. There is an Englishman." He took a long breath and spoke coldly. "I believe he will wed her. But if your lady’s grace accuses her to my father—" He shrugged, and his elegant murdering hands twisted together.

  She might have thought he was lying. He was player enough, verily, for any part.

  He squeezed his eyes closed, lifting his face to the high arches. "I am yours. I’ll act only for you. I will do whatever you ask to prove myself. Only—I cannot leave her there, and I cannot go back without you, my lady."

  Three monks in procession came from the chancel down the nave toward them, singing, their faces underlit by the candles they carried. Melanthe watched them turn and leave the church by a side door,

  "Listen to me, my lady. Your white falcon was there—when my father punished his enemy and forewarned me."

  She looked toward him. "What?"

  "My father fed it," he said. "He said that he had trained it to know me."

  "That is impossible."

  "The falcon hates me, my lady."

  "Your father has never touched Gryngolet."

  "He told me that if I betrayed him with you, that the falcon—" He looked at her imploringly. "My lady, he fed it."

  He did not say more; he let her understand the monstrous thing he meant. Through her horror Melanthe bared her teeth. "If he had a gyrfalcon, it was not Gryngolet!"

  "I will carry her." Allegreto gazed at Melanthe with a straight and terrified intensity. "To prove my fidelity—that I do not lie to you."

  She suddenly realized that the church was silent, the prayers completed, the sanctuary dimmer. What candlelight was left hardened the sweet curves and comeliness of his face, erased the last hint of childhood, revealed the untenable compass of his fear.

  He should have tried to appeal to Melanthe’s welfare if he wished to entrap her. Her desires, her ambitions. But he had admitted that he did not know them.

  He asked her what he could do, as clumsy and open as Cara in her folly.

  It did not seem a great thing, this offer to carry a falcon, for a manslayer, a lovely boy with the soul of a demon. If he was lying, and she trusted him—then she walked open-eyed and helpless into Gian’s clasp.

  Three things Allegreto dreaded. Plague and his father, and Gryngolet. He knelt in the church and offered to defy two of them. For lying.

  Or for love.

  "Thou needst not carry her," Melanthe said. "I trust thee."

  His lips parted; that was the only sign he gave of elation or relief.

  "If thou art mine," she said, "then attend close to me now. Thy father did not have Gryngolet, nor ever has. I flew her at Saronno, all that week that I supposed thee in Milan. She was not in Monteverde for him to use in such vice. It was another bird obtained to daunt thee, we must assume—and contemptible abuse of a noble beast."

  His jaw twitched. She deliberately disdained his father’s horror as a mere offense against a falcon’s dignity, to shrink it to a thing that he could manage.

  "Gryngolet has hated thee because I have not been over fond of thee, I think." She shrugged. "Or haps she dislikes thy perfume. Change it."

  He closed his dark eyes. He drew
a deep breath into his chest, the sound of it uneven.

  Melanthe stood up, the beads sliding through her fingers. She turned and left the church, pausing after she had made her obeisance. "Allegreto," she said quietly as he rose beside her from his knee, "if we fear him to a frenzy, we are done."

  He nodded. "Yea, my lady. I know it well, my lady."

  * * *

  She had not seen Bowland for eighteen years. Against spring thunderclouds, the towers did not seem as monstrous huge as she remembered, and yet they were formidable, the length of the wall running a half-mile along the cliff edge to the old donjon at the summit. Its massive height stared with slitted eyes to the north, defying Scots and rebels as it had for a hundred years and more.

  Strength and shield—her haven—and Gian held it of her. She had not sent word. She arrived at the head of a guard provided by the abbot when she had revealed herself to him. Their approach had been sighted five miles back, of that she could be sure, for Bowland overlooked all the country around, with signal towers to extend the view. He would know by now a party came.

  And he had surmised who it was. A half-mile from the gatehouse, a pair of riders sped out to them, bringing breathless welcome, and a few moments later an escort of twenty lances showing signs of hasty organization trotted to meet them, wheeling to form proud flanks.

  A few drops of rain spattered her shoulders, but she did not raise her hood. She rode over the bridge and into the immense shadow of the barbican with her face lifted and her head bare but for a golden net.

  Woodsmoke and cheering shouts greeted her as her rouncy jogged into the open yard. The lower bailey swarmed with people and animals, as if every member of the hold had dropped his task to come. They wished to see her, she knew, their mistress returned.

  Among the English she recognized no one, but that was beyond reason to expect. All her old servants, her parents’ men, they would all be changed beyond knowing. But a babble of Italian and French equaled or outpaced the native tongue, and there were ones she saw of Gian’s knaves whom she knew better than she cared to, and her own familiar retinue awaiting—her palfreyour to take her horse, and her chaplain, and yes...Cara, smiling, with a trapped rabbit’s fright in her eyes.

  Melanthe ignored her. As she dismounted, Gian came striding from the donjon.

  He was grinning, his arms open. His houppelande of crimson flared behind him, guards of gold embroidery skimming the ground, and his spiked harlots impaling the air elegantly with each step.

  He went low to his knee, lifting the hem of her gown. "God be thanked for His might. God be thanked." He made the cross and touched his lips to the cloth.

  "Your Grace," she said. "Give you greeting."

  He sought her hands as he rose, kissing her eagerly on cheeks and mouth. "Princess, you know not what I have endured."

  He tasted of perfumed oil, his beard dressed neat, blackened by dyes of cypre and indigo. She offered her hand.

  "I was the one lost in desert," she said lightly. "Ask what I’ve endured. Depardeu, I have not heard a word but in English these three months."

  "Torture indeed!" He took her arm and led her up the stairs into the donjon. "You shall tell me all, when your ladies have done with you. Come—oh, come, my sweet." His fingers tightened on her suddenly. He halted, gathering her hands in his and kissing them.

  "Gian," she said softly.

  He straightened. "Christ, I am undone, to treat you so." He released her. "Go to your women. Call me when you will."

  With a swift turn he walked away from her. At the screen he passed Allegreto, who bowed down with his forehead to the very floor tile. Gian did not glance at him. He crossed the hall and disappeared into a stair.

  * * *

  It was not until she was in her bath, with the silk sheets hung about and Cara setting a tray of malvoisie wine on the trestle, that the full scope of Melanthe’s defeat came upon her. She had held herself insensible to what she did; refused to think backward instead of forward, to move in weakness rather than strength.

  But she had lost, and lost beyond all her worst imagining.

  Gian held her. And Bowland that was to have been her security, her refuge where every servant was safe and known and no alien countenance could be concealed. She had thrown away the quitclaim to draw him off, she had rid herself of Allegreto and Cara only to have them back, she had played bishop and queen and king—and lost. Bowland. Her safety, her freedom. And more—but she could not think of him; she would break if she thought of him, and Gian would see.

  Cara washed her hair. Melanthe could feel the maid’s unsteady fingers—she wanted to scream at the girl to summon her nerve, for one weak link was enough to kill them all. Instead she took the washcloth and wiped soap across her mouth, preferring the flavor of it to Gian’s taste.

  "I hear thou art repentant," she said coldly. "What proof canst thou give me of it?"

  "Oh, my lady!" Cara whispered. She bent her head, her wet hands clenched together. "I’ll do anything!"

  Melanthe gazed at her. "Hardly reassuring. What of thy sister?"

  The girl shook her head. "My lady, what am I to do? I would give my life for her if it would make her safe, but it would not. Allegreto has said—that he has tricked the Riata for a little time—I know not how, but I was to account to them by Ficino, and within the day of when he came here, before he tried to seek me out, he...he must have caught a candle in his clothes, my lady, and...there was a fire. It was a terrible accident, my lady. All said so."

  Melanthe hid the jolt of discovery about Ficino in a brief laugh. "Thou hast found thyself a useful friend in Allegreto, it would seem."

  The maid kept her eyes lowered. She did not answer.

  "Thou wilt go between us. He must stay near his father and away from me," Melanthe said. "He has told me I may trust thee, which is why I do, and the only reason, since thou givest me none other. But remember that Gian is here, and at thy least indiscretion I will give thee to him, and even Allegreto could not save thee then."

  "Yea, my lady. I could not forget it, my lady."

  * * *

  She received Gian in the chamber that had belonged to her father, with its paintings of jousts and melees all along the plastered walls, a newer wainscoting below them that she did not remember and a line of diverse shields hung above. Again it seemed not so vast as it ought, the colors duller, the curtained bed smaller and the red and blue ceiling beams not so high as she recalled. But her father’s chair still stood near the chimney, with a cushion in it that was shabby and almost worn through, an imperfect embroidery of the Bowland arms that Melanthe recognized at once.

  Every year since her marriage she had made him a new cushion, and sent it. This one had been the first. Some others lay about the chamber, early efforts, when she had been so sick for home that she had spent hours at the task. In latter years she had chosen elaborate designs and caused the best craftsmen in the city to execute them in expensive materials, but she did not see any of those richer pillows in the room.

  She was glad they were not here. The thin cushion worn through in her father’s chair was better comfort and courage. She did not rise from it as Gian entered, but only indicated a lesser chair drawn up near.

  He bowed to her. Melanthe went through the ritual of ordering spices and drink. While a servant waited at the door for any further charge, they exchanged greetings of exquisite courtesy. Gian sat down.

  "My lady’s father left his holding in good order, may God assoil him," he said in French. "I’ve seen naught but signs of the most excellent management here since he passed to his reward."

  Gian was a master. Word of that compliment would soon spread throughout the bailey.

  Melanthe smiled. "I think you are a little amazed, sir. Haps you thought we lived as savages here in the north."

  "My dear, none such as you could have sprung from savages, or from any but the most noble blood."

  "I told you that my English estate was well worth my journey. This hol
d is but a fraction; I have numerous manors to the west and south, and five good castles, garrisoned all. I’ve made homage for them to the king, but there’s much work yet to be done—I must meet my vassals and tour my holdings. I’ll be truthful with you, my lord, and hope that you did not come sallying north in the expectation that I would return immediately."

  He was silent, looking at her in an unfathomable way. She tilted her head and put a question in her glance. She had worn a high-necked gown and dressed her hair in a wimple of purple silk, so that the pulse in her throat would not show.

  "I would have thought you well occupied at home," she added, defying caution to make a swift attack.

  He grinned, lifting his eyebrows. "And well you should, my lady. After such a kindness as you did me with your quitclaim."

  He appeared quite at ease, even amused. But of course that could hide anything. She shrugged. "A mischief, verily—but not too great, I hope. I regret I had not time to warn you, but I was pressed upon too closely, and then of course—this fearful adventure I have experienced—"

  She left it there, without supplying details that might entangle her.

  "We must thank God that you’re safe," he said. "These other matters are trifling. The Duke of Lancaster has graced us with a company of men and lawyers in Monteverde, to press the claim you gave his father. My son tells me you have met the duke?"

  There was the heart. His real concern, in a casual question tagged to the end of his words. Armies might move and lawyers argue over the paper claim she had given away, but the real threat she still carried in herself and her marriage. Lancaster was ambitious and powerful, with the throne of England behind him; if already he sent a force to assert her quitclaim, how much more aggressive might he be with the princess of Monteverde as his wife?

  "Indeed yes," she said, "I stopped at Bordeaux until the new year. A gracious and hospitable man, truly. His brother the prince is sore ill, I fear, and so the duke takes all the burden of Aquitaine upon his own shoulders. I’m surprised he had the resource to pursue any business in Monteverde."