Shadowheart

by Laura Kinsale

  "Get back, give me room!" Henry held up a leather lure, with a hastily attached garnish of meat from the mews. He shouted and whistled, whirling the temptation overhead as the company scattered.

  The falcon dropped playfully toward the toll and rolled out of her stoop halfway, dancing upward over the hall roof. She circled the yard, ringing up to a higher pitch before she stooped again. Henry threw down the lure as she came.

  Ruck still held Melanthe in a death grip. Gryngolet dived on the downed lure and made a cut at it, leash and all, then passed right on over the gatehouse. She was in one of her mirthful moods, twisting and pumping lazily, looking back at them as if in jest.

  Henry whistled frantically, swinging the toll again. Melanthe’s heart was in her mouth. She feared the garnish was of pork, a meat that Gryngolet loathed. The dangling leash was a death warrant for her if she escaped now—she would catch it in a tree and hang head downward until she died.

  Gryngolet turned back. She almost came to light on the gatehouse, then changed her mind, nearly catching a loop of the leash on an empty banner pole. Curious of the whistling, the gyrfalcon sailed over them, looking for the other hunting birds that she would expect to see among the company—for Melanthe’s usual call was no whistle, but her own voice.

  The lure spun. Gryngolet trifled about it. She swung in dilatory circles just over their heads. After a few rings she began to ignore the lure and tighten her compass, centering on Melanthe.

  Everyone in the yard stared in silence as the falcon swung about her, disdaining the meat, passing Melanthe’s head so close she could feel the windy whisper. Sir Ruck kept her hand forced down.

  "Princess!" It was the chestnut-haired gallant shouting. "Shut the gate! Look at it—Christ’s rood, she’s a princess!" He began to run for the passage. "That bird belongs to her!"

  Ruck released her hand. Instantly Melanthe lifted it, calling Gryngolet urgently to her fist as he spurred the horse. There were men already running toward the gatehouse, Henry yelling frenzied commands, a sudden tumult, shouts of "Princess!" and "To ransom!"

  Gryngolet came, landing just as the destrier lunged into motion. Melanthe grappled for the tangled leash; in the sudden thrust forward the gyrfalcon near fell backward, beating her wings, but her talons gripped and Melanthe swung her arm back to absorb the force.

  A pair of men almost reached the gate too soon, but a blond youth in skin-toned hose collided with them, such a bumble that it was as if he’d intended it, sending them all sprawling to the ground only a foot from the horse’s massive hooves. Hawk swept past them.

  His hooves hit the bridge like the sound of boulders rolling, a pounding rumble and then the wind as he lengthened his stride to a gallop beyond the walls.

  * * *

  Sir Ruck guided the stallion out from among the trees into an abandoned charcoal burners’ clearing. He had reined the horse sometimes left and sometimes right, halting now and then to shade his eyes and look up through the bare branches at the winter sun. His mantle was missing, dropped in the yard in the wrangling over Gryngolet, and the light gleamed on his shoulder harness, showing scratches and the arcs of cleaning scours.

  In the deserted clearing they dismounted. Gryngolet was flustered and hungry, and Melanthe felt likewise. Sir Ruck reached for the bag of foodstuffs. "Sit you, my lady, if you will, and take refreshment."

  He nodded toward a thronelike seat that had been cut out of a tree stump. Melanthe perched Gryngolet there on the tall back of it, tying the leash to a heavy shoot that had sprouted from the old roots.

  She drew a deep breath. "We almost lost her."

  He shrugged. "With a choice between the two of you to bring out of there—" He hesitated. "In faith, I reckon that a wife warms me more pleasantly than a falcon, my lady."

  Immediately he turned away, as if he shied from his brash speaking. He squatted down and held the food bag open, scowling into it.

  Melanthe felt the touch of shyness, too. She sat down on the edge of the tree stump, taking refuge in a pragmatic tone. "We could have ransomed her back, if that little mar-hawk of a lord could have retained her long enough." She made herself look at him, though his head was still bent over the food. "Sir Ruadrik, I’ve been in consideration of our nuptial contract."

  His hand arrested in his laying out of bread and cheese. Then he went on with the task, saying nothing. He rose and bent knee before her, offering food on a white cloth. Melanthe took it on her lap.

  "There are many matters to be studied," she said. "My dower and your courtesy, and—how best to reconcile the king that we’ve married without his license."

  "My lady wife." He stood up. "I’ve thought on nothing else all this morn. If you wish it—" He stared past her at the ground, his face grim and empty of emotion. "There was no witness on earth to our vows. I won’t hold you fast to your words, do you think on them today, that they were said in haste or to your harm. It’s a poor bargain for you, such a marriage. All the advantage be mine, though I seek it not. I ask nothing of your wealth; I’ll accept none of it, and yet still I know that the king may in his anger strip you of what’s rightfully yours. Therefore, I will release you from any duty or avowel to me, if you wish it so." He raised his eyes to meet hers, his jaw firm-set. "As for myself—if be so much as high treason that I’ve married you, then I will die for it, but never will I forswear it."

  "How then could I do less for you?" she asked softly.

  He turned away to the horse, removing its bit so it could graze. With his back to her he said, "God save us both."

  "Amen," she said. "Have a little faith in my wits, too. I have me more than the king."

  He remained gazing at the horse and then looked over his shoulder with a slight smile. "My lady, look what you come to—" He shook his head, opening his arms to take in the clearing. "A stump for a chair and me for a husband. There be peahens with greater wits than yours."

  "A poor comment on the king," she said.

  He turned, with a serious look. "When I have my lady safe, I’ll go and supplicate of him at any price, that you must not be disowned of your possessions and title on account of me."

  "No, leave the king to me." She frowned thoughtfully at the black mound of a decaying charcoal kiln. "I think His Majesty may be appeased, if the thing is laid before him deftly. And even should he not, or someone else make trouble—well, I’ve searched on the matter in my heart." She took a deep breath. "I’ve said that my estates are of no great concern to me. I will sweep the hearth myself if I must."

  He laughed aloud, a sound that rang in the little clearing—the first time Melanthe had ever heard his uncontained amusement.

  She turned in indignation. "Think you I would not?"

  He was grinning at her. "I think me you would muddle the business right royally, madam,"

  "Pah." She flicked her fingers and ate a bit of cheese. "How difficult can it be?"

  He came to her and took her face between his bare hands. "You weren’t born to sweep a hearth. I’m not so poor that my wife must be a charwoman, but neither would I have your property reduced one shilling because of me."

  "Think again on it. The favor of kings isn’t cheaply bought. For such a crime as this, gifts and presents must be spent to appease him." She lifted her brows. "Lest you’d rather forswear this marriage yourself, so that I may keep all."

  His gaze traced her face. "I have said that I will not, for my life."

  Melanthe dropped her gaze. "Speak not of such cost; I dislike it." She reached up and pulled him down toward her. "Enough of heavy words. Sit by me, beau knight, and let me feed you milk and honey with my own fingers."

  He sank down cross-legged beside the stump, leaning his shoulder on it. "Hard cheese and havercake, it looks to me."

  "Ah, but I’ve said a great spell and turned it to honeycomb." She passed him down a lump of cheese and broken bread.

  With his thumb he splintered a bite from the dry edge of the cheese and ate it. "Hard and sour as ever." He t
urned, stretching out a leg, his back against the tree. "This is poor witchcraft, wench." He laid his head against her hip. "I’ve seen better at the market fair."

  "Do you know why I love you?" she asked.

  "In faith, I cannot believe that you do, far the less why."

  She curled her forefinger in his hair and tugged. "Perhaps one day I shall tell you."

  He was silent. She felt him turn his head, and looked down. He was gazing toward the edge of the clearing.

  "I hear a hound," he said.

  He rolled to his knees and held still, listening. Melanthe heard it then, too, a far-off bell.

  "That lymer." He threw himself to his feet. "Christ."

  * * *

  It was a thing of peculiar horror, to be hunted so. At first Melanthe hadn’t believed that experienced hounds could be coaxed to track them—they weren’t deer, or even coney, but she remembered the lymer and the gallant’s game with a lady’s scarf—that chestnut-haired carpet knight it had been, the one she’d cut, and Melanthe could well believe he’d be glad to turn his sport with the hound to account against her.

  Sir Ruck’s mantle, dropped in the yard, must have the scent of herself and him and the horse all thick upon it. The whole pack would follow the lymer’s lead. The persistent music of the hounds, distant, sometimes lost as Ruck twisted and turned, riding down the middle of a stream, but then coming again, always from the trail behind

  He had hours since turned Hawk west to the sunset, away from the course to her castle, away from Torbec and the hounds. The big horse went on into the darkening night with its flanks moist and smelling of sweat.

  She lost all track of time, jerking awake and dozing, so that it all became a ghastly dream, in which the voices of the hounds got confused with the wind, and she thought she heard them howling so close that she gave a start and a low cry—and felt herself in a black roaring confusion, until her mazed mind recognized that they had come out of the trees onto a shore swept by a dry tempest, the waves like a great slow heartbeat, showing long pale lines in the blackness.

  She held Gryngolet in her lap, hiding her face behind his shoulders to escape the stinging wind. She could no longer hear the hounds; she could hear nothing but the gale and the sea. The horse rocked beneath her, a steady surge, and she fell asleep again—drifting, sleeping, riding into an endless baying nightmare.

  * * *

  Ruck thanked God who had led him in the right direction. When they’d reached the strand, he hadn’t known how far north or south they might have come. But Hawk had plodded on a loose rein through deep sand dunes, veering away from the worst of the wind, and so they had gone north looking for what Ruck meant to find.

  He’d found it. The steady creak and groan of a shuttered window made Hawk prick his ears. The night was moonless, but the sand and clouds reflected back on one another, showing the vague outlines of pale things and black massive shadows,

  He dismounted. The princess wrenched upright, mumbling, "I hear them."

  "No, we’ve left the hounds behind," he said, though he knew that he might be wrong. He believed that the sand and wind would scour their scent, but he wasn’t certain. "Hold here." He pushed the reins into her free hand.

  Hawk stood with his head down, his tail sweeping up against his haunches, as if he did not care to take another step. Ruck left them there and slogged through the sand toward the salterns, taking care to squint ahead and avoid the pools and trenches of the saltworks as he made his way to the single hut.

  FIFTEEN

  Things seemed to Melanthe to happen in disconnected scenes, the hounds and the wind and the shore in the freezing darkness, and then a strange figure, shagged and silent, barely seen, a woodwose, a wildman of the desert, mad rocking and water and a sturdy boat—and colder, colder, wet spray that made her huddle into her cloak. Then the first light of dawn, the world a sickening sway of wind and wave.

  Sea loathing and lassitude and cold kept her immobile, hunched in the tiny cover for the endless voyage, carrying her she knew not where, nor hardly cared. Hawk stood with his head encased in armor, his legs braced and his nose lowered to the deck.

  Near sunset the awful rocking abated. She found the strength to open her eyes and crawl from the small shelter into the open, looking blearily upon an unfamiliar shoreline, crystalline with black trees that somehow glittered, mountains behind them, rising to ponderous heights dusted a spectral white. From low cliffs, overhanging tree limbs drooped down near the water, every twig and branch encased in clear ice to form strange white cascades against the dark stone.

  Sir Ruck hurried her, lifting her bodily onto the sand in a small inlet, glancing often toward the opposite shore of the bay. The horse came calmly off the grounded boat, as if it splashed from vessel into shallow water half the days of its life. Without a word the shaggy woodwose handed over Gryngolet, her body encased in a falconer’s sock, and pushed off his craft with an oar.

  Ruck slapped the destrier’s rump, sending it into a heavy trot ahead of them. The horse thudded up a path toward the trees, a pale form in the failing light, and vanished in the space of a blink.

  Melanthe looked over her shoulder, squinting her gritty eyes at the other shore. A mile off or more, she thought she could see low buildings and signs of active cultivation.

  "It’s the abbey land," he said, with a soft contempt in his voice. "The house of Saint Mary. I don’t want them to see us."

  "Where go we?"

  He held her arm and looked into her face as if he would speak—then gave her a light push, turning her ahead of him. "Into the forest," he said. "Make haste, my lady."

  * * *

  They rode all night—or if they didn’t, Melanthe knew nothing of it. She held onto the high back of the saddle. She kept falling asleep and starting awake as she lost her balance, until he said, "Lay your arms about me."

  She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his back. He held both her hands clasped securely under his. It was cold and uncomfortable, with only his surcoat to pad the hard backplate of his cuirass, but Melanthe must have slept long and deep there, for when next she roused, the slant of the ground had steepened, and dawn light filtered black into gray around them.

  The forest itself was so dark and thick that it seemed the horse was plowing through massive brambles and hollies without a path or sign of passage. And yet, none of the thorns pricked them, or even caught her cloak. The destrier stepped steadily ahead into dark caverns of winter foliage like tunnels, finding easy degrees up a cliff where icicles hung down from rocks directly over their heads.

  The horse labored, blowing puffs of steam, its iron shoes ringing sometimes on hard stone and other times thudding on moss. The sound of the wind in the branches overhead grew stronger as they gained height. Melanthe could look down and see dusts of gritty snow on every tree and evergreen, but no sign of where they had come.

  Ahead, sharp rocks made huge flat-sided teeth, as if a dragon of the earth bared its fangs. The trees were smaller, driven into hunted shapes by the wind. The destrier heaved up over a shelf and passed between two huge masses of slate, the gray slabs angling down to the ground like a great V-shaped gate.

  The sound of the wind suddenly dimmed. Hawk’s iron shoes echoed in the defile. They emerged beside a mountain tarn, purplish black and still beneath a clear sheen of ice. Sir Ruck halted the blowing horse at last.

  "We’ll let Hawk rest and drink," he said, helping her down. "Are you thirsty?"

  She shook her head, wrapping her cloak tight about her, and sat down on a rock. He produced a havercake from some unknown pocket and offered it to her. As Melanthe crunched on it glumly, he led the horse to the tarn and broke the surface with his heel. There appeared to be no exit from the coombe, and no entrance, either, though she stared at the place she thought they had come in.

  "Where are we?" she asked, brushing crumbs from her cheek.

  He looked up, weariness written in all the lines of his face. With a faint
smile he said, "In the fells beyond the thorn-wall, my lady. None can follow here."

  The horse plunged its nose into the water and sucked. Melanthe thought of the pathless forest they had passed through so easily. She gazed at the bare branches around the tarn—and suddenly saw the pattern in them, the felled trunks and interwoven framework, one twig pulled down and anchored beneath another, a third twisted about its neighbor, a pair spread open, braided and pruned and pinned to the ground to start a new shoot, all growing together into a wall of thorn and wood.

  "My God," she breathed. "It is a plessis barrier."

  "Aye. And ancient, my lady. Since before the northmen came to this coast, before anyone remembers, it’s been kept so."

  She looked at him. "What does it protect?"

  He came to her and held out his hand. Melanthe took it, rising. He led her to a place that seemed impenetrable: only when he stepped into it did she see that she could follow. They walked through a dark hollow, skirting the downed trunks of trees. He climbed ahead of her into another cleft in the rocks, and offered his hand.

  Melanthe gathered her skirts and let him hike her up. The space was barely large enough for both of them, with wind whining through the fissure of slate. He flattened himself to the towering sheet of rock and let her sidle in front of him, pulling her back against his chest so that she could see through the rent in the cliffs to the open country beyond.

  "There," he said, and pointed.

  The mountainside fell down so steeply from where they stood that she could not see the tops of trees except far below, where the forest swept to the valley floor. Ragged mists moved across, forming and fleeing, rising in wisps to flow up the cliffsides, blurring her view. At first she thought the valley empty, only more forest, and more, with the hint of a river running along the bottom and frozen waterfalls on the far side. She scowled against the wind-tears in her eyes, trying to follow where he pointed.