Lancaster rubbed his face with his good hand and looked to Sir Robert. "My head pains me in truth," he said, with something of a smile. "What think you of him?"
Knolleys shrugged. "He will be a loss to us."
"A loss," Lancaster repeated in a silken voice, looking at Ruck from beneath lazy eyelids. "Well for thee, that thou didst not leap at the command. Some here have counseled me that thou art a sly rebel, Green Sire. That thou hast kept thy name secret for something less than honor, and wormed thy way into a place and gained the love of my men only to inflame disloyalty and rebellion with this spectacle today. That thou hast conspired with the princess to weaken us, in preparation for a French attack tonight or tomorrow."
Ruck dropped to his knees. "Nay, my lord! By Almighty God!"
"Who stands behind the Princess Melanthe, traitor?" Knolleys demanded.
"I know not!" Ruck exclaimed. "I’m no traitor to you, my lord, I swear on my father’s soul. Her man told me that she wished me to issue challenge in her name."
"Against thy liege?" Sir Robert demanded. "And thou took her up?"
"My beloved lord, I meant you no insult. I was to challenge all comers. I am sworn to her. Years ago—and far from here. I knew not even her name until yesterday. I never thought to see her again. She was..." He paused. "I swore myself to her service. I know not why. It was long ago." He shook his head helplessly. "I cannot explain it, my lord."
Lancaster lifted his brows. "Canst not explain it?" He burst out in caustic laughter and held his head. "Has she bewitched us or besotted us?"
"Send for the inquisitor," his brother said. "If she’s a sorceress, he will discover it."
"And whiles? There’s no time for the inquisitor." Lancaster rested his head against the throne. "Much as I should like to see her burn." He drew a deep breath and sighed. "But here—I find I cannot imprison or execute my green companion-in-arms, in spite of my aching head and dislocate joint. I have a fellow feeling for him, the love-struck ass. Moreover, it provokes riot."
"Nor let him walk free," Knolleys said.
"Nor let him free, for if he wills or no, the men gather to him, and with the temper of the nobles, we’d have disorder enough to burn this city down. I want no rivals to my command. I need my men to fight France, not one another."
Ruck knelt silently, awaiting his fate, watching his future dissolve before his eyes.
Lancaster gazed at him with that sleepy speculation. "Tell me, Green Sire, what is it thou hoped to gain of me, to join my court?"
"My liege..." Ruck’s voice trailed off. He had not envisioned that his moment with Lancaster would come this way.
"Position? Lands? A fine marriage? I hear that the ladies admire thee."
"Nay." Ruck lowered his face. "I ask naught of you now, my lord."
"And I offer naught," Lancaster said, "for I want no more of thee. I have detained Princess Melanthe at the gate, so that thou wilt be seen alive and well to escort her into the city. At dawn thou must be off, with thy princess and all her train." He smiled sourly. "And look thee to see me at the quay, to bid you both a cordial farewell."
* * *
It was for her protection, the message said. Melanthe pulled her cloak close about her in the cold darkness outside the city gate. Her little hunting entourage huddled before her. Behind lay the distant fires and tents of the tourneyers who had no lodging within the walls. That the gate was still open this late was strange. The guards were men in Lancaster’s and the prince’s livery—not the usual gatekeepers. She could see torches and hear drunken shouting from within.
If she had had another choice, she would have turned away. The message—and signs of riot inside—were ominous. She did not think real trouble had erupted yet, but it might flare at any moment. Her presence alone might be enough to spark it. She much doubted that Lancaster’s message to await an escort at the gate had been sent with loving concern for her safety.
Gryngolet fluffed her feathers to keep out the cold, perching quietly upon the saddlebow. The greyhound sat shivering. Melanthe had not dressed for darkness. Even in gauntlets, her fingers were cold. She looked into the blackness behind her, sparked by open fires, and admitted wryly to herself that nothing stopped her at the moment from fading into the gloom, as free as she dreamed of being, except for the mystery of how to live as anything but what she was.
"My lady—" One of the guardsmen came striding from beneath the black bulk of the gatehouse over the bridge. "Your escort."
Even as he spoke, the arch brightened with the flare of many torches. At the head of a score of armed men her green knight rode toward her beneath the gate.
The torches behind him lit his mount’s breath and his own in transparent gusts of frost. He wore no armor now, only a light helmet over a bandage that shone white across his forehead. The bridge thudded with the sound of hooves and boots.
He never looked directly at her. With a perfunctory bow he made a motion to the men to surround her horse. Placing half of the company before them, and half behind, he wheeled his mount next to hers, swept his sword from its sheath, and shouted the order to march.
She rode beneath the archway beside him. Inside the city walls, the streets were full of men. They stared and shouted and ran beside the company. Melanthe kept her eyes straight ahead and up. Her palfrey felt very small next to the destrier, and the score of men a thin wall against violence. In some of the side streets other knights sat their mounts, swords unsheathed, staring malevolently as her escort passed. Limp bodies lay in doorways—drunk or dead, she could not tell. The high bulk of the keep itself was a welcome sight, until she saw the crowd milling and pressing below it. As her escort came into view a cheer went up, confounded with outrage and spiced by drink.
The Green Sire shouted an order. The men ahead halted. He lifted his sword over his head, and the men-at-arms spun their sharpened pikes, forcing the nearest of the crowd to give room. The pikes stopped with their points at chest-level, a bristle of protection.
The castle gates opened slowly amid noise and disordered motion. He yelled another order, and the men-at-arms began to move, stabbing into the crowd ahead of them. In the light of the torches her cavalcade pushed through the mob, encapsuled by pikesmen. The throng in the street could not seem to decide if they wished to cheer or resist, swarming back and forth in ill-tempered confusion, fighting one another, staggering back from the pikes, waving their own weapons in wild and abortive threats to their neighbors.
Her palfrey danced along beside the war-horse, taking hopping, frightened steps, half rearing as a man fell between the pikes and sprawled in front of her. Melanthe gave the horse a quick spur, and it sprang off its haunches, coming down on the other side of the prone figure. The palfrey kicked out as it landed, but Melanthe did not turn to see if the blow struck. Allegreto’s horse crowded behind her; the gate was overhead at last—and they were through, passing into the inner courtyard. The gates boomed closed behind them, shutting out a rising roar.
Her knight dismounted and came to her, offering his knee and arm. Melanthe took his hand for support. Hers was shaking past her ability to control it. As her feet touched the ground, she said, "Thou tarried long in coming. I’m nigh frozen through."
She did not wish him to think that she shivered from fear. Nor did she thank him. She felt too grateful; she felt as if she would have liked to stand very close to him, he seemed so sure and sound, like the enclosing walls of the keep, a circle of sanctuary in the disorder. For that she gave him a sweeping glance of disdain and started to turn away.
"My lady," he said, "his lordship the duke sends greeting and message, and desires to know that your hunting was well."
Melanthe looked back at him: "Well enough," she said. "Two ducks. I will dispatch them to the kitchens. There is a message?"
"Yea, my lady." He looked at her with an expression as opaque as a falcon’s steady cold stare. "I am to escort you hence without delay. We leave at dawn, upon the tide."
"Ah." S
he smiled at him, because he expected her to be shocked. "We are cast out? Crude—but what does an Englishman know of subtlety? Indeed, this is excellent news. Thou shalt make all preparations for our departure to England and attend my chamber at two hours before daybreak."
His face was grim. He bent his head in silent assent.
"The duke has denied you, then?" she asked lightly. Melanthe held out her hands in the flicker of torches. "Green Sire, swear troth to me now as liege, and I will love thee better."
His mouth grew harder, as if she offended him. "My lady, I was sworn to your service long since. Your man I am, now and forever." He held her eyes steadily. "As for love—I need no more of such love as my lady’s grace has shown me."
Melanthe raised her chin and shifted her look past him. Allegreto stood there, watching with a smirk.
She bestowed a brilliant smile upon her courtier and lowered her hands. "Allegreto. Come, my dear—" She shivered again, turning, pulling her cloak up to her chin. "I want my sheets well warmed tonight."
* * *
The boats rode the current and the outgoing tide downriver, their oars shipped and silent. As the banks of the Garonne slipped away, ever wider, a cold sun rose behind Ruck’s little fleet, sucking the wind up the estuary off the sea. It was not to his taste, but he’d reckoned it his duty to sail aboard Princess Melanthe’s vessel himself.
He had worked with her steward all night to organize their departure. When he had seen the painted whirlicote Princess Melanthe was to inhabit on the land journey, he’d found that he had to use the duke’s patent to commandeer an extra ship only to convey the leather-covered, four-wheeled house and the five horses necessary to draw it.
Ruck had full believed that he would spend hours waiting on his liege lady’s convenience, as she did not seem the sort to bestir herself to undue exertion, but Princess Melanthe’s attendants outshone even the men-at-arms in their packing and loading efficiency. There was no scurrying back to fetch a lost comb or another pillow. Not one lady slipped away to linger in farewell with some brokenhearted lover. Ruck suspected that they feared their mistress too well to delay her.
The duke had come to see them off as he’d promised, making a great false show of giving the kiss of peace and offering cordial farewells. Ruck had found himself the object of more courtesy from his liege in the cold dawn of his departure than he had received in the whole sum of his years in service to Lancaster. The audience was small, only a few beggars and merchants, and a soldier or two woken from sleeping on the docks, but by noontide the story would have spread throughout the city to gentles and commoners alike: the Green Sire had left Aquitaine in Princess Melanthe’s service, alive and without duress. No threat to Lancaster’s command, no martyr to his pride—no spark to set rebellion alight.
The Green Sire was nothing to Lancaster, or to anyone else now.
Ruck drew in a slow breath and let it go. He had lost his prince and liege. He had loved a lady who did not exist—but she had seemed so real, he had spent so long devoted to her, that he felt as if death had claimed a piece of his heart.
He sat on deck atop the single high cabin in the stern, very aware of the princess below him. He wondered if she suffered from the seasickness, and had not sufficient imagination to picture such a thing.
Pierre huddled in the tip of the stern, snoring gently. The wind blew in Ruck’s face. His men lined the deck, sitting in the protection of the gunwales. He reached over and plucked his flute from Pierre’s capacious apron. The squire opened one eye, and then snugged into his cloak again.
In the early light Ruck began to play a sweet, mournful song of the Crusades, of a lover left behind to grief and worry. It seemed to him fit for the gray rise of dawn, slow and yearning, with the sway of the water and the glint of dull light on the helmets and crossbows. Fit for his mood: leaving nowhere, going nowhere.
Below him the curtain over the cabin door flicked. Ruck’s note faltered for a bare instant, and then he lowered his eyes and went on playing. It was only her lapdog Allegreto, who climbed the short stairs with a crimson cloak wrapped tight around him. To Ruck’s concealed surprise, the youth sat down on the deck at his feet, facing away from him into the wind.
"That is a love song, is it not?" the young courtier asked.
Ruck ignored him, enclosing himself in the melody.
Allegreto sat quietly for a few moments, and then sighed. He looked around at Ruck. "Hast thou ever been in love, Englishman?"
He asked it wearily, as if he were a century old. Ruck made no answer beyond his tune.
Allegreto smiled—an expression that was undeniably charming in spite of his blackened eye. He pushed the windblown dark hair from his forehead. "Of course. Thou hast as many years as my lady, and she knows more of love than Venus herself." He leaned back against the gunwale. "Thou knowest she has magic to keep herself always the same. Perhaps she’s a thousand years old. Upon hap, if thou wouldst see her in a mirror, she would be no more than a skull, with black holes for eyes and nose."
Ruck lifted his brows skeptically, without losing the cadence of his notes.
Allegreto laughed. "Ah, thou art too astute for me. Thou dost not believe it." With an abrupt intensity he leaned nearer. "Thou wouldst not take her from me?"
Ruck’s music wavered for a beat.
Allegreto closed his eyes tightly. "Thou hast—such as I cannot give her," he said in a lowered voice. "I am not so young as I appear."
It took Ruck’s mind a long moment to construct that into meaning. He lowered the flute.
Allegreto pulled the red cloak up to his mouth and turned his head away. Ruck stared at the smooth wind-pinkened cheek.
"When I was ten and five," Allegreto said, muffled, as if in answer to a question. "She preferred me thus." He pulled the cloak closer and then glared over his shoulder. "But still I love her!" he exclaimed fiercely. "I can still love!"
Ruck gazed at him. He could think of nothing more to do than nod in the face of such awful devotion. Allegreto held his eyes for a long moment, and then put his head down in his arms. Amid his shock Ruck felt ashamed of himself. Whatever sacrifices he’d made in the name of his false lady, they had been honorable, and his own choice. He was a whole man. He wet his lips and picked up the flute again, taking refuge in the music.
He had played only a few notes when two sharp thumps came from the deck beneath their feet. Allegreto looked up.
"Oh." He turned to Ruck and smiled sweetly. "I forgot. I was to order thee to cease that dirge and play something more amusing."
FIVE
The old King of England was a haggard and drunken shadow of the tall warrior Melanthe remembered. Edward’s regal progresses and tournaments lay as gemstones amid her childhood, all luster and polished steel and dazzling majesty: her father’s red and gold glistening among the other colors, sparks flying from his helmet at a hard strike; her mother’s fingers tightening for an instant over Melanthe’s hand.
King Edward drank a long swallow of wine and handed the cup aside hastily, gesturing his servant behind his chair when Melanthe entered his royal bedchamber. The king’s gray hair lay loose over the broad shoulders that once had borne armor, his mustaches flowing down into his long beard. He had the reddened nose and cheeks of too much drink, but he kept a regal posture in his chair.
A day in London had been ample time for Melanthe to discover that he was in utter thrall to his mistress, a fine female of a stamp that Melanthe understood full well. No one attended the king without consent of the feared and hated Lady Alice—and Melanthe was no exception. Alice Perrers sailed into the chamber on her heels.
"I bring you someone you will like, my dear," Lady Alice said, plucking the goblet from the servant’s hand. She leaned over the king’s chair and kissed his forehead as she poured him more wine. He smiled dreamily at the ample bosom hovering so near his face. "Here is Lady Melanthe, the daughter of Lord Richard of Bowland, God give his soul rest. She bears gifts for you, and letters from Bor
deaux. The duke writes."
"John?" The king’s eyes brightened. He held out both his hands. His fingers shook.
Melanthe made a deep courtesy. She rose, giving Lady Alice a significant look before she moved forward to make her offerings.
The mistress had fattened her unofficial power so far that it was said she even sat upon the benches and threatened the justices. But Melanthe could play that game. She had lavished compliments and gifts upon this overripe and overblown person, along with hints that their interests were quite compatible. Lady Alice would not wish any powerful man, most particularly someone like John of Lancaster, to marry Melanthe and combine their great estates into a domain that would challenge the king’s.
No more did Melanthe care to marry such a man, she had assured Lady Alice. She had no ambitions beyond her father’s inheritance. Her greatest desire was to pay her levies to the king so that he might be enriched, and thus more generous yet in bestowing suitable presents upon his favorites. In her excess of goodwill Melanthe herself would make a generous present to the king’s intimates the moment a private audience might be arranged.
Of course, if a private audience was impossible, if Lady Alice did not trust her new friend, then in Melanthe’s crushing disappointment and hurt, she feared that she must return in disgrace to Aquitaine, where his lord’s grace the duke had been most flattering in his attentions.
Lady Alice gave Melanthe a narrow smile as she straightened from bending over the king. With much petting and many careless endearments, she withdrew. He retained her hand in a lamentably fatuous manner, but when she finally departed, leaving only the chamberlain—Alice’s man—and the servant, Edward seemed to forget her, leaning forward in his eagerness for his son’s letter.
Melanthe made another courtesy and gave him Lancaster’s missive. She could have recited it to him, having made herself free with the wax seal before they had left Bordeaux. She watched the king frown over his eldest son’s poor health, and quicken at the news that the prince would return home to recover. She saw Edward’s mouth purse at the report of the empty treasury in Aquitaine, and the uneasy temper of the Gascon nobles.