He turned away and stood for a full minute, drinking draughts of clear night wind. The fear of plague held him frozen on the edge of frenzy: the lifelong terror—to be left alone, to be the last, to die that way...
The moon hung over him, cold and sane. He stared at it, struggling with himself.
Allegreto was sitting up, a faint outline against the light mist that still clung to the grass. Ruck felt the youth staring at him.
He suddenly began to tremble, letting go of his breath.
Not plague. It was not plague. The stink was wrong.
Ruck had smelled pestilence until the fetid black odor had burned itself into his brain—and this was not it. The loathsome stench of plague made poor Pierre’s disgorgement seem halfway sweet. Ruck looked down at the shapeless mass and saw what his mind had not recorded a moment before—the white shapes of two opened cockleshells lying on the dark ground.
Horrible enough, if Pierre had purloined spoilt cockles and then choked on his own vomit, unable to call for help—but not plague. Not plague. Ruck took a deep breath. The reality of his man’s death was beginning to reach him. Pierre, who had been with him for thirteen years, who filched small things, never more than a penny’s worth, who’d learned to squire from Ruck, who’d always been an enigma, mute, faithful as a dog was faithful, but with no outward sign of affection.
Ruck glanced toward Allegreto. The youth was no longer visible sitting up against the mist. Ruck hoped he’d gone back to sleep. He bent down and gathered the furs about Pierre, keeping the small body wrapped close. His mind flashed over possibilities, trying to think of a way to hide this and prevent panic. Allegreto’s fears and mask had the rest on tenterhooks—Ruck saw now that he should not have suffered any talk of plague at all.
"Is he dead?"
The youth’s suffocated voice startled him, coming from behind, at a distance. Another man stirred.
"Of putrid shellfish," Ruck said quietly. "He could not call us. He choked, God give his soul rest."
"Thou liest," Allegreto hissed. "I saw him when thou lifted the mantle! He’s warpened with death agonies. Has he the swellings?"
"Nay. Come thee and see for thyself." Ruck laid the body back down and threw off the cover. Now that he recognized what it was not, the smell was bearable.
Allegreto stumbled backward with a little cry, waking another man.
"Silence!" Ruck hissed. "Listen to me. There’s no black eruption. The smell be not of plague, but only plain vomit. Not six hours past he was fit and walking like the rest of you. He stole cockles from the hermit and ate them. The shells are here on the ground. None other ate such, did they?"
No one answered. He knew they were all awake now. He tossed the blanket back over Pierre’s dead face.
"He choked to death," he said softly. "Too quick it killed him, for to be plague."
"Nay, I saw it take a priest in half an hour," came a shaky voice from somewhere in the shadows. "There were no black boils. He fell dead over the man he’d come to shrive."
"’Tis winter," said someone else. "The cockles be sweet now."
"The stench is wrong," Ruck said. They simply stared at him.
"Henri," he snapped in a low voice. "Thou quitted watch without the next man wakened." He took a stride, hauling the culprit out of his coverings by his collar. Before Henri had a chance to cower away, Ruck backhanded him so hard that he fell over his heels. "Tom Walter!" He scanned the dark for his sergeant. The man scrambled up. "Tie him, and John who was on duty with him. Ten lashes at first light. Relight the fire. And if any speak so loud as to wake Her Highness, tie him, too, and he shall have twenty." He swung his hand toward Allegreto. "Watch this one, also."
He paused, to see if they would defy him, but Walter was moving toward John to obey. Allegreto was only a motionless shape in the dark. Ruck looked toward the tent and saw a pale face thrust between the drapes at the entrance. He lowered his voice to a bare murmur. "My lady—she has not been disturbed?"
"Indeed, she has." It was the princess’s amused voice. "How could I sleep in this uproar? What passes? Where is Allegreto?"
Her courtier made a faint sound, barely articulate.
"Your Highness, it is nothing," Ruck said. "I beg you will return to your rest."
Instead she pulled a cloak about her and emerged from the tent, standing alone without her gentlewoman. "What is it?" she asked, in sharper tone.
"My squire has died in the night."
She sucked in a breath, staring at him.
"My lady!" Allegreto’s moan was like grief, like a plea for mercy, as if she could save him. "The pestilence."
"He died not of the pestilence, Your Highness," Ruck said. "The smell is wrong."
"The smell!" she repeated blankly.
"Yea, my lady. Have you never smelled the plague stench?"
She stood silent a moment, then lifted her hand. "Uncover him," she said.
"Nay, there is no need. He grew sick on cockles," he said, "and gagged to death."
"Uncover him," she snapped.
Setting his jaw, Ruck leaned down. Let her look then, if she must, and choke on her revulsion.
But she did not cringe back from the body. Instead, she went forward, gesturing. "A light."
None of the men moved. Ruck finally squatted down and lit the lanthorn himself. He opened the light on the corpse. Princess Melanthe gazed down at it. She knelt and lifted Pierre’s stiffened hand. "Poor man. He suffered, I fear."
For a moment Ruck thought it was real, this sympathy, the echo of regret in her voice a true emotion. Then she rose, turning toward Allegreto.
"Come to bed, my love. There is nothing to be done for him." She walked toward her young courtier. Allegreto made a gurgling gasp and backed away from her. She beckoned.
"Come, do not be foolish. The man died of cockles. Come lie down with me now."
"Lady—" It was a whisper of horror.
Ruck watched her advancing slowly upon him, driving him to frenzy apurpose. Only for the cruelty of it—she must be as certain as Ruck there was no pestilence, or she would not have touched Pierre.
"Dost thou not love me, Allegreto?" she murmured in a hurt voice, moving toward him with her hand extended. "But I love thee still."
Allegreto groaned, beyond any reason. He scrambled back from her. "Touch me not!" he cried. "Get away!"
She stopped. Over the moonlit distance he had made between them, they gazed at each other.
"I won’t come," he said in a deathly voice. "I won’t come."
Princess Melanthe swayed slightly. She turned to Ruck. "Help me—help me to my place. I do not feel strong."
Before Ruck could respond, she fell to her knees. He moved on instinct, catching her limp body in his arms as she toppled. He rose with her, shocked beyond feeling, staring down at the pale column of her exposed throat.
Fear hit him again like a hammer. He carried her, seeing nothing but her arm hanging lax over his in the moonlight, hearing nothing but his heart in his ears, turning blindly for the tent. As he laid her down on the featherbed, he called for her gentlewoman—he thought he shouted it, but he could not hear anything over his heart.
No one answered. In the utter blackness of the tent he could see nothing; he groped for a lanthorn, sparking the flint and steel by fumbling. As the light rose, he looked toward her.
She was smiling at him. She sat up on her elbows and lifted her finger to her lips for silence.
Ruck’s jaw went slack—and then stiffened in outrage. He shoved himself off the ground, standing with his head against the silken roof. She raised her hand, as if to hold him, but Ruck was too furious. He took up the lanthorn, flung back the cloth, and strode outside in a black temper.
"My lady is in fine health," he uttered through his teeth, jerking his head toward Pierre’s body. "I need two men to bury him."
In the tallow light no one moved. Allegreto shrank into the shadows, and even the sergeant took a step backward.
"He’ll
haunt us," someone muttered.
"Accursed be you all!" Ruck snarled. "I want no succour from a pack of cowards, then. I’ll leave him myself with the monks." He lifted Pierre again, turning toward Hawk. "Loosen his fetterlock," he ordered the nearest man, who covered his mouth and nose with his chaperon as he obeyed.
The horse disliked the load, flaring its nostrils and drawing in suspicious noisy draughts of air, but Hawk was accustomed enough to the smell of death to bear his burden. Ruck took his lead and turned him toward the trickle of hazy moonlight that fell onto the track, heading toward a dim black line of trees in the distance, silently asking pardon of God and Pierre’s soul for what he was about to do.
There were no monks, not within his reach, for though he knew there was a priory at the headland, it was yet so far away that he could not hear the bells. But he wanted no more of these whining fears of hauntings and pestilence. In his anger he wanted isolation in which to lay Pierre to rest. He wanted the comfort of driving a spade deep in the ground until he was weary with it, his muscles hurting instead of his spirit.
He wasn’t afraid of ghosts—he’d buried all his family in unconsecrated ground and found their only haunting to be the gentle, lost voices in his plague dreams. Poor silent Pierre didn’t even have a voice to haunt dreams, unless his soul found one with the wild wolves that ran free in this place, the way he had never been able to run in life.
* * *
Melanthe slept. She kept trying to rally, rising to the weary surface and failing, losing herself again in the sweet dreamless warmth. With her wakening mind she knew she must not let sleep have her, but she had lost the will to fight it, falling back, luxurious collapse into rest and safety.
Full light flooded the tent, coloring everything with a rosy tint, when she finally held herself awake. The light shocked her; she made the effort to pull herself from the depths. It was difficult, as it had never been before. She had slept oversound, and the slumber still sucked at her.
The difference came slowly. She realized that she was alone. Without Allegreto’s restless clinging presence at her side, without Cara’s quiet rustle.
The whole camp was unusually quiet. Her Green Knight always did his best to restrain the men, she knew, attempting to serve his indolent lady by maintaining peace of a morning—little as he might approve of her slothful habits—but this morning he had succeeded well beyond his usual measure. There was only a faint chink of harness, none of the low talk and dragging sounds of packing and loading.
She must have outslept all. Or they were still confounded by the night’s events and sat bemused. She sighed and stretched, enjoying the soft liberty of the furs.
Melanthe smiled as she thought of her knight, how he would lift that one dark eyebrow, conveying utter disdain while he spoke in the most courteous of phrases. He scorned her, this green man—scorned and still desired her.
It was a compound new to Melanthe. She was not accustomed to disdain, not at least from the men who wanted her. She might already have pursued the matter in some way, if not for Allegreto. And Gian.
Pulling an ermine about her shoulders against the icy air, she sat up. There was still no sound from outside, nor any scent of toast browning at the fire—nor even the scent of a fire at all.
The strangeness struck her. Her heart began to thump. The poisoned cockles—had any but the hunchback eaten them? Wild thoughts possessed her. Allegreto, nightwalker, assassin, capable of any butchery, had been driven half to madness by the fear she had roused in him. And this was wilderness, the knight had said, a place beyond the king’s control, resort of outlaws.
She looked quickly around—but there—there was Gryngolet, sitting hooded and calm on her perch. Melanthe slipped her dagger from beneath her pillow and left the furs, shivering. She broke open a chest, ransacking it for something to pull over her nakedness. The azure wool of a heavy tunic prickled her skin through linen. Her hands had begun to shake a little, suddenly anticipating what nightmare she might find outside.
Covered, she knelt at the opening of the tent and listened. A horse blew softly, champing its bit, but there was no other sound of man or beast. She held the dagger at ready and pulled the drape slightly aside.
A few feet away she saw a man’s mail sabaton, old-fashioned, with a blunted toe. An upright leg—through a slightly wider slit, she could see two armored legs—he sat motionless on a half-rotted log a few yards from the tent. She closed her eyes, fortifying her mind for any horror—a dead man tied into a lifelike position, a decapitated torso. She lifted her head a little and saw the hem of a green-and-silver coat of arms.
One toe moved, pushing a cockleshell a fraction of an inch, first one way, then the other.
Relief shuddered through her. She had half expected a bloodbath and bodies in the sand—she had not even trusted those greaves and knee poleyns to belong to a still-living man until she had seen the faint, ordinary movement.
It was her knight, then, fretted with her. Following on the surge of reprieve, Melanthe felt an odd spurt of good humor. Had she slept so late that he’d sent all the others ahead and stayed to scold her?
The idea pleased her, but she recognized the absurdity of it instantly. He would do no such thing—it was not his nature to openly rebuke his liege, and she had given him provocation enough. She found slippers and pulled them on, grabbed a mantle, and pushed aside the curtain, emerging from the tent.
His war-horse, its green-dyed coat long since washed to a handsomer gray, pricked its ears toward her as it stood by the log. The knight sat for a moment with no expression, his breath frosting, his helm in his lap. He looked up at her.
It was the only time in her life that any man but her husband or her father had not risen to greet her. That jolted her, made the empty, trampled clearing of marsh grass stranger yet, eerie in its silence and the blank way that he looked at her.
"They have fled," he said. Then he seemed to come to himself and stood with a metallic sound. "My lady—I beg your forgiveness."
"Fled?" she echoed. "All of them?"
She stared around the barren camp. The only horse was his. They had ransacked the supplies and taken the animals, leaving bags and bundles broken open.
"Allegreto?" she asked breathlessly.
His brows drew together. "He is gone, madam."
She gripped the dagger, holding her hands pressed over it. "Gone."
His scowl deepened. He nodded, watching her.
"He is gone?" She could hardly bring herself to speak. "How long?"
"I know not. Two hours I was absent, before dawn." He made a slight gesture toward the ground. "The tracks—they scattered apart from one another. Your maid, also. This talk of plague—it inflamed a terror."
She was alone. Free. She had done it. But she had not meant to do it so completely.
She met his green eyes and saw everything he thought of her. She let him think it. In his armor he stood perfectly still, black-haired and silent, a solidly potent presence on this empty moor.
Allegreto was truly gone. He had left her.
"Where went he? What will happen to him?" She stared at the horizon.
"I cannot say which marks are his, Your Highness. We can wait here. Mayhap he will grow frightened and return."
Melanthe kept gazing at the horizon, the empty horizon.
"I would seek him for you, my lady," he said, "but I cannot leave you alone."
"Do not leave me!" she said.
He dipped his dark head. "Nay, Your Highness."
She looked about her again. It was so strange: she had never in her life been alone—never without attendants, never with one man, not even in her husband’s bedchamber where his pages always slept on pallets beside the bed. The sky suddenly seemed bigger, dizzyingly huge, the moorland vast.
"God shield me," she whispered. How beautiful it was, how quiet, only the wind and the wild fowl speaking far off at that strand of silver light where the sky came down to the land.
"By hap they
will all come into their senses and return to us," he said.
She realized that he was trying to reassure her. She turned to him. "Nay—they will not, between fear of plague and retribution."
"Then they live outlawed," he said simply.
His plain view of things seemed oddly befitting in this place, but she said, "I cannot comprehend Allegreto as an outlaw."
He did not return her faint smile. In his expression she saw the truth of what he thought of Allegreto’s prospects in the wilderness.
"What threatens?" she asked quickly.
He hesitated. "Bogs and quicksands," he said at last. "Brigands. Poison water." He shifted, making that faint armor noise. "I heard wolves in the night."
She pulled her lip through her teeth. "Melike not to linger here," she said, changing to English because it somehow soothed her to hear him speak in his own tongue, a thin common thread between them.
"I ne like it nought myseluen," he agreed, shifting language in response as he always did, "but we shall dwell here for today, so that they moten come again to us if they so will."
Melanthe shivered in the wind, pushing her hands beneath her mantle. "Thou art too merciful," she said. "Traitors deserven no such indulgence."
Ruck watched her hug her arms about herself. He narrowed his eyes. "Indulgence they shall nought have, Your Highness. But it were your lo—" He almost said "lover," but it curdled on his tongue. "—your courtier who unnerved them." It was she herself had been the one to set the seal on the party’s panic, with her spiteful games, but he did not say so. "Away from Allegreto, they mayen think well again."
She stared toward the horizon. She seemed smaller somehow than she had seemed before to Ruck, the cloak bundled around her, less elegant and imperious.
"Allegreto," she echoed, as if her tongue were not her own. She made a sound of frenzied laughter, and then stopped it, biting hard on her lower lip. Her knees seemed to give beneath her. She sat down on the ground and stared at the horizon, rocking. Then she leapt up again. "I see him!"