Ruck dropped his sword. Both of them pounced upon the bags, tearing through them for the falcon’s furniture. Ruck found the hawking-pouch, proffering it with a muttered prayer of thanks that he’d brought it. She snatched the prize from his hands.
White leather it was, embroidered in silver and jeweled like all the rest of her possessions. Emeralds caught the sun and sparkled on her gauntlet as she thrust her hand into the heavy glove. Even the lure itself was decorated with tiny gems at the ring and fastened along the shafts of the heron’s feathers, with one splendid diamond blazing on the body.
She looked up. Ruck watched her face as she followed the falcon’s tower. He had thought her not so beautiful in the unsparing light of day, but he found himself mistaken again. Witchlike, she had transformed herself to loveliness once more, as the falcon changed its nature from earthbound to sky-free in one leap.
He turned to find the bird and could not see it, the black speck gone so high it was beyond sight. Her hand swept upward. The sun took the lure as it arced over their heads, scattering brilliant light. Hawk pricked his ears at the faint rush of the cord and feathers spinning through the air. The princess kept her face to the sky, her arm outstretched against the blue, her gauntlets sparkling, green fire and silver flying from her fist.
She called her falcon, spinning the lure; a carol of love, half laughter—and the bird came, dropping hard from the sky.
Ruck heard the stoop before he saw it. The bells screamed one long, high note as the falcon hurtled downward, a prick on the blue that became a dot, a lancet, an arrow bolt, a scythe, its wings bowed close in two thousand feet of fall. The lure rose to it, aflame with emeralds.
At the instant of strike, a fan of white burst open, wings spread wide against the glitter as the hit sent a crack of sound echoing across the water; the lure shot downward and the falcon threw up into the air, jesses dangling. The lure impacted the ground, spraying sand, and sailed off again under Princess Melanthe’s hand on the cord.
They began a dance, the woman and the bird, a swinging and sweeping dance that defied the compass of the earth, marked by the flash of emeralds, the bells, and the white glory of the falcon’s twisting flight as it drove and stooped and chased the toll. Around and around the lure spun, beckoning and evading, mercurial, up and down and doubled back, the falcon keen and nimble in pursuit—an eternity— and yet before Ruck could take his eyes from them, before he could imprint the picture on his mind, before he could overcome the irresistible rise of his heart at the sight of the falcon’s dance, it was over.
She ended the flight in a fashion he had never seen. Instead of letting the toll drop onto the ground for the falcon to take, she swung the lure up and caught it into her other hand, lifting it like a pagan priestess calling to the sun. The bird shot past, chopping once at the feathered toll with her talons. Then she swung wide and slanted back, checking hard.
With wings outspread the falcon came to the glove, silvered talons open to grip fast. In a regal sweep she settled, folding her wings and reaching greedily for the lure.
"Poor Gryngolet!" The princess was breathless, laughing and weeping at once. "Poor Gryngolet, my beauty, my love! ’Tis a foul trick, I vow. We have no garnish for your reward."
The falcon spread her wings again, screaming angrily and striking the meatless lure at this injustice, but her mistress had a secure hold on the jesses that Ruck had severed to cut the bird free. The falcon’s complaints ceased as the princess deftly slipped a hood over its head.
Now that the moment was over, Ruck found his heart thudding in reaction. He could not believe what he had seen, that tremendous stoop from such a height and the dance that followed. The gyrfalcon sat quietly, unresisting as the princess caught the braces, drawing the gaily plumed hood closed. One-handed, she tied the shortened jesses to the glittering varvels and leash, using her teeth to finish off the tightening of the knots.
Ruck picked up the fallen toll. Its feathers were battered, one broken. The big diamond had fallen off, and emeralds hung loose by metallic threads. He looked about him on the ground, searching for the lost gem. When he saw a white glint in the sand, he pulled off his glove and reached down.
"Keep it. It is thine," she said as he rose with the diamond between his thumb and fingers. "A token." She was smiling. Glowing, her eyes shining with tears of elation. "So thou wilt not forget her flight."
The gem lay in his palm, a gulf between them, a distance beyond comprehension—so careless was she of such stones, to hazard them as decoration for a falcon’s lure, to give them in casual remembrance—as generous as the greatest lord Ruck could imagine. He did not know if the king himself did such things.
"My lady, I need me no token to mind such a sight. As help me God on high, I shall ne’er forgetten it."
"Ne the less," she said, "keep it." She turned her attention to the falcon, leaving him with his hand extended.
He felt vaguely insulted, though there was nothing slighting in her manner, or in the gift itself. It was the first time she had given any sign that he was due anything at all for his service.
Not that he served her for a reward. He did not expect or wish any recompense for honor. But she did not endow him for his fidelity; she only gave a token of remembrance as a gracious lady might—and that made him more sullen yet, for she obviously expected nothing in exchange. Why should she, when she would see that he had naught to his name that was worthy of a lady?
He watched her cherishing the gyrfalcon and remembered the tall fair Northman who had given the bird to her. A man of sense would have felt uneasy—that stupendous flight could have been sorcery—but instead all he felt was churlish. He thought of what he had: his horse, his sword, the jeweled bells and jesses that were her own present. The field armor that he wore. His other set, the ornate tournament trappings that had cost him his first five years of ransoms and jousts, and bore the emerald she had given him...left behind for bandits to plunder.
He had nothing deserving of her notice that had not come to him at her own hest, and so he was angry at her.
Holding himself stiffly courteous, he said, "I crave no gift of you, before God, my lady—and naught will I taken. My whole care is for your well faring. Go we on to a safe place tomorrow."
She turned from the falcon, but did not lift her eyes to his. For a moment she watched the long wind ripples on the river. Her face altered, the warmth in her passing to an ivory stillness. "There was a castle," she said. "And a town."
In the deep oppression of her spirit, he had not thought she had perceived them.
"Lyerpool," he said quietly.
"Will we go there?"
Below the river’s surface, beneath the sparkle of the sunlight, the depths lay black and unplumbed, like old fears.
"Nay, my lady. Nought there, I think."
"They died of pestilence, did they not?" Her voice made a queer upward break. "The monks."
"Yea, my lady."
She sat down on a bank of sand, staring at the falcon. "I brought it," she said. "I have brought it back."
All of his suspicions rushed over him again. The clinging mist, her secrets, her dark hair and purple eyes—hellmarks, drawing and repelling him at once. A changeling. A witch.
"I teased and beleaguered Allegreto with it so." She held the falcon on her fist, biting her lower lip, rocking faintly. "Now he’s dead, and pestilence comes. It is God’s judgment on me."
Ruck’s mouth flattened as his mistrust deflated into exasperation. "Your Highness, I ne think me that God would bringen down plague on all mankind only for your foolish wickedness."
For a long moment she remained rocking, each sway a little greater than the last, until she was nodding her head. She began to smile again. "Be my sins so trifling? By hap I am not to blame for plague, but only for the excess of lice this winter."
"Certain it is that you are to blame for our present state," he muttered. "My liege lady."
She stood, taking up the falcon. "Thou art i
mpudent, knight."
"If my lady japes at sin and pestilence, is her servant to be less bold?"
"Avoi, I wist thou art but a saucy knave, hid in a loyal servant’s clothes!"
His moment of insurrection already mortified him. He became very interested in putting the fetters on Hawk. "Lady, there be no humor in it. We ne haf no escort, my lady, nor sufficient food to eaten, nor now’r safe to go."
"Why then," she said, "I will call thee Ruck by name, sir, and thou wilt call me Little Ned, thy varlet and squire. Gryngolet will be known as ’Horse,’ and the horse will continue as Hawk, that we mayen have a pleasant balance. And we will all hunt dragons together."
His mouth tightened. He could not tell by her tone if she was making jest of him. He held out the stone. "Nill I nought accept this. My lady should stowen the thing safe away."
She ignored it. "Yea, Ruck and Little Ned and Horse and Hawk." She was suddenly smiling, beautiful again, beautiful and ordinary at once with her smile. He wondered if he would ever resolve on which.
"My lady’s brain is fevered," he said.
"’Ned,’ if thou please. Thou art to put a degree more of contempt in thy voice. ’Ned, thou worthless churl, thy witless brain is fevered!’"
"My lady—"
"Ned."
"I ne cannought call you Ned, my lady!"
"Pray, why not?"
He lifted his eyes to Heaven, unable to compose an answer to such a question. Retrieving the falcon-pouch, he dropped the stone and lure inside.
"Tom, then," she said. "I will answer me to Tom, and on hunting of dragons will we wenden. Thou art our master and guide, Ruck, for thy experience of fiery worms and diverse other monsters."
"We nill nought hunt dragons, my lady," he said impatiently.
"We have nowhere safe to go. Nowhere but wilderness and wasteland empty of people." She paused with the gyrfalcon still on her fist, her body shaking again with that tremor that was too deep for cold. But she smiled, her eyes dry, fierce as the falcon in her spirit. "So say me true, Ruck—what better business hast thou on the morrow than to fare with me for to slayen dragons?"
NINE
Cara could not control the shivers. It was not the cold, though the air in the abandoned smithy was cold enough. It was that she wore the clothes of a dead woman, and that Gian Navona’s bastard son kept looking at her as if he expected her to stop her shaking. She was terrified of Allegreto; she wished he had left her with the bandits—no, she did not wish that— God save her, she was going mad. She would wander the countryside, tearing her hair and crying at the moon in grief. It was her penance, just vengeance upon her for trying to poison her mistress.
She wept for herself and for Elena. Little Elena, mischievous and quiet by turns, Elena with her ears too big and her chin too pointed and still pretty—Cara loved her and she was doomed, as the princess had said, because Cara had not succeeded at her task. But Allegreto told her that Princess Melanthe was dead anyway, of plague. Would the Riata accept that?
No. It would not be enough. There would never be enough. She saw past it now, saw what her mistress had meant—why should the Riata loose their grip on her, when they could keep Elena, when they had such a hold as love upon Cara to make her do their bidding?
"Cease this weeping," Allegreto said tautly. He looked at her again and stood up from the block of iron he had been resting upon. Even in the bandit’s dull woolens, he had his father’s arrogant nobility and the grace of a fallen angel. His legs were muddy to the knees from floundering in the bogs.
"I’m sorry. I’m trying." She held her fist hard against her mouth in the attempt. Another sob escaped.
"Stupid Monteverde bitch," he said.
"I’m sorry!" she cried. "I’m sorry I’m Monteverde! I’m sorry I can’t stop weeping! I don’t know why you troubled to save anyone but yourself from those thieving brutes!"
He stared at her sullenly. Then he lowered his dark lashes and looked away. "Are you rested? I want to go on."
Hunger gnawed at her, and her legs were cramped and aching. Her bare feet bled in the dead woman’s rough shoes. "Go, then. It’s nothing to me."
He leaned over her and jerked her chin up. "What is this—another puling, weeping Monteverde? Christ, I wonder that your father found the vigor to get you on your mother. By hap he didn’t, but let a Navona do the work."
Cara tore her chin from his fingers, scrambling to her feet. "Don’t touch me. And I would not brag so of Navona vigor were I you, gelding!"
In the half-light of the smithy, his teeth showed in a feral grin. "Careful, Monteverde, or I’ll prove myself intact on you. How would you like a Navona babe?"
"Idle threat!" she snapped.
"Shall I show you?" He reached as if to untie his hose.
Cara could not contain her breath of shock. "Liar! Cursed Navona, your own father would never have let you near my mistress if you were whole. You slept with her!"
His mouth hardened. "My father has reason enough to trust me." He shrugged, dropping his hand. "And the Princess Melanthe was as hard as this anvil. Stupid girl, she was old! We did no more than mock at love, she and I, to preserve her from Riata and the silly Monteverde geese who do their bidding."
"I don’t believe it."
"It’s not her I ever wanted." He looked down at Cara, just a little taller than she, his face smooth and youthful, but with cheekbones shaded by the promise of maturity. "How many years do you think I have?"
She shrugged. "I know not, nor care. Enough for every evil."
"Sixteen on Saint Agatha’s day," he said.
"Nay," she said. She had thought him twenty and more, caught forever at the cusp of adulthood, his voice a young man’s, his body still a youth’s but with a full-grown control, matured beyond the gawkiness of adolescence.
But when she looked at him, she could see it. Like a trick of the light, his aspect altered before her eyes, and she saw a tall boy, a year younger than herself, well-grown for his age, with his frame filling rapidly into manhood.
"I don’t believe you," she said, but her voice wavered.
He gave a short laugh. "Well, it matters not what you believe. If you are alive in a year or two, Monteverde goose, which I doubt, you may see for yourself. This play must have come to an end soon enough, for no eunuch grows a beard. I see that I shall have to grow mine to my knees now, just to prove my sex."
"A beard will suit you ill," she said caustically.
He gave her an odd look. He touched his jaw, drawing his fingers down it as if he already felt the coarsening.
"Navona peacock! Of course you would not wish to cover up your beauty!"
His dark eyes searched hers for a moment. Then he smiled, sweetness tinged with some strange melancholy of his own. "Nay," he said slowly, "haps I would not. Come, feeble Monteverde, I see you have made your feet. Walk with me, and if I please, I may discover you something to eat." He grinned, a flash in the shadow. "Even if I have to kill another outlaw for you, and his lady, too, for to take it."
* * *
Ruck had brought only delicacies for food, oranges and nuts and spiced sugar, having presumed that there would be refuge and keep at the priory. He had intended the luxuries as gifts for the house—instead they were all that was to be had for supper. The twilight was coming on too deep to hunt, and his stomach was hollow with complaint.
He was unrelentingly formal in his manners with the princess, trying to regain the proper distance between them, but she seemed to have taken a capricious dislike to ceremony. In the sunset that lit the river gold and turned the coppice along the shoreline to black lace, she would not sit as a gentle lady and be served. After seeing her falcon established upon a bow perch made of a green alder branch, its ends thrust into the ground, she persisted in collecting deadwood for the fire and winter grass for the horse.
"My lady soils her gloves," he said in disapproval as she dumped handfuls of greenery at Hawk’s nose. "I bid Your Highness sitten adown, if it please you no
ught ill."
The destrier lipped up her offering eagerly and lifted his head, pushing at her shoulder. She stumbled a step under the hard nudge and dusted the clinging stems from her gloves. "The horse mote eaten."
"He’s fettered. A little distance he can wander, to finden the same fodder you bring him, lady, and more."
Hawk had already dropped his head and begun nosing and cropping at the tender winter shoots around a sandy hummock. She looked at the horse and said, "Oh," as if such a novel notion had never occurred to her.
"Your Highness mote eaten, also," he said. "If you be pleased to sitten adown, so I may attend you."
He opened his hand toward where he had made a seat from his saddle and some furs and carefully positioned it upwind of the smoking fire. It was the third time he had made the suggestion, but he managed, with some effort, to keep his voice mild.
She smiled, with the golden light on her face. "I do not wish for thy attendance, worthy knight, but for pleasure I will beg thee to bear me company at table."
He bowed stiffly. "Nought to your honor be it, to sup with your servant. Do sit ye adown, if it please."
"I will sit me down if thou wilt," she said.
He held fast to form. "I think it nought seemly, my lady."
Her lips tightened stubbornly. She stooped and began tugging at grass, gathering more into her hands. Sand clung to the damp hem of her cloak and skirt. Green stained her white gloves. She carried the fodder to Hawk, and then picked up a stick from the kindle pile. She tossed that on the fire and chose another, struggling to break a branch that was too thick for her to snap.
"Iwysse—I will sit!" Ruck crossed his legs and dropped down onto the ground. This newest vagary of hers, this acting as if she were no greater than he, vexed and baffled him. Instead of feminine tears and terror, peril seemed to make her foolish in her mind.
When she dropped the stick and sat beside him, he regretted his capitulation, for she ignored the saddle and took up a place much too close, so close that her folded knees almost touched his. Her cloak did, a bedraggled ermine corner lying in a casual sweep over his knee poleyn.