The bishop leaned forward. Ruck clasped his hands and put them in the holy man’s cool grasp, sealing his consent. Now he had no wife. No true wife. He didn’t know if he was married or not.
"You may rise, my son," the bishop said.
Ruck stood. He started to bow and move back, but the prelate raised his hand.
"Sire Ruadrik—do you believe this woman’s visions are given to her by God?" he asked mildly.
"Yea, my lord." Ruck knew well enough to answer that in a firm voice. Any other reply, he felt, could be twisted to mean that they were Hell-inspired.
"You follow her in her preachings on that account?"
"She is my wife," Ruck said, and then felt a flush of embarrassment rise in his face. "She was. My lord—I—could not let her go so far alone."
"You did not require her to stay modestly at home?"
He stood in shame, unable to admit that he’d found it impossible to command his own wife. "Her visions enjoin her," he said desperately. "She is God’s own servant."
His words died away into a profound silence. He felt they were laughing at him, to offer that as an excuse.
"And you have given a solemn vow of chastity to her some five weeks past, on the road from Reims?"
Ruck gazed helplessly at the bishop.
"In obedience to this woman’s visions," the bishop repeated insistently, "you lived chaste in your marriage?"
Ruck lowered his face. "Yea," he mumbled, staring at the bright floor tiles. "My lord."
"Oh, I think not," said a light female voice. "He is not chaste. Indeed, he is an adulterer."
Ruck stiffened at this astonishing accusation. "Nay, I am not—" His fierce denial died on his tongue as he turned to find the lady with the falcon standing not a rod behind him.
She strolled forward, sliding a glance at him over her shoulder while she dropped a token reverence toward the bishop. Her eyes were light, not quite perfect blue, but saturated with the lilac tinge of her dress and lined by black lashes. She seemed ageless, as young as Isabelle and as old as iniquity. The emeralds on the falcon’s hood glittered.
Ruck felt his face aflame. "I have not adultered!" he said hoarsely.
"Is not the thought as sinful as the deed, Father?" she asked, addressing the bishop but looking at Ruck, her voice clear enough for her words to resonate from the walls.
"That is true, my lady. But if you have no earthly evidence, it is a matter of absolution between a man and his confessor."
"Of course." She smiled that serene and indifferent smile, lifting her skirts, withdrawing. "I fear that I presumed too far. I wished only to spare Your Holiness the mockery of hearing a solemn vow of chastity made by such a man. He stared at me full bold yesterday in the Hall of Great Audience, causing me much uneasiness of mind."
A low sound of protest escaped Ruck’s throat. But he could not deny it. He had stared. He had committed adultery in his heart. He had desired her with an inordinate desire, a mortal passion—her eyes met his as she retired gracefully to one side—he read absolute knowledge there; she laid him bare, and she knew that he knew it.
"I am grieved to hear that you have had any cause for annoyance in the house of God, my lady," the prelate said, not sounding particularly disturbed. "Modesty in manner and dress, daughter, will temper the boldness of ungodly men toward you. But your point is well-taken with regard to the vow. Sire Ruadrik—can you swear to your purity both in thought and in deed?"
Ruck thought God Himself must be subjecting him to this mortification, holding him to a standard of truth beyond the strength of human flesh. Why else should all these great people take up their time with him? He was nobody, nothing to them.
He could not bring himself to answer, not here in front of everyone. In front of her. She might be the agent of God’s truth, but he thought no woman had ever appeared more as if she’d been sent by the Arch-Fiend to enthrall a man.
The silence lengthened, condemning him. He looked at her, and at Isabelle’s open tear-streaked face. His wife stared back at him.
Ruck closed his eyes. He shook his head no.
"Sire Ruadrik," the archbishop said heavily, "with this admission of impurity, and other considerations, the vow given to your wife must be considered invalid."
As the interpreter translated, Isabelle broke into a great wail.
"Silence!" the archbishop thundered, and even Isabelle drew in her breath in shock at the suddenness of it. In the pause he said, "You must be heard by your confessor, Sire Ruadrik. I leave your penance to him. For the other matter—" He glanced at Isabelle, who had crawled forward and lay tugging at his hem. "In the usual course, one spouse is prevented from taking such a vow of chastity, if the other does not consent to it and vow also the same. Consent alone is not sufficient, as without the consolation of a solemn commitment to live celibate and close to God, the temptations of the flesh may prove too great." He looked at Ruck. "Lacking this true commitment, you will see the wisdom in such requirement, Sire Ruadrik."
Ruck could barely hold the man’s eyes. He nodded slightly, burning all over.
The archbishop lifted his hand. "Nevertheless, this woman appears to me to be a special case. With the proper provisions, I am willing to allow that she may be attached to the convent and live in obedience to the rules of the house without her husband’s concurrent vow. After I have examined her further in the articles of the faith and found her response to be satisfactory, and the provision for her support has been received, she may be admitted to the order."
When Isabelle heard the translation of this, she kissed the archbishop’s hem and showed clear signs of working herself into an ecstasy. The archbishop made a gesture of dismissal. Ruck found himself escorted toward the door.
He wrenched his arm from the clerk’s hold and turned back, but people had crowded in. From the corridor all he saw was the lady of the falcon, lifting her hand to her ear with a look of pained sufferance as Isabelle’s voice rose to a shriek. The door closed. A clerk accosted him, informing him that an endowment of thirty-seven gold florins had been promised on behalf of Isabelle and would be accepted at once.
Thirty-seven gold florins was all the money that Ruck had, the last of the ransom from the two French knights he’d captured at Poitiers. The clerk took it, counting carefully, biting each coin before he dropped it into the holy purse.
* * *
Ruck walked to the hostel as if in a dream. His steps took him first to the stable, to make certain at least of his horse and his sword when everything else seemed a daze.
"Already gone," the hosteler said.
The haze vanished. Ruck grabbed him by the throat, sending his broom flying. "I paid thee, by God!" He threw the man against the wall. "Where are they?"
"The priest!" The hosteler scooted hastily out of reach. "The priest came to collect them, gentle sire! Your good wife—" He stumbled to his feet, ducking. "Is not she to go for a nun? He had a bishop’s seal! An offering to the church—on her behalf, he said—he told me you had willed it so. A bishop’s seal, my lord. I’d not have let them go for less, on my life!"
Ruck felt like a man hit by a pole-ax, still on his feet, but reeling.
"They took my horse?" he asked numbly.
"My lord’s arms, too." From a safe distance the hosteler made a sympathetic grunt. "They would fain have me climb upstairs after your mail and helm. Bloodsuckers, the lot of them."
Isabelle had made him leave his armor. She had made a great ado of it.
Thirty-seven gold florins. Exactly what she had known was in his purse. And his horse. His sword. His armor.
He locked his hands over his head and tilted his face to the sky. A howl burst from him, a long bellow that reverberated from the stones like a beast’s dumb roar. Impotent tears and fury blurred his vision. He leaned back against the wall and slid down it, sitting in the dirt with his head in his arms.
"Ye might sue for to have the horse back, if it were a mistake, gentle sire," the hosteler offered
kindly.
Ruck gave a miserable laugh from the hollow of his arms. "How long would that take?"
"Ah. Who could know? Twain year, mayhap."
"Yea—and cost the price of a dozen horse," he muttered.
"True enough," the hosteler agreed morbidly.
Ruck sat curled, staring into the darkness of his arms, his back against the stone wall. He heard the hosteler go away, heard people talking and passing. Grief and rage spun him. He couldn’t move; he had nowhere to go, no wife, no money. Nothing. He couldn’t seem to get his mind around the full dimension of it.
A smart prod at his shoulder pushed him half off his balance. He looked up, with no notion of what time had passed, except that the shadows lay longer and deeper on the street.
The prod came again and Ruck grabbed at the staff with an angry oath. Before him stood the hunchbacked mute he’d gifted with a denier—and his first thought was that he wished he had the money back again.
The beggar held out a little pouch. Ruck scowled. The hunchback wriggled the pouch and offered it closer. He waited, staring at Ruck expectantly as he accepted it.
The bag contained a folded paper and a small coin. The beggar was still waiting. Ruck held onto the coin for a moment, but futile pride overcame him and he tossed it to the beggar with no good grace. The man grinned and saluted, shuffling away.
Ruck watched his dinner and bed disappear up the narrow street. He unfolded the paper—and jerked, catching at the green glitter that fell from inside.
I charge thee, get thee far hence ere nyt falleth. Fayle not in this.
He gazed at the English words, and the two emeralds in his palm. One was small, no bigger than the lens of a dragonfly. The other was of a size to buy full armor and mount, and pay a squire for a year. A size to adorn a falcon’s arrogant crest.
He held the emeralds, watched them wink and catch the light.
He knew what he ought to do. A good man, a virtuous man, would stand up and stride to the palace and throw them in her face. A godly man would not let himself be bound to such a one as she.
He’d given up his wife to God.
And his horse, and his armor, and his money.
Ruck closed his hand on the jewels she sent and swore himself to the Arch-Fiend’s daughter.
* * *
A year turns full turn and yields never like;
The first to the finish conform full seldom.
Forbye, this Yule over, and the year after,
And each season separately ensued after other:
And thus yields the year in yesterdays many,
And winter wendes again.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
ONE
"Year’s gifts!"
The cry rose with squeals and laughter as the ladies of Bordeaux craned, reaching for the prizes held tauntingly overhead by their gay tormentors. Veils came askew, belts failed and sent misericordes flying in the tussle—in a rush of varicolored silks and furs each gentleman went down in willing defeat, yielding his New Year’s keepsake for the price of a kiss.
The first Great Pestilence was twenty and two years gone, the Second Scourge ten Christmases past—but though the French harried Aquitaine’s borders and yet another outbreak of the dread black swellings had killed Lancaster’s white duchess herself just last year, such dire thoughts were blown to oblivion when the trumpets gave forth a great shout, sounding the arrival of pastries to the hall, fantastic shapes of ships and castles and a stag that bled claret wine when the gilt arrow was plucked from its side.
A mischievous lady was the first to toss an eggshell full of sweet-water at her lord—the carved rafters resounded with glee, and in a moment every man was wiping perfumed drops from his lashes, grinning, demanding another kiss for his misfortune. Some hungry lordling broke the crust of a huge pie and a dozen frogs leapt free, thumping onto the table amid skips and feminine screams. From another pie came a rush of feathered bodies, birds that flew to the light and put out the candles as the company filled the gloom with shrill enjoyment.
The Duke of Lancaster himself sat with languid elegance at the high table of Ombriere, watching critically as kettledrums and the wild high notes of warbling flutes heralded the first course. At the duke’s right hand, his most high and honored guest, the Princess Melanthe di Monteverde, overlooked the dim noisy hall with cold indifference. Her white falcon, equally impassive, gripped its carved and painted block with talons dipped in silver. The bannered trumpets sounded once more. All the candles and torches glowed again in magical unison, illuminating the hall and dais as the liveried servants held the lights aloft.
Lancaster smiled, leaning very near Princess Melanthe. "My lady’s highness likes not mirth and marvels?"
She gave him a cool glance. "Marvels?" she murmured in a bored tone. "I expect naught less than a unicorn before the sweetmeats."
Lancaster grinned, allowing his shoulder to touch hers as he reached to refill the wine cup they shared. ’Too commonplace. Nay, give us a more difficult task, Princess."
Melanthe hid her annoyance. Lancaster was courting her. He would not be snubbed and he would not be forestalled. He took her coldness as challenge; her reluctance as mere dalliance.
"Then, sir—I will have it green," she said smoothly, and to her vexation he laughed aloud.
"Green it shall be." He signaled to an attendant and leaned back to speak in the servant’s ear, then gave Melanthe a sidelong smile. "Before sweetmeats, my lady, a green unicorn."
The heavy red-and-blue cloth of his sleeve brushed her arm as he lifted the cup toward her lips, but the bishop on his other side sought him. In his distraction Melanthe took her opportunity to capture the goblet from his hand. She could already see the assembly’s reaction to his attentions. Swift as metheglin could intoxicate a man, another horrified report began to spread among the tables below.
It would be a subdued mumble, Melanthe knew, passed over a shared sliver of meat or a finger full of sweet jelly, whispered under laughter with the true discretion of fear. Lancaster was thirty, handsome and vigorous in the full strength of manhood. While his oldest brother the Black Prince lay swollen and confined to his bed with dropsy, it was Lancaster who kept court as Lieutenant of Aquitaine, but who could blame a younger son of the King of England—most surely one of such energy and pride as Lancaster—if his ambitions were for greater things than service to his brother? Everyone knew he would take another highborn heiress after losing his good Duchess Blanche, and no one expected him to dally long about it. But Mary, Mother of God, even for the gain it would bring him, did he truly contemplate the Princess Melanthe?
She could almost hear the whispers as she sat next to him upon the dais and surveyed the company. There—that woman in the blue houppelande, leaning back to speak to the next table—she was no doubt complaining to her neighbor that such a gyrfalcon as Princess Melanthe carried was too great for a woman to fly. Nothing in the duke’s mews could match it; not even the Black Prince himself owned such a bird. The insolence, that she would display it so at the duke’s own feast! Immodesty! Wicked vanity and arrogance!
Melanthe gave the woman a long dispassionate stare and had the pleasure of watching her victim turn white with dismay at the attention.
Her reputation preceded her.
And those three, the two knights inclining so near to the pretty fair-haired girl between them—Melanthe could see the relish in their faces. Widowed of her Italian prince, the men would say, heiress to all her father’s vast English lands...and the girl would whisper that Princess Melanthe had caused a maiden to be drowned in her bath for dropping a cake of Castile soap.
From her late husband, someone else would murmur—the income of an Italian city-state; from her English father, lord of Bowland, holdings as large as Lancaster’s; she’d taken fifteen lovers and murdered all of them; for a man to smile at her was certain death—here the knights would smirk and grin—certain, but exquisite, the final price for the paradise he could savor f
or as long as it pleased her to dally with him.
Melanthe had heard it all, knew what they spoke as well as if she sat among them. But still Lancaster paid her court with polish and wolf’s glances, smiles and covetous stares, barely concerned to keep his desire in check. Melanthe knew what they were saying of that, too. She had entrapped him. Ensorcelled him. He’d left off his black mourning; all trace of lingering grief for his beloved Blanche had vanished. He looked at the Princess Melanthe as he looked at her falcon, with the look of a man who has determined what he will have and damn the price.
She only wished she might ensorcell him, and turn him to a toad.
Tonight she must act—this public gallantry of his could not be allowed to go on without check. Before the banquet ended, she must spurn him so that he and no one else could doubt it. When she looked out upon the trestles, she saw the assassin who watched her, tame and plump in her own green-and-silver livery, but in truth another spawn of the Riata family, one of the secret wardens set upon her. Only by the mastery of long practice did she maintain her cold serenity against the hard beat of her heart.
The food arrived with full pomp and glitter, loaded onto cloths of purest linen, the procession winding endlessly among the tables. Lancaster offered her the choice dainties from his own fingers. She brought herself to the point of rudeness in response to him—by God’s self, must he be so open about it, this determined public pursuit in the face of her expressed displeasure, when he might have had the sense to send his envoy by night and secrecy to measure her willingness?
But he thought it agreeable sport, she saw, a lovers’ game of disinterest and affectation. He full expected that she would have him. She had told him more than once that she would have no man, but none here would blame him for his confidence. It was a brilliant match. Their lands marched together in the north of England: the sum of their possessions would rival the king’s. By this alliance the duke could make her the greatest lady in Britain—and she could make him greater yet than that.