She ignored this gloomy warning. "Has Dan Gian arrived yet?"
"The boats and baggage are here, and the lower servants. His grace has not come with his men."
Late sun through the open front door made Melanthe’s shadow a long distorted shape. "Hold all of my people at readiness on the dock. As soon as I am changed, we depart. Dan Gian’s servants may do as they please, but I will not wait for him past the time that I set. I wish to be at London by midnight. I will want a supper on the boat. See to it." She almost ordered that Cara attend her, but remembered that the girl would already be off with her beloved Englishman. "Send Lisa to me."
She left him, climbing the stairs to her solar. The bareness of the house did not sadden her—she was glad enough to leave Merlesden. She had no childhood memories of the place; it had merely been convenient while the court was at Windsor, and full in its way of Gian’s presence.
But her steps were slow on the stairs. Leaving here, she broke the final thread. There would be London and Dover and then the sea, but it was here that the end came.
She passed under the arched door. The last chest lay open for her to change into traveling gear. The great bed was dismantled and gone, the stone walls bare of tapestries and the floor of carpets. Colored light poured in the oriel windows, green and gold and red and blue, intense with sunset.
A shadow stepped into it. She started. "Gian!"
But he was too tall, too broad in the shoulders. He was all black against the light but for the hard curve of his cheek and the red and blue hues on his shoulders.
Melanthe turned and slammed the door, barring it. She pressed her back against the wood. Lisa’s knock came, and her perplexed call, muted through the door.
"I do not need thee!" Melanthe strove to keep her voice steady. "Go to the others. Wait at the wharf!"
"Yea, my lady." The maid’s voice was barely audible through the wood.
Too late, Melanthe realized that she should have given some order that would keep Gian and everyone else from the house. But her mind seemed simple, her heart sending too much blood to her brain with wild beating.
"Ye wends you anon," Ruck said.
"A’plight, art thou to annoyen me yet, mad churl?" She thrust herself off the door, but stayed near it. "Go, ere I have thee arrested for trespass!"
"My lady, ye stonds betwix me and the way."
She could not let him leave—at any moment Gian would come. So close, she had been so close to drawing the danger safely off. Even now, if she could get Gian aboard the barks and on the river, if she could hold Ruck bound just long enough—
"Ne would I leaven here by any way," he said. "I have come for you, wife."
"Thou hast a wooden head."
"So haf I said myseluen, as I lay in chains of your making, my lady."
"Behoove thee to mark them well!" In her agitation she glared at him with real savagery. "I know not how thou art here, but by Christ’s rood, I tire of thy impestering of me!"
"And I tire of thy faithless deceits!" He walked nearer to her, out of the glare. His dress was nothing from a prison—he wore his black velvet, with the gold belt and marcasite, stones that were silver and pitch at once, like the face of water at night. "Where lies thy heart?"
"I have no heart. Did I never say thee so?"
"I had a message of thee, that thy great love, this Navona, had come to wed thee. Allegreto hatz poured news of it in my ears, how ye cherish his father and forget me for love of him. N’is nought thy heart?"
She turned his words. "Hast thou slain Allegreto to get free?"
"Nay, he is safe enow, but nought here to twisten and turnen for thee, my lady. Nor Navona to harbor thee."
"Gian comes anon."
His eyes flickered, as if he heard a sound behind her. Melanthe stiffened, gripping the door hasp, but there was nothing, no noise of feet on the stairs, no voices below.
"Faithly, does he? Then my lady has only to wait. He will slay me, nill he nought?"
"Slowly," she agreed. "With the greatest agony he can serve thee."
He smiled slightly. "So would I serve him, if I could."
She saw with despair that fear would not move him. He had no dismay of Gian, but she was possessed with dread of what would happen if Gian and his men found him here. It would be no quick poison this time. It would be torture, and she would have to watch.
Melanthe tilted her head back against the door. She looked at him beneath her lashes. "Come, wilt thou be such a poor love-sotted wretch, to die for me?"
"Yea," he said simply. "I would."
"Fool!" She pressed against the door. She must have him out of here, away, and yet she could not think of how. "When I despise thee! Wilt thou torment me to my grave?"
"To thy grave. Jouk and duck and tumble, and guile as thou wilt, I am still thy husband, Melanthe, and I will have thee."
"Never did I wed thee, fool. How should I? It was a jape, an idle disport, monk-man, to make thee forfeit thy vaunted chastity!"
His green eyes held steady. "Thou hatz as many deceits as a fox has turnings, my lady, but thou art well skewered on this jape of thine."
She laughed. "I love another man. Thou art nothing to me."
He took a step at that. She sought desperately for a way to turn it to advantage.
"Melanthe—"
"I loathe and scorn thee!"
He lowered his hand. With a sharp turn he paced to the far end of the chamber, lost again in shadow. The rays of the sun were longer and lower. Gian must come, any moment he must come.
"Ye ne’er told of Wolfscar to them," he said, his voice coming with a soft echo from the dark comer. "Why did ye nought, lady?"
"Why?" She shrugged. "But why should I? Ne did I wish to make my lover jealous."
She could not see him, but she sensed that she had found a chink. An inspiration came to her, if she only had time to employ it. She reached to her throat and released the catch on her silken mantle. It fell to the floor, and she kicked it from her.
She stood in the light and stretched her arms luxuriously overhead. "But Gian is not here yet. Haps I will bedevil thy chastity one more time before I go."
She turned, looking toward him, unable to see past the shafts of colored sunlight. He said nothing.
With a wicked smile, she moved into the shadow. "One kiss," she murmured. "For farewell, monk-man."
He caught her hand before her eyes adjusted, pulling her up against him. "Is this loathing and despite?" he asked low.
She lifted her eyes, the sun-haze still in them, his face dim and veiled; his mouth on hers all feeling. He kissed her hard. She breathed him, familiar heat and plain scent, a man’s unadorned skin and the taste of him on her tongue—memory and delight and pain. The last time. The last time his arm pressed her into his chest, the last time his fingers slid upward behind her throat, straining her closer still.
She almost lost herself in it, but the declining sun burned on her eyelids. Her hand crept up his shoulder. She pressed the point of her dagger beneath his ear.
He jerked at the prick of it, his breath hissing inward.
"Now," she said, "thou wilt do as I bid. Thy hands crossed behind thee."
His dark lashes hid his eyes as he looked down upon her. Slowly, slightly, he shook his head. "No, Melanthe."
She breathed deeply, holding the tip against his skin. "Dost thou think I have not the skill, or the strength?"
"Nought the will."
"Fool! Ne do not try me!"
His mouth was a taut line in the half light. "I try you. Do it, if you will."
She gripped his sleeve, turning the blade, pressing harder and praying.
"Ye thinks to tie and imprison me until you go," he said bitterly. "But thou moste slay me, Melanthe, if thou will to be free, for nill I concede it while I breathe life."
She cut him. He flinched, but he held her, his arms tightening as a bright trickle of blood ran down his neck. She was trapped in his embrace.
"Fool! Fo
ol! If Gian comes now, he will flay the skin from thee alive."
"What matters it to thee, who hates and loathes me?"
She heard horses. Hoofbeats sounded in the courtyard, and the voices of men. "He is come!"
Ruck seized her tight. "Decide, my lady. It is beyond lies now."
"He is come!" she cried. She tore herself from him. "Go!"
"Is he you want, then?"
Her mastery shattered. "Go!" she screamed. "Thou simple, dost thou think it is between you? He will slay thee—I cannot bear it, God curse thee, he has killed all that I ever loved only because I loved it. Go! The kitchen, the postern door—"
But he did not go. Melanthe stood in the midst of the streaming light clutching the dagger, staring at the blind shadow of him, hearing the sounds below.
"He knows, he knows," she moaned. "He will find thee here—how didst thou come? Thou wast safe, I made thee safe, go, go now, if thou ever loved me...please—I cannot bear it." She could see nothing, only light and the window, the last sun pouring past her in rainbow hues. "I cannot bear it."
He caught her wrist, wrenching the blade from her. His body made an outline against the light, the rays shifting and dancing around him. She heard the knife clatter on the stone floor.
"Melanthe—" He held her hands up, and she saw blood on them, felt the sting where she had cut herself. "He is dead."
"Go," she whispered, but it was hopeless, too late. She could hear them in the hall and on the stairs.
"Navona is dead, Melanthe."
She shook her head. "He is not dead. He comes."
"Nay, my lady." He held her hands. She couldn’t see his face. She wanted to see his face, but tears and light and dark were all she had.
"He comes."
"No," he said.
There was a scratch upon the door. She shuddered. She could not move. ,
"My lady, thou said me once, ne’er was I to tell thee false. Gian Navona is dead. I saw him—my lady, my sovereign lady. Believe me. Thou need nought fear."
"My brother, and Ligurio," she whispered. "And my daughter. And any friend I ever thought to have but Gryngolet. I did not mean to love thee. I did not mean to. It was so far away. I never thought he could find out."
The sun rays shafted around him as he lifted his hands to her face. He smoothed her hair, his fingers catching in the net and passing over the jewels.
"She only had two years. My baby. And she was so fair. I always remembered how fair—and I thought—with thee—if God willed—" She licked tears from her mouth. "But then I was afraid."
"I would thou had told me. Melanthe. If thou had told me!"
"I was afraid." Her face crumpled, and she could not see again. "I was afraid for thee. And then Desmond came, and I knew that I had brought it all there, and I had to go away." She shook her head. "Ne did I want to, but I could not say thee so, for thou wouldst come."
"I did come. How could I nought?" His hands squeezed tight on her shoulders. "How could I lose thee? Ah, Christus, a child...Melanthe, my lady, my life—e’en that? And thou kept all from me, and made me think—" He shook her and then pulled her to his chest. "Helas, I have nought known thee; thou hatz blinded me."
The scratch came at the door again. She put her hands on him, closing her fingers.
"Gian is dead," Ruck said. "It is not Navona."
With an effort she released him. He let go of her and went away. She stood facing the shining window, the tall traceries of colored glass. Her hands stung and throbbed.
Behind her, someone spoke softly in French. Ruck answered them, the words too low to understand. Melanthe turned around, and for the first time she saw him clearly, not a shadow against glare, but real and distinct. He closed the door and came back to her.
His face in the light was sober, his black brows and lashes stark. He touched her hands gently, and then her cheek. "Is Allegreto below, and Navona’s men." He took her wrists.
She lifted her eyes, a new terror rising in her. "Who killed Gian?"
"No one, lest it were the Arch-Fiend himseluen."
"Thou art certain he is dead?"
"Without nay, I am certain." He held her face between his hands. "Luflych, make thy soul easy." He gathered her close to him. "He is gone beyond where he can reach thee e’er-more."
A quiver ran through her. He held her harder, pressing his lips to her hair. The gentle kisses seemed to draw fear from her in a surge, breaching walls and barriers, transforming it into endless tears that spilled from her eyes and washed her cheeks and his black velvet.
"It cannot be." Her voice was hollow, muffled against his shoulder. "It cannot. Art thou sure? Didst thou kill him?"
"Husht, Melanthe," he murmured. "Be still." He rocked her softly. "I haf said thee true."
She wanted to push back and look at him, to make herself believe that he was with her, but she did not want to leave his embrace. She closed her eyes and felt him instead, his broad back beneath her palms, the height of his shoulder and the breadth of his body. She pulled him into her as if she could make the steady rise and fall of his breath supplant the jolting sobs that shook her.
"Husht now." He drew her down onto the window seat. His arms enfolded her tight against him. He kissed the nape of her neck as she pushed her cheek to his chest. "My liege lady—my heart. Husht. Thou art safe with me."
TWENTY-SEVEN
The murmur of many lowered voices drifted to them in the stairwell. Ruck felt Melanthe’s hand on his, colder than the stone walls. He stopped on the stair, enclosing her fingers between his palms to warm them. In the dim light he could barely see her face.
She rested against him for a brief moment, and then stepped down. At the foot of the stairs she paused, looking into the manor hall.
Silence fell over the gathering. In candlelight Gian Navona lay on a straw-covered hurdle, only the stone floor beneath him. He was white, his skin and his clothes, already an effigy with painted black features and gilt embellishment. A priest knelt beside him; the others left a space about the corpse, standing back clustered in the corners and along the walls, except for Allegreto.
The youth stood beside his father’s body like a white alaunt guarding its master. Ruck had not sensed the depth of resemblance between them before. In his frozen pallor Allegreto was a mirror of his father: comelier, younger, perfected. He still wore the milky livery, showing damp yet, as if no one had thought to let him change.
Beneath the rafters painted red and gold, against the dark slate floor, Allegreto and Navona and the priest were like a scene from a miracle play—only the look of Allegreto’s face was no playing. His pitch-black eyes turned to Melanthe, watching her as she left Ruck at the screens and crossed the floor.
She stood looking down on the dead man for a long time. The priest murmured his prayer softly. Ruck could not see her face.
Navona’s men waited, a score of them ranged beyond Allegreto. Most of Melanthe’s retinue gathered nearer to Ruck, at the lower end of the hall. Set apart, an Englishman stood with another, unmistakably a clerk by his writing roll and pen. Local people pressed forward through the open door into the passage, goggling and hushing one another, staring at Ruck harder than they stared at the corpse.
He jerked his head at them to leave. The ones in the front tried to comply, but the others behind jostled them forward. Melanthe turned, glancing toward the whispering spectators.
"Place a shroud on him," she said. She looked at her maids and spoke in Italian. One of them ducked a courtesy and went quickly out past Ruck.
"My lady," the Englishman said, stepping forward and speaking mannerly French. He sank to one knee and rose again. "With all reverence—John de Langley, our lord the king’s justice of the peace."
"What happened?" she asked, lifting her chin. "How did he die?"
"Madam, I am—"
"He fell from our boat into the river." Allegreto’s voice cut across the justice’s, sharp and cold. Then despair seemed to burst from him. "My lady, I tried t
o save him. I tried!"
"Madam, I am—"
"Will you believe such a thing?" One of Navona’s men stepped toward the justice. "Nay, the bastard speaks false—my lord never fell from that boat. They have murdered him, these three together!"
A murmur ran through the onlookers. "Madam," the justice said tightly, "I pursue an inquisition to determine this matter, whether it be an accident or a crime to be brought before the jury."
Melanthe said nothing. Langley inclined his head to her.
"I have found no witness but this youth, the name of, ah—"
"Allegreto," she said. "He is Dan Gian’s bastard son."
"Yea, my lady. And this is—?" He looked meaningfully toward Ruck.
"My wedded husband. Lord Ruadrik of Wolfscar."
The spectators didn’t even attempt to remain quiet. A clamor broke out among them. Ruck walked to Melanthe’s side.
"Yea, and so I have said," he declared, glaring about him to silence them. "I have defended my word before the king. The archbishop himself has heard my plea that my wife went in fear of her life from this man Navona, and could not say the truth." He faced the justice. "If this is not proof enough—that she speaks my name now, when he is dead—then will I gladly prove it by my sword again, against any who deny it."
"Hear him!" The single cry came from the passage, and instantly all the English took it up. The hail even rose from outside, the sound of a substantial crowd. "Hear him, hear him!"
"Oyeh!" the clerk bawled. "Silence for my lord justice!"
They settled into muttered grudging. Langley made a courteous nod toward Ruck. "I hear your words, Lord Ruadrik. I was in attendance on your honorable combat. You will understand that I am justice of the peace. A complaint and accusation is lodged here, which I must see into. If I adjudge there is not evidence of a crime, then no arraignment be required."
"They have murdered my lord Gian, may God avenge it!" the Italian shouted. He pointed toward Ruck. "Look you, that this Ruadrik threatened my lord, and assaulted him, and desired to steal his promised wife! All know it! Where has he been, this fine Lord Ruadrik, I ask you, that he was mourned for dead and now we find him here with her, almost in the very hour of the murder? They’ve conspired together, these vipers; Allegreto to have his own father’s place, and those two to congress together as they will!"