"Good morning, my lady," Cara said pleasantly, on her knees beside the chest as she laid out Melanthe’s clothing. "The hunchbacked man brought fresh cockles from a hermit here." She gestured toward a bowl, where they were already washed and opened. "Will you breakfast while they’re still sweet?"
"Bring them here," Melanthe said. "I’m in no hurry to leave my bed on such a morning. Where’s my water? Not heated yet? Go—fetch it at once."
Cara bowed, still on her knees, and scurried out of the tent. Melanthe eyed the cockles.
Though Cara’s own mother had been first cousin to Melanthe, the soft-voiced maid was far more dangerous to her life than Allegreto. Cara could hide much behind her mild pleasantries, a sharp eye and perceptive mind the least of it. Yesterday she had asked quietly if she would be allowed to stay and attend her mistress in the English nunnery. Melanthe had returned some careless answer, but truly, shouldn’t Cara have shown more curiosity about the location and name of this religious house? She’d asked no more or less in the whole time they traveled.
Melanthe stared at the cockles. Then she grabbed up the sandy bag that Cara had laid aside and poured the shellfish in. Pulling up the silken floor of the tent, she pushed the bag down into the sand. She heard Allegreto returning and hurriedly smoothed the fabric back in place.
She didn’t bother to tell him of the suspicious cockles. She was weary of hearing his spiteful accusations against Cara—and no more did she want to wake and find the maid dead of poison or a knife. Allegreto, at least, was determined that Melanthe should live to become his father’s wife, at the cost of any other life but his own.
In truth, it was something strange that he had not killed Cara already.
* * *
Ruck kept Allegreto close beside him on the traverse of the sands, dragging the patient cart horse along at his knee, following hard on the footprints of the mount in front of him. Ahead, lost in mist, the horses bearing Princess Melanthe’s litter were immediately behind the hermit’s donkey, held narrowly in the track to avoid quicksands.
Ruck and Allegreto brought up the rear, but the pace was so sedate that there was never any danger of Hawk falling behind, even burdened as he was. The war-horse proclaimed his displeasure at the sluggish speed by leaping from bank to bank of each sandy tidal stream instead of fording them, which annoyed Allegreto and his cart horse very much. The boy held a smelling-apple of powders and herbs constantly to his lips to ward off pestilence. In a muffled voice Allegreto kept Ruck fully informed of his sentiments regarding the danger of their position as last in the procession and the folly of allowing a stranger any contact with the party. He vacillated unhappily between fear of association with the hermit and desire to cross the quicksands directly at his heels.
When Ruck saw large broken shells beneath Hawk’s hooves and heard the sound of the mild surf that marked the solid shore of the Wyrale, he let go of the cart horse’s reins and tossed them at Allegreto. But the youth gave a dismayed cry as his mount immediately began to fall behind. He pounded it into a trot, holding the reins out toward Ruck with his free hand.
"Do not leave me!" The order was arrogant and scared, half-stifled through the scented bag. "The vapor! Is it thicker behind us? It breathes poison—do you sense it?"
Ruck tendered no opinion on the vapor, but he took back the leading reins. Up a sharp, sandy bank with a heave and a scramble, and they were safe across the mouth of the river, the marsh and bleak forest of the Wyrale before them. He took a quick account of the party as he rode up to Pierre and the hermit, ignoring Allegreto’s vociferous objections.
Pierre had thieved something—Ruck could tell by the beatific smile on his squire’s lips. He fixed his broken-backed man with a ferocious scowl. Pierre’s benevolent smirk faded. No doubt he’d found some mislaid trinket as they broke camp and folded the tents, but Ruck knew, having done it once or twice, that even if he upended Pierre and shook him by the feet, there would be no finding the hidden cache.
While the hermit intoned a long prayer of thanksgiving for their successful crossing, Ruck took another count with his head bowed, considering each of the men-at-arms while repeating paternosters, deciding on the day’s order of march. Once, his lowered gaze wandered to Princess Melanthe’s litter: he saw the curtain pulled slightly back and her eyes upon him instead of closed in prayer.
The curtain dropped, hiding her. Ruck felt his body flush and harden with the chance of what her thoughts might be. She’d been looking at him, staring. He lost the sequence of the prayer, his "amen" coming too late and loud after the rest.
"You," Allegreto said imperiously from behind his smelling-apple. "Hermit! Have you heard tell of plague in this region?"
The man betrayed no sign of understanding. Ruck repeated the question more respectfully, in English, and got a negative shrug.
Allegreto wasn’t satisfied. "The atmosphere is corrupted here. I feel it."
"We move onward," Ruck said, to forestall any enlargement on this unsettling topic. He gave orders, placing himself at the head of the cavalcade once more, the litter midway back and protected on both sides. With Allegreto’s and Hawk’s reins firmly in one hand, Ruck lifted his arm and shouted, "Avaunt!"
As they moved off the sandy shore and into the trees, Allegreto leaned forward, holding the rouncy’s thick mane, keeping his bag of herbal protection pressed across his mouth and nose as he bumped along. "The recluse was bloodless, don’t you think?" he demanded through his bag. "He’s sickening."
"I saw no sign of it," Ruck said in a deliberately disinterested tone.
"He sickens. He was ashen. By nightfall he’ll be dead."
Ruck cast him a glance. "What’s this? You’re now a physician, whelp?"
"This fog is infectious!" Allegreto insisted. He let go of the horse’s mane and dug in his mantle, pulling out another bagged smelling-apple. He offered it to Ruck. "I have three. I’ve given my lady’s grace the other."
Ruck lifted his brow in surprise. "You’ve no need of it yourself?"
"Take it," Allegreto said. "I wish you to have it, knight."
Ruck gave him a one-sided smile. "No. Keep it for your own. The plague never touches me."
Allegreto crossed himself. "Don’t say that! You’ll call the wrath of God upon you!"
"I only speak the truth," Ruck said mildly.
The youth changed hands, holding his apple with the left.
"Cramped arm?" Ruck asked, hard put not to smile.
"Yes," Allegreto said seriously. "It’s a most tiring thing to hold."
Ruck raised his hand, signaling a halt. He drew the cart horse up to him. "Where’s your scarf?" He leaned over and dug under the youth’s furs, pulling the dagged silken scarf from his shoulders. With a few knots he made a cup in the middle of the length and reached for Allegreto’s smelling-apple. "Hold in your breath."
The boy reluctantly released the bag, making a small, choked sound of protest as Ruck dumped out the amber apple. As quickly as he could, Ruck secured the herb bag and apple within the scarf and reached over to tie it round Allegreto’s mouth and head.
"There. You’re safe from pestilent airs, whelp."
Allegreto looked down over his bright blue mask and tucked away his spare bag of herbs. "God grant you mercy," he said behind the scarf, the most courteous words he’d yet spoken to Ruck.
He answered with only a short nod. Allegreto looked foolish in his sapphire kerchief; foolish and young. Ruck wondered if it was possible to make a cuckold of a castrato—his mind pondered on the wordplay until he realized what he was thinking. He slapped Hawk overhard with the reins and yelled the order to move.
"You’ve seen plague, then?" Allegreto asked from inside his muffle.
"Yes," Ruck said.
"I was only a child when it came again. My father took me into the country, away from the malignant atmosphere."
"Give thanks for that."
"How are you so certain that it doesn’t touch you?"
Ru
ck rode in silence, watching the trees ahead for any sign of hazard.
"You have a charm?"
"No. None of man’s making."
"What, then?" Allegreto urged. "What protects you?"
"Nothing." Ruck frowned at the sandy track ahead.
"It must be something. Tell me." When he got no answer, he raised his voice. "Tell me, Englishman!"
"I know only that all about me died, and I lived," Ruck said at last. "In the last pestilence my man sickened. I stayed with him when the priest refused to come, but it never touched me."
"The hunchback? He sickened and lived? He’s protected, too?"
Ruck shrugged.
Allegreto urged his horse a little closer. "Perhaps your presence confers some immunity."
"Perhaps." Ruck looked at him with faint amusement. "Stay close, whelp."
He kept the company to a brisk pace, not caring to tarry long outside the sound of bells and habitation. But the mist yet lay heavy in the late morning, and Princess Melanthe demanded frequent rests from the sway of the litter. Ruck held to his austere outer composure, but he smoldered inside. He was regretting his decision to chance the Wyrale with such a small guard. This persistent vapor could hide too much. It seemed to cling, salty and still, hanging as close as Allegreto clung to Ruck. The company said little, but he could feel their nerves, and Allegreto was strung as tight as a lutestring. Only Princess Melanthe seemed careless of the atmosphere’s malevolent influence. Ruck half wondered if she’d called the mist herself.
They left the forest to cross the marsh far later in the afternoon than he’d intended. Moorland stretched away into white nothingness ahead. The vapor closed behind them. When the maid sent word forward that Her Highness wished to pause again, he threw Allegreto’s reins to the sergeant-at-arms and dropped back to ride abreast of the litter.
"Your Highness, I pray you," he said to the litter’s closed drape, "I advise all haste to continue."
"Indeed, then let us do so," she agreed in English, a disembodied voice from the curtain.
Such an easy capitulation was not what he had expected. He was left with an unfocused sense of impatience, a restlessness that seemed to call for something more to be said.
"I mind your safe conduct, madam," he said, as if she had argued with him.
Her fingertips appeared, swathed in ermine, but she didn’t pull back the drape as the litter rocked along. "I submit myself to your will, Green Sire," she answered modestly.
He gazed at the fine elegance of her fingers and looked down at his own mailed glove resting atop Hawk’s saddle bow. The contrast, the delicacy of her hand set against his metal-clad, cold-leather fist, sent a surge of carnal agitation through his body.
In a low voice, past the hard rock in his throat, he murmured, "Passing fair you are, my lady." He stared at the reins in his hand. "My will burns me."
As soon as he said it he wished it retrieved—repelled and aroused at once by his own boldness.
Her fingers disappeared. "Faith, sir," she said in a different tone, "I don’t care for such crude, rough men as you. Study on my gentle Allegreto and save your love-talking for your horse."
For a long instant Ruck listened to the steady thud of Hawk’s hooves in the sand. Her words seemed to pass over him—coolly spoken, unreal.
Then mortification flashed through him, a fountain of chagrin. He closed his fist hard on the reins: his large and rough and crude fist, green and silver in her colors, darkened with mud in her service, stiff with cold, with shame and passion.
"I am at your command, Your Highness," he said rigidly and spurred Hawk to the fore.
* * *
As Cara prepared Melanthe’s bed, she said, "My lady’s grace took pleasure in the cockles this morning?"
Melanthe looked up from painting silver gilt on Gryngolet’s talons. Her pot gleamed in the light of the half-closed lanthorn. "No—I hadn’t the stomach for cockles this day. I made a present of them to our knight."
Cara gave it all away—all of it—in the instant of horror that crossed her features. It was gone in a moment, but too late. They both knew. Cara sat still as stone.
Melanthe smiled. "Do you suppose he’ll enjoy them?"
"My lady—" The maid seemed to lose her voice.
"You’re a very foolish girl," Melanthe said softly. "I believe I shall loose Allegreto on you."
Cara wet her lips. "My sister." She whispered it. "They have my sister, the Riata."
Melanthe hid a jolt of shock at the news. "Then your sister is already dead," she said. "Look to your own life now."
"My lady—ten years I’ve served you faithfully."
Melanthe gave a quiet laugh. "It takes but a moment to turn treacherous." She placed a careful brush stroke. "Yes, I believe I’ll have Allegreto kill you. Not tonight. I’m not certain when. But soon. You’ve served me faithfully for such a span of years, I shall be kind. You needn’t dread it for long."
Cara was sitting on her knees, staring at the pillow in her hands, panting with fear. Melanthe stirred the silver paint and continued with her task.
"You love your sister greatly," Melanthe said in a mild tone.
Cara was shaking visibly. She nodded. A single teardrop of terror gathered and tumbled down her face.
"Such love is ruinous. You placed your own sister in jeopardy by showing it. Now you’re both doomed."
Cara’s hands squeezed rhythmically on the pillow. Suddenly she turned her face to Melanthe. "You’re the spawn of Satan, you and the rest of them," she hissed low. "What do such as you know of love?"
"Why, nothing, of course," Melanthe said, placing a careful stroke of silver. "I take good care to know nothing of it."
SEVEN
Allegreto’s dread of plague was such that the youth bedded down as close as possible to his living talisman, so close that his hand curled, childlike, around Ruck’s upper arm. What his mistress thought of this desertion was left unsaid. Ruck didn’t see her. As usual, she left her litter only after her tent was pitched, shifting from one silken cage to the other without showing herself.
As Ruck lay in the dark with the fire fading, staring upward into nighttime oblivion, he had a bitter thought that it might have been to his advantage that Allegreto had left the tent, if Ruck had possessed foresight enough to discourage this inconvenient transfer of the youth’s attachment to himself. If she’d liked such crude rough men as he. But she did not, and Allegreto went quickly to sleep in the blue mask, firmly holding to Ruck’s arm, as effective as any governess in protecting his lady.
Not that she required protection, beyond a scornful tongue and that mocking laugh.
Ruck attempted to form a prayer, asking forgiveness of Isabelle and God for his carnal lust. But his prayers were never of the inspired kind; he couldn’t think of much more to avow than he was deeply repentant and would do better.
Not that he ever did do better, for every confession day he had a penance laid upon him for lusting in his heart after women. Sometimes for the mortal sin of easing himself, too, which he would have done now, at the price of barring from communion and any number of Ave Marys and hours on his knees before the altar, if Allegreto had not had such tight hold of his right arm. He was not a godly man; his mind went where it would and his body had limits to its rectitude, but he had dishonored himself, and Isabelle, too, this day.
He had the Princess Melanthe to thank for saving him from committing real adultery—and that only because she didn’t care for rough men. It was no virtue of his own that had saved him. If she were to call him now into her tent, he would go.
He felt sullen and ashamed, thinking of it. He should get away from her. He should go home, having nowhere else pressing to go at the moment.
* * *
He slept badly, dreaming plague dreams, old dreams, in which he was lost and searching. The howl of a wolf woke him, shaking him out of uneasy dozing. He lifted his head. The fire had gone to dead coals—there was no sign of a guard. The wind had come
up, blowing off the vapor. By the height of the moon over the moorland, it was three hours to dawn. Pierre should already have woken him to share the last and most arduous watch. With a silent curse Ruck slipped out of his warm place. Allegreto’s hand fell away from him.
He stood up in the frigid night, sliding his feet into icy boots. He’d ordered a double watch—but by moonlight he could see the whole company sound asleep. The hourglass glinted softly next to Pierre’s place, white sand all fallen through. A loose tie fluttered on Princess Melanthe’s tent.
He gave the fur-covered lump that was Pierre a light kick. It did not move. Ruck leaned down and tossed the mantle away.
A smell of vomit assailed him. Pierre lay with a terrible arch to his twisted back, his dead eyes rolled up to show the whites in the dim moonlight, a sheen of sweat on his face and his open mouth full of dark spittle. Ruck swallowed a gag and threw the fur back over him.
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.