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 behest, and so he was angry at her.
Holding himself stiffly courteous, he said, "I crave no gift of you, before God, my lady—and nothing will I take. My whole care is for your welfare. We’ll go on to a safe place tomorrow."
She turned from the falcon, but didn’t 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.
"Liverpool," 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.
"No, my lady. Not there, I think."
"They died of pestilence, did they not?" Her voice made a queer upward break. "The monks."
"Yes, 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 don’t think God would bring 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. "Are my sins so trifling? Perhaps I’m not to blame for plague, but only for the excess of lice this winter."
"It’s certain that you’re to blame for our present state," he muttered. "My liege lady."
She stood, taking up the falcon. "You’re impudent, knight."
"If my lady jokes at sin and pestilence, is her servant to be less bold?"
"So, I see you’re but a saucy knave, hidden in a loyal servant’s clothes!"
His moment of insurrection already mortified him. He became very interested in putting the fetters on Hawk. "There’s no humor in it. We’ve no escort, my lady, nor sufficient food to eat, nor anywhere safe to go."
"Why then," she said, "I’ll call you Ruck by name, sir, and you will call me Little Ned, your varlet and squire. Gryngolet will be known as ’Horse,’ and the horse will continue as Hawk, that we may have a pleasant balance. And we’ll all hunt dragons together."
His mouth tightened. He couldn’t tell by her tone if she was making jest of him. He held out the stone. "I’ll not accept this. My lady should stow the thing safe away."
She ignored it. "Yes, 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 you please. You’re to put a degree more of contempt in your voice. ’Ned, you worthless churl, your witless brain is fevered!’"
"My lady—"
"Ned."
"I can’t 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’ll answer to Tom, and on hunting of dragons will we go. You’re our master and guide, Ruck, for your experience of fiery worms and diverse other monsters."
"We will not hunt dragons, my lady," he said impatiently.
"We’ve 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 have you on the morrow than to fare with me for to slay dragons?"
NINE
Cara could not control the shivers. It wasn’t 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. Perhaps 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 wouldn’t 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.
"No," she said. She had thought him twenty and more, caught forever at the cusp of a
dulthood, 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’re 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’ll 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 wouldn’t 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. "No," he said slowly, "perhaps I would not. Come, feeble Monteverde, I see you’ve 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 sit down, if it please you."
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 must eat."
"He’s fettered. A little distance he can wander, to find 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 must eat, also," he said. "If you would be pleased to sit down, so I may attend you."
He opened his hand toward where he’d 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 don’t wish for your attendance, worthy knight, but for pleasure I’ll beg you to bear me company at table."
He bowed stiffly. "It’s beneath your honor, to sup with your servant. Do sit you down, if it please."
"I will sit me down if you will," she said.
He held fast to form. "I think it not 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.
"Verily—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 knee almost touched his. Her cloak did, a bedraggled ermine corner lying in a casual sweep over his armored leg.
"My lady, I made a fitter seat for you," he protested.
"The sand is soft enough." She picked up the knife. "Come, we’ll counsel together. I pray you, what best for us to do?"
"Hunt dragons, of course," he muttered. "Why shouldn’t we, if Your Highness will gather fodder and sit upon the ground like a bondman’s wife?"
She held out to him a segment of orange. "Yes, we’ll hunt firedrakes—why not?"
"Because I’m not doted in my head, even if you are." He bit into the orange unthinking, and then realized that she was not yet served. He lowered it hastily, appalled at himself and aggrieved at her for luring him into it by taking no notice of his misdemeanor at all. She peeled the rind and offered the whole fruit to him as if she fully expected him to eat before her.
He refused to do it, but sat sternly with the food in his hands, waiting.
"Tell me, are you at my service, knight?" she asked.
"By right I am yours, lady," he said swiftly, "in high and in low."
She smiled. "This is low."
"What is your will?"
"That you’ll eat till you’re full and leave me the rest, because I don’t wish you to wax faint from hunger in this wild place. I don’t doubt you’d swoon just as a dragon fell upon us, which would be inconvenient, as I’m no master of a sword."
He turned the orange in his hand. "I grant my lady that she’s no swordsman"—he laid it back upon the cloth—"but I deem it no more convenient that my lady be brought low of a fainting-fit herself, and I have to carry her."
"For one vowed at my bidding"—she snatched up the fruit—"you’re as obstinate as a wooden ox!"
Her white teeth sank into the orange. She ate it all. While he watched, she finished the second orange and peeled the third, ate one segment of it and threw the rest over her shoulder, where it plopped into the muddy shallows of the river. Then she nibbled at the almonds until she had consumed them. She tasted the sugar, made a face, and ground the remainder into the sand.
Ruck looked down at the bare cloth. She had eaten or destroyed everything.
"If you would have a pampered princess, then you’ll have one, knight. I am mistress of that craft."
Ruck said nothing. He stared grimly into the darkening woods that lined the shore.
"If you’d have a companion of sensible wits," she said, "then save this overweening indulgence for the court. It’s yours to choose."
He looked over his shoulder into the twilight shadows where she’d thrown the last orange. "My lady, I say you true, I haven’t seen any such thing as common wit in you yet."
She drew in her breath at that. He expected temper, but instead the silence expanded between them. Darkness had fallen enough that he could see only the shape of her face, not the contours.
Her soft laugh surprised him. "Yes, so I imagine," she murmured. "Poor knight—you must be sorely dismayed to have ward of me in this desert."
He could think of no answer that would combine truth and courtesy but to say, "I’m sworn to you, my lady."
"I can’t conceive how that came to be, but truly—I think it better fortune than I deserve." She made a faint sound of rue. "And how do I favor you, but to make you go hungry in my temper? I’m sorry."
Ruck scowled. He picked up the stick she had dropped and cracked it in two. "It’s nothing, lady."
"Tomorrow, Gryngolet takes a duck. It is yours."
"Less does my belly concern me than your safety." He held the sticks between his fists, frowning down at them. "We’re far out of the way to my lady’s lands, or any dw
elling that I know from my faring in this country. In faith, it’s near forsaken since the Great Death, without souls enough to keep the weeds back." He hesitated, and then broke the wood again over his knee and tossed the staves on the fire. "Of fortified places, there’s none but Liverpool, if any souls are left alive there. To say true, Your Highness, I fear pestilence more than any wilderness."
"Allegreto told me that you’re exempt from it."
"I am." He looked up at her. "Can my lady say the same?"
Full dark had fallen. The firelight played on the curve of her face, shadowing her lashes. "But you will keep me," she said softly. "I place my whole trust in you."
"Best to put your faith in God’s design, my lady," he replied in a rough tone.
She smiled, her skin kindled rose by the fire, her hair black shade. "Monkish man, what are you if not part of God’s design?"
He felt anything but monkish, sitting beside her, all semblance of respectable reserve between them in ruins. It seemed to him that God’s design must be to make him live a lifetime of temptation, the half of it condensed into this moment, when it would be no more than a movement of his hand to touch her.
"Perhaps I might be part of God’s scheme, too," she mused, "though I’ve not much odor of sanctity, I know."
He turned his face away from the firelight, unable to disagree with that even for courtesy.
"Well, I’ve endowed an abbey, so let it be a secret between us," she said, as if he had assented aloud. "The nuns have made an eloquent record of my faith and good works. We wouldn’t wish to cast doubt on such a pleasant document."
He tried to think of his empty belly, which was her perverse doing, and failing that, of the danger that she was to his soul. He tried to hope that she would move away from him, and instead could not stop gazing at her, at any part of her that he could see while he turned his face away, even if it was only the ermine fringe of her cloak.
With the corner of his eye he saw her yawn deeply. The ermine fell from his knee as she drew her cloak close about her.