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 impudent, 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, t
o 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 nought 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.
"My lady, I made a fitter seat for you," he protested.
"The sand is soft enough." She picked up the knife. "Come, we will counsel together. I pray thee, what best us to do?"
"Hunt dragons, I trove," he muttered. "Wherefore should we nought, if Your Highness will gaderen fodder and sitten upon the ground like unto a bondman's wife?"
She held out to him a segment of orange. "Yea, we will hunt us firedrakes—wherefore not?"
"Because I'm nought doted in my head, even if you are so." 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 full expected him to eat before her.
He refused to do it, but sat sternly with the food in his hands, waiting.
"Tell me, art thou at my hest, 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 thou wilt eat till thou art sated and leave to me the remainder, forwhy I do not wish thee to wax faint from hunger in this wild place. I doubt not thou wouldst swoon just as a dragon fell upon us, which would be inconvenient, as I am no master of a sword."
He turned the orange in his hand. "I grant my lady that she is no swordman"—he laid it back upon the cloth—"but I deem it no more convenient that my lady be brought low of a fainting-fit herseluen, and I haf to carry her."
"For one avowed at my bidding"—she snatched up the fruit—"thou art 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 thou wouldst have a forpampered princess, then thou shalt have one, knight. I am mistress of that craft."
Ruck said nothing. He stared grimly into the darkening woods that lined the shore.
"If thou wouldst have a companion of sensible wits," she said, "then save this overweening indulgence for the court. It is thine to choose."
He looked over his shoulder into the twilight shadows where she had thrown the last orange. "My lady, I say you troth, I haf nought seen no 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. "Yea, so I imagine," she murmured. "Poor knight—thou must be sore 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 am sworn to you, my lady."
"Ne cannot I conceive how that came to be, but verily—I think it better fortune than I deserve." She made a faint sound of rue. "And how do I favor thee, but to make thee go hungry in my temper? I am full sorry."
Ruck scowled. He picked up the stick she had dropped and cracked it in two. "I reck nought of it, lady."
"Tomorrow, Gryngolet takes a duck. It is thine."
"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 dwelling that I know from my faring in this country. In faith, is near forsaken since the Great Death, without souls enow to keepen 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 aught but Lyerpool, if any souls be left alive there. To sayen troth, Your Highness, I fear pestilence more than any desert."
"Allegreto said me that thou art exempt from it."
"Yea, I am." He looked up at her. "Can my lady sayen the same?"
Full dark had fallen. The firelight played on the curve of her face, shadowing her lashes. "But thou wilt keepen me," she said softly. "I place my whole trust in thee."
"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. "Forbye, monkish man, what art thou 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.
"Haply I might be part of God's scheme, too," she mused, "though I've not much odor of sanctity, I trow."
He turned his face away from the firelight, unable to disagree with that even for courtesy.
"Well, I have endowed an abbey, so let it be a secret betwix us," she said, as if he had assented aloud. "The nuns have made an eloquent record of my faith and good works. We would not wish to casten doubt on such a pleasant document."