"Ah, lady. I love you too well."
Her fingers slipped away. She was silent, still leaning her forehead against him.
"Who would know?" she asked, muffled. "Once. Only once. For this one night."
He drew a deep breath, speaking low. "My sweet lady, ye hatz a demon of hell in you, that takes hold of your tongue sometimes and tempts me beyond what I can bear."
"'Tis no demon. It is me." Her hand crept up and twined with his. "I have been so much alone. You do not know." She squeezed his fingers. "I did not know, until I found thee."
"My luflych, my precious lady, I have me a wife."
She was still for a long moment. Then she said, "Is that why thou wilt deny me? For thy wife?"
"For my wife. And for the dishonor to you."
"Dost thou love her still?"
He gave a bitter chuckle. "Ten and three years has it been. I ne cannought e'en see her face in my head. But she is my wife, before God and man, for we were rightly wed."
"I thought her a nun."
"Yea," he said.
She lifted her head. In the blackness of the heavy curtains, he could see nothing, only feel her.
"But ne'er have I adultered, or profaned my vows." He paused, gripping his hand tight in hers. "Nought with my body."
She stroked his hair, and his back. "Ah, what have they done to thee, these priests?" she whispered sadly. "Hast thou lived in this thought, that thou art wed and yet bound to be chaste, since that day I saw thee last?"
"In troth," he said, "I have lived in thought of you." He pulled from her and lay back on the bed, staring into darkness. "Awake and asleep, I have thought of you. Else I were dead of despair a hundred times, I think me, if I had nought you in my mind to bind me to virtue." He shook his head. "I am no monkish man, I tell you, lady."
She gave a bewildered soft laugh. "Ne do I understand thee not. I bind thee to purity? Thou jape me."
"I swore to you, my lady, in Avignon. When you sent the stones. Then I thought—but I was in a frenzy; I recall it little, but that I swore my life to you. I sold the lesser emerald for arms and a horse, and took me to fighten tournies for the prizes, and then to my liege prince, when I had some money and good means to show myseluen. I made your falcon my device and took your gemstone for my color. And when my body tempted me, I thought of you and Isabelle my wife, I thought how you both were pure and good and blameless, better than me, and I mote live with honor for your sake, because I was her husband and your man."
"Depardeu," she murmured. "Thy wife—and I? Blameless and pure? Thou art a blind man."
"I knew naught else to do." He pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. "And it is impossible, it is nought the same, now that—"
He broke off and blew all the air from his chest in a rough sigh.
"Now that thou knowest me for myself," she said with a tone he could not read, whether amused or sad or bitter, or all three.
"I love you, my lady," he said, his voice suppressed. "'Tis all certain that I know. With my heart, with my body, though I've nought the right to thinken of it, though you are too high—in faith, though I burn in Hell for it." He swallowed. "God forgive me that I say such things. I'm in drink enow to drownen me."
She lay down beside him, half on top of him, her arm across his shoulders. "Dost thou love me?" she whispered, with an intensity that made him turn his face toward her in the dark.
He lifted his hand—he allowed himself that for the fierce plea in her voice—and brushed the back of his fingers over her cheek. "Beyond reason."
"Oh," she said, and buried her face in his shoulder, hugging herself close. "Yesterday I was a witch in thy estimate."
"Yea, and now ye be a wanton wench, and in a moment ye will be a haughty princess, and I know nought what next to plague and bemaze me."
"Thy lover."
"Nay, lady." He started to rise.
She caught him, holding tight. "No. Do not go."
"I will keep watch by the door."
"No. I will ne be able to sleepen, be thou not near where I can reach thee."
"Lady," he said, "for all the hours ye sleeps, me think this one night be nought such a great loss."
Still she held him. "I can't sleep." Her voice was soft, but her fingers had the grip of real dismay.
"God shield, am I to lie beside you in a bed all the night?" he asked. "Have mercy on me."
"I cannot." She would not cease; she pulled him slowly downward. "I cannot have mercy. Please thee—stay."
"Enow!" he said harshly. His shoulder sank into the featherbed. He turned his face to the bolster. "Only touch me nought then, my lady, for your pity."
She let go. He felt her roll over away from him. She was angry, he thought, child-geared in her tempers as only those of high estate could be. But she asked too much; to lie here beside her—in bed, unclothed, as if they were married. He was already mired in mortal lust; now she would have him pay his soul for fornication. God have mercy on him if he died this night, for he was bound for everlasting flames.
Yet she lay still in the blackness, without word or demand, and it gradually came into his head that she was weeping. He listened, trying to subdue the sound of his own breath. He could hear nothing.
She said she had been alone until she had found him. He closed his eyes. Lone he had lived all his life, it seemed, dwelling among dreams of things to come. They were all of them shattered now, lost to her whims—he had hated her for that, and hated her yet, but love and hate turned so close in his heart that they seemed to dazzle him together as one passion. He could tell them apart no more than he knew if she was beautiful or plain—she was neither, more than both, his very self, that he might love or hate as he pleased, but could not disown short of the grave.
He reached out his hand. It came to rest on her hair that was loose, spreading over the pillow. She lay silent. Softly, haltingly, he found the shape of her with his fingertips, her temple, her brow. He touched her cheek and lashes, and felt warm tears.
"I ne did not give thee leave to handle me at thy whim, knave," she said sharply.
He moved, folding her in his arms. "I knew you would come the high princess soon enow," he said with a painful laugh. He leaned near and rocked her against his chest. "My lady queen, your tears are liken to an arrow through my body."
"Pouf," she said. "Monkish man."
He crushed her to him and rubbed his cheek against her hair. "Do you want my honor? I give it you, I will forlie and adulter with you, my lady, then—and God and the Fiend torment me as they will."
He felt her turn toward his face, though he could not see her in the dark. For a long moment she lay very still.
"Were I thy wife, would not be sin," she whispered.
He made a bitter sound of mirth. "Yea—and were I king of all England and France, and a free man."
She put her hands up, seizing his face between her palms. "Listen to me."
The sudden urgency caught his full heed. He waited, but she said nothing. Her fingers moved restlessly, forming fists against his face and opening again.
"Ah," she said, "I know not how...it frightens me to wound thee. Best-loved, my true and loyal friend, hast thou never guessed all these years why I denounced thee in Avignon? Why I sent thee thence in haste?"
In a far deep place inside himself, he felt his soul arrested. Slightly he shook his head.
"Thy wife—thinkest thou that they released her to this convent at Saint Cloud? Nay, they sent her to the Congregation of the Holy Office. They sent her to the inquisitors, and they would have sent thee, too, if thou hadst shown that her preachings and raving had convinced thee of aught. They could not bide her, do you see? A woman to preach, to interpret Scripture—to demand of thee her own oath within thy marriage."
"Nay," he breathed. "Nay—the archbishop—he said a place was made for her at Saint Cloud. I paid for it! For her keep—my money and my horse and arms."
She did not answer. In the hush he thought of the letters
he'd sent, the money, every year with no word of reply.
"Oh, Mary, Mother of God—where is she?" He sat up, gripping her shoulders.
She stroked her palms up and down his face.
Ruck groaned. He let go of her and rolled away, trying to find the breath that seemed suddenly to have left his lungs. "Imprisoned?"
But he knew she was not imprisoned. He knew by the silence, by the way the princess did not move or touch him, only waited.
"I forsook her." His body began to shake, his hands clenching and unclenching, beyond his command. "Helas, I abandoned her."
"Listen to me." Her cold voice abruptly cut like a scourge. "She abandoned thee. I heard her, if thou hast forgot. She was no saint, nor holy woman, nor even a fit wife for such as thee."
"Her visions—"
"Pah!" she spat. "They weren no more of God than a peacock's preenings. I tell thee, sir, when I married I did not love my husband, but I gave back to him the same honor and duty that he gave to me. I did not weep and scream and claim God sent some handy vision to free me from my vows. Nor do the world of women, but live the half of them without complaint in such subjection as thou canst not conceive, not one in ten thousand so fortunate as she!" Her voice was a throbbing hiss. "I loved my husband well enough in the end, but the life that I have lived for his sake—I would have given my soul to have thy wife's place instead, with a good steadfast man to defenden me and children of my own. And she foreswore thee, for her vain pride, no more, so that she mote be called sainted and pure by such foolish sots as would drivel upon her holiness. By Christ, I would have burned her myself, had she taken thee adown with her as she was wont to do!"
He took a shuddering breath of air. "She was burned?"
"Yea," she said in a calmer voice. "I am sorry. There was naught to be done for her, for she brought it upon herself. They declared her a Beguine, an adherent of the Free Spirit."
"Isabelle," he said. Horror crept over him. "In God's name, to burn!" He began to breathe faster, seeing the image of it, hearing it.
"Ne did she not suffer," the princess said in a steady voice. "She was given a posset to stupefy her, even before she heard the sentence passed, and kept so to the end. I have no doubt she went to sleep still in full assurance she was regarded as a saint."
He turned toward her in the dark. "You know it so, my lady?"
"Yea. I know it."
He stared at her, at the source of her cold and even voice. "I do nought believe you."
"Then I will given thee the name of the priest I paid to intoxicate her. He was Fra Marcus Rovere then; now he is a cardinal deacon at Avignon."
"You—" He felt benumbed. "Why?"
"Why! I know not why! Because her witless husband loved her, stupid man, and I knew thou couldst do naught. Because my window gave out on the court, and I ne did nought wish my nap disturbed. Why else?"
He lay back, his hands pressed to his skull. No tears came to his eyes. He thought of the times he had wished Isabelle dead, to free him, and the penance he had done for it. Of how she had been a burgher's daughter—never could he have brought her openly to Lancaster's court even before she came to believe she was consecrated to God, never could he have held a knight's place there with a baseborn woman to wife. He thought of the first days of their marriage, his joy in her body and her smile, the end of his loneliness, it had seemed, and in his first battle the worst, most shameful unvoiced fear, not of pain, which he knew well enough, nor of dying itself, but of dying before he might bed her again, couple with her on the pillows and look at her.
She was the only woman he had ever lain with in his life—and she had been dead for thirteen years, ashes and charred bone.
He heard the sound he made, a meaningless dry moan like a man at the last reach of his strength. He should weep. But plaint and lament choked in his throat. He could only lie and hold his hands to his head as if he could imprison the melee of thoughts there, his muscles straining with each indrawn breath.
"I cannought remember her face!" he cried. "Oh, sweet Mary save me, I can only see you."
"Shhh." She put her finger to his lips. "Hush." She rubbed the side of his face in a quiet cadence, a firm chafing pressure. "That is not marvelous. Iwysse, I am here with thee, best-loved. Is no more than that."
He reached up and caught her arms. "Do nought stray out from my shield, my lady," he said fiercely. He pulled her down against him. "Leave me nought."
"Never," she said. "If it be within my power, never."
Her breath stirred lightly on his face. She lay half atop him, the wool of her gown spread over his leg and thigh. He held her there.
"Nor will I leave you." He bound her wrists in both his hands. "Ne'er, lady, lest ye sends me from you."
The rise and fall of his chest lifted her, so close she was. Though he could barely see her as but a blacker shadow on blackness, he felt her weight, her hushed submission to his grasp. Her loose hair fell down between them, as if she were a maid. As if she were his wife.
"Lady," he whispered, "God shield me, I have thoughts in my head that are very madness."
"What is thy true name and place?" she asked softly.
A distant part of him seemed to know what came to him, what gift of unthinkable value, but his tongue felt near too numb to form the words. "Ruadrik," he said in a dry throat. "Wolfscar."
His hands where they gripped her arms were trembling. Only her steadiness held him motionless.
"Sir Ruadrik of Wolfscar," she said, "here I take thee, if thou will it, as my husband, to have and to holden, at bed and at board, for better for worsen, in sickness and health, til death us depart, and of this I give thee my faith. Dost thou will it?"
Only a little shiver beneath his hands and a break in her final question gave a hint that she was not calm.
"My lady, it is madness."
Her body tightened in his arms. "Dost thou will it?"
He stared up into the dark at her, bereft of words.
"Dost thou believe it is no bargain for me?" she asked in a voice spun as fragile as glass. "I told thee what I would give to be wife to thee. Dost thou will it?"
"Lady—have a care of your words, and make game of me nought, for I haf the will in my heart to answer you in troth."
"In troth have I spoken. Here and now I take thee, Ruadrik of Wolfscar, as my wedded husband, if thou wilt have me."
He turned his right hand, lacing his fingers into hers. "Lady Melanthe—Princess—" His voice failed as the immensity of it overcame him. He swallowed. "Princess of Monteverde, Countess of Bowland—my lady—I humbly take you—take thee—ah, God forgive me, but I take thee with my whole heart, though I be nought worthy, I take thee as my wedded wife to have and to hold, for fairer or fouler, in sickness and in health—for my life so long as I shall have it. Thereto I plight thee my troth." He closed his fist hard over her fingers. "I have no ring. By my right hand I wed thee, and by my right hand I honor thee with the whole of my gold and silver, and by my right hand I dow thee with all that is mine."
For a long moment neither of them moved or spoke. Beyond the heavy curtains there was a faint sigh of coals falling in upon themselves.
"Ne do I have flowers, nor a garland to kiss thee through," he murmured, cupping her face. He leaned up and pressed his lips softly against hers. At first she seemed frozen, cool as marble, and a bolt of apprehension passed through his heart, for fear that she had done it all as a mocking jape—but then she gave a low whimper and kissed him in return, hard and ruthless, as her kisses were wont to be. She put her arms about his shoulders and held to him tightly, her face pressed into his throat.
He lay gazing upward, full of bliss and horror. The world seemed to go in a slow spin about him. He did not know if it was drink or amazement.
Then he embraced her and rolled her onto her back, overlying her, using his hands to master the awkward tangle of her skirts, his rigid tarse to search out her place urgently. He mounted her, sinking inside with a groan like a beast
. A fearsome ache of pleasure shot from his belly through his limbs. It drowned his senses; from a distance he felt her clutch at him, heard her swift breath—but with all the strength in him he could not stop to satisfy her. With a violent thrust he spilled his seed in her womb.
He used and possessed her to bind his right, before God, sealing her beyond resort or recourse as his wife. And when it was finished, he laid his face against her breast and wept for Isabelle, for joy, and for mortal dread of what they had just done.
FOURTEEN
She held him as he grieved, and lay waking long after the shudders of rough sobs had passed through him. He wept like a man who had lost child and kin and future. And then he slept profoundly, weight upon her such that she could hardly breathe, but she never ceased stroking her fingers through his hair.
She was jealous of his silly and dangerous wife, that he mourned her so. And yet Melanthe thought that it was his lost years and distorted vision that he mourned—pure and gentle nun that he had seemed to make the woman out for be. Melanthe remembered a shrieking and offensive female, full of herself and her prophecy, and a part of her longed to recall it to him in forceful detail. But she thought, with a little wonder at herself, that she did not care so much for her own discontent, if to undeceive him would cause him further pain.
Lying with him seemed enough. It was entirely new to her, so different was he from Ligurio, and from Allegreto's lithe and constant tension that had haunted all her nights. Ligurio had been gentler, without urgency, courteous in his dealing with her. She suspected now that he had already been ill when he had consummated their marriage, coming to her bed for the first time on her sixteenth birthday, and seldom enough in the year after, until he had not come at all.
She felt now as she thought other women must, with her lover sprawled warm and heavy upon her in trusting insensibility. Where Allegreto had the supple light shape of a beardless youth, Ruadrik's arms and shoulders were solid, hard-muscled, his cheek prickly on her bared breast and his leg a dense weight across her thigh. Even to bed, Allegreto wore hose stuffed to make him appear full intact and more; Sir Ruadrik lay with the broad expanse of his back naked to the night air, quite undeniably whole and male, having wept and gone to sleep still filling her, sliding gradually free until she felt the strange touch of his parts, heated between their bodies, a feather brush now where he had been stiff, a gentle pressure instead of invasion.