He dragged his mount to a halt at the stone monument. A hush fell over the onlookers, delicious expectation; a carnal pleasure in this drama. The black lance poised—and came down on the silver falcon, rocking it with force of the blow. The shield he had chosen rang with a wooden resonance as the cheers hit a new plane of passion.
A outrance.
The black lance had no safe coronal to blunt it, but a sharp tip. The shield it had struck was not the battered falcon with the hood, but the one that hung above it, with the silver bird of prey unhooded, offering combat à outrance—beyond all limits.
A joust of war, fought to the death with real weapons.
His attendants came behind him, a full score, masked, dressed as fools in rainbow colors, playing flutes and hunting horns. The curling toes of their shoes were so long and pointed that they were attached by belled chains at the knee. They made a grotesque fantasy behind the blood-gold knight, an uncanny contrast to his hostile silence.
Amid the cries and tumult, Melanthe's green knight rode out to meet him, armed with a sharpened lance. She pressed her palms together and tasted the salt on her fingertips, then folded her hands and held Gryngolet's jesses motionless in her lap.
The hunting horns mingled their clear notes with the trumpets, rising higher and higher into the air. They broke off one by one, leaving a single carol from the herald's horn to ascend and echo back from the stands and the river and the city walls, dying away like an angel's voice.
The knights saluted Melanthe, the golden one with an extra flourish.
As they faced their mounts toward each other, the Green Sire pulled his arm from within the leather straps and threw his shield away.
He knew it. Melanthe knew it. The crowd guessed it—and burst into a furor of scandalized exaltation as the man hidden inside the ruddy gold armor tossed down his blank shield in answer.
When the lances couched level, an instant of silent anticipation blanketed the onlookers. The black horse threw its head and charged. The Green Sire spurred his destrier. In the hush the thunderous roll of the animals' hooves made the wood beneath Melanthe's feet vibrate.
The lances impacted with the sound of fractured bone, of a hundred hammers against steel. Both knights fell backward and sideways, clinging to smashed lances; hanging half off their mounts against the weight of armor as the onlookers broke into an uproar.
The rainbow attendants rushed to propel their master back into place and supply him with a fresh lance. He was already at the charge before the Green Sire had hauled himself upright and grabbed his new lance from the hunchback. As the green spear swung up, tip to the sky, Melanthe realized that he had it in the wrong hand to meet his opponent,
A sound like a great moan rose from the crowd. His dancing mount froze in place. As the challenger realized his advantage, he aimed for the most vital target, leveling the black lance at his adversary's head. The green knight didn't even attempt to compel his horse forward, but faced the oncoming lance and rider as if he were entranced. The onlookers' groan rose to voluptuous agony.
Then the Green Sire seemed to collapse; an instant before the black spear hit his faceplate, he and his lance both toppled sideways—a sheer perpendicular to his course. As the tip of the black spear grazed his helm, the green lance swung down across his opponent's path.
The rod took the golden knight flat across his belly. In a crash of plated metal he seemed to fly, bent double for a suspended instant across the lance as the green destrier sat down on its haunches, scrambling against the force of the butt end jammed between the Green Sire's thigh and the pommel.
Melanthe found herself on her feet with everyone else. She stared at the fallen knight stretched on his back on the ground. When he moved, rising drunkenly, his golden armor dimmed by dust, she sat down. The green destrier wheeled and galloped after the loose horse, scattering the attendants as if they were colorful leaves.
Leaning to catch the reins, her champion flipped them over the black's head just as his mount danced away from a vicious kick. The horses trotted together to the little hunchback, who took the black as if it were a palfrey instead of a trained warhorse—and the animal lowered its head, submitting instantly, as if it recognized that a man without armor was no enemy. The squire led the captured horse out of the gate. Melanthe looked away from the dirty golden challenger as he swayed to his feet, shaking off his attendants' aid.
The Green Sire sat fixed upon his horse, gazing toward her.
The nameless challenger drew his sword, shouting within his helm. Still her knight did not move, but stared toward Melanthe. The great helm showed only menace, its eyeslits black and empty, but she saw beyond, saw a man on his knees in the great hall, looking up at her with intense entreaty. She allowed herself no change of expression, gazing steadily back.
The red-gold challenger shouted again. Her knight turned and swung down from his horse, jerking his sword from its sheath. His squire ran up to him with his shield and bascinet helm, but the challenger was already running forward, aiming a great swing with a sword that took the sun to its tip, shining murderous steel.
The hunchback ducked away, dragging the destrier with him. Her knight met the blow with an upward cut; the weapons rang and the crowd cheered. Neither man gave way as the blows fell, denting helmets and armor. They fought as barbarians fought, without mercy.
The golden knight slashed over and over at her champion's neck, killing blows, pivoting and swinging back again. He landed a strike that made the Green Sire stumble sideways, but her knight seemed better at mischance even than advantage, turning his swordhand down and slicing sideways, beneath his adversary's arm, cutting through the vambrace strap. The challenger's plate flapped loose, exposing vulnerable chain mail above his elbow.
He did not appear to realize it, whipping his sword again toward his opponent's helmet. It struck, driving a deep dent in the steel—under the force of the blow, the green knight's sword seemed to fly from his hand, but then it was in his left as if he'd snatched it from the air. He brought it overhead, striking an arc downward, the sharpened edge aimed for his adversary's outstretched arm with a force that would slice through chain mail and bone alike.
Sunlight flashed on the broad side of the blade. Melanthe closed her eyes. She heard it hit—and the golden knight's grunt of pain was audible an instant before the throng burst into noisy reaction.
She blinked her eyes open. The challenger was hauling himself up off the ground, but he could not seem to gain any purchase on his sword. The Green Sire stood over him, looking up again at Melanthe. She had full expected to see the blood-gold arm severed and covered in real gore. But it was still attached to its owner—only rendered useless. The golden knight was groping for his sword with his left hand, his other hanging ineffectually at his side.
The marshal had stepped forward, poised with his white arrow, but the fallen challenger shouted furiously at him. The official hesitated, his hand wavering, and then bowed and stepped back.
The red-gold knight rolled, pushing himself to his feet with his good arm. Melanthe's champion took a step toward her, the black eyeslits in his helm still focused in her direction. She could see his heavy breathing at the edges of his hauberk.
He lifted his hand, palm up in petition.
Melanthe saw the red-gold opponent achieve his feet. He shouted, his words obscured and echoing within the helm, and raised his sword with his left arm.
She ignored her champion's appeal, staring at him coldly.
The challenger ran forward. The Green Sire turned, met the sword, and threw it off. He thrust the tip of his weapon at the golden knight's helm, catching the visor's edge, shoving the whole helmet upward, half off. Blinded, the other man ducked away, flailing his wounded arm and his sword to reset the helm, but another blow took it completely off.
It rolled across the ground. A great roar swelled from the crowd. Lancaster stood swaying in the middle of the dusty list. One of his attendants grabbed the helmet and ran toward
him.
Her green knight turned yet again to Melanthe. He lifted his sword and shoved his helmet off his head with both hands; throwing the armor away from him. He pushed back his mail coif. Sweat streaked his face, stained with rust from inside the helm, marking the edge of his curling, half-plastered black hair. He did not look toward Lancaster, but still to her, breathing in great deep gusts.
She watched the attendants re-helm their master, and then met her champion's silent plea with calm indifference. He closed his eyes and turned his face upward, like a man under torture.
The duke rushed at him. Without helm, the Green Sire came on guard. He ducked his liege's left-handed swing and pressed close inside the other man's reach, nullifying the lack of a helmet. Lancaster tried to grapple him with both arms, but the injured one would not lift past his waist. The duke's sword cut awkwardly across the back of the Green Sire's head, spreading crimson on black curls and mail. The blades locked at their hilts, crossed, pointing at the sky, shaking with the force of each man's strength.
Lancaster made a hard shove, turning his sword inward between them, trying to slash it into the green knight's unprotected face. The tip sliced her champion's cheek, but he used the sudden motion to thrust his elbow back and up in one vicious lunge, ramming the guard against Lancaster's fist, breaking the duke's hold on his weapon. The duke made a desperate recovery, trying to retain his blade. The sword dropped, the tip lodging for an instant against the earth just as Lancaster caught it. As he stumbled, the Green Knight's blade came up broadside against his helmet.
He fell sideways over the lodged sword, his exclamation of agony audible above the noise as he hit the ground on his injured side. He rolled onto his back.
The Green Sire stood above his liege, sword point at his throat. Lancaster lay weaponless, injured, felled—and still made no surrender. The crowd held its breath so still that the panting of the two knights seemed the loudest sound.
Her champion looked up at her, holding the sword steady. The blood on his face and hair was darkening, gathering dust; he looked like a devil risen from some pit, imploring her to save him.
"My lady!" The words were an exhalation of despair.
Melanthe lifted her plume and fanned herself. She laughed aloud, in the silence, so they could all hear.
"Yes, thou mayest have pity upon him," she said, with a mocking bow of her head.
Her knight pulled his sword from the duke's throat and flung it half across the list. As Lancaster sat up, the Green Sire fell on his knees before his prince, head bowed. He pressed his gauntleted hands over his eyes. Slowly, like a tree falling, he leaned lower and lower, until his hands and forehead touched the ground.
"Pax, my dread lord." His muffled voice was agonized. "Peace unto you."
Painfully Lancaster hauled himself to his feet, standing against the support of one of his attendants. Still in his helmet, he seemed to overlook the man in the dirt at his feet. He searched out Melanthe on the escafaut, and then turned his back to her, walking unsteadily out of the lists with his attendants clustering about him.
Melanthe rose and descended the steps. As she walked toward the gate, youths and men-at-arms and onlookers parted, gazing at her. She moved to the center of the dusty lists, where the green knight still knelt with his face to the ground, blood matting his hair and staining his neck.
"Green Sire," she said mildly.
He sat back, staring for a long moment at the hem of her gown. Then he wiped his gauntlet across his eyes, smearing blood with rust. He turned his face up to her.
All light of worship and chivalry was gone from his look. He was still breathing hard, his teeth pressed together to contain it.
She knelt and reached for his right arm, tying the jesses about the vambrace and mail. The heat of his body radiated from metal armor. Gryngolet's varvels made a silvery plink against his arm, the precious stones casting tiny sprays of light that played over steel, coalescing green and white as the rings came to rest.
On a level with him, she looked up from her task into his eyes. She could not have said what she saw there—hatred or misery or bewilderment—but it was surely not love that stared back at her from under his begrimed black lashes.
From the persistent tickle of recollection, memory sprang sudden and full blown into her mind.
Once, long ago, for a whim, she had pulled a thorn from this lion's paw. She remembered him, she remembered when and where, an image stirred more by his height and bearing and the baffled agony in his face than by his features. Just so he had submitted, disarmed of all defense, as they took away his wife and money from him.
He repaid her today, then, for that emerald on his helm. Whatever precarious place he had striven to gain in Lancaster's heart, with his fighting skills and command of men and vow to find glory, was vanished now. He knelt before her like a man dazed.
Apology sprang to her lips, regret for his maimed honor, his lost prince. It hovered on her tongue.
"Thou art a fool," she murmured instead, "to think a man can serve two masters." She lifted a varvel and let it fall against his armor, smiling. "A splendid fool. Come into my service to stay, be it thy desire."
He stared at her. A sound like a sob escaped him, a deeper breath, harsh through his teeth.
Melanthe rose. She extended her hand, touching his shoulder to make a gesture for the crowd. "Rise."
His squire brought the destrier forward. Melanthe took the silver lead. They smelled of sweat and dust and hot steel, the knight and his mount, perfumed with blood and combat. When he had mounted, she looked up at him.
"If thou art vassal unto me," she said, "I shall love and value thee as Lancaster never could." And with that snare set, she turned before he answered, leaving his hunchbacked squire to lead him from the lists.
* * *
"Away, away!" Melanthe held Gryngolet on her wrist, urging the flustered falconers of Ombriere to haste. "I will away!"
She turned her palfrey in the castle's empty courtyard, watched only by her own retinue and a few dumbstruck servants. Outside the walls the sound of the tournament was a distant rise and fall of temper, the tensions between soldiers and squires and townsmen flaring. Melanthe cared nothing for that—it was the duke's difficulty if he could not control his people—she only wanted escape from the tumult, releasing her own tensions in a flying gallop over the countryside with Gryngolet aloft before her.
Allegreto stood sullenly under the arched entrance to the hall, waiting for a horse, one of his eyes turning black from his morning in the town stocks. He had not had a difficult time of it; no taunting of a foreign stranger could equal the excitement of a tournament, but he glared at Melanthe all the same.
Her greyhound strained against its leash as Melanthe felt her heart strain for the open country. She had seen herons and ducks by the river; yesterday Lancaster had given her his leave to take what she could—and if he regretted it now, she was beyond having to care. The falconers, two underlings left behind to mind the mews, finally secured their drum and swung up double onto a thin poorly horse, carrying a trussed chicken in a bag in case the hunt should have no success.
Melanthe reined her palfrey toward the gate. Across the bridge and through the barbican—and she could turn away from tournaments and courts and crowds and pretend she was alone with the open sky. Alone, as Gryngolet flew, but for the escort of hunters and falconers that chased the bird's wild courses.
Melanthe, too, was followed. Allegreto and Cara and a Riata rode behind her; Lancaster and Gian Navona and the ghost of Ligurio hounded her; and another hunted her now—the image of a man in green armor, bending slowly to the ground with his hands covering his eyes.
All of them her constant companions, ever in pursuit, never lost to sight. Spur her horse as she might, she was only free as the falcon flew free—until she killed, or was called back again to the brilliant jewels and feathers of her lure.
FOUR
A witch, she was.
Ruck stood beside
one of the shadowed columns in the cathedral, staring blindly at the scaffolding beneath a newly installed stained glass window.
He felt robbed. He felt utterly pillaged.
Where was his lady, his bright unblemished lady, lovelokkest of all, who made the blood and boredom and solitary days worth bearing? He hadn't asked that she be with him. He had never thought he was that worthy, but he had held himself to her standard—when they laughed at him, when he hurt for a woman's body to the point of despair, he cleaved to the impossible measure that she set by her own perfection.
He had dreamed about her in his bed or on the cold ground; he saw her beside the Virgin in the churches. He even imagined her with Isabelle in the nunnery, praying for his soul, both of them together, both of them the same, fair blue eyes and fair blond tresses and a face too lovely for any woman on earth...
He turned his head and rested his bandaged temple against the pillar. The cut across his skull burned. His cheek stung and throbbed in spite of Pierre's salve.
The reality of Princess Melanthe had been like a bucket of ice-cold water thrown in his face. He was angry at himself, but he reserved his deepest fury and disgust for her—the witch—she probably had ensorcelled him. How else could he have managed to forget what she was?
The Arch-Fiend's whore, that was what she was, curling like a silken tiger on the bed with her Satan's cub caressing her. He could not even find the image of fairness anymore. It had vanished from his soul, blasted by the sight of sable hair and eyes the color of unearthly twilight, the deep strange inner hue of hellish flowers. He recognized them now—but he had not remembered them so vivid-dark, or her coldness so numbing.
She had laughed. He could hear it still, like an echo in the empty cold air of the cathedral, floating above the endless murmur of the priests' chantries. The sound was branded on him. He had stood with swordpoint to the throat of his gallant liege, who had fought on wounded, unbowed, with no thought of submission—and she had laughed.