For My Lady's Heart (4 page)

*

And ţus
irne
ţe
ere in
isterdaye
mony,
And wynter wynde
a
ayn.

A year turns full turn and yields never like;
The first to the finish conform full seldom.
Forby, this Yule over, and the year after,
And each season separately ensued after other.

*

And thus yields the year in yesterdays many,
And winter wendes again.

Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight

“Year’s gifts!”

The cry rose with squeals and laughter as the ladies of Bordeaux craned,
reaching for the prizes held tauntingly overhead by their gay tormentors.
Veils came askew, belts failed and sent misericordes flying in the tussle—in
a rush of varicolored silks and furs each gentleman went down in willing
defeat, yielding his New Year’s keepsake for the price of a kiss.

The first Great Pestilence was twenty and two years gone, the Second
Scourge ten Christmases past—but though the French harried Aquitaine’s
borders and yet another outbreak of the dread black swellings had killed
Lancaster’s white duchess herself just last year, such dire thoughts were
blown to oblivion when the trumpets gave forth a great shout, sounding the
arrival of pastries to the hall, fantastic shapes of ships and castles and a
stag that bled claret wine when the gilt arrow was plucked from its side.

A mischievous lady was the first to toss an eggshell full of sweet-water
at her lord—the carved rafters resounded with glee, and in a moment every
man was wiping perfumed drops from his lashes, grinning, demanding another
kiss for his misfortune. Some hungry lordling broke the crust of a huge pie
and a dozen frogs leapt free, thumping onto the table amid skips and
feminine screams. From another pie came a rush of feathered bodies, birds
that flew to the light and put out the candles as the company filled the
gloom with shrill enjoyment.

The Duke of Lancaster himself sat with languid elegance at the high table
of Ombriere, watching critically as kettledrums and the wild high notes of
warbling flutes heralded the first course. At the duke’s right hand, his
most high and honored guest, the Princess Melanthe di Monteverde, overlooked
the dim noisy hall with cold indifference. Her white falcon, equally
impassive, gripped its carved and painted block with talons dipped in
silver. The bannered trumpets sounded once more. All the candles and torches
glowed again in magical unison, illuminating the hall and dais as the
liveried servants held the lights aloft.

Lancaster smiled, leaning very near Princess Melanthe. “My lady’s
highness likes not mirth and marvels?”

She gave him a cool glance. “Marvels?” she murmured in a bored tone. “I
expect naught less than a unicorn before the sweetmeats.”

Lancaster grinned, allowing his shoulder to touch hers as he reached to
refill the wine cup they shared. “Too commonplace. Nay, give us a more
difficult task, Princess.”

Melanthe hid her annoyance. Lancaster was courting her. He would not be
snubbed and he would not be forestalled. He took her coldness as challenge;
her reluctance as mere dalliance.

“Then, sir—I will have it green,” she said smoothly, and to her vexation
he laughed aloud.

“Green it shall be.” He signaled to an attendant and leaned back to speak
in the servant’s ear, then gave Melanthe a sidelong smile. “Before
sweetmeats, my lady, a green unicorn.”

The heavy red-and-blue cloth of his sleeve brushed her arm as he lifted
the cup toward her lips, but the bishop on his other side sought him. In his
distraction Melanthe took her opportunity to capture the goblet from his
hand. She could already see the assembly’s reaction to his attentions. Swift
as metheglin could intoxicate a man, another horrified report began to
spread among the tables below.

It would be a subdued mumble, Melanthe knew, passed over a shared sliver
of meat or a finger full of sweet jelly, whispered under laughter with the
true discretion of fear. Lancaster was thirty, handsome and vigorous in the
full strength of manhood. While his oldest brother the Black Prince lay
swollen and confined to his bed with dropsy, it was Lancaster who kept court
as Lieutenant of Aquitaine, but who could blame a younger son of the King of
England—most surely one of such energy and pride as Lancaster—if his
ambitions were for greater things than service to his brother? Everyone knew
he would take another highborn heiress after losing his good Duchess
Blanche, and no one expected him to dally long about it. But Mary, Mother of
God, even for the gain it would bring him, did he truly contemplate the
Princess Melanthe?

She could almost hear the whispers as she sat next to him upon the dais
and surveyed the company. There—that woman in the blue houpelande, leaning
back to speak to the next table—she was no doubt complaining to her neighbor
that such a gyrfalcon as Princess Melanthe carried was too great for a woman
to fly. Nothing in the duke’s mews could match it; not even the Black Prince
himself owned such a bird. The insolence, that she would display it so at
the duke’s own feast! Immodesty! Wicked vanity and arrogance!

Melanthe gave the woman a long dispassionate stare and had the pleasure
of watching her victim turn white with dismay at the attention.

Her reputation preceded her.

And those three, the two knights inclining so near to the pretty
fair-haired girl between them—Melanthe could see the relish in their faces.
Widowed of her Italian prince, the men would say, heiress to all her
father’s vast English lands ... and the girl would whisper that Princess
Melanthe had caused a maiden to be drowned in her bath for dropping a cake
of Castile soap.

From her late husband, someone else would murmur—the income of an Italian
city-state; from her English father, lord of Bowland, holdings as large as
Lancaster’s; she’d taken fifteen lovers and murdered all of them; for a man
to smile at her was certain death—here the knights would smirk and
grin—certain, but exquisite, the final price for the paradise he could savor
for as long as it pleased her to dally with him.

Melanthe had heard it all, knew what they spoke as well as if she sat
among them. But still Lancaster paid her court with polish and wolf’s
glances, smiles and covetous stares, barely concerned to keep his desire in
check. Melanthe knew what they were saying of that, too. She had entrapped
him. Ensorcelled him. He’d left off his black mourning; all trace of
lingering grief for his beloved Blanche had vanished. He looked at the
Princess Melanthe as he looked at her falcon, with the look of a man who has
determined what he will have and damn the price.

She only
wished
she might ensorcell him, and turn him to a toad.

Tonight she must act—this public gallantry of his could not be allowed to
go on without check. Before the banquet ended, she must spurn him so that he
and no one else could doubt it. When she looked out upon the trestles, she
saw the assassin who watched her, tame and plump in her own green-and-silver
livery, but in truth another spawn of the Riata family, one of the secret
wardens set upon her. Only by the mastery of long practice did she maintain
her cold serenity against the hard beat of her heart.

The food arrived with full pomp and glitter, loaded onto cloths of purest
linen, the procession winding endlessly among the tables. Lancaster offered
her the choice dainties from his own fingers. She brought herself to the
point of rudeness in response to him—by God’s self, must he be so open about
it, this determined public pursuit in the face of her expressed displeasure,
when he might have had the sense to send his envoy by night and secrecy to
measure her willingness?

But he thought it agreeable sport, she saw, a lovers’ game of disinterest
and affectation. He full expected that she would have him. She had told him
more than once that she would have no man, but none here would blame him for
his confidence. It was a brilliant match. Their lands marched together in
the north of England: the sum of their possessions would rival the king’s.
By this alliance the duke could make her the greatest lady in Britain—and
she could make him greater yet than that.

It was not passion alone that drove him to these smiles and hot looks.

She touched him lightly when he leaned too close, to remind him that they
were in the court’s view. He grinned, sitting back in obedience, but a
moment later he had leaned near again, grasping her hand possessively,
holding it in his upon the table in a gesture as clear as a proclamation.
The Riata stood up from his seat, mingling with the servants as they passed
up and down the hall.

Melanthe made no move to disengage herself. It was a game of hints and
inklings between her and the Riata’s man— a language of act and counteract.
He moved closer, warning her, reminding her of her agreement with Riata and
her peril if she thought to wed any man, especially such a one as Lancaster.

She merely looked at the duke’s fingers entwined with hers on the white
cloth, refusing to show fear. Her heart was beating too hard, but she held
to her aloof composure, asking Lancaster for a loaf of trimmed pandemain
from the golden platter just set down before them, so that he must let go
her hand to serve her properly.

When she looked up, she saw the Riata lingered in a closer place even
though the duke had released her. Verily, Lancaster’s hopes must be crushed,
or she would be fortunate to see the light of another morning.

Gryngolet moved uneasily on her perch at Melanthe’s elbow, the falcon’s
silver bells ringing as she half roused to the sweeping flutter of a sparrow
that still flew, panicked, among the roof beams. Noble stewards clustered
and moved behind and before the dais, attending the duke and his guests,
trimming bread, carving quail: knives and poison and color— she could not
keep them all in her eye at once, as adept as she had made herself at such
things. The Riata could kill her as well before the entire hall as in some
dark passage. It was too dangerous and open a position; she had not chosen
it; she had tried to avoid it, but Lancaster’s ambitions had overwhelmed her
subtleties. She must sit at his high table and deny him to his face.

She had misjudged. These reckless English—she saw that she had been too
accustomed to the feints and lethal shadows of the Italian courts to recall
the power of plain English boldness. She would be fortunate to find her way
to her chambers alive in this castle of unfamiliar corners and hidden
places.

An ill luck it had been that had brought her to Bordeaux at all on her
way home to England. She’d foreseen this disaster with Lancaster well enough
to avoid the place by intention, but still had not cared to chance her
French welcome and take the most northern route. She’d skirted Bordeaux,
choosing the road to Limoges—only to meet there the English army just done
with razing the town to ashes.

Lancaster wielded his courtesy with the same skill he handled a sword.
She must not rush on her way home to Bowland, he had insisted
graciously—there was to be a New Year’s tournament—she must come to Bordeaux
and honor him with her presence at the celebration. He had the ear of his
father the king, he told her with his elegant hungry smile. He would write
his recommendation that Princess Melanthe be put in possession of her
English inheritance immediately and without prejudice. That he might, if he
chose, equally well jeopardize her prospects with King Edward needed no such
blunt hinting.

Wherefore, she was here. And Lancaster continued on his fatal
determination, courting her through the service of the white meats and the
red. She lost sight of the Riata, and then found him again, closer.

The moment approached. Lancaster would ask for her favor to carry in the
tournament tomorrow. He had already told her that he would fight within the
lists. In this public place, hanged be the man, Lancaster would beg her for
a certain token of her regard and force her to a public answer.

There was no eluding it, no hope that he would not. His intention toward
her was in his every compliment and sidelong glance. She had thought of
becoming faint and retiring, but that could only put the thing off until the
morrow— another night on guard against the Riata—and set off a round of
further solicitude from the duke. Beyond that, the Princess Melanthe did not
become faint. It was a weakness. Melanthe did not choose to show weakness.

She would end with Lancaster a powerful enemy, his lands marching with
hers in bitterness instead of friendship. A man such as he would not soon
forget a woman’s public refusal. Among these northerners, chivalry and honor
counted for all... but the Riata must be shown that she would not have the
duke, and must be shown it soon and well.

She suffered Lancaster’s attentions to grow more and more direct. She
began to encourage him, though he needed no encouragement from her to lead
himself to his own humiliation. She was angry at him, but smiled. She
regretted him, but she smiled still, ruthless, laughing at his wit,
complimenting his banquet. It was no sweet love that drove Lancaster now,
but ambition and a man’s lust. She could not save him if he would not save
himself.

The second course arrived. As a gilded swan was carved before them, the
duke grew a little drunk with wine and success. He plucked a subtlety in the
shape of a rosebud from the profusion of decoration on the platter and
offered it to her with a glance more of affection than desire. Melanthe
accepted the almond sweet from his fingers. She looked at him smiling softly
upon her and felt a twinge of regret for his spare, comely figure—for
women’s fancies—things she had heard about him, of the love he bore still
for his first wife, things that could not now nor ever be between her and a
man.

In exchange for her life—his pride. It seemed a fair enough bargain to
Melanthe.

As Lancaster prepared their shared trencher with his own hands, she
glimpsed a slim figure in blue-and-yellow hose in the throng below.
Allegreto Navona lounged at the edge of the hall, near the great hearth, his
black hair and bright hues almost blending into the shapes and figures in
the huge tapestry on the wall behind him. The youth was looking toward the
dais. As Melanthe accepted the duke’s tidbit, Allegreto smiled directly at
her.