For My Lady's Heart (45 page)

Her smile widened. She touched Navona’s arm and nodded toward Ruck.

The moment that she did it, the cold enveloped him. His fingers numbed,
his feet and his legs. As he took a step, his knee collapsed, cold rising to
his waist, poisonous cold.

The wine killed him. He felt it stop his heart. Like a murderous hand, it
strangled his throat. His lungs froze; his limbs seized.

His mind failed him. He felt himself die, the ground hurling upward to
meet him.

Princess Melanthe sat on the window seat that curved within the oriel
recess. She leaned her elbow on a pillow, looking out an open glass, staring
down into the garden. Cara stood in attendance, gazing at the painted window
glass where two angels held the message “Love God and dread shame.”

“My dear one,” Gian said, bending before the princess, “I beg your pardon
for my delay.” When she only lifted her hand for a kiss without turning from
the window, he left her in the sunset glare and went to pour himself wine.
“But entertaining it was, you may be certain.”

“What have they decided?” Princess Melanthe asked idly.

He set down the brass ewer. “For two hours did they debate over whether
this green fellow had upheld his word after all. It turned on a fine point,
my dear. A fine point. Did he leave the lists before he died or after? Had
it been after, the case might have been different!” He put on a mock solemn
face, imitating a justice. “For then no one could assert that he had been
killed by the Fleming, without a mark on him. But he was still in the lists
when he expired, so it could be argued that the Fleming killed him with one
of those blows to the head, but the effect was belated. You’ll delight in
the verdict, my love.”

“Will I?” the princess asked. She turned her face to him.

Cara thought her cold—so cold that there was not a shred of living
feeling in her.

“Since the green fellow did not lose, his cause was just and true. So he
did not lie.” Gian shrugged and smiled at her over his cup. “I suppose it
must follow that you did, then, but we will pass over that lightly in the
circumstances, as our clever justices of chivalry chose to do. They have
determined that God could not allow the green churl to lose, precisely—but
clearly He did not think it a satisfactory match, and so put period to your
late husband with a flourish, rather in the style of striking him with
lighting. Be it a lesson to all abductors and rapists of innocent females.”

The princess narrowed her eyes. “I will not remain here another day. We
leave tomorrow, Gian. No more of this!”

He did not answer her, but roamed the solar, his white velvet turned to
rose by the late burn of the sun through the tall open windows. “So, my
betrothed—you are a married woman and a widow in the space of a few moments.
With all thanks to my precious boy—” He stopped beside Allegreto, who
lounged against the bedstead. Gian stroked his son’s cheek lovingly. “Ah,
Allegreto, thou art forgiven everything. Thou didst so well. I saw his face
as he died—and he knew it. He went to Hell knowing, and he’ll burn there
knowing. I could not have asked for more, my sweet son. I do love thee
beyond words.”

He took Allegreto in his arms, a long and hard embrace. Allegreto’s hands
curled into the rich flowing cloth of his father’s houpelande. He gripped
the velvet as if he would not let go, near as tall now as Gian but holding
to him like a child. He pressed his cheek against Gian’s shoulder, his face
squeezed into a grimace of passion, a terrible thing to see.

“How can I reward thee?” Gian murmured, stroking his son’s black hair.
“Wilt thou have Donna Cara? I see thine eyes when she enters the hall. She
is not worthy of thee, Allegreto—I would have better for thee, but if it
would please?”

“I am betrothed, my lord,” Cara said sharply.

Allegreto’s face was hidden in his father’s shoulder. Gian made him lift
his head. “Wilt thou have her?”

Cara began to tremble. She knew that she should not; it was the worst
thing she could do, show her thoughts and feelings. No one else showed his
heart.

“I will have what you want for me, my lord,” Allegreto said. “I am ever
yours in obedience.”

Gian smiled. “And in love,” he said, touching Allegreto’s cheek.

He looked into his father’s eyes. “And in love, my lord.”

Gian’s thumb moved over his cheek. “Thou hast thy mother’s comeliness,”
he murmured. “And my wit. We’ll look far higher for thee, sweet son. Let her
have her English clod, or take her as thy mistress. But nay—” He grinned,
tilting his head back. “Nay, I forget, thou art a virgin still, poor
Allegreto, on account of playing the role I gave thee. And didst well at
that, too, as Lady Melanthe informed me with some wrath. Let me find a woman
to teach thee pleasure first, lovely boy. Then canst thou decide if this
sour little milkmaid will satisfy thee.” He stepped back, disengaging
himself gently from Allegreto’s still clinging hold, and gave him another
kiss.

“So touching!” the princess said viciously. She stood up. In the last
shafts of light from the window, she was only a black device against it, her
hair haloed, sunset sparkling on the golden net and the besants lined down
her sleeves. “Where have they taken the body?”

Allegreto shrugged. “The charnel house, I suppose.”

“Fool! Thou shouldst have found out!”

“My lady, I made sure he was dead and left him with the doctor and one
weeping squire. I was not required to follow him to the grave!”

“Thou art certain of this poison,” she said.

Allegreto lifted his brows. “I put a misericorde in his heart, my lady,”
he said. “He did not bleed.”

She made a faint sound in her throat. Cara was afraid for her mistress
suddenly; afraid she would swoon, afraid Gian would see and kill them all in
his jealousy.

But Princess Melanthe only stared for a long moment at Allegreto. Then
she said, “I will not have him thrown in a paupers’ grave. He will be buried
properly, by a priest, in a church. There will be a stone made, marked by
that name the king called him. I wish a chantry endowed for his soul.” She
moved toward the door. “Find him, Allegreto, and see to it. Tonight.”

Gian caught her arm. “My lady,” he said coldly, “you pay him such
respect?”

“He prayed too much,” she said. “I do not wish some tedious ghost
haunting me with aves and hosannas.” She pulled her arm from his hand. “And
I do not care for restraint, from you or any man, Gian. Do not touch me so
again.”

He smiled down at her. “You’re an unruly little dragon. I would not have
you slip your couple.”

“Hold me with love, Gian,” she said smoothly. “That works best.”

“Nay, my dear,” he murmured. “The fear that comes of love works best.”

“Then am I on a long leash,” she said, sweeping from the chamber. “Come,
Cara—why stand there like a gaping trout? See that Allegreto does my
bidding.” She paused at the door. “And pay no mind to this talk of looking
higher for him. Marry thy English squire—and if thou art clever, thou wilt
still have Allegreto panting after thee as Gian does me. And then we may
rule the world, I promise thee.”

There were voices. It was a great well of stone, its compass lost in
darkness, echoing, with shadows that moved and hulked across the curving
wall.

He had no body. He could see and hear, but the voices made no sense. It
had been only an instant’s shift, a blink between crowds and color and the
poison cup in his hand, then strangling death and this place. A deep horror
possessed him. He was in Purgatory; demon-haunted; he had died without
shrive or absolution of killing a man.

One of the demons counted. It was invisible, but he could hear the clink
of its claws with each tally. “Two and fifty hundreds,” it said with a lurid
satisfaction.

Was that his sentence? So many years? Fear drowned him. He tried to
speak, to plead that Isabelle had prayed for his soul, but he could not
speak. He had no tongue. He remembered that there had been no prayers.
Isabelle was dead, as dead as he, burned for heresy.

The well echoed with fearful murmurs, with scrapes and footsteps, and
then a great crash that thundered and rolled about him. He heard something
come toward him plashing and dripping, and wanted to scream with fear of
what monster it would be to gnaw and tear at his flesh for two hundred fifty
years.

“He does look dead,” the monster said in bad French. “A merry poison,
this. I could make good use of it in my art.”

“What, to physic thy patients to death and bring them out again! Dream,
thou mountebank—thou couldst not buy it in a thousand years.”

Allegreto’s reverberating voice shocked him. Like a demon-angel, the
youth floated in the air, appearing and vanishing. He had not expected
Allegreto to be here.

“I would have him wake.” Now it was his squire John Marking. “Never did I
contract to be party to murder.”

Had they all died? Their voices and faces kept slipping away from him.
His nose hurt. He was dimly surprised to have a nose. He tried to open his
eyes to see if the monster was gnawing on it, but he only had eyes
sometimes, and other times not.

They were demons, he thought. Demons with voices and faces that he knew.
He refused to answer them when they demanded that he wake. It was the Devil
calling him. If it called in Melanthe’s voice, then he would be sure it was
the Devil.

The monster touched him, cold and wet. He tried to jerk back, his head
hitting stone—he had a head suddenly, because it hurt. He had never thought
of this. He knew that his dead soul would be like a body so that it might be
tortured for his sins, but he had not imagined it would be by single parts,
with the rest still gone.

The wet thing licked over his face, a loathsome cold tongue, water in his
eyes and on his chest. He had a chest. And a heart. The Devil spoke in the
voice of a maid.

“Wake now, my lord.” It was the gentlewoman who had served Melanthe. He
could see her through slitted and dripping eyes, and felt sorry that she had
died, too. Wolves, he thought. Wolves had eaten her. “Try to wake,” she
said. “Drink this.”

He turned his head away. “De’il,” he mumbled, the word barely passing his
throat. “Deviel.”

“He’s alive,” Allegreto said. “Art thou satisfied?”

He could not make sense of it. Alive. Dead. Purgatory, and these were his
demons. He did not think the worst could have begun yet, for Melanthe was
not among them, but he had no doubt mat she would come and take delight to
torture him. She had smiled as he drank her poison, knowing that she killed
him.

Allegreto returned from the river, beckoning to Cara from the door at the
top of the stairs. She was glad to leave this awful place, abandoned as it
seemed to be by the monks who had built it, indeed, by God Himself. The
great round cellar still held a few ale-kegs, but the water well dominated
the brewery, a black pit as wide across as a castle turret.

She hurried up the arch of stone steps, leaving the water bucket full and
one candle burning for their prisoner. Allegreto closed the heavy door,
barred and locked it.

“I’ll walk with you to the lodge,” he said. “There is a horse, and a
guide to take you back.”

She followed him up the wide, sloped passage. At the outer door he opened
the wicket and doused the candle. They both ducked through the small door.

A half-moon was rising,, shedding light on the empty monastery. Buildings
rose about them in black and gray bulks, shapes without colors. She pulled
her hood over her head and lifted her skirt as he led her across a grassy
plot. Her footsteps echoed softly as they passed onto the paved cloister.

A half-year past she would have been terrified out of her mind to walk
here in the silence and emptiness. But Allegreto was with her, and not even
the ghosts of dead men could frighten her. An old monastery on a summer
night, only abandoned because the monks had preferred some better place,
held nothing so fearsome as he was.

He walked ahead of her, noiseless, turning through another passage where
the moonlight shone in a pale arch at the other end. They followed the
overgrown road to the gatehouse, and Allegreto gave her his hand to help her
over the slanted timbers of the half-fallen door.

He let go of her instantly. But he stopped, facing Cara in the starlight.
“Is it true—or did you say it for my father?”

She could not look into his face. Since they had left Bowland, she in
Princess Melanthe’s household and he in Gian’s, there had been naught but
the briefest dealings between them, messages passed for her mistress and no
more. She was safe with him, she knew; she did not even fear ghosts with him
beside her, but Guy had been given a place with the princess as a yeoman of
horse. He was well within Allegreto’s reach.

“No,” she lied. “No, I just said it, so that—”

She stopped.

“So that my father would not force you.” Mortification hovered in his
voice. “I wouldn’t have—I didn’t, did I? I could have said yes to him.”

“Let us not speak of this.” She started past, suddenly fearing him as she
had not before, fearing that they were alone here in the empty dark.

“Are you betrothed to him?”

“No.” She said it too quickly, too breathlessly. That was to protect Guy,
but she had no lie to protect herself if Allegreto chose to constrain her by
strength.

“Do you think I’ll kill him?” he said. “I won’t kill him.”

She stopped and looked back across a distance of a yard. He propped his
foot on the warped and canted door, the moonlight on his shoulders. “I only
wondered if you would go home with us.”

“Of course. My sister.”

In a silken tone he asked, “Will Guy save and keep your sister?”

“You sound like your father.”

“How not? I am his son. And Navona alone can steal your sister safe from
the Riata.”

“What does that mean? Will you make me choose between Guy and my sister?”

He lifted his head. “Then you are betrothed.”

“You swore Navona would keep my sister safe.”

“You
are
betrothed. You are. You are. Monteverde bitch.” It was
not an execration; it was like an endearment with him. He swung away and
walked on, passing her, a moonlit shadow.

Cara went behind him, keeping distance. The faint path led across a water
meadow and up onto higher ground, where she could look back and see the
sheen of the river beyond the dark priory. Night dew made her shiver.

“So—will your Englishman remain with the princess, that you may go home
with us?” Allegreto asked.

She did not answer, but walked on behind him. He hiked himself over a
stile and waited on the other side until she climbed it.

“You should see that he asks her for a place soon.” Allegreto wove around
a black patch of bushes. “You heard her say tomorrow she leaves—it won’t be
that swift, but as soon as she can have my father upon a ship without his
suspicion, she will. We can’t hold the green man long.”

“Who is to set him free?” Cara had a sudden ghastly thought. “Mary, what
if some mistake is made, and he’s left down there after we’re gone?”

Allegreto turned to face her, so suddenly that she almost fell over her
skirt. “I would not let that happen!” he said fiercely. “And if you care so
much, then stay here with your precious Guy and see to it yourself!” He
snorted. “But I wouldn’t put it beyond the two of you to drop the key down
some gong-pit, so I guess I’d better do the thing.”

He pivoted and strode on along the path, ducking a branch.

“You’ll stay here?” she asked, trailing him.

“I’m to miss the departure and catch up in Calais. I think I’ll let my
father give me a good whore,” he said bitterly, “and have her teach me about
pleasure until I can’t crawl out of the bed to travel.” He took Cara’s arm
and propelled her in front of him. “There’s the lodge. Her father had all
this enclosed for a hunting chase, and there’s none but a parker who likes
good Bordeaux. The princess gifted him with a tun of it, so you need not
expect he will ask questions.” He pushed Cara ahead. “The guide will see you
back to her. Farewell.”

He was walking away before she realized the finality of his tone. She
turned and gazed after him.

“Farewell, Allegreto,” she called softly.

He did not pause. He vanished in the dark.

“I know you can hear me.”

It was Allegreto’s voice again. Ruck had all of his body now. His stomach
warmed, and he shook in every limb. It was a Purgatory he had never
conceived, but no less appalling for that. He thirsted. He could not get his
breath, and these insistent demons plagued him. He swallowed, trying to lift
his hands, but one was weighted down with iron and the other would not do as
he expected, moving aimlessly at the end of his arm.

“Open your eyes, green man, if you can hear me,” the Allegreto-demon
said.

He remembered that he had a name. “Ruadrik,” he muttered. He stared
bleakly at Allegreto, trying to see the shade of a monstrosity behind his
comely face.

The demon smiled a wicked smile. “Ruadrik, then, if you’ll have it so.
Listen to me, Ruadrik. Try to remember this. You have food and drink here.
There’s a pail, if you need it. I’ll return in the morning. Remember. Don’t
lose your head. Do you hear me?”

Ruck tried to lift his hand, to catch and strangle him, but he could not.

“Wink your eyes if you hear me,” the fiend ordered.

Ruck closed his eyes. When he had eyes to open again, the demon was gone.

“He was waking, my lady,” Cara said very softly.

Melanthe laid her forehead down on the pillow. She had been waiting at
the window, waiting and waiting. She had not thought Cara would ever come.

It might have killed him, the poison they had used, a grain too much, a
drop of wine too little—but Gian’s would have done it with mortal certainty.

“He spoke, but made no sense, my lady,” Cara said. “Allegreto sent word
to you that he is weak, but will be well by morning.”

Melanthe lifted her head. The night air flowed in the open window. She
put her hands on her cheeks to cool them.

“My lady—” Cara said. “I wish to tell you—when I spoke—when I said I was
betrothed. I had no right to make a contract without your leave. Forgive
me!”

Her words seemed distant to Melanthe. She flicked her hand in dismissal.
“Later. I cannot think of that now.”

“My lady. Please! I have no wish to marry Allegreto.”

Melanthe made an effort to turn her mind to Cara’s distress. “After all
he has done for thee? Poor Allegreto. Thou dost have thy claws in his
heart.”

“I never meant to do so, my lady! He frightens me. And— I fear for Guy.”

“Such a tragic face. Guy? That Englishman from Torbec, I suppose. He is
beneath thee. He hasn’t a florin to his name. Silly girl, his lord lives in
a pigsty. Thou mayest believe me, for I saw it.”

“My lady—I love him.”

Melanthe gave one short laugh. “Verily, this is what comes of letting
foolish female creatures sit at windows and look out upon the street, is it
not? We dream stupid dreams, and fall in love with any unsuitable man who
walks past.”

Cara bowed her head. “Yea, my lady.”

“I spoke to thee once of love.”

“Yea, my lady.”

Melanthe pulled the window closed. She could see the reflection of
candles in the glass, and a wavering darkness that was herself. “What did I
say of it?” she whispered. “I have forgotten what I said.”

“My lady, you said to me that great love is ruinous, my lady.”

“And so it is.” She put her hands over her hot cheeks again, watching the
obscure movement in the glass. “So it is.”

“My lady—if it would please you—if Guy might find a place in your retinue
when we return—”

“God’s death, dost thou care no more for thy betrothed than to lead him
into the viper’s nest?” Melanthe turned angrily on the girl’s brown-eyed
innocence. “And what of Allegreto? Is he to sing a gleeful carol at thy
wedding?”

“My lady, it was Allegreto who proposed it”—Cara made a courtesy—“that
Guy find a place with you, so that I might go home.”

Melanthe gazed at her. She could not see in the soft face anything but a
tame doe’s stupid trust. “Do not press Allegreto too far.” She rose,
flinging the pillow aside. “Nay, if thou must have this Englishman, then you
will both remain here. And count thy blessings.”

Cara bowed. She went to Melanthe’s bed and began to turn down the sheets.
The manor bells tolled matins.

“I’ll go to the chapel,” Melanthe said. “In faith, I cannot sleep!”

She would have preferred to go to the garden, or the mews, but Gian had
spies on her in the household, and she did not dare arouse any curiosity. As
well accustom herself to altar and roodscreen—it would be the whole scope of
her life soon enough.

She thought perhaps she would surprise everyone and be a fiercely austere
nun. The ladies who retired as religious and still kept high estate had
always seemed pathetic to her—acting out a play without stage or spectators.
No, she would give everything to the church, and fast, and have visions. And
they would all be of a man who had loved her once.