Chapter Fifteen.

Things seemed to Melanthe to happen in disconnected scenes, the hounds and the wind and the sh.o.r.e in the freezing darkness, and then a strange figure, s.h.a.gged and silent, barely seen, a woodwose, a wildman of the desert, mad rocking and water and a st.u.r.dy boat-and colder, colder, wet spray that made her huddle into her cloak-she did not have Gryngolet, but somehow she remembered that all was right; Ruck said so, when she asked-then the first light of dawn, the world a sickening sway of wind and wave.

Sea loathing and la.s.situde and cold kept her immobile, hunched in the tiny cover for the endless voyage, while the woodwose shouted incomprehensible orders at Ruck and they worked together against the wind and spray, sailing and hauling upon the ropes, manning oars to point the vessel over waves that seemed too tall for it, carrying her she knew not where, nor hardly cared. Hawk stood with his head encased in armor, his legs braced and his nose lowered to the deck.

Near sunset the awful rocking abated. She found the strength to open her eyes and crawl from the small shelter into the open, looking Wearily upon an unfamiliar sh.o.r.eline, crystalline with black trees that somehow glittered, mountains behind them, rising to ponderous heights dusted a spectral white.

She came a little more into her wits as they landed, the boat sweeping and bobbing on the swells that rolled into a protected inlet of a small bay. They had to disembark onto a sandbar. It thrust out into the inlet from overhanging trees, their lower limbs drooping down near the water, every twig and branch encased in clear ice to form strange white cascades against the dark wood.

Sir Ruck hurried her, lifting her bodily onto the sand and glancing often toward the opposite sh.o.r.e of the bay. The horse came calmly off the grounded boat, as if it splashed from vessel into shallow water half the days of its life. Without a word the woodwose, as coa.r.s.e and savage-looking in the day as in the dark, handed over Gryngolet, her body encased in a falconer's sock, and pushed off his craft with an oar.

Ruck slapped the destrier's rump, sending it into a heavy trot ahead of them. The horse thudded toward the trees, a pale form in the failing light, and vanished in the s.p.a.ce of a blink.

Melanthe looked over her shoulder, squinting her gritty eyes at the other sh.o.r.e. A mile off or more across the sands, she thought she could see low buildings and signs of active cultivation. But he did not allow her to linger and study.

"It is the abbey land," he said, with a soft contempt in his voice. "The house of Saint Mary. N'would I nought haf us apperceived."

"Where go we?"

He held her arm and looked into her face as if he would speak-then gave her a light push, turning her ahead of him. "Into the forest," he said. "Make haste, my lady."

Though they had left the hounds of Torbec far behind across open water, he mounted them upon the horse again and did not stop to rest. They rode all night-or if they didn't, Melanthe knew nothing of it. Poor long-suffering Gryngolet lay secured behind the pillion, girded in her linen sock with her hooded head emerging from one end and her feet and tail from the other. Melanthe held onto the high back of the saddle. She kept falling asleep and starting awake as she lost her balance, until he said, "Lay your arms about me."

She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his back. He held both her hands clasped securely under his. It was cold and uncomfortable, with only his surcoat to pad the hard backplate of his cuira.s.s, but Melanthe must have slept long and deep there, for when next she roused, the slant of the ground had steepened, and dawn light filtered black into gray around them.

The forest itself was so dark and thick that it seemed the horse was plowing through ma.s.sive brambles and hollies without a path or sign of pa.s.sage. And yet, none of the thorns p.r.i.c.ked them, or even caught her cloak. The destrier stepped steadily ahead, turning often, making into dark caverns of winter foliage like tunnels, finding easy degrees up a cliff where icicles hung down from rocks directly over their heads. The horse labored, blowing puffs of steam, its iron shoes ringing sometimes on hard stone and other times thudding on moss. The sound of the wind in the branches overhead grew stronger as they gained height. Melanthe could look down and see dusts of gritty snow on every tree and evergreen, but no sign of where they had come.

Ahead, the woods seemed brighter, the trees smaller, driven into hunted shapes by the wind. Sharp rocks made huge flat-sided teeth, as if a dragon of the earth bared its fangs. The destrier heaved up over a shelf and pa.s.sed between two huge ma.s.ses of slate, the gray slabs angling down to the ground like a great V-shaped gate.

The sound of the wind suddenly dimmed. Hawk's iron shoes echoed in the defile. They emerged into a little dark snow-spattered wood hidden in the cleft. Beside a mountain tarn, purplish black and still beneath a clear sheen of ice, Sir Ruck halted the blowing horse at last.

"We will letten the horse rest and drink," he said, helping her down. "Are ye thirsty?"

She shook her head, wrapping her cloak tight about her, and sat down on a rock. He produced a havercake from some unknown pocket and offered it to her. As Melanthe crunched on it glumly, he led the horse to the tarn and broke the surface with his heel. The sound cracked against the cliffs and reverberated back as jags of white splintered across the pond. There appeared to be no exit from the coombe, and no entrance, either, though she stared at the place she thought they had come in.

"Where are we?" she asked, brushing crumbs from her cheek.

He looked up, weariness written in all the lines of his face. With a faint smile he said, "In the fells beyond the frith, my lady. None can follow here."

The horse plunged its nose into the water and sucked. Melanthe thought of the pathless forest they had pa.s.sed through so easily. She gazed at the bare branches around the tarn-and suddenly saw the pattern in them, the felled trunks and interwoven framework, one twig pulled down and anch.o.r.ed beneath another, a third twisted about its neighbor, a pair spread open, braided and pruned and pinned to the ground to start a new shoot, all growing together into a wall of thorn and wood.

"Avoi," she breathed. "It is a plessis barrier."

"Yea. And ancient, my lady. Since before the northmen came to this coast, before anyone remembers, hatz been kept so."

She looked at him. "What does it protect?"

He came to her and held out his hand. Melanthe took it, rising. He led her to a place that seemed impenetrable: only when he stepped into it did she see that she could follow. They walked through a dark hollow, skirting the downed trunks of trees. He climbed ahead of her into another cleft in the rocks, and offered his hand.

Melanthe gathered her skirts and let him hike her up. The s.p.a.ce was barely large enough for both of them, with wind whining through the fissure of slate. He flattened himself to the towering sheet of rock and let her sidle in front of him, pulling her back against his chest so that she could see through the rent in the cliffs to the open country beyond.

"There," he said, and pointed.

The mountainside fell down so steeply from where they stood that she could not see the tops of trees except far below, where the forest swept to the valley floor. Ragged mists moved across, forming and fleeing, rising in wisps to flow up the cliffsides, blurring her view. At first she thought the valley empty, only more forest, and more, with the hint of a river running along the bottom and frozen waterfalls on the far side. She scowled against the wind-tears in her eyes, trying to follow where he pointed.

She blinked. What she had thought to be a waterfall seemed to be a tower; she blinked and it was a waterfall again, its lower cascade hidden by the spur of a ridge-but it had a strange slate formation at its source. Triangular; and another, a little lower, dark cones of stone, each with a bleeding white tail at its base ... the mists drifted and broke apart, and suddenly, for one instant, she saw a castle, bleached white, turrets with battlements and slate-blue conical roofs, the glint of golden banner staves-and then it was only a misted cliff marked by icefalls once more.

"Do you see it?" he asked, bending close to her ear.

Melanthe realized that she had drawn a sharp breath. "I cannot say-is there a hold? The mist befools me."

"There is a hold." He put his hands on her shoulders. "Wolfscar."

"Depardeu," she said as the mist cleared again. "I see it!"

"This is mine, from six miles behind us to that second peak, to the coast on the west and the lakes east. Held of the king himself-and a license and command to fortify it with a castel." His voice held a note of defiant pride, almost as if he expected she might disagree with him.

Melanthe turned away from the icy wind. "Thou art a baron, then!"

"Yeah, we haf a baron's writ, to my father's grandsire and before. Did ye think me a freeman, my lady?" he demanded.

She slipped back from the crevice, down into a wider and quieter s.p.a.ce between the rock walls. He came behind, the familiar c.h.i.n.k of his mail compounded by the ring of steel as his scabbard hit the stone with each step.

She stopped and turned, smiling. "Nay. Bast son of a poor knight. "Twas Lancaster thought thee a freeman."

He bristled, his eyes narrowing. But before he could speak, Melanthe said, "Why should we imagine more of thee, Green Sire? When thou wouldst not name thyself."

"I cannought," he said. He gazed at her grimly, his eyes dark in the shadow of the walls. He shrugged. "The letters patent be lost. My parents died in the Great Pestilence. The abbey-" His mouth curled. "They were to holden my ward in my non-age. And they forgot me! I went there when had I five and ten years, for I ne'er heard word nor direction, nor had aid of them. And the monks said I was an open liar and in fraud of them, that this land escheated to the abbey in the last reign, and ne'er watz revoked by the king. Ne did they e'en know of the donjon-" He set his fist on the stone. "My father's castel, that was seven years abuilding! To them is naught but impa.s.sable forest, and all else unremembered!"

His indignation at that seemed greater than at being disavowed himself. But Melanthe saw instantly the heart of the blow. "Thou canst not prove thy family?"

He leaned against the rock face, his heel braced on it. "They all died."

"All of them?"

He contemplated his knee, his head down. He nodded, as if he were ashamed of it.

Melanthe frowned at him. They were of an age-if his kin had perished in the first Great Death, he would have been no more than seven or eight when he was orphaned. "But-from then, till thou went to the monks at ten and five-who cared for thee?"

He looked up, with his trace of a wry smile. "My lady- come thee now and greet them, if thou wilt deign."

Plunging into the valley of Wolfscar, carrying Gryngolet on her wrist once again and clinging to Ruck with the other arm, Melanthe felt a stir of superst.i.tious wonder. She had traveled with him in wilderness and desert, so she had thought-but this place seemed farther from church and humanity with each step.

The way down was a slide and slip into murky trees that groaned with the wind in their tops. She stiffened as she heard the distant howl of a wolf-or was it a woman's scream? The shriek went on and on, changing pitch from low to high, growing louder as they descended, but Ruck gave it no notice. They made a sharp turn and abruptly the wail was a roar; the wind through a pile of slate teeth, transforming again to a living screech as they pa.s.sed it.

"G.o.d save us," she said below her breath.

He squeezed her wrist. She was glad that he had tightened his hold on her, because in the next twisting in their progress, she looked up over his shoulder and near leapt from the pillion in her recoil.

It was a huge face; thrice taller than the destrier, staring at her with baleful black eyes out of the depth of the tree-shadow. She made a choked sound in her throat, but neither horse nor master made a sign of fear; they moved steadfastly downward, and at a different angle the face became stone and bush and branch, an illusion of reality.

She remembered the strange fusion of dream and waking of the night before, the silent woodwose they had sailed with, the boat that seemed too small to bear them and the horse safely ... she began to doubt what sort of guardians watched over him.

The ground became gentler. A cold mist enfolded them, a sudden pale blankness, with only the next bush, the next tree trunk looming out of it and vanishing. The horse put its head down as if it smelled its path the way a hound would. Melanthe shuddered, hiding Gryngolet under her cloak as the mist sent the chill to her bones.

As she sat huddled as close within her mantle as she could, her fantasy began to imagine that she heard music. She told herself that it was the wind, another illusion like the scream she could still hear from above them. And yet it had form and melody; it was a song that she knew, or thought she knew, sweet and sad and beguiling. The horse's hooves beat in time to it. Ruck said nothing; his head seemed to nod in the same rhythm, his hand loosened on hers-she thought that he was falling asleep, the direst lapse of all with such enthralling spirits.

She grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. "Wake!" she hissed. "In G.o.d's name, wake up!"

"Avoi!" He started upright. He lifted his head and jerked it back, neatly smashing her nose as he reached for his sword.

Melanthe yelped, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain. She put her hand over her face, blinking back tears. When she got her sight back, the forest was silent but for the high wind and the sound of Hawk's hoofbeats.

"On guard!" she whispered. "Thou moste not let thyself sleep, or they shall have thee!"

He took a deep breath, gripping the pommel of his sword. "Whosome shall haf me?" he asked in a bewildered tone.

She shook him again, until his armor rattled. "The fays," she said. "If they have thee not already. Didst thou hear the tune?"

He seemed to come a little into his wits. "You heard music?" His hand loosed the sword. "What melody?"

"I know not. Fairy music, sweet and slow."

He grunted, looking to the left and right into the mist. Then, to her dismay, he idly began to whistle the selfsame air. Hawk's ears p.r.i.c.ked, and his pace increased.

As the mist thinned, the distant flute took up his tune again. The path dropped below the fits of the wind, into a calm that seemed warm after the driving chill of the vapor. The fluting music seemed to always recede before them, never closer, never farther. She did not know if it was some prearranged signal, or if the fay folk themselves put the whistle in his head and gave the weary horse a new energy to stride forward. It was such a mournful and familiar tune ...

The memory of where she had heard it came to her. Aboard ship, leaving Bourdeaux-with the man who rode before her now upon the deck above.

In one fell moment her mind flew over the impossible sequence of events that had brought her here, and she thought that he was bewitched, that his purpose was always to draw her into the fairies' power, to this place where they ruled.

Part of her thought it folly, and part of her feared, and part of her felt a strange excitement, a keenness to behold such as she had only read and heard about.

He ceased his whistle suddenly, halted the horse, and thrust his fist in the air. "Aver!" he shouted in a voice that reverberated off every wall of the valley.

A horn answered, a trumpet's call. The note held and climbed, blending with echoes of itself, until it seemed a whole company of horns.

He touched his heels to the horse, and the stallion seemed to forget fatigue. It rocked into a canter down the last of the slope, thundering across a bridge and frozen river that appeared beneath them before Melanthe half knew they were there. There was a road before them now, well-trod, following the bank and skirting the base of a rock-strewn ridge.

They pa.s.sed the descending claw of slate, and the view burst open beside them. A whole valley spread below, thrice again as wide as the one they left, broad and level with tilled fields striped by snow, a palisaded park, a lake. And at the head of it the castle, shimmering white, its walls plummeting deep into the water, its garrets iced by traceries, lacy delights cut in stone, as intricate as paper fantasies.

The trumpet called again, loud and close, this time a dizzying cascade of proclamation. It broke off suddenly, and Melanthe looked to the left. Beside the road stood a brightly dressed youth with a big mastiff, both grinning, the boy's arms uplifted as if he would leap upon the horse as it galloped by.

The expression upon this young jester's face when he saw Melanthe was near as surprised as hers. He wore the gear of a court fool, parti-colored hose, bells, and rich flutters of fabric on his sleeves and doublet, and a cap decked with feathers and trailing dags. As Ruck pulled up beside him, the young man lowered his horn with a comic look of dismay.

"Who is she?" he demanded, full as if he had the right.

"Well come to thee also, Desmond," Ruck said dryly.

Young Desmond instantly dropped to his knee. He bowed his head so low that he was in danger of toppling over. "My lord," he said in a m.u.f.fled voice. "Welcome."

Hawk threw his head, as if impatient with this delay, but Ruck held him. "My lady, this is Desmond, porter to the castel. Be his task to see that no strangers enter Wolfscar withouten leave-I ne haf no doubt that is the reason he demanded your name with such diligence."

"I beg pardon, my lord," Desmond said miserably from his prostration. "Beg pardon, my lady."

"Go before us," Ruck said, "and tell them that I come with my wife, the Princess Melanthe of Monteverde and Bowland."

Desmond stood up. He held the horn beneath his arm, his head lowered, but he managed one good long slanted look at her. She saw mostly a prominent nose and a complexion red from cold or horn-blowing; his expression was still hidden.

"M'lord," he said, bobbing. "M'lady."

He turned and ran ahead with a youth's energy in the speed of his piked shoes, his dog loping alongside. The road bent right, into the valley. He stopped at the turning and lifted the horn, playing his quick-noted exhortation, sending it blaring across the land with zealous vigor.

"That," Melanthe said, "be no fairy."

Ruck glanced over his shoulder. "Nay, he is a minstrel. Didst thou prefer a fay welcome?"

"Depardeu, a few moments since, I thought me married to Tam Lin himself."

He laughed aloud, the second time she had heard that fine sound. "Yea, thou shook me till my teeth rattled!"

"And well thou didst deserve it," she said stoutly. "Now take me to thy fairy castel, for I be right weary of this horse."

Fairy they might not be, but a strange company and a strange castle it was. As they drew nearer the hold, Melanthe saw why it had seemed so like a frozen waterfall from a distance. While the tracery-work in stone gave the sparkling towers and chimneys an aspect of light froth, the lime-wash on the walls had not been maintained. Long streamers of dark stone showed through the white wherever water flowed off the blue roofs and out of the gutters. The whole keep gave the ghostly effect of melting like a sugar castle at a banquet.

And the household-every man, woman, and child was dressed as if he belonged in a mummery play, from the spiked poulaines on their feet to the lavish colors and designs of their clothes. They came running to line the road, most all with an instrument, from nakryn drums to little harps to bells, and as Melanthe and Ruck rode between them, they sang a gay chorus with treble and countertenor as well executed as if they had practiced it for weeks. Those that did not sing went before the horse, tumbling and leaping and juggling-there were even women and girls among the acrobats, wearing men's hose and springing as high as the others-and a pair of little terriers that walked upright backward, performing flips and yapping.

Melanthe saw no peasants, no tools or evidence of winter toil, though there were gray sheep with white faces scattered in the pasture about the lake. "Where are thy people?" she whispered, beneath the song and music.

He opened his hand, indicating the lively troop. "These they are, who brought me up."

"These minstrels?"

He nodded, leaning down to accept a braided sheaf of wheat from a little girl who marched alongside the destrier and then pelted away, her caroling full of giggles.

Melanthe looked about her at the singing company. "Better than raised by wolves, I trow," she murmured.

They had come to the outer barbican. Before the gatehouse, at the base of the gangway, a portly fellow with a great white beard stood waiting, dignified and comic in his tight hose and barrel body clothed in rainbow hues. His companion had a smarter aspect, a man with a young face and old brown eyes, calm and intelligent, geared all in blue but for a white pointed collar and a silver belt.

As the younger man stepped forward, the music fell to silence. "Your Highness," he said, with a deep and perfect bow, "all honor is yours. May the King on High bless you, and our dear lord esteem and cherish you. I am William the Foolet, and this be William Ba.s.singer. Do we give your lady's grace great welcome to our master's house and hold."

He held out a ring of keys to Melanthe. Looking down into his soft-lashed dark eyes, she thought him no fool, little or otherwise. She accepted the keys and nodded to him and to Ba.s.singer. "Grant you mercy, trusty and well-beloved." she said clearly, for all to hear. "May Christ you foryield, and give all in this castel good chance."

Plump Ba.s.singer swept a deep flourish. "The gates!" he declared in a voice that rolled across the lake like ripe thunder. "Our liege lord and lady come!"