"But if they had," she said fiercely, "they would have made short work of thy troop of minstrels sojourning here!" She swept her hand wide. "Lord Ruadrik would have held the land of his own right long since-but instead you have made him surrender his real claim, and try to win it back by foolish errantry, for fear his wards would cast you out!"

"My lady, be it nought in our power to make His Lordship do anything!"

She stood up. "Nay, you have some unholy clutch upon him! What is it? Why should he withhold his name from those who could help him, if not to hide something? He is a baron, by G.o.d's bones, and he married a burgher's daughter as if he could do no better! You have battened upon this place somehow, a troop of worthless common minstrels, and he protects you by his foolishness, and you care not that you drag him down!"

"Madam." Ruck's voice arrested them all, cold and soft. "I asked you for love of me to esteem my people." He stood in the doorway, dressed in a black doublet and hose, a golden belt about his hips, his hair uncovered and his face angry and tired. "Ne do I demand obedience as your husband," he said in English, "but I expect of a princess the honor of your word, that ye gave me nought a few hours since."

Melanthe felt a fire of mortification rush into her cheeks. She had promised-but the state of this place outraged her.

In the silence he said, "Ye does nought know what clutch they haf upon me, in troth, nor can knowen, did ye ne'er come on your home to finden it a charnel house. The death annihiled in this country, my lady; took it nought one in five or one in three, but nine in ten-of every living thing down to the sheep and the rats, for what sins I know nought." His breath frosted in the cold room. "Came I home from the household where I was fostered as a page, but the pestilence met us on the road." He gave an ugly laugh. "Ye speaks of warding. Oh, I was well warded. I had me full eight years of life and wisdom, lady, and dead men all about me. Ne did no pa.s.serby, ne friar nor knight, halt or linger, but stoned me for fear of my contagion if I approached them, but until I met this troop of worthless common minstrels."

"Then in faith," she answered coolly, turning to the window. "I wish thy minstrels as well as any men under G.o.d, for their great charity to thee."

The jealousy was there again, the envy of his loyalties to anyone but her. Her hands were freezing, but she refused to clasp or warm them, only holding them at her sides. She wished to explain, to tell him that it was his welfare and his rightful place that she would defend, but pride held her tongue, and the apprehension that if she made herself offensive to his men, it was she who might be sent away.

She was not accustomed to making herself agreeable to servants. To turn a smile and wiles on them to win affection .. . well, she had performed more difficult counterfeits for less, but already the need to deceive seemed a distress, an old and fatal misery. She could not, at that moment, even summon the will to begin it. She said no more. Instead she found herself turning to walk quickly to the door. She did not look up at her husband as she pa.s.sed him. Lifting her skirts, she ran down the spiraling stairs, seeking the courtyard.

Ruck watched her from an arrowslit in the gate tower that commanded the whole of the meadow and the lake. His first foolish thought had been that she was leaving-but of course she would not, could not, alone. She would not have been able to find her way from the valley even if she had commanded a horse.

Knowing that, he had not followed her. He was hotly aware of Ba.s.singer and Little Will; of how this impossible marriage must appear. Since his first warning of plague, he had thought of bringing her here for security, though more in his fantasy than in seriousness. Not once had it ever entered his head that he would bring her to Wolfscar as his wife.

But in the crisis, trapped between the hounds and the sea, he had gone by his secret way for the one place he could be certain of. He knew the decision now to be as witless as their exchange of vows-had realized it in full when he saw his castle and his people as they must look to her. Already she disdained them.

Nodding stiffly to Will and Ba.s.singer, Ruck had left the ladies' chamber with its cobwebs and echoes, acting the lord just as if he had not cleared ditches and drunk ale and planted palisades shoulder to shoulder with the Foolet while Ba.s.singer gave advice and complained of his back. Ruck did not wish to seem to chase her, but he could not face his old friends, either, or justify what he had done. Standing now in the empty garret, he felt utterly alone, as if he had executed his own banishment.

He leaned his forearms against the angled cut of the arrow embrasure, resting his head in the crook of his elbow so that he could keep her in his sight as she carried the gyrfalcon into the sheep pasture. She strode across the snow-crusted gra.s.s. A train of children followed, tramping behind with their arms swinging, until Hew Dowl chased them off to a proper distance. She was a hooded sweep of emerald green in the dirt-gray landscape, leaving the motley colors of the children and the austringer behind her. She stopped, and Ruck saw her beckon.

Hew ran to her, his shoulders stooped in reverent submission and his eyes fixed on the ground. As Ruck watched, she spoke to the austringer. Hew's head came up. His face was too distant to see clearly, but his whole body cemed to expand. He donned his glove and held out his arm to take the falcon. They talked for a moment, Hew raptly attentive as she handed him the jeweled lure.

As the princess stood back, Hew hid the lure and struck the hood, removing it. For a few moments the gyrfalcon sat motionless on the man's upraised arm; then it bounded free.

Ruck lost sight of the bird. From his arrowslit he could only gaze at Melanthe as she shaded her eyes and followed the flight. It felt mockingly suitable that he stand hidden, staring out at a narrow view from this crack in stone-thick walls. He grew angry at his own cowardice as he thought of it. Afraid of her contempt, afraid of his own friends-ashamed of his home.

He thrust back from the embrasure and paced across the garret, the bare planks reverberating beneath his feet. For twenty years the haunted frithwood and fate had protected Wolfscar; there had been no need of a garrison or armed watch and none to man the towers anyway. He had not reopened the mine, he had not reclaimed the road; he had done nothing that might draw attention, waiting for the day when Lancaster his prince would call for the Green Knight and ask him what reward he would have for some marvelous deed-and then, Ruck had dreamed, he would reveal himself, and say his claim, and Wolfscar would be his without dispute, without abbots or haughty monks or any question of right.

It was all a boy's fine fantasy, built of the songs the minstrels sang, of Gawain and Lancelot, adventure and glory, of troth and loyalty between a man and his master.

He had long ago learned the way of the world. But he had been committed by then, and making a name with Lancaster, and there were tournaments and war-if not as glorious as the adventure of his imagination, at least opportunity for advancement and future, until Lancaster had dismissed him. Because of her.

Princess Melanthe could purchase Wolfscar ten times over. Ruck would have been more of a saint than he was, he reckoned, if the thought had not crossed his mind. But he could hardly stay apace with his own feelings. Outside, he had been bewildered and humbled by her vow to be his wife, but here-here, he did not want to give up his sole mastery, he did not want to explain himself and his life, he did not want to submit to her authority, he did not want everything he was to depend on her, he did not want to give her up, he did not want to deny her anything, he did not want to sleep alone again- and he did not, did not want her to leave him.

He returned to the arrowslit in time to see Gryngolet pounce upon the lure that Hew threw down on the frozen gra.s.s. It was a simple method, the usual way a towering falcon would be brought down. In its very simplicity, with plain Hew making in to the bird like any countryman's falconer, the sight brought the image of Melanthe lifting her jeweled gauntlet and lure, unbearably vivid, the sky and the bird and the fire of emeralds and white diamonds as the gyrfalcon came to her hand. She had been weeping and laughing, beautiful and not, a dream within the compa.s.s of his touch.

He watched her as she bewitched Hew into a hound in human shape. The man heeled to her with panting devotion, nodding and gazing and nodding again as she spoke. While the gyrfalcon ate, he pointed about the valley, obviously discussing the hunting.

Ruck felt his heartbeat rise. If she thought to hunt the bird, then she did not wish to leave anon. He wouldn't have taken her even if she desired to go, not until he could better a.s.sure her safety, but he had not relished a quarrel with her about it.

He rolled on his shoulder and put his back to the tower wall, leaning there and staring at the gash of light that fell across the floorboards from the defensive slit. The stone was so frigid that the cold seeped through his doublet to his body, but he did not move. He knew he was not thinking clearly. Weariness misted his wits. Had it been warfare, he would have distrusted any humor or inclination now, holding himself back from hasty action.

But it seemed that he had done naught but hold himself back for all of his life. Hard-won habit ruled him: he had only to think of her to want to couple again, and his next thought was that he must not-and only in the eternal struggle to conquer his bodily pa.s.sions did it come to him that there was no longer a contest to win.

He stared so hard at the patch of light on the boards that his eyes began to water.

He had made a particular study of the sin of l.u.s.t, with careful questions to the priests, and a certain amount of reading in confession manuals when he could examine one in French or English. He felt himself rather a master of the subject. Even on marriage, the religious did not always agree among themselves, which meant there was a little s.p.a.ce for preferring one set of advice over another amid the thickets of clerical admonition. All admitted that there was no sin if the intention was purely to engender children, but a few maintained that any pleasure at all in the marriage bed could not be without sinful fault. Others judged that the conjugal debt was a pious duty between spouses to prevent incontinence, and the marriage act only a deadly sin if there was excessive quest for pleasure-with many fine computations of what might const.i.tute excessive pleasure.

Ruck found his tired spirits lifting. He was clearly incontinent, or like to be if he thought on his wife at any length at all, and the very notion of begetting a child on her sent him into a hot ardor of perfectly sinless pa.s.sion. Not excessive ardor- but iwysse, if he waited too long, he judged his soul would be in certain danger.

He pushed away from the wall, finding a new vigor in the gloom.

Melanthe refused to allow herself to hesitate as she opened the door. When she had returned from the mews, a girl had been waiting with the message that Sir Ruadrik asked Princess Melanthe to honor his unworthiness by her presence in his chamber-courteously worded as a request, it was true, but still her hand had lacked a little steadiness as she coaxed Gryngolet onto her perch.

She entered the lord's chamber expecting to be confronted by all three of them, including the two Williams, for it was always the way with favorites that they wished to be present when their rivals were diminished. But Ruck was alone. He rose from a chair as she closed the door behind her.

"My lady," he said, "I would have you eat now."

He placed the chair by the chimney corner, where a white linen cloth lay over the table, already laden with a meal. In his black weeds he was tall and formidable, the green of his eyes intensified by the night-hue of his clothes and hair. A fire crackled actively, warming the chamber, and fresh-cut boughs of pine drove out the stale atmosphere with their fresh scent. In the late afternoon a candle gave the table extra light.

She was hungry indeed, but the flutter of dread in her stomach made the food unsavory. She released the pin on her cloak, and tossed it over a chest. "What did they sayen of me?" she asked haughtily, meeting the matter on head so that she might gain the upper hand by surprise.

He looked up at her. "Say of you?"

She washed her hands in a basin beside the door. "I warn thee, sir-is a poor master who is ruled by his servants. But of course, they will say thee otherwise, that to be ruled by a wife is worse."

He gazed at her, a shadow of a frown between his brows. She paced to the table and sat down, scowling at a dish of wheaten frumenty, well aware that he stood close behind her.

From the edge of her eye she could see his arm, the velvet rich with light and shadow on the black curve of his sleeve.

She took two swallows of the frumenty, which was nearly cold and only barely palatable, before her throat closed and she could not eat more. She put down the spoon. "I ne cannot eat, ere I hear thy decision."

"My lady," he said, "what decision?"

"Wilt thou send me hence?"

He walked away. Melanthe slid a look after him. He stood at the window, his back to her. "Send you hence?" he demanded harshly. "A'plight, then why haf I troubled to bringen you here, in the stead of drowning you like a kitten in a bag, for to spare myseluen the toil? If that be the decision you would hear-nill I take you hence, nay, nor any here show you the way. In good time, when augurs it safe enow, then will I see you to your hold. Henceforth until then, thou moste biden here, though it displease."

She bent her head, clasping her fingers tight together. "Nay-I will not displease. I can maken myself pleasant to them. It is the easiest thing possible. I cannot thank them for their injury to thee and thy rightful estate, but I am thy wife, and n'would not have discord sown between us, for it bodes not well in the house." She took up the spoon again abruptly, plunging it into the pottage. "And such is a humble speech as I am not accustomed to making, in troth, but I love thee, even if I do not adore thy churls."

She forced herself to eat, sitting on the edge of the chair with her back straight.

From the window he spoke hesitantly. "It is nought that ye will to go?"

She did not care to admit the depth of her desire to stay. Lightly she said, "Wysse, ne do I languish for the back of a horse again soon."

The floorboards creaked beneath the carpets. He came behind her. "Haply is rest and a soft bed you desire, my lady, after your meal."

If some mannered gallant had said such to her, she would have known how to understand it. But she heard naught beyond his careful courtesy in his voice, though again he stood very near her as he took up a napkin and poured hot ale from the hob. He set the kettle back.

"Thou hast not fulfilled thy own repose," she said, watching steam rise from the gold chalice and vanish against the background of patterned silk on the wall.

"Nay," he murmured, still close behind her. "Nay, lady."

He offered no dalliance, and her court wit deserted her. All the words that came into her head seemed green and foolish. He sat on his heels beside her chair and served her a roasted apple. She ate a few bites. He did not rise, but remained there like a man at ease.

She felt herself strangely daunted by him, overpowered by his greater size, the black line of his legs, the heavy square links of the belt that hung at his hips. He wore it as if it had no weight at all, though each joint, ornate and thick, studded with the silvery sable of marcasite crystals, would have balanced a cobblestone on the measuring scale. But in his velvet he moved effortlessly. When she glanced at him, his eyes were on her, his lashes showing very dark, his face somber, almost severe. As if he had forgotten himself by kneeling there, he rose instantly, drawing away.

Melanthe was not certain of whether he had made an invitation to share the bed or not. She ate slowly, delaying the end of her clear reason for being there in his chamber. As she sipped at the honeyed ale, she felt a miserable excitement, doubtful of what he wished. He said nothing to woo or dismiss her. She did not know if he was angry with her still. In this mute courtesy he could hide anything. She did not want to sleep alone, away from him.

At last she set down the chalice. "I will leave thee respite then, to take thy rest as thou art due."

She rose. With her eyes downcast she went to him and put her hands upon his shoulders. She reached on her toes and touched her lips to each cheek, lightly, taking a mannerly leave as if he were an honored guest or close kin. "Give thee good eve, sweet knight," she murmured.

He stood still, only turning his face slightly, returning pressure in response to each kiss. She let her hands slip down his arms. His palms turned up; he caught her fingers for an instant-and then let them slide through his.

She turned swiftly, taking up her cloak as she went to the door. At that moment she would gladly have given up all of her n.o.ble estate and forgone the cold and private luxury of the ladies' chamber. At least she did not intend to sleep with the dust: she would rouse out these useless minstrels for a fire and proper comfort, be they pleased by it or not. By hap she could find a maid or two among the women, to make the bower clean without moving any item from its sacred place, and then invite him there on the morrow, when he might be- "Melanthe."

She halted with her hand on the door hasp. He had never before called her by her name.

He stood, all black, his legs set apart as if someone might come at him with a sword. "Art thou sore

weary?" He made a trifling motion of his hand. "I ne am nought one to sleepen in the light of day."

Pleasure and relief soared through her. "Nay, how is this?" She crossed the carpet to him and lifted her

hand to his forehead. "Dost thou go sick? I have seen thee snore with some success in daylight ere now."

"I n'would nought have thee depart so soon, if it please thee."

"Please me?" She let her hand slip down and sighed. "What-forfeit a cold chimney and empty bower,

only to suit thy liking? Verily, thou art a tyrant, husband."

He caught her waist, holding her between his hands. She had been wary of mirrors, and compliments, but in his face as he looked down at her what she saw was desire, open and vehement, unembellished. "Wilt thou have me?" he asked softly. Almost, he frightened her, in the lightness of his hands and the calmness of his voice. He was like Gryngolet when she hunted, a silent rage, hushed violence, riding currents beyond knowing. "Yea," she said. "Gladly." His hold tightened a little. "Then I would hear-how I can best please you." She rested her hands on his arms uncertainly. "I am pleased with thee," she said. His jaw was tense. "On hap I am nought gentle enow, or skilled enow, or-what would delight thee." All of her experience was in denying men. For delight she knew naught beyond kisses, and lying beneath him as she had done. There was more to it, experience and skill, as he said, and a new fear sprang alive in her, that he would expect her to know such things.

She made a small lift of her shoulders, feigning sport. "Thou moste guess what delights me."

He looked down upon her. He lifted his hand and drew his thumb across her mouth. His green eyes showed a new light, a trace of amus.e.m.e.nt. "Then I shall take experiment of thee, lady. Happens I haf made me a modest study of wicked delectation."

She murmured, "I thought thee chaste, monkish man."

"Yea, I haf been." He closed his eyes and bent to her, kissing the side of her mouth. "But no monk am I in my head, G.o.d grant me pardon," he whispered. His body drew closer, velvet and taut elegance. "My confessor has chastised me oft, and bade me study on my sins at length. And so, lady"-he kissed her, the hunger in it sinking down through her like a comet falling-"I have studied."

Chapter Seventeen.

Melanthe drew a breath, tasting him on her lips, inhaling his scent. "And what hast thou mastered in thy study, learned husband?"

He seemed to grow abashed, turning his face away. "My lady, it is all nonsense. Better thou shouldst sayen me how to give thee pleasure. Ne am I accomplished in luf wiles, truly."

She drew her palm down the soft nape of velvet on his chest. "I would hear what thou hast learned. For my pleasure." With a light pluck she freed the topmost golden b.u.t.tons on his doublet.

He made a low unhappy laugh. "I know well that ye wields more skill in this art than I."

She stepped back. Standing in the half-light, he appeared no innocent, but a man full in prime of carnal boldness, no more chaste than a stallion might be chaste, being beautiful and strong and only what it was, a creature made for life and union.

"But a child am I in the craft," she said lightly. "Thou moste be my master, or nill we proceed far."

He made no move, but stood with his hands open, a signet gleaming on his middle finger, the light sliding on his golden belt.

She lifted her eyebrows. "Or be thou courageous in war and coward in chamber, knight, for shame?"

She had not expected such a crude hit to touch him, but he flushed at her words, response so quick that she thought it a taunt he must have heard before. The severity came into his face again, the hunting coldness. He closed the s.p.a.ce she had made between them and lifted his hands. Without speaking, he began to unfasten her gown.

Melanthe stood still. The cotehardie was not an elaborate fashion, but simple and warm for traveling, ermine-lined and b.u.t.toned. He pushed it off her shoulders. The fur hem brushed over her hands, dropping to the carpet.

Her white damask kirtle laced beneath her arms, fitting to her body. He loosened the cords. She felt the lace slip and knot in an eyelet. He worked at it, looking down, his face close to hers. A line formed beside his mouth. He gave the tie a tug, and then a jerk, breaking it, a force that made her take a step backward for balance. Without even unlacing the other side, he lifted the damask over her head and tossed it away.

Through her linen, she could feel the cool air. He opened his hands over her, his palms against her hips with only her thin shirt between.

Melanthe closed her eyes. Abruptly she put her arms about his neck, arching against him on tiptoe as she had done before, seeking that delicious sensation he had given her at Torbec.

Velvet touched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She could feel his hard belt, and silk and pressure against her belly-but somehow she could not come within reach of the pleasure. With a small sound, of frustration, she fell back onto her heels.

He pulled her closer. "Lady," he whispered against her ear. "Lie you down."

His hands slid upward, lifting the linen with them. On the eastern carpet before the chimney, he stripped her of her shirt, baring her of all but her white hose and garters, drawing her down with him as he knelt. She lifted her chin defiantly, resting back on her elbows, refusing to be mortified by her nakedness like some fluttering novice nun given to visions and starvation. Shameless, he had called her-so let him see.

But she was terrified, her heart beating so rapidly that she was sure he must discern it. She wasn't a delicate blonde beauty, frail and dainty-she was dark-haired and white-skinned, and not a girl. Above the gaiters at her knees, she had two bruises on one thigh from some encounter on their wild travels, and another at her hip. He could not have spanned her waist with his two hands, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were too full to be the high round strawberries, or nuts, or even pears, sung of the ladies in romances.

He only looked at them for an instant, before he averted his face and closed his eyes, sitting beside her with his weight on his hand.