Shadowheart (28 page)

Afterward he lay with her close in his embrace, curled around her body. His pulse still beat loud in his ears. She was soft and warm and delicate. He felt it fiercely, that she was under his protection, and the idea mingled and twisted in his mind with the way he submitted to her rule, a strange and sweet confusion, hardly bearable.

Lethargy tried to creep into his limbs. He drew a breath, to deny it and clear his brain. He threw back the sheets, setting her away as he rose. She made no protest, only watching him from amid the dark tumble of her hair as he sat on the edge of the bed.

He looked across a space of infinity to where his daggers lay.

With another deep breath, he stood and dressed himself in clean breeches and gray hose of Gerolamo’s provision, aware all the time that she observed him. He tied off the laces. His belt and bracers lay tangled in his father’s chair. Without looking at her, he crossed to them and drew his stiletto, gauging the edge with a stroke across the back of his arm, shaving a patch of hair sheer as a razor. He sheathed the blade and took up the arm guards one by one, strapping them on.

“What manner were you punished as a boy?” she asked suddenly. “With scourging?”

He gave a slight laugh, like a harsh breath, and shook his head. “That is not punishment.”

“Worse?” she asked.

“I was not punished,” he said. He reached down for the waist belt. “Not as you mean.”

She lifted her brows. “Never?”

“If I erred, he would have killed me,” he said simply.

He felt her gazing at him as he drew each dagger and inspected their points. She hugged the pillow and made a grieving sound.

He had a sudden dread that she would shed tears for him. He girded on the belt and buckled it. “It was what I thought, at least,” he said, sliding leather through the keeper. “Doubtless only a boy’s fear.”

“How well you he,” she said.

He strode across the room and caught her hand and gripped it hard in his fist, holding it up to his mouth to kiss her fingers. “Dress for travel, my queen. The time has come for me to prove it.”

The old priest was loyal, a Navona himself, distant blood-tie still clinging to this poor remote sanctuary in the hills beside the lake. The house of Navona had been scattered and decimated, the castles razed, the villages burned. It lived in hiding now, a veiled web of shared hate for Riata, a promise of revenge and blood and fidelity to the bastard son of Gian Navona.

But he did not let himself be seen; he wanted no eyes to recognize him, no more acquaintance or complications than he must have. Gerolamo had arranged it; the priest would shrive a veiled woman of her sins and give her communion and ask no untoward questions of who she might be or why she sojourned here. For the character of the sins she had to confess, Allegreto thought, it would seem plausible enough that she came here because she dreaded to voice them to any but a stranger and God Himself.

He stood with her at the water’s edge, under a tangle of reeds and overhanging olive bushes. The lake lapped softly, rocking the little barque as he held it ashore with his boot at the prow. What village had once clustered about the pale stone church was deserted now, the houses burned, the small piazza gone to goats and weeds. At the last moment, as his man made a signal from the arched shadow of the church door, Allegreto held her back. “When you confess— do not say that we adultered,” he said, leaning down close to her heavy veil. “Do not mistake that we committed such a sin.”

She turned her face toward him. He could not see her beneath the cloth. It had only occurred to him in that instant, that she might remember the island, the false bedding, and think she had fornication, too, on her soul. He did not want any speculations or guesses of such a thing, even by ancient silent priests, but mostly he found that he did not want her to believe it.

“We are wed before God,” he said. “You had no troth to the Riata, no free consent.”

The moment that he said it, with such insistence in his voice, he wished it taken back. He could see her pause, and think of things that she had not before. He cursed himself for a sotted fool, that he had even spoken to deny it, to remind her that she had never given free consent to him, either.

She bent her head without reply. In full black, her face hidden, she could have been any widow from city or countryside, come to light a candle for her husband’s soul. She carried a small basket of eggs for the priest, with a gold coin in the bottom of it.

He felt a wave of desire for her, a wild thought that he would go down on his knees and beg her not to go away from him into light and grace. She would return a stranger, made innocent again as she had been when she first came to him. She might even forget, or not want to remember. He thought of forcing her into the boat and back to the tower, a dream of locking her into it forever with him as her servant and defender; so satisfied with all he did for her that she would never want to leave.

Such thoughts were a blink in time. He did not touch her. “Go now,” he said. “I will wait here.”

He watched as she walked out into the sunlight. It was a small church, and old; bare white stone with blunt corners and a single slit for a window above the door. He knew it inside, knew what it would be to step from glare into the sudden murk, to pause a moment and kneel, accustom his eyes to the golden pinpoint light of a few candles. The odor of incense, the stone floor, the massive columns marching into shadow, painted with spirals of red-and-white that led upward to a few faded saints who smiled down at the center aisle.

He stood there exiled from it, with a longing at the back of his throat. As she reached the door that Gerolamo held open for her, and passed under the arch, he turned away.

She would come back. If she did not, he would go and seize her, and the old Navona priest would be no bar if it came to that. Better in haps if he did seize her, for then none could claim that she bore his society willingly, or defied the decree to shun him from any Christian relations.

He stepped aboard the boat, making a final tally of their provisions—clothing sufficient to see them into the mountain passes, small coin and walking staves, a tinder-pouch. Clouds had begun to roll over the peaks to the north where the steep flanks plunged into the lake. Gerolamo stood guard by the church door.

It creaked open again, far sooner than it should have. Allegreto glanced up, looking through the tall reeds.

She appeared in the entry with the priest at her side. The old man held the basket. They paused for a moment at the door, the priest speaking urgently to her as Gerolamo drew respectfully away.

She shook her head beneath the veil and put her hand on the cleric’s sleeve with a small reverence. Then she left him, her head bowed low, and walked rapidly across the open ground toward Allegreto, her feet kicking aside her skirts with determination.

He stepped back onto the sandy bank, signaling Gerolamo to retire with a jerk of his chin. “What passed?” he asked sharply, as she came under the tangled shade.

She put back the veil and looked up at him. “I will wait to confess,” she said.

“Wait? Nay, there will not be another chance,” he hissed. “I cannot vow safety elsewhere.”

The priest was still standing under the church portal, looking after her. She could not have done more than tell him she would not make confession; there had been no time for more. Allegreto could guess that the old man’s pressing words had been strong advice to clear her soul. He took her shoulder, reaching to turn down the veil again. “I know it is difficult,” he said more gently. “But he does not know you, nor will ever.”

She threw the cloth back. Under the black hood, her skin was like ivory, her eyes the hue of the deepest lake. The shadows of reeds and branches played over her face. “Nay, it is not for shame.” She lifted her chin. “I will wait for you.”

“Wait for me?” He stood with his hands on her shoulders.

“I know you cannot. Not yet.” She wet her lips. “But I will wait until you can be absolved, too.”

He let go of her abruptly. “Do not be a fool.”

“I thought on it these many hours,” she said. “By chance I am a fool, but I cannot say I am full sorry, or ask for pardon alone.”

“Why not?” he demanded. “I thought it was what you wanted.”

“Because I thought on it—and thought—” She looked away from him, toward the lake and the dark clouds rising. “What if something goes wrong? What if we are slain?”

“So much the more cause to be in grace!” He caught her arm, giving her a little shake. “These are deadly sins, you know it. You’re in danger of damnation for such.”

She looked down at his feet. “Aye, and ‘tis pain of excommunication for me only to converse with you. I asked him, and he said me so.”

“You asked him!”

“I did not say your name. I only asked it as a doubt I had, as if it were some neighbor.”

He set his jaw. “And he answered rightly, but that we are wed, and so you may speak to me and such common things without penalty. I have inquired into all of those matters well enough myself.”

She lifted her eyes to him. It was true that a wife need not shun her own husband—that much was certainly true.

“We are wed!” he exclaimed, with mulish resolve. “We will have it blessed in the church when we can.” He looked toward the sanctuary. “But the other need not wait. Here is a confessor; you wished to repent and be shriven. It is foolish and … and”—he searched for sufficient words—“sinful to delay!”

She smiled then, as if she knew a secret that he did not. “I will wait.”

“Elena!” Her easiness about it made him strangely angry. “It is your immortal soul at peril!”

She tilted her chin downward, like a wayward child, and looked up at him aside from beneath her lashes. “Are you a priest now, to be so alarmed for my immortal soul?”

He gave a huff of disapproval and stepped back. “Nay, I am no priest. But Hell is not a game of morra, for you to smile at me that way about it. I will not see you in danger of damnation; do not put that on my conscience, too.”

“And neither do I wish to enter Heaven while knowing you could not. So I will wait.”

“Elena! And risk—”

“Aye!” she snapped. “I understand what is at risk. And this is what I choose.”

He heard her words as if they slipped through his mind without catching—sounds come and gone, senseless—and then their meaning struck him full, like a clout across his face.

The reeds bowed and rustled around them. An olive leaf fluttered down, a silvery thin shape, catching in a black fold of her veil. Her lower lip trembled as he gazed at her.

“I would miss you for eternity,” she said. “I would grieve.”

He shook his head, all the feeble movement he could summon. If she had held out jeweled cities, riches, towers of gold, all the stars and the sun and the moon offered to him in her hands, he could have spoken. But he could not. She would miss him in Heaven. She would grieve.

She did not know what she was saying, in truth. What she risked. He had read every poem and sermon and hymn about it; he had studied all the ghastly frescoes that portrayed the kingdom of Hell in terrifying and perfect detail. But that she would hazard the chance for an instant, or even think of it, for him…

He feared for a long moment that he would die where he stood, only from confusion. He put his hand on his dagger, for something solid, something he could understand in the roaring flood that engulfed him like water rushing from a broken dam of ice. “I pray you,” he said helplessly. “This is madness. Go and repent. And then stay there. Stay away. Don’t come back.”

She did not turn. She did not flee to safety and grace and the priest still standing in his infinite beckoning patience at the door of the church. “No,” she said. “I will wait for you.”

Elayne knew when she was in disgrace. She was familiar with the averted eyes and compressed lips after she had not been sufficiently contrite over some misadventure. He said nothing of it, or anything more of his brief perverse command to her to remain with the priest. But he had desired her to be shriven, and she was not. And so the long hours of the journey on the huge lake passed in a silence that was more than mere stealth.

A cold breeze funneled out of the north, creating small sharp waves that splashed against the prow. Clouds rolled over the cliffs and tumbled down the sides like foam pouring from a vessel. Shrouded under the pointed hood of a peasant’s mantle, Allegreto took up oars, bending into the pull in time with Gerolamo’s efforts. His face was set in an unchanging scowl. He never once looked at her.

He was armed now. She would not be suffered to touch him. Unspoken, that pact held between them, and she had no wish to breach it. Instead she looked at his soft boots braced against the thwart, at the way the muscles in his legs worked as he rowed, and the things that came into her mind were sufficient cause in themselves to make the preachers spit and rage.

The boat seemed small, a mere chip bobbing and skimming below the terrible beauty of the mountains. The cliffs passed slowly nearer, closing upon the lake like the walls of some giant’s castle. She craned her neck as the gray crags grew steeper, the summits taller, masses of rock pitching straight into the water without even a narrow shore for relief. Ledge mounted upon precipitous ledge on overhangs that no man could climb.

Gerolamo kept them to the center of the lake, far from any barges or boats or the towns and castles perched along the cliffs. It was darkening to late afternoon as they passed close under a vast spur of stone that thrust far into the lake. But the sun broke through looming clouds, lighting the water below the headland with a sheen of silver. The brisk wind dropped suddenly to a ripple over the surface.

A bright bay came into view. Across the water the sails of small boats drifted like white birds flocking toward the towers and walls and quays of a great city.

Elayne sat up. She knew it instantly. She had never held a clear memory, never been able to conjure it in her mind, but the sight of Monteverde was like a dream she had dreamed all her life.

In the midst of the towers rose an imperious rock, a high sharp promontory walled all around, crowned by a citadel that ruled the structures below. But the lower city pushed up toward it in proud challenge, a forest of towers reaching skyward, stone fortresses tinted in rose and cream and ochre with banners flying from their rooftops. Behind it the blue mountains lay in a circle of massive defense, cradling the smooth rich valley at the head of the lake.

Allegreto sat back on his oars. He glanced over his shoulder toward the city. Then he turned a sidelong look to her from under his hood, watching her face.

Elayne put her fingers over her mouth. She felt startled and confused, almost mortified by wonderment. She shook her head a little, as if she declined some spoken invitation.

He smiled. “Not yet,” he said, like a soft promise.

Never,
she thought—but it was only an echo of an idea, a distant sense of trepidation. She was fallen in love. Directly and straightaway in love with a place, with the reality of it as it lay before her, lit by sun-shafts that toyed with the citadel and the towers, sparkled on the lake and vanished in cloud-shadow.

She huddled in consternation at this unforeseen sensation, watching as Gerolamo let the boat drift and Allegreto worked with him to throw out a net. As the sun angled lower, the light breeze carried them slowly toward the wild headland, as if they were only casting for fish along the shore.

Elayne still stared across the bay. It was as unexpected as his laughter, this dazzling city. Hidden by mountains, guarded by cliffs and fathomless water. Another castle held the precipice above them, overlooking the narrows from the headland. Elayne could see a colossal chain that bowed down into the water, stretching from the rocks below the fortress across the throat of the bay, marked by floating fetters. She could barely discern the other end where the cable rose again from the water below a stronghold on the far cliffs.

Tiny boats such as theirs sailed across the boundary without pause. But the laden barges and bright-painted galliots seemed to be required to pass at the center, where a pair of sturdy guard ships awaited them. A warlike galley lay in wait beyond, the oars flashing as it made a leisurely circuit of the bay.

She thought suddenly of the fleet and army of men he had lost; realizing for the first time the magnitude of that attempt. To bring such a force—from the sea—up the lake or over the mountains, or both; what devices and plans he must have had, strategies laid out like the plays in a game of chess. Five years, he said, that he had worked for it.

She thought, too, of the way her journey might have gone. Should have gone. A regal procession; a cavalcade with the green-and-silver banner overhead and a man she never yet seen to be her bridegroom. Or perchance she would have arrived by water, in one of the glittering galliots, these pretty replicas of seagoing galleys made to ply the lake.

She felt very small, staring across to the walled towers. Someone else held it, Monteverde. Someone who could not be weak-willed or defenseless to rule this place. The citadel rose in unyielding splendor, a fortress within a fortified city. The very idea that from this little boat there could be any chance of unseating the possessor of that power was beyond her imagination.

“His ensigns fly at the water gates,” Allegreto said quietly, standing beside her, his legs braced against the sway. “He means to conceal that he’s left the city.”

Elayne did not have to ask who he meant. “He’s left?” she said under her breath. “Can you be sure?”

He gave a slight nod toward the distant walls. “The last standard by the western quay.” She squinted. The green-and-silver banners rose and unfurled in lazy waves in the fitful breeze. The last one seemed as the others. She glanced again along the line of banner staves that marked each quay, and only then perceived that the westernmost flag was not quite raised to the full height of its pole. The difference was so subtle that she would never have noticed if he had not told her where to look.

She released a breath and glanced at up Allegreto.

“One banner only,” he said softly. “He left this day, by the western gate.” He turned his bruised face toward the city, his teeth showing in a faint smile of mockery. “I knew he could not forgo to be in at the kill.”

Gerolamo made a wordless grunt and jerked his chin toward the great chain.

“Aye, ‘tis as Morosini told,” Allegreto said. “He’s beset with rumors. Full prepared for attack. I count at least two dozen masts inside the harbor walls. I want the number of his hired companies, and who leads them, and what he’s contracted to pay—have our blessed saint send me certain word of it by way of the lamb.”

The man assented, as if orders to saints and livestock were common things. The boat rocked as the two of them hauled in the empty net. With the push of an oar, they drifted into the deep shadow below the headland. Their small vessel rode up onto a tiny space of sand under the cliff. Allegreto leaped lightly ashore and turned, reaching for the bundles and staves that Gerolamo was already handing off.

Elayne rose, grabbing Gerolamo’s shoulder, comprehending their haste to be out of plain sight of the city walls. She made the jump, propelled by Allegreto’s hand toward an overhang of rock that was covered in brush. He came after, crowding close behind her under the thorny branches. When she glanced back through the leaves, she could see Gerolamo casting the fishing net again, the boat drifting slowly away from the shore.

“Sleep.” The bushes shielded him as he sat on his heels, overlooking the lake and the tiny path they had ascended.

Elayne huddled back in the recess under an overhanging rock, where there was a flat space of ground and odd bits of rubbish, a wax stub and the torn and dirtied sleeve of an old chemise amid the litter of leaves. She had never felt more awake. “Sleep!” she whispered, as low as he had spoken. “I cannot.”

He cast her a look from under the gray hood. There was a hardness about his face that she had not seen since the island storm. “Are you frightened?”

This cliff seemed wholly exposed, almost facing the city, with the castle directly above them so close that she could hear the sentries call their stations. “Yes!”

He nodded. “We will move after dark. I must see the sign that Gerolamo has entered the gates.”

“Into the city?” she asked anxiously.

“Aye.” He turned back, surveying the bay. “Try to sleep,” he said to the lake. “I will not fail you.”

She sat with her eyes closed. She had not slept an instant, vexed by nerves and the stony ground and the prickle of dry leaves no matter how she tried to shift and sweep at the debris. It seemed that hours passed. Each time she looked through her lashes, the mountains were only a little darker, the clouds somewhat thicker, the sun rays fading slowly into a broad evening gloom.

He knelt a few feet from her in the drab gray clothes of a common man. The pointed hood had fallen back. She realized for the first time that his hair was now cut, rough curls hacked and twisting below the nape of his neck, a loose strand hanging down across his face. The colors about his eye had been fading slowly from their virulent purple to ugly shades of green. Even so, he was striking—not all of the unsightly elements together could conceal his rare looks.

In the silence of twilight the wind had gone to nothing. A deep chill descended with the shadows. From below, the lake made small clear sounds, water washing gently on the shore.

He turned his head abruptly. Elayne heard it at the same time—the slide and crunch of footsteps descending the path above them.

Thick brush covered their position from any view from the lake, but there was only a thin screen of thorn branches to shield them from the path itself. They were easily visible. As the descending intruder began to whistle an aimless tune, Allegreto moved back. He grabbed Elayne and pushed her down, his full length sprawled atop her.

Before she knew what he was doing, he had pulled up her skirts to her hip, exposing her hose and bare leg. He covered her mouth in a grinding kiss, tearing at her clothes. With a fully audible groan he dragged the gown off her shoulder and plunged his hand up her skirt. Elayne made a gasping squeal of surprise.

The whistling stopped. Allegreto nipped her earlobe hard. “Hush!” he whispered, quite loud enough for anyone nearby to hear.

She gave a scared giggle. He lifted his head, his hair falling down over his eyes as he looked toward the path. He reached up and put his arm and elbow at the side of her head, blocking her from any sight of the intruder, but she knew her naked leg and shoulder must be in full view. She could feel his other hand hover near his poison dagger.

“Pleasant eve,” said a man’s voice, with a hint of amusement. “Are you well?”

There was a moment of silence but for Allegreto’s harsh breath. He looked out with a malevolent glare. “Well enough for my business,” he said caustically, “if you will leave me to it.”

The other man chuckled. “You need no aid?”

“And bugger you!” Allegreto hissed.

“I pray you!” the interloper said wickedly. “Spare the lady’s ears!”

She felt Allegreto’s hand close on the dagger hilt. Quickly she reached up and grabbed his face between her hands and pulled him down to kiss her. She made a moan and writhed against him. His whole body went rigid. He broke away, pushing her face toward the wall.

“But she is not discontented, I see,” the man said. “I will leave you to your task, then. Take care on this path after dark!”

The lazy sound of footsteps receded upward. Allegreto lay over her, looking out, until they were vanished. Then he sat back, pulling her skirt down with a snap. “Dirty goat,” he muttered.

Elayne rearranged her gown and brushed small pebbles from her sleeves as she sat up. Her fear had altered to something else. She felt mortified and breathless, a peculiar exhilaration. “He seemed harmless enough,” she whispered. “I’m glad you did not kill him.”

“I should have.” Allegreto sent a dark murderous stare after the intruder. “He knows this is a trysting place. He should have turned back without speaking.”

“You know him?”

“Nay, I don’t know him. It is some lackey from the castle above, no doubt come down to do himself—” He stopped, looking conscious. “I pray your pardon. But he knows well enough. Everyone does.”

Elayne looked at the torn sleeve among the leaves. She felt a mix of aversion and excitement. A sharp memory of her meeting with Raymond at the mill came to her. There was something deeply disturbing about the chance of discovery at wanton play in such a place, stirring and embarrassing at once. Allegreto’s indignation only made her want to take him around the shoulders and thrust her fingers into his rough-cut hair and pull him back down to the ground.

Their eyes met as she thought it. At once his face grew stone and cold, as if he saw into her mind and rejected such things instantly. He sprang lightly to his feet. “Did you rest?” he asked.

“A little.” She watched him walk to the edge of the cliff, a figure half-lost in the growing darkness.

“We should go,” he said, “before he steals back to peer again, the harlot.”

Elayne rose, shaking out her skirts. “Did you ever… make a tryst here yourself?” she asked, without looking at him.

“No,” he said bluntly.

She took the stave he handed to her and slanted him a smile. “Good.”

He put his hands to her shoulders. For a moment she thought he might kiss her, but instead he yanked her mantle up over her head and close to her face. “Keep your eyes down, and try to walk like a modest woman,” he said, holding it together under her chin. “I don’t want him supposing you will lie in the dirt and giggle for any yokel who passes by.”

“Only you!” She smirked at him, tapping the side of his boot with her stave.