For My Lady's Heart (12 page)

Pierre huddled in the tip of the stern, snoring gently. The wind blew in
Ruck’s face. His men lined the deck, sitting in the protection of the
gunwales. He reached over and plucked his flute from Pierre’s capacious
apron. The squire opened one eye, and then snugged into his cloak again.

In the early light Ruck began to play a sweet, mournful song of the
Crusades, of a lover left behind to grief and worry. It seemed to him fit
for the gray rise of dawn, slow and yearning, with the sway of the water and
the glint of dull light on the helmets and crossbows. Fit for his mood:
leaving nowhere, going nowhere.

Below him the curtain over the cabin door flicked. Ruck’s note faltered
for a bare instant, and then he lowered his eyes and went on playing. It was
only her lapdog Allegreto, who climbed the short stairs with a crimson cloak
wrapped tight around him. To Ruck’s concealed surprise, the youth sat down
on the deck at his feet, facing away from him into the wind.

“That is a love song, is it not?” the young courtier asked.

Ruck ignored him, enclosing himself in the melody.

Allegreto sat quietly for a few moments, and then sighed. He looked
around at Ruck. “Hast thou ever been in love, Englishman?”

He asked it wearily, as if he were a century old. Ruck made no answer
beyond his tune.

Allegreto smiled—an expression that was undeniably charming in spite of
his blackened eye. He pushed the windblown dark hair from his forehead. “Of
course. Thou hast as many years as my lady, and she knows more of love than
Venus herself.” He leaned back against the gunwale. “Thou knowest she has
magic to keep herself always the same. Perhaps she’s a thousand years old.
Upon hap, if thou wouldst see her in a mirror, she would be no more than a
skull, with black holes for eyes and nose.”

Ruck lifted his brows skeptically, without losing the cadence of his
notes.

Allegreto laughed. “Ah, thou art too astute for me. Thou dost not believe
it.” With an abrupt intensity he leaned nearer. “Thou wouldst not take her
from me?”

Ruck’s music wavered for a beat.

Allegreto closed his eyes tightly. “Thou hast—such as I cannot give her,”
he said in a lowered voice. “I am not so young as I appear.”

It took Ruck’s mind a long moment to construct that into meaning. He
lowered the flute.

Allegreto pulled the red cloak up to his mouth and turned his head away.
Ruck stared at the smooth wind-pinkened cheek.

“When I was ten and five,” Allegreto said, muffled, as if in answer to a
question. “She preferred me thus.” He pulled the cloak closer and then
glared over his shoulder. “But still I love her!” he exclaimed fiercely. “I
can still love!”

Ruck gazed at him. He could think of nothing more to do than nod in the
face of such awful devotion. Allegreto held his eyes for a long moment, and
then put his head down in his arms. Amid his shock Ruck felt ashamed of
himself. Whatever sacrifices he’d made in the name of his false lady, they
had been honorable, and his own choice. He was a whole man. He wet his lips
and picked up the flute again, taking refuge in the music.

He had played only a few notes when two sharp thumps came from the deck
beneath their feet. Allegreto looked up.

“Oh.” He turned to Ruck and smiled sweetly. “I forgot. I was to order
thee to cease that dirge and play something more amusing.”

The old King of England was a haggard and drunken shadow of the tall
warrior Melanthe remembered. Edward’s regal progresses and tournaments lay
as gemstones among her childhood, all luster and polished steel and dazzling
majesty: her father’s red and gold glistening among the other colors, sparks
flying from his helmet at a hard strike; her mother’s fingers tightening for
an instant over Melanthe’s hand.

King Edward drank a long swallow of wine and handed the cup aside
hastily, gesturing his servant behind his chair when Melanthe entered his
royal bedchamber. The king’s gray hair lay loose over the broad shoulders
that once had borne armor, his mustaches flowing down into his long beard.
He had the reddened nose and cheeks of too much drink, but he kept a regal
posture in his chair.

A day in London had been ample time for Melanthe to discover that he was
in utter thrall to his mistress, a fine female of a stamp that Melanthe
understood full well. No one attended the king without consent of the feared
and hated Lady Alice—and Melanthe was no exception. Alice Perrers sailed
into the chamber on her heels.

“I bring you someone you will like, my dear,” Lady Alice said, plucking
the goblet from the servant’s hand. She leaned over the king’s chair and
kissed his forehead as she poured him more wine. He smiled dreamily at the
ample bosom hovering so near his face. “Here is Lady Melanthe, the daughter
of Lord Richard of Bowland, God give his soul rest. She bears gifts for you,
and letters from Bordeaux. The duke writes.”

“John?” The king’s eyes brightened. He held out both his hands. His
fingers shook.

Melanthe made a deep courtesy. She rose, giving Lady Alice a significant
look before she moved forward to make her offerings.

The mistress had fattened her unofficial power so far that it was said
she even sat upon the benches and threatened the justices. But Melanthe
could play that game. She had lavished compliments and gifts upon this
overripe and overblown person, along with hints that their interests were
quite compatible. Lady Alice would not wish any powerful man, most
particularly someone like John of Lancaster, to marry Melanthe and combine
their great estates into a domain that would challenge the king’s.

No more did Melanthe care to marry such a man, she had assured Lady
Alice. She had no ambitions beyond her father’s inheritance. Her greatest
desire was to pay her levies to the king so that he might be enriched, and
thus more generous yet in bestowing suitable presents upon his favorites. In
her excess of goodwill Melanthe herself would make a generous present to the
king’s intimates the moment a private audience might be arranged.

Of course, if a private audience was impossible, if Lady Alice did not
trust her new friend, then in Melanthe’s crushing disappointment and hurt,
she feared that she must return in disgrace to Aquitaine, where his lord’s
grace the duke had been
most
flattering in his attentions.

Lady Alice gave Melanthe a narrow smile as she straightened from bending
over the king. With much petting and many careless endearments, she
withdrew. He retained her hand in a lamentably fatuous manner, but when she
finally departed, leaving only the chamberlain—Alice’s man—and the servant,
Edward seemed to forget her, leaning forward in his eagerness for his son’s
letter.

Melanthe made another courtesy and gave him Lancaster’s missive. She
could have recited it to him, having made herself free with the wax seal
before they had left Bordeaux. She watched the king frown over his eldest
son’s poor health, and quicken at the news that the prince would return home
to recover. She saw Edward’s mouth purse at the report of the empty treasury
in Aquitaine, and the uneasy temper of the Gascon nobles.

The tournament went unmentioned in the letter, as did the Green Sire and
Lancaster’s shoulder and the duke’s soured courting of Melanthe. Lancaster
merely recommended her to his father’s favor as the daughter of a loyal and
beloved subject, suggesting that she be confirmed in her inheritance with
all due haste—a forbearance that spared everyone, including himself,
considerable embarrassment. Melanthe was greatly in charity with the duke at
present.

“Richard of Bowland, God assoil him!” Edward exclaimed with pleasure in
his voice. He bade Melanthe rise and gave her a wine-balmed embrace. “Child!
And our John has sent you to us! Tell us of him; in truth, how does he?” He
held out the paper with a sad sigh. “This speaks naught a word of himself.”

“My very dear and mighty lord, your son was in great good humor when I
took leave of him, may God defend,” she said.

He nodded, pleased, and then seemed to lose the course of his thought as
he stared off into a corner. After a long moment, he tilted his head toward
her as if he were a child with a secret. “The prince is our pride,” he
whispered, “but John is our heart.”

Melanthe murmured, “The duke has much the look of his dear mother the
queen, God give her soul rest.” Melanthe had no idea if this were so, having
only the haziest recollection of Queen Phillipa as a plump and smiling
personage, but she added, “He has her eyes, my lord. A very fine figure of a
man. Your majesty may well love him with a full heart.”

Edward’s lips trembled. “Verily. Verily.” He gave a deep sniff. “You are
a good and lovely child. What can we do for you?”

Melanthe bowed, placing a lavishly bound volume upon his bed. “My lord
would honor me, would you accept this small gift. It is a work upon
falconry, written by a master from the north country.”

At Edward’s impatient gesture, the king’s servant passed the book to him.
He turned the leaves, nodding in delight. “A most worthy subject for a
treatise. Excellent. Excellent. We are pleased.”

Melanthe drew him into a little discussion of hunting birds. After a
quarter hour they were great friends. He was well known to have a passion
for falconing and hawking.

“And this, sire,” she said, when she felt the moment right, “I would
convey into your own hand, if you will consent.”

She held out a sealed parchment. King Edward accepted the paper, fumbling
it open. “What is this, my dear?”

“It is my claim to my husband’s estate, quitted into your name, my
beloved lord. I am a weak woman; I have not the power to assert it myself,
but it is a most valuable right. My husband was the Prince of Monteverde. He
had no male heirs to survive him, and I myself have a claim through my
mother’s blood. All of it I cede to my mighty and esteemed lord, to do with
as your majesty might will.”

Melanthe was aware of the chamberlain’s subtle stir at this news. He
stood close to the king, bowing. “May I read the document to you, sire?”

The chamberlain’s greedy hand was already upon the quitclaim, but
Edward’s fingers closed. He held to the document. “Monteverde?” His vague
old eyes seemed to sharpen. “We are in debt to Monteverde for a certain
sum.”

“My lord, I did not know of such a thing,” Melanthe lied, dropping into a
deep courtesy. Edward was in debt by an impossible amount to the bank of
Monteverde, as he was and had always been in debt to the Italian money
merchants. “Then I may have even greater hope that my humble gift is of
value to my king.”

Alice’s man made another attempt, not so subtle, to divest Edward of the
quitclaim, but the king held it tightly. “You have not asserted your right?”
He frowned. “Nay, but—our mind betrays us. Bowland—have you not a brother to
act for you? Lionel’s friend ...” He paused, his voice trailing off into an
old man’s quiver.

Melanthe could see him remember. He had peddled his second son Lionel to
the Viscontis of Milan, in a payment for England’s debts—but the most lavish
wedding of the age, with gifts of armor and horses and hounds in gemmed
collars, cloaks of ermine and pearls, a banquet of thirty courses all gilded
with gold leaf and a dowry so huge it had taken two years to barter, had not
bought a long and happy life for Lionel. He had died six months later in
Italy of an unnamed fever.

And with him Richard, of his closest inner circle, Richard her brother,
who had been only five when Melanthe had left England and a stranger of
twenty-one when he came to Italy to die. The gossips had said that he had
been slain mistakenly, by sharing poisoned drink with Lionel. The gossips
had said that Richard had meant to kill his own prince and accidentally
killed himself as well. The gossips had said that Melanthe had murdered her
brother for his inheritance, uncaring that the prince died with him. The
gossips said anything. She watched the king with her heart beating hard.

“May God give both of their souls reprieve.” Edward’s broad shoulders
were drawn inward, his lower lip unsteady. He groped for the wine goblet and
drank.

“Amen.” She made the cross, drawing a deep breath. “My lord, in my
woman’s frailty, I have not the courage or desire to act upon my claim to
Monteverde. I wish only to return to Bowland and live there unmolested in my
widowhood, if it please you. But a man of greater energy and shrewdness than
my poor self, sire—such a man as the Duke of Lancaster, say—a lord of your
son’s natural powers might make a great and useful thing of this claim.”

“Verily.” The king wiped his eyes. “Verily.”

“Your majesty must wish to give the duke much, in return for his
dedication to his brother’s interests in Aquitaine,” Melanthe murmured.

King Edward began to weep at this mention of his son’s unswerving
loyalty. God knew, Lancaster was truly faithful to his family, bankrupting
his own coffers as he was in trying to hold Aquitaine together in their
name. For a moment Melanthe feared she had gone too far, that this talk of
his sons would send Edward back into maudlin foolishness. But the
chamberlain took advantage of the moment to get his claws upon the quitclaim
again. The king roused, shaking off his retainer’s obtrusive hand with royal
contempt, showing a gleam of his former spirit as he stared down at the
document with a narrow-eyed examination.

They shall not have it, Ligurio.
Melanthe smiled inside herself,
her teeth grinding together.
Not Alice Ferrers or Riata or Navona
either.
Pray God and Fortune, King Edward had resolve enough left in
him that he would turn her quitclaim over to his favorite son instead of
Alice’s brood, and the wolves of Italy would find John of Lancaster in their
midst after all. Fair payment it would be to him, she thought, for the
dislocate shoulder and humiliation she had caused. By hap someday he would
even thank her.

The king looked up at her, his eyes red. “What can we do to show our
fondness for you, child?”

“Sire,” she said, bowing her head. “My only wish is that I may live alone
at Bowland. My marriage is in your majesty’s gift.”

“You would not be pleased to wed again?”

“Nay, sire, by your leave. In hap, in the fullness of time, at God’s hest
I will enter a nunnery and devote myself to prayer.”

The king nodded, gripping the quitclaim. “So be it. You have our pledge,
child—in our affection for you we shall not require you to marry again.
Also, we desire that you hold the dignity of your father’s offices, in the
style of Countess of Bowland, and all other titles with which he was
invested.” He waved a shaky hand toward the chamberlain. “See that these
things are so affirmed by our seal.”

Bowing down unto the very floor, Melanthe abandoned the king to Alice’s
tender avarice. It was vital now to leave London instantly, before Allegreto
or the Riata could discover what she had done. She acted by Ligurio’s
teaching: she kept her goal clear, but the path to reach it shifted on the
edge of a moment.

She felt freedom near. On the high empty hills she remembered from her
northern childhood she would live, belonging to no one but herself. Of all
her father’s rich and comfortable manors, she chose cold Bowland Castle as
her citadel, as he had done. If she could command Monteverde for the six
years of Ligurio’s dying, she could hold her father’s lands from Bowland,
vast though they might be, among these simple-headed Englishmen.

The course she would take to attain her end was still uncertain, but she
lived moment to moment as she must. Allegreto was well distracted from his
usual vigilance—she had made sure of that before her audience with the
king—but how long his fear would divert him she did not know. Always she
watched for opportunity, seized on a different ruse, twisted and turned as
she saw her chance or felt her danger. She had betrayed every bargain and
vow with her quitclaim. Now she lived like quicksilver, breath to breath
until she could rid herself of her watchdogs.

London was full of plague rumors. At Princess Melanthe’s command Ruck
tracked hearsay through the muddy streets. When he presented himself to
attend her at Westminster Palace, Allegreto assailed him in her anteroom.

“What befalls?” the youth demanded, trailing Ruck to her steward.
Allegreto had a morbid fear of plague: he talked of it endlessly and had
taken to attaching himself to Ruck whenever he was at the palace, as if Ruck
had some talisman against it.

“Naught befalls, that I can tell,” Ruck said.

“Naught?” Allegreto asked anxiously.

Ruck held out his hand toward the door as the steward announced him. “Am
I to report to thy mistress or to thee, whelp?”

“To me, certainly.” The princess’s voice was elegant and firm. She
lowered the book of poetry to her lap.

“My liege lady.” Ruck bowed, while Allegreto hovered by his elbow like an
importunate child.

“Green Sire,” she acknowledged courteously. She was much more sedate in
her manner among the English, dressed with rich propriety in blue and white,
only a few diamonds sparkling in her necklace and belt. A changeling, taking
on the aspect of her surroundings. He felt his own weakness, succumbing to
this false look of virtue when he knew the corrupt truth of her.