For My Lady's Heart (27 page)

“I will go,” he whispered. “Lady, I am drunk; do nought kiss me.”

“Thou like me not?” she murmured.

“Ye slays me, my lady.” He turned his face from her. “Ye slays my reason.
I am in wine. I will dishonor you.”

She rested her forehead on his bare shoulder and ran her fingertips down
his back. “I wish it,” she said, so low that he could hardly hear.

“Nay,” he said. “I will nought.”

Her hand curled around his arm. She rocked him, her face still pressed to
his skin, like a child entreating.

“Ah, lady. I love you too well.”

Her fingers slipped away. She was silent, still leaning her forehead
against him.

“Who would know?” she asked, muffled. “Once. Only once. For this one
night.”

He drew a deep breath, speaking low. “My sweet lady, ye hatz a demon of
hell in you, that takes hold of your tongue sometimes and tempts me beyond
what I can bear.”

“ ‘Tis no demon. It is me.” Her hand crept up and twined with his. “I
have been so much alone. You do not know.” She squeezed his fingers. “I did
not know, until I found thee.”

“My luflych, my precious lady, I have me a wife.”

She was still for a long moment. Then she said, “Is that why thou wilt
deny me? For thy wife?”

“For my wife. And for the dishonor to you.”

“Dost thou love her still?”

He gave a bitter chuckle. “Ten and three years has it been. I ne
cannought e’en see her face in my head. But she is my wife, before God and
man, for we were rightly wed.”

“I thought her a nun.”

“Yea,” he said.

She lifted her head. In the blackness of the heavy curtains, he could see
nothing, only feel her.

“But ne’er have I adultered, or profaned my vows.” He paused, gripping
his hand tight in hers. “Nought with my body.”

She stroked his hair, and his back. “Ah, what have they done to thee,
these priests?” she whispered sadly. “Hast thou lived in this thought, that
thou art wed and yet bound to be chaste, since that day I saw thee last?”

“In troth,” he said, “I have lived in thought of you.” He pulled from her
and lay back on the bed, staring into darkness. “Awake and asleep, I have
thought of you. Else I were dead of despair a hundred times, I think me, if
I had nought you in my mind to bind me to virtue.” He shook his head. “I am
no monkish man, I tell you, lady.”

She gave a bewildered soft laugh. “Ne do I understand thee not.
I
bind thee to purity? Thou jape me.”

“I swore to you, my lady, in Avignon. When you sent the stones. Then I
thought—but I was in a frenzy; I recall it little, but that I swore my life
to you. I sold the lesser emerald for arms and a horse, and took me to
tighten tournies for the prizes, and then to my liege prince when I had some
money and good means to show myseluen. I made your falcon my device and took
your gemstone for my color. And when my body tempted me, I thought of you
and Isabelle my wife, I thought how you both were pure and good and
blameless, better than me, and I mote live with honor for your sake, because
I was her husband and your man.”

“Depardeu,” she murmured. “Thy wife—and I? Blameless and pure? Thou art a
blind man.”

“I knew naught else to do.” He pressed the heels of his hands over his
eyes. “And it is impossible, it is nought the same, now that—”

He broke off and blew all the air from his chest in a rough sigh.

“Now that thou knowest me for myself,” she said with a tone he could not
read, whether amused or sad or bitter, or all three.

“I love you, my lady,” he said, his voice suppressed. “ ‘Tis all certain
that I know. With my heart, with my body, though I’ve nought the right to
thinken of it, though you are too high—in faith, though I burn in Hell for
it.” He swallowed. “God forgive me that I say such things. I’m in drink enow
to drownen me.”

She lay down beside him, half on top of him, her arm across his
shoulders. “Dost thou love me?” she whispered, with an intensity that made
him turn his face toward her in the dark.

He lifted his hand—he allowed himself that for the fierce plea in her
voice—and brushed the back of his fingers over her cheek. “Beyond reason.”

“Oh,” she said, and buried her face in his shoulder, hugging herself
close. “Yesterday I was a witch in thy estimate.”

“Yea, and now ye be a wanton wench, and in a moment ye will be a haughty
princess, and I know nought what next to plague and bemaze me.”

“Thy lover.”

“Nay, lady.” He started to rise.

She caught him, holding tight. “No. Do not go.”

“I will keep watch by the door.”

“No. I will ne be able to sleepen, be thou not near where I can reach
thee.”

“Lady,” he said, “for all the hours ye sleeps, me think this one night be
nought such a great loss.”

Still she held him. “I can’t
sleep.”
Her voice was soft, but her
fingers had the grip of real dismay.

“God shield, am I to lie beside you in a bed all the night?” he asked.
“Have mercy on me.”

“I cannot.” She would not cease; she pulled him slowly downward. “I
cannot have mercy. Please thee—stay.”

“Enow!” he said harshly. His shoulder sank into the featherbed. He turned
his face to the bolster. “Only touch me nought then, my lady, for your
pity.”

She let go. He felt her roll over away from him. She was angry, he
thought, child-geared in her tempers as only those of high estate could be.
But she asked too much; to he here beside her—in bed, unclothed, as if they
were married. He was already mired in mortal lust; now she would have him
pay his soul for fornication. God have mercy on him if he died this night,
for he was bound for everlasting flames.

Yet she lay still in the blackness, without word or demand, and it
gradually came into his head that she was weeping. He listened, trying to
subdue the sound of his own breath. He could hear nothing.

She said she had been alone until she had found him. He closed his eyes.
Lone he had lived all his life, it seemed, dwelling among dreams of things
to come. They were all of them shattered now, lost to her whims—he had hated
her for that, and hated her yet, but love and hate turned so close in his
heart that they seemed to dazzle him together as one passion. He could tell
them apart no more than he knew if she was beautiful or plain—she was
neither, more than both, his very self, that he might love or hate as he
pleased, but could not disown short of the grave.

He reached out his hand. It came to rest on her hair that was loose,
spreading over the pillow. She lay silent. Softly, haltingly, he found the
shape of her with his fingertips, her temple, her brow. He touched her cheek
and lashes, and felt warm tears.

“I ne did not give thee leave to handle me at thy whim, knave,” she said
sharply.

He moved, folding her in his arms. “I knew you would come the high
princess soon enow,” he said with a painful laugh. He leaned near and rocked
her against his chest. “My lady queen, your tears are liken to an arrow
through my body.”

“Pouf,” she said. “Monkish man.”

He crushed her to him and rubbed his cheek against her hair. “Do you want
my honor? I give it you, I will forlie and adulter with you, my lady,
then—and God and the Fiend torment me as they will.”

He felt her turn toward his face, though he could not see her in the
dark. For a long moment she lay very still.

“Were I thy wife, would not be sin,” she whispered.

He made a bitter sound of mirth. “Yea—and were I king of all England and
France, and a free man.”

She put her hands up, seizing his face between her palms. “Listen to me.”

The sudden urgency caught his full heed. He waited, but she said nothing.
Her fingers moved restlessly, forming fists against his face and opening
again.

“Ah,” she said, “I know not how ... it frightens me to wound thee.
Best-loved, my true and loyal friend, hast thou never guessed all these
years why I denounced thee in Avignon? Why I sent thee thence in haste?”

In a far deep place inside himself, he felt his soul arrested. Slightly
he shook his head.

“Thy wife—thinkest thou that they released her to this convent at Saint
Cloud? Nay, they sent her to the Congregation of the Holy Office. They sent
her to the inquisitors, and they would have sent thee, too, if thou hadst
shown that her preachings and raving had convinced thee of aught. They could
not bide her, do you see? A woman to preach, to interpret Scripture—to
demand of thee her own oath within thy marriage.”

“Nay,” he breathed. “Nay—the archbishop—he said a place was made for her
at Saint Cloud. I paid for it! For her keep—my money and my horse and arms.”

She did not answer. In the hush he thought of the letters he’d sent, the
money, every year with no word of reply.

“Oh, Mary, Mother of God—where is she?” He sat up, gripping her
shoulders.

She stroked her palms up and down his face.

Ruck groaned. He let go of her and rolled away, trying to find the breath
that seemed suddenly to have left his lungs. “Imprisoned?”

But he knew she was not imprisoned. He knew by the silence, by the way
the princess did not move or touch him, only waited.

“I forsook her.” His body began to shake, his hands clenching and
unclenching, beyond his command. “Helas, I abandoned her.”

“Listen to me.” Her cold voice abruptly cut like a scourge. “She
abandoned thee. I heard her, if thou hast forgot. She was no saint, nor holy
woman, nor even a fit wife for such as thee.”

“Her visions—”

“Pah!” she spat. “They weren no more of God than a peacock’s preenings. I
tell thee, sir, when I married I did not love my husband, but I gave back to
him the same honor and duty that he gave to me. I did not weep and scream
and claim God sent some handy vision to free me from my vows. Nor do the
world of women, but live the half of them without complaint in such
subjection as thou canst not conceive, not one in ten thousand so fortunate
as she!” Her voice was a throbbing hiss. “I loved my husband well enough in
the end, but the life that I have lived for his sake—I would have given my
soul to have thy wife’s place instead, with a good steadfast man to defenden
me and children of my own. And she foreswore thee, for her vain pride, no
more, so that she mote be called sainted and pure by such foolish sots as
would drivel upon her holiness. By Christ, I would have burned her myself,
had she taken thee adown with her as she was wont to do!”

He took a shuddering breath of air. “She was burned?”

“Yea,” she said in a calmer voice. “I am sorry. There was naught to be
done for her, for she brought it upon herself. They declared her a Beguine,
an adherent of the Free Spirit.”

“Isabelle,” he said. Horror crept over him. “In God’s name, to burn!” He
began to breathe faster, seeing the image of it, hearing it.

“Ne did she not suffer,” the princess said in a steady voice. “She was
given a posset to stupefy her, even before she heard the sentence passed,
and kept so to the end. I have no doubt she went to sleep still in full
assurance she was regarded as a saint.”

He turned toward her in the dark. “You know it so, my lady?”

“Yea. I know it.”

He stared at her, at the source of her cold and even voice. “I do nought
believe you.”

“Then I will given thee the name of the priest I paid to intoxicate her.
He was Fra Marcus Rovere then; now he is a cardinal deacon at Avignon.”

“You—” He felt benumbed. “Why?”

“Why! I know not why! Because her witless husband loved her, stupid man,
and I knew thou couldst do naught. Because my window gave out on the court,
and I ne did nought wish my nap disturbed. Why else?”

He lay back, his hands pressed to his skull. No tears came to his eyes.
He thought of the times he had wished Isabelle dead, to free him, and the
penance he had done for it. Of how she had been a burgher’s daughter—never
could he have brought her openly to Lancaster’s court even before she came
to believe she was consecrated to God, never could he have held a knight’s
place there with a baseborn woman to wife. He thought of the first days of
their marriage, his joy in her body and her smile, the end of his
loneliness, it had seemed, and in his first battle the worst, most shameful
unvoiced fear, not of pain, which he knew well enough, nor of dying itself,
but of dying before he might bed her again, couple with her on the pillows
and look at her.

She was the only woman he had ever lain with in his life— and she had
been dead for thirteen years, ashes and charred bone.

He heard the sound he made, a meaningless dry moan like a man at the last
reach of his strength. He should weep. But plaint and lament choked in his
throat. He could only lie and hold his hands to his head as if he could
imprison the melee of thoughts there, his muscles straining with each
indrawn breath.

“I cannought remember her face!” he cried. “Oh, sweet Mary save me, I can
only see you.”

“Shhh.” She put her finger to his lips. “Hush.” She rubbed the side of
his face in a quiet cadence, a firm chafing pressure. “That is not
marvelous. Iwysse, I am here with thee, best-loved. Is no more than that.”

He reached up and caught her arms. “Do nought stray out from my shield,
my lady,” he said fiercely. He pulled her down against him. “Leave me
nought.”

“Never,” she said. “If it be within my power, never.”

Her breath stirred lightly on his face. She lay half atop him, the wool
of her gown spread over his leg and thigh. He held her there.

“Nor will I leave you.” He bound her wrists in both his hands. “Ne’er,
lady, lest ye sends me from you.”

The rise and fall of his chest lifted her, so close she was. Though he
could barely see her as but a blacker shadow on blackness, he felt her
weight, her hushed submission to his grasp. Her loose hair fell down between
them, as if she were a maid. As if she were his wife.