For My Lady's Heart (37 page)

The stairwell from the lord’s presence chamber opened onto the high end
of the great hall. Melanthe heard voices and music and laughter before she
reached the floor, but in this castle there were no convenient spying peeks
to oversee the hall, or none that she could find.

She stepped into the doorway, then hastily pulled back. Ruck was there,
seated at the table on the dais, facing away from her. He had a child on his
shoulders, a half-grown babe with feet balanced on either side of his head
and hands planted in his black hair as he bent over rolls and counters
spread across the table. In her brief moment of view, Melanthe had seen
William Foolet counseling with him, and minstrels all around the hall, some
of them congregated about the dais, some at work, and one pair juggling a
great wheel of apples up toward the roof.

Melanthe sat down on the stair out of sight. The fantastic aspect of it
struck her anew. She felt unsure of herself, a somber crow at the feast. It
would not be wise, she thought, to go to him amidst their smiles and
laughter. Later, when he came to her alone, she could try to reckon how the
Williams might have damaged her.

But she did not want to go back to the empty bedchamber now. She sat in
the stairwell, listening to the easy talk, the murmurs of mirth. They spoke
of lambing and the fish in the lake, things she knew but little of. She
could predict what would happen if she stepped through the door. They would
all turn and stare, and she must be her lady’s grace the princess then, for
she knew nothing else to be.

Quick small footsteps sounded on the wooden dais, and a little girl in
gaudy-green appeared through the door. She put her plump hands on Melanthe’s
knees and leaned forward, dark-eyed and rapt, her black locks flying free of
any braid. “Why hide ye?” she demanded.

Melanthe drew back a little. “Ne do I hide.”

“Ye does. I saw you. But I found you!” She turned and wedged herself into
the space between Melanthe and the wall, taking a seat on the narrow stair.
She put her arms about Melanthe’s neck and kissed her cheek. “I love you.”

“Thou dost not love me,” Melanthe said. “Thou dost not even know me.”

“Ye are the princess.” She said it with an enraptured sigh. “I am Agnes.”
She laid her head on Melanthe’s shoulder and took her hand, toying with the
rings. “I play the tympan and the cymbals. I haf a white falcon and lots of
jewels.”

Melanthe watched the small fingers trifle with hers. “Thou art a great
lady, then.”

“Yea,” Agnes said. “I shall sleepen all the day when I be grown. Ne likes
me nought to nap now, though,” she added scrupulously. “I shall marry
Desmond.”

“Desmond. The porter?”

“He will be the king then.”

“Ah,” Melanthe said. “A man of ambition.”

“A man of what?” Agnes looked up at her. “Oh. Are you sad?”

Melanthe shook her head.

“You weep, my lady.”

“Nay. I do not.”

“I love you.” Agnes climbed into her lap and put her face into Melanthe’s
throat. “Ne do nought weep.”

“I do not.”

“Why do you weep?” The girl’s voice was muffled.

Melanthe held the small body close to her. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.
She drew a breath against fine black hair, as if she could drink it like
some fragrant long-forgotten wine. “I’m afraid.”

“Oh, my lady, be nought.” Agnes hugged her. “All be well, so long as we
bide us here as my lord commands, and go nought out beyond the wood.”

They had pleased Ruck, those days that she spent tumbled in his bed like
a dozing kitten. He would have thought she was ill, but that he knew her for
a master in the art of idle slumbering, and she awoke well enough when he
came.

While she had stayed in his chamber, Wolfscar was his yet. He spent the
days in ordinary work, in spring plans and lists of repairs, the most of
which would never get done, but he did not have to make explanations or
excuses to her. She had asked nothing, but only besought him in bed with her
blunt and unhende wooing.

He did not dislike it. A’plight, he lived all through the day in thought
and prospect of it. His clearest memories of Isabelle were of bedding her,
and those were dim, overlaid with years of throttled desire and fantasy. But
he did not think that any woman on Earth or in imagination could compare
with Melanthe, her black hair and white body, her sleepy eyes like purple
dusk, the feel of her as she used him, mounting atop him in her favored sin.
To have seen her so was worth a thousand years of burning to him. If he went
to Hell for it, he only prayed God would not take away the memory.

Still, nothing about her came as he expected it. When finally she had
left the bed and appeared in the hall, he was girded for her queries and
objections. He saw her look about. He had grown taut in readiness for her
censure—saw dust and decay that he had never noticed before.

But he was forwondered once again by his liege lady. She did not speak of
Wolfscar’s unkept state at all. She smiled at him like a shamefast maid,
looking up from beneath a kerchief. She became modest; at night she withdrew
from him and eluded his kisses. In the day she went about with a crowd of
small girls. It was as if she had arisen from her spelled sleep transformed,
turned from a haughty princess into a nun’s acolyte.

Will Foolet was terrified of her. Bassinger was not daunted to speak to
any person alive—he would have sung his lays to the Fiend himself given the
chance—but even he gave her a wide breach. All three of them, Ruck and Will
and Bassinger, had heard her speak her mind about Wolfscar and its history.

The others gathered around her, enslaved as easily as she had vanquished
Hew Dowl and Sir Harold. Will was complained of and called a hard
taskmaster, only for directing that the ground-breaking begin in the fields.
Performing before her lady’s grace, their first new spectator in a decade of
years, was much to be preferred.

Ruck and Will rode out alone to the shepherds and lambs, making
rain-soaked notes of the fences and fodder, and lists of needed work. They
ordered the labor by its importance, for never did they have enough bodies
or skills to carry out all that cried to be done. Before there had been
willingness and ready hands, at least. Now the fields and the bailey were
empty, and Ruck walked into the hall to find it full of tumbling and singing
before Melanthe.

He lost his temper. Flinging his wet mantle from his shoulders, he strode
into the middle of the clear space, halting a pair of somersaults before
they were begun. The music died.

“Is a feast day?” Ruck glared around him. He threw his cloak onto the
floor, sending droplets from it to spatter on the tile. “How be it that my
gear is drenched and my rouncy in mud to his belly, while ye maken mirths
and plays? Am I your lord or your servant?”

Everyone fell to his knees. A tympan tinkled in the stunned silence as a
small girl crawled from Melanthe’s lap and knelt, holding the belled drum
before her.

“Thorlac,” he snapped to one of the poised tumblers. “Stable my mount.
Simon, take Will’s. Stands he outside in the rain with the order of
laboring. Nill no one be seen in this hall nor heard to singen or playen
until Lent is passed. Eat in the low hall, and give ye thanks for it.”

At once the great room emptied, light footsteps and shuffles and the odd
note of a justled instrument. Only Melanthe was left, sitting on a settle
drawn near the huge chimney. The gems on her kerchief gleamed as she bent
her head, rubbing one hand over the back of the other.

“My lady mote forgive me for ending your sport,” he said tautly, “but the
work demands.”

“I ask thy pardon,” she said, without lifting her face. “Ne did I know
it. I thought they were at leisure.”

“Nought in this season, my lady. Spring comes.”

“Yea,” she said.

No more than that. He was damp, his hands still cold, though the fire
beside her rumbled with more than enough wood and charcoal. “Haf I
displeased you, lady,” he said harshly, “that ye refuse my company?”

He had not meant to speak it out so abruptly. Her hands folded together
in her lap, nunlike.

“I ne do not refuse thy company, my lord. I am with thee now.”

“My embraces,” he said.

She slanted a look up at him beneath the kerchief and her lashes, and
then gazed down again, the picture of chastity.

He paced away. “Peraventure ye tire of this place and wish to go anon to
Bowland.”

“Nay, and risk the pestilence?” she asked quickly.

He turned. “Was little sign of it enow, my lady. Only at Lyerpool.”

“Who speaks to thee of this—that I would go?”

“I think of your place, and your holdings. Ne cannought ye look to
sojourn here long, to your lands’ neglect.”

She stood up. “Who spake thee so?”

“Is common wit, my lady. I should have seen you to Bowland, as we
intended. Nis nought fitting I should have brought you here to detain you.”

“Thy minstrels said thee so!” she exclaimed.

“My minstrels?” he repeated blankly. He stopped in the face of her
vehemence. “Nay, they said no such.”

“William Foolet has whispered in thy ears, and the Bassinger, to sayen
thee of my lands’ neglect, and plague is no danger to me!”

“Ne did they.”

“Dost thou care less for me than for thy people? They are commanded to
stay within
yow plessis
wood for fear of pestilence!”

“Watz nought my meaning, forsooth!” He found himself near to shouting in
response to her wild accusations. “Faithly—ne did I wist you feared the
plague so much.”

“I do.”

Her violet eyes regarded him, shaded in black lashes. She had never
seemed overconcerned to Ruck. She did not seem so now. With her head lifted,
her kerchief sparkling with gems, she seemed more angry than alarmed.

“Ye does nought choose to make all haste to your lands, then,” he said.

“I fear pestilence.”

He shook his head with a slight laugh. “My lady—ne do I trow that you
e’er speak me troth.”

“I do! I fear to go out, for the pestilence.”

Her lips made a strange pressing curve—an aspect there and gone, a shadow
between her brows before she smoothed her face again to cool composure.
Always she was a secret, impossible to read. It could have been a hidden
smile or a hint of tears. But he thought it was not a smile.

She faced him wholly. “Thou said that I may stop here, where no ill could
come, so long as I wished!” She made it a challenge, as if she expected him
to deny it.

“Then do we nought go, my lady,” he said, “until I know it to be safe for
you.”

“Oh,” she said, and closed her eyes.

“I thought me that you would wish to depart anon.”

She made a tiny shake of her head.

“Melanthe,” he said, “will I ne’er understand thee?”

Her eyes opened. “When I wish it.”

He bent and retrieved his wet mantle, throwing it across his shoulder as
he stepped up onto the dais. “My lady,” he said, giving her a brief, stiff
bow before he went through the door and mounted the stairs.

He had stripped himself down for dry weeds when she came. She closed the
door and looked at him with a look that made the blood run strong in his
veins. He could not hide himself, though he turned away from her—but she
came to him and touched him and put his hands at her waist.

He kissed her. He held her hard and laid her on the bed, knowing he had
been befooled somehow, that she meant to wile him by her days of denying and
now giving, heartless ramp that she was. But she had only wiled him into
what he wanted anyway, to keep her here and love and overlie her until she
gasped in frenzy beneath him, her hair escaped from the kerchief to spread
all about the pillows.

He buried his face in the black silken strands, groaning his release
through clenched teeth. He lay atop her and felt her breasts rise and fall
against him, her sheath tight and delicious, faint throbs in her that ran
through him like sweet kisses.

She turned her lips beside his ear. “Now,” she said, “thou dost
understand me.”

He gave a laugh, his teeth still clenched. “No, Melanthe. Only you make
me cease to care if I do or nay.”

In a careful fold over her arm, Cara carried an altar-cloth and the
vestments she was to mend. She crossed Bowland’s dim and busy hall, jumping
back from a woodman’s bundle of fagots as he stopped suddenly in front of
her and dropped the load. The wood thudded almost on her toes.

“Ware thee!” she exclaimed, one of the English expressions she was
learning well among these savages.

The servant turned with a great show of surprise, but he was smirking
beneath it. He did not even bow, but only leaned down to grab the roped
bundle.

“Thou didst that on purpose!” she cried in outrage. “Disrespectful oaf,
thou wouldst have broke my foot!”

He didn’t understand her French, or pretended not to. She pressed her
lips together. In less than a fortnight here, the small slights were
mounting to open disdain. She hated this place, and these people. A hot
sting threatened behind her eyes.

Someone stopped beside her. Still in his travel mud, the English squire
Guy seized the woodman’s collar and dragged him up close. He growled
something in English. The servant’s insolence vanished as he tried to choke
out words and bow at the same time, his face turning red with effort.

Guy spoke again, short and fierce, and shoved the woodman back. He fell
over his own pile of fagots, landing on the rush mat with a loud thud and
yelp. Guy made a gesture toward Cara. When the servant was slow in heaving
himself up, Guy stepped over the bundle and aimed a kick with his armored
toe.

The man yelped again, scrambling into a kneel before Cara. He begged her
pardon humbly, in perfectly adequate French.

Everyone in the hall had paused to watch. Guy swept a look over them.
“Surely a noble house serves its ladies with good cheer,” he said, his quiet
voice carrying to the corners.

The hall was silent. Slowly, as Guy maintained his arrogant stare, one or
two of them bowed, then more, until finally every servant in the hall had
acknowledged him.

He gave Cara a curt nod and strode back toward the passage beyond the
screens, his blue cloak flaring from his shoulders. She looked down at the
still-kneeling woodman and the respectfully bowed heads around her, and
hugged the vestments close, turning to go after him.

She caught up with him in the passage. “Sir!”

He stopped, looking over his shoulder. When he saw her, his face broke
into a boyish grin.

“I must thank you, sir,” she said, halting a few feet away from him and
lowering her face.

“Did you see that?” he exclaimed. “It worked. I can’t believe I did it.”

The excitement in his voice made her look up. He was still grinning, with
a streak of mud she hadn’t noticed on his jaw. When she had first seen him,
his blond hair had been damp and plastered to his head—she hadn’t realized
what a bright color it was, shining like a golden crown in the dismal
passage. He didn’t wear the flesh-colored hose now, but a soldier’s armor.
He did not appear silly at all.

“It’s the manner,” he said. “Soft and steady. Confidence.”

“God grant you mercy, sir, for your aid,” she repeated, taking a shy step
backward.

He bowed. “It was an honor to serve you, my lady.”

She almost retreated, and then paused. “You’ve been traveling.”

He lowered his voice. “Seeking after news of your mistress. Navona and
Lord Thomas have divided a few of us to search and report.”

“You’ve found something?” Cara asked anxiously.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, my lady. Nothing. But you must not fear
that we will fail.” He gestured toward the door. “I must give my account to
them now, and so haste, if I don’t offend you.”

“Oh no—of course you must go.” She moistened her lips. “Where do you
lodge?”

“Over the postern gate, with the squires.”

“I will see that a bath is made for you, and see that your robes are
ready when you wish them.” She wrapped the vestments close about her arm and
went quickly toward the hall. She hesitated at the screen, glancing back.

He stood looking after her, his golden hair a faint gleam against the
stone. She smiled, making a little courtesy, and hurried into the hall.

There were almost no other women in the castle— none at all of Cara’s
rank, and, she had the upper rooms of the household range to herself except
for the infrequent servants passing through. She had found herself a place
by a window and sat in the embrasure, bending over the vestments in the
rain-soaked light and picking the seam loose with her needle.

Allegreto came upon her before she knew he was there. She reached for
scissors and looked up, starting to see him leaned against the stone chimney
mantel with his arms crossed.

“Blessed Mary!” she exclaimed, her hand on her breast. “You’re as sly as
a stoat.”

He inclined his head, as if it were a compliment. Dressed in the Bowland
livery, all scarlet but for a simple gold slash diagonal, he might have been
a crimson angel or a devil from the fires below. Cara slipped her needle
into the fabric, pretending to go back to work. He came sometimes to watch
her, and then left again without saying a word—spying, she supposed, though
to what purpose but to unnerve her she had no notion.