For My Lady's Heart (43 page)

Navona kept his own lodging three miles off, in the town hard by the
castle. If he had not, Ruck thought, he would already be dead.

Warm air, smelling of dust off the street, flowed into the upstairs
window of the inn. Ruck sat with his feet propped on the sill. He could see
Merlesden from his chamber, an admirable court hall of pale stone on a
wooded hillside across the water meadows, the sun sparkling from its many
windows.

He hated it. He hated her, with a fine relentless hate, a cold will down
to his heart and sinew.

He would not endure her to make mock of him. To discount him, as if he
did not exist. How long she must have planned it, he could not fathom—she
had rused and wiled, and he had been so sotted and glad that he had not
pressed her. Or haps she had never planned it, but only heard that her great
love had come for her, this Dan Gian, this Italian lord—father of her
lap-dog lover; vice beyond conjecture—and she forgot all else but to warn
Ruck not to presume on her for shame of him.

He swung his legs down and stood, pacing the width of the private
bedchamber as he had walked the towers of Wolfscar. She had called him mad,
and he had gone near mad in truth, lost he knew not how long in silent
ferocity, a violence locked up in himself, so that he could not speak even
when he heard common voices talking to him.

He was out of his right mind yet, he knew. She would have her way, he did
not doubt: he would not have her back—nor wanted her. She had not even
looked as he remembered. Ever the witch, she had changed herself again:
thinner, delicate and narrow like a phantom spirit clothed in richness, her
eyes deep and dead when she gazed upon him. Her flowers were a japing mock,
virgin’s blossoms to adorn a ramp.

He leaned his hands on the painted boards and put his forehead to the
wall. He listened to the sound of his own breathing.

Ruck wanted to slay her as she slayed him, but he could only take the
oiled and painted carpet knight. By the church or by the challenge, he would
deprive her of that connection. In his madness to prevent her, he was
blessed with detached reason, as if he were two men, one who burned and one
who was ice.

He had hired counsel in canon law. He made his case to the bishop, giving
solemn oath of his truth—on the morrow she would have notice of that, and
peraventure her foreign lord’s great preparations for a feast would be gone
to waste. Ruck had even found his green tournament plate, stolen in the
Wyrale and ransomed back from an armorer in Chester, missing the emerald
yes, but fit for use. He had chosen his place and time with perfect care—to
speak before witnesses who would put the word about court and countryside
swift as gossip’s wing could carry it.

If they dared to carry on with their betrothal, Ruck intended to sour the
wine in their mouths.

The canon clerk had advised him to assert that she could not speak freely
for fear of someone near her, a trick to counter her foregone denial. That
Melanthe had ever feared anything, even unto Hell itself, Ruck greatly
doubted, but he could see the usefulness of the pretense. He had also given
a hoard to the clerk’s safekeeping, in case they should try to have him
arrested on charges of deceit and falsehood, and set down names of men who
would let mainprize for his surety. He trusted her as he would trust a viper
in his bed.

He lifted his head at the sound of a horse coming fast in the road. Two
days had he waited for Navona’s agent. He turned eagerly, to hear if the
rider came to a halt, but the hoofbeats did not slow. The horse rushed
beneath the window.

A pale object flew through the open glass, startling him. It thumped on
the floor, a small white sack, while the horse passed on without a pause.

He swept it up, yanked open the string, and poured pebbles from inside. A
folded paper fell after them into his hand.

For an instant his whole heart changed—he pressed open the folds with a
hope that lasted only long enough to see that it was French. She would not
write him in French, not if she meant well. Neither her name nor her sign
marked the paper.

“On guard,” it said only. “The wine.”

He held the paper, rubbing it between his fingers. There was no hint—but
it must be her, to warn him of this wine. Who else ...

Comprehension came to him. He had seen Desmond here, at a distance,
loitering with Allegreto and a crowd of honey-fly gallants and laughing
ladies, dressed in a short hamselin coat with delicate embroidery and fur
tips. Desmond, too, she had perverted, but this much faith the boy must have
left, to forewarn Ruck—in French no less—that his wife or her lover tried to
poison him.

He made a small laugh, tearing the parchment and flicking the pieces
away. And when Navona’s agent came at last, bearing a flask of wine and news
that Dan Gian, his ankle broken in the fall beneath his horse, would have a
champion in his place rather than delay their reckoning, Ruck did not drink
to seal the arrangement.

A champion. But let him cower behind tainted wine and champions, the
fisting cur. He would not have her.

Ruck gave the wine flask to the landlady and told her to poison rats with
it—for which she thanked him in the morning and said that it had done very
well.

The champion was to be imported from Flanders. Ruck learned of it when he
went to the jousting ground in search of exercise, and found no dearth of
offers.

He fought in the lists all morning. He did not usually encounter so many
who wished to trade spars with him, but he was glad enough for the fierce
activity. The betrothal feast had not been set aside; it went forward at
Merlesden after a promise on the church porch—the canon lawyer assured him
that the priest’s words would include “if the Holy Church consents,” a
caution Ruck could depend upon to protect his interest, but he knocked a
squire clear from his saddle with a wooden waster when he thought of
Navona’s face.

It came now to forbidding the banns. He would not have to stand up in
church and object; his clerk already worked to present his case, and at
least until it had been investigated, the betrothal could be carried no
further. Ruck chafed at these bishops and clerks, but it was a rite that had
to be observed. He expected no success; she would deny him to the bishop as
she had denied Ruck to his face, and so it was his word against hers. He had
but one way to prove himself, with a sword.

He dismounted, starting to take a ladle of water from a page who ran up
to offer it—and then hesitated. He let the water pour onto the ground and
called another waterboy from outside the lists.

“Wary bastard!” A knight halted beside him, some foreigner with an accent
of the south. He said in a loud voice, “These stinking coquins must watch
their backs.”

Ruck ignored him, squatting down to cup his hands and drink from the
bucket.

“Miserable wretch, how much money dost thou think to get for renouncing
your foul tale? Tell me, and I’ll take the message to Dan Gian, to save thee
the toil.”

Ruck stood up. “If thou hast come from Navona,” he said, calm and clear,
“then advise him to save his silver, for to hire the man who dies in his
place.” Ruck wiped his face with a towel. “Since he’s too much a woman to
fight himself.”

“He’s injured, caitiff.”

Ruck smiled up at the knight. “I’d be pleased to wait, but I think his
ankle won’t be so brave as to knit soon.”

The foreigner looked about at the crowd that gathered and deliberately
spit on him. “Fight me. Now.”

Ruck wiped his
cuir bouilli
with the towel and threw it down.
“With the greatest delight, thou son of a mongrel bitch.” He turned to Hawk
and tightened his girth. Immediately the spectators split, pages and squires
pressing up to serve him with helm and a steel sword instead of the wooden
wasters for practice. The blunt-fingered squire who held out the helmet
dropped it an inch from Ruck’s hand.

As they both bent to retrieve it, the squire hissed, “Your friend says
beware the sword.”

Ruck looked up at him. He was a stranger, backing away with a quick bow.
A quick scan of the spectators lined along lists revealed no Desmond, nor
any other friend.

They were sympathetic to him, though, halloing him vigorously as he
mounted. He turned the sword he’d been given, running his glove along the
edge. Light flashed up and down it. He could see no flaw, but he was not
fool enough to chance it. He called for another—and as he handed down the
first blade, he saw it: a ghost across the metal, the faintest flaw of
color.

“Who gave me this?” he shouted in English. He held it overhead, reining
his horse in a circle, spurring toward the quintain. “Who gives me a sword
nought worth ambsace?” With a violent sweep he brought it flat against the
stout practice post.

The blade broke, the sundered half flying through the air to land with a
skidding puff of dust.

“Witness this, that I was goaded into combat by no will of my own, and
given that to fighten with.” He glared around at the staring faces. “I am in
health and whole today—if I die afore I prove my truth against Navona’s
slander, then I pray you, for your honor, to search into the cause.” He
threw away the broken hilt and turned his mount toward the gate. “I ne do
nought fight with a foul nithing.”

They jeered; he supposed it was at him, until he reached the rail and
they started to duck under it and run into the lists. His challenger did not
make it to the gate, surrounded by an angry swarm. They pulled him from his
horse, tearing his helmet and weapon away the better to beat him.

Ruck watched for a moment, with a habitual urge to stop the disorder. He
was not certain that the man had been behind the flawed sword. But there
were boys taking hold of Hawk’s bridle, excited squires and pages escorting
him out the gate. He remembered that foreign voice and deliberate spit, and
turned his back.

He realized that the bull-shouldered squire who had given him the warning
was walking beside him, hand on his stirrup.

When he dismounted, the man took his shield and helmet with a seasoned
efficiency.

“Who does thou serve?” Ruck asked in English.

He made a smart bow. “My good lord Sir Henry of Grazely died at
Pentecost, may Lord Jesus grant him grace. I be withouten place since.”

Ruck frowned. “Who spake thee as my friend?”

“Ne do I not know, sir, but will I try out the creature and find him, an
you liketh.” He looked at Ruck with a sober expression that did not quite
disguise the glint of hope. “John Marking is my name. My lady Grazely will
write a letter to attest me, should it fall out that you be in need of a
humble squire, God save you, sire.”

“Then let her write anon,” Ruck said, and handed John his gloves.

At the archbishop’s pleasure, Ruck knelt with his canon in the inner
closet where the prelate was lodged at Windsor. He listened to the canon
review his case, as he had listened to it laid before priest and archdeacon
and bishop. When the clerk had finished, the archbishop sat in silence for a
few moments, and then said he wished to speak to Ruck alone.

“Sit there.” The prelate waved him to a bench, holding the papers, all in
Latin, and spreading them out on the table before him. “This is not a cause
in which I would intervene,” the prelate said, “but that since I came here I
have heard of nothing but the marvelous case of this unknown knight, who
would have it that he’s married to the Countess of Bowland— who would have
it that he’s not.”

Ruck said nothing. He sat straight, looking at the archbishop’s peaked
and embellished mitre that he’d taken off and set upon the table. The
churchman sorted through papers.

“You press your cause ardently, with nothing to make proof,” he murmured,
reading. “But of course, I’m told that the widow is an heiress of great
fortune.”

“Your grace,” Ruck said, “I do not want her fortune, nor will have it.”

The prelate ran his finger across a line. “I see that you have so
testified, that you quit all right in her estate. And yet such a marriage
cannot be a disadvantage to you, for you have no property or place that you
name. Sir who? Of where? What county?”

“Honorable father—I am under solemn vow, that I will not undertake my
right name before the world until I prove worthy. But I have written it, and
lies it sealed there.” He nodded toward the parchments on the table. “The
Duke of Lancaster is my liege lord. Six gentlemen and knights of good
character vouch upon me, that I am no felon nor outlaw, but a true Christian
man ready to keep the peace.”

The archbishop made an irritated flick of his hand. “The Lord would be
better pleased if young knights were not so hasty to swear such extravagant
and profitless vows. But you must keep to your sworn word. Still—this want
of conformity and open truth seems sufficient to arouse suspicion that you
make your claim with worldly and wicked motive.” ‘

“My lord, I make claim for cause the Princess Melanthe is my wife, before
God, and no other man may marry her while I live.”

The archbishop tapped on the papers. Strong light shafted across the
table from a lancet window, making a long shadow from his finger. “You
testify that the Princess Melanthe took you to husband by your right name
and knows your place.”

“Yea, my lord. She lay at my hold, from February to May.”

The churchman frowned at him thoughtfully. “Say me, in your own words,
what passed.”

Ruck had told the story often now; he related everything from his
dismissal by Lancaster to the bed at Torbec. The archbishop did not break in
to question him as the others had. He simply listened, shifting the papers
on occasion. At the end he said, “My son, I fear that you have been wiled by
a wicked and lewd woman. If those at Torbec could have testified to witness
of the vows, the case might be different. I do not say that you have lied,
but you have no proof.”