Lancaster lifted his brows. "Can't explain it?" He burst out in caustic laughter and held his head. "Has she bewitched us or besotted us?"
"Send for the inquisitor," his brother said. "If she's a sorceress, he'll discover it."
"And meanwhile? There's no time for the inquisitor." Lancaster rested his head against the throne. "Much as I'd like to see her burn." He drew a deep breath and sighed. "But here—I find I can't execute my green companion-in-arms, in spite of my aching head and dislocated joint. I have a fellow feeling for him, the love-struck ass. Moreover, it provokes riot."
"Nor let him walk free," Knolleys said.
"Nor let him free, for if he wills it or not, the men gather to him, and with the temper of the nobles, we'd have disorder enough to burn this city down. I want no rivals to my command. I need my men to fight France, not one another."
Ruck knelt silently, awaiting his fate, watching his future dissolve before his eyes.
Lancaster gazed at him with that sleepy speculation. "Tell me, Green Sire, what is it you hoped to gain of me, that you joined my court?"
"My liege..." Ruck's voice trailed off. He hadn't envisioned that his moment with Lancaster would come this way.
"Position? Lands? A fine marriage? I hear that the ladies admire you."
"No." Ruck lowered his face. "I ask nothing of you now, my lord."
"And I offer nothing," Lancaster said, "for I want no more of you. I've detained Princess Melanthe at the gate, so that you'll be seen alive and well to escort her into the city. At dawn you must be off, with your princess and all her train." He smiled sourly. "And look to see me at the quay, to bid you both a cordial farewell."
* * *
It was for her protection, the message said. Melanthe pulled her cloak close about her in the cold darkness outside the city gate. Her little hunting entourage huddled before her. She could see torches and hear drunken shouting from within.
If she'd had another choice, she would have turned away. The message—and signs of riot inside—were ominous. She didn't think real trouble had erupted yet, but it might flare at any moment. Her presence alone might be enough to spark it. She doubted that Lancaster's message to await an escort at the gate had been sent with loving concern for her safety.
Gryngolet fluffed her feathers to keep out the cold, perching quietly on the saddlebow. The greyhound sat shivering. Melanthe looked into the blackness behind her, and admitted wryly to herself that nothing stopped her at the moment from fading into the gloom, as free as she dreamed of being, except for the mystery of how to live as anything but what she was.
"My lady—" One of the guardsmen came striding from beneath the black bulk of the gatehouse over the bridge. "Your escort."
Even as he spoke, the arch brightened with the flare of many torches. At the head of a score of armed men her green knight rode toward her beneath the gate.
The torches behind him lit his mount's breath and his own in transparent gusts of frost. He wore no armor now, only a light helmet over a bandage that shone white across his forehead. The bridge thudded with the sound of hooves and boots.
He never looked directly at her. With a perfunctory bow he made a motion to the men to surround her horse. Placing half of the company before them, and half behind, he wheeled his mount next to hers, swept his sword from its sheath, and shouted the order to march.
She rode beneath the archway beside him. Inside the city walls, the streets were full of men. They stared and shouted and ran beside the company. Melanthe kept her eyes straight ahead and up. Her palfrey felt very small next to the destrier, and the score of men a thin wall against violence. In some of the side streets other knights sat their mounts, swords unsheathed, staring malevolently as her escort passed. Limp bodies lay in doorways—drunk or dead, she could not tell. The high bulk of the keep itself was a welcome sight, until she saw the crowd milling and pressing below it.
The castle gates opened slowly amid noise and disordered motion. He yelled an order, and the men-at-arms began to move, stabbing into the crowd ahead of them. In the light of the torches her cavalcade pushed through the mob. Her palfrey danced along beside the war-horse, taking hopping, frightened steps, half-rearing. Melanthe gave the horse a quick spur, and it sprang off its haunches. The gate was overhead at last—and they were through, passing into the inner courtyard. The gates boomed closed behind them, shutting out a rising roar.
Her knight dismounted and came to her, offering his knee and arm. Melanthe took his hand for support. Hers was shaking past her ability to control it. As her feet touched the ground, she said, "You were long in coming. I'm nearly frozen through."
She didn't wish him to think that she shivered from fear. Nor did she thank him. She felt too grateful; she felt as if she would have liked to stand very close to him, he seemed so sure and sound, like the enclosing walls of the keep, a circle of sanctuary in the disorder. For that she gave him a sweeping glance of disdain and started to turn away.
"My lady." He looked at her with an expression as opaque as a falcon's steady cold stare. "I'm to escort you from here without delay. We leave at dawn, upon the tide."
"Ah." She smiled at him, because he expected her to be shocked. "We're cast out? Crude—but what does an Englishman know of subtlety? Indeed, this is excellent news. You'll make all preparations for our departure to England and attend my chamber at two hours before daybreak."
His face was grim. He bent his head in silent assent.
"The duke has denied you, then?" she asked lightly. Melanthe held out her hands in the flicker of torches. "Green Sire, swear to me now as your liege, and I will love you better."
His mouth grew harder, as if she offended him. "My lady, I was sworn to your service long since. Your man I am, now and forever." He held her eyes steadily. "As for love—I need no more of such love as my lady's grace has shown me."
Melanthe raised her chin and shifted her look past him. Allegreto stood there, watching with a smirk.
She bestowed a brilliant smile upon her courtier and lowered her hands. "Allegreto. Come, my dear—" She shivered again, turning, pulling her cloak up to her chin. "I want my sheets well warmed tonight."
FIVE
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 amid 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 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 perfectly 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 Lancaster at present.
"Richard of Bowland, God save 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 not a word of himself."
"My very dear and mighty lord, your son was in great good humor when I took leave of him," 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 haven't 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 didn't 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—don't you have 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 haven't 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 Perrers 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 t
hought, for the dislocate shoulder and humiliation she had caused. Perhaps 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?"
"No, sire, by your leave. Perhaps, in the fullness of time, at God's behest 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.