"You have a charm?"
"No. None of man's making."
"What, then?" Allegreto urged. "What protects you?"
"Nothing." Ruck frowned at the sandy track ahead.
"It must be something. Tell me." When he got no answer, he raised his voice. "Tell me, Englishman!"
"I know only that all about me died, and I lived," Ruck said at last. "In the last pestilence my man sickened. I stayed with him when the priest refused to come, but it never touched me."
"The hunchback? He sickened and lived? He's protected, too?"
Ruck shrugged.
Allegreto urged his horse a little closer. "Perhaps your presence confers some immunity."
"Perhaps." Ruck looked at him with faint amusement. "Stay close, whelp."
He kept the company to a brisk pace, not caring to tarry long outside the sound of bells and habitation. But the mist yet lay heavy in the late morning, and Princess Melanthe demanded frequent rests from the sway of the litter. Ruck held to his austere outer composure, but he smoldered inside. He was regretting his decision to chance the Wyrale with such a small guard. This persistent vapor could hide too much. It seemed to cling, salty and still, hanging as close as Allegreto clung to Ruck. The company said little, but he could feel their nerves, and Allegreto was strung as tight as a lutestring. Only Princess Melanthe seemed careless of the atmosphere's malevolent influence. Ruck half wondered if she'd called the mist herself.
They left the forest to cross the marsh far later in the afternoon than he'd intended. Moorland stretched away into white nothingness ahead. The vapor closed behind them. When the maid sent word forward that Her Highness wished to pause again, he threw Allegreto's reins to the sergeant-at-arms and dropped back to ride abreast of the litter.
"Your Highness, I pray you," he said to the litter's closed drape, "I advise all haste to continue."
"Indeed, then let us do so," she agreed in English, a disembodied voice from the curtain.
Such an easy capitulation was not what he had expected. He was left with an unfocused sense of impatience, a restlessness that seemed to call for something more to be said.
"I mind your safe conduct, madam," he said, as if she had argued with him.
Her fingertips appeared, swathed in ermine, but she didn't pull back the drape as the litter rocked along. "I submit myself to your will, Green Sire," she answered modestly.
He gazed at the fine elegance of her fingers and looked down at his own mailed glove resting atop Hawk's saddle bow. The contrast, the delicacy of her hand set against his metal-clad, cold-leather fist, sent a surge of carnal agitation through his body.
In a low voice, past the hard rock in his throat, he murmured, "Passing fair you are, my lady." He stared at the reins in his hand. "My will burns me."
As soon as he said it he wished it retrieved—repelled and aroused at once by his own boldness.
Her fingers disappeared. "Faith, sir," she said in a different tone, "I don't care for such crude, rough men as you. Study on my gentle Allegreto and save your love-talking for your horse."
For a long instant Ruck listened to the steady thud of Hawk's hooves in the sand. Her words seemed to pass over him—coolly spoken, unreal.
Then mortification flashed through him, a fountain of chagrin. He closed his fist hard on the reins: his large and rough and crude fist, green and silver in her colors, darkened with mud in her service, stiff with cold, with shame and passion.
"I am at your command, Your Highness," he said rigidly and spurred Hawk to the fore.
* * *
As Cara prepared Melanthe's bed, she said, "My lady's grace took pleasure in the cockles this morning?"
Melanthe looked up from painting silver gilt on Gryngolet's talons. Her pot gleamed in the light of the half-closed lanthorn. "No—I hadn't the stomach for cockles this day. I made a present of them to our knight."
Cara gave it all away—all of it—in the instant of horror that crossed her features. It was gone in a moment, but too late. They both knew. Cara sat still as stone.
Melanthe smiled. "Do you suppose he'll enjoy them?"
"My lady—" The maid seemed to lose her voice.
"You're a very foolish girl," Melanthe said softly. "I believe I shall loose Allegreto on you."
Cara wet her lips. "My sister." She whispered it. "They have my sister, the Riata."
Melanthe hid a jolt of shock at the news. "Then your sister is already dead," she said. "Look to your own life now."
"My lady—ten years I've served you faithfully."
Melanthe gave a quiet laugh. "It takes but a moment to turn treacherous." She placed a careful brush stroke. "Yes, I believe I'll have Allegreto kill you. Not tonight. I'm not certain when. But soon. You've served me faithfully for such a span of years, I shall be kind. You needn't dread it for long."
Cara was sitting on her knees, staring at the pillow in her hands, panting with fear. Melanthe stirred the silver paint and continued with her task.
"You love your sister greatly," Melanthe said in a mild tone.
Cara was shaking visibly. She nodded. A single teardrop of terror gathered and tumbled down her face.
"Such love is ruinous. You placed your own sister in jeopardy by showing it. Now you're both doomed."
Cara's hands squeezed rhythmically on the pillow. Suddenly she turned her face to Melanthe. "You're the spawn of Satan, you and the rest of them," she hissed low. "What do such as you know of love?"
"Why, nothing, of course," Melanthe said, placing a careful stroke of silver. "I take good care to know nothing of it."
SEVEN
Allegreto's dread of plague was such that the youth bedded down as close as possible to his living talisman, so close that his hand curled, childlike, around Ruck's upper arm. What his mistress thought of this desertion was left unsaid. Ruck didn't see her. As usual, she left her litter only after her tent was pitched, shifting from one silken cage to the other without showing herself.
As Ruck lay in the dark with the fire fading, staring upward into nighttime oblivion, he had a bitter thought that it might have been to his advantage that Allegreto had left the tent, if Ruck had possessed foresight enough to discourage this inconvenient transfer of the youth's attachment to himself. If she'd liked such crude rough men as he. But she did not, and Allegreto went quickly to sleep in the blue mask, firmly holding to Ruck's arm, as effective as any governess in protecting his lady.
Not that she required protection, beyond a scornful tongue and that mocking laugh.
Ruck attempted to form a prayer, asking forgiveness of Isabelle and God for his carnal lust. But his prayers were never of the inspired kind; he couldn't think of much more to avow than he was deeply repentant and would do better.
Not that he ever did do better, for every confession day he had a penance laid upon him for lusting in his heart after women. Sometimes for the mortal sin of easing himself, too, which he would have done now, at the price of barring from communion and any number of Ave Marys and hours on his knees before the altar, if Allegreto had not had such tight hold of his right arm. He was not a godly man; his mind went where it would and his body had limits to its rectitude, but he had dishonored himself, and Isabelle, too, this day.
He had the Princess Melanthe to thank for saving him from committing real adultery—and that only because she didn't care for rough men. It was no virtue of his own that had saved him. If she were to call him now into her tent, he would go.
He felt sullen and ashamed, thinking of it. He should get away from her. He should go home, having nowhere else pressing to go at the moment.
* * *
He slept badly, dreaming plague dreams, old dreams, in which he was lost and searching. The howl of a wolf woke him, shaking him out of uneasy dozing. He lifted his head. The fire had gone to dead coals—there was no sign of a guard. The wind had come up, blowing off the vapor. By the height of the moon over the moorland, it was three hours to dawn. Pierre should already have woken
him to share the last and most arduous watch. With a silent curse Ruck slipped out of his warm place. Allegreto's hand fell away from him.
He stood up in the frigid night, sliding his feet into icy boots. He'd ordered a double watch—but by moonlight he could see the whole company sound asleep. The hourglass glinted softly next to Pierre's place, white sand all fallen through. A loose tie fluttered on Princess Melanthe's tent.
He gave the fur-covered lump that was Pierre a light kick. It did not move. Ruck leaned down and tossed the mantle away.
A smell of vomit assailed him. Pierre lay with a terrible arch to his twisted back, his dead eyes rolled up to show the whites in the dim moonlight, a sheen of sweat on his face and his open mouth full of dark spittle. Ruck swallowed a gag and threw the fur back over him.
He turned away and stood for a full minute, drinking draughts of clear night wind. The fear of plague held him frozen on the edge of frenzy: the lifelong terror—to be left alone, to be the last, to die that way...
The moon hung over him, cold and sane. He stared at it, struggling with himself.
Allegreto was sitting up, a faint outline against the light mist that still clung to the grass. Ruck felt the youth staring at him.
He suddenly began to tremble, letting go of his breath.
Not plague. It was not plague. The stink was wrong.
Ruck had smelled pestilence until the fetid black odor had burned itself into his brain—and this was not it. The loathsome stench of plague made poor Pierre's disgorgement seem halfway sweet. Ruck looked down at the shapeless mass and saw what his mind had not recorded a moment before—the white shapes of two opened cockleshells lying on the dark ground.
Horrible enough, if Pierre had stolen spoilt cockles and then choked on his own vomit, unable to call for help—but not plague. Not plague. Ruck took a deep breath. The reality of his man's death was beginning to reach him. Pierre, who had been with him for thirteen years, who filched small things, never more than a penny's worth, who'd learned to squire from Ruck, who'd always been an enigma, mute, faithful as a dog was faithful, but with no outward sign of affection.
Ruck glanced toward Allegreto. The youth was no longer visible sitting up against the mist. Ruck hoped he'd gone back to sleep. He bent down and gathered the furs about Pierre, keeping the small body wrapped close. His mind flashed over possibilities, trying to think of a way to hide this and prevent panic. Allegreto's fears and mask had the rest on tenterhooks—Ruck saw now that he should not have suffered any talk of plague at all.
"Is he dead?"
The youth's suffocated voice startled him, coming from behind, at a distance. Another man stirred.
"Of bad shellfish," Ruck said quietly. "He couldn't call us. He choked, God give his soul rest."
"You lie," Allegreto hissed. "I saw him when you lifted the mantle! He's warped with death agonies. Does he have the swellings?"
"No. Come see for yourself." Ruck laid the body back down and threw off the cover. Now that he recognized what it was not, the smell was bearable.
Allegreto stumbled backward with a little cry, waking another man.
"Silence!" Ruck hissed. "Listen to me. There's no black eruption. The smell's not of plague, but only plain vomit. Not six hours past he was fit and walking like the rest of you. He stole cockles from the hermit and ate them. The shells are here on the ground. None other ate such, did they?"
No one answered. He knew they were all awake now. He tossed the blanket back over Pierre's dead face.
"He choked to death," he said softly. "It killed him too quickly to be plague."
"No, I saw it take a priest in half an hour," came a shaky voice from somewhere in the shadows. "There were no black boils. He fell dead over the man he'd come to shrive."
"It's winter," said someone else. "The cockles are sweet now."
"The stench is wrong," Ruck said. They simply stared at him.
"Henri," he snapped in a low voice. "You quitted watch without the next man wakened." He took a stride, hauling the culprit out of his coverings by his collar. Before Henri had a chance to cower away, Ruck backhanded him so hard that he fell over his heels. "Tom Walter!" He scanned the dark for his sergeant. The man scrambled up. "Tie him, and John who was on duty with him. Ten lashes at first light. Relight the fire. And if any speak so loud as to wake Her Highness, tie him, too, and he'll have twenty." He swung his hand toward Allegreto. "Watch this one, also."
He paused, to see if they would defy him, but Walter was moving toward John to obey. Allegreto was only a motionless shape in the dark. Ruck looked toward the tent and saw a pale face thrust between the drapes at the entrance. He lowered his voice to a bare murmur. "My lady—she's not been disturbed?"
"Indeed, she has." It was the princess's amused voice. "How could I sleep in this uproar? What passes? Where is Allegreto?"
Her courtier made a faint sound, barely articulate.
"Your Highness, it's nothing," Ruck said. "I beg you will return to your rest."
Instead she pulled a cloak about her and emerged from the tent, standing alone without her gentlewoman. "What is it?" she asked, in sharper tone.
"My squire has died in the night."
She sucked in a breath, staring at him.
"My lady!" Allegreto's moan was like grief, like a plea for mercy, as if she could save him. "The pestilence."
"He didn't die of the pestilence, Your Highness," Ruck said. "The smell is wrong."
"The smell!" she repeated blankly.
"Yes, my lady. Have you never smelled the plague stench?"
She stood silent a moment, then lifted her hand. "Uncover him," she said.
"No, there is no need. He grew sick on cockles," he said, "and gagged to death."
"Uncover him," she snapped.
Setting his jaw, Ruck leaned down. Let her look then, if she must, and choke on her revulsion.
But she didn't cringe back from the body. Instead, she went forward, gesturing. "A light."
None of the men moved. Ruck finally squatted down and lit the lantern himself. He opened the light on the corpse. Princess Melanthe gazed down at it. She knelt and lifted Pierre's stiffened hand. "Poor man. He suffered, I fear."
For a moment Ruck thought it was real, this sympathy, the echo of regret in her voice a true emotion. Then she rose, turning toward Allegreto.
"Come to bed, my love. There's nothing to be done for him." She walked toward her young courtier. Allegreto made a gurgling gasp and backed away from her. She beckoned.
"Come, don't be foolish. The man died of cockles. Come lie down with me now."
"Lady—" It was a whisper of horror.
Ruck watched her advancing slowly upon him, driving him to frenzy on purpose. Only for the cruelty of it—she must be as certain as Ruck there was no pestilence, or she would not have touched Pierre.
"Don't you love me, Allegreto?" she murmured in a hurt voice, moving toward him with her hand extended. "But I love you still."
Allegreto groaned, beyond any reason. He scrambled back from her. "Don't touch me!" he cried. "Get away!"
She stopped. Over the moonlit distance he had made between them, they gazed at each other.
"I won't come," he said in a deathly voice. "I won't come."
Princess Melanthe swayed slightly. She turned to Ruck. "Help me—help me to my place. I feel weak."
Before Ruck could respond, she fell to her knees. He moved on instinct, catching her limp body in his arms as she toppled. He rose with her, shocked beyond feeling, staring down at the pale column of her exposed throat.
Fear hit him again like a hammer. He carried her, seeing nothing but her arm hanging lax over his in the moonlight, hearing nothing but his heart in his ears, turning blindly for the tent. As he laid her down on the featherbed, he called for her gentlewoman—he thought he shouted it, but he couldn't hear anything over his heart.
No one answered. In the utter blackness of the tent he could see nothing; he groped for a lantern, sparking th
e flint and steel by fumbling. As the light rose, he looked toward her.
She was smiling at him. She sat up on her elbows and lifted her finger to her lips for silence.
Ruck's jaw went slack—and then stiffened in outrage. He shoved himself off the ground, standing with his head against the silken roof. She raised her hand, as if to hold him, but Ruck was too furious. He took up the lantern, flung back the cloth, and strode outside in a black temper.
"My lady is in fine health," he uttered through his teeth, jerking his head toward Pierre's body. "I need two men to bury him."
In the tallow light no one moved. Allegreto shrank into the shadows, and even the sergeant took a step backward.
"He'll haunt us," someone muttered.
"Curse you all!" Ruck snarled. "I want no help from a pack of cowards, then. I'll leave him myself with the monks." He lifted Pierre again, turning toward Hawk. "Loosen his fetters," he ordered the nearest man, who covered his mouth and nose with his hood as he obeyed.
The horse disliked the load, flaring its nostrils and drawing in suspicious noisy draughts of air, but Hawk was accustomed enough to the smell of death to bear his burden. Ruck took his lead and turned him toward the trickle of hazy moonlight that fell onto the track, heading toward a dim black line of trees in the distance, silently asking pardon of God and Pierre's soul for what he was about to do.
There were no monks, not within his reach, for though he knew there was a priory at the headland, it was yet so far away that he couldn't hear the bells. But he wanted no more of these whining fears of hauntings and pestilence. In his anger he wanted isolation in which to lay Pierre to rest. He wanted the comfort of driving a spade deep in the ground until he was weary with it, his muscles hurting instead of his spirit.
He wasn't afraid of ghosts—he'd buried all his family in unconsecrated ground and found their only haunting to be the gentle, lost voices in his plague dreams. Poor silent Pierre didn't even have a voice to haunt dreams, unless his soul found one with the wild wolves that ran free in this place, the way he had never been able to run in life.