Without a word he knelt again before her and offered the ewer. When she had ceremoniously dipped the tips of her fingers, he cleared the cloth of her half-eaten meal. She stuffed her cold hands into her furs and watched him bed down in full armor beside his sword and helm. He turned his back to her, pillowing his head on a pack saddle.
She envied him his easy sleep. She felt as if she had never had enough.
* * *
Ruck ate her discarded orange by moonlight and the sound of wolves. A few hundred yards away he could just see the spark of the three fires that he kept going in their original camp, returning at intervals to add fuel and stand a brief watch. His men would reappear tonight, he felt, those who could. The fires were to reassure them—and give the impression of a well-manned camp to any others.
He would have moved farther from the flames, beacon and decoy that they were, but the wolves hunted close. He'd made Princess Melanthe's bed here in the dark. Cold, perhaps, but more likely to be overlooked if something human took him. The wolves would find her no matter where she hid.
He sucked the fruit, allowing the rich bitter juice to run on his tongue. He'd had oranges in Aquitaine a few times, at feasts and Christmas—but to eat one every day as she did was something utterly beyond his experience. And the penidia: he'd never tasted white sugar but once, a score and more Christmases gone, a child at the high board with his father and mother.
He held the fragile stick to his nose, smelling his own fingers, smoke and orange, and on the sugar a very faint scent of flowers. He closed his eyes and touched his tongue to it. It was a thousand times sweeter than the fruit, flooding his mouth with potent flavor, erotic as sin and springtime.
He lowered it and looked away from the fires, into the darkness. She was there, close to him, though he could see nothing but blackness.
He lifted his hands again. He did not eat the sugar stick, but sat with it cupped to his mouth, watching the dark and the fires, breathing the scent of a world beyond his reach.
EIGHT
An instant of sleep, it seemed, and the urgent voice was at Melanthe's ear, whispering out of the dark.
"Your Highness, we must go." He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. "Lady, wake you, all haste!"
His urgency drove through the waves of sleep. She rolled toward him, allowing frigid air to hit her face. In the moonlight he was leaning down over her, very close, his breath frosting about her face. She could hear voices somewhere in the night.
"We're marked," he murmured harshly, grasping her arm amid the furs, pulling her upright. "Come!" He didn't even give her time to rise. He thrust his arms beneath the furs, lifting her all in a bundle. Melanthe gave a small cry of surprise. His arms tightened as he made a hiss to silence her.
He carried her to the horse—and Melanthe wakened fully to the sense of things now. She took hold of the saddle and dragged the furs about her shoulders, struggling into position atop the lumpy bags as he pushed her up. He mounted in front of her. She fumbled to take hold of his sword belt beneath his mantle, grabbing it just in time to save herself as he spurred the destrier hard, clapping his hand over hers as the horse leapt forward.
They rode through the dark as if the Wild Hunt were at their heels. Melanthe saw nothing, her face pressed into his cloak as the freezing wind whipped her, clinging for her life with the reckless pace. He'd loaded the stallion with this in his mind, for though she bumped and swayed, the bags formed a slight hollow that let her keep her seat. She locked both her hands in his belt and felt his glove gripped tight over them, stiff leather and freezing metal pressing her arms into the hard plates at his belly.
Her chin jolted against his shoulder armor, padded only by his mantle. The horse twisted and turned in the darkness on some frenzied path of its own, but the knight rode as if he had the mind of the beast itself, holding her with him when the strength of her own fingers began to fail.
A sudden falter threw her forward onto his back. The stallion stumbled and came almost to a halt, the marsh sucking at its hooves. With a shaft of horror Melanthe felt its haunches begin to sink beneath her—before she could find the voice to cry out, the knight let go of her and raised both arms. She felt his body drive; he gave a great shout, and the horse reared, leaping and floundering forward. Melanthe grappled to keep her hold, cutting her fingers, pinching them painfully against the sharp-edged metal belt as he impelled the destrier forward into another rearing leap.
With a jolt and a heave, the horse scrambled free. Melanthe gave a faint mew, holding on as the animal broke again into a gallop. The knight's hand closed on hers, locking her fingers into his glove, crushing her fingers between his. She hid her face against his back, concentrating on the pain, welcoming it as the only thing that assured her she would not fall.
After an eternity of this mad race, she felt the stallion's endurance wane. She could hear its laboring breath and feel the slowing pace. She cracked her eyes open and saw the barest hint of dawn light. They plunged into the gloom of tall trees, the silhouettes of their trunks black against gray mist.
The horse shied, a great leap sideways that nearly hurled her loose from her clinging perch. The knight grabbed her, holding her arm so tight that she gave a desperate squeak. He dragged her upright, settling the horse to a walk.
It came to an abrupt halt. He swore quietly on Saint Mary.
Melanthe was panting as hard as the horse. She couldn't seem to command her fingers. They were frozen to his belt and armor; she could not spread them open, she could only droop against his back, staring mindlessly at the barely perceptible dawn.
A bird called amid the barren branches, and suddenly motion returned to her fingers. "Gryngolet!" she gasped, shoving herself awkwardly away.
"I cut the falcon free," he said softly. "Be still."
He was looking ahead of them. Melanthe realized that the horse's ears were pricked—she closed her hands again on his belt, but he brushed them aside and dismounted, dropping the destrier's reins over its head to trail on the ground.
"Don't move," he murmured, and drew his sword. She watched him duck off the faint track into a thicket of branches, each step a gentle chink.
Then, in the growing light, she saw it. Between the winter-bare twigs, a spot of bright yellow and blue.
Allegreto.
Her heart began to pound as if it would explode. She held her bloody hands around her stomach, huddling in the furs.
She heard the knight's quiet steps move about beyond the tangle of branches. Allegreto was utterly motionless—hiding—she couldn't see him, only that splash of color through the thicket and the mist. She had a horrible fear for her knight walking into murderous ambush.
"Don't kill him!" she cried fiercely in French. "Or I'll see you flayed alive."
The footsteps paused.
"It's too late, madam," the knight said in a cold voice. "He's dead."
Melanthe froze in place. She stared at the patch of yellow and blue.
Then she slid from the horse, pushing back branches, shoving them away as they whipped in her eyes and stung her cheeks. But the knight met her, stepping solidly before her, turning her with a rough push.
"You don't want to see it," he said in English.
She turned back, trying to pass. "I must see him!"
"No, madam." He held her firmly. "Wolves."
Her panting breath frosted between them as she stared up into his eyes. He shifted his gaze, tilting his head toward something beside her.
She followed his look. On a low branch, brushing her skirt, hung a tangle of black hair dirtied with blood and fallen leaves.
"Your maid," he said quietly. "Her gown is there, too." Melanthe turned her head aside. Nausea swept over her. She tore herself from the knight's grasp and floundered through the brush. Leaning against the stallion's steaming flank, she bent over, shuddering. But the tangle of hair had clung to her skirt—she shook it frantically, panting in great hysterical gulps. Still it clung. The cold air seemed to draw slim
y fingers over her flushed cheeks, as if the bloody hairs touched her face. She shrieked, flapping the azure wool, shaking harder and harder, but the black tangle adhered to her. She turned, as if she could run from it, and collided with the knight.
"Off!" she cried, her voice peaking shrilly. "Get it off me!" She held out her skirt, her hands trembling. When he hesitated, she screamed at him, "There! There! Do you see it?"
He reached down and plucked the black mass from her skirt, then took a step back, casting it away. Melanthe didn't look to see where it went.
"Is there more?" She lifted her dress toward him with a frenzied move. "I feel it!"
The knight pulled off his gloves and put his hand on her shoulder. He bent a little and with his other hand smoothed over her skirts. He turned her, running his bare palm briskly over all of the woolen folds, her sides, her back and hips. "No, my lady. No more."
She retched, falling to her knees, holding her hands over her stomach.
"Oh, God," she moaned, and began to laugh. "Allegreto!"
The crazed hilarity echoed in the barren wood. Ruck stood over her, looking down at the vulnerable white nape of her neck beneath the bedraggled netting that barely contained her hair. He retrieved the furs she'd dropped. Kneeling, he wrapped them about her and lifted her onto Hawk as he'd done before. She made no resistance, reaching for him even as he mounted. She slid her arms around him, clinging hard, still laughing and sobbing dry half sobs.
* * *
Allegreto and the maid would haunt him, Ruck feared. He chose not to linger even to bury the remains, anxious to lengthen the distance between themselves and the camp. His men had indeed come back in the night, some of them—bound and at knifepoint, held by the felons who haunted this ungoverned wilderness. He hadn't waited to watch. Little enough torture it would take to loosen his soldiers' tongues about whose camp it was and what a prize was ripe for the taking in Princess Melanthe. He could do no more for his hostage men than he could do for Allegreto and the maid. His whole charge lay now with the princess.
She clung to his waist, leaning hard against him as he guided Hawk through the woods. Over the soft thud of the stallion's hooves on the damp, littered ground, he heard her breathing, still punctuated by small gasps and shudders, the residue of her fearful fit of grief for her young lover.
His frosting breath curled about his face and vanished. In hopes of confounding pursuit, he made for the priory at the headland instead of going east out of the Wyrale, but as the morning rose a fear grew in him that he had lost his direction, for still he could not hear the bells.
Near midday they came abruptly out of the wood to the edge of a low cliff, where the wind off the sea blew in his face. Below, the forest thinned to bogs and fenny copses that ended in a range of dunes; beyond, the western sea, running brisk with whitecaps. To the south, far across the estuary of the Dee, the Welsh peaks made a line of misty gray.
He turned Hawk away from them, heading north along the ledge. Ruck was uneasy with the wilderness silence. On the back slope of the hill the land dropped down to an inlet of another great river. Rising above the leafless birches, the square bell tower of rose-colored stone marked the priory not a mile away. And yet he heard nothing.
He brought Hawk to a quick halt at the edge of the trees. In a burst of noise a flock of wild geese took wing from the deserted garden plots.
Beyond the fallow earth lay the priory, sharp sandstone walls rising clear of the wasteland, the imposition of God on the wilderness. The bell tower stood solid and lofty, crowned foursquare by spires, with the domestic ranges huddling in its shadow. Ruck hadn't seen the priory for six years, and then only for a night's lodging before the monks ferried him across the river. Sixteen habited brothers and a few laymen had occupied it then, a small house—but at least they had kept the garden plots neat and enriched, and their livestock fed.
Now only a single white goose, wings clipped, was left behind on the empty field. It waddled toward where Hawk stood, honking impatiently.
"Wait here with the horse," he said softly. He dismounted, tossing Hawk's reins over a branch. Halfway across the field the goose paused, turning a bright eye toward Ruck.
The ferry landing was deserted. One of the monks' sturdy rafts lay beached, tied by a thick, sandy snake of hemp to its high-tide mooring.
But there were no bells.
The white goose poked and prodded in the open ground. When he was sure Nones had passed, with no bell rung and no sign or sound of human voice, Ruck finally decided to chance crossing to church porch. The goose followed him doggedly. He shoved at the outer door. It gave easily beneath his effort, squeaking wide on strap hinges. Beyond, the church doors stood open, revealing the tall, stark void rising in ranks of double arches that demanded the eye follow them to the great window where the white light shone down, jeweled with the small figures of saints.
Ruck swept a wary glance about the sanctuary. It stood silent after the echoes of his entry died away.
He walked to the side aisle. The sound of his steps on the stone-tiled floor came back in more reverberations, each finished by the jangle of his spurs.
He unbarred the side door and opened it onto the cloister. The monks' carrels and book cupboards stood unused, but there was a volume lying open upon a lectern, with parchment beside it and an inkpot still uncapped, as if a black-robed figure had left it just a moment before. Loose chickens scratched in the dirt.
"Oy!" Ruck called. "Hail, good monks!"
He had no answer, nor truly expected one. Moving quickly, he crossed the cloister, ducking through a passage that brought him out on the stableyard behind the guesthouse and refectory.
The livestock was missing, but he saw no sign of struggle. There were still cattle tracks in the mud, a few days old at most. A green-glazed jug sat on a bench, full of soured milk.
Ruck swore softly on Saint Julian. He strode back and stopped, looking hard at each window over the cloister arches. The parchment on the abandoned lectern rustled lightly in the silent air.
Ruck walked to the podium. He put his hand on the parchment. He was no scholar to have studied Latin; he read French and English, but little more. Nevertheless he ran his gloved finger down what was clearly a letter, scowling over each word. He skimmed the salutation, which directed the missive to the bishop of Chester. From liturgies he recognized the words for "humble brethren beseech you," and "hear us," and a reference to "after Christmas." With difficulty he followed a passage describing a brother—the cellarer, he thought—a trip, the village of Liverpool, and something about a swine and candles.
The next sentence said that all at Liverpool were dead or ailing.
Ruck read it again, his finger on each word. Mortuum, he was certain of that. Omnis and invalidus he knew, also. He could not translate it any other way.
A slow dread began to grow in him as he passed his finger down the page. Miasma malignus. Pestis.
He pushed away so hard and suddenly that he overturned the lectern. It crashed upon the stone, the dry inkpot shattered. Chickens clucked and fluttered overtop one another in alarm. Ruck walked swiftly along the cloister. The cemetery lay beyond the eastern range.
In the open ground there were ten new graves. He stood by the wall and put his forehead down on his locked fists.
He tried to conjure Isabelle's glowing features, tried to ask her to beg God to spare His children. Or if the pestilence must come again to castigate mankind, to let it take Ruck this time, so that he would not have to watch the whole world die around him once more. He was as wicked as any other; he deserved affliction as surely as the next man.
And yet he did not mean it. He couldn't see Isabelle in his mind, not anymore, and the willful flame of life burned stubbornly, deaf to fear and fueled by flesh—he realized amid his despair that he was hungry. The Princess Melanthe was in his charge, another link to human clay. She was worldly passion, hot desire—and like enough she would be glad to eat, as well.
* * *
> He caught up Hawk's reins, untangling them from the brush. "Come, there's no cause for us to stay here."
He said nothing of plague. She asked nothing, only looked down at him from the pillion with strange innocence, as if she didn't comprehend the truth of their situation even yet. She held the furs awkwardly about her shoulders, her fingers pale and stained with dried blood beneath their load of glittering rings. Her eyes seemed sooty dark instead of clear, tiny lines at the corners that he hadn't noticed before. The cold made her cheeks red, marring their smooth whiteness. With wonder he realized that she was not now so very beautiful as he had thought.
No longer a princess—only a woman, not even comely, but cold and apprehensive. And instead of repelling him, it made all his senses rise a hundredfold in response, hot greed to protect and possess her, things beyond honor or vows.
With a sudden move he turned his face away from her. He gathered Hawk's reins and led the horse out of the trees down to the ferry landing. Across the river Mercy, a mile distant, the castle of Liverpool was a silent gray shadow; no ships lying in the water below it; no sign of life that he could discern on the other side.
"We must cross while the tide runs in," he said, halting the destrier.
He raised his arms to her. She shifted her skirts, showing a flash of her white hose and green long-toed boots. She put her hands on his shoulders, but he barely felt that through his armor; his mind was fastened on the brief image of her boots and ankles, trimmed in silver and fine as an elven's slippers.
He released her instantly, but she didn't move away, only took hold of his sword belt and stood beside him, as if loath to let go. The shock of her lover's death, the sudden transition in circumstances from rich comfort to cold peril—he wouldn't have blamed any woman who succumbed to distress. But since the fit had left her, she seemed subdued, even sleepy, indifferent to time or destination.