Another shudder passed through him. She stood, unpinning her cloak, and thrust it at him. "There—wrap yourself. And do not dispute and debate me!" she added. "Your bones rattle from the chill."
He rose, sweeping the mantle around his shoulders. "Nay, lady," he said meekly.
She hesitated, and then said, "She didn't hurt you?"
He turned a thumb toward the pile of stiffened leather. "Before I won my spurs, I used that for armor. Good boiled leather will turn off hard steel."
"It won't turn off a catarrh," she said. "Come back to dry at the fire, before you begin to cough and croak."
* * *
She could slit the wing-bone of a heron for the marrow, but she didn't know that green wood wouldn't burn. She had cut the hearts out of all the fowl, but could not clean them without direction, ending with duck down clinging to her nose, sneezing and struggling to bat it away. The necessity of a spit for roasting did not occur to her until she had already plucked both mallards.
Ruck sat with his mantle and hers both wrapped about him, squinting against the smoky fire she had built, offering advice when she applied to him. By the time they had reached their camp, he hadn't been able to control his shaking—he had to remove his wet linen. While he was encumbered by the need to hold both mantles close about him to cover himself, she became housewifely in her waywardness—if any housewife could be so inept at some of the tasks as she was.
Reasoning that she would soon tire of such an arduous game, he silenced his objections. But as the ducks roasted amid billowing smoke, burning on one side and raw on the other, she seemed in high humor, binding the heron's feet to an alder branch, undaunted by the fact that she couldn't reach high enough to prevent its severed neck from dragging the ground. She held another branch curved down, trying to bend the bird's knees over it.
Ruck watched her struggle for a few moments. "My lady—" he began.
She turned her head. The twig she was holding broke off in her hand and the branch snapped aloft, the heron's wings smacking her face as it passed. It hit the top of its arc, bounced off the branch, and fell into the sand.
Ruck kept his expression sedate, as if he hadn't even noticed.
She sighed, bending down to pick it up by the neck. "For to be tender, I thought to hang the bird a day or two."
"It's a witty idea," he acknowledged, "but we move on today. I'll tie it to the baggage."
She dropped the bird on the ground, as if someone else would pick it up, and came to sit down beside him. Ruck shifted his weight, withdrawing as well as he could without standing up to move. He was wary of her, that she might make love to him again. He didn't wish to be teased and tempted. He could not endure it. She was a rich and gentle lady; she might be delighted by the amusements and pleasures that men made with women in the court, but Ruck had never partaken of those pastimes. He knew his own limits.
As she settled cross-legged beside him like a lad, he realized that she herself had always been his armor against seduction. His true lady.
"Where go we?" she asked, turning up her eyes to him, pretty flower eyes, witching eyes.
"A safe place."
"How can we know where is safety? Even my own castle at Bowland—" She frowned. "Pestilence may be there, too, or in the country between. How can we know?"
Such feminine uncertainty made him feel protective and suspicious at once. His own responses to her he did not trust; how so, when he could look at her and see that she was ordinary and yet think her comely beyond telling?
He scowled at the ground before him. "I have heard me, madam, that there are some can go in the air at night—to far places, where they learn there what they please and return ere morning."
Her expression changed, drew stiff and harsh. "Why say you so to me?"
"Oft have I thought me that you're a witch." He said it outright. He was determined to know, yea or nay, even if she should slay him for it. "How else could you hold me so long—and still yet? If it be enchantment, I pray to God that you release me."
She pressed her lips together. Then she lifted her arms and cried, "White Paternoster, Saint Peter's brother, open Heaven's gates and strike Hell's gates and let this crying child creep to its own mother, White Paternoster, Amen!" She spread her fingers. She clapped three times, and dropped her hands. "There, tiresome monkish man—you're released from such spells as I have at my command."
With a shower of sand she stood up and stalked away. Ruck pulled the cloak up around him, leaning on his knees, watching her. She spun the spit—the first time she had done it—and looked with dismay on the blackened skin of the ducks.
"Mary and Joseph! Ruined!" She let go of the stick, and the awkwardly spitted fowls fell back with their burned sides to the fire. Then she cast Ruck a venomous look and held out her fingertips toward the fire, wriggling them and chanting some weird garble of sound.
She lifted the spit from the wobbly supports she'd made, and one carcass fell off into the flames.
"Well, it is no matter," she said lightly, fishing the duck from the coals and rolling it out onto the sand. She pushed it with a stick onto the cloth that they ate from and picked it up. She set the half-charred fowl before him, spreading out the cloth with great care and standing back with a flourish. "I have conjured three fiends and worked a great incantation, and enchanted it to be cooked to perfection."
He gazed down at it for a long moment. "Better to have turned the spit," he said wryly.
"You should have said so. I could have ordered Beelzebub to do it."
He lifted his eyes. She looked straight at him, with no warding for speaking the Devil's name, her mouth set, her eyes bright with challenge.
"Allegreto said my lady is a witch. And Lancaster's counselors. All at court said so."
Her lips tightened dangerously. "And what say you, knight?"
He stared at her, his imperious liege lady, beautiful and plain, with her jeweled gauntlets and her hair astray and a great black smudge of ash on her cheek. Her own cloak he wore about his shoulders, and the duck she had hunted lay before him. Her gyrfalcon held the soul of a dead lover, and her eyes, her eyes, they saw through him like a lance, and crinkled at the corners when she laughed.
"I don't know why I love you!" he exclaimed, sweeping the mantles around him as he rose. "I don't know why I swore to you; why I never accepted any man's challenge that might release me from it! Never did I want to be released. I do not still, if it cost my soul. And I can't say why, but that you've beguiled me with some hellish power."
"Flatterer!" she murmured, mocking, but her face was terrible and cold.
He turned away from her. "I know a place safe," he said. "Safe from pestilence and all hazard." He frowned at the river. "But I won't take a witch there."
"Well, then there is no more to be said." Her voice was cool and haughty. "If a woman bewhile a man, a witch must she be."
"If you say me you're not, my lady—" He paused. Ripples blew across the water, the cold wind stung his face. "I will believe you."
He waited, watching the water and the dark line of trees that marked the far shore of the Wyrale. The wind shifted, sending another sparkle of ripples at an angle to the first set, scenting the air about him with smoke.
He turned. She stood with her arms hugged about herself, her brows drawn together in icy disdain, black and arched, delicate as the tips of a nymph's infernal wings.
"Perhaps I am a witch," she said. "I tell you true, Green Sire—I've cheated demons, and still I am alive."
He could believe she had. He thought, were he some minor devil, that he would look on her and be afraid. She discharged power; he could dream that he saw it in a radiance about her, even here, even stripped of jewels and silver trappings, if he let his imagination run away with his sense.
"It's no sin to cheat demons," he said gruffly. "Only to yield service to them."
"My husband taught me many things. Readings from the Greek—astrology and alchemy and such, matters of natural phi
losophy, but never did we call on any power but God's mercy that I know. Test me on my knowledge, if you will."
"I have no command of such. Battle I know, and a sword. Nothing of natural philosophy."
She lifted her chin. "I make no protection-spells."
He did not wish her to be a witch. In his heart he longed to prove her innocent. But he said stubbornly, "By logic, that's no more than evidence that you desire not to make them."
She narrowed her eyes. "Then what proofs will you have, if you're so prudent? Will you bind me and throw me in the river, or have me to clasp a red-hot staff?" She pointed at his sword. "Heat it in the fire, then, and test me! And then perhaps I'll test you the same; Sir Ruck of No Place, for neither do I know why I took notice of you and gave you jewels in Avignon when you were but a shabby stranger to my eyes! Perhaps you worked a charm on me and stole my gems by magic craft!"
"Not I!" he uttered. "I'm no—" He stopped, his hands tightening in sudden realization.
She remembered. Embarrassed heat suffused him, thinking of the raw youth he had been, of how he had let Isabelle be taken from him—of the nameless lady of the falcon and her accusation of adulterous lust against him. "A strong memory, my lady has," he said grimly.
"I recall every evil deed I've done in my life," she said. "No great difficulty is it, to remember a good one."
"A good deed, lady? To shame me before the church? To name me adulterer in my thoughts?"
She paused. And then her lips curved upward gently, as if the recollection pleased her. "Yes...I remember that. I saved you."
"Saved me!" With a harsh chuckle he pulled the woolens close about him. "My lady saved me of a wife and a family, so did she, and set me for to live alone as I do." He swept a stilted bow. "May God grant you mercy for such a favor!"
"Wee loo, what a sad monkish man it is."
"I am no monk!" he exclaimed in irritation, turning his shoulder to her.
"In faith I'm glad to hear you know it." Her tone had warmed. "If I caused you any such injury as to compel you to live alone, Sir Ruck—I'll repair it and look about me in my household for a suitable spouse to comfort you."
He whirled back to face her. "Mock me not, my lady, if it please you!"
Her brows lifted at his vehemence. "I mean no mockery. I bethought me just this morn that I would look out a good-wife for to cherish you."
"You've forgotten," he said shortly. "I have me a wife, my lady."
For a clear instant her startlement was palpable. Then she gave him an accomplished smile, of the kind that court ladies excelled in. "But how is this? 1 had thought you a single man."
It seemed impossible that she did not remember, if she recalled the rest. But her face was puzzled and attentive, a faint shadow of question in the tilt of her head.
"My wife took nun's vows." Ruck inhaled cold air. His breath iced around him as he let it go. "She is—a sister of Saint Cloud." A little of the wonder and agony of it always crept into him when he spoke of Isabelle, thinking of the radiant image that forever knelt and prayed in his mind.
"Is she indeed?" Her voice became vague as she knelt beside the half-burned carcass of the duck. "And is she well there?"
"Yes," he said. "Very well."
"I'm pleased that she writes good word of her health," she said in an idle way as she pulled the wing of the duck between her thumb and forefinger, examining the scorched area.
"She writes me not," he added stiffly, "for her mind is fixed on God."
"Indeed, I'm sure your wife is a most holy personage," she said, inspecting the duck with immoderate concentration. "She married you, did she not?" she murmured.
His mouth grew hard. "I send money for her support each year. The abbess would advise me if anything were ill."
"For certain. There is no doubt of it." She looked up at him with a brilliant smile. "Now say me true, Sir Ruck—do you suppose this duck can be saved?"
He stalked away from her, leaning down to sweep up the heron from the sand as he passed it. "I'm dry now for to dress. I'll wash this when I'm geared, and roast it, so that we may eat before we starve of hunger."
* * *
In the thin peasant clothes, without furs or camel's hair, Cara could barely move her fingers. All night she had lain on the bare ground, the cold seeping up through her. She had not been able to curl tight enough to warm herself. It seemed that she ought to have died, but it was worse to be alive in this horrible country, with this dreadful companion, in these hideous clothes, and no other choice that she could fathom. If Allegreto felt the cold as she did, he had some way to conceal it. He never shivered. She wondered if he was a demon.
The bare trees and spiky bushes reached out claws to tear her. They had yet to see a living soul, or a dead one either, only one village in deserted ruin, but the overgrown path out of it must lead somewhere, she told herself. What she would do when she arrived there, she had no notion, but the hope of food and warmth was enough to move her.
Yesterday she had wished to die, but the process seemed so endless and miserable that she had given up on it. At first light, too cold to sleep, she had heard Allegreto rise, and had stumbled to her feet and trudged behind him without a word, without even a prayer, until the suspicion that she might be following a real demon to the abyss made her recite prayers with silent diligence.
He didn't change shape or disappear, though he stopped and waited for her when she fell behind. She limped up to him, and he made a face at her. With renewed hate for him, she lifted her head and passed by.
He gripped her from behind. Before Cara could even scream, sure that this was the end, that he would transform to a fiend and rend her to bits, he stopped her mouth with his hand.
She felt his breath rise and fall against her back, but he made no sound. Only when the thump of her own heartbeat slowed did she hear the chinking creak of a harnessed animal.
A woman's voice muttered, then gave a sharp command. The clear sound of a blade scraping against hard soil rang through the cold morning air.
Cara exhaled relief. No bandit, then, but an ordinary peasant. She waited for Allegreto to realize it and release her, but his body grew even more tense. He gripped her harder. She felt a tremor grow in him.
They stood there, frozen, for endless moments.
Finally she lifted her hand and pulled his away. He did not object; he freed her all at once, staring through the trees.
He was dazed by terror. She could see it. Like a rabbit panting beneath a circling hawk, he was arrested in place, only the white puffs of his breath showing life.
Cara began to laugh.
She could not help herself. The frenzied hilarity echoed about her, a sound halfway to weeping, an echo as if someone else answered.
He was afraid of the plague. She almost pitied him.
"I'll go first," she said. "I don't care how I die."
She hobbled on, but he caught her again. "No. Cara—wait."
He had such urgency about him that she halted. He held her hand, wrapping it between both of his, pressing a small bag into her fingers. "You stay here. Use this."
He left her standing alone with the herbal purse. With his silent ease and muddy leggings, he moved ahead. A thicket swallowed him, as this heavy English wood ate everything a few yards away.
Cara looked down at the bag. It was one of the perfumes against pestilence that he had about him always—he must have taken it back when he'd killed their bandit guard and his mistress. She threw it down. Even the thought repelled her, made her remember stumbling over the woman's body in the dark as Allegreto had urged her with him, the sick shame of being stripped of everything she wore down to her shift; the dread of worse, but by God's mercy the bandit's drab had put a violent stop to that, boxing her man's ears and covering Cara in her own filthy rags.
The woman had treated her with an uncouth kindness, talking in this ugly English speech, stroking the silk again and again as she paraded back and forth between lamplit bushes in Cara's gown
, almost pretty in her awe and pleasure in it. She must not have looked at Allegreto's black eyes, Cara thought, or she would have seen death watching her.
With a half-mad chuckle, Cara picked up the perfumed bag again. How amusing, that death was afraid of the plague. How gallant of him, to leave his charm to protect her. How courageous, to approach some poor peasant woman only trying to plow the icy clods!
She would save this for him, his little shield. She carefully dusted off the bits of leaf. She chuckled again, baring her teeth. God's body, any more of this reckless chivalry, and she would be like to think the Navona loved her.
"Monteverde!" His voice from the path ahead was triumphant. She limped quickly forward, favoring the worst of the blisters on both her heels. In a clearing the peasant plow and ox stood abandoned. Allegreto held up a food pouch with a grin.
"They ran before I showed myself," he said. "Perhaps your laughing sounded like some fiend out of the wood. It was ghastly enough."
She ignored his mockery. "There must be a village nearby," she said. "We can buy shelter, if you thought to recover more than your plague apple from the thieves and got my silver, too."
"Silver enough," he said, looking into the pouch. "But we shan't chance a village."
"Please yourself, wretched Navona, but give me my money. I don't fear pestilence so much that I want to sleep on the ground again tonight, or steal food from churls. I'm going to the village."
He glanced up at her. "Nay—you would not."
"I will."
"I tell you, I won't go in amongst people!"
"Then don't, for God's grace. We'll part here, and gladly. As soon as you give me my coin."
He turned a sullen shoulder. "Monteverde goose! You wouldn't last a day without me."
"What's that to you, Navona?" she snapped. "I don't even owe you thanks for freeing me—you and yours have done me more mischief than you could ever repay!"
"Go then!" He dropped the food pouch and strode away over the frozen dirt. "It's nothing to me. Nothing!"
"My silver!"