Bassinger appeared to have a good deal of trouble swallowing her rude interruption, but after a moment of offended silence, he agreed. "Your Highness, Ruadrik of Wolfscar led the way."
"Well, I think I would have heard of him, had he led the way, but I can believe that he was in the company. And for this service, I presume he was rewarded?"
"He was made a knight of the Bath, and his lands extended from here to the abbey in the south, and the lakes in the east, and the coast on the west, and two miles north."
"Do you know you who held these lands before him?"
"Your Highness, I'm no lawyer," Bassinger pronounced solemnly.
"They were escheated of a part of Lancaster that had no heir, my lady, and held by the abbey," the younger William said, "but the king suspended the escheat and gave them to Wolfscar for reward."
"And the license to fortify? These lands don't appear rich enough for such a castle."
William Bassinger would have spun out another tale, of Scots and battle heroics, but William Foolet cut him short. "There's a mine for iron in the hills, Your Highness. The king gave my lord's father the income without encumbrance for the building of the castle, for there was no northern defense."
"Iron?" Melanthe looked about her at the silk and cushions with skepticism. "A very rich iron mine it must be," she said.
The fool's unfoolish eyes regarded her. She waited. "There's gold in it, too, my lady, and silver," he said at last, reluctantly.
Melanthe steepled her fingers and rested her chin on the tips. For a long while she watched the slow fall of dust motes through a shaft of light.
"Why," she demanded softly of Foolet, "did the abbot not ward him as Lord Ruadrik told me should have been?"
"It were evil days, my lady. I think many monks died. None came here."
"He should have gone to them!" She looked to Bassinger, for Foolet could have been no more than a child. "After the death passed. You should have taken him!"
"My lady, you may be assured that had I known of the arrangement, I would have moved both Heaven and Earth to see my lord Ruadrik into the hands of those who would guard and care for him, for I loved him as my own son. I was not made mindful of this warding. I think he did not perceive the will of his father, whom God absolve, for some time."
"What time?"
"I found his father's testament, my lady," Foolet said, "among the manor rolls. My lord Ruadrik was fifteen then, and we went to the abbey, my lady."
"And?"
Bassinger made an apologetic gesture. "The clerks had no record of the king's grant of the land to my lord's father. There was a fire, it seems. They were short with us, my lady. We left them."
"Left them! Without seeing the abbot?"
"My lady, with such a rude welcome, I advised my lord to withdraw, before he let news abroad that might be harmful to him. It is a very covetous abbey, my lady."
"You half-wits, there would be record among the king's rolls, if the abbey's was lost!"
"I am no lawyer, my lady," Bassinger murmured. "We carried out his honored father's will."
"My lady," Foolet said anxiously, "we did try. But we were afraid then; we realized that he could not prove himself—"
"None knew him from the font? No retainer? No villein?"
"Only Sir Harold," William Foolet said in a hollow tone.
"One is enough, if he is a man of good standing."
"I think not, my lady. His mind is—uncertain."
"The priest, then."
"My lady, our chaplain came into the valley after the pestilence. There were a few such who came from outside, in the first years, and we made a place and welcome."
She frowned at him. "Come, they didn't all perish, those who knew him. What of these you've named to me as in this valley at their birth?"
"Yes, my lady. But you saw them; they're younger than my lord. It's their parents who could have said, and they've died since." He shrugged helplessly.
"I am no lawyer, my lady," Bassinger repeated, "but I think that to make a claim stick against that abbot, a hundred peasants who could name my lord Ruadrik would not suffice. And so I counseled my lord." He drew air into his chest expansively. "He saw the wisdom of my words, and being a young man of great heart and spirit, he betook him to prove himself worthy of his lands by his own exertion. He eschewed these ink-stained clerks and lawyers and went out into the world in search of adventures and glory—as is proper to one of his knightly lineage, my lady, I'm sure you will agree. I have recorded his ordeals and victories in a poem, and will be pleased to delight my lady's grace with the singing of it. It is not finished yet, for we still await the great deed by which he will prove himself, and take his due reward, but God willing comes it soon."
Melanthe gazed at him. At first she thought that he was making a jest. But he looked back at her with a pleased expression.
"Perhaps my lady would care to hear the prologue?" he asked.
"God confound you!" she breathed. "Have you made him go ragged and nameless about the world, as if he's of no account but what he wins by his strength of arms?"
"My lord does nothing but what he chooses of his own self." Foolet's voice was stout, but his gaze wavered almost imperceptibly.
She leaned forward. "The abbey should have warded him! Or better yet the king!"
The two stood silent before her vehemence.
"But if they had," she said fiercely, "they would have made short work of your troop of minstrels sojourning here!" She swept her hand wide. "Lord Ruadrik would have held the land of his own right long since—but instead you've made him surrender his real claim, and try to win it back by foolish errantry, for fear his wards would cast you out!"
"My lady, it's not in our power to make His Lordship do anything!"
She stood up. "No, you have some unholy clutch upon him! What is it? Why should he withhold his name from those who could help him, if not to hide something? He's a baron, by God's bones, and he married a burgher's daughter as if he could do no better! You've battened upon this place somehow, a troop of worthless common minstrels, and he protects you by his foolishness, and you care not that you drag him down!"
"Madam." Ruck's voice arrested them all, cold and soft. "I asked you for love of me to esteem my people." He stood in the doorway, dressed in a black doublet and hose, a golden belt about his hips, his hair uncovered and his face angry and tired. "I don't demand obedience as your husband," he said in English, "but I expect of a princess the honor of your word that you gave me not a few hours since."
Melanthe felt a fire of mortification rush into her cheeks. She had promised—but the state of this place outraged her.
In the silence he said, "You don't know what clutch they have upon me, in truth, nor can know, did you never come on your home to find it a death house. The plague annihilated in this country, my lady; took it not one in five or one in three, but nine in ten—of every living thing down to the sheep and the rats, for what sins I know not." His breath frosted in the cold room. "I came home from the household where I was fostered as a page, but the pestilence met us on the road." He gave an ugly laugh. "You speak of warding. Oh, I was well warded. I had me full eight years of life and wisdom, lady, and dead men all about me. No passerby, not friar nor knight, did halt or linger, but stoned me for fear of my contagion if I approached them, until I met this troop of worthless common minstrels."
"Then in faith," she answered coolly, turning to the window, "I wish your minstrels as well as any men under God, for their great charity to you."
The jealousy was there again, as she'd felt it for his first wife, the envy of his loyalties to anyone but her. Her hands were freezing, but she refused to clasp or warm them, only holding them at her sides. She wished to explain, to tell him that it was his welfare and his rightful place that she would defend, but pride held her tongue, and the apprehension that if she made herself offensive to his men, it was she who might be sent away.
She wasn't accustomed to making herself
agreeable to servants. To turn a smile and wiles on them to win affection...well, she'd performed more difficult counterfeits for less, but already the need to deceive seemed a distress, an old and fatal misery. She could not, at that moment, even summon the will to begin it. She said no more. Instead she found herself turning to walk quickly to the door. She didn't look up at her husband as she passed him. Lifting her skirts, she ran down the spiraling stairs, seeking the courtyard.
* * *
Ruck watched her from an arrowslit in the gate tower that commanded the whole of the meadow and the lake. His first foolish thought had been that she was leaving—but of course she would not, could not, alone. She wouldn't have been able to find her way from the valley even if she had commanded a horse.
Knowing that, he hadn't followed her. He was hotly aware of Bassinger and Little Will; of how this impossible marriage must appear. Since his first warning of plague, he had thought of bringing her here for security, though more in his fantasy than in seriousness. Not once had it ever entered his head that he would bring her to Wolfscar as his wife.
But in the crisis, trapped between the hounds and the sea, he'd gone by his secret way for the one place he could be certain of. He knew the decision now to be as witless as their exchange of vows—had realized it in full when he saw his castle and his people as they must look to her. Already she disdained them.
Nodding stiffly to Will and Bassinger, Ruck had left the ladies' chamber with its cobwebs and echoes, acting the lord just as if he hadn't cleared ditches and drunk ale and planted palisades shoulder to shoulder with the Foolet while Bassinger gave advice and complained of his back. Standing now in the empty garret, he felt utterly alone, as if he had executed his own banishment.
He leaned his forearms against the arrow embrasure, resting his head in the crook of his elbow so that he could keep her in his sight as she carried the gyrfalcon into the sheep pasture. She strode across the snow-crusted grass. A train of children followed, tramping behind with their arms swinging, until Hew Dowl chased them off to a proper distance. She was a hooded sweep of emerald green in the dirt-gray landscape. She stopped, and Ruck saw her beckon.
Hew ran to her, his shoulders stooped in reverent submission and his eyes fixed on the ground. As Ruck watched, she spoke to him. Hew's head came up. His face was too distant to see clearly, but his whole body seemed to expand. He donned his glove and held out his arm to take the falcon. They talked for a moment, Hew raptly attentive as she handed him the jeweled lure.
As the princess stood back, Hew hid the lure and struck the hood, removing it. For a few moments the gyrfalcon sat motionless on the man's upraised arm; then it bounded free.
Ruck lost sight of the bird. From his arrowslit he could only gaze at Melanthe as she shaded her eyes and followed the flight. It felt mockingly suitable that he stand hidden, staring out at a narrow view from this crack in stone-thick walls. He grew angry at his own cowardice as he thought of it. Afraid of her contempt, afraid of his own friends—ashamed of his home.
He thrust back from the embrasure and paced across the garret, the bare planks reverberating beneath his feet. For twenty years the haunted thorn-wood and fate had protected Wolfscar; there had been no need of a garrison or armed watch and none to man the towers anyway. He hadn't reopened the mine, he had not reclaimed the road; he had done nothing that might draw attention, waiting for the day when Lancaster his prince would call for the Green Knight and ask him what reward he would have for some marvelous deed—and then, Ruck had dreamed, he would reveal himself, and say his claim, and Wolfscar would be his without dispute, without abbots or haughty monks or any question of right.
It was all a boy's fine fantasy, built of the songs the minstrels sang, of Gawain and Lancelot, adventure and glory, of truth and loyalty between a man and his master.
He had long ago learned the way of the world. But he'd been committed by then, and making a name with Lancaster, and there were tournaments and war—if not as glorious as the adventure of his imagination, at least opportunity for advancement and future, until Lancaster had dismissed him. Because of her.
Princess Melanthe could purchase Wolfscar ten times over. Ruck would have been more of a saint than he was, he reckoned, if the thought had not crossed his mind. But he could hardly stay apace with his own feelings. Outside, he'd been bewildered and humbled by her vow to be his wife, but here—here, he did not want to give up his sole mastery, he did not want to explain himself and his life, he did not want to submit to her authority, he did not want everything he was to depend on her, he did not want to give her up, he did not want to deny her anything, he did not want to sleep alone again— and he did not, did not want her to leave him.
He returned to the arrowslit in time to see Gryngolet pounce upon the lure that Hew threw down on the frozen grass. It was a simple method, the usual way a towering falcon would be brought down. In its very simplicity, with plain Hew making in to the bird like any countryman's falconer, the sight brought the image of Melanthe lifting her jeweled gauntlet and lure, unbearably vivid, the sky and the bird and the fire of emeralds and white diamonds as the gyrfalcon came to her hand. She had been weeping and laughing, beautiful and not, a dream within the compass of his touch.
He watched her as she bewitched Hew into a hound in human shape. The man heeled to her with panting devotion, nodding and gazing and nodding again as she spoke. While the gyrfalcon ate, he pointed about the valley, obviously discussing the hunting.
Ruck felt his heartbeat rise. If she thought to hunt the bird, then she didn't wish to leave immediately. He wouldn't have taken her even if she desired to go, not until he could better assure her safety, but he hadn't relished a quarrel with her about it.
He rolled on his shoulder and put his back to the tower wall, leaning there and staring at the gash of light that fell across the floorboards from the defensive slit. The stone was so frigid that the cold seeped through his doublet to his body, but he didn't move. He knew he wasn't thinking clearly. Weariness misted his wits. Had it been warfare, he would have distrusted any humor or inclination now, holding himself back from hasty action.
But it seemed that he had done nothing but hold himself back for all of his life. Hard-won habit ruled him: he had only to think of her to want to couple again, and his next thought was that he must not—and only in the eternal struggle to conquer his bodily passions did it come to him that there was no longer a contest to win.
He stared so hard at the patch of light on the boards that his eyes began to water.
He had made a particular study of the sin of lust, with careful questions to the priests, and a certain amount of reading in confession manuals when he could examine one in French or English. He felt himself rather a master of the subject. Even on marriage, the religious men did not always agree among themselves, which meant there was a little space for preferring one set of advice over another amid the thickets of clerical admonition.
All admitted that there was no sin if the intention was purely to engender children, but a few maintained that any pleasure at all in the marriage bed could not be without sinful fault. Others judged that the conjugal debt was a pious duty between spouses to prevent incontinence, and the marriage act only a deadly sin if there was excessive quest for pleasure—with many fine computations of what might constitute excessive pleasure.
Ruck found his tired spirits lifting. He was clearly incontinent, or like to be if he thought on his wife at any length at all, and the very notion of begetting a child on her sent him into a hot ardor of perfectly sinless passion. Not excessive ardor—but indeed, if he waited too long, he judged his soul would be in certain danger.
He pushed away from the wall, finding a new vigor in the gloom.
* * *
Melanthe refused to allow herself to hesitate as she opened the door. The message to attend Sir Ruadrik had been courteously worded, but she entered the lord's chamber expecting to be confronted by all three of them, including the two Williams, for it
was always the way with favorites that they wished to be present when their rivals were diminished. But Ruck was alone. He rose from a chair as she closed the door behind her.
"My lady," he said, "I'd have you eat with me now."
A white linen cloth lay over the table, already laden with a meal. In his black tunic he was tall and formidable, the green of his eyes intensified by the night-hue of his clothes and hair. A fire crackled actively, warming the chamber, and fresh-cut boughs of pine drove out the stale atmosphere. In the late afternoon a candle gave the table extra light.
She was hungry indeed, but the flutter of dread in her stomach made the food unsavory. She released the pin on her cloak, and tossed it over a chest. "What did they say of me?" she asked haughtily, meeting the matter head on, so that she might gain the upper hand by surprise.
He looked up at her. "Say of you?"
She washed her hands in a basin beside the door. "I warn you, sir—it's a poor master who is ruled by his servants. But of course, they'll say you otherwise, that to be ruled by a wife is worse."
He gazed at her, a shadow of a frown between his brows. She paced to the table and sat down, scowling at a dish of wheaten frumenty, well aware that he stood close behind her.
From the edge of her eye she could see his arm, the velvet rich with light and shadow on the black curve of his sleeve.
She took two swallows of the cereal, which was nearly cold and only barely palatable, before her throat closed. She put down the spoon. "I cannot eat, until I hear your decision."
"My lady," he said, "what decision?"
"Will you take me hence?"
He walked away. Melanthe slid a look after him. He stood at the window, his back to her. "Take you hence?" he demanded harshly. "In faith, then why did I trouble to bring you here, instead of drowning you like a kitten in a bag, for to spare myself the toil? If that be the decision you'd hear—I'll not take you hence, no, nor anyone show you the way. In good time, when it's safe enough, I'll see you to your hold. Until then, you must bide here, though it displease."