EIGHT

 

 

An instant of sleep, it seemed, and the urgent voice was at Melanthe’s ear, whispering out of the dark.

"Your Highness, we moten get us gone." He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. "Lady, wake ye, 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 are marked," he murmured harshly, grasping her arm amid the furs, pulling her upright. "Come!"

She was sitting, but he did not 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. The featherbed slipped away, but he did not stop. 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 before 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. But there was no margin for modesty or coyness in the full-tilt sprint—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 and face jolted against his shoulder armor, padded only by his mantle. The furs slipped, but she loosened her hold with one hand long enough to grab them back, depending on to his grasp to anchor her. 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 bent at the waist and 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. It almost vanished as they plunged into the gloom of tall trees, but when she turned her head to look behind she could see silhouettes of trunks 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 could not 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.

"Move nought," 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 could not 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.

"Do not kill him!" she cried fiercely in French. "Or I shall see thee flayed alive."

The footsteps paused.

"It is too late, madam," the knight said in a cold voice. "He is 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.

"Ye ne wants to see it," he said in English.

She turned back, trying to pass. "I mote see him!"

"Nay, 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 and down. 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 slimy 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. "Take it off me!"

She held out her skirt, her hands trembling. When he hesitated, she screamed at him, "There! There! Dost thou 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. "Nay, 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 had not waited to watch. Small enough torture it would want to loosen his soldiers’ tongues about whose camp it was and what a prize was ripe for the taking in Princess Melanthe if she could be found. 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.

They passed between fir and barren oaks and birches, the frigid morning sun laying bars of light and shadow across Hawk’s path. Ruck kept a wide watch, turning to inspect underbrush and thickets as they passed, careful of ambush. Once a red deer broke cover and crashed away from them, leaving his heart speeding.

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 sandhills; 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.

They came across a narrow, sandy track that led downward off the slope. He urged Hawk to a slow canter, ducking branches as the path took them again into the woods. Princess Melanthe held to him, quiet now.

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 had not seen the priory for half a dozen years, and then only for a night’s lodging before the monks ferried him across the river. Ten and six 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.

Ruck examined the open space and all the distance along the trees. "Wait here with the horse," he said softly. He dismounted, tossing Hawk’s reins over a branch to make the destrier stand. Halfway across the field the goose paused, turning a bright eye toward Ruck.

Using the thickets of bog myrtle as cover, he circled the priory’s cleared land, moving out toward the river. The ferry landing was deserted. Only one of the monks’ sturdy rafts lay beached, tied by a thick, sandy snake of hemp to its high-tide mooring.

Ruck squinted up at the priory. It was possible that behind the walls and heavy doors, the monks worshiped as usual, that it was simply happenstance—or fear of outlaws—that kept all inside, including the lay brothers, on this winter day.

But there were no bells.

For a long while he lay in a copse and watched. The white goose poked and prodded in the open ground, feeding near Hawk. 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 the gate beneath the guesthouse. The goose came hurrying after him, demanding and impudent, nipping at his heels. He knocked the bird aside, but it followed, making loud claims on his charity.

Before the gate he paused with his hand lifted—and then pulled the bell rope thrice in slow time. The sound seemed huge and clear, though it was only the gate bell and not the tower.

There was no answer. He gave the gate a push, but it was barred from inside.

The goose renewed its excited honking. Ruck turned, walking along the wall and around the corner to the church porch with the goose following 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.

It seemed sacrilegious to go armed into a church, but he made a brief obeisance, crossing himself and asking pardon in respect of the holy place. 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.

"Oyeh!" Ruck called. "Haylle, good monks!"

He had no answer, nor truly expected one. Moving quickly, he crossed the cloister-garth, ducking through a barrel-vaulted 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 through the vaulted slype and stopped, looking hard at each window over the cloister arches. He began an examination of the undercroft, though the doors were locked and the narrow cracks between boards showed only blackness inside. The parchment upon 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 Lyerpool, and something about a swine and candles.

The next sentence said that all at Lyerpool 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. He found admission beside the chapter, house, another dark passage that opened to winter grass beyond.

In the open ground there were ten new graves. On the far side of the chapter house, over a wall, he counted two more in the burying ground for laymen. Twelve—and the others fled. 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 could not 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, be no cause for us to biden here."

He said nothing of plague. She asked naught, only looked down at him from the pillion with strange innocence, as if she did not 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 had not 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 Lyerpool 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 moten 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 did not move away, only took hold of his sword belt and stood beside him. The furs dropped to the ground.

He reached up and yanked the ties free on the bags, searching out her cloak. The emerald wool came loose in a puff of breeze as he dragged it down.

She still held to his belt, 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 would not 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.

When she made no move away from him, he stepped back, disengaging her hand from his belt as gently as he could, careful not to crush her fingers in the metal of his gloves.

"Be nought fearful, lady," he said. "Put on the cloak and go aboard."

She seemed not to hear him. He swept the cloak around her shoulders and caught her up in his arms.

The raft was near to floating in the rise of the tide. His stride cleared a half yard of shallows as he sprang onto the boards. He set her on her feet, holding her muffled female figure steady as the casks and boards rocked beneath them.

"My lady—" He kept his hands on her shoulders. "Are ye ill?"

"Nay," she said remotely. "Where do we go?"

"Across the river, Your Highness."

"The monks—" Her eyes came to his, wide and dark. "Were they dead?"

He hesitated for a long moment. "Yea, madam. Dead or departed."

She seemed bewildered at that, like a child that had been asked an incomprehensible question. She turned away from him and sank down into a huddle on the boards.

Ruck watched her for a moment. "I will keep you, lady. I swear it."

He jumped ashore to unload their meager baggage and toss it onto the raft. Experienced in water passages, Hawk made no objection to being led into the shallows and onto the unsteady surface: the horse put his big hoof on the boards and pulled it off again, then came in one great splattering lunge that tipped the raft, grounding it at one corner. He stood splay-legged and wild-eyed, until Ruck dressed the horse in his chaufrain, with its blinding pieces that narrowed his vision.

Hawk calmed immediately, as if what he could not see did not exist. Ruck led him a few steps, refloating the grounded casks by shifting the horse’s weight.

The princess sat with the baggage. Ruck cast off the hempen line, took up a pole, and shoved, pushing them away from the shallows. The raft spun gently. He walked to the other side and poled there.

They drifted into open water. He unlashed the great oar that propelled and steered the unwieldy vessel, letting it swing loose between the thole-pins. When he looked up to make certain of the princess, he saw that she had settled herself against the bags, her cloak wrapped about her. She was gazing into the water.

He grasped the thick paddle with both hands and put his back into rowing. The next time he looked toward her, she had fallen fast asleep.

The raft spun slowly across the river, carried sometimes upstream on the tide, and sometimes downstream on a wayward current. Ruck could not guide the vessel with the skill the monks had used: even with the great oar, the casks drifted at the mercy of the water, so that it took a long time to cross. The incoming stream and a wind off the sea overbore the current, propelling them up the estuary, away from Lyerpool and the priory. Ruck thought he saw a figure moving in the village, but he could not be sure, and soon enough even the castle was lost to sight.

He took a landing where it came. Along a shoreline of coppice and reeds, the raft hit bottom. He poled it in as close as he could, and still had to wade through a spear’s length of shallows.

The princess seemed reluctant to wake, huddling herself closer when he knelt and spoke to her. He pulled off his glove and pressed his hand to her forehead, but she was cool, her skin chapped with wind, not fever. "Ne may I sleepen?" she mumbled plaintively when he touched her. "I want to sleepen a little while."

He did not disagree, just picked her up and carried her again. The motion seemed to revive her a little; she sat in the sandy clearing he’d chosen for their camp with her arms clasped about her knees. She watched him silently as he slogged back and forth, moving the bags ashore.

Then, as he knelt to fetter Hawk, she turned sharply, her eyes on the shoreline of the Wyrale. "Listen!"

Ruck hurled himself to his feet, grabbing his sword. As he stood, he heard bells, dreamlike and soft; and at the same moment saw the white speck flash against dark trees.

"Gryngolet," she whispered, with her eyes fixed on the distance.

Almost as if it heard the longing in her voice, the pale falcon soared upward, turning black against the sky, and dipped into a wheeling curve toward them. It skimmed across the river with powerful fast beats, striking upward again, spiraling above them until it was naught but an atom in the winter-blue heights.

"She waits on us!" The princess sprang to her feet. "The lure—before she rakes away!"

Ruck dropped his sword. Both of them pounced upon the bags, tearing through them for the falcon’s furniture. Ruck found the hawking-pouch, proffering it with a muttered prayer of thanks that he’d brought it. She snatched the prize from his hands.

White leather it was, embroidered in silver and jeweled like all the rest of her possessions. Emeralds caught the sun and sparkled on her gauntlet as she thrust her hand into the heavy glove. Even the lure itself was decorated with tiny gems at the ring and fastened along the shafts of the heron’s feathers, with one splendid diamond blazing on the body.

She looked up. Ruck watched her face as she followed the falcon’s tower. He had thought her not so beautiful in the unsparing light of day, but he found himself mistaken again. Witchlike, she had transformed herself to loveliness once more, as the falcon changed its nature from earthbound to sky-free in one leap.

He turned to find the bird and could not see it, the black speck gone so high it was beyond sight. Her hand swept upward. The sun took the lure as it arced over their heads, scattering brilliant light. Hawk pricked his ears at the faint rush of the cord and feathers spinning through the air. The princess kept her face to the sky, her arm outstretched against the blue, her gauntlets sparkling, green fire and silver flying from her fist.

She called her falcon, spinning the lure; a carol of love, half laughter—and the bird came, dropping hard from the sky.

Ruck heard the stoop before he saw it. The bells screamed one long, high note as the falcon hurtled downward, a prick on the blue that became a dot, a lancet, an arrow bolt, a scythe, its wings bowed close in two thousand feet of fall. The lure rose to it, aflame with emeralds.

At the instant of strike, a fan of white burst open, wings spread wide against the glitter as the hit sent a crack of sound echoing across the water; the lure shot downward and the falcon threw up into the air, jesses dangling. The lure impacted the ground, spraying sand, and sailed off again under Princess Melanthe’s hand on the cord.

They began a dance, the woman and the bird, a swinging and sweeping dance that defied the compass of the earth, marked by the flash of emeralds, the bells, and the white glory of the falcon’s twisting flight as it drove and stooped and chased the toll. Around and around the lure spun, beckoning and evading, mercurial, up and down and doubled back, the falcon keen and nimble in pursuit—an eternity— and yet before Ruck could take his eyes from them, before he could imprint the picture on his mind, before he could overcome the irresistible rise of his heart at the sight of the falcon’s dance, it was over.

She ended the flight in a fashion he had never seen. Instead of letting the toll drop onto the ground for the falcon to take, she swung the lure up and caught it into her other hand, lifting it like a pagan priestess calling to the sun. The bird shot past, chopping once at the feathered toll with her talons. Then she swung wide and slanted back, checking hard.

With wings outspread the falcon came to the glove, silvered talons open to grip fast. In a regal sweep she settled, folding her wings and reaching greedily for the lure.

"Poor Gryngolet!" The princess was breathless, laughing and weeping at once. "Poor Gryngolet, my beauty, my love! ’Tis a foul trick, I vow. We have no garnish for your reward."

The falcon spread her wings again, screaming angrily and striking the meatless lure at this injustice, but her mistress had a secure hold on the jesses that Ruck had severed to cut the bird free. The falcon’s complaints ceased as the princess deftly slipped a hood over its head.

Now that the moment was over, Ruck found his heart thudding in reaction. He could not believe what he had seen, that tremendous stoop from such a height and the dance that followed. The gyrfalcon sat quietly, unresisting as the princess caught the braces, drawing the gaily plumed hood closed. One-handed, she tied the shortened jesses to the glittering varvels and leash, using her teeth to finish off the tightening of the knots.

Ruck picked up the fallen toll. Its feathers were battered, one broken. The big diamond had fallen off, and emeralds hung loose by metallic threads. He looked about him on the ground, searching for the lost gem. When he saw a white glint in the sand, he pulled off his glove and reached down.

"Keep it. It is thine," she said as he rose with the diamond between his thumb and fingers. "A token." She was smiling. Glowing, her eyes shining with tears of elation. "So thou wilt not forget her flight."

The gem lay in his palm, a gulf between them, a distance beyond comprehension—so careless was she of such stones, to hazard them as decoration for a falcon’s lure, to give them in casual remembrance—as generous as the greatest lord Ruck could imagine. He did not know if the king himself did such things.

"My lady, I need me no token to mind such a sight. As help me God on high, I shall ne’er forgetten it."

"Ne the less," she said, "keep it." She turned her attention to the falcon, leaving him with his hand extended.

He felt vaguely insulted, though there was nothing slighting in her manner, or in the gift itself. It was the first time she had given any sign that he was due anything at all for his service.

Not that he served her for a reward. He did not expect or wish any recompense for honor. But she did not endow him for his fidelity; she only gave a token of remembrance as a gracious lady might—and that made him more sullen yet, for she obviously expected nothing in exchange. Why should she, when she would see that he had naught to his name that was worthy of a lady?

He watched her cherishing the gyrfalcon and remembered the tall fair Northman who had given the bird to her. A man of sense would have felt uneasy—that stupendous flight could have been sorcery—but instead all he felt was churlish. He thought of what he had: his horse, his sword, the jeweled bells and jesses that were her own present. The field armor that he wore. His other set, the ornate tournament trappings that had cost him his first five years of ransoms and jousts, and bore the emerald she had given him...left behind for bandits to plunder.

He had nothing deserving of her notice that had not come to him at her own hest, and so he was angry at her.

Holding himself stiffly courteous, he said, "I crave no gift of you, before God, my lady—and naught will I taken. My whole care is for your well faring. Go we on to a safe place tomorrow."

She turned from the falcon, but did not lift her eyes to his. For a moment she watched the long wind ripples on the river. Her face altered, the warmth in her passing to an ivory stillness. "There was a castle," she said. "And a town."

In the deep oppression of her spirit, he had not thought she had perceived them.

"Lyerpool," he said quietly.

"Will we go there?"

Below the river’s surface, beneath the sparkle of the sunlight, the depths lay black and unplumbed, like old fears.

"Nay, my lady. Nought there, I think."

"They died of pestilence, did they not?" Her voice made a queer upward break. "The monks."

"Yea, my lady."

She sat down on a bank of sand, staring at the falcon. "I brought it," she said. "I have brought it back."

All of his suspicions rushed over him again. The clinging mist, her secrets, her dark hair and purple eyes—hellmarks, drawing and repelling him at once. A changeling. A witch.

"I teased and beleaguered Allegreto with it so." She held the falcon on her fist, biting her lower lip, rocking faintly. "Now he’s dead, and pestilence comes. It is God’s judgment on me."

Ruck’s mouth flattened as his mistrust deflated into exasperation. "Your Highness, I ne think me that God would bringen down plague on all mankind only for your foolish wickedness."

For a long moment she remained rocking, each sway a little greater than the last, until she was nodding her head. She began to smile again. "Be my sins so trifling? By hap I am not to blame for plague, but only for the excess of lice this winter."

"Certain it is that you are to blame for our present state," he muttered. "My liege lady."

She stood, taking up the falcon. "Thou art impudent, knight."

"If my lady japes at sin and pestilence, is her servant to be less bold?"

"Avoi, I wist thou art but a saucy knave, hid in a loyal servant’s clothes!"

His moment of insurrection already mortified him. He became very interested in putting the fetters on Hawk. "Lady, there be no humor in it. We ne haf no escort, my lady, nor sufficient food to eaten, nor now’r safe to go."

"Why then," she said, "I will call thee Ruck by name, sir, and thou wilt call me Little Ned, thy varlet and squire. Gryngolet will be known as ’Horse,’ and the horse will continue as Hawk, that we mayen have a pleasant balance. And we will all hunt dragons together."

His mouth tightened. He could not tell by her tone if she was making jest of him. He held out the stone. "Nill I nought accept this. My lady should stowen the thing safe away."

She ignored it. "Yea, Ruck and Little Ned and Horse and Hawk." She was suddenly smiling, beautiful again, beautiful and ordinary at once with her smile. He wondered if he would ever resolve on which.

"My lady’s brain is fevered," he said.

"’Ned,’ if thou please. Thou art to put a degree more of contempt in thy voice. ’Ned, thou worthless churl, thy witless brain is fevered!’"

"My lady—" 

"Ned."

"I ne cannought call you Ned, my lady!" 

"Pray, why not?"

He lifted his eyes to Heaven, unable to compose an answer to such a question. Retrieving the falcon-pouch, he dropped the stone and lure inside.

"Tom, then," she said. "I will answer me to Tom, and on hunting of dragons will we wenden. Thou art our master and guide, Ruck, for thy experience of fiery worms and diverse other monsters."

"We nill nought hunt dragons, my lady," he said impatiently.

"We have nowhere safe to go. Nowhere but wilderness and wasteland empty of people." She paused with the gyrfalcon still on her fist, her body shaking again with that tremor that was too deep for cold. But she smiled, her eyes dry, fierce as the falcon in her spirit. "So say me true, Ruck—what better business hast thou on the morrow than to fare with me for to slayen dragons?"