TEN

      

 

The bird must be fed. That demand went unspoken. All the gems on the princess’s gauntlet and lure, all the books left behind in her chests, all her furs and pearl-encrusted gowns were not worth the price of the white gyrfalcon. Ruck’s empty stomach, the question of where safety lay, the awareness and awkwardness between the two of them—all of that diminished before the first necessity of properly keeping the falcon.

She had not been fed for two days; she was in highest flying condition, restless, showing herself ready to hunt by her roused feathers and fretful talons. Ruck had some hope of what was left, after the falcon had taken its reward, although by now he thought that the princess must be hungry again, too. He waited silently while she prepared, changing the jesses and examining the leash and hood.

The huge flocks that had floated so close early in the dawn had vanished but for a few stragglers. In spite of her command of the falcon’s lure, he was not certain what sort of hunter the princess might be in a true quest for food—her morning indolence did not promise great skill or experience of more than ladies’ crossbows and deer-parks. But he was no master falconer himself. He looked on their situation beside the wide estuary with misgiving—it seemed to him that the fowl must flush away from shore, and the strike be made inevitably over water.

He had once been in the courtyard when Lancaster and his brothers had returned from a day of flying a score of high-bred falcons at crane and heron. Among the large and colorful party, there had been dripping servants, damp courtiers, wet dogs, and great good humor—on a temperate day with the castle and a warm fire at hand.

Here they had no dogs or servants to retrieve if the gyrfalcon lost its prey over the depths. And as the only courtier present, Ruck felt he would be exceedingly fortunate if he didn’t have to swim.

Perhaps she had witchcraft to enchant the quarry. She seemed confident enough as she swerved and bent ahead of him through the reeds and coppice, carrying the hooded falcon. The hawking-pouch hung over her shoulder, gems shining under her cloak as it flared, so that as she moved she seemed some Valkyrie of ancient dreams, a silent war-maiden striding to battle. Ruck moved quietly behind. He had taken off his spurs and stripped himself of plate and mail for stealth, wearing only his leather gambeson and sword.

Beside a brushy bank she paused, staring out through a dense clump of leafless alders. Ruck saw the pair of mallards floating fifty feet from shore. What he did not see was any hope that they would flush in the desirable direction.

"These will do," she murmured, so low he could barely hear. She slanted a glance at him. "Look you to bide there, in the farthest reeds, for to await my sign. We won’t delay until she towers up so high this time.

He inspected the stand of reeds, gauging a hidden path to it. "What sign?"

"A blackbird’s call."

"Lady"—he squinted through the branches and whispered barely above the sound of his own breath—"have you a sorcery to direct them?"

She gave him such a look askance that he felt chagrined and added in haste, "Were I to swim, I may sink or take ill and leave my lady without protector."

Her lilac gaze seemed to cut a hole through him. "Or get you wet!" she mocked.

It didn’t seem such a jest to him. He muttered tautly, "The clothes I wear be all I have, my lady."

Her lip curled. "So I won’t watch you strip, monkish man, do you dislike it."

She had not the modesty of a stoat. He set his jaw, feeling the burn of mortification—worse, feeling his own body’s instant reaction to such words. Even she seemed to feel it; her eyes sliding abruptly away from his.

She nodded toward a layer of cobbles and gravel in the sand bank. "You’re the master stone-hurler of our little company. Cast one up so it comes down beyond the ducks. Perhaps it hies them toward us."

Ruck thought even a mild charm had a better chance than that. "Lady—only a natural magic. A small one. God will forgive us."

She lifted her fine eyebrows. "I perceive you’re monkish only when it agrees with you."

"I am no monk," Ruck muttered, having rapidly tired of that nick-name.

"No more am I witch." She stared at him, her eyes level. "I await your readiness."

Ruck set his jaw and squatted by the bank, prying out two cobbles that filled his hand, round and heavy to land with a generous splash. Bent low, he moved out of the coppice and down amongst the reeds, parting them slowly as he passed through. His feet sank into sandy mud; he had to lift each one carefully to avoid a loud sucking. Cold water quickly began to seep into his boots.

 

* * *

 

Melanthe had a secret sympathy for his disinclination to enter the cold river—though she would have smothered herself in a hair shirt before she would have said so aloud. But she had no magic beyond her wits and Gryngolet’s to please him. The falcon had experience enough to wait until her quarry was over land to strike. The ducks, though, would likely flush into the wind which came down the wide length of the river, and, if they were wary and wise, fly within its compass, never leaving the safety of water below them. Fortune had provided mallards, big fowl confident of their own size and speed, furnishing the only hope that the quarry might chance an overland passage to escape. They belonged to Gryngolet then, for in level flight she could outfly any other bird under God’s Heaven.

Impossible to guess how far away the kill might occur in that case. In more common circumstance—a well-mounted party with falconers, beaters, servants, and hounds—following the gyrfalcon on such a cross-country chase was a joy. But that was sport; the catch less to be admired than the elegance of the flight, the valor of the bird. They hunted in earnest now. Gryngolet must make a quick slaying, or there would be no dinner and perhaps no falcon, either, once she was beyond sight and sound of the lure.

Melanthe kept a divided watch between the mallards that still fed peacefully off the bank and the faint sway of reeds that marked the knight’s passage. It was a delicate moment: if she dallied too long, the ducks might flush and be lost before the falcon was ready, but if she unhooded Gryngolet and cast her off too soon, the anxious and hungry falcon might lose patience with waiting for her quarry to be served and rake off on her own hunt.

The reeds had ceased swaying. Melanthe saw the mallard drake glance alertly toward shore and begin to paddle away. She caught Gryngolet’s brace in her teeth and struck the hood. Lifting her arm a little, she faced the wind and gently plucked the hood free by its green feathered plume.

The gyrfalcon slowly roused, expanding herself. Melanthe did not take her eyes from the ducks, but from the edge of her vision she could see Gryngolet survey the horizon deliberately. Her feathers tightened, and she roused again. Melanthe opened her glove, losing her hold on the jesses.

Gryngolet spread her wings and bounded upward.

The ducks began to paddle faster, making wide V’s in their wakes. They would be soon out of reach of stone or yell; already they were almost too far from the bank to fear it more than the white shadow of death overhead. Melanthe glanced up, saw Gryngolet circling out wide and returning at a few hundred feet. She gave a low blackbird’s whistle.

The knight should have exploded into motion, shouting and waving, throwing stones or any other maneuver that would frighten the ducks into flight.

"Go!" she whispered under her breath.

Instead, that light sway in the reeds was silent, moving, paralleling the bank until it was directly before her and she lost sight of the subtle movement through the interlacing of coppice twigs and branches.

"God’s bones!" she hissed between her teeth. She whistled again.

Gryngolet circled idly; falling downwind as she waited, losing position. The ducks still paddled, gliding farther and farther beyond flushing. Melanthe made a faint whimper of dismay in her throat. She reached for the lure at her belt, preparing to call the falcon down before she raked away.

A boom of feathers erupted from the reeds. Like a huge ghost, a gray heron—king of river quarry—leapt into the air with a shriek, the knight yelling and waving as the bird lumbered along the edge of the reeds, running with wings outstretched, trying to regain the safety of the thick cover. The knight drew back his arm and hurled a stone, fired the second one after it with a powerful heave of his arm, sending the heron clawing upward, gaining the sky in great ringing circles.

Gryngolet snapped to business; she instantly began a kindred spiral. For a hundred beats of Melanthe’s heart the two birds circled for advantage, their flights arcing over the bank and then back above the river as they gyrated upward, Gryngolet ever gaining, passing the desperate heron, mounting aloft.

Suddenly the gyrfalcon seemed to capsize, overturning, empowering her downward plunge with three mighty strokes of her wings before she fell into her stoop. She hit the heron like Vulcan’s lightning hammer; threw upward, rolled over, smashed a daring mallard that had risen before Melanthe even perceived it, and then drove straight back up and turned head-on into the second duck as it pumped for the horizon. They met with a crack like solid stones colliding. The mallard exploded in feathers.

The two ducks dropped dead well out in the river, but the big heron tumbled and listed, shedding feathers, collapsing into the reeds as Gryngolet wheeled and followed it down. The falcon and the huge wildfowl disappeared, battling, Gryngolet shrieking defiance of her quarry’s superior size and strength. Melanthe heard a great splash as she broke out of the coppice running.

She pulled her skirts up, elbowing branches and reeds aside, racing for Gryngolet’s life. Wild splashing and screeching came from the reeds. She saw stalks fall, swept aside as if by a scythe, and despaired of the falcon’s survival of such a combat. 

"Towe-towe-towe, hawk!" She cried Gryngolet to her as if she could save her that way.

She stumbled on the long toes of her boots and slid in thick mud, gained her feet, trying to run, ignoring the water that poured in at her ankles. The reeds ahead swayed violently. Suddenly the splashing ceased, an instant of silence that stopped her heart. Then Gryngolet screamed again with lunatic frenzy. Melanthe whipped the stems aside and came upon the battleground.

The gyrfalcon was mantled, her wings arched in a white canopy as she stood shrieking atop the heron’s body. The knight lay full length, facedown in three inches of water, with one arm over the heron and its broken neck between his fists.

Gryngolet had footed his elbow, seizing it with a savage shrill of anger, one claw buried in her quarry and the other in his leather-covered arm as if to fend him off. Ruck had his face turned away from her, hiding it in the crook of his other arm as he yelled muffled curses in answer to the falcon’s screams.

Melanthe pressed her fingers over her mouth. She suffocated an appalling urge to burst out laughing.

"Stand up," she said unsteadily. "Get off her dinner, and she will let you go."

Slowly, shielding his face, he humped himself to his knees while Gryngolet screamed. Water poured off the front of him and dripped on the gyrfalcon, startling her into a moment of confounded silence. Then she bated ferociously, attacking him with both feet. He stood up with her hanging upside down off his elbow, shrieking and flapping as if she were demented. Melanthe jammed her fingers harder over her mouth to contain herself, holding back hilarity with fierce resolution.

The knight gave her a look as malevolent as the falcon’s rage. He appeared to know there was nothing to be done until Gryngolet decided to let go—which she did, with startling suddenness, dropping in a delicate sweep onto her prize. She mantled over the dead heron’s body again, staring suspiciously at the knight.

He moved back promptly, shoving aside the reeds and slogging away without a word. Melanthe slipped her knife from her belt and lifted her skirt. She made in quietly, sliding her bare hand into the cold water to lift the heron’s head and cut it off. Gryngolet, recalling her manners, accepted that as her rightful due, stepping onto the gauntlet like a high-born lady.

With the falcon busy tearing feathers and skin, Melanthe stood. She dragged the heron by its feet, It was the largest she had ever seen, a weight that felt well over a full stone as she pulled it up on the dry bank.

She dressed it there, giving Gryngolet bone marrow and the heart. The falcon ate eagerly, then paused, mantling covetously over the spoils again as it stared behind Melanthe.

She turned. The knight stalked barefooted up through the reeds, soaked, wearing only linen that molded to him so perfectly he might have had on nothing at all. Every muscle showed as he moved, every feature, his ribs and chest, his waist, his thick calves and thighs, even tarse and stones. His shoulders gleamed wetly, big and straight beneath the dripping tails of his rough black locks.

She was accustomed to men who diminished by a third when they shed their armor, but he almost seemed larger, looming up over her as she knelt beside Gryngolet. He dangled the mallards by the neck in one hand, his sword and leather gambeson wadded together under the other arm. His small amulet pouch swung from his wrist, the leather darkened with wet. He did not appear amused.

He cast the ducks down beside her and stood dripping. Melanthe looked at his bare muddy feet and saw a shudder run up through his whole body. She raised her face warily.

He squatted beside her, his eyes for a moment on Gryngolet, who was rending her food with renewed energy, glancing frequently at the knight as if she were determined to consume it before he could steal it from her.

A slow grin lifted his mouth. "Little warrior," he said, smiling his rare smile. "Three in one flight!"

Melanthe watched him, feeling things in her heart that frightened her, emotion that all her instinct and experience warned her against.

She looked from his face to his body, stifling sentiment in cold observation of muck and clammy wet—and not even that could rescue her from folly. He was a pleasure for a woman to look upon, as elegant and fine in his body as a great horse was elegant, startling in his grace and muscle. She had been married at twelve to a prince thirty years older and courted in halls of the highest fashion—she had not until this moment understood the plain, powerful comeliness of a dripping and muddy man.

He seemed at ease, as if he thought the linen clothed him as well wet as dry. He had only to look down at himself to find his mistake—but with a rueful inner smile, Melanthe thought that even the evidence of his eyes might not convince him, if he would put his faith in such flimsy things as honor and courtesy and linen, principles as liable to evaporate under the force of reality as the cloth was prone to become transparent in water.

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 philosophy, 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!"

He stopped, slanting a look over his shoulder. "I don’t work for free, carissima. It’s mine now."

She held the herb bag behind her. "A fair exchange. Your plague perfume for my silver."

"I’ll buy another herbal."

"Without going in amongst people?"

He turned slowly to face her, a look upon him that sent a chill to her heart. "Monteverde goose," he said softly, "I can take it from you before you can draw breath."

"Then slit my throat if you must!" she cried defiantly. "And be damned for it! Plague or murder, it makes no mind to me. I’m dead no matter what I do." Her voice began to quaver on the last words, and she shut her mouth, lifting her chin.

Allegreto was impossible to read, his black eyes watching her. "You work for the Riata, don’t you?" he asked slowly. Cara tried to stare him down. For a moment he only studied her—then something in his expression changed, grew more penetrating.

"I didn’t see you when we found the hunchback dead." He said it with a voice of discovery. His hand curled over his dagger. "You were already gone from the camp."

She managed to keep her breathing even. If her life was over, she should commit her soul to God, but in the moment of peril all she could do was think that he was too young and comely to be what he was.

"And you took money with you—you knew you were leaving. You were already running. Oh, Mary, Mother of God—" He took a step. "Why?"

She didn’t answer him. She only closed her eyes and waited for him to kill her.

"What did you do? Was it poison?" A note of panic hovered in his question. "Did you try to poison her?"

His concern for his evil mistress sent a spurt of wild rage flooding through her. "Yes, you harlot—I tried to poison her. And if she hadn’t sickened for death of plague as you tell me, I would try again, God forgive me, to save my sister!"

In three steps he had her: "Was it the cockles?"

She tried to jerk free, and could not. He shook her until her teeth rattled and her head rang, and stopped with a jerk.

"Was it the cockles?" he asked, in a voice so quiet and soft that it turned her limbs into water.

She nodded, trembling. He stared down at her with horror, with that same frenzy that he had of plague.

"God save me." He let her go and turned, breathing like a winded stag. "She’s not dead. Oh, Mary; oh, God and Jesus, she contrived it. She isn’t dead." He dropped to his knees, his fists pressed to the side of his head. As Cara watched in shock, he tore his fingers down his face, drawing blood. "I let her fly, she’s not dead, she’s not dead, she’s not dead! My father!" With a mortal groan he lifted his face to Heaven. "Lord God have mercy on me!"