FIFTEEN

 

 

Things seemed to Melanthe to happen in disconnected scenes, the hounds and the wind and the shore in the freezing darkness, and then a strange figure, shagged and silent, barely seen, a woodwose, a wildman of the desert, mad rocking and water and a sturdy boat—and colder, colder, wet spray that made her huddle into her cloak. Then the first light of dawn, the world a sickening sway of wind and wave.

Sea loathing and lassitude and cold kept her immobile, hunched in the tiny cover for the endless voyage, carrying her she knew not where, nor hardly cared. Hawk stood with his head encased in armor, his legs braced and his nose lowered to the deck.

Near sunset the awful rocking abated. She found the strength to open her eyes and crawl from the small shelter into the open, looking blearily upon an unfamiliar shoreline, crystalline with black trees that somehow glittered, mountains behind them, rising to ponderous heights dusted a spectral white. From low cliffs, overhanging tree limbs drooped down near the water, every twig and branch encased in clear ice to form strange white cascades against the dark stone.

Sir Ruck hurried her, lifting her bodily onto the sand in a small inlet, glancing often toward the opposite shore of the bay. The horse came calmly off the grounded boat, as if it splashed from vessel into shallow water half the days of its life. Without a word the shaggy woodwose handed over Gryngolet, her body encased in a falconer’s sock, and pushed off his craft with an oar.

Ruck slapped the destrier’s rump, sending it into a heavy trot ahead of them. The horse thudded up a path toward the trees, a pale form in the failing light, and vanished in the space of a blink.

Melanthe looked over her shoulder, squinting her gritty eyes at the other shore. A mile off or more, she thought she could see low buildings and signs of active cultivation. 

"It’s the abbey land," he said, with a soft contempt in his voice. "The house of Saint Mary. I don’t want them to see us."

"Where go we?"

He held her arm and looked into her face as if he would speak—then gave her a light push, turning her ahead of him. "Into the forest," he said. "Make haste, my lady."

 

* * *

 

They rode all night—or if they didn’t, Melanthe knew nothing of it. She held onto the high back of the saddle. She kept falling asleep and starting awake as she lost her balance, until he said, "Lay your arms about me."

She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his back. He held both her hands clasped securely under his. It was cold and uncomfortable, with only his surcoat to pad the hard backplate of his cuirass, but Melanthe must have slept long and deep there, for when next she roused, the slant of the ground had steepened, and dawn light filtered black into gray around them.

The forest itself was so dark and thick that it seemed the horse was plowing through massive brambles and hollies without a path or sign of passage. And yet, none of the thorns pricked them, or even caught her cloak. The destrier stepped steadily ahead into dark caverns of winter foliage like tunnels, finding easy degrees up a cliff where icicles hung down from rocks directly over their heads. 

The horse labored, blowing puffs of steam, its iron shoes ringing sometimes on hard stone and other times thudding on moss. The sound of the wind in the branches overhead grew stronger as they gained height. Melanthe could look down and see dusts of gritty snow on every tree and evergreen, but no sign of where they had come.

Ahead, sharp rocks made huge flat-sided teeth, as if a dragon of the earth bared its fangs. The trees were smaller, driven into hunted shapes by the wind. The destrier heaved up over a shelf and passed between two huge masses of slate, the gray slabs angling down to the ground like a great V-shaped gate.

The sound of the wind suddenly dimmed. Hawk’s iron shoes echoed in the defile. They emerged beside a mountain tarn, purplish black and still beneath a clear sheen of ice. Sir Ruck halted the blowing horse at last.

"We’ll let Hawk rest and drink," he said, helping her down. "Are you thirsty?"

She shook her head, wrapping her cloak tight about her, and sat down on a rock. He produced a havercake from some unknown pocket and offered it to her. As Melanthe crunched on it glumly, he led the horse to the tarn and broke the surface with his heel. There appeared to be no exit from the coombe, and no entrance, either, though she stared at the place she thought they had come in.

"Where are we?" she asked, brushing crumbs from her cheek.

He looked up, weariness written in all the lines of his face. With a faint smile he said, "In the fells beyond the thorn-wall, my lady. None can follow here."

The horse plunged its nose into the water and sucked. Melanthe thought of the pathless forest they had passed through so easily. She gazed at the bare branches around the tarn—and suddenly saw the pattern in them, the felled trunks and interwoven framework, one twig pulled down and anchored beneath another, a third twisted about its neighbor, a pair spread open, braided and pruned and pinned to the ground to start a new shoot, all growing together into a wall of thorn and wood.

"My God," she breathed. "It is a plessis barrier."

"Aye. And ancient, my lady. Since before the northmen came to this coast, before anyone remembers, it’s been kept so."

She looked at him. "What does it protect?"

He came to her and held out his hand. Melanthe took it, rising. He led her to a place that seemed impenetrable: only when he stepped into it did she see that she could follow. They walked through a dark hollow, skirting the downed trunks of trees. He climbed ahead of her into another cleft in the rocks, and offered his hand.

Melanthe gathered her skirts and let him hike her up. The space was barely large enough for both of them, with wind whining through the fissure of slate. He flattened himself to the towering sheet of rock and let her sidle in front of him, pulling her back against his chest so that she could see through the rent in the cliffs to the open country beyond.

"There," he said, and pointed.

The mountainside fell down so steeply from where they stood that she could not see the tops of trees except far below, where the forest swept to the valley floor. Ragged mists moved across, forming and fleeing, rising in wisps to flow up the cliffsides, blurring her view. At first she thought the valley empty, only more forest, and more, with the hint of a river running along the bottom and frozen waterfalls on the far side. She scowled against the wind-tears in her eyes, trying to follow where he pointed.

She blinked. What she had thought to be a waterfall seemed to be a tower; she blinked and it was a waterfall again, its lower cascade hidden by the spur of a ridgebut it had a strange slate formation at its source. Triangular; and another, a little lower, dark cones of stone, each with a bleeding white tail at its base...the mists drifted and broke apart, and suddenly, for one instant, she saw a castle, bleached white, turrets with battlements and slate-blue conical roofs, the glint of golden banner staves—and then it was only a misted cliff marked by icefalls once more.

"Do you see it?" he asked, bending close to her ear.

Melanthe realized that she had drawn a sharp breath. "I cannot say—is there a hold? The mist befools me."

"There is a hold." He put his hands on her shoulders. "Wolfscar."

"God save—" She squinted as the mist cleared again. "I see it!"

"This is mine, from six miles behind us to that second peak, to the coast on the west and the lakes east. Held of the king himself—and a license and command to fortify it with a castle." His voice held a note of defiant pride, almost as if he expected she might disagree with him.

Melanthe turned away from the icy wind. "You’re a baron, then!"

"Aye, we have a baron’s writ, to my father’s grandsire and before. Did you think me a freeman, my lady?" he demanded.

She slipped back from the crevice, down into a wider and quieter space between the rock walls. He came behind, the familiar chink of his mail compounded by the ring of steel as his scabbard hit the stone with each step.

She stopped and turned, smiling. "No. Bastard son of a poor knight. It was Lancaster thought you a freeman."

He bristled, his eyes narrowing. But before he could speak, Melanthe said, "Why should we imagine more of you, Green Sire? When you wouldn’t name yourself."

"I cannot," he said. He gazed at her grimly, his eyes dark in the shadow of the walls. He shrugged. "The letters patent be lost. My parents died in the Great Pestilence. The abbey—" His mouth curled. "They were to hold my ward in my underage. And they forgot me! I went there when had I fifteen years, for I never heard word nor direction, nor had aid of them. And the monks said I was an open liar and in fraud of them, that this land escheated to the abbey in the last reign, and never was revoked by the king. They didn’t they even know of the donjon—" He set his fist on the stone. "My father’s castle, that was seven years building! To them it’s nothing but impassable forest, and all else unremembered!"

His indignation at that seemed greater than at being disavowed himself. But Melanthe saw instantly the heart of the blow. "You cannot prove your family?"

He leaned against the rock face, his heel braced on it. "They all died."

"All of them?"

He contemplated his knee, his head down. He nodded, as if he were ashamed of it.

Melanthe frowned at him. They were of an age—if his kin had perished in the first Great Death, he would have been no more than seven or eight when he was orphaned. "But—from then, till you went to the monks at ten and five—who cared for you?"

He looked up, with his trace of a wry smile. "My lady—come you now and greet them, if you’ll deign."

 

* * *

 

Plunging into the valley of Wolfscar, carrying Gryngolet on her wrist once again and clinging to Ruck with the other arm, Melanthe felt a stir of superstitious wonder. She’d traveled with him in wilderness and desert, so she had thought—but this place seemed farther from church and humanity with each step.

The way down was a slide and slip into murky trees that groaned with the wind in their tops. She stiffened as she heard the distant howl of a wolf—or was it a woman’s scream? The shriek went on and on, changing pitch from low to high, growing louder as they descended, but Ruck gave it no notice. They made a sharp turn and abruptly the wail was a roar; the wind through a pile of slate teeth, transforming again to a living screech as they passed it.

"God save us," she said below her breath.

He squeezed her wrist. She was glad that he had tightened his hold on her, because in the next twisting in their progress, she looked up over his shoulder and near leapt from the pillion in her recoil.

It was a huge face; thrice taller than the destrier, staring at her with baleful black eyes out of the depth of the tree-shadow. She made a choked sound in her throat, but neither horse nor master made a sign of fear; they moved steadfastly downward, and at a different angle the face became stone and bush and branch, an illusion of reality.

She remembered the strange fusion of dream and waking of the night before, the silent woodwose they had sailed with, the boat that seemed too small to bear them and the horse safely...she began to doubt what sort of guardians watched over him.

The ground became gentler. A cold mist enfolded them, a sudden pale blankness, with only the next bush, the next tree trunk looming out of it and vanishing. The horse put its head down as if it smelled its path the way a hound would. 

As she sat huddled as close within her mantle as she could, her fantasy began to imagine that she heard music. She told herself that it was the wind, another illusion like the scream she could still hear from above them. And yet it had form and melody; it was a song that she knew, or thought she knew, sweet and sad and beguiling. The horse’s hooves beat in time to it. Ruck said nothing; his head seemed to nod in the same rhythm, his hand loosened on hers—she thought that he was falling asleep, the direst lapse of all with such enthralling spirits.

She grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. "Wake!" she hissed. "In God’s name, wake up!"

"What!" He lifted his head and jerked it back, neatly smashing her nose as he reached for his sword.

Melanthe yelped, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain. She put her hand over her face, blinking back tears. When she got her sight back, the forest was silent but for the high wind and the sound of Hawk’s hoofbeats.

"On guard!" she whispered. "You must not let yourself sleep, or they shall have you!"

He took a deep breath, gripping the pommel of his sword. "Who shall have me?" he asked in a bewildered tone.

She shook him again, until his armor rattled. "The fays," she said. "If they have you not already. Did you hear the tune?"

He seemed to come a little into his wits. "You heard music?" His hand loosed the sword. "What melody?"

"I know not. Fairy music, sweet and slow."

He grunted, looking to the left and right into the mist. Then, to her dismay, he idly began to whistle the selfsame air. Hawk’s ears pricked, and his pace increased.

As the mist thinned, the distant flute took up his tune again. The path dropped below the fits of the wind, into a calm that seemed warm after the driving chill of the vapor. The fluting music seemed to always recede before them, never closer, never farther. She didn’t know if it was some prearranged signal, or if the fay folk themselves put the whistle in his head and gave the weary horse a new energy to stride forward. It was such a mournful and beguiling tune...

In one fell moment her mind flew over the impossible sequence of events that had brought her here, and she thought that he was bewitched, that his purpose was always to draw her into the fairies’ power, to this place where they ruled.

Part of her thought it folly, and part of her feared, and part of her felt a strange excitement, a keenness to behold such as she had only read about.

He ceased his whistle suddenly, halted the horse, and thrust his fist in the air. "Ave!" he shouted in a voice that reverberated off every wall of the valley.

A horn answered, a trumpet’s call. The note held and climbed, blending with echoes of itself, until it seemed a whole company of horns.

He touched his heels to the horse, and the stallion seemed to forget fatigue. It rocked into a canter down the last of the slope, and the view burst open beside them. A whole valley spread below, broad and level with tilled fields striped by snow, a palisaded park, a lake. And at the head of it the castle, shimmering white, its walls plummeting deep into the water, its garrets iced by traceries, lacy delights cut in stone, as intricate as paper fantasies.

The trumpet called again, loud and close, this time a dizzying cascade of proclamation. It broke off suddenly, and Melanthe looked to the left. Beside the road stood a brightly dressed youth with a big mastiff, both grinning, the boy’s arms uplifted as if he would leap upon the horse as it galloped by.

The expression upon this young jester’s face when he saw Melanthe was near as surprised as hers. He wore the gear of a court fool, parti-colored hose, with bells and rich flutters of fabric on his sleeves and doublet, and a cap decked with feathers and trailing dags. As Ruck pulled up beside him, the young man lowered his horn with a comic look of dismay.

"Who is she?" he demanded, full as if he had the right.

"Well come to you also, Desmond," Ruck said dryly.

Young Desmond instantly dropped to his knee. He bowed his head so low that he was in danger of toppling over. "My lord," he said in a muffled voice. "Welcome."

Hawk threw his head, as if impatient with this delay, but Ruck held him. "My lady, this is Desmond, porter to the castle. Be his task to see that no strangers enter Wolfscar without leave—I’ve no doubt that’s the reason he demanded your name with such diligence."

"I beg pardon, my lord," Desmond said miserably from his prostration. "Beg pardon, my lady."

"Go before us," Ruck said, "and tell them that I come with my wife, the Princess Melanthe of Monteverde and Bowland."

Desmond stood up. He held the horn beneath his arm, his head lowered, but he managed one good long slanted look at her. She saw mostly a prominent nose and a complexion red from cold or horn-blowing; his expression was still hidden.

"M’lord," he said, bobbing. "M’lady."

He turned and ran ahead with a youth’s energy in the speed of his piked shoes, his dog loping alongside. The road bent right, into the valley. He stopped at the turning and lifted the horn, playing his quick-noted exhortation, sending it blaring across the land with zealous vigor.

"That," Melanthe said, "be no fairy."

Ruck glanced over his shoulder. "No, he’s a minstrel. Did you prefer a fey welcome?"

"Indeed, a few moments since, I thought me married to Tam Lin himself."

He laughed aloud, the second time she had heard that fine sound. "Aye, you shook me till my teeth rattled!"

"And well you did deserve it," she said stoutly. "Now take me to your fairy castle, for I’m right weary of this horse."

 

* * *

 

Fairy they might not be, but a strange company and a strange castle it was. As they drew nearer the hold, Melanthe saw why it had seemed so like a frozen waterfall from a distance. While the tracery-work in stone gave the sparkling towers and chimneys an aspect of light froth, the lime-wash on the walls had not been maintained. Long streamers of dark stone showed through the white wherever water flowed off the blue roofs and out of the gutters. The whole keep gave the ghostly effect of melting like a sugar castle at a banquet.

And the household—every man, woman, and child was dressed as if he belonged in a mummery play, from the spiked poulaines on their feet to the lavish colors and designs of their clothes. They came running to line the road, most all with an instrument, from nakryn drums to little harps to bells, and as Melanthe and Ruck rode between them, they sang a gay chorus with treble and countertenor as well executed as if they had practiced it for weeks. Some went before the horse, tumbling and leaping and juggling—there were even women and girls among the acrobats, wearing men’s hose and springing as high as the others—and a pair of little terriers that walked upright backward, performing flips and yapping.

Melanthe saw no peasants, no tools or evidence of winter toil, though there were gray sheep with white faces scattered in the pasture about the lake. "Where are your people?" she whispered, beneath the song and music.

He opened his hand, indicating the lively troop. "These they are, who brought me up."

"These minstrels?"

He nodded, leaning down to accept a braided sheaf of wheat from a little girl who marched alongside the destrier and then pelted away, her caroling full of giggles.

Melanthe looked about her at the singing company. "Better than raised by wolves, I suppose," she murmured.

They had come to the outer barbican. Before the gatehouse, at the base of the gangway, a portly fellow with a great white beard stood waiting, dignified and comic in his tight hose and barrel body clothed in rainbow hues. His companion, dressed all in blue, had a smarter aspect, a man with a young face and old brown eyes, calm and intelligent.

As the younger man stepped forward, the music fell to silence. "Your Highness," he said, with a deep and perfect bow, "all honor is yours. May the King on High bless you, and our dear lord esteem and cherish you. I am William the Foolet, and this be William Bassinger. We give your lady’s grace great welcome to our master’s house and hold."

He held out a ring of keys to Melanthe. Looking down into his soft-lashed dark eyes, she thought him no fool, little or otherwise. She accepted the keys and nodded to him and to Bassinger. "Grant you mercy, trusty and well-beloved," she said clearly, for all to hear. "May Christ bless you and give all in this castle good chance."

Plump Bassinger swept a deep flourish. "The gates!" he declared in a voice that rolled across the lake like ripe thunder. "Our liege lord and lady come!"

Unseen hands bore open the portcullis and brought down the bridge. As Ruck and Melanthe rode through the echoing stone passage, handfuls of wheat kernels rained down from the murder holes in the ceiling. Their motley household followed, singing and cheering.

Crossing the moat, Melanthe glanced up from the bridge to the towering wall. Above the inner gate was carved the device of a wolf’s head, painted black on a field of azure, the colors a fresh contrast, bright against the fading white. Inside the walls the intricate lace of stonework and decay seemed stranger still. A neat garden plot occupied the center of the court, but leafless woodbine climbed and covered half the arches of a sagging wooden gallery, the last vestiges of its painted ornament almost lost to the weather. Several cattle munched on hay strewn in the dry well of a fountain, oblivious to elegant slender chimneys and the beautiful tracery glass windows that soared above.

Ruck dismounted and helped her down. A pair of boys seized his sword and shield, bearing them off with the destrier. He seemed reluctant to meet her eyes, standing in his armor amid this elvish ruin that was no ruin, a fortress that should have held ten times the folk she saw, that was too recently raised, too lovingly fashioned, to be forsaken to neglect and decline.

The arched door to the great hall was opened for her, the minstrels forming a path as a harper struck up a lively cascade of notes. Ruck took her hand. Carrying Gryngolet, Melanthe stepped with him up the stairs, the icy crunch of their feet obscured by music fit for sprightly angels.

It followed them inside, past the fine screens, into the hall where the liquid sun shone down through mosaic glass from five huge windows. A splendor of airy light glowed on plaster and tapestry, touched gilt and varnished beams, illuminated long cobwebs that trailed from the ceiling. The excellent tapestries gathered dust in their folds, losing their brighter hues already.

But a fire blazed in the big hearth, with benches and stools gathered round it, discarded work, piles of brilliant cloths and unstrung musical instruments, here and there a sign of more mundane effort, such as a harness in repair. In the rest of the hall the trestles were stacked against walls.

Ruck lifted her hand, guiding her onto the dais. He looked over the gathering, the upturned faces of perhaps fifty people, near half of them no more than children, the whole dressed in color and caprice. The harp music lent a sweet air of fantasy, the dust made all hues softer, and Melanthe wondered if she had wed Tam Lin in truth, for everything seemed only incompletely real.

He waited until the music drew to a conclusion, as if it held precedence. And yet his waiting gave him greater attention than any seneschal bawling for quiet. In the new silence he spoke quietly, and yet with a voice that came back in soft echoes from the hall.

"Your Highness," he said to her, "my lady, my dear consort and friend, accustomed be you to greater, deserve you greater, but this is my hold, and my people. For what love you may bear me, I ask of you to keep them in your heart as I do. And them I ask and require likewise to love you, and hold you in fear and respect, and I give you power over them all, to ordain and arrange according to such as you shall see best to do. I won’t name them to you now, for our journey has been long and weary." He had spoken to a point somewhere below her chin, still avoiding her, but he lifted his eyes then and met hers. "I say you, on my life and soul, that you’re safe here, where no ill can find you, for so long as you wish to remain."

She held his hand, and made a small reverence toward him. "In these matters, husband, do I willingly and gladly obey you."

His green eyes narrowed in a brief smile, abashed and mocking at once, taking full note of her reservation, that she didn’t promise to submit in all things, but only in these. He looked again over the hall.

"Plague comes once more to the world beyond the thorn-wall, so therefore I decree for the common good that none shall venture out. Pierre Brokeback is dead, may God preserve and defend him, and give his soul rest. And also my wife the Lady Isabelle, whom God pardon, returned—after the spirit to Heaven whence she came, these thirteen years. I—" He seemed to lose the tail of his words and said abruptly, "I’m weary, and my lady also. We’ll speak of these things later."

He let go of Melanthe, and in his turning she saw indeed that he was like to fall asleep on his feet. "Avaunt!" she exclaimed, beckoning to the nearest of the dumbfounded household. "Dispoil your lord of his armor, and offer comfort. You know not how far he’s carried me these two nights and day again."

 

* * *

 

In the chamber of the lord of Wolfscar, cushions lay on the floor, and carpets, too, the height of sumptuous luxury. The bed was made in ermine-lined coverlets and hung with embroidered silk on red cords and golden rings. The place smelled of old smoke and damp.

Melanthe’s first notion was to chastise and justle, demanding whether these acrobatic women could not find the time amid their tumbles to air the bedding, but both William the Foolet and Ruck were looking at her doubtfully, like two boys caught neglecting their studies by a severe master. Ruck, divested of his armor, went past her to the windows, leaning with his knee on the deep sills to open each latticed glass pane. Fresh air poured in from the courtyard, cold and carrying a faint scent of livestock.

"Charcoal," William snapped to the bevy of persons hanging back at the door.

"Here!" A jester in a pointed cap came pushing through with two pails of fuel and set to work at the hearth.

"Your lady’s grace," William Foolet said diffidently, "the falcon?"

Melanthe had no intention of handing Gryngolet over to this odd crew. "I’ll inspect the mew while the chamber airs," she said, maintaining a courteous tone. "A meal before the fire will do your master well."

"Stews are preparing, and fish baked in bread, my lady. Will my lady see the kitchen?"

"I think it prudent." She looked at Ruck, who sat on a window seat, leaning against the painted stone embrasure, his expression brooding and his eyes with the distant cast of too many hours waking. Melanthe felt weary herself, but wonder and curiosity drove her. She went to him and caught his hands. "You’ll stay here and rest," she ordered gently.

He frowned and looked as if he would object. But at last he said only, "It’s the way they left it. I don’t wish anything changed." The note of sullen defiance did not quite conform with the way his hands closed about her fingers, detaining her, almost a pleading touch.

"Nothing would I do here," she promised, "without I ask your leave, my lord."

A fresh rue came into his face. He released her, standing. "Alter what you will, then," he said shortly, "for nothing I could deny that Your Highness asked."

He moved away, kicking a stray charcoal that had rolled onto the carpet, sending the piece clattering into the hearth. With his back to her, he lifted the trestles from where they stood leaning in the corner and began to set up the small table himself.