Medieval Hearts - For My Lady's Heart Part 1

For My Lady's Heart.

Laura Kinsale.

Prologue.

Where werre, and wrake, and wonder Bi sye hat wont erinne, And oft boe blysse and blunder Ful skete hat skyfted synne.

Where war and wrack and wonder By sides have been therein, And oft both bliss and blunder Full swift have shifted since.

Prologue.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The pilgrims looked looked at the sky and the woods and each other. Anywhere but at the woman in the ditch. The Free Companies ruled these forests; her screeching might draw unwelcome attention. As she rolled in the wagon rut, grinding dirt into her hair, crying out pious revelations with shrieks and great weepings, her companions leaned against trees and squatted in the shade, sharing a vessel of warm beer. Remote thunder murmured as heat clouds piled up over the endless grim forests of France. It was high summer of the ninth year after the Great Pestilence. A few yards from the sobbing female, on the high gra.s.sy center of the road, a priest sat removing his sandals and swatting dust off his soles one by one.

Now and then someone glanced into the dark woods. The girl had prophesied that their party of English pilgrims would reach Avignon safe-and though she was prostrated by holy ecstasies in this manner a dozen times a day, moved by the turn of a leaf or the flicker of a sunbeam to fall to her knees in wailing, it was true that they'd not seen or heard a suspicion of outlaws since she'd joined the party at Reims.

"John Hardy!" she moaned, and a man who'd just taken hold of the bottle looked round with dismay.

He drank a deep swig and said, "Ne sermon me not, good sister."

The woman sat up. "I shall so sermon thee, John Hardy!" She wiped at her comely young face, her bright eyes glaring out from amid streaks of dirt. "Thou art intemperate with beer. G.o.d is offended with thee."

John Hardy stood up, taking another long drink. "And thou art a silly girl stuffed with silly conceits. What-"

A crash of thunder and a long shrill scream overwhelmed his words. The devout damsel threw herself back down to the ground. "There!" she shouted. "Hearest thou the voice of G.o.d? I'm a prophet! Our Lord forewarneth thee-take any drink but pure water in peril of eternal d.a.m.nation, John Hardy!" The rain clouds rolled low overhead, casting a green dullness on her face. She startled back as a single raindrop struck her. "His blood!" She kissed her palm. "His precious blood!"

"Be naught but the storm overtakin' us, thou great fool woman!" John Hardy swung on the others with vehemence. " 'I'm a prophet!'" he mocked in a high agitated voice. "Belie me if she be not a heretic in our very midst! I'm on to shelter, ere I'm drowned. Who'll be with me?"

The whole company was fervently with him. As they prepared to start on their way, the girl bawled out the sins of each member of the party as they were revealed to her by G.o.d: the intemperance of John Hardy, the G.o.dless laughing and jesting of Mistress Parke, the carnal l.u.s.ting of the priest, and the meat on Friday consumed by Thomas O'Linc.

The accused ignored her, taking up the long liripipes that dangled from the crests of their hoods and wrapping the headgear tight as the rain began to fall in earnest. The party moved on into the sudden downpour. The woman could have caught up easily, but she stayed in the ditch, shrieking after them.

In the thunderous gloom the rain began to run in sheets and little streams into the road. She stayed crying, reaching out her hands to the empty track. The last gray outline of the stragglers disappeared around the bend.

A waiting figure detached itself from the shadows beneath the trees. The young knight walked to the edge of the rut and held out his hand. Rain plastered his black hair and molded a fustian pilgrim's robe to his back and shoulders, showing chain mail beneath.

"They ne harketh to me," she sobbed. "They taken no heed!"

"Ye drove them off, Isabelle," he said tonelessly.

"It is their wickedness! They nill heed me! I was having a vision, like to Saint Gertrude's."

His gauntleted hand still held steady, glistening with raindrops. "Is it full finished now?"

"Certes, it is finished," she said testily, allowing him to pull her to her feet. She stepped out of the ditch, leaving her shoe. The knight got down on his knees, his mail c.h.i.n.king faintly, and fished the soggy leather out of a puddle already growing in the mud. She leaned on his shoulder and thrust her foot inside the slipper, wriggling forcefully. He smoothed the wet wrinkles up her ankle. His hand rested on her calf for a moment, and she s.n.a.t.c.hed her leg away. "None of that, sir!"

He lifted his face and looked at her. The rain slipped off strong dark brows and dewed on his black lashes. He was seventeen, and already carried fighting scars, but none visible on his upturned features. Water coursed down, outlining his hard mouth and the sullen cast of his green eyes. The girl pushed away from him sharply.

"I believe thou art Satan Himself, sir, if thou wilt stare at me so vile."

Without a word he got to his feet, readjusting the sword at his hip before he walked away to a bay horse tethered in the shadow of the trees. He brought the stallion up to her. "Will ye ride?"

"The Lord Jesus commanded me walk to Jerusalem."

"Ride," he said "until we comen up with the company once more."

"It were evil for me to riden. I mote walk."

"This forest hides evil enow," he said harshly. "N' would I haf us tarry alone here."

" 'Fear not, in the valley of shadow and death,'" she intoned, catching his hand. She fell to the sodden ground, her wet robe clinging to the feminine contour of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Kneel with me. I see the Virgin. Her light shineth all about us. Oh ... the sweet heavenly light!" She closed her eyes, turning up her face. Her tears began to mingle with the raindrops.

"Isabelle!" he cried. "Ne cannought we linger here alone! For G.o.d's love-move freshly now!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her up. By main force he threw her across the saddle in spite of her struggle. She began to screech, her wet legs bared, sliding from his mailed grip. The horse shied, and she tumbled off the other side. He jerked the reins, barely holding the stallion back from trampling her as it tried to bolt.

She lay limp in the gra.s.s. As he dropped to his knees beside her, she rolled feebly onto her back, moaning.

"Lady!" He leaned over her. "Isabelle, luflych-ye be nought harmed?"

She opened her eyes, staring past him. "So sweet. So wondrous sweet, the light."

Rain washed the mud from her face. Her fair blue eyes held a dreamy look, her lashes spiky with wetness, her lips smiling faintly. The pilgrim's hood had fallen open, showing a white, smooth curve of throat. He hung motionless above her a moment, looking down.

Her gaze snapped to his. She shoved at him and scrambled away. "Thou thinkest deadly sin! My love is for the Lord G.o.d alone."

The young knight flung himself to his feet. He caught his horse with one hand and the girl with the other, dragging them together. "Mount!" he commanded, baring his teeth with a savagery that cowed her into grasping the stirrup.

"I n'will," she said, trying to turn away.

"Will ye or nill ye!" He hiked her foot, catching her off balance, and propelled her up. She yelped, landing pillion in the high-cantled war saddle, clutching for security as he swung the wild-eyed horse around. The stallion followed him, neck stretched, the black mane lying in sloppy thick straggles against the animal's skin. The knight hauled his horse a few yards down the verge through the wet gra.s.s and mud. He stopped, facing stiffly away from her into the rain. "I am nought Satan Himseluen," he said. "I'm your wedded husband, Isabelle!"

"I am wed to Christ," she said righteously. "And oft revealed the truth to thee, sir. Thou hast thy way with me against my will and G.o.d's."

He stood still, looking straight ahead. "Six month," he said stonily. "My true wife ye hatz n'been in that time."

Her voice softened a little. "To use me so were the death of thee, husband-so I've prophesied, oft and oft."

He slogged forward. The horse slipped and splashed through a puddle, sending water up, causing the knight's fustian robe to cling over the plated greaves and cuisses that protected his legs. The rain swelled into huge drops. Hail began to spatter against his shoulders, bouncing in pea-size pebbles off his bared black hair.

He made an inarticulate sound and dragged the stallion to the edge of the wood, stopping beneath a ma.s.sive tree. Isabelle and the horse took up the protected s.p.a.ce beneath the heaviest branch, leaving him with the filter of sodden leaves above to break the hail.

She began an exhortation on the sins of the flesh and detailed a vision of h.e.l.l recently visited upon her. From this she went on to a revelation of Jesus on the Cross, which, she a.s.sured him, G.o.d had told her was superior in its brilliance to the similar sight described by Brigit of Sweden. When a hailstone the size of a walnut cracked him on the skull, he cursed aloud and yanked his helmet from the saddle.

Isabelle reproved him for his impious language. He pulled the conical bascinet down over his head. The visor fell shut. He leaned against the tree trunk with a dismal clang: a faceless, motionless, wordless suit of armor, while his wife told a parable of her own devising in which a man who used unG.o.dly maledictions was condemned to dwell in h.e.l.l with fiery rats forever eating out his tongue. The music of the hailstones pattered in tinny uneven notes on steel.

She had finished the parable and gone on to predicting what sort of vermin they might expect to find among the infidels when the storm began to lift, leaving the forest and the gra.s.sy verge steaming in greens and grays. Light shone on the watery ruts in two twisted ribbons of silver. Like a frost of snow, hail lay amid the foliage, already beginning to melt. The knight pulled off his helmet and tried unsuccessfully to dry it on his robe. Without speaking, he pushed away from the tree and began to walk again, tugging the horse through small lakes beside the road, his spurs catching in the muddy weeds.

Vapor rose from his shoulders. Isabelle plucked at her sodden robe, holding it away from her skin as she talked. She was describing the present state of her soul, in considerable detail, when he stopped suddenly and turned to her. A breaking shaft of sunlight caught him, banishing the sullen shadows. He looked up at her, young and earnest, interrupting her eloquence. "Isabelle. Say me this." He paused, staring at her intensely. "If outlaws were to fall upon us this moment, and ransom my life against-" The youthfulness vanished from his face in a set scowl. "Against this-that ye takes me again into your bed as husband-then what would you? Would ye see me slayed?"

Her lips pinched. "What vain tale is this?"

"Say the truth of your heart," he insisted. "My life for your vaunted chast.i.ty. What best to be done?"

She glared at him. "Thou art a sinner, Ruck."

"The truth!" he shouted pa.s.sionately. "Have ye no love left for me?"

His words echoed back from the forest, enticement enough to outlaws, but he stood waiting, rigid, with

his hand on the bridle. She began to sway slightly. She lifted her eyes to the glowing clouds. "Alas," she said gently, "but I love thee so steadfast, husband-it were better to beholden thee put to death before my eyes, than we should yielden again to that uncleanness in the eyes of G.o.d." His gaze did not leave her. He stared at her, unblinking, his body still as stone. She smiled at him and reached down to touch his hand. "Revelation will come to thee." He caught her fingers and gripped them in his, holding them hard in his armored glove. "Isabelle," he said, in a voice like ruin. With her free hand she crossed herself. "Let us make troth of chast.i.ty both together. Thee I do love dearly, as a mother loveth her son."

He let go of her. For a moment he looked about him in a bewildered way, as if he could not think what to do. Then, abruptly, he began to walk again, pulling the horse in silence. A cool wind out of the storm caught the knight's dark hair, drying it, blowing it against his ears. The breeze faltered for a moment, playing and veering. The horse threw up its head. Its nostrils flared. The knight came alert. He stopped, his hand on his sword hilt. The animal planted its feet, drinking frantically at the uneasy wind, staring at the curve ahead where the road disappeared into deep woods. There was only silence, and the breeze. "The Lord G.o.d is with us," Isabelle said loudly. Nothing answered. No arrow flew, no foe came rushing upon them from ambush.

"Get ye after the hind-bow." The knight shoved his helmet down on his head and threw the reins over the horse's ears. As Isabelle floundered out of his way over the cantle, he mounted. She flung her arms about his waist. With his sword drawn he drove his spurs into the nervous stallion, sending it into a sprint with a war cry that resounded in volleys from the trees. The horse cannoned along the road with water flying from its hooves, sweeping round the curve at the howling height of the knight's battle shout.

The sight that met them was no more than a flicker of red mud and slaughter as the horse cleared the first body in a great leap. The animal tried to bolt, but the knight dragged it to a dancing halt amid the stillness.

He said nothing, turning and turning the horse in an agitated circle. The butchered bodies of their former companions wheeled past beneath his gaze, around and around, white dead faces and crimson that ran fresher than the rain.

Isabelle clung to him. "G.o.d spared us," she said, with a breathless tone. "Swear now, before Jesus Our Saviour, that thou wilt liven chaste!"

He reined the horse hastily among the bodies, leaning down to look for signs of life as the animal pranced in uneasy rhythm, its hooves squelching wet gra.s.s and gore. The looters had done thorough work. "G.o.d's blood-they been slain but a moment." His voice was tight as he scanned the dark encroaching forest. "The brigands be scarce flown." He turned the stallion away, but at the edge of the clearing he doubled the horse back on the grisly scene again, as if he had not looked upon it long enough to believe.

"Unshriven they died," Isabelle whispered, and murmured a prayer. She had never let go of her grip on his arm, not even to cross herself. "Swear thee now, in thanks for G.o.d's mercy and deliverance-thou wilt be chaste evermore."

He was breathing hard, pushing air through his teeth as he looked at what was left of Mistress Parke.

"I swear," he said.

He yanked the horse around and spurred it away down the road in a gallop for their lives.

Avignon intimidated and disgusted him. In the murky, baking streets below the palace of the Pope, he stood stoically as Isabelle prayed aloud before a splinter of the True Cross. Behind her back a wh.o.r.e with bad skin beckoned to him, striking licentious poses in the doorway, folding her hands in mockery, running her tongue about her dark lips while Isabelle knelt weeping in the unswept dirt. His wife had barely warmed to her devotions, he knew from experience, when the toothless purveyor of the holy relic grew impatient and demanded in crudely descriptive English that she buy it or take herself off. The wh.o.r.e laughed at Isabelle's look of shock; Ruck scowled back and put his hand on his wife's shoulder more gently than he might have.

"Bide ye nought with these hypocrites," he said. "Come." She stumbled to her feet and stayed near him, uncharacteristically quiet as they made their way through the crowds.

The shadow of the palace fell over them, a ma.s.sive wall rising sheer above the narrow cobbled street, pocked with arrow slits styled in the shapes of crosses, the fortifications crowned by defensive crenels. Isabelle's body pressed against him. He put his arm about her, shoving back at a stout friar who tried to elbow her aside in pa.s.sing.

She felt cool and soft under his hand. He was blistering hot in his chain mail and fustian, but dared not leave the armor off and untended as they moved from shrine to shrine, kissing saints' bones and kneeling before images of the Virgin, with Isabelle's tears and cries echoing around the sepulchers. Now this new shrinking, her snugging against him, fitting into the circle of his arm as she'd been used to do made piety even more difficult to maintain.

He tried to subdue his l.u.s.tful thoughts. He prayed as they joined the stream of supplicants forging up the slope to the palace gate, but he was not such a hand at it as Isabelle. She'd always been a chatterer-it was her voice that had first caught his attention in the Coventry market, a pretty voice and a pretty burgher's daughter, with a giddy laugh and a smile that made his knees weak-he'd felt amazed to win her with nothing to offer but the plans and dreams he lived on as if they were meat and bread.

But there had been only a few sweet weeks of kissing and bedding, with Isabelle as loving and eager for it as himself, before the king's army had called him to France. When he'd come back, knighted on the field at Poitiers, full of the future, triumphant and appalled and eager to bury himself and the bloodshed in the clean tender arms of his wife-he'd come back, and found that G.o.d had turned her dizzy prattle into prophecy.

For a sevennight he'd had his way with her, in spite of the weeping, in spite of the praying and begging, in spite of the scolds, but when she'd taken to screaming, he'd found it more than he could endure. He'd thought he ought to beat her; that was her father's advice, and sure it was that Ruck would gladly beat her or mayhap even strangle her when she was in the full flow of pious exhortations-but instead she'd beseeched him to take her on pilgrimage across the heap of war-torn ruins that was France. And here he was, not certain if it was G.o.d's will or a girl's, certain only that his heart was full of lechery and his body seethed with need.

They entered the palace through an arch beneath two great conical towers, pa.s.sing under them to an immense courtyard, larger than any castle he'd ever seen, teeming with beggars and clergy and hooded travelers. The clerics and finer folk seemed to know where to go; the plain pilgrims like themselves wandered with aimless bafflement, or joined a procession that ran twice around the perimeter and ended at a knot of priests and clerks.

Isabelle began to tremble in his arms. He felt her bones dissolve; she sank from his grip to the pavement, with a hundred pairs of feet scuffing busily past. As her wail rose above the noise, people began to pause.

Ruck was growing inured to it. He even began to see the advantages-not a quarter hour elapsed before they had a church official escorting them past the more mundane supplicants and into a great columned and vaulted chamber full of people.

The echoing roar of discourse stopped his ears. The ceiling arched above, studded with brilliant golden stars on a blue field and painted with figures bearing scrolls. He recognized Saint John and the Twenty Prophets. His eyes kept sliding upward, drawn by the gilded radiance, the vivid color- abruptly the clerk pushed him, and he collapsed onto a bench. Isabelle looked back over her shoulder at him with her hand outstretched and her mouth open as she and her escort were engulfed by the crowd.

"Isabelle!" Ruck jumped to his feet. He shoved after them. She had been named heretic for her sermoning more than once. He had to stay near her, explain her to the wary and suspicious. He floundered into a clearing and found himself in the midst of a circle of priests in rich vestments. The robed and tonsured scribe looked up from the lectern with a scowl, the plaintiff ceased his pet.i.tion and turned, still kneeling before the podium.

Ruck backed out of the gathered court, bowing hastily. He turned and strained to his full height, a head taller than most, looking out over the ma.s.sed a.s.sembly, but Isabelle was gone. A guard stopped him at a side door and pretended not to understand Ruck's French, gesturing insolently at the benches. He glared back, repeating himself, raising his voice to a shout. The guard made an obscene gesture with his finger and jerked his chin again toward the benches.

A shimmer of color sparkled at the corner of Ruck's eye. He turned his head reflexively, as if a mirror had flashed. s.p.a.ce had opened around him. At the edge of it, two spears' length distant, a lady paused.

She glanced at him and the guard as she might glance at mongrels sc.r.a.pping. A princess-mayhap a queen, from the richness of her dress and jewels-surrounded by her attendants, male and female, secluded amid the crowd like a glitter of silent prismatic light among shadows.

Cold. . . and as her look skimmed past him, his whole body caught ice and fire.

He dropped to one knee, bowing his head. When he lifted it, the open s.p.a.ce had closed, but still he could see her within the radius of her courtiers. They appeared to be waiting, like everyone else, conversing among themselves. One of the men gave Ruck a brief scornful lift of his brow and turned his shoulder eloquently.

Ruck came to a sense of himself. He sat down on the bench by the guard. But he could not keep his gaze away from her. At first he tried, examining the pillars and carved animals, the other pilgrims, a pa.s.sing priest, in between surrept.i.tious glances at her, but none in her party looked his way again. Concealed among the throng and the figures pa.s.sing in and out the door, he allowed himself to stare.

She carried a hooded white falcon, as indifferently as if the Pope's hall had been a hunting field. Her throat and shoulders gleamed pale against a jade gown fashioned like naught he'd seen in his life-cut low, hugging her waist and hips without a concealing cotehardi, embroidered down to her hem with silver dragonflies, each one with a pair of jeweled emerald eyes, so that the folds sparkled with her every move. A dagger hung on her girdle, smooth ivory crusted with malachite and rubies. Lavish silver liripipes, worked in a green and silver emblem that he didn't recognize, draped from her elbows to the floor. Green ribbons with the same emblem laced her braids, lying against hair as black as the black heavens, coiled smooth as a devil's coronet.

He watched her hands, because he could not bear to look long at her face and did not dare to scan her body for its violent effect on his. The gauntlet and the falcon's hood, bejeweled like all the rest of her, glittered with emeralds on silver. She stroked the bird's breast with white fingers, and from four rods away that steady, gentle caress made him bleed as if from a mortal wound in his chest.

She turned to someone, lifting her finger to hold back the gauzy green veil that fell from her crown of braids to her shoulder-a feminine gesture, a delicacy that commanded and judged and condemned him to an agony of desire. He could not tear his look from her hand as it hovered near her lips: he saw her slight smile for her ladies-so cold, cold ... she was bright cold; he was ferment. He couldn't comprehend her face. He hardly knew if she was comely or unremarkable. He could not at that moment have described her features, any more than he could have looked straight at the sun to describe it.

"Husband!" Isabelle's voice shocked him. She was there; she caught his hand, falling on her knees beside the bench. "The bishop speaketh with me on the morrow, to hearen my confession, and discourse together as G.o.d's servants!" Her blue eyes glowed as she clutched a pa.s.s that dangled wax seals. She smiled up at him joyfully. "I told him of thee, Ruck, that thou hast been my good and faithful protector, and he bids thee comen also before him-to confirm thy solemn vow of chast.i.ty in the name of Jesus and the Virgin Mary!"

Isabelle insisted that he leave off his armor for the interview with the bishop. Her brief timidity, her snugging against Ruck for protection, had vanished. All night she'd sat up praying, pausing only to describe in endless particular the triumph of her examination by the clerks and officials. They had heard of her-her fame had really spread so far!-and wished to prove to their own satisfaction that her visions were of G.o.d. They had questioned her fiercely, but she'd known every proper answer, and even given them back some of their own by pointing out an error in their orthodoxy concerning the testament of Saint James.

Ruck had listened with a deep uneasiness inside him. He could not imagine that those arrogant churchmen, with their bright vestments and Latin intonations, had been won over by his wife. Isabelle attracted a certain number of adherents, but they were of kindred mind to her, inclined to ecstasies and spiritual torments. He had not seen a single cleric here who gave the appearance of being any more interested in holy ecstasy than in his dinner.

He'd slept fitfully, dreaming of falcons and female bodies, waking fully aroused. For an instant he'd groped for Isabelle and then opened his eyes and seen her kneeling at the window next to a sleeping tailor. Tears coursed silently down her cheeks. She looked so radiant and anxious, her eyes lifted to the dawn sky, her hands gripped together, that he felt helpless. He wanted this bishop to give her whatever it was that she desired-sainthood, if she asked for it.

He dreaded the interview. He was afraid as he'd never been before a fight; he felt as if he were facing execution. As long as that vow had been private, between him and Isabelle, it had not seemed quite real. There was always the future; there were mitigating circ.u.mstances; he had not spoken clearly just what he swore to. She might change her mind. They were neither of them so very old yet. Women were erratic, that was known certainly enough. He ought to have beaten her. He ought to have put up with the screams and got her with a child. He ought to have told her that decent women stayed home and didn't drag their husbands over the face of creation in pursuit of canonization. He watched her prayerful tears, his lufsom, his sweet Isabelle, and could have wept himself.

In the great audience hall he was informed he must wait, that only Isabelle was required. A hunchbacked man held out his hand, leaning on his staff, and Ruck put a coin in it. He got a mute nod in return.

All the morning he sat there, feeling naked in his leather gambeson without armor over it, swallowing down apprehension and despair. There was no way he could find out of the thing short of disavowing his own words and revealing himself a false witness in public, before a bishop of the church. Worse, he was afraid that they might trap him into it, perplex him with religious questions and turn him about like a spinning top, as Isabelle could do, until he swore whatever they wished.