Medieval Hearts - For My Lady's Heart Part 36

She wondered how many fingers he had left beneath the bandage. But someone had been kind to him-it was only his left hand, and he could still move his joints, if stiffly. He had not been racked for long.

So far from Gian, she had let herself drown in foolish visions. She had done a thing unforgivable and irreparable, disdaining the danger. She had loved, and let it command her.

If she had not, Desmond would be whole. He would still be in Wolfscar, playing his mirthful flute. But she had never thought Gian would come. She had thought Allegreto dead. She had thought she was free.

Free! Better she had obeyed Ligurio and gone into the nunnery. Better she had flung herself from the highest tower of Monteverde. Better that she had never, never known what she knew now-a man's faint smile and the depth of his heart and his faithfulness. She did not deserve it, she had never deserved such, she had mistaken herself for someone else. Ligurio had trained her, Gian would have her; it was beyond defying.

Even G.o.d Himself had stayed his hand. She had not conceived; she had seen the signs denying it each month with regret-but she understood now what mercy had been given her, that she was barren.

Fantasies and a lover she left behind. Only one thing did she do for herself, brutally cruel as she could do it, so that she might have a hope of sleeping. She made him hate her, so that he would not follow.

The moment that they rode within sight of the ma.s.sive gatehouse and red sandstone walls that guarded the abbey, Allegreto came striding out. He did not keep to a walk-he began to run, avoiding puddles and a flock of peahens, coming to a halt before her horse.

"My father," he said.

His face held no expression, his voice no panic, and yet he radiated a fear so deep that he seemed to breathe it in and out of him.

"Is he here?" She nodded toward the abbey.

"Depardeu, no!" He seemed to get a little hold of himself and shook his head. He bowed to her. "No, lady. At Bowland. We came away in secret."

"Let us go in, then. Desmond must have rest and food."

Allegreto looked toward her drooping companion. He walked to the horse and took its reins, reaching back to grip Desmond's good hand. "Well worth you," he said, "for bringing her lady's grace. You see I did not follow."

Desmond gave a hollow croak of a laugh. "Not for lack of trying."

Allegreto turned and clucked the rouncy into a slow walk. He looked back at Desmond. "How were you injured, when they ask?"

"A mishap," Desmond said weakly. "A mill wheel."

Allegreto nodded. "Clever enough," he said to the horse.

Melanthe saw Desmond smile feebly. He looked at Allegreto with bleared and worshiping eyes.

"I have said a lady doing penance is expected," Allegreto informed them. "A great lady traveling poorly, to atone for her pride and vainglory. A falcon brought the message to her in a dream."

Melanthe sighed. "Ah, Allegreto-and I thought thee dead." She pulled her hood about her face and lifted the bird who had delivered the unfortunate news of her pride and vainglory, pressing her horse toward the abbey gate.

She knelt beside Allegreto in the sanctuary, telling prayer beads with her fingers. While the monks sang compline in the candlelit church, he spoke softly to her, his voice a tight undertone to the motet and descant.

"I know not what you want, my lady. I don't know what you intended by fleeing. I have thought on it these three months, and still I cannot fathom your desire."

"It is not important," she said.

"Yea, my lady, it is important to me. I am yours. You won't believe me. I cannot prove it. But if I must choose between you and my father, I have chosen."

She looked aside at him, keeping her head bowed. He was staring intensely at her, the smooth curve of his cheek lit by gold, his eyes outlined in shadow as if by a finely skillful hand. "Thou hast chosen me?" she asked, with a soft incredulity.

"You do not want my father. That is all I can make of your move. Is that true?"

Such a blunt question. She forced her fingers to tell the beads, her mind to think. Was this Gian, trying to wrest words from her that he would use somehow? Allegreto was his father's creature; he had ever been, born and bred to his devotion. As frightened of Gian as all the rest of them, loving his father as a wolf cub loved its parent, in cringing adoration.

"You need not tell me," he said quickly. "I well know you cannot trust me. What can I do that you will trust me?"

"I cannot imagine," she said.

He was silent. The monks sang an alleluia and response, voices soaring up the dark roof. The straw

beneath her knees made but a rough cushion; she was glad to stand when the rite allowed it.

"Lady," he said when they knelt again, "two years ago, my father wished me to journey with him to Milan. Do you remember?"

She made a slight nod, without taking her eyes from her fingers.

"We did not go to Milan. We spent the time in his palace, lady. He told me I must keep you from all harm. He taught me such further lessons as he thought I needed, and watched me spar and fight,

and-tested me." A tenor answered the treble song. Melanthe started the beads over again, her head bent. "My lady, there was a man who had done my father a wrong. I know not what. He was loosed in the palace, and my father said I was to kill him, or he would kill me." Allegreto was unmoving next to her. "He was a master, this man. He was better than I. I was at the point of his dagger when my father delivered me." Amid the chants, Allegreto's voice seemed to become distant. "I failed. My father told me that because I was his son, he saved me, but I had to remember not to fail again. And so I was bound in a room with the man I should have killed, and they took his member and parts."

Melanthe shook her head. She put her hand on his arm to stop him, to silence him. But he kept speaking, trembling beneath her hand. "And while they did it, my father came to me and said to remember I was his b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and he could sire more sons, but was better for Navona that I could not. He laid the blade on me, so I should feel it and bleed, but then-because he loved me, he stayed it. He made me know that if I failed him again, that should be my reward. I should not be reprieved." He looked up at her, breathing sharply. "And I have not failed, until this time." Melanthe's hand loosened. She stared into his face. "It has been deception, my lady, that I was gelded. He let me go and bid me play it well, or it would be done to me in truth. It was so that you would bear me to sleep near you, that I might keep you from your enemies. He knew-" Allegreto's mouth hardened. "He knew that he could trust me in all ways."

She closed her eyes and drew a shaky breath. "Christ's blood. And I am to trust thee?"

"My lady-" He put his hand over hers, gripping hard, desperate. "Lady, this time he will do it. He promised it."

She shook her head, as if she could deny all thoughts.

"I can't go back without you, my lady!"

"Ah," she said, pulling her hand from under his, "is that all thou wouldst have of me, for thy vast loyalty?"

"Not all," he said in a painful voice.

She looked sideways from under her hood. His hands were clenched together on his thighs as he knelt.

"My lady." He bent his head down over his fists. "Donna Cara is there. If you tell my father of what she

tried to do to you-"

His words broke off, requiring no completion. Melanthe gazed at his hands and thought, Cara? Cara the b.i.t.c.h of Monteverde, whom he had scorned so savagely and strained so hard to have sent away?

Away, away, out of Monteverde, Riata, Navona. Away, where she would have been safe.

In profile he looked older than she remembered, his mouth and jaw set, his beauty more solid. Growing.

And a man, with pa.s.sions in him that he had kept dark and silent.

"Oh, G.o.d pity thee," she whispered. "Allegreto."

"She is not for me. I know that. There is an Englishman." He took a long breath and spoke coldly. "I believe he will wed her. But if your lady's grace accuses her to my father-" He shrugged, and his elegant murdering hands twisted together.

She might have thought he was lying. He was player enough, verily, for any part.

He squeezed his eyes closed, lifting his face to the high arches. "I am yours. I'll act only for you. I will do

whatever you ask to prove myself. Only-I cannot leave her there, and I cannot go back without you, my lady."

Three monks in procession came from the chancel down the nave toward them, singing, their faces

underlit by the candles they carried. Melanthe watched them turn and leave the church by a side door. "Listen to me, my lady. Your white falcon was there- when my father punished his enemy and forewarned me." She looked toward him. "What?" "My father fed it," he said. "He said that he had trained it to know me." "That is impossible." "The falcon hates me, my lady." "Your father has never touched Gryngolet." "He told me that if I betrayed him with you, that the falcon-" He looked at her imploringly. "My lady, he fed it."

He did not say more; he let her understand the monstrous thing he meant. Through her horror Melanthe bared her teeth. "If he had a gyrfalcon, it was not Gryngolet!" "I will carry her." Allegreto gazed at Melanthe with a straight and terrified intensity. "To prove my fidelity-that I do not lie to you." She suddenly realized that the church was silent, the prayers completed, the sanctuary dimmer. What candlelight was left hardened the sweet curves and comeliness of his face, erased the last hint of childhood, revealed the untenable compa.s.s of his fear.

He should have tried to appeal to Melanthe's welfare if he wished to entrap her. Her desires, her ambitions. But he had admitted that he did not know them.

He asked her what he could do, as clumsy and open as Cara in her folly.

It did not seem a great thing, this offer to carry a falcon, for a manslayer, a lovely boy with the soul of a demon. If he was lying, and she trusted him-then she walked open-eyed and helpless into Gian's clasp.

Three things Allegreto dreaded. Plague and his father, and Gryngolet. He knelt in the church and offered to defy two of them. For lying.

Or for love.

"Thou needst not carry her," Melanthe said. "I trust thee."

His lips parted; that was the only sign he gave of elation or relief.

"If thou art mine," she said, "then attend close to me now. Thy father did not have Gryngolet, nor ever has. I flew her at Saronno, all that week that I supposed thee in Milan. She was not in Monteverde for him to use in such vice. It was another bird obtained to daunt thee, we must a.s.sume-and contemptible abuse of a n.o.ble beast."

His jaw twitched. She deliberately disdained his father's horror as a mere offense against a falcon's dignity, to shrink it to a thing that he could manage.

"Gryngolet has hated thee because I have not been over fond of thee, I think." She shrugged. "Or haps she dislikes thy perfume. Change it."

He closed his dark eyes. He drew a deep breath into his chest, the sound of it uneven.

Melanthe stood up, the beads sliding through her fingers. She turned and left the church, pausing after she had made her obeisance. "Allegreto," she said quietly as he rose beside her from his knee, "if we fear him to a frenzy, we are done."

He nodded. "Yea, my lady. I know it well, my lady."

She had not seen Bowland for eighteen years. Against spring thunderclouds, the towers did not seem as monstrous huge as she remembered, and yet they were formidable, the length of the wall running a half-mile along the cliff edge to the old donjon at the summit. Its ma.s.sive height stared with slitted eyes to the north, defying Scots and rebels as it had for a hundred years and more.

Strength and shield-her haven-and Gian held it of her. She had not sent word. She arrived at the head of a guard provided by the abbot when she had revealed herself to him. Their approach had been sighted five miles back, of that she could be sure, for Bowland overlooked all the country around, with signal towers to extend the view. He would know by now a party came.

And he had surmised who it was. A half-mile from the gatehouse, a pair of riders sped out to them, bringing breathless welcome, and a few moments later an escort of twenty lances showing signs of hasty organization trotted to meet them, wheeling to form proud flanks.

A few drops of rain spattered her shoulders, but she did not raise her hood. She rode over the bridge and into the immense shadow of the barbican with her face lifted and her head bare but for a golden net.

Woodsmoke and cheering shouts greeted her as her rouncy jogged into the open yard. The lower bailey swarmed with people and animals, as if every member of the hold had dropped his task to come. They wished to see her, she knew, their mistress returned.

Among the English she recognized no one, but that was beyond reason to expect. All her old servants, her parents' men, they would all be changed beyond knowing. But a babble of Italian and French equaled or outpaced the native tongue, and there were ones she saw of Gian's knaves whom she knew better than she cared to, and her own familiar retinue awaiting-her palfreyour to take her horse, and her chaplain, and yes . .. Cara, smiling, with a trapped rabbit's fright in her eyes.

Melanthe ignored her. As she dismounted, Gian came striding from the donjon.

He was grinning, his arms open. His houpelande of crimson flared behind him, guards of gold embroidery skimming the ground, and his spiked harlots impaling the air elegantly with each step.

He went low to his knee, lifting the hem of her gown. "G.o.d be thanked for His might. G.o.d be thanked." He made the cross and touched his lips to the cloth.

"Your Grace," she said. "Give you greeting."

He sought her hands as he rose, kissing her eagerly on cheeks and mouth. "Princess, you know not what I have endured."

He tasted of perfumed oil, his beard dressed neat, blackened by dyes of cypre and indigo. She offered her hand.

"I was the one lost in desert," she said lightly. "Ask what I've endured. Depardeu, I have not heard a word but in English these three months."

"Torture indeed!" He took her arm and led her up the stairs into the donjon. "You shall tell me all, when your ladies have done with you. Come-oh, come, my sweet." His fingers tightened on her suddenly. He halted, gathering her hands in his and kissing them.

"Gian," she said softly.

He straightened. "Christ, I am undone, to treat you so." He released her. "Go to your women. Call me when you will."

With a swift turn he walked away from her. At the screen he pa.s.sed Allegreto, who bowed down with his forehead to the very floor tile. Gian did not glance at him. He crossed the hall and disappeared into a stair.

It was not until she was in her bath, with the silk sheets hung about and Cara setting a tray of malvoisie wine on the trestle, that the full scope of Melanthe's defeat came upon her. She had held herself insensible to what she did; refused to think backward instead of forward, to move in weakness rather than strength.

But she had lost, and lost beyond all her worst imagining.

Gian held her. And Bowland that was to have been her security, her refuge where every servant was safe and known and no alien countenance could be concealed. She had thrown away the quitclaim to draw him off, she had rid herself of Allegreto and Cara only to have them back, she had played bishop and queen and king-and lost. Bowland. Her safety, her freedom. And more-but she could not think of him; she would break if she thought of him, and Gian would see.