For My Lady’s Heart
The Medieval Hearts Series: Book One
Laura Kinsale
LETTER TO MY READERS
Dear Readers,
Many years ago, I read a medieval poem full of color and adventure about knights and mysterious ladies. It opened up an unknown world to me, a place of wild, dangerous forests and white castles, of mud and glorious spectacle; a time when blackbirds really were baked in pies. Against this rich background, I wrote a story about a powerful, devious woman desperate to reach refuge, and a knight—a true knight who never wavered once he swore his heart, a man who could not comprehend deceit.
To do justice to their world, I wove the music of their own medieval words into the dialogue. My favorite response was from a reader who wrote that at first, she'd been a bit dubious about the Middle English, but by the end of the book, she was wondering why the man on the six o'clock news didn't talk that way!
I was determined to make my characters' words clear and understandable in the text, even though readers might never have come across them before. But I've also added a glossary so that you can be certain of their meanings if you have any doubt. In compiling it, I enjoyed revisiting that world and realizing again how much history and how many shades of meaning stand behind the words we've forgotten and the words we still use.
Now, for this ebook edition, in addition to the original and complete version of the book which was published in 1993, I've included a condensed version of For My Lady's Heart. I've made this 2011 revision for readers who prefer a tighter read and more modern words for dialogue. If you don't know which you'd prefer, I suggest you start out with the original, and if you find yourself too distracted by the Middle English, switch to the revised version. For many readers, it just takes a few chapters to get into the rhythm of another time and place, but for others the unfamiliar words remain problematic. We all have different preferences and I hope you'll enjoy whichever version you choose.
As I wrote about Ruck and Melanthe, a shadow figure appeared in their story: Allegreto, the young assassin who served his father's cruel ambitions. By the time I reached the end, I knew I must eventually give Allegreto his due. Many readers wrote to ask for his story. It took me a long time, but Shadowheart was finally finished. It is dark and beautiful—like Allegreto himself—and I hope you'll be as fascinated by his elusive and compelling character as I was.
Laura Kinsale, 2011
FOR MY LADY’S HEART:
Original Published Version
These old gentle Britons in their days
Of diverse adventures they made lays
Rhymed in their first Briton tongue,
Which lays with their instruments they sung,
Or else read them for their pleasance,
And one of them have I in remembrance,
Which I shall say with good will as I can.
But sires, by cause I am a burel man,
At my beginning first I you beseech,
Have me excused of my rude speech.
I learned never rhetoric, certain;
Thing that I speak, it must be bare and plain.
PROLOGUE
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 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 grassy 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. God 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 God? I'm a prophet! Our Lord forewarneth thee—take any drink but pure water in peril of eternal damnation, 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 God: the intemperance of John Hardy, the godless laughing and jesting of Mistress Parke, the carnal lusting 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 chinking 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 snatched her leg away. "None of that, sir!"