She stepped into the doorway, then hastily pulled back. Ruck was there, seated at the table on the dais, facing away from her. He had a child on his shoulders, a half-grown babe with feet balanced on either side of his head and hands planted in his black hair as he bent over rolls and counters spread across the table. In her brief moment of view, Melanthe had seen William Foolet counseling with him, and minstrels all around the hall, some of them congregated about the dais, some at work, and one pair juggling a great wheel of apples up toward the roof.
Melanthe sat down on the stair out of sight. The fantastic aspect of it struck her anew. She felt unsure of herself, a somber crow at the feast. It wouldn't be wise, she thought, to go to him amidst their smiles and laughter. Later, when he came to her alone, she could try to reckon how the Williams might have damaged her.
But she didn't want to go back to the empty bedchamber now. She sat in the stairwell, listening to the easy talk, the murmurs of mirth. They spoke of lambing and the fish in the lake, things she knew but little of. She could predict what would happen if she stepped through the door. They would all turn and stare, and she must be her lady's grace the princess then, for she knew nothing else to be.
Quick small footsteps sounded on the wooden dais, and a little girl in gaudy-green appeared through the door. She put her plump hands on Melanthe's knees and leaned forward, dark-eyed and rapt, her black locks flying free of any braid. "Why hide you?" she demanded.
Melanthe drew back a little. "I don't hide."
"You do. I saw you. But I found you!" She turned and wedged herself into the space between Melanthe and the wall, taking a seat on the narrow stair. She put her arms about Melanthe's neck and kissed her cheek. "I love you."
"You don't love me," Melanthe said. "You don't even know me."
"You're the princess." She said it with an enraptured sigh. "I am Agnes." She laid her head on Melanthe's shoulder and took her hand, toying with the rings. "I play the tympan and the cymbals. I have a white falcon and lots of jewels."
Melanthe watched the small fingers trifle with hers. "You're a great lady, then."
"Yes," Agnes said. "I shall sleep all the day when I be grown. I don't like to nap now, though," she added scrupulously. "I shall marry Desmond."
"Desmond. The porter?"
"He'll be the king then."
"Ah," Melanthe said. "A man of ambition."
"A man of what?" Agnes looked up at her. "Oh. Are you sad?"
Melanthe shook her head.
"You weep, my lady."
"No. I do not."
"I love you." Agnes climbed into her lap and put her face into Melanthe's throat. "Why do you weep?"
Melanthe held the small body close to her. "I'm afraid," she whispered. She drew a breath against fine black hair, as if she could drink it like some fragrant long-forgotten wine. "I'm afraid."
"Oh, my lady, be not." Agnes hugged her. "All be well, so long as we bide us here as my lord commands, and go not out beyond the wood."
NINETEEN
They had pleased Ruck, those days that she spent tumbled in his bed like a dozing kitten. He would have thought she was ill, but that he knew her for a master in the art of idle slumbering, and she awoke well enough when he came.
While she had stayed in his chamber, Wolfscar was his yet. He spent the days in ordinary work, in spring plans and lists of repairs, the most of which would never get done, but he didn't have to make explanations or excuses to her. She had asked nothing, but only besought him in bed with her blunt and awkward wooing.
In truth, he lived all through the day in thought and prospect of it. He did not think that any woman on Earth or in imagination could compare with Melanthe, her black hair and white body, her sleepy eyes like purple dusk, the feel of her as she used him, mounting atop him in her favored sin. To have seen her so was worth a thousand years of burning to him. If he went to Hell for it, he only prayed God would not take away the memory.
Still, nothing about her came as he expected it. When finally she had left the bed and appeared in the hall, he was girded for her queries and objections. He saw her look about. He had grown taut in readiness for her censure—saw dust and decay that he'd never noticed before.
Will Foolet was terrified of her. Bassinger was not daunted to speak to any person alive—he would have sung his lays to the Fiend himself given the chance—but even he gave her a wide breach. All three of them, Ruck and Will and Bassinger, had heard her speak her mind about Wolfscar and its history.
But he was bewildered once again by his liege lady. She didn't speak of Wolfscar's unkempt state at all. She smiled at him like a shamefast maid, looking up from beneath a kerchief. She became modest; at night she withdrew from him and eluded his kisses. In the day she went about with a crowd of small girls. It was as if she had arisen from her spelled sleep transformed, turned from a haughty princess into a nun's acolyte.
The others gathered around her, enslaved as easily as she had vanquished Hew Dowl and Sir Harold. Will was complained of and called a hard taskmaster, only for directing that the ground-breaking begin in the fields. Performing before her lady's grace, their first new spectator in a decade of years, was much to be preferred.
Ruck and Will rode out alone to the shepherds and lambs, making rain-soaked notes of the fences and fodder, and lists of needed work. They ordered the labor by its importance, for never did they have enough bodies or skills to carry out all that cried to be done. Before there had been willingness and ready hands, at least. Now the fields and the bailey were empty, and Ruck walked into the hall to find it full of tumbling and singing before Melanthe.
He lost his temper. Flinging his wet mantle from his shoulders, he strode into the middle of the clear space, halting a pair of somersaults before they were begun. The music died.
"Is it a feast day?" Ruck glared around him. He threw his cloak onto the floor, sending droplets from it to spatter on the tile. "How be it that my gear is drenched and my rouncy in mud to his belly, while you make mirth and plays? Am I your lord or your servant?"
Everyone fell to their knees. A tympan tinkled in the stunned silence as a small girl crawled from Melanthe's lap and knelt, holding the belled drum before her.
"Thorlac," he snapped to one of the poised tumblers. "Stable my mount. Simon, take Will's. Stands he outside in the rain with the order of laboring. I'll see no one in this hall singing or playing until Lent is passed. Eat in the low hall, and give you thanks for it."
At once the great room emptied, light footsteps and shuffles and the odd note of a justled instrument. Only Melanthe was left, sitting on a settle drawn near the huge chimney. The gems on her kerchief gleamed as she bent her head, rubbing one hand over the back of the other.
"My lady must forgive me for ending your sport," he said tautly, "but the work demands."
"I ask your pardon," she said, without lifting her face. "I didn't know it. I thought they were at leisure."
"Not in this season, my lady. Spring comes."
"Yes," she said.
No more than that. He was damp, his hands still cold, though the fire beside her rumbled with more than enough wood and charcoal. "Have I displeased you, lady," he said harshly, "that you refuse my company?"
He hadn't meant to speak it out so abruptly. Her hands folded together in her lap, nunlike.
"I don't refuse your company, my lord. I am with you now."
"My embraces," he said.
She slanted a look up at him beneath the kerchief and her lashes, and then gazed down again, the picture of chastity.