He seemed to get tangled in the tail of his sentence again. Ruck finished his oatcake, brushing the crumbs from his palms. He leaned his elbows back on the ledge, waiting.
"There are no maids, my lord!"
The despairing exclamation rang back off the rocks. Desmond flung a stone. He hurled another pebble after the first.
Ruck watched them take the leaf tips off a holly branch. Desmond had impressive aim.
"They're all too young, or too old," the boy muttered.
"Did you bring a mount?" Ruck asked.
Desmond glanced at him warily.
"I'm in hopes that you did. I be loath for the mare to carry us double down and back."
The boy stared at him, then leapt off the ledge with a whoop. "You'll take me?" He threw himself down at Ruck's feet. "Thank you, my lord! Thank you! I brought Little Abbot to ride, and plenty of food, for chance!"
Desmond was by no means the first youth to venture out of Wolfscar with maidens on his mind. He followed Ruck's mare on the little white-footed ass, kicking to keep up, and carried on a flow of fine talk and song about love all the way down through the thorn-wood. Ruck listened, half inclined to his old jealousy of the minstrel wit to hear it. Full grown, he'd never been so confident and easy as this unfledged orator was at sixteen. The first time Ruck had come down from the mountains himself, he'd been too shamefast to make a bow to a female, far less sing of love.
But Desmond lost a little of his boldness after they'd dropped below the mists and come into where the dark woods thinned. The air held a heavy scent of smoke, the mark of the charcoal-burners who worked the abbey's iron ore, and a sign, Ruck hoped, that no pestilence interrupted ordinary labor.
He was already certain that plague had spared the country before he spent a shilling to find out the news from a shepherd. What might have come to pass in the larger world, the man knew not, but a band of pilgrims had descended upon the abbey for Easter, and they seemed healthy enough to complain of bedbugs and the sour ale as they went through.
Ruck looked past the shepherd's flock, where the hills opened to farm and pasture. There was no plague, and no reason to delay longer. If not for Desmond's hopes, he would have turned back here, for he knew what he'd come to discover.
But the youth was waiting, having lost interest in love and conceived a lust for travel. He kicked Little Abbot along eagerly. The wider horizon had worked strongly on his mind, and he was full of questions about far places and cities Ruck had seen.
"I'll go to London," Desmond announced.
"Mary, it's a sore journey only for a maid," Ruck said.
"How far?"
"Weeks, if you walk—which you will, as Little Abbot does not accompany you."
"My lord doesn't wish me to go," Desmond surmised gloomily. "Never will I go nowhere."
Ruck smiled. "Never. I forbid it."
The youth sighed. He squinted longingly at the distance and sighed again.
"Never, that is, but for the journey I command you," Ruck said idly, "with the man I'll send to my lady's castle, to fetch back her guard."
A grin broke over Desmond's face. "My lord! I may go?"
"Yes."
"When, my lord?" he demanded. "How far be it? And who goes with me?"
A pair of cows lifted their heads as the mare passed. Their bells clanked roundly. Ruck watched them, weighing the matter in his mind.
"Soon enough when we return," he said finally. "I charge Bassinger to go."
"Uncle Bass?" Desmond cried. "But he'll never stir himself!"
"Will he or won't he," Ruck said. "None other but myself knows the road as he."
"It was a hundred years ago, my lord!" Desmond kicked the ass up even with him. "His knee will pain him. His back will ache upon the horse. He won't ride from the gatehouse as far as the sheepfold now, my lord! Send Tom with me, my lord."
"Thomas plants. And Jack, and all able bodies. Someone will be caused to take up your slack, and that be enough."
Desmond scowled. "Will Foolet."
"Will is afraid to go out of the valley, as you know well. Take your satisfaction that I allow you leave, before I regret it."
"Yes, my lord." The youth swiftly ceased his complaint. "So will I, my lord."
Little Abbot announced their arrival by planting his hooves and braying lustily in spite of all a red-faced Desmond could do to whip him along. But the animal's voice was hardly noticeable amid the disorder and stir on the green. Horses tied too close nipped at one another or nosed hopefully in laden carts. Servants hustled packs and boxes. A pair of nuns stood together guarding their bags with the ferocity of wimpled mastiffs, while a stream of people passed in and out under the long pole and brush that marked the tavern.
"Pilgrims," Ruck said, but it was an unusually large party, and even conducted by an armed guard. The carts were full of larder and wool. "They go out with the abbey's trade."
Desmond was gazing at the soldiers, his eyes alight. "Will they have to fight?"
Ruck took stock of the large guard. They were mounted all, and well turned out, holding patient watch while their charges refreshed themselves—the kind of escort he wanted for Melanthe. But they wore the abbey's livery, and he had no notion to ask for aid there. "They'll account themselves well, if they do." He turned away. "Dame Fortune likes you, Desmond—every maid in the country will be here for such sight."
Even as he spoke, three girls hurried out of the inn and began rooting for something in a baggage cart. One of them cast a glance at Ruck and Desmond and instantly pulled her veil over her face, huddling into hisses and giggles with her companions. All three turned and stared.
Desmond turned bright red. He was common enough in his green and yellow dags in Wolfscar, but here his vestment shouted amid the common grays and browns. Ruck could see him shrinking. Little Abbot chose that moment to lift his head and send forth another raucous bray.
Desmond turned from red to white. He looked as if his stomach revolted.
"Were I you," Ruck said under his breath, "I'd show them that I had a right to my minstrel's gear."
But the youth seemed daunted into impotence. Ruck dismounted. He took hold of Abbot's halter.
"Is this the king of lovers I met this morn? Hie, tumble you to the tavern door," he said, "three springs off your hands, if you can."
Desmond threw his leg over Abbot's back and hit the ground. He bounded off his feet onto his hands, flipping backward, a green-and-yellow wheel across the grass, five handsprings and a midair tumble at the finish before he came up flushed, sent a glare at Ruck, and stalked into the tavern without even glancing at the girls.
They were openmouthed with astonishment. A few of the guards shouted and clapped. Ruck raised his hand to them and gave the maids a light courtesy. He tied his beasts, then carried Desmond's gittern into the tavern.
Desmond had fallen in love. It was his misfortune that his choice was the comely redheaded maid who served the shoemaker's wife and traveled with the rest of the pilgrims in the abbey's party. Ruck, sipping ale in a corner well removed from the white-robed clerks traveling with their abbot's goods, foresaw lengthy pining over doomed love as the harvest of this day.