Cara looked down. Lint flecked her gown from the wool she'd been spinning when he summoned her. She picked at a bit, rolling it around and around between her fingers. "The messenger will not say."
"No," he snapped, turning sharply toward her. "Not for love, in any case."
"It may be he doesn't know."
"He knows. She's with the green man—she sent the falcon's varvels, the ones she gave to him. She's using the knight somehow, but for God's rood I can't make out her intention." His voice held a cold strain. "And my father—I've not sent him word all this time. I don't dare, not even to pray him to protect your sister. Cara, this messenger—" He stopped, as if he'd spoken what he did not wish to say.
"What of the messenger?" she cried, rising suddenly from the chair. "You want to torture him, don't you? And you ask me if I have a better means, when you know I've no notion what to do!"
"I thought—perhaps if you spoke to him. I frightened him. He's but a boy, and innocent as a virgin."
Cara laughed. "You're more fool than I think you, if you believe I can succeed where you've failed."
"Or your friend Guy might do it," Allegreto said, ignoring her denial. "He's back from searching again, empty-handed."
She lifted her eyes, feeling her heart contract. But Allegreto showed no sign of malice. There was nothing in his gaze when he looked at her but the faint longing that she had come to recognize. He had never touched her since that day before he'd killed Ficino. He did not press her. She would have thought it had been imagination, that one touch, if she did not see it in his face every time now that he was near her.
"If you would only aid me, Cara," he said in a strangely helpless tone. "I'm trying."
For no reason she could say, her eyes began to blur with tears. "I don't understand you."
He walked the wall from the window to the tapestry. "No," he said distantly. "I know it."
He stood before the woven stag. The woven hunter stared at him in wonder.
"You can't do anything," he said bleakly.
He was so beautiful. She had never seen a living man or a work of art so beautiful and terrible. She swallowed tears. "Allegreto, I will try, if you wish it."
"No, it is hopeless," he said. "You'd only blunder, and Guy the same." He smiled at her, wooden as a carved angel in a church. "A hopeless pair, the two of you."
She did try. She took food to the messenger in the room where he was kept, careful that she did not do anything to let him escape. He was very frightened, as Allegreto had said. He would not even eat, but sat hunched on the stool, a youth with a long nose and long musician's fingers. Allegreto had even left him his instrument, but Cara doubted that he played. The turret room was frigid.
A boy, Allegreto had called him, and yet she thought them of an age. But he could never be as old as Allegreto, not if he lived a hundred years.
"Do you speak French?" she asked.
He didn't answer, but looked away from her. She thought he must understand her, though. She took a deeper breath.
"I've come to explain to you," she said. "You must tell Allegreto what he asks."
His look flicked toward her, and then back. A stubbornness came into his jaw.
"He only wishes to find my mistress and see that she is safe."
"She is safe," the youth said.
"How can we be certain? Why can't we go to her, or she come to us?"
"I've said all I can say!" He stood up, prowling the cold turret and chafing his hands. "Persecute me as you will!"
Cara rose from beside the tray that he scorned. "You don't know what danger you're in," she said sharply. "You don't know what persecution means."
"What, hot pincers? The wheel? Go ahead. I've sworn my word. I will not speak."
She shook her head in amazement. "Are you so blithe?"
"I'll die before I speak!" he said wildly.
"This isn't courage, I think, but mere ignorance!" Cara's angry breath made a keen flash of frost in the air. "Do you know why you're sound now? Because of me. Because he doesn't want to displease me, you foolish boy! How long do you think that can last?"
He drew himself straight and gave her a sneering look. "Tell your lover to try me as he will."
"Oh!" She whirled, banging her knuckles upon the door to be released. "I'll tell him to serve you as a fool should be served!"
The guard let her out, locking the door behind. She ran down the spiraling stairs, her hand on the cold plaster curve of the wall to support her. At the first landing Allegreto stepped out to meet her.
She hadn't told him she would go to the boy, but of course he knew. His dark eyes questioned her.
"I learned nothing," she said, "but that he's a witless mouse among cats."
Only by his silence, and the slight casting down of his shoulders, did she realize that he'd truly hoped she might succeed. But in the next moment he was the sculpted angel, living stone. "Then you must visit him again tomorrow. And tell him that your lover's patience wanes."
For more than a week they played the farce. Cara feared every day that she would come to the turret room and the young messenger would be gone, forfeited to Allegreto's ruthless practice. She did not have to feign the growing urgency of her pleas to the youth; Allegreto would not, could not keep this forbearance long.
She saw the struggle in him. Even the seneschal had begun to mutter of stronger measures. Sir Thomas did not approve of involving a lady in such matters as imprisoned messengers, and shrugged and glared and said, "So there," each day when Cara reported her failure. "Her lady's grace is held to ransom, mark me," he said. "We'll have a payment demand yet if we don't deliver her."
Allegreto sat at the heavy council table, staring as if he looked far beyond the seneschal's white head. He seemed to grow farther away as each day passed, reclusive and distracted. Only in the moments when Cara came from the tower room, before he heard that she had learned no more, were his eyes alive and quick, asking for fulfillment.
She knew that her efforts were no use, as he must know it. But instead of bringing the game to its foregone end, he withdrew into a strange languor. He had no counsel for Sir Thomas, no insults for Cara, nothing but those instants of living hope once a day.
She was coming to hate Desmond. As she grew more vehement, he grew more cocksure, as if he took pot-courage from her visits. Well he might, she thought, hearing dire warnings from a female, threats that must seem more impotent by the day.
"You must do something more," she said, after another fruitless session in the turret.
Allegreto gave her a level look. "Must I?" he asked softly.
She thought of Desmond, so proud of his boy's stupid courage, trying to protect someone who deserved no protection, her fiendish mistress and her wicked schemes. She thought of Ficino, who at least had known the way of things. And Allegreto, standing in crimson on the dais, the color of blood and fire.
Somehow, after that night, he had given over his soul to her, as if she could protect it for him. He waited for her decision.
"You must talk to him again," she said.
He smiled. He laid his head back in the chair and laughed.
"Cara," he said. "Ah, Cara."
He said it as if he were in despair. He cast a look about the room, a prisoner's search for some weakness or crack in the walls. Then he pushed back the chair and sprang like a cornered cat from a pit, leaving Cara and Sir Thomas alone.
She was lying awake when he came in the dark. She had heard the single clarion that heralded some late arrival, and sat up hastily. Allegreto's outline against the low candle confirmed her in fear and wild relief. "She's come?" she whispered.