"My lord!" There was a hot strain in Hew's voice. "A message from my lady!"
Ruck paused, leashing his urge to throw Hawk into a pell-mell charge down the path. As soon as he turned, Hew stood up and closed his eyes. He looked miserable and scared, squeezing the wool mitts on his hands.
"My lord, my lady commanded me. I am to say you as if she herself spoke, my lord, and her message to you be thusly—" He wet his chapped lips. "'I leave you of my own desire. Desmond says that Al—Allegreto lives, and his father comes in this country to wed me. I love this man as my life, better than ever I loved you.'" He took a breath while Ruck stared at him. "'What was between you and me is nothing and naught,'" he recited with a nervous flick of his tongue. "'I sore repent it. Do nothing to shame me, for henceforth I desire never to beholden you again, for disgrace and disgust of such a connection.'" He opened his eyes and flung himself down on his knees. "And so did she charge me to say exactly, my lord!" he cried. "I swear to you, for never should I speak such words else!"
"It is false!" Ruck shouted. "The horses are gone! They took her; they forced her!"
He gripped his hands together and bent his head down. "No, only Desmond was here, my lord, and she went apart and spoke to him within the sight of my eyes, lord! And she mounted him upon my horse, and said that he would have it to carry him, and bade me on pain to stay you from following her."
"No." Ruck took a step forward. "She did not!"
"My lord, she instructed me to say to you, if you would not abide her word"—Hew lifted wretched eyes—"to remember, my lord, that she warned you once, that always she deceived."
TWENTY-TWO
He had no memory of coming down from the mountain. Hawk was galloping, pounding down the road before the castle. The May pole stood in the meadow. He sent Hawk flying off the track, drawing his sword, careering down the slope with his arm outstretched.
The sword hit, slashing through the ribbons, a violent impact in his hand. The stave vibrated wildly as he swept past. He reined Hawk on his haunches and spurred the destrier at the pole. He was yelling as he rode it down, swinging his sword overhead. The bright silks flew in the wind. The blow rang through him, opening a white gash in the wood.
He flung the weapon from him as he passed the lists, leaning down to catch the haft of the battle ax. He swung upright in the saddle and charged the May pole howling fury in his throat.
The blade flashed and bit deep in the wood. With a crack the pole bent drunkenly. He drove the horse around with his legs, hefting the length of the ax in both hands. He cut at the stave, spurring Hawk in ever smaller circles around the fractured pillar, swinging again and again as wood chips flew past his face, chopping until the log fell with a squealing groan.
He raised the ax over his head and brought it down, cleaving the stump down the center with a crack like a lightning bolt. He yanked the weapon free and dismounted amid trampled ribbons, assaulting the downed spar.
The wood splintered beneath the blade. He had no thoughts, no idea of time. He hewed until his hands went numb with the work, until he couldn't pull the blade from its seat but stumbled forward over it when he tried.
He fell on his knees amid mutilated silk and sundered wood. With his dagger he stabbed at a scarred length of pole beside him, the only thing in reach. He could hear nothing but his own heaving breath and the sound of the point impaling wood. Sweat trickled down into his eye, sharp salt. He wiped it with the back of his leather sleeve.
The cold wind bit his cheeks when he looked up. All of his people stood at the edge of the lists, a cluster of color and silence except for one little girl who was weeping. Their May stave and garlands lay maimed and dismembered about him.
He shook his head. He shifted the dagger and speared the mud beside his knee. Torn strips of blue and pink fluttered and curled around his gauntlet. He pulled free and gored again, his fist rising and falling weakly. He shook his head once more.
"My lord." It was Will Foolet's voice, heavy with fear and question.
"I can't speak of it." Ruck's throat was hoarse. He shoved himself to his feet. "Ask Hew."
He took up the ax and walked toward the lists, wiping his muddy knife on his thigh. The tear-stained girl came up to meet him as he passed, reaching for the hem of his surcoat. "Won't we have a May then, m'lord, if you please?" Her large eyes fixed him. "My lady's grace said me that I might carry her flowers to the stave—" Her mother hurried up, trying to lift her away, but she clung stubbornly to him. "And I can't now!" she cried.
"Beg grace, my lord!" her mother exclaimed, yanking the small fist free.
Ruck saw a lone figure walking toward them from far away down the track. Hew. Soon enough they would all know, and stare at him, and pity him for a wretched love-sot, more fool than they could invent in their best playing at fools.
"I'll fell another." He turned from them, hefting the ax onto his shoulder. "I don't desire company at it."
Desmond had told Melanthe nothing more, but that Allegreto's father had come to Bowland. She hadn't asked. He did not use his bandaged hand, and he moved like an old man, his young face unsmiling, his eyes bleak.
He brought her to her senses. She had looked on him, the boy who had left with a merry melody that knew nothing of pain, and she had known that she must go.
She could not let this come to Wolfscar. And it would come, if she stayed, if Gian was here. The world would come no matter the depth of the woven wood barrier. Gian would hunt her until he found her.
As dreams and vapor vanished, as a laughing youth came home a cripple, so would such things perish if she tried to hold on to what she could not possess. She had not forgotten who she was, but she had let herself forget what it demanded.
She had looked back once, halting the horse at a crossroad where a monk and a farmer worked to repair a harrow. Gryngolet sat on the saddlebow, asleep, her head tucked beneath one white wing. The wind blew warmer here, pushing fat low clouds and showers off the sea. The lowland was alive with the work of spring, with cleared fields and flowers, church bells and children chasing birds off the new seeds.
Behind her the mountains rose, catching the rain against their flanks—a dark watch, a malevolence that made the eye long to turn to the new foliage and fresh red soil. She stared at the boundary. High and impenetrable it seemed, and yet preciously frail, vanishing at a glance for anyone with the key.
Her message to Ruck had been a more powerful kind of barrier, designed to kill all trust and love. He would have followed her—she made a pit of broken faith between them to prevent him.
Desmond didn't halt or look back at her. His fat sluggish rouncy, taken from Hew, carried him step by step. She had seen him wrap his good hand in the mane, his mouth drawn hard against every jolt. Sometimes, when his face grew too white, she had told him they would rest, and gave him time to recover himself.
She wondered how many fingers he had left beneath the bandage. But 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'd 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'd 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.