He lifted his face and looked at her. The rain slipped off strong dark brows and dewed on his black lashes. He was seventeen, and already carried fighting scars, but none visible on his upturned features. Water coursed down, outlining his hard mouth and the sullen cast of his green eyes. The girl pushed away from him sharply.
"I believe thou art Satan Himself, sir, if thou wilt stare at me so vile."
Without a word he got to his feet, readjusting the sword at his hip before he walked away to a bay horse tethered in the shadow of the trees. He brought the stallion up to her. "Will ye ride?"
"The Lord Jesus commanded me walk to Jerusalem."
"Ride," he said "until we comen up with the company once more."
"It were evil for me to riden. I mote walk."
"This forest hides evil enow," he said harshly. "N'would I haf us tarry alone here."
"'Fear not, in the valley of shadow and death,'" she intoned, catching his hand. She fell to the sodden ground, her wet robe clinging to the feminine contour of her breasts. "Kneel with me. I see the Virgin. Her light shineth all about us. Oh...the sweet heavenly light!" She closed her eyes, turning up her face. Her tears began to mingle with the raindrops.
"Isabelle!" he cried. "Ne cannought we linger here alone! For God's love—move freshly now!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her up. By main force he threw her across the saddle in spite of her struggle. She began to screech, her wet legs bared, sliding from his mailed grip. The horse shied, and she tumbled off the other side. He jerked the reins, barely holding the stallion back from trampling her as it tried to bolt.
She lay limp in the grass. As he dropped to his knees beside her, she rolled feebly onto her back, moaning.
"Lady!" He leaned over her. "Isabelle, luflych—ye be nought harmed?"
She opened her eyes, staring past him. "So sweet. So wondrous sweet, the light."
Rain washed the mud from her face. Her fair blue eyes held a dreamy look, her lashes spiky with wetness, her lips smiling faintly. The pilgrim's hood had fallen open, showing a white, smooth curve of throat. He hung motionless above her a moment, looking down.
Her gaze snapped to his. She shoved at him and scrambled away. "Thou thinkest deadly sin! My love is for the Lord God alone."
The young knight flung himself to his feet. He caught his horse with one hand and the girl with the other, dragging them together. "Mount!" he commanded, baring his teeth with a savagery that cowed her into grasping the stirrup.
"I n'will," she said, trying to turn away.
"Will ye or nill ye!" He hiked her foot, catching her off balance, and propelled her up. She yelped, landing pillion in the high-cantled war saddle, clutching for security as he swung the wild-eyed horse around. The stallion followed him, neck stretched, the black mane lying in sloppy thick straggles against the animal's skin. The knight hauled his horse a few yards down the verge through the wet grass and mud. He stopped, facing stiffly away from her into the rain. "I am nought Satan Himseluen," he said. "I'm your wedded husband, Isabelle!"
"I am wed to Christ," she said righteously. "And oft revealed the truth to thee, sir. Thou hast thy way with me against my will and God's."
He stood still, looking straight ahead. "Six month," he said stonily. "My true wife ye hatz n'been in that time."
Her voice softened a little. "To use me so were the death of thee, husband—so I've prophesied, oft and oft."
He slogged forward. The horse slipped and splashed through a puddle, sending water up, causing the knight's fustian robe to cling over the plated greaves and cuisses that protected his legs. The rain swelled into huge drops. Hail began to spatter against his shoulders, bouncing in pea-size pebbles off his bared black hair.
He made an inarticulate sound and dragged the stallion to the edge of the wood, stopping beneath a massive tree. Isabelle and the horse took up the protected space beneath the heaviest branch, leaving him with the filter of sodden leaves above to break the hail.
She began an exhortation on the sins of the flesh and detailed a vision of Hell recently visited upon her. From this she went on to a revelation of Jesus on the Cross, which, she assured him, God had told her was superior in its brilliance to the similar sight described by Brigit of Sweden. When a hailstone the size of a walnut cracked him on the skull, he cursed aloud and yanked his helmet from the saddle.
Isabelle reproved him for his impious language. He pulled the conical bascinet down over his head. The visor fell shut. He leaned against the tree trunk with a dismal clang: a faceless, motionless, wordless suit of armor, while his wife told a parable of her own devising in which a man who used ungodly maledictions was condemned to dwell in Hell with fiery rats forever eating out his tongue. The music of the hailstones pattered in tinny uneven notes on steel.
She had finished the parable and gone on to predicting what sort of vermin they might expect to find among the infidels when the storm began to lift, leaving the forest and the grassy verge steaming in greens and grays. Light shone on the watery ruts in two twisted ribbons of silver. Like a frost of snow, hail lay amid the foliage, already beginning to melt. The knight pulled off his helmet and tried unsuccessfully to dry it on his robe. Without speaking, he pushed away from the tree and began to walk again, tugging the horse through small lakes beside the road, his spurs catching in the muddy weeds.
Vapor rose from his shoulders. Isabelle plucked at her sodden robe, holding it away from her skin as she talked. She was describing the present state of her soul, in considerable detail, when he stopped suddenly and turned to her.
A breaking shaft of sunlight caught him, banishing the sullen shadows. He looked up at her, young and earnest, interrupting her eloquence. "Isabelle. Say me this." He paused, staring at her intensely. "If outlaws were to fall upon us this moment, and ransom my life against—" The youthfulness vanished from his face in a set scowl. "Against this—that ye takes me again into your bed as husband—then what would you? Would ye see me slayed?"
Her lips pinched. "What vain tale is this?"
"Say the truth of your heart," he insisted. "My life for your vaunted chastity. What best to be done?"
She glared at him. "Thou art a sinner, Ruck."
"The truth!" he shouted passionately. "Have ye no love left for me?"
His words echoed back from the forest, enticement enough to outlaws, but he stood waiting, rigid, with his hand on the bridle.
She began to sway slightly. She lifted her eyes to the glowing clouds. "Alas," she said gently, "but I love thee so steadfast, husband—it were better to beholden thee put to death before my eyes, than we should yielden again to that uncleanness in the eyes of God."
His gaze did not leave her. He stared at her, unblinking, his body still as stone.
She smiled at him and reached down to touch his hand. "Revelation will come to thee."
He caught her fingers and gripped them in his, holding them hard in his armored glove. "Isabelle," he said, in a voice like ruin.
With her free hand she crossed herself. "Let us make troth of chastity both together. Thee I do love dearly, as a mother loveth her son."
He let go of her. For a moment he looked about him in a bewildered way, as if he could not think what to do. Then, abruptly, he began to walk again, pulling the horse in silence.
A cool wind out of the storm caught the knight's dark hair, drying it, blowing it against his ears. The breeze faltered for a moment, playing and veering.