A shimmer of color sparkled at the corner of Ruck's eye. He turned his head reflexively, as if a mirror had flashed. Space had opened around him. At the edge of it, two spears' length distant, a lady paused.
She glanced at him and the guard as she might glance at mongrels scrapping. A princess—mayhap a queen, from the richness of her dress and jewels—surrounded by her attendants, male and female, secluded amid the crowd like a glitter of silent prismatic light among shadows.
Cold...and as her look skimmed past him, his whole body caught ice and fire.
He dropped to one knee, bowing his head. When he lifted it, the open space had closed, but still he could see her within the radius of her courtiers. They appeared to be waiting, like everyone else, conversing among themselves. One of the men gave Ruck a brief scornful lift of his brow and turned his shoulder eloquently.
Ruck came to a sense of himself. He sat down on the bench by the guard. But he could not keep his gaze away from her. At first he tried, examining the pillars and carved animals, the other pilgrims, a passing priest, in between surreptitious glances at her, but none in her party looked his way again. Concealed among the throng and the figures passing in and out the door, he allowed himself to stare.
She carried a hooded white falcon, as indifferently as if the Pope's hall had been a hunting field. Her throat and shoulders gleamed pale against a jade gown fashioned like naught he'd seen in his life—cut low, hugging her waist and hips without a concealing cotehardi, embroidered down to her hem with silver dragonflies, each one with a pair of jeweled emerald eyes, so that the folds sparkled with her every move. A dagger hung on her girdle, smooth ivory crusted with malachite and rubies. Lavish silver liripipes, worked in a green and silver emblem that he didn't recognize, draped from her elbows to the floor. Green ribbons with the same emblem laced her braids, lying against hair as black as the black heavens, coiled smooth as a devil's coronet.
He watched her hands, because he could not bear to look long at her face and did not dare to scan her body for its violent effect on his. The gauntlet and the falcon's hood, bejeweled like all the rest of her, glittered with emeralds on silver. She stroked the bird's breast with white fingers, and from four rods away that steady, gentle caress made him bleed as if from a mortal wound in his chest.
She turned to someone, lifting her finger to hold back the gauzy green veil that fell from her crown of braids to her shoulder—a feminine gesture, a delicacy that commanded and judged and condemned him to an agony of desire. He could not tear his look from her hand as it hovered near her lips: he saw her slight smile for her ladies—so cold, cold...she was bright cold; he was ferment. He couldn't comprehend her face. He hardly knew if she was comely or unremarkable. He could not at that moment have described her features, any more than he could have looked straight at the sun to describe it.
"Husband!" Isabelle's voice shocked him. She was there; she caught his hand, falling on her knees beside the bench. "The bishop speaketh with me on the morrow, to hearen my confession, and discourse together as God's servants!" Her blue eyes glowed as she clutched a pass that dangled wax seals. She smiled up at him joyfully. "I told him of thee, Ruck, that thou hast been my good and faithful protector, and he bids thee comen also before him—to confirm thy solemn vow of chastity in the name of Jesus and the Virgin Mary!"
Isabelle insisted that he leave off his armor for the interview with the bishop. Her brief timidity, her snugging against Ruck for protection, had vanished. All night she'd sat up praying, pausing only to describe in endless particular the triumph of her examination by the clerks and officials. They had heard of her—her fame had really spread so far!—and wished to prove to their own satisfaction that her visions were of God. They had questioned her fiercely, but she'd known every proper answer, and even given them back some of their own by pointing out an error in their orthodoxy concerning the testament of Saint James.
Ruck had listened with a deep uneasiness inside him. He could not imagine that those arrogant churchmen, with their bright vestments and Latin intonations, had been won over by his wife. Isabelle attracted a certain number of adherents, but they were of kindred mind to her, inclined to ecstasies and spiritual torments. He had not seen a single cleric here who gave the appearance of being any more interested in holy ecstasy than in his dinner.
He'd slept fitfully, dreaming of falcons and female bodies, waking fully aroused. For an instant he'd groped for Isabelle and then opened his eyes and seen her kneeling at the window next to a sleeping tailor. Tears coursed silently down her cheeks. She looked so radiant and anxious, her eyes lifted to the dawn sky, her hands gripped together, that he felt helpless. He wanted this bishop to give her whatever it was that she desired—sainthood, if she asked for it.
He dreaded the interview. He was afraid as he'd never been before a fight; he felt as if he were facing execution. As long as that vow had been private, between him and Isabelle, it had not seemed quite real. There was always the future; there were mitigating circumstances; he had not spoken clearly just what he swore to. She might change her mind. They were neither of them so very old yet. Women were erratic, that was known certainly enough. He ought to have beaten her. He ought to have put up with the screams and got her with a child. He ought to have told her that decent women stayed home and didn't drag their husbands over the face of creation in pursuit of canonization. He watched her prayerful tears, his lufsom, his sweet Isabelle, and could have wept himself.
In the great audience hall he was informed he must wait, that only Isabelle was required. A hunchbacked man held out his hand, leaning on his staff, and Ruck put a coin in it. He got a mute nod in return.
All the morning he sat there, feeling naked in his leather gambeson without armor over it, swallowing down apprehension and despair. There was no way he could find out of the thing short of disavowing his own words and revealing himself a false witness in public, before a bishop of the church. Worse, he was afraid that they might trap him into it, perplex him with religious questions and turn him about like a spinning top, as Isabelle could do, until he swore whatever they wished.
Three clerks came for him. He rose and followed them through corridors and up stairs, until they entered a high, square room. His blood beat in his ears. He had an impression of silence and intense color, frescoes on all the walls and many vividly dressed people, before he followed the clerks with his head bared and lowered. He went down on his knees before the bishop without ever looking into the man's face.
"Sire Ruadrik d'Angleterre." The modulated voice spoke in French. Soft slippers and the gold-banded hem of white and red robes were all Ruck could see. "Is it your will that your wife take the veil and the ring, to live chaste henceforth?"
Ruck stared at the slippers. The veil. He lifted his eyes as high as the bishop's knees. Isabelle had never said anything about taking...
Was she to leave him? Go into a nunnery?
"He hath sworn." Isabelle's ardent voice reverberated off the high walls. She spoke English, but the interpreter's French words came like a murmured echo.
"Silence, daughter," the bishop said. "Thy husband must speak."
Ruck felt them all looking at him, a crowd of strangers at his back. He hadn't been prepared for this. He felt as if a great hand gripped his throat.
"Do you understand me, Sire Ruadrik? Your wife desires to take the vow of chastity and retire to a life of contemplation. A placement can be made for her among the Franciscans at Saint Cloud, if her situation is your concern."