"Cease this weeping," Allegreto said tautly. He looked at her again and stood up from the block of iron he had been resting upon. Even in the bandit's dull woolens, he had his father's arrogant nobility and the grace of a fallen angel. His legs were muddy to the knees from floundering in the bogs.

"I'm sorry. I'm trying." She held her fist hard against her mouth in the attempt. Another sob escaped.

"Stupid Monteverde bitch," he said.

"I'm sorry!" she cried. "I'm sorry I'm Monteverde! I'm sorry I can't stop weeping! I don't know why you troubled to save anyone but yourself from those thieving brutes!"

He stared at her sullenly. Then he lowered his dark lashes and looked away. "Are you rested? I want to go on."

Hunger gnawed at her, and her legs were cramped and aching. Her bare feet bled in the dead woman's rough shoes. "Go, then. It's nothing to me."

He leaned over her and jerked her chin up. "What is this—another puling, weeping Monteverde? Christ, I wonder that your father found the vigor to get you on your mother. By hap he didn't, but let a Navona do the work."

Cara tore her chin from his fingers, scrambling to her feet. "Don't touch me. And I would not brag so of Navona vigor were I you, gelding!"

In the half-light of the smithy, his teeth showed in a feral grin. "Careful, Monteverde, or I'll prove myself intact on you. How would you like a Navona babe?"

"Idle threat!" she snapped.

"Shall I show you?" He reached as if to untie his hose.

Cara could not contain her breath of shock. "Liar! Cursed Navona, your own father would never have let you near my mistress if you were whole. You slept with her!"

His mouth hardened. "My father has reason enough to trust me." He shrugged, dropping his hand. "And the Princess Melanthe was as hard as this anvil. Stupid girl, she was old! We did no more than mock at love, she and I, to preserve her from Riata and the silly Monteverde geese who do their bidding."

"I don't believe it."

"It's not her I ever wanted." He looked down at Cara, just a little taller than she, his face smooth and youthful, but with cheekbones shaded by the promise of maturity. "How many years do you think I have?"

She shrugged. "I know not, nor care. Enough for every evil."

"Sixteen on Saint Agatha's day," he said.

"Nay," she said. She had thought him twenty and more, caught forever at the cusp of adulthood, his voice a young man's, his body still a youth's but with a full-grown control, matured beyond the gawkiness of adolescence.

But when she looked at him, she could see it. Like a trick of the light, his aspect altered before her eyes, and she saw a tall boy, a year younger than herself, well-grown for his age, with his frame filling rapidly into manhood.

"I don't believe you," she said, but her voice wavered.

He gave a short laugh. "Well, it matters not what you believe. If you are alive in a year or two, Monteverde goose, which I doubt, you may see for yourself. This play must have come to an end soon enough, for no eunuch grows a beard. I see that I shall have to grow mine to my knees now, just to prove my sex."

"A beard will suit you ill," she said caustically.

He gave her an odd look. He touched his jaw, drawing his fingers down it as if he already felt the coarsening.

"Navona peacock! Of course you would not wish to cover up your beauty!"

His dark eyes searched hers for a moment. Then he smiled, sweetness tinged with some strange melancholy of his own. "Nay," he said slowly, "haps I would not. Come, feeble Monteverde, I see you have made your feet. Walk with me, and if I please, I may discover you something to eat." He grinned, a flash in the shadow. "Even if I have to kill another outlaw for you, and his lady, too, for to take it."

* * *

Ruck had brought only delicacies for food, oranges and nuts and spiced sugar, having presumed that there would be refuge and keep at the priory. He had intended the luxuries as gifts for the house—instead they were all that was to be had for supper. The twilight was coming on too deep to hunt, and his stomach was hollow with complaint.

He was unrelentingly formal in his manners with the princess, trying to regain the proper distance between them, but she seemed to have taken a capricious dislike to ceremony. In the sunset that lit the river gold and turned the coppice along the shoreline to black lace, she would not sit as a gentle lady and be served. After seeing her falcon established upon a bow perch made of a green alder branch, its ends thrust into the ground, she persisted in collecting deadwood for the fire and winter grass for the horse.

"My lady soils her gloves," he said in disapproval as she dumped handfuls of greenery at Hawk's nose. "I bid Your Highness sitten adown, if it please you nought ill."

The destrier lipped up her offering eagerly and lifted his head, pushing at her shoulder. She stumbled a step under the hard nudge and dusted the clinging stems from her gloves. "The horse mote eaten."

"He's fettered. A little distance he can wander, to finden the same fodder you bring him, lady, and more."

Hawk had already dropped his head and begun nosing and cropping at the tender winter shoots around a sandy hummock. She looked at the horse and said, "Oh," as if such a novel notion had never occurred to her.

"Your Highness mote eaten, also," he said. "If you be pleased to sitten adown, so I may attend you."

He opened his hand toward where he had made a seat from his saddle and some furs and carefully positioned it upwind of the smoking fire. It was the third time he had made the suggestion, but he managed, with some effort, to keep his voice mild.

She smiled, with the golden light on her face. "I do not wish for thy attendance, worthy knight, but for pleasure I will beg thee to bear me company at table."

He bowed stiffly. "Nought to your honor be it, to sup with your servant. Do sit ye adown, if it please."

"I will sit me down if thou wilt," she said.

He held fast to form. "I think it nought seemly, my lady."

Her lips tightened stubbornly. She stooped and began tugging at grass, gathering more into her hands. Sand clung to the damp hem of her cloak and skirt. Green stained her white gloves. She carried the fodder to Hawk, and then picked up a stick from the kindle pile. She tossed that on the fire and chose another, struggling to break a branch that was too thick for her to snap.

"Iwysse—I will sit!" Ruck crossed his legs and dropped down onto the ground. This newest vagary of hers, this acting as if she were no greater than he, vexed and baffled him. Instead of feminine tears and terror, peril seemed to make her foolish in her mind.

When she dropped the stick and sat beside him, he regretted his capitulation, for she ignored the saddle and took up a place much too close, so close that her folded knees almost touched his. Her cloak did, a bedraggled ermine corner lying in a casual sweep over his knee poleyn.

"My lady, I made a fitter seat for you," he protested.

"The sand is soft enough." She picked up the knife. "Come, we will counsel together. I pray thee, what best us to do?"

"Hunt dragons, I trove," he muttered. "Wherefore should we nought, if Your Highness will gaderen fodder and sitten upon the ground like unto a bondman's wife?"

She held out to him a segment of orange. "Yea, we will hunt us firedrakes—wherefore not?"

"Because I'm nought doted in my head, even if you are so." He bit into the orange unthinking, and then realized that she was not yet served. He lowered it hastily, appalled at himself and aggrieved at her for luring him into it by taking no notice of his misdemeanor at all. She peeled the rind and offered the whole fruit to him as if she full expected him to eat before her.

He refused to do it, but sat sternly with the food in his hands, waiting.

"Tell me, art thou at my hest, knight?" she asked.

"By right I am yours, lady," he said swiftly, "in high and in low."

She smiled. "This is low."

"What is your will?"

"That thou wilt eat till thou art sated and leave to me the remainder, forwhy I do not wish thee to wax faint from hunger in this wild place. I doubt not thou wouldst swoon just as a dragon fell upon us, which would be inconvenient, as I am no master of a sword."

He turned the orange in his hand. "I grant my lady that she is no swordman"—he laid it back upon the cloth—"but I deem it no more convenient that my lady be brought low of a fainting-fit herseluen, and I haf to carry her."

"For one avowed at my bidding"—she snatched up the fruit—"thou art as obstinate as a wooden ox!"

Her white teeth sank into the orange. She ate it all. While he watched, she finished the second orange and peeled the third, ate one segment of it and threw the rest over her shoulder, where it plopped into the muddy shallows of the river. Then she nibbled at the almonds until she had consumed them. She tasted the sugar, made a face, and ground the remainder into the sand.

Ruck looked down at the bare cloth. She had eaten or destroyed everything.

"If thou wouldst have a forpampered princess, then thou shalt have one, knight. I am mistress of that craft."

Ruck said nothing. He stared grimly into the darkening woods that lined the shore.

"If thou wouldst have a companion of sensible wits," she said, "then save this overweening indulgence for the court. It is thine to choose."

He looked over his shoulder into the twilight shadows where she had thrown the last orange. "My lady, I say you troth, I haf nought seen no such thing as common wit in you yet."