She turned. The knight stalked barefooted up through the reeds, soaked, wearing only linen that molded to him so perfectly he might have had on nothing at all. Every muscle showed as he moved, every feature, his ribs and chest, his waist, his thick calves and thighs, even tarse and stones. His shoulders gleamed wetly, big and straight beneath the dripping tails of his rough black locks.

She was accustomed to men who diminished by a third when they shed their armor, but he almost seemed larger, looming up over her as she knelt beside Gryngolet. He dangled the mallards by the neck in one hand, his sword and leather gambeson wadded together under the other arm. His small amulet pouch swung from his wrist, the leather darkened with wet. He did not appear mirthful.

He cast the ducks down beside her and stood dripping. Melanthe looked at his bare muddy feet and saw a shudder run up through his whole body. She raised her face warily.

He squatted beside her, his eyes for a moment on Gryngolet, who was rending her food with renewed energy, glancing frequently at the knight as if she were determined to consume it before he could steal it from her.

A slow grin lifted his mouth. "Little warrior," he said, smiling his rare smile. "Three in one flight!"

Melanthe watched him, feeling things in her heart that frightened her, emotion that all her instinct and experience warned her against.

She looked from his face to his body, stifling sentiment in cold observation of muck and clammy wet—and not even that could rescue her from folly. He was a pleasure for a woman to look upon, as elegant and fine in his body as a great horse was elegant, without padding or puff, startling in his grace and muscle. She had been married at twelve to a prince thirty years older and courted in halls of the highest fashion—she had not until this moment understood the plain, powerful comeliness of a dripping and muddy man.

He seemed at ease, as if he thought the linen clothed him as well wet as dry. He had only to look down at himself to find his mistake—but with a rueful inner smile, Melanthe thought that even the evidence of his eyes might not convince him, if he would put his faith in such flimsy things as honor and courtesy and linen, principles as liable to evaporate under the force of reality as the cloth was prone to become transparent in water.

Another shudder passed through him. She stood, unpinning her cloak, and thrust it at him. "There—wrap thyself. And do not dispute and debate me!" she added. "Thy bones rattle from the chill."

He rose, sweeping the mantle around his shoulders. "Nay, lady," he said meekly.

She hesitated, and then said, "She did not hurt thee?"

He turned a thumb toward the pile of stiffened leather. "Before I won my spurs, I used that for armor. Good cuir bouilli will turn off hard steel."

"N'will it turn off a catarrh," she said. "Come back to dry at the fire, ere thou begin to cough and croak."

* * *

She could slit the wing-bone of a heron for the marrow, but she did not know that green wood wouldn't burn. She had cut the hearts out of all the fowl, but could not clean them without direction, ending with duck down clinging to her nose, sneezing and struggling to bat it away. The necessity of a spit for roasting did not occur to her until she had already plucked both mallards.

Ruck sat with his mantle and hers both wrapped about him, squinting against the smoky fire she had built, offering advice when she applied to him. By the time they had reached their camp, he had not been able to control his shaking—he had to remove his wet linen. While he was encumbered by the need to hold both mantles close about him to cover himself, she became housewifely in her waywardness—if any housewife could be so inept at some of the tasks as she was.

Reasoning that she would soon tire of such an arduous game, he silenced his objections. But as the ducks roasted amid billowing smoke, burning on one side and raw on the other, she seemed in high humor, binding the heron's feet to an alder branch, undaunted by the fact that she could not reach high enough to prevent its severed neck from dragging the ground. She held another branch curved down, trying to bend the bird's knees over it.

Ruck watched her struggle for a few moments. "My lady—" he began.

She turned her head. The twig she was holding broke off in her hand and the branch snapped aloft, the heron's wings smacking her face as it passed. It hit the top of its arc, bounced off the branch, and fell into the sand.

Ruck kept his expression sedate, as if he had not even noticed.

She sighed, bending down to pick it up by the neck. "For to be tender, I thought to hengen the bird a day or two."

"Is a witty idea," he acknowledged, "but we wenden us today. I'll tie it to the baggage."

She dropped the bird on the ground, as if someone else would pick it up, and came to sit down beside him. Ruck shifted his weight, withdrawing as well as he could without standing up to move. He was wary of her, that she might make love to him again. He did not wish to be teased and tempted. He could not endure it. She was a rich and gentle lady; she might be delighted by the amusements and pleasures that men made with women in the court, but Ruck had never partaken of those pastimes. He knew his own limits.

As she settled cross-legged beside him like a lad, he realized that she herself had always been his armor against seduction. His true lady.

"Where go we?" she asked, turning up her eyes to him, pretty flower eyes, witching eyes.

"A safe place."

"How can we knowen where is safety? Even mine own castle at Bowland—" She frowned. "Pestilence may be there, too, or in the country between. How can we knowen?"

Such feminine uncertainty made him feel protective and suspicious at once. His own responses to her he did not trust; how so, when he could look at her and see that she was ordinary and yet think her comelych beyond telling?

He scowled at the ground before him. "I have heard me, madam, that there are some can go in the air at night—to far places, where they learn there what they please and return ere morning."

Her expression changed, drew stiff and harsh. "Why say thee so to me?"

"Oft have I thought me that you are a witch." He said it outright. He was determined to know, yea or nay, even if she should slay him for it. "How else could you hold me so long—and still yet? If be enchantment, I pray to God that you release me."

She pressed her lips together. Then she lifted her arms and cried, "White Paternoster, Saint Peter's brother, open Heaven's gates and strike Hell's gates and let this crying child creep to its own mother, White Paternoster, Amen!" She spread her fingers. She clapped three times, and dropped her hands. "There, tiresome monkish man—thou art released from such spells as I have at my command."

With a shower of sand she stood up and stalked away. Ruck pulled the cloak up around him, leaning on his knees, watching her. She spun the spit—the first time she had done it—and looked with dismay on the blackened skin of the ducks.

"Mary and Joseph! Ruined!" She let go of the stick, and the awkwardly spitted fowls fell back with their burned sides to the fire. Then she cast Ruck a venomous look and held out her fingertips toward the fire, wriggling them and chanting some weird garble of sound.

She lifted the spit from the wobbly supports she'd made, and one carcass fell off into the flames.

"Well, it is no matter," she said lightly, fishing the duck from the coals and rolling it out onto the sand. She pushed it with a stick onto the cloth that they ate from and picked it up. She set the half-charred fowl before him, spreading out the cloth with great care and standing back with a flourish. "I have conjured three fiends and worked a great incantation, and enchanted it to be cooked to perfection."

He gazed down at it for a long moment. "Better to have turned the spit," he said wryly.

"Thou shouldst have said so. I could have ordered Beelzebub to do it."

He lifted his eyes. She looked straight at him, with no warding for speaking the Devil's name, her mouth set, her eyes bright with challenge.

"Allegreto said my lady is a witch. And Lancaster's counselors. All at court said so."

Her lips tightened dangerously. "And what sayest thou, knight?"

He stared at her, his imperious liege lady, beautiful and plain, with her jeweled gauntlets and her hair astray and a great black smudge of ash on her cheek. Her own cloak he wore about his shoulders, and the duck she had hunted lay before him. Her gyrfalcon held the soul of a dead lover, and her eyes, her eyes, they saw through him like a lance, and crinkled at the corners when she laughed.

"Ne do I know why I love you!" he exclaimed, sweeping the mantles around him as he rose. "Ne do I know why I swore to you; why I ne'er accepted any man's challenge that might release me from it! Ne'er did I want to be released. Ne do I nought still, if it cost my soul. And I cannought say why, but that you have beguiled me with some hellish power."

"Flatterer!" she murmured, mocking, but her face was terrible and cold.

He turned away from her. "I know a place safe," he said. "Safe from pestilence and all hazard." He frowned at the river. "But ne will I taken a witch there."

"Iwysse, then there is no more to be said." Her voice was cool and haughty. "If a woman bewhile a man, a witch mote she be."

"If ye says me you are nought, my lady—" He paused. Ripples blew across the water, the cold wind stung his face. "I will believe you."