"My lady," he said, "up swa downer is it, that so worthy as you would incline to so poor as your knight."

"Ah." She rested against the table and looked about the little shadowed space, opening her hand. "But among these hundred of suitors, thou art my favorite, Sir Ruck."

He did not know how he was to go on with her so near to him. She stood in this chapel, all but offering herself to be his lover. Never would he have looked so high above him, even had he succumbed to love-amour, but it was she who chose.

He closed his fist around the hasp of the door. "These are foolish matters," he said abruptly. "The night comes on too swift."

"And what if I made thee a greater man? I have lands escheated to me, with yet no lord. I will maken thee a present of them."

She stung his pride with that. "I am lord in my own lands, my lady, and my father before me. I need no whore-toll."

Her swift look made him instantly regret that he had said so much. She said mildly, "What lands are these?"

He held the door wide. "If my lady does please to pass?"

"Whence hails thee?" she demanded, without moving.

Ruck stood silently, angry at himself. He felt her study penetrate him.

"Thou speakest the north in every syllable."

"Yea, a rude and runisch northeron I am, lady. Avoi, will you come then, ere I cast you o'er my saddle and ravish you off to the wilderness, for to take my will like a wild man?"

She laughed aloud. "Nay, not while all is upside down." She came to him, a sweep of cloak and warmth out of the shadow, taking hold of both his arms. "I will take thee captive, and have my will here and now, for I cannot cast thee upon a horse to ravish thee away, and we are in wilderness already."

She leaned up and kissed him, all softness and glee, so that he was powerless, captive in truth. He was instantly beyond thinking of spells and enchantment: what she willed, he willed. He held his arm under her back and lifted her against him, hungry for her body against his, despairing that his armor screened all sensation of it.

"My lady," he mumbled on her cheek, when her indrawn gasp for breath broke the kiss. "It is a church."

"Then release me, monkish man, and I will lead thee astray outside."

He relaxed his arm. She slipped down, laughing still, and he followed her like a mongrel dog would follow a kind-hearted village girl in hopes of a scrap of bread, dragging the door closed behind him.

She turned and met him, another stand on tiptoe—he could not feel her, but he could not even think of her body, her breasts, without his member going full and stiff. He pressed his gloved palms wide under her arms, taking her up against him again. He leaned back hard on the door of the chapel, drawing her whole weight on himself so that he had some crude sense of her through his plated armor.

Her lips met his, so sweet that he knew it was a magic that could kill him and make him glad to die. He felt her slip and try to keep her place. Without lifting his mouth from hers he slid his back down the church door and sat upon the step, holding her between his legs.

She stood on her knees, cupping his face in her hands, smiling down at him. He came a little to his senses.

"I have a wife," he said to the white soft skin below her ear. "I ne cannought do this."

"It is none of thy doing. Thou art seized and cruelly assaulted." Her breath caressed the corner of his mouth. "I perceive thou art a princess in disguise, Green Sire, with vast properties in unknown places. Haps I shall force thee to marry me for thy fortune."

He tipped his head against the door, evading her, breathing roughly with the effort of containing his desire. "Would be sore disappointed in your bargain, my lady, I fear."

She sat back, catching his chin between her fingers, examining his face solemnly. "A beauteous fair damsel thou art not, forsooth. But 'tis a poor marriage founded on a comely countenance, so they sayen. I'll have thee for thy riches."

He shook his head, half smiling at her in spite of himself, pulling her hands down from his face and holding them gently in his mailed gloves. "Lady, ye knows nought how thin you draw this thread."

"By hap I wish it thin," she murmured. She lifted her lashes, looking into his eyes. "Haps I desire it broken asunder."

She was so close to him that he could see each fine black brushstroke that formed her brows and lashes. In the lengthening afternoon shadow, her skin seemed like snow under moonlight, her eyes that strange deep hue, the color of flowers that bloomed in the winter dark, more rare than any dragon or basilisk or unicorn could be rare.

He felt as if he himself must break asunder, the unbending rectitude and loneliness of thirteen impossible years razed at a stroke, consumed by the clear invitation in her words and her eyes. "I pray you, think wiser, my lady," he said roughly. "It is this strange place and time. I am far beneath you. Yourseluen said ye be nought certain of your desire." He curled his hands about hers. "My liege lady, my luflych, when we wend us back to court, your pride and your honor were mortified, to know you kept close company with such as I am."

She was silent, her hands unresisting in his. Tiny strands of her hair had long since come free of her netted braids, floating about her cheeks and temple. Slipping her hands free, she spread her fingers over his dirty gauntlets.

"Nay, I would be proud," she whispered. "I would be proud, when I think of such worse as I have kept company with." She bit her lips with a faint sound. "Oh, thy good conscience will make me weep."

He lowered his head, gazing down at her hands. "Ne'er in my life, my lady, could I believe this much would come to pass, that I could e'en touch you."

She skimmed her fingertips over his hands and his arms, up to his shoulders, over mail and plate, following with her eyes. He saw tears, which amazed him. He shook his head. "No, lady—do nought; nought for such a thing."

She leaned forward and kissed him. The sweetness ran down through him, unbearable. He put his arms about her and buried his face in the side of her throat to avoid her. "I beseech you, my lady," he said. "It will ruin us. It will be the ruin of us both."

She pressed her head hard against him. He could feel the silent unevenness of each indrawn breath, and her tears that trickled down below his ear and under his gorget. He sat holding her, waiting, because to say her nay again was more than he could do; he was body and soul at her will now, heedless of rank or witchery, of honor or his wife.

She set her palms against him and pushed back. He let her go, opening his arms.

"Thou art mistaken," she said fiercely. "Both of us would it not ruin, no—but only thee, and that I ne will not have. Naught will we say more of keeping company, but as sure friends and companions. Little thou may reckon it, but my friendship is worth something in the world. I will stand thy true friend, Sir Ruck, in all that may pass."

He put his hand to her cheek and throat, resting it softly there, isolated forever from the feel of her by layers of metal and leather, by what he was, and had been, which was nothing. "I am your true servaunt. I will lay down my life for you if you ask it."

She made a teary grimace. "Well, ne do I not ask it! Pray keep thyself alive and well, Sir Ruck, if thou dost not wish to displease me most grievously." She wiped hard at her eyes and swallowed. Then she pushed away from him and rose, holding her hands tucked close beneath her arms, her head bent. She shivered, but did not draw her cloak about her.

Ruck stood. His hands were open. He would have pulled her into his arms and warmed her. All night he would have embraced her, lain down with her and kept company with her, held her so near that she was one with him. But his fingers closed, empty.

"I could weep myseluen, lady," he said, "for wanting what you would give me."

She laughed, still crying. "Oh, honor and a silver tongue, too! Look what a lover I have lost."

"My lady—naught is lost. I am with you yet, and always, to serve you and sayen you ne'er false. I swear it upon what I hold more precious than my life—" He reached out and touched her, laid his hand above her breast, against the soft green felt and ermine.

She raised her eyes. Even through his heavy gauntlet, he could feel her pulse.

"For my lady's heart," he said. "My life, my troth, and my honor. For your heart I swear it, and none other."

TWELVE

Melanthe sat with her mantle wrapped close about her, her back against the chapel wall, watching the frigid dusk come down. Her head felt dull with the unfamiliar aftermath of tears, her eyes heavy, but she was not melancholy.

Her knight lay across the door, his head on his arm, padded by his cloak. The steady sound of his breathing was the only noise but for the destrier cropping grass outside the open portal, and the occasional tinkle of Gryngolet's bells. Each soft chime brought a sharper breath and a suspension from him, as if he listened for peril even in sleep—then a shift of his body, and a long deep exhalation like a sigh.

She was to wake him before full dark gathered, so that he might sit up again all through the night on watch. He had gone to sleep with his back to her, but soon enough his movements had turned him so that she could just see his face in the last of the light. He looked exactly what he was: a weary man-at-arms, shabby and handsome, resigned to sleeping in armor on stone. The strong lines of his face were no softer in sleep: only his lips, slightly parted, and the smoothing of the stern lines about his eyes and brows made him seem younger, more like to the youth who had stared at her so hotly those many seasons ago in the Pope's palace.