"Depardeu," she murmured. "Thy wife—and I? Blameless and pure? Thou art a blind man."

"I knew naught else to do." He pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. "And it is impossible, it is nought the same, now that—"

He broke off and blew all the air from his chest in a rough sigh.

"Now that thou knowest me for myself," she said with a tone he could not read, whether amused or sad or bitter, or all three.

"I love you, my lady," he said, his voice suppressed. "'Tis all certain that I know. With my heart, with my body, though I've nought the right to thinken of it, though you are too high—in faith, though I burn in Hell for it." He swallowed. "God forgive me that I say such things. I'm in drink enow to drownen me."

She lay down beside him, half on top of him, her arm across his shoulders. "Dost thou love me?" she whispered, with an intensity that made him turn his face toward her in the dark.

He lifted his hand—he allowed himself that for the fierce plea in her voice—and brushed the back of his fingers over her cheek. "Beyond reason."

"Oh," she said, and buried her face in his shoulder, hugging herself close. "Yesterday I was a witch in thy estimate."

"Yea, and now ye be a wanton wench, and in a moment ye will be a haughty princess, and I know nought what next to plague and bemaze me."

"Thy lover."

"Nay, lady." He started to rise.

She caught him, holding tight. "No. Do not go."

"I will keep watch by the door."

"No. I will ne be able to sleepen, be thou not near where I can reach thee."

"Lady," he said, "for all the hours ye sleeps, me think this one night be nought such a great loss."

Still she held him. "I can't sleep." Her voice was soft, but her fingers had the grip of real dismay.

"God shield, am I to lie beside you in a bed all the night?" he asked. "Have mercy on me."

"I cannot." She would not cease; she pulled him slowly downward. "I cannot have mercy. Please thee—stay."

"Enow!" he said harshly. His shoulder sank into the featherbed. He turned his face to the bolster. "Only touch me nought then, my lady, for your pity."

She let go. He felt her roll over away from him. She was angry, he thought, child-geared in her tempers as only those of high estate could be. But she asked too much; to lie here beside her—in bed, unclothed, as if they were married. He was already mired in mortal lust; now she would have him pay his soul for fornication. God have mercy on him if he died this night, for he was bound for everlasting flames.

Yet she lay still in the blackness, without word or demand, and it gradually came into his head that she was weeping. He listened, trying to subdue the sound of his own breath. He could hear nothing.

She said she had been alone until she had found him. He closed his eyes. Lone he had lived all his life, it seemed, dwelling among dreams of things to come. They were all of them shattered now, lost to her whims—he had hated her for that, and hated her yet, but love and hate turned so close in his heart that they seemed to dazzle him together as one passion. He could tell them apart no more than he knew if she was beautiful or plain—she was neither, more than both, his very self, that he might love or hate as he pleased, but could not disown short of the grave.

He reached out his hand. It came to rest on her hair that was loose, spreading over the pillow. She lay silent. Softly, haltingly, he found the shape of her with his fingertips, her temple, her brow. He touched her cheek and lashes, and felt warm tears.

"I ne did not give thee leave to handle me at thy whim, knave," she said sharply.

He moved, folding her in his arms. "I knew you would come the high princess soon enow," he said with a painful laugh. He leaned near and rocked her against his chest. "My lady queen, your tears are liken to an arrow through my body."

"Pouf," she said. "Monkish man."

He crushed her to him and rubbed his cheek against her hair. "Do you want my honor? I give it you, I will forlie and adulter with you, my lady, then—and God and the Fiend torment me as they will."

He felt her turn toward his face, though he could not see her in the dark. For a long moment she lay very still.

"Were I thy wife, would not be sin," she whispered.

He made a bitter sound of mirth. "Yea—and were I king of all England and France, and a free man."

She put her hands up, seizing his face between her palms. "Listen to me."

The sudden urgency caught his full heed. He waited, but she said nothing. Her fingers moved restlessly, forming fists against his face and opening again.

"Ah," she said, "I know not how...it frightens me to wound thee. Best-loved, my true and loyal friend, hast thou never guessed all these years why I denounced thee in Avignon? Why I sent thee thence in haste?"

In a far deep place inside himself, he felt his soul arrested. Slightly he shook his head.

"Thy wife—thinkest thou that they released her to this convent at Saint Cloud? Nay, they sent her to the Congregation of the Holy Office. They sent her to the inquisitors, and they would have sent thee, too, if thou hadst shown that her preachings and raving had convinced thee of aught. They could not bide her, do you see? A woman to preach, to interpret Scripture—to demand of thee her own oath within thy marriage."

"Nay," he breathed. "Nay—the archbishop—he said a place was made for her at Saint Cloud. I paid for it! For her keep—my money and my horse and arms."

She did not answer. In the hush he thought of the letters he'd sent, the money, every year with no word of reply.

"Oh, Mary, Mother of God—where is she?" He sat up, gripping her shoulders.

She stroked her palms up and down his face.

Ruck groaned. He let go of her and rolled away, trying to find the breath that seemed suddenly to have left his lungs. "Imprisoned?"

But he knew she was not imprisoned. He knew by the silence, by the way the princess did not move or touch him, only waited.

"I forsook her." His body began to shake, his hands clenching and unclenching, beyond his command. "Helas, I abandoned her."

"Listen to me." Her cold voice abruptly cut like a scourge. "She abandoned thee. I heard her, if thou hast forgot. She was no saint, nor holy woman, nor even a fit wife for such as thee."

"Her visions—"

"Pah!" she spat. "They weren no more of God than a peacock's preenings. I tell thee, sir, when I married I did not love my husband, but I gave back to him the same honor and duty that he gave to me. I did not weep and scream and claim God sent some handy vision to free me from my vows. Nor do the world of women, but live the half of them without complaint in such subjection as thou canst not conceive, not one in ten thousand so fortunate as she!" Her voice was a throbbing hiss. "I loved my husband well enough in the end, but the life that I have lived for his sake—I would have given my soul to have thy wife's place instead, with a good steadfast man to defenden me and children of my own. And she foreswore thee, for her vain pride, no more, so that she mote be called sainted and pure by such foolish sots as would drivel upon her holiness. By Christ, I would have burned her myself, had she taken thee adown with her as she was wont to do!"

He took a shuddering breath of air. "She was burned?"

"Yea," she said in a calmer voice. "I am sorry. There was naught to be done for her, for she brought it upon herself. They declared her a Beguine, an adherent of the Free Spirit."

"Isabelle," he said. Horror crept over him. "In God's name, to burn!" He began to breathe faster, seeing the image of it, hearing it.

"Ne did she not suffer," the princess said in a steady voice. "She was given a posset to stupefy her, even before she heard the sentence passed, and kept so to the end. I have no doubt she went to sleep still in full assurance she was regarded as a saint."

He turned toward her in the dark. "You know it so, my lady?"

"Yea. I know it."

He stared at her, at the source of her cold and even voice. "I do nought believe you."

"Then I will given thee the name of the priest I paid to intoxicate her. He was Fra Marcus Rovere then; now he is a cardinal deacon at Avignon."

"You—" He felt benumbed. "Why?"

"Why! I know not why! Because her witless husband loved her, stupid man, and I knew thou couldst do naught. Because my window gave out on the court, and I ne did nought wish my nap disturbed. Why else?"

He lay back, his hands pressed to his skull. No tears came to his eyes. He thought of the times he had wished Isabelle dead, to free him, and the penance he had done for it. Of how she had been a burgher's daughter—never could he have brought her openly to Lancaster's court even before she came to believe she was consecrated to God, never could he have held a knight's place there with a baseborn woman to wife. He thought of the first days of their marriage, his joy in her body and her smile, the end of his loneliness, it had seemed, and in his first battle the worst, most shameful unvoiced fear, not of pain, which he knew well enough, nor of dying itself, but of dying before he might bed her again, couple with her on the pillows and look at her.

She was the only woman he had ever lain with in his life—and she had been dead for thirteen years, ashes and charred bone.

He heard the sound he made, a meaningless dry moan like a man at the last reach of his strength. He should weep. But plaint and lament choked in his throat. He could only lie and hold his hands to his head as if he could imprison the melee of thoughts there, his muscles straining with each indrawn breath.