Instead a rope dropped over his shoulders. A tug pulled him off his feet. With a startled flail and exclamation, he overturned onto his back in the cold grass.

"I have thee!" Melanthe said.

She fell on her knees, pinning the rope down with her hands next to his shoulders. He lay looking at her upside down.

"How much?" he asked.

"All thy land and chattels, knight, shouldst thou hope to rise again."

"I paid the others but a groat."

"Ha," she said, "I make no such paltry bargains."

He pulled her down and kissed her, holding her head between his hands. "All is thine, brazen wench," he said against her lips. "'Ware thee what I levy on the morrow, when will be the men's turn."

"Thou moste catch me first."

He rolled over and sat up, casting the rope about her. "Haply I haf thee already."

She squealed and wriggled like a village girl. "Thou treacher! Never!" Their frosted breaths mingled in the sun as he held the cord against her struggles. She tried to push him away, laughing. "No trumping wretch shall cheat me of my lands!"

He stilled, standing on his knees, looking into her eyes. "Melanthe," he said soberly, "ne do nought accuse me of it, e'en in jape."

Her hands lightened on his shoulders. Then she gave him a push. "Whence this gravity, monk-man? Thou wilt be sorry, to fatigue me with earnest speech."

"Nay, my lady, I have bided silent too long." Ruck let the rope fall. He stood up and walked a step away. "I let bliss conquer my wit. Ne can you nought linger here lost for e'er-more."

He looked back at her. She sat on her knees, holding the rope across her lap, staring down at it. On her hair she wore the golden net. From her shoulders a mink-lined cloak of amber flowed carelessly onto the muddy grass. He did not recognize it; she must have found it among the fabrics and chests that filled abandoned wardrobes all over the castle, more richness than Ruck had ever been able to use. And yet a hundred times more wealth belonged to her beyond the mountains.

"My lady—if it be our marriage that checks you from returning—I ask no open espousal of you. For as long as you will, it shall be secret and private betwixt us."

"Is this repentance," she asked lightly, "that thou wouldst conceal our vows?"

"Nought repentance, ne'er mine, forsooth. But I think me the world will looken harsh upon your folly, and therefore you tarry here for fear of consequences. Ne did I wed thee to obtain thy fortune or place. I am willing to biden, without I am acknowned to the world as thy husband, till some meet time as you choose. Be it long, e'en."

"Such heavy thoughts!" She reached over and plucked a tiny snowblossom from the grass. "Thou dost weary me."

"We moten set our faces to this, and take you to your rightful place."

"The plague," she said. "We dare not venture out."

He shook his head. "I will go alone. After Hocktide, to ascertain what is in the world. A day or twain, peraventure, to discover if plague still imperils."

She curled the rope about her hand, crushing the flower in it. "Thy talk annoys me," she said. She cast the blossom away and rose. "Come, I would have luf-laughing, and not leaving."

With her hands about his arms, she pulled him to a fierce kiss, drowning why and wherefore and reason. She could make him forget time and sense. She could make him forget his own name.

* * *

On the Wednesday after Hocktide, Ruck came upon Desmond far up the mountainside, plucking doleful tunes on a gittern and staring at the blank wall of mist that shrouded the hills. Although in his gloom the boy appeared not to notice Ruck, he was situated where he could be sighted easily from the trail, a brooding figure in yellow and green like a forlorn elf-prince of the wood. Since it was well known that Ruck intended to make scout-watch outside the valley today, he viewed this melancholy vision with a dry smile, understanding it to be a request for audience. Ruck had a fair guess as to what matter troubled Desmond. Maidens.

He tied the bay mare and hiked up the rocks, coming to where the youth sat cross-legged on a ledge. Desmond made a creditable start of surprise, striking an off-note.

Ruck leaned against the ledge. "Lost lamb?"

Desmond jumped down from his perch. "Nay, my lord!" He opened his mouth, as if to go on, and then remembered himself. He went to his knee. "My lord, I have been at work on the green wood."

Maintaining the frith as an impenetrable tangle required constant labor, uncounted twigs staked down or coupled to their neighbors, logs felled and sharp-needled leaves and thorns encouraged. It gave an excuse to be outside the valley and past the tarn, as Desmond was. Ruck made no comment on the boy's lack of industry at this worthy labor, but loosened his wallet.

"Rise," he said. "Stay with me whilst I break fast. I be gone for scouting outermere today."

"Is it so, my lord?" Desmond said, just as if this were fresh news. He climbed back onto the ledge and sat with his legs dangling while Ruck shared out oatcakes and small ale. They ate and drank in silence. The mist drifted past, dewing the rocks with black tear streaks.

"My lord," Desmond said suddenly, "yesterday, and the day afore—Hock Monday, you know—"

He broke off. Ruck took a swig of ale, not looking at the boy as he struggled with his words.

"My lord, watz no woman to binden me up on Monday. And yesterday, when were the men's turn—and I be six and ten this year, so I am to join in—I ne could nought—you nill haf counted, but I can tellen for you, my lord, that all the women are taken, and Jack Haliday so jealous of his wife that he shouted at me ere I put a rope about her, my lord, which I ne would nought ha' ventured but she's my sister's friend, and twenty and one, with three bairns!" His voice rose, throbbing with his sense of the injustice of this event. "My lord, I—"

He seemed to get tangled in the tail of his sentence again. Ruck finished his oatcake, brushing the crumbs from his palms. He leaned his elbows back on the ledge, waiting.

"There are no maids, my lord!"

The despairing exclamation rang back off the rocks. Desmond flung a stone. He hurled another pebble after the first.

Ruck watched them take the leaf tips off a holly branch. Desmond had impressive aim.

"They're all too young, or too old," the boy muttered.

"Didst thou bring a mount?" Ruck asked.

Desmond glanced at him warily.

"I am in hopes that thou didst. I be loath for the mare to carry us double down and back."

The boy stared at him, then leapt off the ledge with a whoop. "Ye will taken me?" He threw himself down at Ruck's feet. "Grant merci, my lord! Grant merci! I brought Little Abbot to ride, and plenty of food, for chance!"

* * *

Desmond was by no means the first youth to venture out of Wolfscar with maidens on his mind. He followed Ruck's mare on the little white-footed ass, kicking to keep up, and carried on a flow of fine talk and song about love all the way down through the frithwood. Ruck listened, half inclined to his old jealousy of the minstrel wit to hear it. Full grown, he had never been so confident and easy as this unfledged orator was at sixteen. The first time Ruck had come down from the mountains himself, he had been too shamefast to make a bow to a female, far less sing of love.

But Desmond lost a little of his boldness after they had dropped below the mists and come into where the dark woods thinned. The air held a heavy scent of smoke, the mark of the charcoal-burners who worked the abbey's iron ore, and a sign, Ruck hoped, that no pestilence interrupted ordinary labor.

They skirted high above the abbey works, descending by steeper slopes to the land beyond what the abbey claimed, passing by stages out of the forest. At first the clearings were small and overgrown, no more than a little pasture for the horses loosed to breed, then better kept, with a meager space for winter oats hacked out of the trees by some poor cotter, gradually increasing in size and density, until suddenly the woods were coppice instead of trees, and the lowland fields lay ahead of them. Desmond had long since ceased his humming and appeared willing enough to wait at the last white water ford.

Ruck was already certain that plague had spared the country before he spent a shilling to find out the news from a shepherd. What might have come to pass in the larger world, the man knew not, but a band of pilgrims had descended upon the abbey for Easter, and they seemed healthy enough to complain of bedbugs and the sour ale as they went through. There had been one raid by Scots reivers, but the worst trouble was between the abbey and some knight who sent his men in livery to seize supplies on purpose to gall and vex the abbot. The shepherd was like to think these hot-spurred nobles were a worse plague than Scots or pestilence, either.

Ruck looked past the shepherd's flock, where the hills opened to farm and pasture. There was no plague, and no reason to delay longer. If not for Desmond's hopes, he would have turned back here, for he knew what he had come to discover.

But the youth was waiting, having lost interest in love and conceived a lust for travel. He kicked Little Abbot along eagerly. The wider horizon had worked strongly on his mind, and he was full of questions about far places and cities Ruck had seen.

"I shall go to London," Desmond announced.

"Mary, 'tis a sore journey only for a maid," Ruck said.