"What will you, my lady?" Lancaster asked. "Shall you send them to hunt dragons?"

The knight glanced at Melanthe for an instant, then away, as if the contact startled. His destrier shifted restlessly beneath him, its enameled hooves thumping on the braided rush. The bells jangled. With an abrupt move he yanked one glove from his hand and threw it down before the company. "A challenge!" he shouted. He turned about in the saddle, scanning the hall, rising in his stirrups. "For the honor of my lady, tomorrow I take all who come!"

Lancaster went stiff beside her. He stood up. "Nay, sir," he snapped. "Such is not thy place, to defend Her Highness!"

The knight ignored his liege. "Is this the court of the Black Prince and Lancaster?" he shouted furiously. "Who will fight me for the honor of my lady?"

His voice echoed in the stunned silence of the hall. They stared at him as if he had lost his senses. But comprehension burst upon Melanthe. This was the source of Allegreto's mirthful satisfaction—he had created a chance for her.

"Cease thy nonsense!" Lancaster growled in a low voice. "It does thee no credit, sir!"

The green knight had dropped his veneer of submissive respect. His gaze hit Melanthe and skewed away again. He dismounted and went down on his knee before her in a chinking clash of mail. "My lady!" Over the edge of the table she could see that he held his bare hand against his heart, the plumed helmet thrust under his arm. "I crave of you, do me this ease—give me something of your gift, that I might carry the precious prize tomorrow and defend against all comers."

"Thou shalt not do so!" the duke declared, his voice rising. "I carry Her Highness's favor, impudent rogue!"

Melanthe seized her moment. She slanted him a cool look. "Think you so, my lord?" she asked softly.

Lancaster glanced at her, his face growing red. "I—" His jaw went taut. "I am at your service, if you will honor me," he said stiffly.

Melanthe smiled at him. She caught Gryngolet's jesses and pulled the soft white calf's leather loose from about the falcon's legs, slipping her dagger inside to cut the belled bewits and the jesses free. Gryngolet's varvels swung suspended from the ends—two silver rings jeweled with emeralds and diamonds and engraved with Melanthe's name. She slipped the bells from Milan onto the jesses, tying them so that they made a falcon's music—one note striking high and one low—in the rich harmony that belonged to nothing else in heaven or earth.

Lancaster was watching her. She looked at him for a long, significant moment, then turned back to the knight who still knelt below her.

"Green Sire," she declared, "the most precious prize I possess on earth, I give thee for a keepsake, to defend me for my honor on the morrow."

She tossed the jesses with their gems and bells onto the rush before him.

"I challenge for it!" Lancaster exclaimed instantly.

"And I, on my lord's behalf!" A man stood up beyond him on the dais.

"And I!" They were seconded by two more, and then four, knights standing in the hall to shout their dares until the hammer-beams rang.

"Enough!" Lancaster lifted his arm. "It shall be arranged who will fight." He glared down at the green knight. "Rise, then, insolent fellow."

The knight came to his feet, his eyes downcast again. She noticed that he'd had the presence of mind to retrieve his gauntlet along with the jesses while he knelt—not entirely a lack-wit. God only knew how Allegreto had threatened or enticed him to do this thing. The knight stood waiting with a stony stare at his lord's feet, the light on his virid armor sculpting broad curves at his shoulders, chasing silver arcs across his arm-plates. Lancaster could barely keep the fury from his face.

"A most marvelous unicorn," she said with amusement. "My lord's grace is kind, to put him at my service."

Lancaster seemed to find some control of his emotion. He bowed to her, producing a smile that did not quite cover the grim set of his jaw. "I would have counted it worth my life to serve you myself, my lady. But now I count it an honor to win your better regard by trial tomorrow, against this man I had thought under true oath to me."

The green knight looked up, his expression a fascinating play of yearning and pride, of checked temper. "My beloved lord, I wish with my whole heart to please you, but my lady commands me."

"Thou takest too much credit upon thyself, knave!"

The knight glanced to Melanthe; his eyes as green as his armor, human now instead of hidden by steel and darkness. In his intense gaze there was an open dismay of his own defiance before his prince—he looked to her hoping for reprieve, asking her for release from what he had done.

She held him, denying it. Her answer was unrelenting silence.

The knight bowed his head. She could see the taut muscle in his bared neck. "Does my lord bid me serve his pleasure before my lady's?" he asked in a low voice.

It was a futile attempt, hardly more than a strained whisper. Without an appeal from Melanthe herself, Lancaster would not withdraw—could not, not now, when he had agreed to fight.

"I do not well know where thou comest by this notion that Her Highness stoops to command such as thee!" Lancaster snapped.

"From me, mayhap," Melanthe murmured.

The duke gave her a sullen small bow. "Then your wish is mine," he said curtly. "And my command, of course. This man shall ride for you on the morrow, my lady, against myself and all who challenge for your favor."

The green knight lifted chagrined eyes to Melanthe. Holding Gryngolet on her wrist, ignoring Lancaster, she gave her new champion a small smile and dropped a mocking bow of courtesy. "I look forward to such spectacle. Go now and refresh thyself, Green Sire. Attend me in chamber when dinner is done."

"May God reward you, lady," he murmured mechanically, and stood. With an easy move that belied the weight of his armor, he remounted, reining the horse around and spurring it to a gallop. He parted the men-at-arms at the door, vanishing out of the hall with an echo of hooves and bells.

* * *

Of course she didn't remember him.

Ruck tore the loaf of white bread and shed more crumbs onto his bare chest, causing mute Pierre to gesture and dust him urgently, but there was no time to sit down for a meal as his broken-backed squire wished. His lady—his liege lady, the cherished queen of his heart—commanded him immediately after the dinner; and by the time he'd stabled Hawk, secured his mount's armor and his own, harried Pierre, and sufficiently bullied and bribed the fourth chamberlain for a bath in the midst of a banquet, he could hear the higher note of the trumpets that signified the lord's retirement from the hall.

A light-headed sickness hung in his throat. The dry bread seemed to choke him. It was almost too fantastical to believe that it was her; that she was here. He had never expected it. He hardly knew how to fathom the fact, or what he had just done for her.

Christ—Lancaster's face—but Ruck could not bear to think of it.

"Hie!" He knocked Pierre's hand aside as the squire tried to wipe the shaving soap from him. The barber had been impossible to obtain at such a time. "My hose." He grabbed the towel, cleaned his jaw himself, and finished off the bread before Pierre had the green hose ready for him.

He didn't think she remembered him. He couldn't settle it in his mind. By her young courtier in the yellow-and-blue motley, she had sent him a command to challenge for her. She had looked upon him in the hall with that cool authority...as if she knew his vow to her service—as if she expected it. He had a wild thought that she had known all there was to know of him since that day he had first seen her, that his every move for ten and three years had somehow been open to her. Those eyes of hers, 'fore God!

She was here. And in faith, it felt more like a blow to his belly than a boon.

His breath frosted in the cold as he bit into an apple. Holding the fruit between his teeth, he pulled the green hose over his linen. A few gentlemen began to wander out of the great hall to relieve themselves, passing the open door of the buttery where the servants had grudgingly hauled the bathtub for Ruck.

"La la! Seest thou, Christine," said a feminine voice. "He is not green all over!"

Ruck looked up from belting his hose to find a pair of ladies leaning in the door. He didn't know either of them. He dropped the apple from his mouth and caught it in one hand. As he bowed, he grabbed his mantle from Pierre's hands and tossed it around his bare shoulders. "A common man only, madam."

The dark-haired one giggled. The other, the one who'd spoken, was blonde and comely and she knew it; she moved upon him with a flow of brilliant parti-color robes. "Thy form gives thee the lie, sir. Thou art uncommon strong and pleasing." Smiling, she traced him with her forefinger from the base of his throat down to his chest. "And uncommon brave, to proclaim such a challenge."

He lightly clasped her hand and lifted it away from him. "For the honor of Her Highness," he said evenly.

Her smile deepened. "Such wild courage," she murmured, lifting her mouth. "We have heard much of your ferocity in battle. Stay and tell us more."

He looked down at her offered lips, the soft smiling curve. "For God's mercy, you tempt me to dally, but I cannot." He held up the apple, brushed her cheek with the rosy smooth skin, and pressed the fruit into her fingers, setting her away from him. "Accept this, and I know I've shared a sweet with a gracious lady."