Allegreto's dread of plague was such that the youth forewent his place with the Princess Melanthe and bedded down so close to his living talisman that his hand curled, childlike, around Ruck's upper arm. What his mistress thought of this desertion was left unsaid. Ruck did not see her. As usual, she left her litter only after her tent was pitched, shifting from one silken cage to the other without showing herself.

As Ruck lay in the dark with the fire fading, staring upward into nighttime oblivion, he had a bitter thought that it might have been to his advantage that Allegreto had left the tent, if Ruck had possessed foresight enough to discourage this inconvenient transfer of the youth's attachment to himself-and if she had liked such runisch men as he. But she did not, and Allegreto went quickly to sleep in the blue mask, firmly holding to Ruck's arm, as effective as any governess in protecting his lady.

Not that she required protection, beyond a scornful tongue and that mocking laugh.

Ruck attempted to form a prayer, asking forgiveness of Isabelle and G.o.d for his carnal l.u.s.t. But his prayers were never of the inspired kind; he could not think of much more to avow than he was full repentant and would do better.

Not that he ever did do better; for every confession day he had a penance laid upon him for l.u.s.ting in his heart after women. Sometimes for the mortal sin of easing himself, too, which he would have done now, at the price of barring from communion and any number of Ave Marys and hours on his knees before the altar, if Allegreto had not had such tight hold of his right arm. He was not a G.o.dly man; his mind went where it would and his body had limits to its rect.i.tude, but he had dishonored himself, and Isabelle, too, this day.

He had the Princess Melanthe to thank for saving him from committing real adultery-and that only because she liked not runisch men. It was no virtue of his own that had saved him. If she were to rise and call him now into her tent, he would go. He felt sullen and ashamed, thinking of it. He should get away from her. He should go home, having nowhere else pressing to go at the moment.

He slept badly, dreaming plague dreams, old dreams, in which he was lost and searching. The howl of a wolf woke him, shaking him out of uneasy dozing. He lifted his head. The fire had gone to dead coals-there was no sign of a guard. The wind had come up, blowing off the vapor. By the height of the moon over the moorland, it was three hours to dawn. Pierre should already have woken him to share the last and most arduous watch. With a silent curse Ruck slipped out of his warm place. Allegreto's hand fell away from him.

He stood up in the frigid night, sliding his feet into icy boots. He'd ordered a double watch-but by moonlight he could see the silvered wind-sweep of marsh reeds and the whole company sound asleep. The hourgla.s.s glinted softly next to Pierre's place, white sand all fallen through. A loose tie fluttered on Princess Melanthe's tent.

He gave the fur-covered lump that was Pierre a light kick. It did not move. Ruck leaned down and tossed the mantle away.

A smell of vomit a.s.sailed him. Pierre lay with a terrible arch to his twisted back, his dead eyes rolled up to show the whites in the dim moonlight, a sheen of sweat on his face and his open mouth full of dark spittle. Ruck swallowed a gag and threw the fur back over him.

He turned away and stood for a full minute, drinking draughts of clear night wind. The fear of plague held him frozen on the edge of frenzy: the lifelong terror-to be left alone, to be the last, to die that way ...

The moon hung over him, cold and sane. He stared at it, struggling with himself.

Allegreto was sitting up, a faint outline against the light mist that still clung to the gra.s.s. Ruck felt the youth staring at him.

He suddenly began to tremble, letting go of his breath.

Not plague. It was not plague. The stink was wrong.

Ruck had smelled pestilence until the fetid black odor had burned itself into his brain-and this was not it. The loathsome stench of plague made poor Pierre's disgorgement seem halfway sweet. Ruck looked down at the shapeless ma.s.s and saw what his mind had not recorded a moment before-the white shapes of two opened c.o.c.klesh.e.l.ls lying on the dark ground.

Horrible enough, if Pierre had purloined spoilt c.o.c.kles and then choked on his own vomit, unable to call for help-but not plague. Not plague. Ruck took a deep breath. The reality of his man's death was beginning to reach him. Pierre, who had been with him for thirteen years, who filched small things, never more than a penny's worth, who'd learned to squire from Ruck, who'd always been an enigma, mute, faithful as a dog was faithful, but with no outward sign of affection.

Ruck glanced toward Allegreto. The youth was no longer visible sitting up against the mist. Ruck hoped he'd gone back to sleep. He bent down and gathered the furs about Pierre, keeping the small body wrapped close. His mind flashed over possibilities, trying to think of a way to hide this and prevent panic. Allegreto's fears and mask had the rest on tenterhooks-Ruck saw now that he should not have suffered any talk of plague at all.

"Is he dead?"

The youth's suffocated voice startled him, coming from behind, at a distance. Another man stirred.

"Of putrid sh.e.l.lfish," Ruck said quietly. "He could not call us. He choked, G.o.d give his soul rest."

"Thou liest," Allegreto hissed. "I saw him when thou lifted the mantle! He's warpened with death agonies. Has he the swellings?"

"Nay. Come thee and see for thyself." Ruck laid the body back down and threw off the cover. Now that he recognized what it was not, the smell was bearable.

Allegreto stumbled backward with a little cry, waking another man.

"Silence!" Ruck hissed. "Listen to me. There's no black eruption. The smell be not of plague, but only plain vomit. Not six hours past he was fit and walking like the rest of you. He stole c.o.c.kles from the hermit and ate them. The sh.e.l.ls are here on the ground. None other ate such, did they?"

No one answered. He knew they were all awake now. He tossed the blanket back over Pierre's dead face.

"He choked to death," he said softly. "Too quick it killed him, for to be plague."

"Nay, I saw it take a priest in half an hour," came a shaky voice from somewhere in the shadows.

"There were no black boils. He fell dead over the man he'd come to shrive."

" 'Tis winter," said someone else. "The c.o.c.kles be sweet now."

"The stench is wrong," Ruck said.

They simply stared at him.

"Henri," he snapped in a low voice. "Thou quitted watch without the next man wakened." He took a

stride, hauling the culprit out of his coverings by his collar. Before Henri had a chance to cower away, Ruck backhanded him so hard that he fell over his heels. "Tom Walter!" He scanned the dark for his sergeant. The man scrambled up. "Tie him, and John who was on duty with him. Ten lashes at first light. Relight the fire. And if any speak so loud as to wake Her Highness, tie him, too, and he shall have twenty." He swung his hand toward Allegreto. "Watch this one, also."

He paused, to see if they would defy him, but Walter was moving toward John to obey. Allegreto was only a motionless shape in the dark.

Ruck looked toward the tent and saw a pale face thrust between the drapes at the entrance. He lowered his voice to a bare murmur. "My lady-she has not been disturbed?"

"Indeed, she has." It was the princess's amused voice. "How could I sleep in this uproar? What pa.s.ses?

Where is Allegreto?"

Her courtier made a faint sound, barely articulate.

"Your Highness, it is nothing," Ruck said. "I beg you will return to your rest."

Instead she pulled a cloak about her and emerged from the tent, standing alone without her gentlewoman. "What is it?" she asked, in sharper tone.

"My squire has died in the night."

She sucked in a breath, staring at him.

"My lady!" Allegreto's moan was like grief, like a plea for mercy, as if she could save him. "The

pestilence."

"He died not of the pestilence, Your Highness," Ruck said. "The smell is wrong."

"The smell!" she repeated blankly.

"Yea, my lady. Have you never smelled the plague stench?"

She stood silent a moment, then lifted her hand. "Uncover him," she said.

"Nay, there is no need. He grew sick on c.o.c.kles," he said, "and gagged to death."

"Uncover him," she snapped.

Setting his jaw, Ruck leaned down. Let her look then, if she must, and choke on her revulsion.

But she did not cringe back from the body. Instead, she went forward, gesturing. "A light."

None of the men moved. Ruck finally squatted down and lit the lanthorn himself. He opened the light on

the corpse. Princess Melanthe gazed down at it. She knelt and lifted Pierre's stiffened hand. "Poor man.

He suffered, I fear."

For a moment Ruck thought it was real, this sympathy, the echo of regret in her voice a true emotion.

Then she rose, turning toward Allegreto.

"Come to bed, my love. There is nothing to be done for him." She walked toward her young courtier.

Allegreto made a gurgling gasp and backed away from her. She beckoned.

"Come, do not be foolish. The man died of c.o.c.kles. Come lie down with me now."

"Lady-" It was a whisper of horror.

Ruck watched her advancing slowly upon him, driving him to frenzy apurpose. Only for the cruelty of it-she must be as certain as Ruck there was no pestilence, or she would not have touched Pierre.

"Dost thou not love me, Allegreto?" she murmured in a hurt voice, moving toward him with her hand

extended. "But I love thee still."

Allegreto groaned, beyond any reason. He scrambled back from her. "Touch me not!" he cried. "Get away!"

She stopped. Over the moonlit distance he had made between them, they gazed at each other.

"I won't come," he said in a deathly voice. "I won't come."

Princess Melanthe swayed slightly. She turned to Ruck. "Help me-help me to my place. I do not feel

strong."

Before Ruck could respond, she fell to her knees. He moved on instinct, catching her limp body in his

arms as she toppled. He rose with her, shocked beyond feeling, staring down at the pale column of her exposed throat. Fear hit him again like a hammer. He carried her, seeing nothing but her arm hanging lax over his in the moonlight, hearing nothing but his heart in his ears, turning blindly for the tent. As he laid her down on the featherbed, he called for her gentlewoman-he thought he shouted it, but he could not hear anything over his heart.

No one answered. In the utter blackness of the tent he could see nothing; he groped for a lanthorn, sparking the flint and steel by fumbling. As the light rose, he looked toward her.

She was smiling at him. She sat up on her elbows and lifted her finger to her lips for silence.

Ruck's jaw went slack-and then stiffened in outrage. He shoved himself off the ground, standing with his head against the silken roof. She raised her hand, as if to hold him, but Ruck was too furious. He took up the lanthorn, flung back the cloth, and strode outside in a black temper.

"My lady is in fine health," he uttered through his teeth, jerking his head toward Pierre's body. "I need two men to bury him."

In the tallow light no one moved. Allegreto shrank into the shadows, and even the sergeant took a step backward.

"He'll haunt us," someone muttered.

"Accursed be you all!" Ruck snarled. "I want no succour from a pack of cowards, then. I'll leave him myself with the monks." He lifted Pierre again, turning toward Hawk. "Loosen his fetterlock," he ordered the nearest man, who covered his mouth and nose with his chaperon as he obeyed.

The horse disliked the load, flaring its nostrils and drawing in suspicious noisy draughts of air, but Hawk was accustomed enough to the smell of death to bear his burden. Ruck took his lead and turned him toward the trickle of hazy moonlight that fell onto that track, heading toward a dim black line of trees in the distance, silently asking pardon of G.o.d and Pierre's soul for what he was about to do.

There were no monks, not within his reach, for though he knew there was a priory at the headland, it was yet so far away that he could not hear the bells. But he wanted no more of these whining fears of hauntings and pestilence. In his anger he wanted isolation in which to lay Pierre to rest. He wanted the comfort of driving a spade deep in the ground until he was weary with it, his muscles hurting instead of his spirit.

He wasn't afraid of ghosts-he'd buried all his family in unconsecrated ground and found their only haunting to be the gentle, lost voices in his plague dreams. Poor silent Pierre didn't even have a voice to haunt dreams, unless his soul found one with the wild wolves that ran free in this place, the way he had never been able to run in life.

Melanthe slept. She kept trying to rally, rising to the weary surface and failing, losing herself again in the sweet dreamless warmth. With her wakening mind she knew she must not let sleep have her, but she had lost the will to fight it, falling back, luxurious collapse into rest and safety.