For My Lady's Heart

  For My Lady’s Heart

  Laura Kinsale

  Copyright © 1993, 2004, 2011 by Hedgehog, Inc.

  Published by E-Reads. All rights reserved.

  www.ereads.com

  LETTER TO MY READERS

  Dear Readers,

  Many years ago, I read a medieval poem full of color and adventure about knights and mysterious ladies. It opened up an unknown world to me, a place of wild, dangerous forests and white castles, of mud and glorious spectacle; a time when blackbirds really were baked in pies. Against this rich background, I wrote a story about a powerful, devious woman desperate to reach refuge, and a knight—a true knight who never wavered once he swore his heart, a man who could not comprehend deceit.

  To do justice to their world, I wove the music of their own medieval words into the dialogue. My favorite response was from a reader who wrote that at first, she'd been a bit dubious about the Middle English, but by the end of the book, she was wondering why the man on the six o'clock news didn't talk that way!

  I was determined to make my characters' words clear and understandable in the text, even though readers might never have come across them before. But I've also added a glossary so that you can be certain of their meanings if you have any doubt. In compiling it, I enjoyed revisiting that world and realizing again how much history and how many shades of meaning stand behind the words we've forgotten and the words we still use.

  Now, for this ebook edition, in addition to the original and complete version of the book which was published in 1993, I've included a condensed version of For My Lady's Heart. I've made this 2011 revision for readers who prefer a tighter read and more modern words for dialogue. If you don't know which you'd prefer, I suggest you start out with the original, and if you find yourself too distracted by the Middle English, switch to the revised version. For many readers, it just takes a few chapters to get into the rhythm of another time and place, but for others the unfamiliar words remain problematic. We all have different preferences and I hope you'll enjoy whichever version you choose.

  As I wrote about Ruck and Melanthe, a shadow figure appeared in their story: Allegreto, the young assassin who served his father's cruel ambitions. By the time I reached the end, I knew I must eventually give Allegreto his due. Many readers wrote to ask for his story. It took me a long time, but Shadowheart was finally finished. It is dark and beautiful—like Allegreto himself—and I hope you'll be as fascinated by his elusive and compelling character as I was.

  Laura Kinsale, 2011

  CONTENTS

  Original Published Version

  Glossary of Middle English

  New Condensed Version

  FOR MY LADY’S HEART:

  Original Published Version

  These old gentle Britons in their days

  Of diverse adventures they made lays

  Rhymed in their first Briton tongue,

  Which lays with their instruments they sung,

  Or else read them for their pleasance,

  And one of them have I in remembrance,

  Which I shall say with good will as I can.

  But sires, by cause I am a burel man,

  At my beginning first I you beseech,

  Have me excused of my rude speech.

  I learned never rhetoric, certain;

  Thing that I speak, it must be bare and plain.

  The Prologue of The Franklin's Tale,

  from The Canterbury Tales

  by Geoffrey Chaucer

  PROLOGUE

  Where war and wrack and wonder

  By sides have been therein,

  And oft both bliss and blunder

  Full swift have shifted since.

  Prologue

  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  The pilgrims looked at the sky and the woods and each other. Anywhere but at the woman in the ditch. The Free Companies ruled these forests; her screeching might draw unwelcome attention. As she rolled in the wagon rut, grinding dirt into her hair, crying out pious revelations with shrieks and great weepings, her companions leaned against trees and squatted in the shade, sharing a vessel of warm beer.

  Remote thunder murmured as heat clouds piled up over the endless grim forests of France. It was high summer of the ninth year after the Great Pestilence. A few yards from the sobbing female, on the high grassy center of the road, a priest sat removing his sandals and swatting dust off his soles one by one.

  Now and then someone glanced into the dark woods. The girl had prophesied that their party of English pilgrims would reach Avignon safe—and though she was prostrated by holy ecstasies in this manner a dozen times a day, moved by the turn of a leaf or the flicker of a sunbeam to fall to her knees in wailing, it was true that they'd not seen or heard a suspicion of outlaws since she'd joined the party at Reims.

  "John Hardy!" she moaned, and a man who'd just taken hold of the bottle looked round with dismay.

  He drank a deep swig and said, "Ne sermon me not, good sister."

  The woman sat up. "I shall so sermon thee, John Hardy!" She wiped at her comely young face, her bright eyes glaring out from amid streaks of dirt. "Thou art intemperate with beer. God is offended with thee."

  John Hardy stood up, taking another long drink. "And thou art a silly girl stuffed with silly conceits. What—"

  A crash of thunder and a long shrill scream overwhelmed his words. The devout damsel threw herself back down to the ground. "There!" she shouted. "Hearest thou the voice of God? I'm a prophet! Our Lord forewarneth thee—take any drink but pure water in peril of eternal damnation, John Hardy!" The rain clouds rolled low overhead, casting a green dullness on her face. She startled back as a single raindrop struck her. "His blood!" She kissed her palm. "His precious blood!"

  "Be naught but the storm overtakin' us, thou great fool woman!" John Hardy swung on the others with vehemence. "'I'm a prophet!'" he mocked in a high agitated voice. "Belie me if she be not a heretic in our very midst! I'm on to shelter, ere I'm drowned. Who'll be with me?"

  The whole company was fervently with him. As they prepared to start on their way, the girl bawled out the sins of each member of the party as they were revealed to her by God: the intemperance of John Hardy, the godless laughing and jesting of Mistress Parke, the carnal lusting of the priest, and the meat on Friday consumed by Thomas O'Linc.

  The accused ignored her, taking up the long liripipes that dangled from the crests of their hoods and wrapping the headgear tight as the rain began to fall in earnest. The party moved on into the sudden downpour. The woman could have caught up easily, but she stayed in the ditch, shrieking after them.

  In the thunderous gloom the rain began to run in sheets and little streams into the road. She stayed crying, reaching out her hands to the empty track. The last gray outline of the stragglers disappeared around the bend.

  A waiting figure detached itself from the shadows beneath the trees. The young knight walked to the edge of the rut and held out his hand. Rain plastered his black hair and molded a fustian pilgrim's robe to his back and shoulders, showing chain mail beneath.

  "They ne harketh to me," she sobbed. "They taken no heed!"

  "Ye drove them off, Isabelle," he said tonelessly.

  "It is their wickedness! They nill heed me! I was having a vision, like to Saint Gertrude's."

  His gauntleted hand still held steady, glistening with raindrops. "Is it full finished now?"

  "Certes, it is finished," she said testily, allowing him to pull her to her feet. She stepped out of the ditch, leaving her shoe. The knight got down on his knees, his mail chinking faintly, and fished the soggy leather out of a puddle already growing in the mud. She leaned on his shoulder and thrust her foot inside the slipper, wriggling forcefully. He smo
othed the wet wrinkles up her ankle. His hand rested on her calf for a moment, and she snatched her leg away. "None of that, sir!"

  He lifted his face and looked at her. The rain slipped off strong dark brows and dewed on his black lashes. He was seventeen, and already carried fighting scars, but none visible on his upturned features. Water coursed down, outlining his hard mouth and the sullen cast of his green eyes. The girl pushed away from him sharply.

  "I believe thou art Satan Himself, sir, if thou wilt stare at me so vile."

  Without a word he got to his feet, readjusting the sword at his hip before he walked away to a bay horse tethered in the shadow of the trees. He brought the stallion up to her. "Will ye ride?"

  "The Lord Jesus commanded me walk to Jerusalem."

  "Ride," he said "until we comen up with the company once more."

  "It were evil for me to riden. I mote walk."

  "This forest hides evil enow," he said harshly. "N'would I haf us tarry alone here."

  "'Fear not, in the valley of shadow and death,'" she intoned, catching his hand. She fell to the sodden ground, her wet robe clinging to the feminine contour of her breasts. "Kneel with me. I see the Virgin. Her light shineth all about us. Oh...the sweet heavenly light!" She closed her eyes, turning up her face. Her tears began to mingle with the raindrops.

  "Isabelle!" he cried. "Ne cannought we linger here alone! For God's love—move freshly now!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her up. By main force he threw her across the saddle in spite of her struggle. She began to screech, her wet legs bared, sliding from his mailed grip. The horse shied, and she tumbled off the other side. He jerked the reins, barely holding the stallion back from trampling her as it tried to bolt.

  She lay limp in the grass. As he dropped to his knees beside her, she rolled feebly onto her back, moaning.

  "Lady!" He leaned over her. "Isabelle, luflych—ye be nought harmed?"

  She opened her eyes, staring past him. "So sweet. So wondrous sweet, the light."

  Rain washed the mud from her face. Her fair blue eyes held a dreamy look, her lashes spiky with wetness, her lips smiling faintly. The pilgrim's hood had fallen open, showing a white, smooth curve of throat. He hung motionless above her a moment, looking down.

  Her gaze snapped to his. She shoved at him and scrambled away. "Thou thinkest deadly sin! My love is for the Lord God alone."

  The young knight flung himself to his feet. He caught his horse with one hand and the girl with the other, dragging them together. "Mount!" he commanded, baring his teeth with a savagery that cowed her into grasping the stirrup.

  "I n'will," she said, trying to turn away.

  "Will ye or nill ye!" He hiked her foot, catching her off balance, and propelled her up. She yelped, landing pillion in the high-cantled war saddle, clutching for security as he swung the wild-eyed horse around. The stallion followed him, neck stretched, the black mane lying in sloppy thick straggles against the animal's skin. The knight hauled his horse a few yards down the verge through the wet grass and mud. He stopped, facing stiffly away from her into the rain. "I am nought Satan Himseluen," he said. "I'm your wedded husband, Isabelle!"

  "I am wed to Christ," she said righteously. "And oft revealed the truth to thee, sir. Thou hast thy way with me against my will and God's."

  He stood still, looking straight ahead. "Six month," he said stonily. "My true wife ye hatz n'been in that time."

  Her voice softened a little. "To use me so were the death of thee, husband—so I've prophesied, oft and oft."

  He slogged forward. The horse slipped and splashed through a puddle, sending water up, causing the knight's fustian robe to cling over the plated greaves and cuisses that protected his legs. The rain swelled into huge drops. Hail began to spatter against his shoulders, bouncing in pea-size pebbles off his bared black hair.

  He made an inarticulate sound and dragged the stallion to the edge of the wood, stopping beneath a massive tree. Isabelle and the horse took up the protected space beneath the heaviest branch, leaving him with the filter of sodden leaves above to break the hail.

  She began an exhortation on the sins of the flesh and detailed a vision of Hell recently visited upon her. From this she went on to a revelation of Jesus on the Cross, which, she assured him, God had told her was superior in its brilliance to the similar sight described by Brigit of Sweden. When a hailstone the size of a walnut cracked him on the skull, he cursed aloud and yanked his helmet from the saddle.

  Isabelle reproved him for his impious language. He pulled the conical bascinet down over his head. The visor fell shut. He leaned against the tree trunk with a dismal clang: a faceless, motionless, wordless suit of armor, while his wife told a parable of her own devising in which a man who used ungodly maledictions was condemned to dwell in Hell with fiery rats forever eating out his tongue. The music of the hailstones pattered in tinny uneven notes on steel.

  She had finished the parable and gone on to predicting what sort of vermin they might expect to find among the infidels when the storm began to lift, leaving the forest and the grassy verge steaming in greens and grays. Light shone on the watery ruts in two twisted ribbons of silver. Like a frost of snow, hail lay amid the foliage, already beginning to melt. The knight pulled off his helmet and tried unsuccessfully to dry it on his robe. Without speaking, he pushed away from the tree and began to walk again, tugging the horse through small lakes beside the road, his spurs catching in the muddy weeds.

  Vapor rose from his shoulders. Isabelle plucked at her sodden robe, holding it away from her skin as she talked. She was describing the present state of her soul, in considerable detail, when he stopped suddenly and turned to her.

  A breaking shaft of sunlight caught him, banishing the sullen shadows. He looked up at her, young and earnest, interrupting her eloquence. "Isabelle. Say me this." He paused, staring at her intensely. "If outlaws were to fall upon us this moment, and ransom my life against—" The youthfulness vanished from his face in a set scowl. "Against this—that ye takes me again into your bed as husband—then what would you? Would ye see me slayed?"

  Her lips pinched. "What vain tale is this?"

  "Say the truth of your heart," he insisted. "My life for your vaunted chastity. What best to be done?"

  She glared at him. "Thou art a sinner, Ruck."

  "The truth!" he shouted passionately. "Have ye no love left for me?"

  His words echoed back from the forest, enticement enough to outlaws, but he stood waiting, rigid, with his hand on the bridle.

  She began to sway slightly. She lifted her eyes to the glowing clouds. "Alas," she said gently, "but I love thee so steadfast, husband—it were better to beholden thee put to death before my eyes, than we should yielden again to that uncleanness in the eyes of God."

  His gaze did not leave her. He stared at her, unblinking, his body still as stone.

  She smiled at him and reached down to touch his hand. "Revelation will come to thee."

  He caught her fingers and gripped them in his, holding them hard in his armored glove. "Isabelle," he said, in a voice like ruin.

  With her free hand she crossed herself. "Let us make troth of chastity both together. Thee I do love dearly, as a mother loveth her son."

  He let go of her. For a moment he looked about him in a bewildered way, as if he could not think what to do. Then, abruptly, he began to walk again, pulling the horse in silence.

  A cool wind out of the storm caught the knight's dark hair, drying it, blowing it against his ears. The breeze faltered for a moment, playing and veering.

  The horse threw up its head. Its nostrils flared.

  The knight came alert. He stopped, his hand on his sword hilt. The animal planted its feet, drinking frantically at the uneasy wind, staring at the curve ahead where the road disappeared into deep woods.

  There was only silence, and the breeze.

  "The Lord God is with us," Isabelle said loudly.

  Nothing answered. No arrow flew, no foe came rushing upon the
m from ambush.

  "Get ye after the hind-bow." The knight shoved his helmet down on his head and threw the reins over the horse's ears. As Isabelle floundered out of his way over the cantle, he mounted. She flung her arms about his waist. With his sword drawn he drove his spurs into the nervous stallion, sending it into a sprint with a war cry that resounded in volleys from the trees. The horse cannoned along the road with water flying from its hooves, sweeping round the curve at the howling height of the knight's battle shout.

  The sight that met them was no more than a flicker of red mud and slaughter as the horse cleared the first body in a great leap. The animal tried to bolt, but the knight dragged it to a dancing halt amid the stillness.

  He said nothing, turning and turning the horse in an agitated circle. The butchered bodies of their former companions wheeled past beneath his gaze, around and around, white dead faces and crimson that ran fresher than the rain.

  Isabelle clung to him. "God spared us," she said, with a breathless tone. "Swear now, before Jesus Our Saviour, that thou wilt liven chaste!"

  He reined the horse hastily among the bodies, leaning down to look for signs of life as the animal pranced in uneasy rhythm, its hooves squelching wet grass and gore. The looters had done thorough work. "God's blood—they been slain but a moment." His voice was tight as he scanned the dark encroaching forest. "The brigands be scarce flown." He turned the stallion away, but at the edge of the clearing he doubled the horse back on the grisly scene again, as if he had not looked upon it long enough to believe.

  "Unshriven they died," Isabelle whispered, and murmured a prayer. She had never let go of her grip on his arm, not even to cross herself. "Swear thee now, in thanks for God's mercy and deliverance—thou wilt be chaste evermore."

  He was breathing hard, pushing air through his teeth as he looked at what was left of Mistress Parke.