Demon Knight

own mind to deny the stirrings in her breast. A certain amount of animal sensuality is a virtue in a man, alarming though it may seem to a virgin. I remember how terrified I was when my own parents informed me that they had chosen a man barely older than myself to be my husband. I quite—'

'No! No! No!' Lisa clapped her hands over her ears and fled howling from the courtyard.

CHAPTER THREE

Although the banquet had lasted late into the night, Toby had been out riding Smeorach since before dawn. Between times he had slept, but poorly — too many things to do, too much to think about. Drumming had wakened him. He heard drumming often now, and the fact that others did not made it no less real to him. He was convinced that the darughachi had set shamans to spy on him, but if the Tartars could do that, then so could the Fiend's hexers. It was past time he found a replacement for Maestro Fischart.

Dusty and bleary-eyed, he strode into the courtyard. Hamish was there already with a pile of reports and correspondence. He looked up and frowned. 'Did you come to bed at all?' At times he mothered Toby infuriatingly.

'You were asleep. And still snoring when I left.' Toby sat on a stool and enjoyed a long yawn. The one bright note in the morning was that the Company had money again and could hold a pay parade at long last. He leaned his arms on the stone table and scowled at the heap of paper. 'What bullguts have you got for me today?' He took a harder look at that face he knew so well and spoke more gently. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing. There's a letter in from—'

'Tell me.'

Hamish sighed crossly and laid a pottery paperweight on the heap, although there was no wind. 'You tell me what you think of Lisa.'

A tiny demon of temptation told Toby to scream at the top of his voice, grab Master Campbell up by the throat, and wave him like a flag. Here they were preparing for a war that would decide the fate of Europe for centuries to come and his chief helper and closest friend — his only friend — was obsessed by an animal fire in his crotch. A fire that could never cook anything. Why couldn't he lust after some two-lire bawd who would drag him into the bushes and quench the blaze for him? Twenty minutes' rollick and he would be the old Hamish again, at least for a day or two.

Lisa? Toby scratched his unshaven jaw. 'If you like statuesque blondes, she's one of the greatest beauties you'll ever meet. She has a wit like a whip, a mind like a rapier, and nerves of steel. She is also totally spoiled, completely self-centered, and as devious as an Italian. Not,' he added, seeing the storm clouds roiling in Hamish's eyes, 'that she can be blamed for all that. It goes with the royal blood. She had a bizarre upbringing, and her mother is nine-sixteenths madder than a March hare. As a king's wife she'd be magnificent, but never as a ruler in her own right. Not for another ten years anyway. I can't imagine her grinding meal or milking the goat. Why do you ask?'

The storm clouds had not dispersed. 'Her mother thinks you are in love with her.'

Toby said, 'Oh, demons!' under his breath.

'You do not deny it?'

'I have told you what I think of her. If I could have dreams, old friend, they might well include a Lisa in them.'

'She says you make eyes at her.' Hamish bared his teeth. 'Her mother is plotting to marry Lisa to you! You are going to destroy Nevil's army, reconquer Europe, marry Lisa, and become King of England.'

If a ditch-born bastard was a suitable match for the future queen, then why wasn't a schoolmaster's son? Toby was aware that Queen Blanche had taken to smiling at him excessively. He snapped at both her and her daughter as much as he could to keep them away. Apparently that strategy was not working.

'She's even madder than I thought. Marry? I don't dare even smile at a girl, you know that!'

His suffering friend was not convinced. 'Are you sure? How long since you lost control of the hob? It didn't escape you even at the Battle of Trent. If you can stay master in a turmoil like that, with gramarye and demons loose, then you can stay master anywhere!'

Toby sighed, shaking his head. 'Believe me, it's different. I know.' He shuddered, remembered the dozens of innocent people who had died in Mezquiriz. 'Remember Jacques, at Montserrat, who tried to be a saint and failed that test? He started with an elementary, not a hob, and yet it became a demon.' It had taken most of him with it when it was exorcised, and left a human cabbage. 'Have you bedded her yet?'

'No!' Hamish glowered at the papers on the table.

'Do you plan to?'

Without looking up, Hamish mumbled, 'You think I couldn't? If I wanted?'

'Sorry. Yes, she's lovely. If I give her sheepdog looks behind her back, then I'm sorry about that, too. I didn't know I was doing it. I probably ogle lots of women — didn't you tell me once that that was why men's heads could turn?' Briefly Toby considered ordering his chancellor to report to the camp brothel, but discretion prevailed. His troubles were too serious to cure that way. 'Old friends should not squabble over a prize that neither of them can ever hope to win.'

He ought to be more sympathetic. Things were easier for him, who was forever denied love. Time had dulled the pain of Jeanne and that terrible night in Mezquiriz, and yet he still dreamed of her sometimes. He wakened weeping.

'It does seem irrational.' Hamish was too upset to smile. 'It's the thought that she's going to have to marry someone, and probably very soon. Demons, Toby, I'm crazy about her! I've never felt like this about a woman, never. At times I want to burst out laughing, yelling, 'Lisa loves me!' so the whole world can know. And then I remember that some man is going to drag her off to bed to breed a pack of royal brats, and I want to kill myself. It's driving me insane! I can't eat or sleep or think straight.' He pounded his fists on the table.

Man chooses woman, woman accepts man, society forbids the match — it happened all the time, but that made it no less tragic.

'Flea farts! You slept like a millstone last night. You're also doing the work of three men and managing to squire Lisa at the same time. Let's get started here. What have…' A flash of movement on the roof of the villa…

'What?' Hamish looked where Toby was looking.

'My keeper is back.'

Hamish's eyes grew almost as wide as the owl's. It was a white owl, a large one, staring fixedly at them. 'It's the same one. Can you hear drumming now?'

'No. Can you?'

'No.'

This was new. Drumming with no owl, yes, but never owl without drumming.

Before Hamish could comment further, Don Ramon de Nunez y Pardo came striding out of the villa with a couple of squires at his heels. He paused long enough to wave them away before advancing on the table like a stalking leopard. What would he say to tales of invisible drummers? He probably heard them all the time, and bugles, too. Toby and Hamish rose and bowed.

He sat down without inviting them to. He was even more resplendent than usual in a dazzling new military doublet that Toby had not seen before; he had his silver helmet on his head and carried his captain-general's baton. Although his blue eyes shone inhumanly bright, he did not seem especially mad this morning, neither angry nor crazy. Time would tell.

'I want an explanation for that scene yesterday! You told me that Marradi had put his villa at your disposal.'

Toby met his glare squarely. 'He did, senor. I suspect his sister bears me a grudge, and the problem is of her devising.'

'The word in Florence is that the duchessa has sworn to have your hide for a rug