by Tamara Leigh
So Wulfrith did throw his shadow where the Lord dwelt.
How was it possible? How did such a man stand here where he no more belonged than fallen angels? It had to be pretense. Nothing at all to do with godliness. The one responsible for her brother’s murder acted a part. For those in training? The priest?
She looked to the latter. Forehead gathered with annoyance, the priest stared at her as he continued to speak the mass.
Annyn stepped to the left. Grateful to be at the rear that she might be spared further disapproval, she bowed her head with the others. But there was no solace in the false obeisance of one whose heart beat so vengefully she refused to heed not only her brother’s warning about vengeance, but that of God who often enough whispered it to her. Thus, throughout the mass, all she could think was how sacrilegious it was for her to be in the house of the Lord.
As much as Annyn longed to hasten from the chapel when the priest dismissed them, it emptied from front to back. Thus, as she would likely fall beneath Wulfrith’s regard, she dragged fingers through her hair and tugged her tunic straight.
He was the first down the aisle behind the priest and, true enough, his gaze found her. From his lowered eyebrows and pressed lips, he was displeased.
He knew—not only that she had come in last, but late. How? She had not seen him look around. Regardless, he would have another lesson for her. How many would that make?
Wulfrith passed from the chapel, followed by his brothers and the knights of Wulfen, then squires and pages.
Imagining the chapel sighed as it expelled her from its hallowed depths, Annyn followed the others along the corridor and down the stairs to the hall.
At Lillia, one always broke fast at table, but at Wulfen there were only sideboards. Though their surfaces evidenced they had been laden, the last of the meal was being taken up by stragglers, the others having traded the hall for the outdoors. Not even dawn and training had begun.
Annyn’s belly groaned. Knowing she would have to tighten her bindings if she did not eat better, she hastened to the nearest sideboard and seized a scrap of cheese and an end slice of bread. Though there was a slop of ale in one of the pitchers, there were no clean tankards. She shrugged, put the pitcher to her lips, and gulped the meager contents.
As she stepped into the dark that was dotted with stars and swept by a chill breeze, she popped the cheese in her mouth. By the time she reached the outer drawbridge, she had swallowed the last of the bread.
The training field was lit by torches that showed the others had formed orderly lines before it. Seeing Wulfrith and his knights at the fore, Annyn slipped into the back of the nearest line.
“A half hour!” Wulfrith shouted. “If you have not returned in that time, you and those of your group will run it again.”
Annyn sagged. Anything but running rounds of the training field.
“To belts!”
Pondering his meaning, she followed the others to where they gathered belts from a cart. Not wishing to be last, she pushed her way forward and seized one. It was heavily weighted. Whereas at Lillia a squire’s muscles and stamina were developed by running in old armor, pieces gradually added until a young man was able to support an entire suit, at Wulfen belts hung with sacks of rocks were used.
As Annyn had never run weighted, she was unprepared. With trembling arms, she stretched the belt between her hands. And was hauled back by the neck of her tunic.
“I’ve another lesson for you, Braose—forsooth, two.”
Have mercy!
Wulfrith released her and stepped in front of her. “Lesson eight, make mass on time.”
She looked into his torch lit face. “Aye, my lord.” Beast! “And the other lesson?”
“Methinks you can tell it yourself.”
She swallowed. “Lesson nine, do not come late to the training field.”
“Good. Do not forget.”
Certain he would question her later, she put both lessons to memory as he lifted the belt from her.
“Wrong cart,” he pronounced. “Wrong line.”
“I do not understand, my lord.”
“You are to join Sir Merrick’s line when you come to the field. ’Tis he who oversees those recently elevated to squire.”
“Did you not say it would be a fortnight ere I served under Sir Merrick?”
His mouth tightened. “Aye, but still you will train at arms with him.”
She nodded. “Which of these knights is Sir Merrick, my lord?”
He looked across the field. “There, at the quintain.”
Though the mix of dark and torchlight divided Squire Merrick’s features, she realized he was the one who had seemed familiar on the night past—and whose familiarity had frightened her. Where had she seen him? Or did his narrow face and sleepy eyes merely favor someone she knew?
“Be of good speed,” Wulfrith said, “or you and the others under Sir Merrick shall run twice.”
As they were to be given a half hour for the exercise, it was not around the training field they would run, for it took perhaps two minutes to circle once. Meaning she faced something greater. But she was determined she would not do it twice, especially as others would suffer for her straggling.
She darted past Wulfrith and retrieved a belt from the cart alongside Sir Merrick. Blessedly, it felt half the weight of the first.
“You are late!” Sir Merrick snapped.
“Apologies, my lord.” She slung the belt around her waist, but before she could fumble with the fastening, he thrust her hands aside and fastened it for her.
“Do not disappoint me, Braose.” Though it was a warning, Annyn thought she glimpsed encouragement in his heavily-lidded eyes.
She hurried to the end of the line where the others awaited the signal—most of them her height or shorter. As the belt settled to her hips, Wulfrith’s shout resounded and the squires and pages burst forth.
Annyn stayed with the mass as they rushed the downside of the hillock on which Wulfen was built. Though the rocks suspended from her belt glanced off her buttocks and hips, making for keen discomfort, she did not slow. Whatever lay ahead, she would overcome. However, her determination wavered when she entered the wood. It was dark, moonlight barely parting the shadows from the trees and the young men ahead.
As she strained to see, someone knocked against her and caused her to drop to a knee. She shot back to her feet. Then another passed her, a large figure whose pale hair set him apart from the others. The squire lunged left, right, certain of his path as if he had run it many times. Though all of her ached, she stayed with him through the wood.
What was their destination? Would she make the half hour? She tugged at her bindings and was grateful for the dark that allowed her to ease the discomfort that had grown with the need to fill her constricted lungs. Would it truly imperil her if she removed the bindings? Her tunic was full and—
Nay, a squire’s training included wrestling, and if she were grabbed about the chest it was best that she remain bound. She touched the misericorde at her thigh. When would it set her free?
Free to wander the path to hell, Father Cornelius whispered as an elbow struck her shoulder and a foot landed atop hers. Without apology, the offender shot ahead and melted into the darkness.
“Curse you, Wulfrith,” she spat, putting the blame where it belonged. “Curse your black soul!” Determinedly, she resettled her gaze on the large shadow that was her beacon through the wood.
When the sound of falling water reached her, dawn had turned the sky from black to deep blue, the towering sentries to trees, the shadows to squires and pages, and the one ahead to a man. It was Wulfrith, the pale hair that had held her to him not flaxen as supposed, but silver.
She swerved and nearly collided with another squire. The young man shouted, but she was too intent on distancing herself to make sense of his words. Staying to the right of the group, she glanced over her shoulder. There were perhaps a dozen behind her, meaning there were thrice as many
ahead. Would she make it back to the training field before time was called?
A waterfall came into view, along with squires and pages who negotiated stones across its width. Annyn looked down at the pool into which the water poured and saw it was a steep ravine she ran alongside. And she was at its edge.
She tried to alter her course, but a foot fell from beneath her. She cried out and slapped her hands to the ground. Down she slid through the mud and undergrowth that clung to the side of the ravine, each handhold leaving her grasping uprooted vegetation.
She glanced over her shoulder. The deep water pool below was banked, so she would not find herself immersed. But then she must climb out of the ravine. Worse, she would have to make it back to the training field before the last minute of the half hour—only possible if she could fly. And no bird was Annyn Bretanne.
Muddied from the slide, bruised from the rock belt and sticks and stones encountered during her descent, she found purchase near the bottom of the ravine.
Rolling onto her back, she drew a breath against her bindings and skipped her gaze across the pool’s tumultuous surface to the opposite side of the ravine. It was also sloped, though not as steeply. Unfortunately, to make it to the other side would require getting soaked.
She glanced overhead. Better wet, even if chilled to the bone, than to try and climb out.
She struggled to her feet. Knowing the weighted belt would sink her if the water proved too deep, she peered down the pool and saw it let into a river scattered with stones. It seemed she might not have to wet more than a toe. Not that she didn’t need a bath.
Though the bank was slippery and she fell once, she soon hopped to the first of the stones that would deliver her across the river. With their moss and mold, they were precarious, but she reached the other side.
As she glanced at the lightening sky that would steer her toward Wulfen, a voice pronounced, “Not worthy!”
She gasped and looked to the left.
Leaning against a tree, arms crossed over his chest, Wulfrith stared at her from beneath the silver hair fallen over his brow.
How long had he watched? And had she revealed anything? She had not tugged at her bindings, had she? The wily churl! Could she make no blunder without him catching it? Such a man would not be easy to sink a dagger into.
“Why did you stray from the path?”
There was no path, but she would not violate a lesson by arguing it. “I vow, ’twas not my intention, my lord.”
He scrutinized her muddy figure and pushed off the tree. “’Tis a pity you and Sir Merrick’s other squires must needs run the exercise again.”
It was dreadful enough that she must do it, but the others? She pressed her shoulders back. “The half hour is not done, my lord.”
He halted before her. “You cannot make it.”
Regardless how she ached, she would prove him wrong. “I can.”
“Not if you stand here arguing.”
As she stepped around him, a thought struck her. “Pity you must also run it again, my lord.”
His lips skewed into a smile that nearly disarmed her for how it transformed his face.
Stirred by something never before felt, she bounded away. Not that she couldn’t guess what this feeling was, for she had ears to hear the things spoken between servants. Too, there was the eve she had come upon a knight and chamber maid as they met against a wall in the hall. Though she had been but ten and three, their mutterings and fumblings required no explanation. Aye, what she felt was the stuff of men and women. And she despised herself for it.
The press of the secreted misericorde suddenly urgent, Annyn grudgingly conceded the time was not right. No revenge would be had without considerable advantage over Wulfrith. And so she ran.
Following close behind Jame Braose, Garr looked to the sky. If the squire had any chance of making it before the half hour was gone, he would require more speed.
He drew alongside Braose. “You will fail!”
The young man reached his legs farther.
It was a challenge Garr had known he would accept as so many before him had done, including Garr whose father had always asked more of him than he had asked of others. No man wanted to be told what he could and could not do. And in that lay a well of strength from which one might not otherwise draw.
Garr dropped back but stayed near Braose. There was much to be gained from an opponent’s breath on one’s neck.
The young man wound the woods, bounded over logs and streams, surely burned in every muscle, but he did not slow. When he broke from the trees, the battlements of Wulfen Castle were touched by the rising sun.
If the half hour was not upon them, it would soon be. “You waste your breath,” Garr called.
Braose gathered more speed, running as he had not likely known he could.
Those upon the training field grew larger with each reach of the legs, and Garr knew the others watched and likely believed Braose could not do it. But they were wrong.
“Unworthy!” Garr reached deep inside the young man.
Braose grunted and, shortly, burst upon the training field. Gasping for breath, he glared at Garr who had halted ahead of him.
Garr looked to Sir Merrick. The knight held up the water clock that could not have more than a drop of water remaining.
Murmurs of relief rose from the squires gathered around him.
Though Braose surely longed to drop to the ground, he propped his hands on his thighs and bent at the waist.
“To your stations,” Garr commanded the others.
As they swelled toward pels, quintains, swords, and lances, Garr strode toward Braose who watched his advance through the hair fallen over his brow.
“It seems you have learned lesson ten on your own.” Garr halted before him.
Braose tilted his head back.
Garr let him wait that he might ponder it, then said, “Let no man make your way for you.”
Annyn blinked. His goading was meant to drag strength from her? To push her to a place she had not known existed? As much as she preferred to believe it had been of cruel intent, it seemed not. And she told herself she hated him more for not fitting the man his murdering hands cast him to be.
She pushed off her thighs and straightened. “Then I am worthy, my lord?”
“That I did not say.”
Insufferable knave! What she would not give for one moment to stand before him as Annyn Bretanne who had every right to gush hatred at him. “When will you say it, my lord?” Not that she required it.
“When ’tis so.” He delved her eyes as if to read her through them.
She lowered her gaze. “Then I shall endeavor to further prove myself.”
“If you wish to remain at Wulfen, you will. Tell me, what is lesson four?”
“It is...” Which lesson had she violated? Ah, but she hadn’t truly violated it, had she? She forced her gaze to his. “Lesson four is to always keep one’s eyes upon one’s opponent, my lord.”
“Yet time and again you look away from me.”
To hide from him, and he knew it. “At the moment, we are not in opposition, my lord.”
“Are we not?”
More than he could know. His nearness and words making it difficult to breathe, she gulped another breath. “Are we, my lord?” I sound like a poltroon!
“Aye, Jame Braose, you war with me. As if I have wronged you.”
He saw too much. “Wronged me, my lord? How can that be?”
His smile was full of falsehood. “I know not, but I shall.”
When a dagger was the end of him.
“Remove your belt and get to Sir Merrick.”
Swept with relief when he strode away, Annyn looked to where Sir Merrick led his squires in the thrusting of swords.
“Squire Jame,” Wulfrith called.
Ordering her countenance, she looked over her shoulder. “My lord?”
“How do you know my soul is black?”
Annyn nearly convulsed. Ho
w did he know what she believed of his soul? She had not— Aye, when she had run the wood, unaware Wulfrith was her beacon, she had cursed him. But had she truly spoken aloud?
She shrugged. “’Twould seem only one with a black soul would make young men awaken ere the sun’s rise, don weighted belts, and seek an obstructed path through the darkness...my lord.”
“Indeed.”
This time, Annyn indulged in relief only when he was gone from sight. Blowing a breath up her brow, she reached to the belt and unfastened it.
“Braose!” Sir Merrick called.
She hastened to the cart and dropped the belt atop the others. When she turned, the knight was before her.
“You nearly earned my wrath,” he said.
But she had not disappointed as he had warned against. “I am aware of that, my lord.”
He turned on his heel. “Come, we are at swords.”
Annyn followed. Though the five squires who served and trained beneath Sir Merrick said nothing, she felt their vexation long before she stood in their midst. For her mistake, they had nearly been punished. Fortunately, she did not require their acceptance. She was at Wulfen for one reason only.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Swords, pels, and more pels. The morning droned on until Annyn was certain Wulfen was but another name for hell. If not for her woman’s body and that she would not be staying, she might indeed be a man at the end of her time here—a formidable one.
Shoulders bent, she entered the hall amid the others and sighed at the smell of Cook’s efforts for the nooning meal. Sideboards were crowded with various dishes that put a haze upon the air, and the tables were laid with crisp, white cloths.
“Hands!” a page called.
Impatient to stuff up the hole in her belly, Annyn tensely awaited her turn with the pages who held basins of water and towels to bathe away the filth of the training field. Finally, the tepid water was poured over her fingers and her hands wiped dry. She turned toward the tables and there, before her, stood Wulfrith’s second squire, Samuel.