Once a Knight

by Christina Dodd

  “What?”

  “That’s what you can do with Bert. Take a lesson with her.”

  “What?”

  “On the morrow, come and take a lesson in fighting with Bert.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “On the contrary, I’m brilliant. If she could see you learning something she already knows, it’ll make her realize you have to go through the same process everyone does to achieve competence. She’ll no longer think you’re a…well!” He leaned over the babe once more. “Still, I suppose a woman in your condition should not attempt something so new.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my condition.” She spoke through her teeth. “But I am not a young girl trying to escape my fate. I am a woman who uses already learned skills and I refuse—”

  He turned the baby’s behind into the light.

  “—to put myself on display simply to make contact with a lass who should have more respect—”

  “What’s this on Hazel’s rear?” He touched the red mark with his finger. “She looks as if she’s been burned.”

  Silence filled the room. No one said a word. He looked up into Alisoun’s face as he stroked the rippled skin, and she stared at his finger with a fascination akin to horror. He glanced at Philippa. She had paled. Only Lady Edlyn seemed able to move, and she walked rapidly to his side. Cranking her head around, she observed the spot and in a casual, too-loud tone said, “Oh, that. It’s a birthmark.”

  “A birthmark? It looks like a brand.” He rubbed the red spot again. “Feels like one, too.”

  He looked again at Alisoun, but she was staring at Lady Edlyn with something akin to awe.

  Meanwhile, Philippa jerked into motion. “Just a birthmark.”

  He could scarcely believe that. “It’s a perfect shape.”

  “I have one, too.” Philippa touched the back of her shoulder.

  “A birthmark that looks like a—” he stared at the baby’s behind, “—ram?” Incredulous, he lifted his eyebrows at Alisoun. “Have you seen this?”

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  He didn’t understand. “What?”

  “I’ll learn to handle a sword, or whatever it is you want me to do.” Alisoun pushed at him until he moved aside, to finish diapering Hazel.

  He watched as Alisoun quickly wound the baby in her dry cloth. But he could see that it drooped, and would fall right off as soon as someone picked Hazel up. This was, he would wager, the first diaper Alisoun had ever replaced. But she wanted to distract him, and he supposed he would allow her to do so. After all, he was getting his way. That mark would be there on the morrow, should he want to question it again. “You’ll come and train with Bert?” he asked.

  “So I said.” She lifted the baby and handed her to Philippa.

  As David thought, the wrapping clothes slipped and Philippa caught them before they could slide off entirely. “Thank you, my lady.” Her gratitude seemed excessive for one badly done diaper.

  But Alisoun caught his arm before he could wonder more. Decisively, she said, “I’ll be there in the morning.”

  20

  Bert scuffled her feet in the dirt of the training ground and wailed, “Daddy, I don’t want her here.”

  “She has to learn how to protect herself, just like you have. You don’t want her to be hurt because she doesn’t know how to use a sword, do you?” David observed his daughter as she struggled with her answer. She didn’t care whether Alisoun learned to use a sword; as he’d told Guy, he believed his daughter dreamed of using her own prowess against Alisoun. But Bert’s fierce heart hid wells of tenderness, and David thought he could plumb those wells. “Your new mama has been threatened by someone.”

  “By who?” Bert demanded.

  “I don’t know, but that’s how we met. She hired me because someone tried to shoot an arrow at her.”

  “She tried to give someone a bath,” Bert muttered.

  David ignored that. “Someone took her cat and hurt it until it died.”

  “Nay, they didn’t!” Bert rolled up her sleeves as if something—her anger, David guessed—made her hot. “That lady has a kitty. See?” She pointed to some long red marks on her arm. “It scratches.”

  “I gave her the new kitty because she was crying over her old one.”

  “Did you see her tears?” Bert asked suspiciously.

  “Nay, it was worse than that.” Glancing at the sky, David observed the solid gray overcast of clouds that hid the sun. A good day to train squires; not hot, not bright, not likely to rain. “See those clouds?” He pointed, and his daughter nodded. “They have rain in them, but they won’t let it go. They hold it in, aching, wanting to cry out all their water, but they can’t. For some reason, they hold it in. Your new mama’s like that. Her tears are the kind of tears she keeps inside, and you know how much those hurt.”

  “Like when you left me here and I knew I had to be brave but I wanted you really, really bad?”

  “Like that.”

  Scratching her chin, Bert thought, then said, “She doesn’t like the kitty you gave her. She never pets it or anything. She never talks to it.” Her mouth drooped. “She never gives it a good-night kiss.”

  Bert didn’t speak of the kitten, David realized. She didn’t care whether that cat got a good-night kiss, but the child’s fragile ego couldn’t comprehend Alisoun’s hesitant affection. Bert’s bold emotions demanded a mother who would hug her and kiss her and tuck her into bed, not speak to her of propriety and spinning and baths. Kneeling beside his daughter, David framed his words carefully. “She’s afraid to like the kitty. She liked her other one so much, and she’s afraid if she likes this one it’ll die, too.”

  “That’s stupid. You’re not going to let someone take her kitty and hurt it again.”

  No one matched Bert’s implicit faith in him—especially not Alisoun. “But she doesn’t trust me.”

  She wrapped her grubby arms around his neck. “But you’re my daddy!”

  Hugging her against him, David explained, “She doesn’t understand what that means. She doesn’t understand that I would do anything to protect you and her. You’re my daughter. She’s my wife. We’re a family, and our family is the most important thing in the world to me.”

  “You gotta tell her!”

  “I’m showing her. I’m letting her come and learn with you and Eudo how to be a warrior.”

  He’d left Bert with nothing to say, and that unusual experience heartened him. Perhaps he was doing the right thing. “Come,” he said. “Help me get the weapons out of the storage shed.”

  As they laid out the shields, the knives, the swords, and the bows and arrows on the trestle table set up for his purpose, David’s mind returned to that scene in the solar. If anything proved Alisoun didn’t yet trust him, it was that.

  That spot on Hazel’s behind was no birthmark. He’d wager Radcliffe on that. The child had been burned somehow, and her mother didn’t want to confess. But why did Alisoun lie, also? And Lady Edlyn—Alisoun had been startled when Lady Edlyn stepped in and fibbed so easily. It all meant trouble, and he feared he would have to do what he told Bert. He feared he would have to protect his family against a very great challenge. He’d learned a lot in these last years of famine, and he only hoped that this time he would make the right choices.

  “Here they come.”

  Bert’s gloomy voice pierced his reverie. Alisoun and Eudo walked toward them, and he grinned when he saw Alisoun’s idea of proper warrior wear. She wore an old cotte with tight sleeves, a sturdy pair of over-boots and a wimple tied at the base of her neck. Two long braids of hair hung down her back, and grim determination stiffened her spine.

  David recognized her expression. Eudo sported the same one every time he had to train with Bert. She was going to do this. She wouldn’t like it, but she would do it.

  “Welcome, my lady, to our squire instruction.” David bowed with mocking delight. “Are you prepared to obey my every instruction and learn to use your w
eapons as every squire should?”

  “I am, my lord.” She stood still as he circled her. “Although I still do not understand what use this will be to me.”

  “It’s so no one will kill your kitty again,” Bert piped up.

  David cringed. He knew Alisoun didn’t want her distress announced to anyone. The woman hoarded her emotions and valued her privacy, and he wondered if she would take her unhappiness with him out on Bert.

  He gave her too little credit. Alisoun stared at Bert in astonishment, then in a small voice said, “That is indeed a reason.”

  David jumped into the fray before any other indiscretions could be aired. “First we’re going to learn how to shoot a bow and arrow.”

  “Aye!” Eudo grinned. Guy taught archery, and he assured David that in Eudo they had found a natural talent. Still too small to have any advantage in a close fight, Eudo found the singing flight of an arrow evened his chances for victory, and he relished every moment spent with a bow in his hand.

  “Aye!” Bert imitated Eudo. She had her own miniature bow, and she practiced for hours trying to match her hero’s skill.

  “Set up the targets, squires.” David picked up a training bow and a quiver of arrows. “I will instruct Lady Alisoun.”

  Bert set her heels in the dirt and glared. “I want you to instruct me!”

  Eudo pushed her from behind. “My lord told us to set up the targets.”

  “He’s my father.”

  “A good squire doesn’t argue with his lord.” Eudo started toward the shed that housed the training weapons. Over his shoulder, he yelled, “Lasses can’t follow directions.”

  “I can, too.” Bert scampered after him. “I can, too.”

  “Does Eudo resent you training me?” Alisoun asked.

  David handed her the bow. “Hold this while I put the wrist and finger guards on you.” She ought to learn to do it herself, he knew, but he wanted the chance to touch her, to stroke her skin with his fingers. “Nay, it’s not you he resents. It’s Bert.” He glanced at the children as they dragged out the targets and argued about their location. “You’ll be pleased to know Eudo also disapproves of my daughter’s combat training.”

  “Why would I be pleased to know that?” She kept her gaze on his hands as they worked the leather over her wrist. “I taught Eudo to have respect for his lord and obey his every command.”

  “He obeys me.”

  “Cheerfully?”

  “Not that,” David admitted as he set the bowstring. “But Bert does make that difficult sometimes. Mayhap if you…nay, never mind, that’s a stupid idea.”

  “What?”

  “Really.” Standing behind her, he placed the bow in her hand. “It’s nothing.”

  “I do not think, my lord, that your ideas are nothing.” She took a deep breath as he wrapped his arms around her.

  Taking her hand, he showed her how to wrap her fingers around the string. “It just seems that if you show Bert affection and respect while we work here, mayhap Eudo would behave in a like manner.”

  “I always show every one of God’s creatures respect.”

  He said nothing.

  Grudgingly, she asked, “What kind of affection?”

  “I’ve seen you place a hand on Eudo’s shoulder when you praise him.”

  “Bert doesn’t like me to touch her.”

  “That’s because you only touch her to clean her. I’m talking about a gesture of regard.”

  She stood relaxed within the circle of his arms as she considered. Then she nodded decisively. “I could do that.”

  “And inquire about her progress with her studies.”

  “As far as I can see, she has no studies. She neither picks up a book nor learns womanly arts.”

  “Right now, she is learning to be a warrior.”

  “I don’t approve of that. Why would I ask after her progress?”

  He managed to keep the triumph from his tone, but only barely. “You’re doing it, too.”

  “Only because—”

  He could almost hear her thinking. Only because I wanted to distract you from that diaper on the baby. But she didn’t say that.

  “Only because you are right. If I am to be threatened, I need to be able to defend myself in some small degree.”

  He wanted to pull her against him and kiss her until he’d ruffled some of her dignity. He wanted to reward her for saying those so difficult words—you are right. He wanted to pledge himself to her again and again until she believed he would always protect her and hers.

  Instead he shouted at a few of his servants who were loitering to watch him and Alisoun. “If you have nothing to do, I’m sure I can find you something.” They wheeled away, and he told Alisoun, “Pull back the string with gentle yet firm tension. Back further. Back further. Pull it almost to your cheek and hold it higher. That’s it. Now let it go.”

  She released the empty string and it struck her wrist guard with a sharp thump.

  “Ouch.” She dropped the bow and rubbed her arm. “That hurt!”

  “Let’s try it with an arrow.” Pulling an arrow from the quiver, he set the nock in the string and showed her how to rest it on her fingers. The children hastily finished setting up the targets and ran back to their sides.

  “Go ahead and practice, children,” Alisoun called.

  They paid no attention to her words. They focused totally on the point of the arrow as she pulled the string back once more.

  “Hold it up! Use a finer tension! Hold it up!” David squinted as the bow quivered in her grasp. “Now, let it fly!”

  Plowing a furrow along the dirt, the arrow came to rest against a clump of grass not five feet in front of her. The children stared at it in confounded silence.

  David told Alisoun, “You can open your eyes now.”

  Her eyes popped open. “I didn’t realize I’d closed them.” She looked eagerly at the targets.

  Bert’s laughter exploded in a snort and Eudo smothered it with his hand. Bewildered, Alisoun looked at them, then looked again at the targets. Taking her head, David moved it down until she could see the abused and dirty arrow.

  “You didn’t point high enough,” he said.

  “Oh.” She looked at the children again, but they had their merriment firmly under control. “I’ll do it again.”

  One thing David had to say about Alisoun, she didn’t give up easily. More arrow points ate dirt than in his entire history of teaching squires. At last he said, “That’s enough for now. Your wrist will be swollen if you don’t stop.”

  “I’ve almost got it.” She set her chin with determination. “Just one more.” Notching the arrow, she lifted the bow high, and let it fly…over the training ground, over the weapons shed, and out of sight.

  David, Alisoun, and the children stood frozen, waiting, wondering.

  They heard a squawk. One squawk, then nothing.

  “What have I done?” Alisoun whispered.

  One of the goose girls came flying around the shed, holding a dead gander by its feet. “Who did that?” she shouted. “Me best stud, killed by an arrow!” She turned the bird and showed the shaft embedded in the gander’s head.

  “I’m sorry,” David shouted back. “It’s my fault.”

  “Likely story.” The girl shook her finger toward Eudo. “’Twas probably this one, wi’ his fancy aimin’ an’ his foreign ways.”

  Bert shouldered her way to the front. “Nay, Nancy, ’twas me.” She took the bow out of Alisoun’s limp grip and waved it. “I’m getting good, aren’t I?”

  Nancy squinted at the bow, then at the child holding it. She wanted to call Bert a liar, but she didn’t dare.

  “Take the gander to the kitchen,” David instructed. “We’ll have him for dinner and my lady will get us a new gander.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Won’t you?”

  “Aye, and gladly, too.” Alisoun tried to smile, but it was nothing more than a lift of the lips to show her teeth.

  Nancy nodded rese
ntfully, and when she disappeared again Alisoun turned to David. “I am so sorry.”

  “’Tis nothing.” He rubbed her back.

  “Your best gander!”

  Bert patted her hip. “Nancy thinks all of the ganders are her best gander.”

  Alisoun seemed to suddenly realize David and Bert were touching her, while she herself had not complied with David’s request to give his child affection. Awkwardly, she patted Bert on the head. The girl looked up in astonishment. David waited, cringing, but Bert just shrugged and moved away.

  “Can we do the swords now?” Bert loved the swords best. Laid out on a trestle table, the gray practice blades shone in the sun. No rust speckled their surface; even worn swords such as these merited good treatment. The wooden swords, too, had been carefully formed and kept for the younger boys’ practice.

  With reverent hands, Bert reached out and stroked one of the iron blades.

  Catching her wrist, David said, “Swords would be a good idea.” He thrust a wooden sword into her hand. “With this.”

  She pouted, sure she wouldn’t get her way but resolved to try. “I’m big enough for a real sword.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Let me try.”

  Hefting his own short sword, Eudo said, “A real squire wouldn’t beg like a girl.”

  Even Bert’s ears turned red. David could see the tips where they stuck out from her butchered hair. But she shut her mouth with a snap.

  David turned to Alisoun. “We’ll start you on a wooden sword, also.”

  Bert saw her chance to take her pique out on someone else. “Aren’t you going to have her lift the broadsword?”

  “Not this day.” David spoke to Alisoun. “You hold the hilt in both your hands—”

  “You made me pick up the broadsword first.” Bert spoke in a singsong voice. “You always make the new swordsman pick up the broadsword first.”