Annoyed, David said, “Nay, Bert.”
“What’s so entertaining about picking up the broadsword?” Alisoun fondled the handle of the biggest blade.
Bert smirked. “Have you ever picked one up?”
“You’re such a baby,” Eudo said in obvious disgust.
“She’s not going to pick up a broadsword,” David insisted.
“I think I would like to, now.” Alisoun asked for permission with an appealing glance.
David glared at his daughter, then answered, “As you wish, my lady. However, they’re very heavy and if you’re not careful—”
She withdrew it from its sheath. It slid it off the table and the tip of the blade slapped to the ground.
“—you’ll drop it.” He tweaked Bert’s hair hard enough to stop her from giggling, then moved to Alisoun’s side. Again he took the opportunity to wrap his arms around her. Putting his hands over hers, he helped her lift it. “It’s a good blade still,” he told her. “Can you feel the balance? The weight?” Swaying back and forth, they swung it until it whistled. “In a fight, it’s not necessarily the man with the most skill who wins. Often, it’s the man with the most endurance.”
“I understand. Let me hold it now.”
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” he warned.
Never taking their gazes from the sword, the children moved away.
“Aye.”
“I’m letting go now.” He loosened his grip, and when she didn’t immediately drop it, he stepped away.
She continued to move it, staring at the tip in amazement.
Then Bert said, “Lift it over your head.”
David yelled, “Nay!”
He was too late. Alisoun brought the blade up. It hesitated just over her head, then tilted backward. She didn’t have the strength to control it, but she didn’t drop it. Instead she followed it as it tilted farther and farther, and at last she toppled backward.
She hit the ground as hard as one of her arrows.
David reached her side even as dust ruffled up. “Alisoun? Alisoun!”
She blinked her eyes open.
“Are you hurt?”
“It didn’t feel good.”
He slid his arm around her and helped her slowly sit up. Her wimple slid off the back of her head. She grabbed at it, but her braids dangled free and she grimaced. “Do you think—” David glanced at the children and lowered his voice, “—the babe is injured?”
“I think the babe is better cushioned than I am.” She answered as quietly, then rubbed at her tailbone.
A small voice broke into their conversation. “I’m sorry.”
David didn’t turn his head, but Alisoun did.
“Daddy, I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t know she’d hit so hard.”
For the first time ever, David found himself thoroughly angry at his daughter. He could scarcely maintain a civil tone when he said, “Don’t ask my forgiveness, Bert. Ask your stepmother’s. She’s the one who suffered.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady.” Bert fought tears now. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
“I am only bruised, Bertrade, and of course I forgive you.” She reached over David’s shoulder and patted the girl’s head, and this time she did it comfortably. “After all, it’s mostly your daddy’s fault.”
“My fault?” David reared back. “Why my fault?”
“Isn’t that jest one you play on all your squires?”
Trying to be righteous, David proclaimed, “It gives them an idea of the work they need to do before they can be dubbed a knight.”
“I think it’s mean.”
David found himself wanting to squirm.
“So why wouldn’t your daughter want me to supply the same entertainment the other squires have provided?” She shook her head reprovingly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to take credit for this, David. Now help me up and we’ll go to work.”
When had he become the one who needed to be taught? Trying to regain control of the practice, David said, “We’ll do the knifework now.” Bert began to protest, but he stared at her until she shut her mouth, and he added, “’Twill be your most likely source of defense anyway, my lady.”
Eudo put away the swords while Bert removed the wooden knives and put them on the table, never touching or asking to touch the real blades with their sharp edges. The children both showed off their best behavior, realizing, no doubt, that David had quickly reached his limit.
Too quickly, he admitted ruefully. If he had been sleeping regularly in Alisoun’s bed, he might have felt secure enough to listen to Alisoun’s reproval without becoming defensive.
Bert tugged at the hem of his gown. “I’ll use the wooden blade, Daddy.”
“Good.” David nodded.
Eudo’s hand hovered over the hilts. “Which blade would you like Lady Alisoun to use, my lord?”
“The light one,” David answered.
Eudo handed it to Alisoun hilt first, and she accepted it with a gracious smile. “You have been good to allow me to interrupt your true instruction.”
Bert wiggled in between them. “It’s my true instruction, too.”
Eudo rolled his eyes.
Without even seeing him, Bert said, “Well, it is!”
“It’s harder than I expected.” Alisoun cradled the knife between her two palms. “You must be very proud of your skills.”
Inveterately honest, Bert was forced to admit, “I’m not good yet, but I’m a lot better than I used to be. You’ll see. You’ll get better, too.”
Something loosened in David. The training session might have gone poorly, but his intuition had been correct. Bert was talking to Alisoun now. She saw her as someone who had to learn, to grow, someone whose apparent perfection had been hard won, and who was willing to study under those who knew more than she—possibly even from Bert.
David tugged on one of Alisoun’s loose braids until she turned and looked at him. “Bert is one of my best pupils, and with Eudo’s ingenuity he’ll be the new legendary mercenary of England.”
Eudo flushed and Bert grinned, and Alisoun swung the knife enthusiastically. “Long live Bert and Eudo!”
Suddenly the end of the braid was dangling from David’s hand.
He stared at it. He stared at her braid, shorter by five inches. He stared at an open-mouthed Bert, at round-eyed Eudo, and finally at Alisoun. Alisoun, too stunned to speak or move.
The moment seemed frozen in time.
Then a tiny sound broke their paralysis.
Alisoun choked.
“Don’t cry,” David begged, removing the dagger from her hand.
She choked again.
Bert wrapped one of her own mutilated locks around her finger. “It’ll grow back.”
“It’s not so bad, my lady,” Eudo said. “You’ve still got lots of hair left.”
Alisoun laughed. Not too loudly, but she laughed.
After a moment, Bert joined her, and then Eudo.
Smiling, David shook his head at his three warriors. “I’ve never failed with a squire yet.”
Alisoun laughed again. Giggling, Bert leaned against her for support, and Eudo straightened his face only to have his grave expression crumple beneath a new onslaught of amusement.
When Alisoun had gained control, she held out her other braid. “You might as well cut this off, too.” David took it while she lifted the shortened hair on the other side. The string that held it was gone, cut off by her knife, and the braid unraveled in great, heavy waves.
He measured one side against the other, then evened them up with a clean slice.
She lifted her face to his. The smile still quivered on her lips. “I apologize for being so difficult a pupil.”
The exertion, the laughter, the companionship had washed the stiffness from her face and left it open to him to read. Or had he just grown skilled at deciphering her thoughts? “A difficult pupil, aye. And just so you come away with a lesson you can use, let me tell you ab
out the dagger.”
Taking one of the wooden knives—he would take no chance with real steel—he pointed at each part of her body as he spoke. “If you have need to defend yourself or to attack another, aim for the eyes, the throat, or the gut.”
“Not the heart?”
“The heart is the best place, but you’re likely to hit the ribs and I think in your case the less difficulty, the better.”
This time Eudo giggled out loud, and when David looked around he realized the children stood watching them, heads cocked, eyes bright with interest.
“Mama, will you come back tomorrow and practice with us again?”
Bert spoke without a shred of self-consciousness, but David wanted to clutch his heart and cheer at the same time. Alisoun has won his daughter over. She hadn’t even tried, and he doubted she knew how she’d done it.
But Alisoun did know enough not to show surprise at her new title. “There’s much in the keep which requires my attention, and I fear I’ll not have the time to practice these skills as much as I obviously require.” She sighed. “If only I had more help…”
Eudo stepped up. “A squire should know all manner of things around the keep, and so I would be honored to have you teach me all you know.”
Bert stuck her skinny elbow into Eudo’s ribs. “Hey! I was going to tell her to teach me!”
“You never wanted to work in the keep, and you’re just a girl. No girl could learn knightly skills and a lady’s skills at the same time. You’d collapse from brain fever.”
“I would not!”
“Would, too.” Eudo carefully inserted the daggers into their sheaths.
“Would not.” She collected the wooden blades.
With his hand on her arm, David moved Alisoun away from the training ground. In a low voice, he explained, “That’s how we got her to read. Bert always faces a challenge head-on.”
“I’ll remember.” Alisoun tried to work the guard off of her hand, but her fingers shook and she finally extended her arm in appeal. “Would you help me with this? I did very little, yet I’m exhausted.”
“Doing it badly is much more difficult than doing it well,” he assured her, and they stopped before the gate of the herb garden while he worked the leather off her wrist.
“Yet you do it very well, and you must have started out as badly as I did.”
He glanced up at her quizzically.
“Fine. Insinuate I performed more poorly than you.” She tossed her half-braided hair over her shoulders. “But you must have started out with a little less skill than you have now.”
“A little less.” He freed her from the wrist guard and rubbed the bruised flesh there. “Your skin’s too tender for this.”
She ignored him. “And you became the best mercenary in England and France. You became the legendary mercenary David of Radcliffe.”
With a wry twist to his mouth, he stripped off her finger guard and stuffed the leather into his pouch. “Aye, that’s who I am. The legendary mercenary who fought a dragon and won.”
“I think you have yourself confused with Saint George,” she answered seriously. “But truly, with the practice you have performed at George’s Cross and your experience, I would wager you are the best mercenary in England this day.”
“Have you seen the herb garden?” He opened the gate and waved his arm inside.
“Aye.” She stepped inside. “’Tis very well kept.”
He hesitated. He didn’t want to go inside with her. Not when her hair hung loose down her back. Not when amusement softened the curve of her mouth. But she kept talking, and he dared not cut off this communication. Not after so many days and nights of only polite conversation.
“Don’t you think you’re the best mercenary?”
He walked in and left the gate gaping behind him. “I’m not. Not anymore.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he shook his head. “There’s more to it than just skill, strength, and experience. I’ll never fight like I did before, because I’ve lost my taste for killing.”
She had leaned over to break off a sprig of mint, but she looked up at his words. “Really?”
Leaning against the wall, he watched her pluck the leaves and sniff them. “Battle is a young man’s game, and only men who have no respect for death can face it with equanimity.”
She tasted the mint and he could almost taste it with her. “Now you have respect for death?”
“I’ve seen the grief it can cause. I’ve lost dear comrades for no better reason than another knight on the circuit wanted his armor and got too enthusiastic in the melée.”
Her soft whimper of sympathy soothed him, and he moved toward her. “I have something to lose now. I have a wife and a child—two children!” He corrected himself and she stroked her belly. “I think there are better ways to retain what I’ve earned than by battering myself bloody.”
“Is that why you wed me?” She moved away as she asked the question, using a careless tone as if she cared nothing for the answer.
He suspected—he hoped—that she did. He should have chosen his words, taking care not to frighten her with undue emotion or anything less than good sense.
Instead he spoke from his heart. “I felt I owed you protection, but what I owed you and what I wanted to give you were two different things. I owed you security.”
She stopped. He stopped. When he didn’t finished, she asked, “What did you want to give me?”
“Love.”
“Love?” She whirled and stared. “Love? That’s nothing but stupid, romantic nonsense. Love doesn’t exist!”
“I never thought so, either.” He took one huge step and stood before her. “But I never thought someone like you existed, either.”
“First you tell me you chose to be the kind of warrior whose thoughtful good sense makes you a welcome mate and I think I can tell you all and you will understand. Then you say something as crack-pated as—”
He gripped her arms. “Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not my secret to tell.”
“But you’re the one in danger.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Have I ever betrayed your trust?”
“Nay.”
“Then let me start you. Your dearest friend was married to Osbern, duke of Framlingford.”
All expression left her face. She became Alisoun, countess of George’s Cross, just as he had first met her. But now he knew how to read her.
Calmly, she replied, “Everyone knows that.”
“She lost her affection for him.” The tension around her mouth relaxed, and he realized he had guessed wrong. “Or maybe she loved him, but he beat her half to death.”
Her jaw tightened.
So Osbern did beat his wife. This was no surprise to David. Most men did. “So she wanted to leave him, and you helped her.”
“Why do you think that?”
“There’s a wolf and a wolf cub in her coffin, my lady. Do you think I’m a fool who believes she turned into a wolf when she died? That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? That if the coffin were ever opened, superstition would overwhelm suspicion and the wolf would be reburied as furtively as it was dug up.”
Alisoun fixed her gaze over his shoulder, trying still to defeat him as he guessed at the chain of events which had brought them together.
David wouldn’t allow it. Not anymore. Not when he was so close. Taking her chin, he made her look toward him and bent down so he filled her gaze. “You staged Lady Framlingford’s death, then whisked her away…somewhere.”
Alisoun’s breath escaped her harshly now, and she trembled under his hands.
“Tell me where. Has she gone to a lover? Is she in one of your other castles? Have you sent her to France?”
Alisoun tried to shake her head.
“Ignorance is dangerous, Alisoun, at least in this case. Framlingford is dangerous. At least tell me where she i
s so I can—”
“Send her back?”
“You do think ill of me, don’t you?” He didn’t give her a chance to reply. “I have my friends, and believe me, Framlingford knows them not. If I could send her to them, he’d never find her and you would be innocent of any knowledge of her whereabouts.”
“How would that stop him from stalking me?” She blasted him with the pyre of her frustration. “He won’t be happy until he makes me hurt as he hurt…my friend.”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
“How will you stop him? You say you don’t relish killing anymore. Well, Osbern does. He especially likes to do it slowly.” Pale with disgust, Alisoun asked, “Do you know that he killed one of the pages in his care?”
“I had heard that.” David didn’t allow his compassion for one dead boy to divert him from his purpose. He needed to protect Alisoun and all connected with her, and so he said, “The lad had no connections—Osbern manages his cruelty as a cold-blooded sport.”
“A sport.” She nodded. “Aye.”
“You are well connected. We can go to the king and—”
“Philippa is an heiress. The king married her to Osbern. If the king knew that I had helped her escape her husband, he would—”
“Philippa?”
Alisoun’s hand flew to cover her mouth.
“Did you say Philippa?” Rage blew like a cold wind through his body, chilling his blood and bringing his terror to a new level. “By Goddes corpus, she’s here in this castle now?”
Grasping his arm, she said, “I had to keep her with me. The babe was just born, and I dared not send her on a long trip.”
Still he could scarcely comprehend the expanse of Alisoun’s betrayal. “She’s here? You never sent her anywhere away from you?”
“No one suspected she was anything but an impoverished cousin with an illegitimate child.”
“In my own castle. I’m harboring Osbern’s wife in my own castle.” He closed his eyes against the immensity of the disaster.
“Osbern watched George’s Cross. I feared to send her anywhere because I feared he would take her.”
“Obviously he suspected, for he dug up that grave.”
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