Page 7 of The Captive Knight
“Alas.”
“But he’s not as furious as Good Friday, you think?”
She pulled a face, thinking of the many gradations of her father’s madness, measured by her and Laurent’s own private scale. “If the condition of the knight in the tower is any measure, we should both be on our best behavior at all times.”
“In that case, I’ll put off reminding our father of his promise to send me to a monastery.”
His words did nothing to assuage her unease. Father had made the promise to Laurent as a child, long ago, when things were different. Before the plague had taken their two older brothers and made Laurent the heir.
“Oh, don’t brood, Aliénor,” he said, his voice light. “I will hold onto hope still, no matter what you think. After all, father hasn’t sent me off to any local lord as squire. I’m nearly fifteen and still living in his house. Certainly that means—”
“—nothing more than father—when not fighting for King Jean—spends too much time offering up his sword to foreign lords rather than seeing to his responsibilities here.” She tried to brush his hair out of his face but Laurent veered away from her touch with a scowl. “Now that he’s back,” she said, “it’s just as likely he’ll secure your future at someone’s court. Maybe even the Count of Armagnac.”
“The count may not be pleased to have such a squire.” He gathered up the length of his woolen tunic, the one that looked very much like a monk’s robe, to expose his twisted foot, which tugged the soft leather of his boot into strange angles. “Have you ever known a crippled knight?”
“Your leg is only a problem when you’re fighting on the ground,” she said. “You know very well, on a horse, there is no difference. Knights fight on horseback, not on foot.”
“Unless they’re unseated.”
“Which you will rarely be,” she added, nodding toward the waiting horse, “if you practice in the saddle.”
“But I’m not Bertrand.” He placed the block of wood aside. “And I’m not Gaston. Do you remember how they rode, Aliénor? How easy upon the saddle, how swift across the fields?”
For a moment she could almost see them, her two husky, dark-haired older brothers, racing one another through the gates of the castle, the shod hooves of their mounts ringing upon the flagstones.
“It’s no secret,” he said, into their shared memory, “that father wishes the plague had taken me instead of them.”
“Don’t say such things.” The words came out by rote for the many times she’d denied their terrible truth. “It will make you bitter, Laurent. Hard-hearted. It will twist you up inside until you’re no better than…”
Our father.
“You’re right, of course. I should say penance.” He squinted up at her from under a fringe of dark hair and flashed a grin like a splinter in her heart. “I’d rather go to the chapel and say penance than practice.”
His ploy was so plain that she couldn’t help but return his smile. “Practice first, penance later.”
“You’re a worse taskmaster than Thibaud.”
“Thibaud would have you on the horse already instead of sitting here wasting time wondering about our fate.”
“Ally, I may wonder about my fate, but you have no reason to do so anymore. Father will find you a husband as soon as he ransoms the prisoner for your castle.”
She resisted the urge to wince. She had no reason to feel guilty. She was not the one who’d murdered an unarmed squire, but blood-guilt couldn’t help but tarnish all her pretty expectations.
“If father plans to marry me off, he’d best do it quickly.” She gestured to the courtyard, cluttered around the perimeter with the villagerentes: bags of grain, huge bundles of wood from the forests on the northern slopes, oak barrels of new wine, and sundry foodstuffs she was long overdue to sort and store. Amid the piles were barrels of pitch and sheaves of arrows. “By the looks of things, he’s expecting to hold off an attack.”
Laurent’s black eyes, so like his father’s, rounded. “Do you think the Prince of Wales will march his army here?”
“If he does, we’ll be well prepared.”
The words tripped off her tongue but her mind traveled a darker path. It had been over a century since this castle had seen battle, if Thibaud’s histories were to be trusted. Now she wondered about the line of trees close outside the northwest wall, thick enough for archers to hide behind. The mortar had been crumbling amid the crenellations of the southwest tower for years, but father had not been here to order restoration. And the drawbridge spanned hard-packed earth instead of the deep ditch that had once been there, if Thibaud’s stories were true.
Then booming laughter rang out in the courtyard, distracting her from growing worries. Their uncle strode into sight from around the shadow of the donjon. Thibaud always reminded Aliénor of a badly wound spool of white woolen thread. His head, with its great mane of stark white hair, was disproportionally larger than his body, which appeared as lean and hard as a young man’s. Despite his sixty years of age, her late mother’s uncle was anything but weak. His penetrating gray eyes saw as sharply as a man half his age, and despite occasional bouts of stiffness, he was as adroit on a stallion as any newly dubbed knight.
“There you are, uncle.” She tilted her head toward Laurent, now sighing and shaking his head. “Help me persuade my stubborn little brother that even monks need to know how to ride well.”
“True monks travel the world on foot,” Laurent said, squinting up at his kinsman, “and they never ride horses.”
“Listen to you, talking about traveling the world on foot.” The older man reached down and gave Laurent’s twisted limb a good pull. “Are you to walk from here to Toulouse on such a leg? A good monk would ride well, to better help the poor in all places.”
